Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (32 page)

The next day, which was usually a Friday, I would format the show on my computer. That’s what it came down to — me and a hard drive. Here is where I went over it with a fine tooth comb — from who would enter the ring first, to who would run-in (interfere in the match), to who would go over (win the match), to whose music needed to be cued after the match, to the loser getting his revenge while the music was still playing. The final format involved everything — pre-tapes, live interviews (with each one written out), vignettes, commercial breaks, everything. Man, writing that was so tedious, so demanding. It took me an average of eight to ten hours just to put the show on paper. From there, I would distribute it to everyone in the tv production department. Then, usually somewhere around 6 p.m. on Friday evening, I would go up to Vince’s office with the formatted show and we would tweak some more. The tweaking would go on all weekend, and continue up to and even during the day of the show. But in reality, when we arrived at the building to shoot
Raw
, the show was 95 percent done. Vince and I used that system for the good part of two years — and, I must say, it was magic.

227

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

• • •

Growing up in Brooklyn, my father was a New York Giants fan. During his early life, he went round and round with the Dodgers, always remaining loyal to the black and orange. When then-owner Horace Stoneham up and moved the Giants to San Francisco back in 1958, my father remained loyal. He never changed colors, even though his boys were now roaming the diamond some three thousand miles away.

My father loved Willie Mays, the “Say Hey Kid.” Hands down, Mays was the greatest Giant — if not baseball player — of all time. Willie roamed centerfield with the grace of no other — making basket-catches on balls others couldn’t even get to. He had speed, power and an arm like Johnny Unitas. In his prime, he was the Michael Jordan of his era.

By the time I was eight, I was already following in my father’s foot-steps. Willie Mays was my lord and savior — and the Giants were my morning, noon and night. Every morning, my father used to leave me the scores from the west coast on my night table, so that the first thing I saw when I woke up was how the Giants did. Whether they won or lost, it would affect my entire day, even back then.

To this very day I am obsessed with San Francisco Giants baseball

— it is my one and only pleasure. When the Giants are on, everything else stops. Don’t bother me, don’t talk to me, leave me alone. When the Giants lose — it’s the same — don’t talk to me, don’t bother me, leave me alone. The Giants are my drug — I can’t get enough of them. When it’s not baseball season, it’s just not the same. I’d rather watch a Giants game than do anything else.

You can imagine how bitter I was when the Giants were in the playoffs against the Florida Marlins in ’97, and I had to miss the games because I was writing tv with Vince.

I mention Willie Mays and the Giants because that’s what writing television with Vince McMahon was like — playing centerfield next to the Say Hey Kid. It was magical — everything I had ever dreamed of, and more.
Think and Grow Rich?
I was living my dream. Vince and I clicked on all cylinders — I knew what he was thinking, and vice versa. He trusted me, I think because he knew I was sincere. I had no 228

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

ulterior motives — I just wanted to help make things better. But it was his trust that gave me the confidence and freedom to throw everything his way as quickly as he could digest it. That’s how we worked. Vince rarely came up with the big picture — that was my job.

And I was never insulted when he didn’t like my ideas. Working that closely with Vince, you couldn’t allow your feelings to get hurt. I mean, at the end of the day it was his company — if he liked something, he liked it — if he didn’t, he didn’t. Luckily, nine times out of ten he liked my stuff. Very rarely did we go toe-to-toe. I can only remember one time where I got really hot, and it was because he was caving in to the talent and I knew it was wrong.

It was the “Highway to Hell” Summer Slam, the main event being a match between the Undertaker and Steve Austin. ’Taker and Steve were hell bent on going into the match with a respect for each other, rather than a hatred. The reason was obvious — behind the scenes these guys got along. But the truth was nobody cared if these guys went out drinking after a long-day’s-rockin’. They wanted to see them kill each other.

Well, Vince caved, and the match sucked. It was Madison Square Garden — a full house — and
nobody
cared. After the match Austin and ’Taker were both disappointed; they couldn’t understand the lack of crowd response. Hey, I could have told them . . . and did. I was from New Yawk — remember?

But all in all, being able to work with Vince on that level was a gift.

There are just so many misconceptions about him, things that you would never know unless you’d worked that closely with him. When it comes to concepts, ideas and the big picture, McMahon may not be the master everybody makes him out to be. In my opinion, his forté, and the thing that constantly used to blow me away about him, is that he could always make things just a little bit better. He visualized things better than I ever could. It was his small tweak here and there that would turn a 50 million dollar picture into a 100 million dollar blockbuster. That was his genius: seeing things that nobody else could.

It was no surprise when, week by week, the ratings began to climb.

One of the main reasons was patience. Vince knew the business was 229

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

changing with every word we put down on paper — and success wasn’t going to come overnight. Every week we would be sitting at his house when the ratings came in — and Vince never got excited one way or another. All he did was stay the course —
patience
. That was a big difference when I went to wcw. They wanted to see results the following week — and it just doesn’t happen that way. It took the better part of eight months just to get the ratings out of the twos, barely touching the threes. I tried to explain that to the chiefs at wcw many times — but they didn’t get it. In fact, there was very little they did get. But again, that’s another story for another time.

When the first quarter of ’98 came along, the ratings were in the mid-threes. Vince and I used to kid each other, saying, “We work damn hard for those threes,” and we did. We wrote every show to be better than the last, and every show as if it were our last. You see, there was a formula. Along with patience, Vince and I took every traditional rasslin’ outcome or finish, and went the other way. Whatever the audience was expecting — give them the unexpected. Immediately this brought
unpredictability
to the product — something it had been lacking for years. Babyfaces would do heel things and sometimes heels would even do babyface things. This was unheard of. It had been written in stone — a heel had to act one way, while a babyface acted another. Well, guess what? We dropped — no, threw — that stone off the Brooklyn Bridge. There were no more rules and regulations.

