Vince Russo was recently a guest on the “Talk Is Jericho” podcast to talk about several professional wrestling topics.
Here are the highlights:
What Vince McMahon said to him that made him leave WWE and go to WCW:
The shows were written. I met with WCW over the weekend. Just to back up a little bit, Chris. The reason why I left the WWE was, you’re a dad, I’m a dad. I’m Italian. Very proud Italian. When Vince McMahon, Vince McMahon had just added Smackdown to our schedule, never spoke to us about it, and to me and Ed [Ferrera] it was a big deal because we took great pride in writing RAW.
Now all of a sudden you’re telling us to write another show and we don’t want to water down our work, so we’re like, ‘My God, how are we going to write another show to our standards,’ ya know? So I went in to Vince’s office, and we kind of had a heart-to-heart, and I said, ‘Vince, listen, I’m not seeing my family at home, my wife is raising my family by herself, I wanted my wife to be able to move my family to her hometown.’
I said, ‘Vince, if I have to fly back to see them on the weekends,’ Evansville, Indiana, I said, ‘If I just have to fly there, but my wife is literally raising my three kids on her own.’ And bro, I’ll never forget, without blinking an eye, he looked me straight in the eye, and said, ‘Vince, I don’t understand what the problem is, why don’t you hire a nanny to watch your kids, I’m paying you enough.’ Bro, I’m telling you, Chris, as soon as the words came out of his mouth, game was over.
He told me right then and there, I don’t give a shit about you, I don’t give a shit about your family, this company is first. Get a nanny. Game over. So I immediately, I had some people at WCW, I had Jeff Jarrett, I had Kevin Nash, I had a couple of people down there, they hooked me up with J.J. Dillon. I flew down to WCW that weekend. Now you gotta understand, I knew the minute I got on that plane to go to Atlanta, I was working for WCW.
On how WWE changed his plan to have Chris Jericho beat the Rock:
The shows were written, RAW and Smackdown were already written. So, what we wrote on the RAW show from the Island, the show that you’re talking about, you were beating Rock in the main event. That was the show where Ed and I were like, this show is going to make Jericho like this.
So bro, we had you beating Rock in the main event. That was the only thing they changed on the show. That was the only thing they changed was the finish of that match. And bro, I say it to this day, for as over as you got in WWE, bro, there’s no doubt in my mind that that would have happened two years earlier if they would have went with this plan.”
Also Read: Vince Russo Claims Vince McMahon Didn’t Think Steve Austin Had a Personality at First
H/T 411Mania for the transcriptions
