Russo is joined on today’s show by Big Vito. They’ll discuss the business of professional wrestling during it’s prime from 1996-2000.
Russo wants to set the record straight regarding the rumour that his attitude era writing was inspired by ECW. When ECW started they were airing on CMT, and Russo only watched a small portion of three or four shows.
ECW was drawing less than a 1.0 rating, and Russo simply didn’t use that product as motivation. He admits that he did use WCW’s NWO as motivation, because when he’d watch Nitro he’d get inspired to take WWE’s product in that direction as well.
Russo says that when he’d tune into an episode of ECW, there were a few things that he enjoyed. He particularly liked some of the characters on the show such as The Dudley Boyz and Sandman, but other Stars like Tazz and Tommy Dreamer didn’t appeal to him as much. The one thing that bothered him about the product was the way Paul Heyman ran his promotion, because Russo was very concerned at that time that someone was going to be killed while working for ECW.
