Vince Russo: the first man to make men in tights appealing.

[kjh]

Yes, that's the first sentence in the foreword to Vince Russo's second autobiography Rope Opera: How WCW Killed Vince Russo, which really sets the self-congratulatory and self-pitying tone for the rest of the book. I suppose Vince's son VJ wouldn't know any better, but it says a lot about his father that this sentence made print. So this thread is here to give Russo his proper due on prowrestlingonly.com as one of the biggest carnies in the business, like Jim Ross and Triple H before him, as I go through his book and share with you his best contradictory nonsense. Feel free to chip in about stuff not covered in his latest book!

 

Russo explaining why you have to pay $19:95 to hear him ramble about his career thoughts for a second time:

 

One way or another, they had to be unleashed - set free into the world to shape young minds and have an everlasting impact on the free world.

On why writing Forgiven was his greatest accomplishment:

 

Not because I was able to receive my medal of "authorship," but because I know God Himself simply used me as a vessel to get His words across.

He's a changed man folks, even from his last book, just look at the thought process behind the prologue for Rope Opera:

 

Even though God created a new creature in me 27 months ago, the old one still rears his ugly head every now and then - not so much in my actions but sometimes in my thoughts. You see no human being is going to be 100% perfect, 100% of the time. Only God is capable of that, and that's why ... well that's why he's God. But as I began to map out this book, the first street I strolled along the way was "Sensationalism Avenue." How do I start this book to reel you all in? Remember that in the last manuscript, I started with the short but powerful sentence of "I hate Jeff." Well, in plotting this bad boy, I thought what better place to start than at Bash of the Beach 2000? Let's face it; years later, that's still all everybody wants to talk about. Hey, why don't I start it with my infamous scripted promo on Hulk Hogan? Yeah ... that will get them!

 

But you know what? Something didn't feel right about that. That's not where the real author of this book wanted to start. No, that was simply a case of yours truly wanting once again to drive the car - just like old times.

Ah, for the good old days when Russo still got unconditional hero worship:

 

A rookie southpaw with great promise, Ralph had some nice pop in his bat as he loaded and cocked his Louisville slugger with visions of impressing yours truly, who at a few years older was his idol.

Clearly there's never been an ignorant, racist bone in his body:

 

The truth is we invented two of the greatest games known to man: "Daniel Elsberg's Psychiatrist" (even though we had no idea who he or his psychiatrist were - we were just hearing their names on TV everyday) and "Negro Sneakers," named after a hideous pair of black, green, red and yellow sneakers my mother bought me that we thought were the colors of the African flag.

I present to you Vince Russo consumate family man, part 1:

 

I remember selling Amy and the kids a whole bill of goods on moving down south when I didn't believe a word of it myself.

It was going to be tough on Will; I could see it in his eyes and hear it in his voice. But being everything a dad shouldn't be, I couldn't worry about my own son's emotions; I had to worry about mine first. I kept going back to Vince McMahon's words in one of our last conversations: "Get a nanny to raise your kids, Vince." I couldn't get those words out of my mind. They played over and over again like a bad, skipping Milli Vanilli record. Those words iced this decision and though Will would never understand that now, I hoped that one day, when he was old enough and had a family of his own, he would. In my heart of hearts, I understood I had to walk away to stand up for what was right. No nanny was ever going to raise my kids and Vince should have never spoken those words to me. They were cold, heartless, insensitive and badly - very badly - thought out.

[Guest Slickster]

I think only Hulk Hogan could get away with this kind of exaggeration, self-aggrandizement, and outright lying.

[Grimmas]

I can't wait for more of this!

[jdw]

More! More! More!

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

The best part of the book is when he rambles about not being a racist and then talks about his best friends the Harris Brothers

[El-P]

Oh, that would explain why he would insist on using those two useless talentless SS-tatooed skinheads everywhere he goes.

I remember him saying back in the days that this was the US and people didn't want to see guys who can't talk English on TV, hence fucking with the mexicans and japanese guys.

