Don’t Fire Russo Plus My Rant on "Smart" Marks
First of all, I was reading the dirt sheets this morning, and this piece of news in particular got my attention.
– After the PPV ended, a small “Fire Russo” chant started in the arena.
Credit: TotalWrestling.net
So, with that in mind, I have to say this. I am sick and tired of hearing these moronic marks in the crowd who think that they will get themselves over by chanting “Fire Russo” when anything they don’t like happens on a PPV. Now don’t get me wrong, the man has been known to have some stupid ideas in the past. Who hasn’t if you really think about it, he is only human. Remember, Paul Heyman and Eric Bischoff, two men who many consider creative geniuses have had some stupid ideas in the past too. The other thing I look at to compare this, when something stupid happens on WWE television, if it’s on RAW, do you get the smart marks chanting “Fire Gerwitz”? Or if it’s on SmackDown! do they chant “Fire Hayes”? No, because while those two men are the head of the creative teams (or at least Hayes was before his racist scandal), there were still a number of people on the creative team, much like is the same as in TNA. Vince Russo doesn’t write everything, he may produce it, but he doesn’t write everything. Dutch Mantell and Jeff Jarrett are also major parts of the creative process.
Onto last night, while I don’t agree with the execution from last nights main event, I also liked the match itself. I mean, think back. When was Samoa Joe at the height of his popularity? I shall answer that for you, it was when he was the ass kicking, bitch killing, badass who was just out for himself. Last night, we saw that for the first time in a long time that Joe was heading down that direction. He was the heel by proxy last night because of the location, but he played to it as well, and I think Joe did well with it. He got opened up by Booker T in the middle of the match, Joe then worked through it and then managed to hit the Olé kick on Booker (which we are to assume was where he was busted open), and then it changed momentum. Booker bled, and Joe didn’t stop, he was beating the shit out of Booker, the ref bump happened, then from here, Joe took over, Booker just got destroyed. Joe wouldn’t let up which led to Sharmell getting involved to try and stop Joe from killing her husband, this led to a number of referees coming down to the ring and they proceeded to get killed by Joe, who then went back to Booker. Then we got security coming to the ring, and Joe just turned and dispatched them with ease, and then went back to killing Booker. This lead to Sting coming out and he tried to convince Joe to leave it. Joe then begins to leave with Sting before he returned to the ring to continue killing Booker. Sting gets involved again, Joe flips him off. Up until this point, I loved it. Joe was a badass. He wasn’t letting anyone stop him. Sting hitting a low blow with the bat followed by a few other bat shots was what pissed me off. Booker getting the “pin fall” victory thanks to Sharmell counting was confusing. Why is Sharmell all of a sudden a TNA official? Oh well. At least there is some intrigue. I will be watching iMPACT to see what is happening with the title situation. Surely the only logical option is Booker handing the title belt back and them having some sort of stipulation match where there must be a winner between the two at Hard Justice, but we are still not 100% sure on what is going to happen.
As for the “Fire Russo” comments, what pisses me off, is how do you know Russo had nothing to do with booking the Full Metal Mayhem match? How do you know Russo had nothing to do with the World X Cup? How do you know Russo booked the finish of the main event? You don’t. Nobody outside of the creative team knows what Vince Russo books on each show.
As for a mini rant of sorts on “Smart Marks”, yes, I see the irony that I myself am classed as a smart mark, I also have these problems myself and I am not afraid to admit it. Being on the internet, we all have a tendency to be as negative as possible about things when we read them on a website like TotalWrestling.net, Wrestlezone.com or from newsletters from places like Figure Four Weekly or the Wrestling Observer. I hate that I do the same, mostly as far as WWE is concerned. I do find negative things about TNA, but due to their infancy compared to WWE, I tend to try and give them a little bit of wiggle room. They make mistakes, but the old cliché is that you learn more from your mistakes than you do from your successes. Here is hoping that TNA are willing to learn from the mistakes and turn them into successes over the coming years. The reason I am harsher on WWE is because I have been watching wrestling for almost 19 years, I have seen what the WWE is capable of when they put their heart and soul into it. They have the talent, they have a lot of talent on their rosters who are, in my opinion, awesome wrestlers, the problem is, they take a lot of these awesome workers, and make them forget what they already know, they don’t seem to have the creative team working together with the talent. In actual fact, one of my next columns will be about how WWE could change the creative process for new wrestlers and how WWE could learn from Hollywood.
