Forgiven: One Man's Journey from Self-Glorification to Sanctification by Vince Russo Page A

at 10 p.m. — I was there every minute. That came to 84 hours a week, but I didn’t even care. I dove in head-first and never even came up for air. Unfortunately, Amy was raising Will by herself. What was I supposed to do? Finally, I had everything I wanted. My days of working for somebody else were over. I controlled my own destiny, and I was going to be big-time successful. . . .
    I should have seen Blockbuster coming.
    We were making money hand over fist; I was literally stuffing it into safety-deposit boxes. It was coming so fast, we just didn’t know what to do with it. We were all working so hard — me, my father and my partner/boyhood pal, Jimmy Monsees. And we took great pride in our business. Will the Thrill’s Video (we changed the name) was a huge success. I smelled early retirement, baby, until somebody ripped the wind from our “sales.” About a mile down the road from our original location, the construction of a building began. It looked like an ordinary building to me, until the sign went up — “Coming soon: Blockbuster Video.” They had done their homework. They knew we were the only game in town, and they knew we were a success.
    Immediately, my parents panicked. My father had just taken early retirement, and now he was screwed. I did everything I could to calm the troops, but the writing was splattered all over the proverbial wall.
    We just didn’t have the money to compete with them. We’d buy 10
    copies of a new release to rent, they’d buy 50. And all our “loyal” customers who we had kissed up to for well over four years — forget it.
    People aren’t loyal. If they could get Dirty Dancing from Blockbuster the first day it came out, they were headed to the blue and yellow.
    Well, at least we had our second location, and that was a goldmine.
    They soon figured that out as well.
    That’s right — across the street from our new store, Blockbuster 68
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    Video opened up another of their own. We were dead in the water.
    Eighty-four hours a week became 100 — it didn’t matter. The fat lady hadn’t just sung — she’d given a whole concert, with two encores to boot! On principle alone we hung in there for about a year — but the end was inevitable.
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    Chapter 13
    NOW WHAT?
    I couldn’t believe my bad luck. It had taken me four years to get my life back on track, and now this. Amy should have divorced me. Since we had been married I spent zero time with her. I was always obsessed with work, my success, the challenge — and for what? I had no clue what I was going to do, but I knew I had to do something. Will the Thrill’s receipts were down to about $100 a day. The customers were gone. It was The Omega Man , and I was Charlton Heston. Everybody abandoned us. I needed to find a new line of work, but I had no idea what that was. The last thing I wanted was to go to work for someone again. What can I say? Corporate America and I mix like Jerry and the rest of the castaways from Survivor  . I’m a free spirit — I just can’t handle rules and regulations.
    Enter John Arezzi.
    One day while working in the video store, a man in his late 20s walked into my nightmare. He introduced himself as John Arezzi and 70
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    told me that he had a wrestling talk show on a local Long Island radio station. Arezzi had heard of Will the Thrill’s through some listeners who had come to my store on occasions when I had done promotions involving wrestlers. Over the years, we had wwf superstars Jake “the Snake” Roberts, Demolition and Brutus “the Barber” Beefcake.
    Literally thousands of fans would show up when we had wrestling promotions, with lines wrapping around the entire strip mall. I remember the first one we did with Jake. About an hour before he showed up, I went outside to look at the crowd. Well, it was more like a mob. I remember thinking, “What did I