10 Wrestlers Who Had Heat With Vince Russo

Vince Russo is certainly a controversial figure in pro wrestling, from his time as a top writer during the WWE Attitude Era, to his disastrous run as the booker of WCW, to his time in TNA, and his many comments over the years about pro wrestling. 

Some love him, yet many more seem to hate him, and the list of people who have heat with Russo is about a mile long. These are 10 of those wrestlers. 

10. Leilani Kai

Former WWE Women's Champion Leilani Kai wrestled a handful of WCW matches during the 1990s, the last of which was a loss to Madusa on the July 26, 1999 edition of Nitro as Patty Stone Grinder.

Kai thought she had one more match booked - against Brandi Alexander - when she flew to Denver, Colorado, for the November 29 Nitro. However, when she got there, Leilani has claimed the script was flipped on her by none other than Vince Russo. 

Kai has said in various interviews that she showed up at the arena with the intention of wrestling a regular singles match with Alexander, only to be informed that she was in fact going to wrestle Rhonda Sing in a mud match instead. 

“It started when he wanted me to do mud wrestling. I had come to the event, I think it was Denver, Colorado, to wrestle a lady named Brandy Alexander, and they just changed it on me and wanted me to do mud wrestling on the show. I was like, ‘You’ve got to be out of your mind; I’m not going to do anything like that.’ Now that I think about it, I would do anything if I can let him get in the mud with me, maybe in a cage, and I’ll wrestle him and let him see what it feels like. I’d love to do that, get in a mud wrestling match with him in a cage. But that was an awful long time ago, and I just didn’t care for that at all,” Kai said about her hatred of Russo in 2014.

“That's not what I'm about, and it really upset me pretty bad; it wasn’t a very good scene. I really don't think that he knew what he was doing, I really don’t. It didn’t do a lot for a lot of the young talent getting in the business; it wasn’t good for them at all. I don’t think they were treated right and he just messed it up with that cartoonish-type thing. I think it messed it up for a lot of the guys who were really trying to make it in the business and worked so hard to pave for pro wrestling. I just didn’t care for the way he pursued his characters or whatever cartoonish things he did. It really made me mad when he said that to me; I was really upset, I think I really went off on him.”

Russo has disputed Kai’s version of events, saying that she was always being brought in for that one specific spot, but her hatred for the writer persists to this day.

"First of all, you're talking about somebody who's very ungrateful. You just saw EC3 say, 'Leilani who?' Obviously, I knew of Leilani Kai. She was a legendary women's wrestler. Now that I'm writing at Nitro, I'm literally giving her an opportunity to come to the show. Now, whatever she thought she was going to do was in her head. I've already got a script written. So, what am I changing up on anybody? Ok, Leilani, this is what I would like for you to do. There's no changing anything up. This is the spot I'm bringing you in for," Russo said on the Wrestling Outlaws in 2023.

On the show itself, Kai was attacked and taken out of the match, which led to a scene where Sing, Roddy Piper, the Harris Twins, Miss Elizabeth and Lex Luger all took a bath in the brown stuff.

9. The Undertaker

If there was one member of the WWE locker room that you didn’t want to have heat with, it was probably The Undertaker. Luckily for Vince Russo, he didn’t even know he had beef with The Deadman until after he’d left WWE for WCW.

It was while he was in WCW that Terry Taylor (who had also jumped ship from WWE) told Russo that ‘Taker held a grudge against him due to Russo constantly asking The Phenom to work through injuries. 

While it was no secret that The Undertaker was struggling during this era as his body broke down, Russo was shocked by the revelation, saying that he never knew that he was hurt and wouldn’t have asked anyone to work a match if they were. 

This heat certainly was a one-way street, as Russo had nothing but respect for Mark Calaway. Michael Hayes, meanwhile, once claimed that Russo suggested ‘Taker retire during his fleeting return to the WWE creative team in mid-2002, a claim that Russo has shot down by saying the pitch was for an angle, not for him to actually retire.

