Hope you're liking this clip from our interview with RAVEN! Here's another 10 hours of Raven interviews we have conducted over the years: bit.ly/2nXtBzb Enjoy and don't forget to hit subscribe!
Scott Levy is really smart guy. It's so awesome to listen to him talk about the creative side of wrestling. Loved his run in ECW. Very underrated for sure.
I could listen to people like Raven ramble on for hours about the business. All of the partying and stuff aside, you can tell he loves it like nothing else.
I've heard him been complimented quite a bit, granted usually backhanded. As bad/out there as some of his ideas were, he still found something for the majority of the guys on TV to do. They had some semblance of a feud or direction. He also seemed like a guy that wasn't going to make a lot of builds too similar. Some of the TNA and WWE stuff in their low points, it just seemed like "okay, you can take what these two guys are saying and doing, switch them with these two guys or these two guys". As for WCW, I don't think he'd have saved the company by a long shot, but I think he was in unenviable position as he basically signed and went straight to work. In WWF, he had been around for quite some time before he moved into a writing role. He had to have known far more about the guys backstage, how they acted, how they might word something, etc.
It's a similar thing with Eric Bischoff the winners get to rewrite history how they want it to be read. Fans love to blame Russo and WWE loves to blame Russo for the death of WCW and paint him to be useless but the reality is he did co write the Attitude Era, he pitched Vince McMahon to go in that direction, and while Vince Russo's tenure at WCW didn't work the reality is that he is not and was not responsible for the demise of WCW, contrary to popular belief and opinion. WCW demise fell squarely on the shoulders of the AOL/Time Warner merger and they did not want wrestling on their network and only tolerated it through gritted teeth because it was the most popular thing on there during it's height. But the minute Ted Turner was out of the picture WCW was already gone it was simply a matter of time. And it was a complete mess of a structure from the word go. Vince McMahon, Paul Heyman, Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff combined couldn't have saved WCW under that structure!
Purists hate him because he made wrestling gimmicky; new people hate him because gimmicks are everything now. Before attitude era, matches were telegraphed and predictable. The choice was stay the same and die, or outlandishly change and shake things up. That needs to happen again. How, I don't know. But being stagnant isn't the answer.
Imo, Raven is a top 5 wrestler, of all time! The way he sold, performed, stayed in character and took that extra step. He is truly an artist. The biggest difference between a guy like Raven and Hogan is EGO! People lile Russo and Raven are the reasons why wrestling was even watchable
I thought his return in 2010 was amazing, this was a great return. With Stevie being his "lackey" for so many years, with Raven coming back and being his "back up" I thought it was great. Raven looked better than he had for awhile and Stevie looked amazing.... and they did nothing with it :/
When Raven came back with the new look I.E. the braids blonde & purple, shirt off finally and like wearing the kilt like skirt thing so great. Same Raven but also different, where as in WCW with the flock they were just a bunch of lost boys following him cause he probably had 100 IQ points on em all. But too me with the new look it seemed like he been on a journey with like shamans and that all to become the world's best and most convincing cult leader. Also not alot of wrestlers (at least very established ones) can be same character brand new look and still be expected by the fans as the same person but Raven did it marvelously!! One of my all-time favorites.
As dope as it was, wish this would've happened in WWE. There superior production value would've made that fireball look incredible. Also, the crowd is so much bigger and so many more people are watching this could've been an epic wrestling moment in general.
+Kingston Hawke Yeah, Raven would have made a great character in WWE, if they would let Scott make some decisions. They rarely let the talent control their own image, so that's why Raven never really took off in WWE.
He perfectly described the idiocy of hardcore wrestling. Once the guy has been dropped on thumbtacks, wrapped in barbed wire, and all kinds of other crao, they need something even more spectacular. Once that new spectacular thing happens, they need something super spectacular. What happens after the fire ball? What happens after tossing the guy from the top of a cage, after throwing the guy through a burning table?
But seriously this thing about Russo from what I can gather is he comes up with a lot of ideas. Some are brilliant, others are terrible. If you have someone in charge who can take the great ideas and discard the rest then you have good sports entertainment.
Vince Russo is a good writer however sometimes he needs to remember that he's working in a wrestling environment not a Michael Bay production. People shit on Russo for the death of WCW but people should also be grateful to him for the attitude era. Once Russo left the attitude era got really redundant and corny. Russo also didn't know how to handle a WCW product which wasn't sports entertainment heavy.
