Vince Russo: For Every Good Idea, There is Ten Bad Ones

Without writers, wrestling would be incredibly boring. It would be two guys in tights wrestling for no apparent reason. So you companies hire writers to give John Cena a reason to fight Randy Orton.

With that in mind, wrestling has had many great storylines. Who could forget Sting taking a one year sabbatical from WCW only to return and beat Hollywood Hogan for the World Title. There was also the storyline thats kept you tuning every week to find out who the Undertaker's mysterious, long lost brother was. Nobody who watched wrestling in the nineties can ever forget the Monday Night Wars with WCW and WWF taking stabs at each other  through their  respective programming. One of the highlights of the Monday Night Wars era was when the original D-X got into army tanks and tried to infiltrate a WCW show.

Just as in the title, for every good storyline in wrestling, there are about ten (or more) bad ones. Vince McMahon acquired WCW and ECW in 2001. If Vince took a minute to think about it, he would have realized that he owned the rights to probably 100 or more of the biggest wrestlers in the world. WWF vs. WCW/ECW angle sounds like a good idea. You're probably thinking that you're going to see Kevin Nash, Goldberg, Sting, Bret Hart, Big Poppa Pump, etc. vs. Triple H, The Rock, Undertaker, Kane, Jericho, etc. Wrong! Instead what you got was WWE's top tier stars, minus Stone Cold, against WCW mid-carders, excluding DDP and Booker T., and some ECW notables.

After the death of Eddie Guerrero, the fans really got behind Rey Mysterio. He pulled off the David vs. Goliath upset and became world champion against all odds. Good Idea. Then you bring in Eddie's widow to side with his nephew against Rey Mysterio with the constant mention of Eddie's name. Bad Idea. You then proceed to bring back Vickie Guerrero as the general manager of Smackdown. Worse Idea. Finally, she turns heel, marries Edge, and is booed by the fans week after week. Downright disgusting.

I think we'll all agree that the most famous writer in wrestling history is Vince Russo. He worked for WWF, WCW, and is currently the writer for TNA. Go figure. Russo is responsible for the start of the Attitude era in the WWF. He is the reason D-X, McMahon vs. Austin, Undertaker vs. Kane, and The Rock all exist. He is also the man behind the Beaver Cleavage gimmick and Mark henry's involvement with a transvestite. The minute Russo signed with WCW, ratings increased, but as we all know, with Russo, you can't have the good without the bad. If any of you remember actor David Arquette winning the WCW championship, you know who to blame for that.

When i first started watching TNA, i was impressed with their wrestle first approach. The wrestlers did their talking in the ring. There was just enough backstage drama to add to the matches, but there weren't pointless storylines that were there just for the hell of it. The AJ Styles and Christopher Daniels rivalry. Good Idea. Styles and Daniels becoming partners and winning the tag titles was an even better idea. They break up, and now Daniels is the horrendous character, Curryman. The man behind all this: Vince Russo. Now TNA has gone from the alternative of WWE to basically the same thing under a different name.

Advice to Russo, stick with traditional storylines such as the betrayal or the star on the rise, because we all know those work. Stay away from the superhero, incest, and challenging people on other brands storylines, because we're all tired of it. If it didn't work in 1996, it's definitely not going to work today.