Russo is joined on today’s show by his co-host, Jeff Lane.

Lane opens today’s show by playing a clip of Wrestling Observer’s Dave Meltzer, who was speaking this past week about the calibre of Braun Strowman’s matches. Meltzer said that wrestling matches isn’t Strowman’s forte, and one of his more recent matches wasn’t any good at all.

Russo says that Meltzer fails to look at the business side of professional wrestling when he makes comments like this. He points out that performers like Strowman are the reason people buy tickets. Andre the Giant and Hulk Hogan matches weren’t “great” technically but those two men sold out arenas around the world.

Advertising
Advertising

Meltzer went on to talk about a recent 205Live match featuring TJP and Buddy Murphy. He said this was a “legit four-star match”, and a great match that everyone should have loved it. However, he added that while 15% of crowd loved it, the rest of the crowd didn’t care.

Russo says that the last sentence says it all. He points out that if a film studio executive heard that only 15% of the audience enjoyed a certain movie they’d consider it a failure and move on. Instead of taking this approach, Meltzer tries to convince everyone that they’re wrong about what’s good and what’s bad.

At one point this past week Pro Wrestling Torch’s Wade Keller interacted with a fan on Twitter, attacking the Ultimate Warrior in the process. Keller implied that no one over age of 12 liked Warrior, and other wrestlers had to struggle to make him look competent in the ring. Russo wonders what the point is in taking cheap shots at a dead guy when he’s not here to defend himself.

Russo knows these guys are going to take shots at him when he’s dead and he’s fine with that, but someone who had the effect on the business that Warrior did doesn’t deserve this type of stuff.

Russo says that these dirt sheet writers definitely got bullied as kids, but to take that out now on dead men doesn’t make any sense to him. He points out that all of these guys are just one fan with one opinion, but he wishes they’d stop trying to make themselves seem so important. He thinks they should just be happy with who they are.

Pro Wrestling Sheet’s Ryan Satin tweeted out a joke after last week’s RAW, bringing up Chris Jericho’s theme music in relation to Braun Strowman throwing Curt Hawkins through a wall backstage. Russo says that no matter how much Satin tries to suck up to Jericho now, Jericho will always hate him for the things he said about Jericho’s promotion of bikinis on his cruise. Satin also ridiculed Jericho after he partly dedicated his recent NJPW match to Chris Benoit, prompting Jericho to tell Satin to “F*** off”.

Lane plays a clip of Wade Keller attempting to fantasy book a segment from last week’s RAW. He said he would have had Coach question the preposterous idea that Stephanie can challenge Rousey physically, prompting Michael Cole to shut Coach down. Coach would have then said, “Oh sorry, I’m new around here”. Russo loves how much enjoyment Keller gets from playing wrestler, and he was impressed that Keller used the word, “preposterous”.

Lane points out that Al Snow has said in the past that Dave Meltzer is greatest worker in the business. Meltzer responded to that this past week, saying that Snow’s living in fantasy land. Russo says Meltzer should have been thanking Snow for that because it’s a compliment. Meltzer has never spent a day in the business and has somehow convinced all these people to give him their money for all these years.

Russo continues by saying that he has no issue with Meltzer reporting about wresting. Meltzer obviously has the right to report on the wrestling business, just like any other fan. However, Meltzer talks about the wrestling business as if he’s wrestled 1000 matches when in reality he’s never wrestled a match in his life. This is what really bothers Russo.

A fan of Russo tweeted Ryan Satin this past week, thanking him for getting Russo kicked off of PodcastOne because Russo’s Brand has grown since that huge controversy from a couple of weeks ago. Satin said he’s fine with that as long as he’s no longer receiving death threats. Russo says he still hasn’t seen proof of any death threats and he’s sure that if they existed, Satin would have tweeted them out by now. He thinks those claims are all lies.

That sums up today’s episode of Vince Russo’s The Brand. You can listen to the show yourself anytime here, and I’ll catch ya tomorrow for another recap!

Steve Carrier

Steve is the Founder of RingsideNews. He has been writing about professional wrestling since 1996. He first got into website development at the time and has been focusing on bringing his readers the best professional wrestling news at it's highest quality.

Disqus Comments Loading...