Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification (3 page)

Forgiven

What’s going to happen to my friendship with his wife, Jill, a person who I care about dearly? And those adorable two kids — every year he would send me a Christmas card with Jocelyn and Jaclyn on it, and my hard heart would melt like a Hershey’s kiss left in the car on a summer’s day. Man, I love those kids.

How could he do this to me? How could he chose this guy over me

— a guy who personally attempted to hurt me and my family over nothing more than money, greed and power. Friendship is more than that. It has to be!

This is my rock bottom. My heart, once fueled with love, is now hardened with hate. I never thought I would hate my best friend.

Never, not Jeff, he was “different.”

I don’t know what else to do. I don’t know where else to go. I can’t believe for one minute that this is it. I’ve spent my entire adult life on a journey to be the best I can possibly be. I forfeit my entire life, my family, my values and my morals to be labeled the most successful sports entertainment writer in the history of the business . . . and this is what it comes down to. As I free-fall down the mountain, my heart is calloused with such pain, such hate, such ugliness. So this is what it’s all about? This is the meaning of life? God creates you — and then the joke’s on you.

Look at yourself. Look at what you’ve become. Your heart that was once filled with compassion and love is now fired by hate. For 42 years you have turned your back on me to get to this point in your life. I was always there — I was there from the moment you took your first breath. I was there to take care of you, to guide you, to protect you . . . to love you.

Vince? Are you going to listen to me now?

I knew that voice. My entire life I had heard it; just didn’t want to listen. Yes, I allowed it to guide me, but I would never completely give into it. I didn’t need it. Subconsciously, I knew what it was, who it was and what it wanted. But I chose not to listen. Now God was no longer taking no for an answer.

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Vince Russo

The voice that once lay dormant in my heart was now screaming at the top of its lungs — God had seen and heard enough. At that moment, his spirit transcended from inside my body and blanketed me. I no longer had a choice — he was taking over whether I liked it or not.

Following that moment of divine intervention, I was placed in my

’99 Jeep Wrangler and led to the local church, a place called North Metro that I had never been to before. Once inside the auditorium, I was directed by a bald-headed preacher, a six-foot-seven former University of Arkansas football player by the name of Mark Henry.

That day, in front of a sold-out house, Mark Henry spoke directly to me. As I left the church that day it was clear: the old Vince was dead, and the new Vince had been born.

My entire being was now overflowing with love and forgiveness.

My feelings of brotherhood towards my friend Jeff Jarrett were stronger than ever. For this was never about him, but rather, me.

There wasn’t an ounce of hate left in my body — only kindness, understanding and compassion. From there, God led me to his book, which I ate up on a daily basis. Right there, within those pages, was the blueprint to follow, and the very meaning of life.

Growing up, this was something you only heard, or read about, usually concerning those who were weak or desperate. But this wasn’t
Reader’s Digest
— it was my life, and it was all very real. Suddenly, gaining a life’s supply of knowledge in a single moment, everything became crystal clear. I couldn’t as much as throw half a used tooth-pick on the ground because I now fully understood — this was God’s creation, this was God’s world. I cried, then I cried some more. If only I had listened earlier.

At that moment all that had mattered to me was no longer important, and that which hadn’t seemed important now meant the world.

I have never looked back.

All the glory be to God.

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Early October, 2004

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Chapter 2

TRIBUTE TO

OSCAR MADISON

“A good writer hates to write, but loves to have written.” I first heard that line in my early teens, stated by none other than Oscar Madison, portrayed by Jack Klugman, on the tv sitcom,
The
Odd Couple
. The story goes something like this: Oscar had been paid money up front by a publisher to write a book pertaining to sports, but every time he sat down at his typewriter (yes, they used typewriters in those days), the blank page lay limp and lifeless before him, growing bigger and whiter with every dripping second.

