Fathers' Blood: True Stories of Pro Wrestling Dads Facing Their Greatest Challenger - Parenthood by Sean Oliver

Author:Sean Oliver [Oliver, Sean]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2018-09-30T16:00:00+00:00

VINCE:

The nanny

VINCE RUSSO WAS standing in the back of a darkened movie theater whispering into his cell phone, trying to be heard above the explosions on the screen. He was getting stares aplenty from the surrounding Saturday afternoon movie-goers.

A nice thing about being the head writer of the biggest wrestling TV shows in the country, as opposed to being a wrestler on them, is your travel is easier. TV still shot on only prescribed days whereas house shows, non-televised wrestling cards, went on all damn week long. Wrestlers worked on TV, then they worked on the house shows. A week later, they worked on TV again, followed by more house shows. Following week? Right.

Vince Russo was writing what we saw on WWE RAW and Smackdown during their prime years. There were also less significant TV shows the company aired, also shot on RAW and Smackdown days. It was hours and hours of TV for which Russo was responsible. But as far as physical travel, he found himself at arenas for Monday and Tuesday TV, with the occasional Sunday pay-per-view, which happened a dozen times a year. In essence, his travel schedule was the same as when he’d put himself on the road for TV tapings as editor of the WWE Magazine.

While physically in Connecticut, his mind and heart had been stolen from his body by Vince McMahon. The WWE product was on fire, having been given a healthy second life after a desiccated stretch in the early 90s riddled with legal wrangling and scandal. McMahon found himself in courtrooms, on talk show sets, in addition to the arenas. And there was more interest in the prior than the latter. The McMahon family business was anemic at that time.

The edgy WWE product of the second half of the 1990s gave an endorphin blast to the company’s collapsing veins. Superstars were again being born in its rings and on its TV. Money was flowing in. TV contracts were hotly pursued by networks. Life, anew. Excess, actually.

Vince Russo was writing it, along with his namesake McMahon. He’d given Russo the ball in desperate times, and now he was wearing the company jersey, the starting quarterback on the team that looked like it was headed to the Super Bowl. McMahon knows a good thing when he sees one. He built a company on looking across the room and getting the pretty girl to dance with him, right out of the arms of her date, at times. Hogan stands up Verne. JYD stands up Watts.

You could go on all day. McMahon might not make them, but he knows them when he sees them. And when he gets them, he works them hard. The stream of WWE Attitude era revenue was flowing in the blood let from the veins of Austin, Rock, Foley, Russo, and McMahon. Let it never be said that McMahon didn’t sacrifice as much as his stars, put in as much time as his writers and bookers.

That commitment from McMahon himself required inhumane time commitment from head writer Vince Russo.

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