Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (8 page)

again
), and from day one she took the position that I was just lucky to be going out with her. And you know what? At the time she was probably right. She was this high-maintenance, popular princess and 41

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Vince Russo

I was unsocial, introverted and couldn’t be bothered. From the first day we met, everything was a head game. She’d call, she wouldn’t call; she’s nice, she’s Witchiepoo (all right, my second reference to
H.R.

Pufnstuf
). You know the routine — as guys, we all go through it at some point. Well, call me a glutton for punishment, but I got into the game. It became an intriguing battle of who’s gonna zoom who first.

Don’t misunderstand me, I truly believed I was in love with L, but the fact was, I dug her because she was the female equivalent of me. So the game grew more intense with each date. Neither side was going to lose. This was the ultimate Batman-Superman showdown to end all feuds. And you know what? Looking back now, the whole situation was whacked. I mean, we really did care for each other, but the win was the most important thing for both sides.

Some time during the school year, L beat me to the punch — she broke up with me. I’ll never forget it. I drove away from her house, my eyes leaking on the steering wheel of my ’73 Camero as the words of Elvis Costello’s “Allison” blared from my eight-track. I’ll never forget L’s cocky last words. Intending to hurt me, she said, “Vinnie, there will be a me and you — but there will never be a me
and
you.” L was the first and last girl I ever cried over. But as heartbroken as I was, I realized that the game had just begun. In my mind there had to be a loser before there could be a winner, so for the months that followed I began to play a masterful game of chess. The spacing of the phone calls, the accidental meetings, the occasional cards — all carried out with precision timing. On one occasion I even tied a stray dog to her car, one of those shaggy canines, and left my calling card — a Gene Simmons trading card — attached to his collar, just to get L’s attention.

Man, what was I thinking?

When I was a teenager, Gene Simmons of kiss was my god and savior. I bought my first kiss album,
Rock-n-Roll Over
, on my 16th birthday, and from that day forward my life would be forever changed.

Those teenage years I looked up to Simmons — I drew inspiration from him. Above my bed I had this poster of the “God of Thunder” 42

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shot, looking up from his platinum, dragon-boots. That particular photo was just so powerful, I looked at it every night, drawing strength, thinking there wasn’t anything I couldn’t do.

Again, here’s something else I promise you will never read in any other ego-driven wrestling book: the first time I saw kiss, at Madison Square Garden in 1977 with my friend Brian Chykirda, I
cried
. You know, like when teenyboppers today go see Justin Timberlake. Yeah, I cried — I’m not afraid to admit it — that’s how much Gene Simmons meant to me.

I remained loyal to Gene Simmons and kiss into adulthood, and even passed the tradition along to my own two boys. As a matter of fact, they were with me the night I got to meet “the Demon” himself. That’s right

— for as bad an experience as wcw was, one good thing came out of it.

I had the opportunity to meet Gene Simmons — my boyhood dream became a reality.

A couple of years later, at the age of 42, the one and only true idol made himself known to me — that being Jesus Christ himself. Looking back at my boyhood idol, I was so far gone to the other team that it was scary. No, I don’t believe Gene Simmons is a devil, devil-worshipper, or a “Knight In Satan’s Service,” but I do believe that it was dangerous for me, at such an impressionable age, to be looking up to someone whose values and beliefs were a bit tainted.

Over the years, Gene Simmons has made it abruptly clear to anyone who will listen that for him it’s all about women and money. Hey — whatever floats your boat, but with Christ running my life, it is so clear to me that those two things mean zero.

I found out firsthand that money doesn’t bring happiness. In my best year at wcw, I made $535,000 — and I was miserable every minute that I earned it. I’ve said it once, and I’ll say it again, the only difference between me making $500,000 a year or $50,000 a year was the amount of dvds I bought —
that’s it!
And, let’s face it, how many DVDs do we buy that we really don’t need anyway? How many times do you have to watch
Rocky
before it gets old? Okay, maybe that’s a bad example, substitute 43

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Vince Russo

Ernest Goes to Camp.
All kidding aside, money does not make you happy. Part of being a Christian is understanding that “your” money isn’t

“your” money at all. It belongs to the one who created you — God.

