During his Something to Wrestle podcast, Bruce Prichard discussed Pat Patterson’s legacy and contributions to WWE:
Royal Rumble creation: “Pat was looking for a different type of match and attraction, and the way Pat would always describe it was it was legal run-ins. Wanted to have a match where you could add to it throughout the match. Probably the way Pat explained it in the beginning was a little confusing. We had one – may have been St. Louis or Rhode Island – and it didn’t really good that well. I don’t think the live audience was all that into it. But Dick Ebersol heard the idea and kind of tweaked it a little bit as far as the selling an explanation, making it easier to understand what the hell it was. Then the Royal Rumble was built. The first one was in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada for USA Network. It was the highest-rated television show on cable for a long, long time.
“But back then, other than having it in your head – yes, we wrote things down and had notes on certain things, but you didn’t have 20 writers and assistants and everything to help you write all this shit out so you know exactly who gets eliminated. This was all in Pat’s head. Pat’s got 30 guys in a room, and he had a list of entry. Not as sophisticated as it became in later years. The Royal Rumble, that was Pat Patterson’s baby, and we nursed that son of a bitch for many years. That was the one time of year I used to love to settle down and work with Pat and we eventually brought more people into the process to what it is now. It’s pure, pure genius as far as how he came up with that and what it has become to be today.”
Other match types that Patterson helped develop: “The template for how most of the triple threats are laid out now came out of Pat’s head. He always figured you’ve gotta have something down so you can put a spotlight on something else in the match. If you have too much shit going on, it doesn’t mean anything. So, he really liked to divvy things up and take something that was traditional and make it non-traditional and put twists and turns to these things. And this came a lot during the Attitude Era because I think Pat felt nobody cares about the rules, they want excitement, they want gaga. As long as you give them good shit and entertaining shit and it’s exciting, no one really cares. That’s where we would get into toms of these nonsensical they’re outside the ring for eight minutes and the match just continues on and there’s no countout. Or my favorite is in the middle of the day, Pat is laying out the match and I go, ‘Pat, that’s a DQ.’ He goes, ‘Then f***ing make the match No DQ, nobody give a f***.’ And that’s what he would do.”
(quotes courtesy of 411Mania.com)