You see, Oscar hated to write, as I think most writers do. There’s just something about that blank page — the emptiness, the coldness, the intimidation. Top that with the pressure of a deadline and you have something that’s quite unappealing. Yes, good writers hate to write. But my, oh my, that finished product — that masterpiece in which every word is carefully and methodically laid in just the right place and just the right order, that moment when the little numbers 6

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Forgiven

on the bottom of each page add up to another number that is now significant. The “finished work” — there is nothing like it.

But man, I hate to write — I always have. It’s such a chore. As I mentioned earlier, there are few things in life that are more intimidat-ing than an empty white page staring you right in the face, not saying a word. It’s just that look. That empty stare begging you to dress its body with something . . . anything. So you sit . . . and you write. You turn on the tv . . . and you write. You have a cup of coffee . . . and you write. You check your E-mail . . . and you write. You spell-check . . .

and you write. This agonizing process seems endless until you finally reach those two glorious words: the end.

For six months, starting on January 10, 2000, I went through this agonizing journey. I sat at a computer in the back of my store, a cd Warehouse in Marietta, Georgia, and tortured myself through this process. Between customers I carefully plotted each word with the precision of a Hollywood plastic surgeon. A little cut here, a tiny tuck there, trim the fat in just the right place. Yeah, this was going to be my legacy. This was going to outsell King, Seuss, Stern, all of them —

because this was my life in professional wrestling.

And, you should have seen it. I mean, it was
all
there — everything you ever wanted to read in those other wrestling books but wouldn’t, simply because those wrestler/authors were under contract to Vince McMahon. The fact is, he was the one who got them the book deal in the first place. They certainly couldn’t write anything to taint the good name of his company — even if they wanted to! But me?
I was
free to say whatever I wanted about whomever I wanted.

As the timeless cliché in wrestling goes — this one was going to be

“no holds barred.” I was dropping the dime on everybody. I had known everything they had ever done. I was going to be the younger brother who spent weeks collecting all the evidence on the older brother, until I had just enough to tell mom. Man, this was going to be bad. Heads weren’t just going to roll — they were going to explode. And wrestlers who were husbands? As we say on Long Island,
fahgettaboutit!
They were in for the worst of it. Because no matter how bad I was at times, 7

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through it all I never cheated on my wife. To me, this would be the ultimate disrespect to the mother of my children. Call it the Italian in me, but I’ve always had a massive problem with that.

Man, you should have read this thing. I clutched it to my chest, tighter, and with more love than I had ever held any of my own three kids. Yeah, this was my real baby! I mean, you just had to see the way it was crafted. It was sewn together with every expletive you had ever heard. A tapestry of curse word, after curse word, after curse word.

Have you ever heard an uncensored Colin Farrell interview? If you haven’t experienced this in your lifetime it’s a must. I recently saw him on the Independent Film Channel’s
Table for Five
, a dinner-setting format where people in the biz openly talk about the biz. On this particular episode, there were a lot of heavy hitters. Farrell sat there breaking bread with the likes of Ben Affleck, Kevin Smith and Jennifer Garner, to name a few. Let’s just say that the “color” spewing out of Farrell’s mouth that day was so offensive that poor, innocent Ms. Garner was 13 going on 30 weeks before the movie ever hit the big screen! I mean, man, this was Jennifer Garner. Did Farrell forget she was at the table? I mean, do you expect me to believe he didn’t have the discipline to edit himself at least until dessert?

In my line of business it’s called shock value. You sandwich vile on top of vile, then force-feed it to the customers watching and listening.

In my heyday, I was no different. My language was plain
filthy
—

there’s no adjective that describes it better. I swore at home, at work, in front of my kids, my wife and my parents, on the phone, on paper, in E-mails and most certainly — in front of the “boys” — the wrestlers. There, it was acceptable, because it was the only language we understood.

Looking back now, I really don’t understand my logic. In my late 30s and early 40s, did I think it was cool to stain the air with my words? Was it hip? Cutting edge? What was my point? I mean, I openly shot out curse word after curse word while I was on the phone in front of my daughter . . . my baby girl. Was that cool? Was this what I wanted her growing up doing?