There is my two cents on the topic. I don’t care if you agree with me, or if you disagree with me. I will happily debate this with anyone who feels like via email. You can contact me with your thoughts on this or any of my other blogs, drop me an email at chris@totalwrestling.net. I will try and reply to any and all emails received (time permitting).
Just as a side note, I will be doing my next blog on the TNA Victory Road pay per view. For those who were in the live play by play centre, you know I was covering the live event and therefore didn’t get to see it properly as I was typing throughout most of it. So, until next time, I have been Chris Gorst, you have been reading the Total iMPACT. Remember to check out the rest of the blogs on the site as well.
Absolutely well said, Chris. I couldn’t agree with you more here, especially when it comes to “Fire Russo” chants and Russo bashing. You wouldn’t believe how many times people get bent out of shape when I tell them Russo is little more than a convenient scapegoat for every poor decision made by TNA. I will admit that I was pissed off last night after the Taylor vs. Kong match for the Knockouts Title and I said some rather irrational things, but I managed to calm down and put things into perspective after a while and I’m now curious to see where things go next. I also remarked about Sting and how he doesn’t appear in TNA too often though my negativity comes more from being a Sting mark than anything else. I honestly marked out when Sting returned a while back. Anyway, I can’t wait to see what happens in the next few weeks on Impact and while everything might not be perfect or the way I want, I still think TNA is an exciting wrestling company with loads of potential. Certain people on the Internet would, sadly, have us believe that TNA is the spawn of Satan. Maybe those fans should take some time to watch and enjoy their favourite wrestlers in TNA instead of over-analyzing everything looking for excuses to bash Russo or trash the company as a bush league joke. I was like that years ago until I took a chance.
As I said, its your typical smarks who think that chanting for someone to be fired makes them clever are nothing more than a waste of oxygen. As I pointed out, when WWE runs shitty angles (JBL attempting to run over Cena who miraculously escaped even though he was supposed to be unconcious after being hit in the back of the skull with a crowbar) or uses stupid gimmicks do WWE crowds chant “Fire Gerwitz” or “Fire Hayes”? No.
Vince Russo has always been a scapegoat for people. I’m not a big fan of his, he has made some stupid decisions and come up with some god-awful ideas, but people who think because they read Meltzer that they are all knowledgable and think they could do better, I say this, how many wrestling shows have those marks who sit in the audience chanting “Fire Russo” booked? I would love to see them try and inevitably fail. I also find it funny these people who are so smart and claim they can see how predictable a show is, pay their good money to go to shows to chant “Fire Russo” when they should know, being as smart as they think they are, that NOBODY IS LISTENING TO THEM. THEY ARE MORONS.
Take this past weeks iMPACT, it was one of the worst in recent months, there was a lot less wrestling on the show than usual, and it drew a 1.1 rating. The shows that the IWC were saying were good shows (although you probably didn’t watch them since you were likely filling your time sticking pins into your Vince Russo voodoo doll) consistently drew a 0.8 to 1.0 rating, so the worst the IWC considers the show, the better the rating does.
Meltzer put the counter-argument to this best – people take the “Russo” part too literally. The chant is not because of a vendetta against Vince Russo, but because they want SOMEONE accountable for the shit TNA spews. Dixie used to say “well Vince doesn’t write the stuff, so the chants are wrong.” Well tell us who did write it, and we’ll chant to fire them instead.