[Dylan Waco]

He thinks the Harris Brothers and Disco Inferno should have been Superstars and are the most misused talents in wrestling history.

[El-P]

Disco had talent. Hell he had more longevity with that gimmick than he had the right to. But he was at his right spot during his whole career. And I don't mean in a booking commitee.

The Harris are a waste a space.

What an idiot Russo is... I can't wait for me extracts from this abortion of a book too.

[kjh]

Not only is Vince Russo a consumate family man, but drug free too:

 

You know, I've never done cocaine and I've never experienced that drug-induced high of go-go-go, but in all reality, I had a monkey of my own on my back and it was my drive. I was a workaholic and I was an addict.

And he's also a more gifted theologian than his Catholic preachers growing up:

 

Nobody explained to me the sacrifice of an innocent man until God himself slapped me upside the head.

 

So this is why I'm explaining it to you - don't wait until you're 42 to get it - and why I'm going to break it down in terms I believe you'll understand:

 

1. Eve disobeyed God's instructions in the Garden of Eden and listened to Satan's instead when she took a bite out of an apple which hung from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. In other words: Eve turned heel.

 

2. She was now a sinner for disobeying God. Adam then followed Eve's lead, so he too became a heel.

 

3. Being that Adam and Eve were the first man and woman on earth, we all come from their bloodlines in one way or another. Therefore, because of Adam and Eve, we were all born with the sin gene. Thus, we are all heels!

 

4. Because of humans obeying Satan rather than God, the earth shifted in power from God to Satan. The world now had a new general manager.

 

5. We were now all slaves of Satan, or jobbers to him, as we lost all our rights and privileges on this earth.

 

6. At this point the plot starts to thicken. (WWE writers: here is where you should begin to take notes on how to develop a good story.)

 

7. God needed to free us from Satan, while freeing us from sin. He needed to win our rights back for us. God is a just God (a true babyface), so there was only one way He could do this. He had to sacrifice a life in order to pay our sin debt.

 

8. But He couldn't just sacrifice any life. Sacrificing a sinner wouldn't have been just. You couldn't sacrifice a sinner to free all the other sinners - it don't work that way. But since we were all sinners, what was He going to do? (Are you starting to take note of the conflict in this story.)

 

9. God knew that He had to sacrifice a man, but this man had to be Godly: sin-free, able to live according to the law. Are you with me? So who is it going to be? Is it going to be someone under a mask?

 

10. No mask - this isn't bad fake rasslin'. This is the Gospel, which translates to the truth. Thus, the Virgin Mary gave birth to Jesus Christ ... the ultimate babyface. Why did the birth have to be immaculate? Because a man and woman couldn't be involved because they carried the sin gene.

 

11. So Jesus, the Son of God and the Son of Man, was born.

 

12. Simply put, Jesus lived the rest of his life to die for us.

 

13. Jesus died on a cross in Calvary.

 

14. His last words: "It is done."

 

15. Satan would now be driven out, as he had killed an innocent man - someone he had no right to kill. Thus, the death of Jesus Christ covers all our sins, evening the score in a just way. It's a Broadway! With that, we now had the choice of choosing sides: with the "Prince of the World" or the "Prince of Peace."

 

16. The death of Jesus also once again opened the door for all of us to have communication with his father, God. All the sins committed by His people had been forgiven. Everything is nicey-nice again.

 

17. Wait, there's more...

 

18. He died on the cross, not only to free us of our sins - if we 'fessed up first and asked for forgiveness - but also to offer the gift of eternal life.

 

19. Three days later Jesus rose from the dead to show us all that there is eternal life, if we only believe in Him. In other words, he didn't just talk the talk - he walked the walk!

 

20. Thank you, Jesus.

 

There you have it: Christianity 101.

[Bob Morris]

For someone who professes to know so much about Christianity 101, he's failing some simple facts about the Bible.

 

Before I begin, I am not trying to convert anybody, just pointing out the inaccuracies Russo makes.