After throwing out the rule book, we concentrated on writing stories, shooting angles and creating characters that had a razor-sharp cutting edge — an attitude that the business had never seen before.

We were standing up and screaming
“@#!$ you!”
at the top of our lungs and people were starting to pay attention. Without a doubt, we had become
dangerous
, and slowly, but surely,
Raw
was becoming the

“in thing” to watch.

And yes — we had a little bit of luck on our side.

230

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Chapter 41

THE BOTTOM LINE

There were many variables that led to the somewhat quick success Vince and I achieved, but a large part of it can be attributed to Stone Cold Steve Austin. Another little known fact is that when Austin was brought into the wwf and given the moniker “Ringmaster” (I swear to you, when Prichard first told me I thought it had something to do with the circus), Vince gave me direct orders: when writing for Steve, “Let Ted DiBiase [Austin’s manager at the time] do most of his talking. And when Steve does speak, he should speak only in a monotone.” I could care less what Vince McMahon will tell you today — back then, he saw nothing in Steve Austin. The only reason we’d had a discussion about him in the first place was because I brought it up. When he first came to the wwf from ecw, Steve was viewed as one of those underneath guys, or “mid-carders,” that Vince didn’t have much, if any, time for. I had to laugh a few years later when Vince, on a biography special about Austin, said that he saw Steve at ecw and knew 231

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

immediately he could be a huge star. First of all — Vince
never
watched ecw. The only thing he knew about the promotion is what others told him. And for him to say that about Austin . . . Steve would be the first to tell you that he practically had to beg Vince for a job.

But to be honest, even I didn’t see the success that lay before him.

Yeah, I was a big fan of his over at wcw, but I never knew he would almost become bigger than the game itself.

Man, I can remember producing those early promos for Austin.

He hated that monotone nonsense, but it was what the boss wanted, so he did it — no complaints. The character of the Ringmaster went on for a while, until Steve himself busted out of that shell and refused to be denied. As Vince and I were hitting stride and becoming comfortable with each other — so was Stone Cold Steve Austin. I’ll never forget — right around the time he won King of the Ring, there was an episode of
Raw
in which Austin sat in on color for the first time.

It was one of those true tv moments, like seeing Gene Simmons spit blood live and in person from the front row of Madison Square Garden for the first time when I was 16. My mouth hit the floor —

what had we been we thinking?

But for as good as he was, Steve needed something perhaps even better to play off.

Give all the credit to Vince; it was his idea to portray himself as

“Vince McMahon, owner of the Evil Empire.” For years, Vince had made an effort to stay out of the limelight. Even though it was a known fact that he owned the company, he had never really been involved in a story line or angle. He had been untouchable and above the fray. It was unthinkable to involve him in the ring — he was just too important — and that’s exactly why it was such a
huge
deal to see his character become part of the mix. I think what it came down to was this: deep down, he knew that if he was going to get the ratings back up he wasn’t going to rely on anybody other than himself. Vince had the foresight to see that he could outperform 95 percent of the roster — and he did. In that character, Vince was amazing. He was the guy you just couldn’t wait to boo every Monday night. There was no 232

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Forgiven

doubt — again in the words of James E. Cornette — “Vince became the biggest heel in the territory.”

Through a natural progression, Stone Cold Steve Austin and Vince McMahon would cross paths — and when they did, we had them —

the fans were eating out of our hands. Not only was the chemistry between them sweeter than Simon and Garfunkel, but they were telling a story every blue-collar worker could relate to. Every hard-working man who earns his pay 60 hours a week with his own two hands would love the opportunity — just once — to tell his boss to stick it . . . well, you know where. Steve Austin spoke for all those people. And Vince represented Corporate America — perhaps the biggest “heel” in the world. Whether you were a wrestling fan or not, you were now tuning in on Monday nights to watch
Raw
. Having a front-row seat through it all, I can now tell you that no two other individuals could have pulled it off. Vince and Austin
were
their alter egos — that’s what made it so believable.

And I must say this — Vince was a gamer. Whatever was needed of him, he did. Probably one too many times I asked him to perform in the ring because the story begged for it, and whether he was banged up or not — Vince put on his black pants and muscle tee and went out there and did it. Remember, the guy was already in his 50s.

Give him all the credit in the world — that’s nothing short of incredible. I know. I first hit the ring when I was still under 40, and man, it was taxing. And I didn’t do one-tenth of the crazy stuff the boss did.

But again, Vince was leading by example. I’ll never forget the time I made him chase a chicken in butt-deep snow, while he was sporting a horrible cold, just so I could get off on my
Rocky
fixation. But when that particular vignette aired — there was no doubt it was a Slammy Award winner.

I can go on forever about McMahon vs. Austin. A story like that only happens once in a lifetime. It was like seeing Pacino and Brando on the screen together — their story was the backbone of our success.

But keep in mind, it was going to take more than one good story to pull us out of the grave that we had dug for ourselves.

233

BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Vince Russo

• • •

It turned my stomach when weeks after I left the wwf for wcw, a wwf internet host poised this question to Shane McMahon on
Byte
This:

“How do you feel about Vince Russo taking all the credit for the success of the wwf?”

It really hurt. I have never once taken credit for the success of the wwf. I was put into a situation where a lot of good things happened at the same time. A great part of my success can be attributed to Stone Cold. Austin was just beginning to hit his stride when I began writing. It’s no different than Dusty Baker managing Barry Bonds, or Scorsese directing DeNiro. Steve was such a pro — you gave it to him and he ran it in.