8. Roddy Piper

Like many of the old-school wrestlers who developed during the territory system, Roddy Piper was not exactly enamoured with the direction the industry had taken during the Monday Night Wars and accused Russo, as the head writer of WWE, of ‘prostituting the business’.

When Russo jumped to WCW, there was instant heat with the Hot Rod, not helped when Russo and his writing partner Ed Ferrara presented Piper with a scripted, profanity-laced promo for him to recite on television. 

Roddy wasn’t in WCW for long thereafter, but he still bore a grudge against Russo, not just for the car crash nature of professional wrestling, but for something more personal. It all came to a head when Piper made an appearance on NWA: TNA’s December 4, 2002 weekly pay-per-view.

Piper was ostensibly there (as an unannounced surprise) to promote his new autobiography, but used his promo time to blast Russo for, among other things, the tragic death of Owen Hart. 

Russo (who was in the building) took exception to Roddy’s rant and hit the ring, leading to a tense exchange where Piper shoot-slapped Russo in the side of the head before the Harris twins came out to diffuse the situation.

7. Dustin Rhodes

The professional wrestling career of Dustin Rhodes changed completely when he left WCW and joined WWE, where he was tasked with portraying the character of Goldust. 

In those early Goldust days, it was Vince Russo writing much of the material for The Bizarre One, particularly the promos where he would talk about Hollywood and movie stars.

Goldust got over big and was a huge success, all things considered, but Rhodes left WWE in 1999 and resurfaced in WCW. It was Eric Bischoff who signed him to a deal, but Bischoff was out and Russo was in as Rhodes was getting ready to debut as the altogether new character of Seven, which Dustin had created himself. 

Speaking about the situation during a Q&A live event with Inside the Ropes, Dustin said that he did not like Russo at all at the time, going as far as to say he ‘hated’ him. When the controversial Seven character was axed due to pressure from Turner Broadcasting's Standards and Practices department, Rhodes felt like it was Russo trying to mess with him.

In his autobiography, Rhodes criticised Russo further for his booking afterwards, particularly the frequent jobs he did for Russo favourite (and close friend) Jeff Jarrett.

6. Eric Bischoff

Since launching 83 Weeks, few have managed to ruffle as many feathers as Eric Bischoff, who is unrestrained in his approach to criticising people within the industry, with Russo one of his frequent targets.

After being relieved of his duties as WCW’s SVP in 1999, Bischoff was later brought back to work alongside Russo in a creative capacity and as an on-screen character in 2000. Bischoff initially liked Russo and felt they could work together but, as the weeks and months went on, he grew wary of him.

In recent years, Bischoff has been unfiltered in his criticism of Russo, who he also worked with later in TNA and they blamed each other for that company’s various failures. 

In 2023, Bischoff described Russo as "one of the most obnoxious human beings I've ever listened to."

5. Samoa Joe

Eric Bischoff is able to criticise Russo, but the former WCW SVP was the man who came up with the abysmal angle of Samoa Joe being kidnapped by a van full of ninjas. 

According to Russo, Bischoff’s grand idea was for Joe to be gone for a while and it would later be revealed that Jimmy ‘Superfly’ Snuka was the person behind the kidnap plot. Even though the angle was Bischoff’s idea, Joe later roasted Russo for bringing him back without any explanation for the kidnapping angle, which he thought was both ridiculous and insulting to the audience. 

Russo, meanwhile, blamed Joe - who he noted clearly hated doing the kidnapping angle in the first place - for returning after his time away weighing 50 pounds more than he did before and scolded The Samoan Submission Machine for throwing him under the bus years after the fact.

4. Goldberg

When Vince Russo made his way to WCW in late 1999, Goldberg was arguably the fading company's top star. The Goldberg formula was a pretty hard one to mess up, but Russo found a way. 

