During his appearance on Busted Open Radio, Vince Russo spoke on feeling like he was responsible for not providing better creative content for Bart Gunn after his Brawl For All victory. Here’s what he had to say:
I failed Bart Gunn. Vince Russo, head writer, 1500%, I failed Bart Gunn. And I’ll tell you why I failed. Vince McMahon didn’t fail Bart Gunn. WWE didn’t fail Bart Gunn. Vince Russo did, and I’ll tell you why. You have to understand, before the Brawl for All, Bart Gunn was a character on the show, it’s 50% in-ring, it’s 50% out of ring, Bart Gunn did not have that 50% out of the ring. He wasn’t a promo guy, that wasn’t his strong suit. Hell of a worker, good worker, but what was stalling Bart was the promo, OK? So now, this guy wins this Brawl for All in a fashion that, if I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I would have never believed it. It was so freaking impressive that, you know how this works in wrestling and I think this is the problem they have now, when I’m writing for a character, week to week to week to week to week, that trajectory has to go upwards, upwards. You gotta keep getting that character over to higher heights. You can’t bring them down, and that’s my job. When Austin’s hot, we gotta keep him hot, he’s gotta get hotter, he can’t start sliding down. So now as a writer, I am faced with this guy that knocked out some of the toughest men in professional sports. So now when I’m looking at the wrestling part, the wrestling aspect, it’s like, there are two things I’m dealing with. How do I book Bart that’s gonna keep him at that level opposed to watering him down, number one, and number two, if you put him now in the company of an Austin or the company of a Rock, if you put him up there, he’s the same guy that can’t cut a promo, so promo wise, he’s not gonna be able to go toe-to-toe with these guys and there’s gonna bury him in that aspect of the game, so I was stuck with, I don’t want to bring this guy down, he still has trouble with promos, what do we do with him? Bro, that’s my failure. That’s my failure as a writer and I take 5000% responsibility for that.
Credit: Busted Open Radio. H/T 411Mania.