— On a recent episode of his “83 Weeks” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Eric Bischoff criticized Vince Russo’s creative ideas and highlighted his difficulties with storytelling.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Vince Russo pitching ideas: “Here was my issue with Russo. Russo could pitch you an idea, even if it was a lukewarm idea. It was a six on a scale of one to 10, five and a half. But he would pitch it with so much passion and conviction that even though in your mind you’re going, ‘This is eh at best?’ He was charming enough and passionate enough, he could get you to go further with an idea than you might normally go. I would listen to some of his ideas more than I typically would, just because of his passion for it.”
On seeing through it: “But once you got through the passion, like all of his ‘Bro, bro, bro, bro, bro, bro’ New York bulls**t. Once you got through that, if you ask him one question, ‘Where does it go from here? What happens next week? What’s the arc look like?’ It was like you were asking him to cure cancer. It would stump him. It was kind of amazing.
“And once I realized it — you know, Hulk was the first one to point it out to me, so I didn’t notice it right away. But if you ever wanted to shut Vince Russo down, all you had to do is say, ‘Vince, this is really great. What do we do next week?’ Because he never thought about next week. He never really understood episodic television. He booked one week at a time, and whatever got him excited, whatever it was and he got — once he wrapped his head around it, and he felt like he was going to go out and pitch it. That’s all he needed. ‘Next week? We’ll figure it out next week. Week after that?’ Whatever, I got it.’”
On Vince Russo not understanding storytelling: “He didn’t understand storytelling. He talks a lot about it, ‘everybody has a story,’ but the story sucked. It’s the same thing that I hear from the internet wrestling community fans that Dave Meltzer, ‘Oh, there’s so many stories in AEW, it’s hard to keep track of them.’ Are you f**king kidding me? Those aren’t stories. They don’t qualify as stories. There’s no structure to them, there’s no journey to them. Just because you come up and you book s**t every single week for the same two people over a course of six weeks, doesn’t mean you’re telling a story. You’re just booking matches.
“And Russo was more guilty of that than anybody that I’ve ever worked with in creative. He just didn’t understand the concept of — as probably in Jim Cornette’s example — yeah, it’s great to come up with a good idea on a piece of paper. It sounds really good when you’re pitching it in a room. But you have to execute it, right? And part of that execution is, what happens next week or next month? Where does it go? And if you don’t have the answer, Where does this story go after we shoot this really cool angle?’ If you don’t have a clear picture for that that you can explain with confidence, all you’re doing is pitching angles. And that’s what everybody does. Everybody’s pitching angles, nobody’s pitching stories.”
— On a recent episode of his “Kliq This” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Kevin Nash shared his candid take on the recent RAW match between Nikki Bella and Asuka.
Nash praised Nikki’s performance but was far less complimentary toward Asuka, bluntly saying, “F***in’ Asuka, she doesn’t sell s**t!” His co-host Sean Oliver suggested that Asuka’s lack of selling might have been intentional to present her as stronger in the match, but Nash dismissed that explanation.
He admitted that when Nikki is in the ring, it’s difficult for him to pay attention to anything else. Beyond that, he criticized Asuka’s overall presentation as “dated” and took aim at her promo work, pointing out her limited ability to cut promos in English.
Nash even compared her unfavorably to former WCW manager Sonny Onoo, who was known for speaking English on behalf of Japanese talent. He said, “There’s no one from Japan that wrestles that speaks like Sonny Onoo? That speaks English? They’re making it difficult.”
Since returning from injury, Asuka has seen mixed results in both singles and tag team competition.
— WWE opened Wrestlepalooza with a tribute to ESPN in recognition of their new partnership.
Notably absent from the video package was Jonathan Coachman, who played a key role in establishing the relationship between WWE and ESPN. Coachman took to Twitter to share his disappointment over the omission, writing:
“The fact that me and my team didn’t make this package hurts us a little. We took SportsCenter to multiple Manias. We did Tuesday interviews from SmackDown for over 2 years. But at least anchors that don’t know anything about wrestling made it. Thank you TRIPS. LOL. To my 5 guys who rolled with me we know.”