At the Great American Bash 2000 pay-per-view, Da Man turned heel for the first (and really only) time in his career, aligning himself with Russo and Eric Bischoff. Fans were not into a heel Goldberg, and neither was Goldberg himself, later ripping on Russo for the booking decision. Goldberg took his character very seriously and didn't appreciate someone making such a monumental decision for him on a whim. 

Goldberg said in 2015:

"I'm glad because I can be a role model for kids but oh man, did I want to be a heel. I would have been the best Bruiser Brody-ish, bald, freaking monster anybody would have been. People think Brock [Lesnar] is good as a heel, oh man. They turned me one time in WCW in Baltimore, the night before I wrestled Hacksaw Jim Duggan, and he just got over surgery, and he had cancer. I had to go out and blast him and had a Make-A-Wish girl in the back, with cancer. So I come back after the match and she's in tears. Wrestling is wrestling, I get it – the good, the bad and the evil – and trying to storyline people in and out of what they think is going to happen. But I wasn't going to do that.

"I failed as a wrestler in that I didn't turn heel but I think I won as a human being. Because if there is one girl or one kid that thinks less of me and doesn’t idolise me because of the fictitious stuff I’ve done in the ring in a negative fashion, I don’t want to risk that. I didn’t reach the level I could have reached, but it doesn’t matter to me. That one little girl destroyed me and I told them the next day that we're going back. Immediately."

Years later, Goldberg would refuse to negotiate with TNA due to Russo’s involvement with the company, and he even expressed his belief that the native New Yorker had been sent by WWE to help destroy WCW. 

Russo addressed the conspiracy during an appearance on Insight with Chris Van Vliet in 2023:

"Here's the insanity. Anybody, and obviously, I would not be saying this, if I were not telling the truth. Anybody can look at WCW ratings, and they can look at the first three months before Vince Russo got there. Then they can look at the first three months when Ed Ferrara and myself started tearing down the building and building a new foundation. When you look at those first three months, bro, the ratings are going up. The ratings were working, our plan was going according to exactly what Ed and I discussed. We gotta erase everything they're doing. We’ve got to build new people, we got to build new stars. It was working perfectly.

"Then of course, bro, politics played its ugly head. I went home, you know, they brought in different people. In the three months that we had built, after three months, bro, they had brought it right back down to where it was before we got there. Thus they called me back. Vince, we need you to get back here. Honest to God. At that point, when I went back, I knew we lost the audience. I knew there’s no way that we’re gonna get the audience back. We had them, we were building for three months, then they went backwards three months to the same crap they were doing. It’s done, it’s over. Obviously, I had to go back because I was contractually obligated. But I knew at that point, bro, we’re not going to get these people back again."

Russo, for his part, has suggested that Goldberg was difficult to work with, citing the fact that Goldberg allegedly baulked at losing to Scott Steiner at Fall Brawl 2000. He also accused Goldberg of intentionally injuring him when he speared him through a cage on the September 25, 2000, episode of Nitro inside WarGames.

3. JBL

Like Vince Russo, John Bradshaw Layfield is another controversial character who has rubbed plenty of people the wrong way. Two big, opinionated personalities who come from very different worlds, it’s no surprise that JBL and Russo were not exactly friends when they worked together in WWE. 

Russo felt as though JBL was a loudmouthed bully - an opinion he was not alone in - and also didn’t think the Bradshaw character could get over due to his strong Texas accent. 

Russo has also claimed that he came up with and pitched the Brawl for All because Bradshaw was constantly bragging about his toughness in the locker room and wanted to shut him up.

JBL has refuted this, admitting that he no doubt talked smack but that most of it would have been in jest considering the WWE locker room at the time contained the likes of Ken Shamrock, Dan Severn and other noted hard men. 

He’s also blasted Russo for his hare-brained creative ideas and what he perceives as a history of failures since leaving WWE back in 1999.

2. Hulk Hogan

In a company rife with fiascos both in front of the camera and behind the scenes, the debacle that occurred at the 2000 Bash at the Beach pay-per-view stands out as one of WCW’s most notorious. 

