He has an absolutely impossible job and does it very well.
I've tried my hand at fantasy booking in the past, doing it properly by writing entire shows and worrying about time constraints and all that crap. I found it phenomenally difficult to keep producing quality material for more than a few months at a time, and I'm a full time professional writer backed by a writing degree and a lifetime wrestling interest.
I was doing it with no time constraints or external influences or pressures and in a world where every fantasy wrestler was my completely willing pawn, and I still couldn't cut it for more than six months. Russo has been doing the same thing, under incomprehensibly more difficult circumstances, for the best part of a decade. That alone gets my instant respect.
He's also been doing it well. As I've articulated countless times in the past, TNA is doing pretty well for itself, and as such Vince Russo deserves some credit. Credit is something the man never seems to get incidentally: in TNA's multi-year history every time something has happened that somebody didn't like the instinct has been to blame Vince Russo (even though countless wrestlers have gone on the record as saying that half the time when the "Fire Russo" chants got broken out it was for stuff he had nothing to do with), yet every time something good happens it is conveniently overlooked that he might have been involved with that as well.
Then there's the fact that he provides me personally with a large quantity of enjoyable programming. Quite a large number of the reasons why I enjoy TNA come down to the style in which the show is booked and written, and most of that comes down to Russo. As a TNA fan that gives me all the motivation I need to feel some fondness for the guy.
Lastly, the guy seems to have a pretty decent character. He doesn't do a whole lot of interviews, but those he has given generally make sense. He doesn't have too much of an ego, he doesn't seem desperate to put himself over, and he doesn't act like a colossal jackass. That's more than I can say for most people I see interviews from. Russo has his interpretation of the business, which I for the most part I agree with, as is stoically unconcerned that a rather sad but vocal minority of fans seem to have taken out some lifelong grudge against him. Anyone who has to put up with that level of being shit on and still goes in to work and does their job well every day deserves respect.
So yeah... I like the man. I don't really have a reason no to.
