Vince Russo is leaving Juggalo Championship Wrestling. The former WWE and WCW writer announced on X Tuesday that he and Violent J have “amicably agreed to part ways” following a phone call, ending a run that was meant to last a few weeks and stretched into a full year as the creative force behind JCW Lunacy.
Russo, 65, said age was the biggest factor. “At 65 . . . I’m not the same guy I was 30 years ago,” he wrote. “Things have changed, life has changed and more importantly . . . I’ve changed.”
He also admitted the split had been building. “I’d been unhappy for a while in @jcwlunacy and I’m not going to deny that. Something had to change,” Russo wrote, explaining that his recent silence came down to one thing: “I just didn’t know.”
Weeks Of Exit Speculation
Fans had been questioning Russo’s status for weeks after he made fewer JCW appearances, skipped the Gathering of the Juggalos, and dropped the promotion from his social media bio. He initially said the Gathering wasn’t the right setting for a 65-year-old and that he’d missed another taping over COVID concerns.
Days before Tuesday’s announcement, Russo said on The Coach and Bro Show that he was “in limbo” with the company. He pushed back on talk of a backstage war, pointing instead to his wife’s retirement and a deal that had been handled on a show-by-show basis since he arrived. “Bro, it’s been a year now!” he said. “There just comes a time when you gotta reevaluate things.”
A Year Of Russo At The Helm
Russo first surfaced at a Lunacy taping in Denver last October, and his debut aired on Thanksgiving Day. On screen, he played the storyline majority owner who stripped Violent J of his commissioner role. Off screen, he took over the writing of the weekly show.
The partnership had real friction. In February, Russo said on The Coach and Bro Show that he had to “fight off Violent J” for four months to protect a long-term storyline, calling it a philosophical difference over booking rather than a personal feud. The run still drew notice outside the promotion, and Russo went on to publicly pitch Tony Khan on a creative collaboration after the AEW president praised Lunacy.
None of that tension showed up in the farewell. Russo called Violent J “one of the kindest, gentlest, most creative souls I have ever met in my life” and thanked the JCW locker room and crew. “It was supposed to be for a few weeks, maybe a couple of months, but we KILLED IT for an entire year,” he wrote.
As of this writing, JCW had not publicly addressed the departure or said who will handle creative on Lunacy going forward. Russo offered no hint about his own plans. “What the future holds . . . we shall see,” he wrote, before signing off: “Yeah, it was a wild ride . . . but, now . . . maybe I can finally take that nap.”
