Russo is joined on today’s show by Big Vito.
Russo says he got into the wrestling business in 1991, when he paired up with John Arezzi to discuss professional wrestling on Arezzi’s radio show. Kayfabe was very much alive at this point, and there were far fewer dirt sheets out there. The internet also didn’t exist, so the world was a much simpler place.
Around the same time, Vince McMahon was forced to defend himself in a steroid trial and Arezzi began criticizing McMahon heavily. Dave Meltzer took the same approach, and Russo couldn’t understand that. He didn’t get how these guys could sit on the outside and attack McMahon and his company, when he was literally fighting for his life at that time. In the end, McMahon was found not guilty.
This was a very early example of how the dirt sheets have hurt the business in Russo’s opinion. Fast forward to 26 years later, and Russo was forced to file a restraining order against Jim Cornette. Every single dirt sheet wrote an article about that, but not one of them reached out to him for the facts of the story. He says that these dirt sheets have an agenda, and they’re only concerned with servicing that agenda.
