Jeff Jarrett Recalls Vince Russo Winning WCW Title In 2000, Russo’s Trust Issues With The Company

On a recent edition of My World with Jeff Jarrett, Jeff Jarrett discussed Vince Russo making himself an on-screen character in WCW, Russo booking himself to win the WCW title, and much more. You can read his comments below. 

Jeff Jarrett on Vince Russo making himself an on-screen character in WCW and his trust issues with the company: “I’ll say this. From my perspective, Vince quit trusting anybody. I’m not saying that’s a defense of him, that’s an observation that he didn’t trust not only the executives that were above him but anybody on his team and certainly any of the talent. Throw in the Hogan situation – I’ll call it the Hogan camp and the Millionaire’s Club. By this point, there were already rumors of Mandalay Bay and new ownership. We’re eight weeks removed from Bash at the Beach and that mess and that litigation. It was a damn mess. Vince didn’t trust anybody, and I think his mindset was, ‘Well, I can trust myself to make the right decisions or promos’ or whatever. He built the show around himself because he could trust himself to at least get the story done. Unfortunately, his in-ring ability just didn’t exist. I just think the foundation of what he was doing crumbled because of his in-ring skills. They weren’t there, among other things.”

On Russo booking himself to win the WCW title: “Look, in that moment, Jeff Jarrett 22 years ago, early 30s, I was still a huge believer of, ‘What are we doing next week? Who’s his opponents? What kind of match is he gonna have?’ And I’m not talking about five-star quality, I’m talking about episodic storytelling. How’s Vince gonna go tell a story in a match? It just wasn’t ever there. He wasn’t trained to be a wrestler. I know the [David] Arquette story and the fluke win and all that and that was a publicity stunt – there’s a bunch of moving parts. I didn’t think Vince could get to week-to-week episodic storytelling. I didn’t think it was a good idea at all.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit My World with Jeff Jarrett with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.