WWE’s Scripted Promos Blamed on Triple H and Stephanie’s Creative Control Era

Vince Russo isn’t holding back when it comes to his thoughts on WWE’s promo system—and he’s putting the blame squarely on Triple H and Stephanie McMahon for what he calls a creativity-killing environment.

While speaking on Sportskeeda Wrestling, Russo broke down exactly why WWE promos feel unnatural to him and why fans aren’t buying into them like they used to. According to him, scripted promos are ruining the authenticity that made wrestling feel real in the past.

He started by pointing out the robotic nature of backstage segments in WWE today.

“Matt, can I tell you something? Like seriously, it’s this easy, bro. Here’s what happens. Mac, you’re at a pre-tape. Somebody’s doing a pre-tape. So I’m getting ready. Okay, you ready? You ready? You know, I’m waiting for them. This is what they’re doing—looking at their notes, memorizing the lines. That’s what they’re doing.”

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Russo said the solution is simple—ditch the scripts and let wrestlers react like actual people in a real situation.

“Matt, this is all you have to do. Ready? Take that away from them and say, ‘Bro, here’s the situation—go.’ That’s all you have to do. You know, every single person in the WWE is standing there with their paper. And bro, we’ve even seen some teleprompters.”

He went on to describe how things worked during his time in WWE, comparing the current format to the past:

“When I came into wrestling, it was: here are the bullet points, and this is what we want you to talk about. That’s it. Now, I would go up to whoever I may be in the ring with delivering this promo with, and I might say, ‘Look, there’s a couple of lines, it’ll be key points for you just to remember, and here’s what I want you to do when I say this.’ That would be about the most of what we would discuss. I would not have a script. I wouldn’t have two or three pages of stuff to remember.”

“I would know that, okay, this is what I got to talk about. So let me speak how I would normally speak. And like you say, if there’s not a script, you’re going to speak like you normally speak.”

And if you’re wondering who he blames for the current scripted promo culture, Russo made that very clear.

““Matt, that all happened—that all happened in the Triple H-Stephanie era. Because that did not exist when I was there. Absolutely not.”

And why did that exist during the Stephanie and Triple H era? Because they wanted to be in control of everything. ‘We want to be in control of everything.’ And it’s not changed since.”

Russo’s take isn’t just a critique—it’s a call to shake things up and bring back realism in promos. With fans increasingly tuning out overly produced segments, it’s worth asking if his old-school approach could actually fix what feels broken.

What do you think about Vince Russo’s take on WWE’s scripted promos? Is he right that realism is gone—or do today’s promos still hold up? Sound off in the comments and let us know how you’d fix WWE’s promo problem.

Please credit Ringside News if you use the above transcript in your publication.