Vince McMahon Refused to Give Vince Russo Any WWE Airtime

JBL just dropped an interesting behind-the-scenes story about Vince McMahon’s stance on Vince Russo, revealing that McMahon flat-out refused to give Russo any airtime on WWE programming.

During a Q&A session on the “Something To Wrestle With” podcast, a fan asked JBL if he thought McMahon held a grudge against Russo. JBL admitted he wasn’t sure, saying:

“I don’t know. Vince never said anything to that. I don’t think he would even if he had them. I don’t know the feelings of Vince when Vince Russo left.”

However, JBL then recalled a direct conversation with McMahon when the topic of bringing Russo onto his WWE Network show, “Legends with JBL,” came up.

“I do know when I did a ‘Legends with JBL’ and I had Eric Bischoff on, he said something about Vince Russo as far as WCW. Russo sent me a text. I sent a very nice text back. He said, ‘I want to come on and refute what Bischoff said about me.’ I said, ‘Okay’ so I asked Vince McMahon.”

JBL went straight to the boss and laid everything out for him, even offering to show McMahon the text from Russo. But McMahon didn’t even need to see it.

“He said, ‘No, I don’t want to. Give me a summary of what it is.’ I gave him a summary. I said, ‘Would you want to do a show with Vince Russo? I’ll be happy to interview him.’ Vince said, ‘Nope. Not giving him any press whatsoever. Nope. Not doing it,’ and that was it.”

According to JBL, McMahon shut the conversation down immediately and refused to entertain the idea. But even after all that, JBL still wasn’t entirely sure if this was personal or strictly business.

“So I don’t know if Vince had any animosity towards him or if this guy was out there saying anything negative about our product and I don’t want to give him press as far as prestige as far as putting him on a WWE show. I don’t know what Vince’s motive was behind saying unequivocally, ‘No, this is not going to happen.’ So I don’t know what Vince was thinking.”

One thing is clear—McMahon wanted nothing to do with Russo on WWE programming, no matter what the circumstances were.

Do you think McMahon still holds something against Russo, or was this just a strategic move to keep the spotlight off him? Drop your thoughts below!