Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (17 page)

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Vince Russo

closed its doors, I began working full-time at the Appliance Giant.

The more I write, the more comes back to me. I have to laugh when I remember a story passed on to me by a wwf employee, who shall remain nameless, concerning an open forum Vince held with his employees at Titan Tower, days after I left.

First off, let me say that the occasional “Open Forum with the Chairman of the Board” conferences were started at my suggestion, when I told Vince he had to address the troops as to why he was walking around the offices with a black eye — a story I’ll get into later. But anyway, days after I left the company, and my name was all over the internet, Vince held one of his open sessions. An employee who was new to the company naïvely asked Vince, “Who is this Vince Russo I keep reading about on the internet?”

Without missing a beat, Vince said, “Vince Russo was a television salesman I gave an opportunity to.”

Yeah, Vince was Walt Disney — he did it all by giving me the

“opportunity,” and I did nothing — typical Vince propaganda. Even after I had gone, he couldn’t give credit where credit was due. He was the genius, and I was just some guy selling toasters.

Man, you have a way of just never forgetting stuff like that.

Perhaps my biggest pet peeve is the failure to just give credit where it is due. This wasn’t just Vince, we all seem to have this flaw. Why is it so difficult for us to tip our hats to somebody rather than take all the credit ourselves? What is it about giving your brother a pat on the back that we’re so afraid of? “Vicious Vincent’s” would never have been successful without Jimmy, I would have never been successful without Amy, the wwf would not have been successful without every single person busting their butts onstage and behind the scenes. Why can’t we just admit that?

I have to admit, when my credibility was attacked — as it still sometimes is — I became defensive; “I did it, I did it, I did it.” Fortunately, when the grace of God filled my soul, it was no longer about me, it was about everybody else. I learned to give thanks and praise to everybody 114

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Forgiven

around me. That’s the difference, being a Christian — everything about you changes. You just see the world differently.

At P.C. Richards, again and again I was the Salesman of the Month.

Nobody could touch me. I sold extended three-and five-year warr-anties as easy as you’d sell Wimpy hamburgers. It just came easy to me. The rest of the salesmen despised me, but the truth was I just worked harder than they did. My first year at P.C. I brought down about $43,000, but it still wasn’t enough. After paying all the bills and putting food on the table, there was just no scratch left to pay for a radio show.

The end was near for Vicious Vincent. I was on life-support, suck-ing on the last breath of air. But I wasn’t going to let it happen — I couldn’t. I had a plan, remember? Every night I would remind Amy of that plan. She still thought I was nuts and maybe for that reason alone I couldn’t fail. Call it pride, call it whatever you want, but I knew that I had to see this thing through. But how? What was I going to do — pull a
Dog Day Afternoon
and rob a bank? No, I had to be practical. So I went back to basics.

Again, I was at that point in my life where you just roll the dice and you go for broke. But to get into the game you have to be willing to lose it all. Seven I win — snake eyes I lose. But, before you roll —

you need to have confidence.

At this point, nine out of ten people would have written a letter to Vince McMahon. Give me a break! Do you think Vince McMahon actually reads his mail? Especially a letter addressed to him from someone he didn’t know? Yeah, I had met him at the steroids symposium, but I would have had to have been out of my mind to believe that he would have remembered me. The truth was, Vince McMahon didn’t know Vince Russo from Knucklehead Smith (if you don’t know who Knucklehead Smith is you’ve
really
missed out on life).

No, I had to come up with a more sensible alternative. Then it hit me

. . . Linda McMahon. How many people, or marks, do you actually think had written to linda McMahon looking for a job? She
had to
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Vince Russo

read her mail. As the vice-president of Titan Sports at the time, many referred to her as the “business brains” behind the empire. Whereas Vince was running the show on the stage, Linda was directing traffic behind the scenes. It was a longshot, but what did I have to lose? I sat down and penned Linda a heartfelt letter. I told her of my trials and tribulations in the wrestling business; my dreams, goals and aspira-tions; and that I was literally hanging on by my last Washington (dollar bill). If my next step wasn’t to work with the wwf , then there would be no step at all. I’d be a crippled wannabe, peddling Sylvanias at the Long Island Appliance Giant.