Without God you would have
nothing.
The treasures you have on earth are given to you by God, and they are given for one reason — for God to see how you manage them. How you manage your earthly gifts here will determine what gifts you will be given
when it matters
— in eternity. So, I’m not dissuading anybody from making as much as they want, I’m just advising you that your riches may be a test. Whether you pass or fail is totally up to you. But remember one thing: you exit this world the same way you entered — with nothing.

As far as women go — look, I had a pretty powerful spot in the wrestling business, and there were, and are, many a female looking to break in and willing to do anything for it. You do the math. Again, my question is: do the nasty and you achieve what? You have good stories to tell the rest of the band, or the locker room? Meanwhile, you’ve degraded your body — which isn’t yours, by the way, it’s God’s temple

— and you’ve violated another human being? Just tell me, what has been accomplished?

Thanks, but no thanks. I’m content being with the love of my life for more than 20 years, and enjoying the fruits of that relationship: Will, VJ, and Annie.

Finally, days before I was to leave for college, I won L back. She knew she couldn’t live without me once I was a thousand miles away. L told me what a mistake she had made, and how she truly loved me.

Without blinking, I looked L in the eye and said, “There is no way I’m going to be committed to you when I’m a thousand miles away. In other words
(here it comes),
There will be a me and you . . . but, there won’t be a me
and
you.” Man — what a rush. What an accomplishment. What a win. It just felt so good.

The point? At that moment, I had learned an extremely valuable lesson — you can get anything you want in this world as long as you work for it. Nothing is out of your reach. Not getting the girl, not 44

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meeting Gene Simmons, and not even working side by side with Vince McMahon.

Dear God,

It pains me deeply when I see the kind of person I was before I surren-dered to you. To think that it was “I” who accomplished this, and “I” who accomplished that, makes me realize how lost I was without you.

Since you saved my life, I truly understand that everything that has happened to me in this life has been your will. The highs and the lows were all by your design. For more than 40 years I never saw the road I was walking, until you made it clear as a Colorado spring. Every circumstance, every instance, every experience, every step of the way was mapped out by you for one reason . . . it would lead me directly to the one who loves me the most.

Father, I thank you for saving my life, forgiving me my sins, never giving up on me, loving me unconditionally and, most of all, for your son, Jesus Christ. Today and every day I live my life to glorify yours.

— Vince

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Chapter 8

THE BIGGEST

WIN OF MY LIFE

Following the “L Triumph,” I had many other huge victories before I became associated with the World Wrestling Federation. The most impressive and significant, however, came when I won the hand of Evansville native Amy Gartner in marriage. Now, get this picture —

here I am, Catholic, Italian and from New York. Ms. Gartner, on the other hand: religion, Baptist; nationality, Baptist; place of origin —

Bible Belt. In other words, this had all the makings of a sitcom.

When I met Amy, I knew within a short period of time that she was the one for me. The truth is, the minute I set foot in Indiana I knew I would marry a girl from the Midwest. They were just so much more “human,” so much nicer. The majority of Long Island girls were all about themselves: the hair, the make-up, which club they were going to. They were forever on a journey to “get themselves over” (a wrestling term we will get more into later), their popularity and status meant
everything
. The only way they knew was their way. In 46

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Indiana it was different. I mean, the girls actually
cared
for you, just like your mother did. They cooked for you, coddled you, babied you and catered to you around the clock. I now realize, at the time I met Amy, maybe it was a combination of a mother thing (the fact that I’d left home at 19 and moved a thousand miles away didn’t mean I was ready for the experience) and a male chauvinistic thing (the way my mother dominated my father) — but I’m neither ashamed or embarrassed to say I needed a woman who would take care of me. When I met Amy in my junior year at Indiana State, I knew she was that woman. I was already tired of the dating scene, and I just wanted one special person to come home to.

