During a recent appearance on the Two Man Power Trip podcast, Vince Russo disclosed that he recently abandoned a potentially highly controversial angle for Juggalo Championship Wrestling. The planned storyline would have centered on wrestler Mecha Wolf being apprehended mid-match by an “ICE” figure in riot gear, instantly provoking outrage over immigration implications.
Yet the long-term plan was for this to be a swerve, with it revealed that the man in the riot gear was actually former WCW star Glacier. And while this would have obviously grabbed attention, Russo scrapped it, fearing immediate backlash would derail the buildup and that the storyline would never reach its payoff.
“Can I tell you something I wanted to do with JCW? We’ve got a really good wrestler there who wrestles a lot in Mexico, his name is Mecha Wolf. So, bro, I wanted to do an angle where he’s wrestling, and somebody comes out in full riot gear with ‘ICE’ on the back and is trying to grab Mecha Wolf … Then when ‘ICE’ gets revealed, I wanted it to be Glacier. Would that not have stuck it to everybody? They’d be ripping me to shreds, and then it turns out he’s ‘ICE’ because he’s Glacier. But the problem is, it would never be able to go that far without people being up in arms. You’d have to build it for a couple of weeks before doing the reveal. After the first week, people would already be going nuts.” – Vince Russo
65-year-old Russo is no stranger to controversial angles, as he is known to embrace shock value and poor taste. In WWE, he scripted Road Warrior Hawk’s addiction storyline, depicting the star’s real-life struggles, blurring entertainment with exploitation. In WCW, Russo controversially booked himself to win the World Heavyweight Championship in a self-serving stunt, further damaging the promotion’s prestige. Yet arguably the most shocking was this “Oklahoma” parody, which saw Ed Ferrara mock Jim Ross’s Bell’s palsy, drawing widespread condemnation as tasteless and cruel.