I remember back in the 90's when raven was in WCW..He carried almost every pay per view by himself...every match would be 5-10 minutes long and he'd come out and work a guy for 35 minutes and have the whole match be entertaining...Damn shame the way Vince mishandled him and his character talent...he should come back as a new manager and run the flock again stating a grievance against Bray Wyatt for stealing his ideas (I'm not saying he has but it'd be a great angle as maybe you could bring back CM Punk because he worked with Raven before) Wrestling needs more factions like the attitude era of the 90's...
Weadfreek Raven's WWF debut was pretty epic but it did slowly decline after that...I know there were a lot of factors but unfortunately the WCW buyout screwed a lot of very talented wrestlers around that time. Raven was a one-of-a-kind character.
Will Tonkin Raven made his debut in a Tazz vs. Jerry King Lawler strap match..showed up and planted King on his head..Tazz slapped on the Tazzmission and that was all she wrote...it was flipping amazing
***** Not yet...working on it..and I MAY have been a little overzealous on the time..but his matches were ALWAYS the best on the PPV's..even tho Bitchoff and Hogan constantly gave him shit storylines and people to work...
***** Truth...He and bitchoff had tons of great guys to push in late 97' early 98' but because they weren't "main eventers" in his eyes none of them got any sort of push except < gag > Goldberg...
raven has like a 150 iq so i trust his opinions lol. i have to look up raven vs foley to see if that hardcore dream matchup ever happened after hearing him mention mick
Its funny hearing people talk about their 'great ideas'. Like, this fireball thing means alot to Raven, but most wrestling fans are like 'wtf are you talking about'. We dont remember specific matches that well but to them its the world. Not dogging on Raven, but I listen to alot of these shoots and the stuff and these wrestlers remember is such minutiae.
Russo had good ideas just 90% of his stuff had to be scrapped by somebody like McMahon. WcW let everything through so it was terrible. Eg: in WWF Russo created The Brood which kicked ass.
I disagree about the lights going out. I think it's a cool bit and most people seem to rather enjoy it. Just look at the Wyatts theme entrance. Raven was in terrible shape though.
lastwolflord he has a medical condition I forget what it's called but he has a hard time with keeping the weight because of it that's why he stopped wrestling
Raven is a Very Smart man in and out of the Ring.It is too Bad that this man Never got a 30 Year Contract with the WWE..Even if it was working in the Creative Dept.Or in Talent Relations.He know the Bussiness Like the back of His Hand inside and Out.I will always Love and Respect Him 100%AVE SATANAS/AVE LUCIFERI///
Hope you're liking this clip from our interview with RAVEN! Here's another 10 hours of Raven interviews we have conducted over the years: bit.ly/2nXtBzb Enjoy and don't forget to hit subscribe!
I'll give Raven this he's got a great mind for the business
"Russo has a lot of great ideas." Nuff said!
Adam Martin for raven, cause they were both bullied in school.
Gotta love Raven. Really dug that feud as well.
One of the things I've ALWAYS loved about Raven is his passion for the wrestling business
Raven tells the truth straight up. Raven really needs to be a wrestling Booker
Scott Levy is really smart guy. It's so awesome to listen to him talk about the creative side of wrestling. Loved his run in ECW. Very underrated for sure.
And people wonder why I was Raven mark #1 back in the day...
I could listen to people like Raven ramble on for hours about the business. All of the partying and stuff aside, you can tell he loves it like nothing else.
+kill28illuminati And you're better, because you were only racist in retaliation?
Really cool watching him talk about when everything comes together bookingwise.
TNA meant something to Raven!
+Reggie Cook It was a company that used him right, and he had a great rapport with Russo, of course it did.
I agree. He won the NWA World Title with the company.
the man is a genuis ive allways liked raven such an underrated wrestler and was never used right
Always loved Scott/Raven. This is a great interview.
