Vincent James Russo (born January 24, 1961) is an American professional wrestling writer, booker, and pundit. He is notable for his tenures in creative roles with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE), World Championship Wrestling (WCW), and Total Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA). He also occasionally made appearances as an on-screen authority figure, and professional wrestler, in WCW and TNA.

Russo's writing style often blurs the line between reality and fiction, while also favoring elements such as shock twists, grand moments, and larger-than-life characters over in-ring action, which made him a controversial figure among some wrestling fans. Russo was part of the WWF's creative department during the widely acclaimed Attitude Era, during which the company achieved record high television ratings.

During a self-booked in-ring career in WCW, Russo became a one-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion, and scored televised singles victories over future WWE Hall of Famers Ric Flair and Booker T (the latter to win his world title).

Vincent James Russo is of Italian descent, grew up in Farmingville, New York, and graduated from the University of Southern Indiana (then known as Indiana State University Evansville) in 1983 with a degree in journalism. He worked for the school newspaper The Shield as an assistant sports editor and later editor-in-chief.

Russo got his start in professional wrestling when he began training with Johnny Rodz at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn. He owned two video stores on Long Island. Russo also hosted his own local radio show from 1992 to 1993 called Vicious Vincent's World of Wrestling, which aired Sunday nights on WGBB in Freeport. The program ran for exactly one year, the final show being the one-year anniversary.

In 1992, Russo was hired as a freelance writer for WWF Magazine after writing Linda McMahon a letter, and he became an editor in 1994 under the pseudonym Vic Venom. He was promoted to the WWF Creative Team in 1996. That year, Monday Night Raw hit a ratings low of 1.8, as Monday Nitro (Raw's chief competition), was in the midst of an 83-week winning streak against Raw head-to-head (see Monday Night War). With World Championship Wrestling (WCW) eclipsing the WWF, WWF chairman Vince McMahon asked Russo to make changes to the televised product. Russo contributed edgy, controversial storylines involving sexual content, profanity, swerves or unexpected heel turns, and worked shoots, as well as short matches, backstage vignettes, and shocking angles and levels of depicted violence. Russo's style of writing came to be known as "Crash TV" and was heavily inspired by The Jerry Springer Show. "Crash TV" centered on Russo's philosophy that every character on WWF television should be involved in a storyline (feud). This contrasted conventional wrestling booking, which typically saw a number of matches between wrestlers who were not necessarily in feuds. Russo believed that if storyline material were constantly on screen, the audience would be more reluctant to change the channel for fear of missing something.

In 1997, Russo became head writer for the WWF and wrote its flagship show Raw Is War as well as its monthly pay-per-views. With the angles he created, Russo had a big part in putting WWF ahead of WCW in the Monday night rating war during the Attitude Era. In a 2015 interview with Jeff Lane, Russo said the first thing he wrote as WWF head writer was the episode of Raw that aired on December 15, 1997. At the King of the Ring pay-per-view in 1998, Ed Ferrara joined the WWF creative team and was paired with Russo. Some of the more controversial characters during this time, often cited by Russo's critics, include Sable, Val Venis, and The Godfather. Russo devised the Brawl for All tournament and contributed to the formation of D-Generation X (DX), The Undertaker vs. Kane feud, the Stone Cold Steve Austin vs. Mr. McMahon feud, the rise of The Rock, and Mick Foley's three-face pushes.

In the two years after Russo's promotion to head writer, Raw surpassed WCW's Nitro in head-to-head ratings.