Six months later I got called to Vince's office again and this was when the ratings were really bad. He had all his minions around the table and I walk into the room thinking the ratings were horrible last night and they need a scapegoat. So I'm going to be the scapegoat and going to be fired in front of all these people. That's what I thought and I was partially okay with it because the product was so bad at the time. I was unhappy and fine with that. He did the complete opposite. He had the magazine in his hands and threw it down in front of everybody and said this is what our show needs to be. It's one of those moments in time you can't believe is happening because I went in their expecting the worst and it was the complete opposite. That's what got me writing with Vince.
Wrestling INC: There was that episode of RAW when Vince addressed the audience and said that the product was going to be edgier. Was that before or after this meeting occurred?
Russo: It was the RAW when they had duel shoots going on. There was one in the United States and one in England, where they were going back-and-forth. When the ratings came in, it was atrocious. It was that RAW where I was called into the office the next day.
Wrestling INC: Did you follow ECW?
Russo: It's so irritating because at the end of the day, I can talk to you until I'm blue in the face. I have nothing to hide or lie about, but people want to believe what they want to believe. I just got a nasty email from one of the writers of a wrestling website, basically saying I ran out of ideas when ECW went out of business and I couldn't copy them anymore. I've said in the last 20 years that I probably caught ECW on TV maybe three times. When I watched it, I liked what I saw.
I would say WCW and the NWO angle at that time was a much greater influence on me than ECW. The thing that appealed me to ECW wasn't characters, creative, or storylines. It was these guys killing themselves in the ring. That was the one thing I admired about Paul Heyman and still wonder how he got those guys to work at that level for him when they could have killed themselves in the ring. I never saw anything like that. There really wasn't an ECW influence because I didn't want guys to go out there and kill themselves in the ring. The NWO angle was more cutting edge and that's what wrestling should be in the 1990s. I liked the ECW product, but they never influenced me one way or another moving ahead with the Attitude Era.
Wrestling INC: When the Attitude Era started, how far along was it when you noticed that it was working? Did it occur right off the bat or take a while?
Russo: It definitely took a while because I would be with Vince when the ratings came in. He looked at the ratings, would turn to me and say we worked damned hard for those 3.0 ratings. He would put the ratings to the side and we would go on with business as usual. I remember it was 3.0 ratings for a very long time, but we never changed course because we knew we were onto something. The ratings became 3.3, 3.5, 3.9, 4.0, 5.0 and much of that credit is to Vince because anybody else would have jumped ship if they didn't see instant results. Vince really knew this formula was going to work and he was smart enough to know it wouldn't happen overnight. Staying the course is what made it successful.
Read more at http://www.wrestlinginc.com/wi/news/2014/0603/576668/vince-russo-talks-getting-his-start-with-wwe/#1ZcmedtVdEbPPifY.99
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