I love how Raven talks like a coach calling the play. With sound effects and all. It shows how much thought really goes into everything
Never heard anyone compliment Russo before.
yer this is one of the first times i watched or read something nice about him tnafanforum com
hes staying on good terms just in case lol
I've heard him been complimented quite a bit, granted usually backhanded. As bad/out there as some of his ideas were, he still found something for the majority of the guys on TV to do. They had some semblance of a feud or direction. He also seemed like a guy that wasn't going to make a lot of builds too similar. Some of the TNA and WWE stuff in their low points, it just seemed like "okay, you can take what these two guys are saying and doing, switch them with these two guys or these two guys". As for WCW, I don't think he'd have saved the company by a long shot, but I think he was in unenviable position as he basically signed and went straight to work. In WWF, he had been around for quite some time before he moved into a writing role. He had to have known far more about the guys backstage, how they acted, how they might word something, etc.
It's a similar thing with Eric Bischoff the winners get to rewrite history how they want it to be read. Fans love to blame Russo and WWE loves to blame Russo for the death of WCW and paint him to be useless but the reality is he did co write the Attitude Era, he pitched Vince McMahon to go in that direction, and while Vince Russo's tenure at WCW didn't work the reality is that he is not and was not responsible for the demise of WCW, contrary to popular belief and opinion.
WCW demise fell squarely on the shoulders of the AOL/Time Warner merger and they did not want wrestling on their network and only tolerated it through gritted teeth because it was the most popular thing on there during it's height. But the minute Ted Turner was out of the picture WCW was already gone it was simply a matter of time.
And it was a complete mess of a structure from the word go. Vince McMahon, Paul Heyman, Vince Russo and Eric Bischoff combined couldn't have saved WCW under that structure!
Purists hate him because he made wrestling gimmicky; new people hate him because gimmicks are everything now.
Before attitude era, matches were telegraphed and predictable. The choice was stay the same and die, or outlandishly change and shake things up.
That needs to happen again. How, I don't know. But being stagnant isn't the answer.
Imo, Raven is a top 5 wrestler, of all time!
The way he sold, performed, stayed in character and took that extra step. He is truly an artist.
The biggest difference between a guy like Raven and Hogan is EGO!
People lile Russo and Raven are the reasons why wrestling was even watchable
Back when TNA was still good, went done hill during December 2009; the fireball in the dark was one of my favorite moments.
I thought his return in 2010 was amazing, this was a great return. With Stevie being his "lackey" for so many years, with Raven coming back and being his "back up" I thought it was great. Raven looked better than he had for awhile and Stevie looked amazing.... and they did nothing with it :/
I miss Scott Levy on Monday nights
the king of hardcore pain is back
"Mick's runnin' around with a chicken like his head cut off."
TNA should hire Raven as a booker!!! I think Raven would be a great booker.
When Raven came back with the new look I.E. the braids blonde & purple, shirt off finally and like wearing the kilt like skirt thing so great. Same Raven but also different, where as in WCW with the flock they were just a bunch of lost boys following him cause he probably had 100 IQ points on em all. But too me with the new look it seemed like he been on a journey with like shamans and that all to become the world's best and most convincing cult leader. Also not alot of wrestlers (at least very established ones) can be same character brand new look and still be expected by the fans as the same person but Raven did it marvelously!! One of my all-time favorites.
As dope as it was, wish this would've happened in WWE. There superior production value would've made that fireball look incredible. Also, the crowd is so much bigger and so many more people are watching this could've been an epic wrestling moment in general.
How stupid! It happened in TNA because TNA allows their wrestlers to do edgy things. WWE sucks and does not!
+Kingston Hawke Yeah, Raven would have made a great character in WWE, if they would let Scott make some decisions. They rarely let the talent control their own image, so that's why Raven never really took off in WWE.
He perfectly described the idiocy of hardcore wrestling. Once the guy has been dropped on thumbtacks, wrapped in barbed wire, and all kinds of other crao, they need something even more spectacular. Once that new spectacular thing happens, they need something super spectacular. What happens after the fire ball? What happens after tossing the guy from the top of a cage, after throwing the guy through a burning table?
But seriously this thing about Russo from what I can gather is he comes up with a lot of ideas. Some are brilliant, others are terrible. If you have someone in charge who can take the great ideas and discard the rest then you have good sports entertainment.
Vince Russo is a good writer however sometimes he needs to remember that he's working in a wrestling environment not a Michael Bay production. People shit on Russo for the death of WCW but people should also be grateful to him for the attitude era. Once Russo left the attitude era got really redundant and corny. Russo also didn't know how to handle a WCW product which wasn't sports entertainment heavy.
FIREBALL!
