Sunday, June 19, 2011

Book Review Log - Week 5

In the next few chapters Vince goes more into details of what happened in his days with WCW. He goes into his impressions of Bill Goldberg, the rising star that almost saved WCW single handed. He also goes into as much detail as he could remember with his match with Ric Flair that ended up giving him a concussion.

Another intersesting and notw-worthy part of the book has to deal with someone coming out at the time this book was being written and calling Vince Russo a racist. This accusation came from the simple fact that Vince did not think that Ernest Miller (an up and coming African-American wrestler who actually had a role in the movie "The Wrestler" a couple years ago) did not need his Japanese manager, So, of course, the certain Japanese manager had to air his grievances to certain dirt sheets and anyone who would listen.

Now in the book, Vince Russo talks about something else that apparently got him labeled as a racist and that was his attitufe towards foreign wrestlers. I bring this up because there are a few things in this book that I agree with and this is one of those things. When asked by a magazine his thoughts on foreign wrestlers, he pointed out two issues that foreign wrestlers face and they are very true in the world of pro wrestling.

Fact #1: Most foreign wrestlers wear a mask. This eliminates a very important aspect of story telling and that is facial expressions. How can you get a wrestler over if the fans never know what emotions are going on behind the mask they wear? It's really hard to build any kind of character if the audience cannot tell what your emotions are in certain situations.

Fact #2: The Language Barrier. Just like not being able to tell facial expressions, how can we know what a wrestler's response is to a situation if we can't tell what they are saying? Many foreign wrestlers have English speaking managers but then the focus goes on the manager and not the wrestler. There have been many great athletes come through the ranks of the WWE that could never get over just because of that language barrier.

Vince next discusses probably the most famous storyline he had come across while in WCW. The angle that got a very talented but very under-appreciated wrestler named Booker T the World Title at the "Bash at the Beach" PPV in 2000. Now, at first, another guy named Jeff Jarrett who is also very well known in wrestling circles, had the World Title and was set to defend against Hulk Hogan. Now, Hogan was supposed to look really strong in his match but NOT leave with the title as Jarrett was going to lose it later that night to Booker T. Hogan didn't like this finish and so it was devised that they would do it in a "shoot" setting. They would work Jarrett and have him think that Hogan was not going to do the job of losing and have Jarrett lay down for Hogan. Jarrett did this just as planned and Hogan left the building with his belt while there would be another belt put on the line later on between Jarett and Booker T. All of this would be tied in by a scathing promo cut by Russo himself to set up the Booker T/Jarrett match. A match that would end with Booker T winning the title and off they would go. This event would also strip Russo of his spirit according to the next chapter in the book. He also goes on to chronicle the end of WCW up until it's demise in March of 2001 and how it effected him physically, mentally and emotionally.

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