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Chapter 23

THE PHONE CALL

HEARD ’ROUND THE WORLD

After a few more weeks, I was ready to pull the plug on “Vicious Vincent’s.” The financial burden became overwhelming. In my mind I tried to justify it. I had tried — done everything that I could — it just wasn’t happening.

Ring-a-ling!

It was a weekday, sometime in March of ’92. I remember being at the kitchen sink doing the dishes.

Why I was washing the dishes I’ll never know. Real men shouldn’t do housework. It’s not in our nature. How many times did you see Archie Bunker with a vacuum cleaner in his hands? Be a man’s man, for cryin’ out loud!

Let’s face it — that’s what we all get married for. We all want to be taken care of, waited upon and loved. If you don’t agree then you’re either full of !@#$ or gay. Men do men’s work; women do women’s work —
period!
So why in God’s name was I doing dishes?

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Vince Russo

Man, what was I thinking? I’m embarrassed by some of the things I wrote for the original draft of this book — but they need to remain as examples of how God changed my life. It’s ironic that I used the phrase “in God’s name.” Nothing I did back then was in God’s name —
nothing
. It was all in my name. I was my lord; I was my savior. And look where it got me.

“Hello, is this Vince Russo?”

“Yes,” I replied.

“Hi, my name is Liz DeFabio; I’m Linda McMahon’s assistant.” Here it was — the
Queen Mary!

“Linda McMahon would like to speak with you.” What can I say? My strategy had worked like a charm. I had Linda McMahon on the phone. This was my opportunity — I sold like a salesman one percent short of his commission with only 30 minutes left in the month. I sold, sold, sold and sold some more. I barely let Linda get a word in edgewise, but from what I can remember, she mentioned to me that they were looking for freelance writers for the
World Wrestling Federation Magazine,
and that someone would be getting in touch with me shortly after WrestleMania ix, that weekend.

Man, I had done it — I had freaking done it! My foot was in the door.

That’s all I needed: just a little crack.

After hanging up the phone I was on a Cheech and Chong high.

Again, I had taken that chance. I had taken my spaldings in my hand and taken that next step. I was on my way, it really didn’t matter where. All I knew was that I had been given the opportunity I needed to stay alive.

Just take one second and count how many “I’s” appear in the previous paragraph. I did this, I did that — now “I” know exactly what was wrong with my life!

I took credit for
everything
back then. It was all about me, and how wonderful I was. How sad. How many of us go about our everyday lives doing the same thing, giving ourselves credit for everything we’ve done, everything we have. It’s not just those actors and actresses I talked 118

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about earlier — it’s all of us. Then we wonder why we go through the hardships in life. God is never going to answer any of our prayers as long as we put ourselves before him. But, the truth is, we need to come to our end in order to find his beginning.

Whether or not we want to admit it, God is responsible for everything we have. We’ve achieved or “earned” nothing without him. Once we come to that realization — and thank him for all he’s done — then and only then will he bless us with the rewards that really matter in life.

True to her word, I was contacted the following week by the editor of the
wwf Magazine
, Ed Ricciuti. Since he called me at home and I was at work, I had to return his call from the Appliance Giant. I’ll never forget it: when I called him back the guy answered the phone Dean Martin–bombed — seven sheets to the wind. I could barely understand him, but I didn’t care. An Italian editor juiced up on a little vino

— that was okay in my book! Ed immediately took a liking to me and me to him. It may have had something to do with the fact both our last names ended in a vowel.

Man, it means so much to me to be 100 percent Italian. I’m so proud of my heritage, and no matter who or what you are — there’s nothing like Italians. We stick together, we look out for each other, that’s just in our nature. In our eyes, Italians can do no wrong — it’s always “them other guys.” I think my pride comes from my late grandfather. I truly believe John Savarino’s influence helped shape me into the person I am today. He was such a proud man — a “man” in every sense of the word. Stubborn, stuck in his ways, strong-willed, strong-minded, everything Vince Russo is.