I remember back in the 90's when raven was in WCW..He carried almost every pay per view by himself...every match would be 5-10 minutes long and he'd come out and work a guy for 35 minutes and have the whole match be entertaining...Damn shame the way Vince mishandled him and his character talent...he should come back as a new manager and run the flock again stating a grievance against Bray Wyatt for stealing his ideas (I'm not saying he has but it'd be a great angle as maybe you could bring back CM Punk because he worked with Raven before) Wrestling needs more factions like the attitude era of the 90's...
Weadfreek Raven's WWF debut was pretty epic but it did slowly decline after that...I know there were a lot of factors but unfortunately the WCW buyout screwed a lot of very talented wrestlers around that time. Raven was a one-of-a-kind character.
I really don't remember Ravens wwf debut. He was awesome in ecw, and ecw, but it seems like wwe didn't know what to do with him, and that is ashame.
Will Tonkin Raven made his debut in a Tazz vs. Jerry King Lawler strap match..showed up and planted King on his head..Tazz slapped on the Tazzmission and that was all she wrote...it was flipping amazing
*****
Not yet...working on it..and I MAY have been a little overzealous on the time..but his matches were ALWAYS the best on the PPV's..even tho Bitchoff and Hogan constantly gave him shit storylines and people to work...
*****
Truth...He and bitchoff had tons of great guys to push in late 97' early 98' but because they weren't "main eventers" in his eyes none of them got any sort of push except < gag > Goldberg...
Raven says Russo is great, so Russo is indeed great!
The only problem with Raven saying no one ever did the "lights out, fireball" thing is that Homicide did it to Samoa Joe in ROH around 2004/2005.
He said "hadn't done the fireball thing in awhile"...The original Sheik was doing it in the 1960s
What's with the horrendous camera work?
raven has like a 150 iq so i trust his opinions lol. i have to look up raven vs foley to see if that hardcore dream matchup ever happened after hearing him mention mick
Its funny hearing people talk about their 'great ideas'. Like, this fireball thing means alot to Raven, but most wrestling fans are like 'wtf are you talking about'. We dont remember specific matches that well but to them its the world. Not dogging on Raven, but I listen to alot of these shoots and the stuff and these wrestlers remember is such minutiae.
I think that's what so fascinating about some of these shoots.
+mo facko I actually saw that match. I think if you had seen it you would remember it.
Are Raven and Dean Ambrose related?
+mcog 2006 Nope but see a lot of similarities between the two
like what...
sephirothisgod their penis size
Wait someone didn't compare Russo to satan?
Love how there are always brainwashed marks in the comments who have to attack Russo.
His opinion on Russo has since changed, thankfully lol
raven does not like rehash fraction he worked with cm punk all ready
If vince would of done Raven right he would of been a great heel for a champion to feud with.
Russo had good ideas just 90% of his stuff had to be scrapped by somebody like McMahon. WcW let everything through so it was terrible. Eg: in WWF Russo created The Brood which kicked ass.
raven.is.my.favoite.wwe.hard.core.champion
rvd was the best hardcore champ, he elevated the title much like.razor with the ic strap
Ugh the camera work
Chris Marshall We got sloppy in a couple parts...we shot this and the Raven/Axl Rotten shoot the same day
I thought you guys were trying to be arty with the zooms and panning. :)
Russo just brought him back. He offered nothing creatively.
lights going out is a terrible hackish bit. And raven was terrible at this time. He was fat and slow then.
I disagree about the lights going out. I think it's a cool bit and most people seem to rather enjoy it. Just look at the Wyatts theme entrance. Raven was in terrible shape though.
yea he was a good 30-40 pounds over weight
lastwolflord he has a medical condition I forget what it's called but he has a hard time with keeping the weight because of it that's why he stopped wrestling
Cj Yankee you mean like diabetes?
He was just about out physically, but the mind... the mind is the last to go.
"Russo" and "Good ideas"... nice oxymoron Raven
"Russo has great ideas" annnnnnnnd goodbye
Raven is a Very Smart man in and out of the Ring.It is too Bad that this man Never got a 30 Year Contract with the WWE..Even if it was working in the Creative Dept.Or in Talent Relations.He know the Bussiness Like the back of His Hand inside and Out.I will always Love and Respect Him 100%AVE SATANAS/AVE LUCIFERI///