Vince Russo’s The Brand Recap – Meltzer Criticizing Corbin, We Need More Demon, Who Cares About NJPW? More!
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Russo is joined on today’s show by Skull Von Crush (Big Vito), his old co-host from Vicious Vincent’s World of Wrestling in the early 90’s. They will discuss Sunday’s Battleground PPV.
Russo says that without entertaining characters and in depth storylines, these shows are just full ok fake fights. That’s not what made him a fan of wrestling many years ago, and he believes that’s a big reason why so many mainstream fans have left the product over the last several years.
He thought the opening match of the show between The Usos and The New Day was a very exciting match and all the guys worked hard, but they started the show at such a high octane pace, that it almost made it impossible to follow. He also says the one superkick that was delivered to Xavier Woods from across the ring looked incredible and it looked like it should have legitimately killed him. Having him kick out of a spot like that doesn’t do anything good for the business.
Vito says that he agrees entirely and he felt that this match negatively affected the matches that followed. He thought the match between A.J. Styles and Kevin Owens was the worst match he’s ever seen Styles work, and that should never be the case because Owens is a good worker as well. The finish of this match was so anti-climatic after all the false finishes we saw in the opening match of the show.
Russo opens today’s show by commentating on the recent drama in the relationship between Paige and Alberto Del Rio. He says that he met Paige and her family before, and they’re all very nice people. He has also met Del Rio in the past and he was very nice as well. In other words, he likes both of these individuals and he really just wants both of them to be okay.
He says that he doesn’t put any weight into the headlines written by wrestling ‘journalists’, but the tweets that were sent out by Paige’s brother really caught his attention. Some people forget that Paige is still just a kid, and her family are obviously very concerned about her. He believes that there is love in that relationship and he thinks they’re both good people, so he hopes they can figure this out.
Lane mentions that there has been some criticism from dirt sheet writers, Bryan Alvarez in particular, over the fact that Billy Gunn worked the recent NJPW show from the United States. Russo says he’s glad that Gunn wrestled on that show, and he’s glad that he’ll continue to wrestle for the foreseeable future because he’s able to make money doing that. This is a business, and each time Gunn wrestles he gets paid, so what’s the problem here?
Russo says that Gunn is still a machine at his age. He adds that in a shoot fight, Gunn would give Brock Lesnar a tougher bout than Samoa Joe or most other performers on WWE’s roster.
Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane and Glenn Gilbertti (Disco Inferno).
Lane asks Russo and Gilbertti for their opinions on the rumours that Paige was sitting ringside at Slammiversary last weekend wearing a mask in order to protect her identity. Gilbertti says that he can’t lower his IQ enough to discuss this on an intellectual level. Russo says that if that was Paige, it’s easy to tell that this was a desperate move by her in order to get out of her contract.
Paige clearly wants to be with her boyfriend Del Rio in Global Force Wrestling, so Russo doesn’t understand why both parties can’t get on the same page here and make that release happen. WWE has actually referenced Paige’s leaked sex tape on WWE the last couple of weeks, but then they removed those references from the replays.
Gilbertti doesn’t understand this because the average age of their fans is 54, yet they’re still acting like they have to market to a young demographic. Russo says that if this was the attitude era, Del Rio would have been signed after Paige’s tape was released, and the storyline would have consisted of Del Rio and Paige accusing Xavier Woods of releasing that tape. This would have been a great storyline and everyone would have been talking about it.
Russo is joined on todays’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane. They will cover part two of the April 10, 2000 episode of Monday Nitro.
Russo informs that he initially reached out to J.J. Dillon about going to work for WCW after having a meeting with Vince McMahon. Russo stressed that he wanted his wife to be able to move closer to her family, and he wanted to see his children more often. McMahon replied by saying that Russo has enough money to hire a nanny to take care of his children.
Russo did not appreciate that response and reached out to WCW. He knew that once he did that, his time in WWE was limited, whether he got a job in WCW or not. He informs that he doesn’t regret leaving WWE for WCW at this time at all, and he’d do the exact same thing tomorrow.
This episode was the first show that he and Eric Bischoff wrote together, and in spite of their differences, they managed to write some pretty good television together.
Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host Jeff Lane and Rue from ‘Rue TV’.
Russo opens today’s show by informing that Bruce Prichard has denied his invitation to appear on this show. He now lumps Prichard in the same category as Jim Cornette and Eric Bischoff, of people who love to talk crap behind his back but refuse to discuss it with him in person.
Rue asks Russo about his connection to Bruce Prichard’s arrival in TNA years ago. Russo says he doesn’t like to talk about this much, but he played an instrumental part in bringing Prichard into TNA. Prichard was released from WWE because he and Stephanie McMahon didn’t see eye to eye, but Prichard had two small children and his wife was sick at the time, so Russo went to work and found a position for him in TNA.
Russo informs that Wade Keller appears to be getting his own podcast on PodcastOne in the near future, and someone has already reached out to him about being a guest on that show. Russo said he’d absolutely appear on that show as a guest because he has no issue debating their opposing wrestling philosophies, even though they’ve had their differences in the past. Russo is interested to see whether Keller actually agrees to have him on as a guest.