 

1. There was no apple. It was the Fruit from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

 

2. Satan did not tempt Eve. It was a serpent. Whether one believes the story or not, there is nothing in the story to even suggest the serpent was Satan, and was, in fact, one of the creatures God created.

 

3. Russo falls into the same trap that many do, in thinking that every time some evil being is mentioned, it must have been Satan. But first the evildoer is referred to as Beelzebub (or Baal-zebub) and only came to be known as Satan in later Biblical writings. For the record, Beelzebub may have been a human being, not an evil spirit.

 

4. Regardless, the Bible never says Satan ruled the Earth at any point. In fact, one interpretation of the Bible is that Satan was the "fallen angel" of God, meaning he never ruled above God.

 

5. The last words of Jesus depend on whether you read Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. It's one of the debated points of the Bible... how people are writing different versions of the same thing.

 

Soon we will hear Russo tell us about how Jonah got swallowed by the whale (no, it was a big fish and whales are not fish), about the Three Kings from the Orient (they were actually magicians from Persia) and how he will prove, once and for all, that Jesus was born on Dec. 25 (which everyone should know by now has never been established).

[Death From Above]

That whole last Russo section might have caused my head to explode a full half dozen times inside two minutes.

 

I need to stay out of this thread. It hurts so much.

[Dan]

Screw TNA. Vince needs to write for WO.com

[El-P]

Reading this, I'm just glad I'm atheist. Russo is retarded.

[jdw]

I love the "sin gene" concept.

 

Eve ate the fruit based on Free Will: it was her own choice, not the genes in here.

 

Adam ate the fruit based on Free Will: it was his own choice, not the genes in him.

 

Unless Vince thinks God created them both with the genes that would make them eat the fruit.

 

In which case, they didn't turn heel: God gave them those genes because he wanted them to eat the fruit.

 

Wait... that means God was a heel on Adam & Eve from the start by giving them the Sin Gene, making them unable to do anything other than eat the fruit when the time game, which allowed God to go even more heel on them by tossing them out of Eden and fucking them over. Evil Mr. McGod.

 

I don't think Vince gets genetics.

 

John, no religious and thinks Vince is just as shitty in explaining his as he is in booking & writing...

[rovert]

How is the book for spelling and grammar?

 

Any Vic Venom style writing?

[kjh]

There's no Vic Venom style writing, he's a changed man after all. There's a few glaring spelling/grammar errors, but it's not too bad for the most part.

[khawk20]

Hearing the Bible translated into Pro Wres terms makes the whole thing sound incredibly retarded. He's doing his religious beliefs a huge disservice spelling out like he does.

[S.L.L.]

1. There was no apple. It was the Fruit from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

It's not explicitly stated, but in fairness to Vince, the fruit has been envisioned as an apple by so many people for so long that it may as well have been. It's a bit like Humpty Dumpty being an egg - never said anywhere in the original text, but the original text doesn't say otherwise, and it's so common in pop cultural depictions that you can just kinda roll with it.

 

As for everything else...well...umm...yeah. This in particular jumps out at me:

 

4. Regardless, the Bible never says Satan ruled the Earth at any point. In fact, one interpretation of the Bible is that Satan was the "fallen angel" of God, meaning he never ruled above God.

Aside from being a relatively religious Jew, I've developed an interest over the years in Zoroastrianism, which is sort of the missing link between your old school polytheistic religions and the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of today. It took the multiple gods of previous religions and neatly boiled them down into two different guys: Ahura Mazda, the "uncreated God" who was 100% good, and Angra Mainyu, who I don't think is ever explicitly called a god, but who was an "uncreated spirit" of 100% evil, and who is arguably the jump-off point for the modern day concept of the Devil. This simplified dualist "good vs. evil" notion is one of the major influences on later monotheistic religions, but one of the big differences is that Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were separate creations (uncreations?), and Angra Mainyu - while ultimately destined to fall to Ahura Mazda - could be something of a real competitor to him. By contrast, the Abrahamic God is the sole "uncreated" being in his religions. He created everything else, and no other entity poses any kind of true threat to him. Satan may have his origins in Angra Mainyu, but he's considerably less powerful, poses no threat to God, and could only rule the Earth if God let him. And well, God doesn't really do that. Offhand, the closest he came was God letting him get his kicks in on Job, for the sole purpose of showing Satan that even when given carte blanche to wreck a guy's shit, he was still basically powerless. For the most part, his M.O. is testing people's faith in the hopes that he can expose how flawed God's prize creation is, and by proxy, how flawed God is. World domination isn't really his bag. He's more interested in watching it all burn and rubbing God's face in it. But he can't really do that, because God is a bajillion times more powerful than he is, so he's basically stuck doing small-scale cons. Russo fucked up Christianity so bad that he actually became a really confused Zoroastrian.