Recently, my son Will asked me, “Dad, how do you know when you’re in love?” Even though I know that’s the age-old question, I actually think I know the answer. I love my wife, Amy, because she was and is everything that I’m not. She filled the missing pieces to my puzzle and made me whole. Whereas I was strong, bull-headed, confident and driven, Amy was the complete opposite — vulnerable, fair, honest and fulfilled with life. Whoever coined the phrase “opposites attract” was dead on the money — Amy and I had nothing in common. In contrast, when you look at my relationship with L, she was everything I was. She wasn’t my better half, as Amy is, because
she was me.
And you wonder why I believe in God? There is no way coincidence brought me to my perfect mate, living in Evansville, Indiana, of all places. Consider the road which led me to Amy in the first place. I had to graduate high school early, enroll in college, realize I wasn’t ready for it, drop out of college, get a real job in the real world on a real assembly line where my father worked, realize I had to go back to school, run into a friend who I hadn’t seen in over a year and let him talk me into going to college in Evansville, Indiana. That’s fate, my friends. That’s the Lord’s plan.

If it hadn’t been for Amy, I don’t know if I would have ever been able to survive the “wrestling bubble” I had somehow landed in. Amy was my rock, my constant, my backbone. And today I thank God for providing such a gift.

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From the first moments I spent with her, I could tell Amy was a saint, hands-down the nicest person I had ever met. I envisioned myself spending the rest of my life with her — there was just nobody more complementary to me. Unfortunately, I don’t think Amy’s mother felt the same way about the relationship as I did.

This would be the biggest battle of my life to date — the main event. In one corner, you had an Italian Catholic from New Yawk, while in the other corner stood a self-righteous General Baptist from Middle America, usa. There’s no question, I was the underdog going into this one. I had everything stacked against me, including the home-field advantage. On paper, this appeared to be a war I couldn’t possibly win . . . something I
thrived
on. In Alta Gartner’s mind, I had no business dating her daughter. Yeah, I said “Alta.” In the Midwest people have
unfamiliar
names like that. Amy’s grandmother and aunt were named Ora and Ura, for crying out loud! Getting back to Alta, she didn’t approve of me and I knew it. I was everything she did not want in a son-in-law. I took great exception to this. I treated Amy like gold and literally cherished the ground she walked on. But in my view, this made no difference to Alta. On more occasions than one, I tried to have civil conversations with Alta, trying to let her know how I truly felt about her daughter, but those words seem to fall on deaf ears. It seems that every conversation we had, Alta would turn to her Bible and start quoting from it — a ritual that rubbed me the wrong way. I never appreciated, and still don’t, when people use the Bible to, in a sense, “scold you.” If you are a non-Christian, the words aren’t going to mean anything to you —
nothing.
This was exactly where I stood. Even though she felt she was doing the right thing at the time

— in essence Alta was distancing herself from me.

Since becoming a Christian, life in general has become much clearer. If Alta sat down with me today and recited those same words, we would be in unison on each and every verse. But back then — write down these words —
I wasn’t ready.

In the past year, I’ve learned first-hand that you can’t force Christianity 48

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on anybody. If they aren’t ready to receive it, they won’t. No matter how hard you preach, it will simply go in one ear and out the other, just like Alta’s words did with me. To accept the words of God your heart has to be ready. The only one who can do that is God himself. God spent 42

years preparing me to understand his vision, but that vision was fully understood not on anyone else’s time, but on his.

As much as I respect and appreciate my mother-in-law today, I feel she made a mistake in quoting the Bible to me at a time when I wasn’t ready to understand. Today, as I spread God’s word among the boys, I too am faced with that dilemma. You’re not going to save anybody, and quite frankly it’s not the job of Christians to even attempt to do so. All we can do is try to lead you to the Lord, or make you aware of him. If your heart is ready he will take it from there.