WWE Senior Vice President Bruce Prichard recently took to an episode of his “Something To Wrestle With” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including if there was chaos backstage when Vince McMahon missed shows.
Prichard said, “No, not at all. I mean, it was — you know, here’s the thing, people are [like] ‘Oh, my God.’ Everybody is trained. Everybody knows their jobs, and can function and do it. You take away one piece and everybody fills in, does their job, and covers whoever is gone as well. So to that I say, it’s like everybody thinks, ‘Oh my god, if somebody’s gone, it’s gonna just crumble.’ Not even close. Everybody is trained, and everybody is very good at their jobs and what they do, and they just do their jobs. There is no — the rhetoric, the perception that it all just crumbles.”
“And I think, you even look later on with Vince no longer in the picture, where it’s ‘Oh, my God is gonna crumble.’ No, it’s not. We’ve been trained. Everybody’s been trained for years to do their job. And we did it while he was there, and we did it without him. So that’s what it is. And without him being there, it was not a lot. A lot of times — you know, it’s funny. You read reports from people who aren’t there or have any clue. I would read reports that I wasn’t there, but yet I was there, literally in the building calling the show from an office. But because whoever the stooges were that were feeding the information back to the dirt sheet people didn’t know that. Had no clue, but yet it’s reported as fact. And it’s inaccurate. It’s just lies, it’s just incorrect information. So same thing here. You know, it was like sometimes Vince was there, and sometimes when Vince wasn’t there, people didn’t even notice. Because people just did their jobs and carried on. And a lot of times, they don’t even know that until way down the road.”
On there being fewer changes when McMahon is not at the show:
“Less, definitely less. So again, it just comes down to, you’re still talking to him. He has a phone, you’re going to be talking to him. But also, I would say that there was a need, maybe in his mind, to — until that show is on the air live, that you have an opportunity to make it better. Now, that’s all relative, and that’s all personal feeling. I think that the general feeling was that, ‘We can make it better.’ And you’re going to keep going until and relook at it until man, it’s on the air.”
On the show being rewritten when it’s on the air:
“Then, I would say that you talk about rewriting the show during the show, I did that more than Vince McMahon ever has. I probably have done it more in a year than Vince McMahon has in a lifetime. Because that’s what I do when we’re live and we have to rearrange because of timing, because of injuries, or because whatever comes up. And it’s just life, and that’s the business, that’s what you do. And people don’t understand it, because they think that, ‘Oh, you’ve got control over everything.’ But you don’t have control over someone getting hurt. Sometimes, you don’t have control over someone going 18 minutes heavy in a segment. And when that happens, 18 minutes is the equivalent of three segments on the show, that you have to make up. You still have to take those commercial breaks. You still have to make all this work.”
“So that’s me, and that’s what I would do. And I would go in and make those changes. It wasn’t Vince. And he gets painted with that brush and it’s not a brush of, ‘Oh, hey, I’m in the middle of the show. Let’s change it.’ No, there are reasons that we change it once that show starts. If things happen, or something doesn’t go right, then we have to go in and change it. And that would — God, you know, it’s on a weekly basis. But it doesn’t happen every week. And that’s a good thing. But when it does, we have to go in, and we have to kill it. That’s what I do.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