Vince Russo was right in the middle of it, his creative vision conflicting with that of Hulk Hogan - who had creative control written into his contract - to the point that Russo cut an unauthorised ‘shoot’ promo on The Hulkster after Hogan had left the building following the worked-shoot match/angle where he defeated Jeff Jarrett to win the WCW World Heavyweight Title. 

Having his character assassinated on the air didn’t work for Terry Bollea, and he later sued WCW for defamation, with the lawsuit being dismissed. 

In the years after, Hogan was often critical of Russo and credited him for playing a part in WCW’s ultimate demise. When TNA (unsuccessfully) tried to woo Hogan in 2003, they went as far as to momentarily axe Russo at Hulk’s insistence, though the two of them learnt to get along when they both worked for Dixie Carter’s company from 2010 onwards.

1. Jim Cornette

Not one to be shy about expressing his opinions about other people, Jim Cornette has launched his famous, foul-mouthed tirades towards many within the wrestling business. He has reserved special scorn for Vince Russo, however. 

Cornette and Russo first crossed paths when they both worked for WWE in the mid-1990s, and it didn’t take long for Cornette to develop a dislike for the man alternatively known as Vic Venom. 

A wrestling traditionalist who grew up in, loved, respected, and protected the business at all costs, Cornette despised Russo’s flippant approach to writing wrestling television and accused him of attempting to kill the business he loved so much. 

This – plus many other slights, imagined or otherwise – have led to the legendary manager bashing Russo for the best part of three decades. Russo, for his part, claims that he holds no ill will towards his nemesis, though he did take out a restraining order against Cornette after being physically threatened with violence in 2017.

Russo said on Insight with Chris Van Vliet:

"First of all, bro, let's be honest here. Okay, I don't have one ounce of ill will towards Jim Cornette, but I know why Jim Cornette dislikes me. I mean, really it's twofold, bro. I told you early on about how people feel about New Yorkers. Jim Cornette hates New Yorkers, hates New York, hates New Yorkers, hates the entire East Coast. Okay, so there’s that. I’m working with a guy from the south now who absolutely hates New Yorkers. Here I come with this thick heavy accent, I am who I am, so that’s number one. Number two, at the end of the day at WWE and TNA I was chosen over Jim Cornette twice.

"Okay now, if the shoe was on the other foot and Jim Cornette was chosen over me, I’m going to look in the mirror and I’m going to ask myself why Vince? Why did they go with Cornette and not you? I would have looked at myself, but in Jim Cornette’s mind that was my fault. Whatever it is I did to get Vince McMahon and Dixie Carter to choose me over him was underhanded, was you know, what whatever, because they couldn’t have been Jim’s flaws that he was very set in his ways and very difficult to work with. It couldn’t have been that, it had to be something Vince Russo did.

"So that’s where all this stems from and then of course, bro, he’s turned it into folklore, you know. I actually know Jim’s big on, you know, the old time Cauliflower Alley Club and all that, right? I even said let’s go on online, pay-per-view, online. Let’s have a one-on-one debate. Let’s charge X amount of dollars. Every single penny goes to the Cauliflower Alley Club. I have no problem confronting you face to face. I don’t want a penny from this and you’ve got some old talent, old time wrestlers really down on their luck that could probably use a few dollars. He outright refused.

"Why did he refuse bro? Because it will kill his gimmick, that’s why he refused. To me, whether it kills your gimmick or not if you love wrestling so much and you love those that built wrestling so much and you financially can raise money for these wrestlers. I would have done it in a heartbeat."

Russo also believes Cornette's angst towards him is just a gimmick, as he added:

"Absolutely bro. You don’t hear me say mean things about him at all. As a matter of fact, bro, I probably put Cornette over at least once a week, I put him over. Absolutely bro. It’s folklore. It’s, it’s, you know what he’s created with his, you know, cult. And God forbid he ever went back on that. Then in his mind his people would never look at him the same."