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Forgiven

“Hey mom, !@#$% Barney’s over. Will you change the !@#$%

channel and put on !@#$%
Rugrats?”

Getting back to the book — it was indeed, “colorful.” Yup, in my hands I had the Holy Grail. You see, throughout my life I’d gone through phases of what I wanted to be when I grew up, as we all did.

I’ll lay it out in stages for you. As a child it was Batman; pre-teen, Tom Jones; young teen, Willie Mays; teen teen, Gene Simmons; young adult, an author. There was always something about wanting to write my own book. It just seemed like it would be a great accomplishment.

A legacy, something I could leave behind for the grandkids. And, here it was, I’d done it! (Even though I wouldn’t have allowed my own kids to read it.) My entire life — from watching Hulk Hogan as a kid to being sued by him as an adult — it was all right there, my entire 40-plus years in 300-plus pages! This was going to catapult me to the next level: Oprah, Ellen, Katie, Conan — they were going to stand in line to book me for their gabfests. I was Rocky Balboa, standing on the very top step of the Philadelphia Museum of Modern Art, screaming at the top of my lungs, “Yo, Adrian . . . I did it!” The last thing I ever expected, not even in my wildest dreams, was that I’d spend the next few months reworking it.

Despite all the work, all the energy, all the love, it was back to the keyboard. However, even though the colorful language had to say bye-bye, replaced with the obligatory !@#$% the old manuscript has been kept basically intact, so you can see firsthand where the Old Vince was, and where the New Vince is. Throughout the book there are also various revelations (highlighted in another font), where the new Vince comments exclusively on the old Vince. What do I mean by this old Vince/new Vince thing? Isn’t Vince Russo — Vince Russo?

Okay, here goes: the original book, in its raw form, was never going to be published, because I wasn’t going to allow it. The reason being: what once made me gleam, now made me grimace; what once made me laugh, now made me cry; what once made me so proud, now made me ashamed.

That’s what God will do to you.

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The reworking of the original manuscript of
Forgiven
(originally titled
Welcome to Bizarroland
) is extremely symbolic. In one day, in one moment, God had wiped out an entire lifetime. With just one revelation he created an entirely new man. To this very second I am shocked by the things I do, the things I say, the things I write. This isn’t me; it can’t be. What happened to that other guy — the swear-ing, absentee father, unloving husband, work-driven “sweetheart” who used to live in this exact house, wear these exact clothes, sit at this very desk. That guy is dead — passed away.
Nah, nah . . . nah,
nah, nah, nah . . . hey, hey, hey . . . goodbye.

Once again, in trying to break it down to something simple, let me relate it to Hollywood. I know there was a
Stepford Wives
, but what about the Stepford husbands? I mean, I could write the thing, I’m already playing the part. On the outside — looks the same, acts the same, dresses the same. But on the inside, somebody else, different being, different temperament, different agenda, different personality, different heart. Only one problem, this isn’t Stepford, this is Marietta, Georgia. And this is very real.

So how did this happen? After 42 years, how does one man become a totally new creature? How does Hyde turn to Jekyll? How does a fire-breathing dragon turn into the town’s gentle mayor (my
H.R. Pufnstuf
reference for this book)? How does evil turn to good?

How does darkness turn to light? To understand the end of a life, we’ll have to go back and examine the beginning.

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Originally written January 2002,

through July 2002

(Only the language has been changed to protect the innocent) BCB7D610-957A-4FEF-BB89-D3E233FB808F

Chapter 3

WHY IS MY MOTHER

BITING HER HAND?

I grew up on Long Island, New York . . . yadda, yadda, yadda. Who cares? Man, I’ve read so many books where the author gets into such trite details, in what appears to me to be no more than an effort to fill as many pages as humanly possible. I’m not going to torture you with that here. I’m thrilled you bought this book, so I’m going to give you the most misery for your money.