As I said earlier, as the years passed and my grandfather grew older, I did everything in my power to avoid seeing him. I just couldn’t picture Granddad as this fragile, old man. It would have busted my heart to see him like that. He always represented this strong individual to me, a man who was in every sense a man. Then one day, he died. After surviving numerous heart attacks and outliving my grandmother, he passed on.

He was never the same after she died.

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I miss my grandparents so much.

Looking back today, everything takes on a whole new meaning. My grandparents were together for over 50 years, and my grandmother went to church religiously at least once or twice a week. On the other hand, my grandfather never went to a single mass.

When Nana suddenly passed away, out of nowhere, my grandfather began to read the Bible every night. Before God embraced me, I never even gave it a second thought. Today . . . today I understand.

My grandfather loved my grandmother so much that he wanted to be assured he’d see her again — as stubborn as he was, he realized there was only one way to do that — and that was through God. You want to talk about miracles? Vince Russo accepting Jesus Christ as his lord and savior is nothing compared to John J. Savarino opening his heart to God.

My grandfather was the strongest-willed man that I have ever known —

but when Nana passed away, even he knew that he had come to the end of his life. Even he reached a point where he realized he could no longer go it alone.

A few months ago, my mother gave me the bible that my grandfather bought and read out of after Nana passed. The emotion, the love I feel every time I open that book is overwhelming. I can feel the presence of my grandfather, praying to God that one day he would see his precious Anna once again.

So here I am, tv salesman by day, Vince Russo, freelance wwf writer by night. Ricciuti started me at $150 a story, doing an average of two stories a month. Man, was the World Wrestling Federation a different animal at that point. It was still in that ’80s phase of bigger-than-life cartoon characters, only by the ’90s, you were already starting to see signs that it just wasn’t going to work anymore. I remember doing my first piece on Bryan Clarke, who went by the name of Adam Bomb at that point. “Adam Bomb”? I don’t know if the gimmick was a bigger joke now or then. But, I was still just happy to have my foot in the door. Whatever Ricciuti asked me to write, I wrote. To this day, that story on Clarke hangs in a frame in my office. That was more than a 120

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decade ago. Man, what a piece of fictional horse-poop. It’s so hard for me to read today. But in my mind, at the time, it was nothing short of Hemingway.

After writing for a couple of months, Ed was sky high on me. Only problem was I didn’t know if it was him or the whiskey talking. But I’m pretty sure it was him. For what it was — my written word was good. Man, I used to hound Ed every week for stories, much the same way I hounded the Fruitinator for a Yogi Bear lunchbox when I was going into kindergarten. “What next, what next?” I would ask. Then one day, after writing volumes of
Aesop’s Fables
, Ed said, “How about interviewing Shawn Michaels, live and in person, for the next issue of the wwf magazine?” I’ve got to sit here and chuckle now. What a big deal that was to me at the time. It meant everything. My passion to get where I wanted had priority over everything. Amy, Will and VJ

came a distant second. What a horse’s ass I was.

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Chapter 24

MY CATERING WITH SHAWN

My meeting with Shawn Michaels was to take place backstage at the Poughkeepsie Civic Center prior to
Monday Night Raw.
At that point,
Raw
was still in its infancy, and Vince was looking for his niche on the usa Network. Shawn was more or less in the same boat. For most of his career he had teamed with Marty Jannetty in the Midnight Rockers, a tag team that had moved from the old awa to the wwf and was well ahead of its time. Due to some personal issues Marty was dealing with, Shawn was left to go solo. This was his first shot at making it on his own. A lot of people don’t realize this about Shawn, but like many of us, he too grew up a wrestling fan. Since his teens he knew what he wanted to do and he followed that dream regardless of any discouragement thrown his way. Shawn was always considered a longshot, because back in the day Vince McMahon was in love with monsters (there are those who say he still is) — the six-foot-eight, 350