Vince Russo’s New Gig

Last Updated on: 21st March 2014, 06:33 am

When you have a track record like his, this takes either an amazing lack of self awareness or the world’s largest testicles and bottomless vats of shamelessness.

BABY FACES, BLADE JOBS and BOOKING

Everything you wanted to know about writing a professional wrestling show but were afraid to ask.

A SEMINAR HOSTED BY VINCE RUSSO

During the years of 1995-2012, Vince Russo was one of the most controversial figures in the history of sports entertainment/professional wrestling, while serving as the head writer of all three major wrestling companies, WWE, WCW and TNA.

During that tenure, Russo wrote over a thousand televised wrestling shows–which achieved some of the highest ratings of all time– while also having a hand in helping create some of the biggest stars in the history of the business.  From Stone Cold Steve Austin to “The Rock”, Russo has written for just about anybody who’s anybody in the world of sports entertainment/pro wrestling. 

Whether it was in front of the camera, or behind the scenes, Russo has played an influential part in helping to bring the drama of the squared circle to the forefront of American pop culture.

Now, in this limited engagement and for the first time ever, Russo is going to bring the “behind the curtain” aspect of his job, into the spotlight, by sharing his craft and experience with wrestling fans around the world.  In his ground-breaking seminar entitled, “Baby Faces, Blade Jobs, and Booking, “, Russo is going to share first hand, what it takes to be a successful writer in the world of sports entertainment/professional wrestling.

Just some of the topics Russo will be covering in this no-holds-barred presentation:

·         Where to get your start in writing for a professional wrestling organization.
·         How to use the experience you’ve built to get in the door of one of the major companies
·         How to create larger-than-life personas and personalities
·         Writing effective dialogue for specific characters
·         How to format a wrestling show
·         How to generate new ideas 52-weeks out of the year
·         How to present and sell your idea to a talent
·         How to create a successful working environment between talent and writer
·         Dealing with egos
·         Overcoming writer’s block
·         Avoiding the pitfalls of politics
·         How to generate ratings
·         The difference between “writing” a show and “booking” a show

Baby Faces, Blade Jobs and Booking; nothing will no longer be sacred!!

I think he missed a few topics on his list there, such as…

  • Making yourself look competent by having people who know what they’re doing filter out most of your really dumb ideas.
  • the art of the interview: How to talk circles around questions and make people believe that your dumb ideas really weren’t that dumb after all when they think about it.
  • Writing storylines so complicated that your announcers can’t understand them even when they’ve been repeatedly explained to them.
  • Who needs a beginning, middle and end? How to structure a storyline starting from the middle, then kind of explain it, then change something, then do what looks like the end, go back to the middle again and then drop it and never speak of it again.
  • How to book unpredictable swerves so many times that the biggest swerve is when you don’t book one.
  • The something on a pole match and why you can never have too many of them.
  • How to help your employer get crushed in a racial discrimination lawsuit. Yes, in a freaking wrestling company, no less!
  • From stipulation match to regular wrestling match: How to book a feud completely ass backwards.
  • All women are bitches, skanks and whores and should always be written at a high school level or women weren’t nice to me growing up so let’s subject what’s left of the audience to my revenge booking.

I’m sure there are more, but there’s only so much time to hit everything in these seminars, you understand.

You know what they say about fools and their money. Unless he treats it like opposite land, anybody who pays for Vince Russo’s booking advice deserves exactly what he gets.

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3 Comments

  1. >See line about having people with a clue filtering your stupid ideas. Russo has lots of ideas and is a creative guy in his own way, but if he was a great booker WCW might still be alive and TNA wouldn't have been so bad for so long. When left on his own he's mostly terrible. In WWE he had a still open to new things Vince McMahon and a staff of other people to help out.

  2. >Also, if he was really so great, how did the WWF get even better and I believe more successful after he left?

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