WWE once looked at the possibility of having Britney Spears perform live on one of their pay-per-views.
During a recent episode of his Something To Wrestle podcast, longtime WWE executive Bruce Prichard revealed that fellow WWE executive Michael Hayes once pitched Britney Spears doing a live performance at a WWE pay-per-view event.
According to Prichard, the pitch was made during the period of time that saw Spears married to aspiring rapper Kevin Federline, who actually defeated John Cena on the January 1, 2007 episode of WWE Monday Night Raw.
“John was the biggest star and was going to get the most play out of it,” Prichard said of Cena putting over Federline on WWE TV. “When you take a look at Kevin Federline, who was in so many headlines and involved in so much controversy outside of our business, the only guy to rub him up against was John Cena. It was a way for fans to get behind Cena because if there was one person who was easier to hate than Cena, it was Kevin Federline. He didn’t know a whole lot about Kevin other than he was Britney’s husband at the time and very controversial. Who better? I don’t know that anybody else on the entire roster matched up.”
Prichard continued, “You go with the Michael Hayes philosophy of ‘Do you think Britney would come to see Kevin Federline with John Cena? We could get Britney and I can ask her if she can sing a song. That would be good for pay-per-view.”
From there, Something To Wrestle co-host Conrad Thompson asked if Michael Hayes pitched Britney Spears singing in a live performance at a WWE PPV.
“Yeah,” Prichard said. “He just assumed she would travel with him and we could get Britney to do something. I wouldn’t be surprised, because I wasn’t in the office, I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if that was a pitch as well. ‘We could get Federline and Britney may come and it’s in the door to use Britney.’ Britney was the hottest thing going at the time. Wouldn’t shock me if that was the pitch.”
Check out the complete episode of the Something To Wrestle podcast with Bruce Prichard via the YouTube player embedded below, or at SomethingToWrestle.com. H/T to Fightful.com for transcribing the above quotes.