 

Also, take a look at this:

 

But He couldn't just sacrifice any life. Sacrificing a sinner wouldn't have been just. You couldn't sacrifice a sinner to free all the other sinners - it don't work that way. But since we were all sinners, what was He going to do?

Well, you conveniently glossed over it, Vince, but what he was going to do was sacrifice every single sinner on the fucking planet except for Noah, his family, and a shit ton of animals in a global flood. Seriously, how do you just miss one of the most famous stories of the Bible like that? I mean, I guess Noah and his family still carried the "sin gene", but it's pretty clear that God's big plan was "kill these sinful motherfuckers, and spare these guys because they're not so bad". "Sin gene" or no, he seemed to be putting an awful lot of faith in a "heel" like Noah to restore decency to the world after 40 days and 40 nights of hardcore sinner sacrificing.

[jdw]

 

John

[Bob Morris]

But wait, there was a heel on the ark! After Noah got drunk and was lying around naked, his son Canaan told his brothers Shem and Japheth, so they covered up Noah without looking at him, and when Noah woke up, he cursed Canaan's children and blessed those of Shem and Japheth.

 

So, in other words, Canaan was the heel.

 

"IT'S ME, NOAH! It was me! It was me all along!"

--Vince McCanaan

 

Only problem... Noah may better fit the profile of Ric Flair than Steve Austin and I have no idea who The Undertaker is supposed to be, because Satan wasn't around at the time.

 

[Johnny Sorrow]

1. There was no apple. It was the Fruit from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

It's not explicitly stated, but in fairness to Vince, the fruit has been envisioned as an apple by so many people for so long that it may as well have been. It's a bit like Humpty Dumpty being an egg - never said anywhere in the original text, but the original text doesn't say otherwise, and it's so common in pop cultural depictions that you can just kinda roll with it.

 

As for everything else...well...umm...yeah. This in particular jumps out at me:

 

4. Regardless, the Bible never says Satan ruled the Earth at any point. In fact, one interpretation of the Bible is that Satan was the "fallen angel" of God, meaning he never ruled above God.

Aside from being a relatively religious Jew, I've developed an interest over the years in Zoroastrianism, which is sort of the missing link between your old school polytheistic religions and the Abrahamic monotheistic religions of today. It took the multiple gods of previous religions and neatly boiled them down into two different guys: Ahura Mazda, the "uncreated God" who was 100% good, and Angra Mainyu, who I don't think is ever explicitly called a god, but who was an "uncreated spirit" of 100% evil, and who is arguably the jump-off point for the modern day concept of the Devil. This simplified dualist "good vs. evil" notion is one of the major influences on later monotheistic religions, but one of the big differences is that Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu were separate creations (uncreations?), and Angra Mainyu - while ultimately destined to fall to Ahura Mazda - could be something of a real competitor to him. By contrast, the Abrahamic God is the sole "uncreated" being in his religions. He created everything else, and no other entity poses any kind of true threat to him. Satan may have his origins in Angra Mainyu, but he's considerably less powerful, poses no threat to God, and could only rule the Earth if God let him. And well, God doesn't really do that. Offhand, the closest he came was God letting him get his kicks in on Job, for the sole purpose of showing Satan that even when given carte blanche to wreck a guy's shit, he was still basically powerless. For the most part, his M.O. is testing people's faith in the hopes that he can expose how flawed God's prize creation is, and by proxy, how flawed God is. World domination isn't really his bag. He's more interested in watching it all burn and rubbing God's face in it. But he can't really do that, because God is a bajillion times more powerful than he is, so he's basically stuck doing small-scale cons. Russo fucked up Christianity so bad that he actually became a really confused Zoroastrian.

