Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Jeff Lane.

Russo informs that one of his fans tried to support him in an argument against Dave Meltzer this past week, when Meltzer said that Russo had a couple of good years in WWE but then was a failure for the rest of his career. Russo says that he has stayed employed and made a living in the wrestling business for over 20 years which is a very difficult thing to do, and he doesn’t understand how Meltzer can consider that a failure.

He also goes on to say that although he disagrees heavily with the majority of Meltzer’s opinions, he’d never call him a failure. Meltzer has built a successful company and has thousands of people subscribe to his dirt sheet. Although Russo doesn’t understand why people would subscribe to the Wrestling Observer, he can’t call Meltzer a failure.

Speaking about the wave of sexual assault accusations in pop culture recently, Russo says it’s only a matter of time before the roof gets blown off in the wrestling industry. He thinks one woman is going to speak out about her experiences in the wrestling business and that will open the flood gates with plenty of more women sharing their stories.

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Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo opens today’s show by pointing out that all the dirt sheet writers were wrong in their prediction that Paige was going to return at Survivor Series as the 5th member of Team Smackdown Live. He says that none of those dirt sheets retracted their incorrect stories after the fact either, but Russo is determined to make people aware of the fact that these people are spreading lies on a weekly basis.

After James Ellsworth was released from WWE last week Ryan Satin of ProWrestlingSheet tweeted out, “Goodnight, Sweet Prince”. Russo says he wouldn’t say that about anyone under any circumstances and although he hates to see anyone lose their job, he’s sure Ellsworth is going to be fine. Russo says Ellsworth’s going to make money on the independent scene because he was on WWE television for long enough to garner some attention.

Russo wonders what’s so special about Asuka, and he questions what makes her any different than Bayley or Sasha Banks. Russo says Asuka can’t hold a candle to Charlotte, and Charlotte has had a much more difficult road to WWE given the fact that Ric Flair is her father, and that adds an insane amount of pressure.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Cena’s Role at Survivor Series, What’s So Special About Asuka? McMahon Reads Dirt Sheets? More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by Glenn Gilbertti (Disco Inferno) and his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo begins today’s show by discussing a recent quote from Dave Meltzer. This past week Meltzer was quoted saying that wrestling storylines are at their best when they’re predictable. When your storylines aren’t predictable you’re often weakening your product in Meltzer’s opinion.

Gilbertti points out that Meltzer’s only concern is the matches, and he couldn’t care less about the storylines. He recalls Meltzer’s analysis of shows during the attitude era when he consistently complained about the fact that the matches were too short, and this was during a period when storytelling was far from predictable.

Russo comments about the fact that A.J. Styles hasn’t been wrestling on Smackdown Live lately. According to Meltzer, WWE has been saving Styles for the dark matches so the live audience stays for 205 Live. Gilbertti says it doesn’t matter anyways because there’s no one showing up to these shows anymore. Russo can’t comprehend placing priority on the live audience especially when ratings continue to decline.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Brock Lesnar Working Live Events, Styles Being Saved for Dark Matches, Corgan’s NWA Purchase, More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo points out that WWE’s viewership continues to decline and is regularly under 3 Million people now. They’re getting dangerously close to an average viewership of 2.5 Million, and Russo has no idea why anybody would watch RAW or Smackdown Live right now. He believes the only people who are watching WWE right now are people who are watching it out of habit, simply because they’ve always watched wrestling.

After Lesnar beat Strowman with one F5 at No Mercy, WWE is now attempting to build him up again. Strowman has defeated Ambrose and Rollins on back-to-back weeks, but both matches were lengthy and competitive.

He believes that WWE has booked these matches to be longer because there are some conditioning issues with Strowman, and this is their way of getting him used to working longer matches. However, ‘The Monster’ should never be working matches of this length with a guy the size of Rollins and although Strowman won, this match hurt him in Russo’s opinion.

Russo is glad WWE is doing something with Mickie James because he’s a very big fan of hers, but this has become a very predictable storyline. The ‘old woman/man’ angle has been done a million times before in professional wrestling, and there’s nothing new to see here.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Strowman’s Conditioning, Storyline Plot holes, Indie Workers Lashing Out, More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo opens today’s show speaking about The Bullet Club’s Invasion of RAW this past Monday. He has no idea what these ‘marks’ were trying to accomplish by doing this but if they were looking for trouble, they’ve found it because WWE issued a cease and desist letter. He says that these guys should be happy with the good living that they’re making on the indie scene.

He also points out that no casual fan has a clue who these guys are. They’re followed by the hardcore indie marks but the mainstream audience has no idea who they are, so it was obvious to him that WWE wasn’t going to open their doors to them on Monday night to invite them on the show.

