Russo doesn’t think we’re ever going to get back to a point in time where WWE puts significant time into character development. The initial segment/tag match on Smackdown ran over 30 minutes, and the main event was over 20. Between those two matches, WWE burned half of their show’s run-time and this doesn’t leave enough time to build characters or explain certain subtleties.
Russo thinks WWE has dwindled their audience down to a core group of ‘marks’ who will like everything they do anyways, so they don’t need to worry about putting out a quality product anymore. They’ve already made every mistake imaginable which has resulted in millions of fans leaving the product over the last few years, and now they’re left with their 2 million fans that will stick with it through thick and thin.
Russo mentions that WWE used the exact same segment on Smackdown as they did on RAW, with all the women’s roster rushing the ring and attacking the Riott Squad, resulting in the heels running away. Just like when Absolution ran away on RAW, Russo hated this because WWE was building these heel factions as a threat and now on back to back nights we saw both factions run away scared.
Vito thinks WWE is heading towards Jinder Mahal versus Bobby Roode in the United States Title finals. He doesn’t like this approach because he’d rather see both of these competitors in the WWE Title picture. Russo says he simply doesn’t care about the US Title picture at this point.