 

Also, take a look at this:

 

But He couldn't just sacrifice any life. Sacrificing a sinner wouldn't have been just. You couldn't sacrifice a sinner to free all the other sinners - it don't work that way. But since we were all sinners, what was He going to do?

Well, you conveniently glossed over it, Vince, but what he was going to do was sacrifice every single sinner on the fucking planet except for Noah, his family, and a shit ton of animals in a global flood. Seriously, how do you just miss one of the most famous stories of the Bible like that? I mean, I guess Noah and his family still carried the "sin gene", but it's pretty clear that God's big plan was "kill these sinful motherfuckers, and spare these guys because they're not so bad". "Sin gene" or no, he seemed to be putting an awful lot of faith in a "heel" like Noah to restore decency to the world after 40 days and 40 nights of hardcore sinner sacrificing.

 

And if everyone was killed in the flood and only Noah and his family were left to repopulate the Earth, Russo can claim that "incest angles" have been around forever.

[smkelly]

For someone who professes to know so much about Christianity 101, he's failing some simple facts about the Bible.

 

Before I begin, I am not trying to convert anybody, just pointing out the inaccuracies Russo makes.

 

1. There was no apple. It was the Fruit from the Tree of The Knowledge of Good and Evil.

 

2. Satan did not tempt Eve. It was a serpent. Whether one believes the story or not, there is nothing in the story to even suggest the serpent was Satan, and was, in fact, one of the creatures God created.

*Disclaimer* I am no religious expert, nor do I claim to be...I have taken some philosophy courses in my college career, and this is the collective knowledge I have attained from said courses. If you take offense to my wording or thought process, please, accept my sincerest apologies, and know it was not my intention to start an emotional conflict.

 

1. Like SLL said, it has been implied for a very long time that it was an apple.

 

2. The serpent thing has always thrown me for a loop. If evil exists simply because of Adam & Eve's dissension and disobeying God to not remove and consume the fruit, then how does it explain the serpent? Temptation in the form the serpent used is evil, it has to be. It wasn't an apple maggot saying, "Hey, this here apple is delicious, you should really try some." At least, it has never been suggested that a scenario like that occurred. It has always been a serpent that tempted Eve to dissent - which I find amusing that it was the woman who caused the fall of man, which makes me wonder if that's entirely accurate, since history has been predominantly written by man. Nevertheless, since the form of temptation the serpent used can be somewhat clearly distinguished as evil, it suggests evil existed pre-dissension of Adam & Eve, which only leads to more unanswerable questions with only hypothesis and speculation.

 

Another thing that has lead to many internal and external debates is in correlation to the fall of mankind. Okay, the apple, or fruit if you will...has been covered. The tricky part, is that God is supposedly omniscient. That suggests that even though God gave Adam & Eve an order, He would already know they would disobey the grand order. Furthermore, it wouldn't be fair to punish a being for disobeying a command you knew before giving to them that they'd disobey. That doesn't suggest a just being, which God is also supposedly supposed to be. It gets even trickier than that. If God is truly omniscient, then He would know that the serpent would successfully tempt Eve, who in turn, would peer pressure Adam into dissension as well. It seems extremely manipulative, which in my eyes, is evil. In addition, since God would have the foreknowledge of the serpent, Adam, and Eve, a just and fair God would not condemn the entire future human race with evil. So in theory, God is the source of evil...partially because of the previous experiences, but also, since God is the creator of all-things, which has been suggested throughout time. Nothing can exist without God being involved, as He is a part of everything of all-time...or so it's suggested.

