Initially a writer for WWE’s magazine, Vince Russo became head writer for the company during the Attitude Era, a reputation that brought him over to WCW, where he attempted to work the same magic. That didn’t work, but despite that Russo found a place in TNA (now known as Impact Wrestling) where he spent a large part of 2002 to 2014 working in a creative capacity for the company.
A controversial figure among fans, Russo has been criticized for his approach to pro wrestling television, which seemed to work during the Attitude Era but earned him scorn from fans during his TNA run. Let’s take a look at instances where Russo’s influence worked against the promotion he was working for.
10 Taking The Job To Begin With
When Vince Russo jumped ship to WCW, he pushed Jeff Jarrett hard, which nobody really wanted to do before. That all but guaranteed him a job when Jarrett started his own company, as Russo was brought in.
Unfortunately, this created a rift between Jeff Jarrett and his partner in founding TNA, his father Jerry Jarrett. The elder Jarrett washed his hands of the company early on, causing weird, unfortunate turmoil to be baked into the promotion’s entire existence, explaining its weird history of ownership changes.
9 Naming the Company
One of Vince Russo’s more annoying tics is his tendency to come up for the most juvenile names for wrestling stables (Pretty Mean Sisters), characters (Hugh G. Rection), and -- in the case of TNA -- entire promotions. Russo has taken credit for the name TNA, which stands for “Total Nonstop Action,” but also sounds like “T&A,” a less-printable phrase that does not stand for Test and Albert.
It would immediately put the promotion at a disadvantage, as the name of the company being a sophomoric joke made TNA already seem like an endeavor not to be taken seriously.
8 Naming Literally Anything
Russo’s juvenile naming conventions didn’t stop with the name of the promotion. Somewhat appropriate to the name of TNA, Russo formed his own stable to stage a takeover of the company he named. Made up of iconic stars with Road Dogg, The Harris Brothers, and Disco Inferno, the group would be called Sports Entertainment Xtreme, or S.E.X. for short.
Russo didn’t stop there with the tacky names. When the New Age Outlaws formed in TNA, the group adopted the name Voodoo Kin Mafia, with the duo’s initials being shoutout to Vincent Kennedy McMahon.
7 Too Many Heel Turns
Vince Russo’s writing style was infamous for constantly shifting gears and employing plot twists incessantly if he believed it would grab attention. As a result, wrestlers would turn heel or face and back again at the drop of a hat.
AJ Styles was an early victim of this -- in 2003 alone, he went through at least four turns as he aligned with S.E.X., betrayed them, and then re-aligned with them, only to become a babyface again after losing the World Title.
6 Gimmick Matches
Part of Russo’s desire to constantly spice up his wrestling shows includes overuse of gimmick matches, as many WCW fans remember the Vince Russo era employing a steady stream of “on a pole matches.”
His TNA run was no different in this regard, with reviled bouts like the Last Rites match and the Electric Cage match being lowlights. The lowest light, however, might be the Reverse Battle Royal, a multi-man battle to get INSIDE the ring that would become legendary for being one of TNA’s worst gimmick matches ever.
5 The Bash At The Beach 2000 Incident, Believe It Or Not
October 2003 saw Hulk Hogan make a triumphant return to his old stomping ground of New Japan Pro Wrestling, where he defeated Masahiro Chono in a singles match at the Tokyo Dome. In a post-match interview, Jeff Jarrett launched a surprise attack on the Hulkster, smashing a guitar over his head.
This incident was meant to lead to a big TNA pay-per-view match between the two men, but Vince Russo’s presence in the company resulted in Hogan staying away from TNA for about seven years. The heat between the two stemmed entirely from the bizarre worked-shoot incident at WCW’s Bash at the Beach 2000 that resulted in Hogan suing Russo.
4 Yet Another Dustin Rhodes Gimmick
Russo is credited with coming up with Dustin Rhodes’ Goldust gimmick in WWE, and has attempted to revive it in each of the major promotions he’s worked in. He tried it with Seven in WCW -- with a dash of Beaver Cleavage worked shoot nonsense -- and again in TNA.
Rhodes arrived in the Impact Zone in July of 2007, and after about a month became “Black Reign”, which looked explicitly like a rehash of Goldust but with a gothic flavor and mental health issues. It certainly did not help to dispel the ongoing narrative of TNA trying to ape WWE.
3 Booking Himself
While in WWE, fans rarely saw Vince Russo on screen, in the gigs that followed, he was a regular character on the show. He was not only an authority figure in TNA -- he led stables, helped Jeff Jarrett cheat in matches, and was up to all other kinds of shenanigans.
While he never booked himself to win a title in TNA, he did continue to book himself in matches, leading to one of the most biggest moments in 2003, where he experienced his first in-ring loss.
2 “Fire Russo”
During Vince Russo’s 2006-2012 run, the bloom was well off the rose in terms of fans’ regard for the man’s work, and TNA crowds were more than happy to let him know. Any time something particularly stupid in TNA happened -- like the aforementioned Last Rites match or Electric Steel Cage fiasco -- fans would chant “Fire Russo” during the show.
This was not a good thing, for TNA, as his reputation was so bad that fans immediately knew who to blame when they didn’t like something on TV.
1 Secretly Returning to the Company
Vince Russo was purported to have left the company in 2012, but in 2014 word got out that he’d been secretly re-hired by TNA as a consultant. This hiring was reportedly kept under wraps because of animosity between Russo and Spike TV, which aired Impact Wrestling.
But Russo outed himself by accidentally sending an email to the wrong recipient -- something that Dixie Carter would also do in the future -- and then admitted his clandestine employment in a public statement. Russo then retracted his statement, but the damage was done, and Spike TV declined to renew its contract with TNA soon after.