Welcome our newest columnist and Raw recapper, Erik Anderson, who starts off with an

analysis of Vince Russo’s affect on pro wrestling, beginning in 1995.

Erik Anderson — The Wrestling Mind

How Vince Russo Changed Wrestling Forever

Vince Russo was the head script writer for the World Wrestling Federation from June 1995 to

November 1999.

Television ratings at the time were high because of the constant competition with the World

Wrestling Federation’s toughest competitor, World Championship Wrestling.

Russo landed his first writing job with the WWF in 1993 when he began writing columns for

the official WWF magazine.

In 1995, Russo was promoted to the head writing position to try to spark television ratings for

the company.

“To put it bluntly, the WWF sucked when i began my work writing the scripts,” Russo explains

as he is giving an interview for his ultimate insider dvd.

According to Wikipedia.org, television ratings for the WWF averaged a 2.2 when Russo was

promoted to lead writer in 1995.

“It was a joke. They had cartoon like characters, childish story lines, and absolutely zero

direction,” Russo mildly states during his interview for his ultimate insider dvd.

Through the next four years, Vince Russo was able to completely change the way people view

professional wrestling.

He created new wrestling stars, wrote compelling story lines that appealed more to the

teenage audience rather than to younger kids, and most importantly, he was able to create

controversy within the company itself that ended up making the WWF a billion dollar

corporation.

According to wikipedia.org, WWF television ratings went from a dismal 2.2 cable rating at the

beginning of Russo’s tenure to a staggering 8.1 cable rating nearing the end of his reign.

The rise in the WWF’S cable rating from 1995-1999 made the owner of the WWF, Vince

McMahon, a legitimate billionaire.

The historic feats that Russo was able to obtain in the wrestling business came without notice.

After asking for a small raise, Vince Russo was let go by the WWF and ratings haven’t been

the same since.

“I’m a wrestling fan and I lost interest in the product on TV right now because, I’m a fan of

good writing, and I’m a fan of good story lines and good characters and good dialogue,”

Russo explains in an interview conducted on December 19th, 2005 with Eric Cohen which is

currently posted at prowrestling.about.com.

Television ratings for the WWF took a turn for the worse after the departure of Vince Russo.

Since 2002, the WWF (now known as WWE) television ratings have consistently averaged a

3.5 cable rating according to Wikipedia.org.

The consistently low rating shows that the WWF product is currently stale and has been for

quite some time.

This also shows that Vince Russo had a much larger impact writing for the WWF than Vince

McMahon or anybody else working within the WWE corporation wants to realize.

– Erik Anderson
erikanderson83@msn.com

I have a couple of points to make to your column.

1 Russo does not deserve all the credit when he was head writer wwe. WWE had the best talented wrestlers during that time. So no he does’t deserve all the credit.

2 WWE did not stink when he got there. It wasn’t that bad
in the early 90’s. The best wrestling was in the 80’s actually.

3 Wikipedia is not the best place to get a sourse because any one can edit the information on the site,