 

Nevertheless, there are many debates and attempts to cloth God as the perpetrator of evil...namely, free will. These people who use this line of defense suggest that God knows everything going on at all times; however, he is unable to know exactly what each human is about to do, or what decision they're about to make. I don't know if that supposed knowledge extends to animals and insects, but let's assume that it does. This entire scenario doesn't make sense to me...in the least. Okay, so we have God, the maker and creator of everything we know, and everything we have not knowledge of yet. God is the only uncaused first cause in history, He has always been, He will always be. The sheer magnitude of His power is indescribable, it lies beyond words or thought...imagine the complexities and knowledge it would require to make everything we see around us...the solar system, the planets, all life forms, etc. It isn't inane or far fetched to theorize that a being with this type of power...true God like power wouldn't be able to pinpoint and accurately predict...better yet, know every human being, animal, and insects next movement, thought, idea, intention, and action.

 

And if everyone was killed in the flood and only Noah and his family were left to repopulate the Earth, Russo can claim that "incest angles" have been around forever.

I have always wondered about that. I mean, if it was just Noah and his family, then we're all from the same cloth, literally.

 

Regarding Russo - This book of his makes me happy and sad. I'll start with sad. It makes me sad that this dribble and non-sense can be published and distributed globally. Next, it makes me happy. It makes me happy that my aspiring career as an author can be fruitful and successful if Russo can become published. I can then spread my dribble and non-sense globally.

[S.L.L.]

And if everyone was killed in the flood and only Noah and his family were left to repopulate the Earth, Russo can claim that "incest angles" have been around forever.

See that's the thing. I, like most people familiar with Russo's work, assumed Russo got into the Bible because of all the incest. But....

 

But He couldn't just sacrifice any life. Sacrificing a sinner wouldn't have been just. You couldn't sacrifice a sinner to free all the other sinners - it don't work that way. But since we were all sinners, what was He going to do?

So he missed the whole "global flood" thing. I would also think that the citizens of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's wife, the firstborn of Egypt during the tenth plague, everyone who might have been killed as a side effect of the nine plagues prior, the Pharaoh and his army who had the Red Sea slammed shut on them as they pursued the Israelites, and Aaron and everyone else who worshiped the golden calf (who were only spared because Moses talked God down from killing them) might take issue with the above statement. Not to mention God laying all this shit on people kinda calls the whole "Satan ruling the Earth" thing into question. In other words, Russo's theology includes the story of Adam and Eve, and then skips straight to the New Testament. And well, aside from that being a really amazingly stupid way to read the Bible, it means he misses out on all the incest. I mean, the New Testament isn't my area of expertise, obviously, but the Old Testament is loaded with incest, and the story of Adam and Eve - being that they're the only two people on Earth at the time - is one of the only stories in the book that doesn't have any. This is completely antithetical to everything I've ever understood about Russo - he actually seems to have gone out of his way to avoid the incest. It still makes sense on the "Russo is a fucking moron" level, but incest is one of the big recurring motifs in his work, and you'd think it's presence in the Bible would appeal to his aesthetic. Maybe he's an anti-Semite on top of everything else.

[Bob Morris]

I should correct one of my earlier posts, to say that Canaan wasn't Noah's son that "turned heel" but it was Ham, whose son was Canaan.

 

But I still like the sound of Vince McCanaan.

 

And on the incest thing... Biblical scholars do believe there was a lot of unseemly sexual relations going on in the era when civilization was forming in the Mesopotamia region. So that the Bible has implications that incest is taking place really shouldn't be surprising.

 

Heck, Russo also misses the stories about Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. It's soap opera stuff at its finest.

[Al]

And on the incest thing... Biblical scholars do believe there was a lot of unseemly sexual relations going on in the era when civilization was forming in the Mesopotamia region. So that the Bible has implications that incest is taking place really shouldn't be surprising.

Wouldn't surprise me. Ever page through the book of Leviticus? It takes a full chapter, detailed, to forbid every specific instance of incest you can come up with. I can only assume that these were common practices because otherwise why would it need to be stated?