Lane plays a clip of Wade Keller who says that he didn’t like the ‘training bra’ line utilized by Mickie James in her promo with Alexa Bliss. Keller says that WWE’s male writers always have to bring things back to breasts. Russo says that he spoke to people within WWE, and he can confirm that a male writer did not write that line. He also says that this line got the biggest pop in the entire promo but Keller doesn’t care about what works with the audience, he just cares about what he likes.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Bullet Club Invasion, Marks Hate Enzo Amore, Triple H Loves Balor, More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo says that while RAW and Smackdown Live weren’t great shows this week, there were a number of positives that gave him hope for the future. Of course there were a number of negative things as well, but Russo points out that it’s refreshing that there were things on the shows this week that he actually wants to talk about.

Russo didn’t like that RAW booked Roman Reigns versus Jason Jordan one week after they booked John Cena versus Jordan. These two matches were carbon copies of each other, and just because Jordan is having good matches that doesn’t mean that he’s going to get over. Now, if these competitive losses lead to frustration from Jordan or disappointment from Kurt Angle to further the storyline, Russo is okay with it.

He thinks that WWE has gone to the well too many times with the Cena/Reigns ‘shoot’ promos. The first one was very well done and it felt real, but the last two times felt like contrived wrestling promos. Russo also says that he didn’t mind Cena brining up Reigns’ failed drug test, but he thought Reigns really needed to have a comeback in that spot.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – RAW & Smackdown Live Analysis, Ziggler’s ‘Terrible’ New Gimmick, McMahon Gets Busted Open, More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo starts today’s show by making a significant statement. After watching RAW and Smackdown Live this week Russo was actually impressed with the majority of what WWE did, and he thinks they might actually be turning a corner creatively.

Getting into RAW, Russo says that he enjoyed the first segment between Lesnar & Strowman, in spite of the fact that Heyman cut another promo that sounded exactly like every other promo he has ever cut. However, in a three hour show Russo felt that Lesnar needed to be shown backstage throughout the show looking for revenge on Strowman.

Russo was saddened by the freak injury to Big Cass on RAW. He says that this was a complete accident, and Big Cass has probably executed that spot a thousand times in his career with no issue whatsoever. Russo points out that the timing of this injury is terrible for Cass, but hopefully WWE picks up right where they left off with his push when he gets back.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – RAW & Smackdown Live Analysis, Roode & Benjamin Debut, Is WWE Turning A Corner? More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo says that Enzo Amore cut a terrific promo to open this week’s episode of Monday Night RAW. He hopes that WWE isn’t writing Amore off after his split with Big Cass, because Amore is a machine on the mic, and he proved it again on Monday. It’s also clear to Russo that Amore is writing his own promos, because there’s no way the same writers that write the rest of the show are writing his promos. Amore’s promos are simply on another level.

In Russo’s opinion, RAW fails every week because of three points:

1. The show is 3 hours
2. They split the brands, so they don’t have their entire roster available to them to use on Monday nights.
3. They don’t even utilize the top talents that they have on that roster.

It doesn’t make any sense to Russo that WWE chose to split there roster. When he almost returned to WWE in 2002, the first thing he talked to Vince McMahon about was undoing the brand split and merging the rosters again. In addition to this, the top stars on both brands are barely utilized each week. We saw all of RAW’s top stars for no more than a few minutes each on Monday night.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – RAW’s 3-point Failure, Kevin Owens’ New Documentary, The Death of Kayfabe, More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.

Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane.

Russo says that he’s absolutely sick of the millennials in this world, who are completely stuck up and can’t take a joke. During the Alexa Bliss/Bayley match on Sunday night, Russo tweeted out joking that he’d let Bliss hit him with that pole. For the next few hours he was shelled with backlash online. He says that these people just take the fun out of life, and the world is going to be a scary place when these people have to run it in 10-20 years time.

Speaking about the Intercontinental match between The Miz and Dean Ambrose, Russo thought these two guys did a poor job of making the match feel realistic. Most fans look right past these subtleties, but there were a couple occasions during the match where one of them stood still and let the other attack them when it was obvious they could have moved (Daniel Bryan kick spot for example).

He says that with the rise of MMA and legitimate fights, it’s almost as if wrestling has gone the opposite direction and has become less believable. Russo also says that the finish of this match was poorly executed, with the referee taking an awfully long time before making a decision to disqualify Ambrose. This allowed Miz to attack Ambrose from behind and pick up the pin-fall win.

The post Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Extreme Rules Review, Heels Get Heat & Go Over, Retiring Undertaker in 2002? More! appeared first on Wrestling News & WWE News, Rumors & Spoilers.