Two former members of WWE’s creative team sat down to discuss some wrestling in Kevin Eck & Bruce Prichard (Brother Love). Kevin Eck who is a current writer for Pressbox spoke with Prichard about his return to Impact Wrestling, his time in the WWE and transitioning from a writer to producer.
Here are the highlights:
Prichard’s Return To Impact Wrestling & How Did It Come About:
“I’m strictly a talent. If they ask me my opinion on stuff, I’ve always been one to not sugarcoat things. Jeff and I have always been friendly. He reached out and asked if I would be interested in coming in and being who I am on the podcast. It was an opportunity to plug the podcast and be able to plug my stuff, so I jumped at the opportunity to do it. I don’t have to worry about the behind-the-scenes stuff and everybody else’s problems. For me, that’s a big plus.”
Why Fans Who Have Stopped Watching Impact Should Tune Back In:
“Well, it’s not going to change overnight, first of all. But I do believe that if given an opportunity, you may see an alternative to what is already out there. Come mid-late July and August, I think you’ll start to see some changes and hopefully they’re going to be for the positive. Anything that is an alternative to what is already out there is a good thing. Competition and diversity is good for the product.”
Prichard’s Thoughts On His Previous Tenure At Impact Wrestling:
“The most-downloaded podcast, which has over a million downloads…. on TNA and my experience there the first time around, which was funny, that’s when they called me to come back. It was frustrating because all I’ve ever done in my life is be in the wrestling business up to that point. To have to deal with people that didn’t appreciate the genre, they really didn’t get it and/or want to get it. Vince McMahon’s a genius. For him to do something different, OK, great, I’ll try that on because I know that deep down he appreciates and loves the business. For the folks who ran TNA at the time, they looked at wrestlers as plumbers. They didn’t have an appreciation for what the talent did or what anyone did other than them supplying the money. They felt there wasn’t an art to it and it was very cut and dried. They looked at wrestling the same way they looked at power plants, that was frustrating.”
Does Prichard Miss Playing The “Brother Love” Character:
“Yeah, because being Brother Love was so much fun. Being someone else is so much easier; it’s more fun and you have a lot more creative license. If Conrad wants me to plug something or do an ad read, I can do it as a character without hesitation. If I’m doing it straight as Bruce, I’ll screw it up every time. If I screw up as a character, oh, I meant to screw up, that’s part of the character’s charm.”
Were His Segments As The Brother Love Character Scripted:
“Oh, god, no. You had Vince and Pat and J.J from time to time, that did creative. For my stuff, Vince gave me the idea of what he wanted for the segment and it was up to me and the talent to go out and get it done. He gave me points I needed to hit and an idea of where he wanted to go with it, but beyond that, it was usually just me getting with the talent and saying here’s what we want to do.”
Transition From On-Air Talent To Writer In The WWE:
“For many years, it was just me, Vince and Pat and as far as verbiage and working with the talent, that was just me and Vince. When I would go out and shoot vignettes, I had an idea and I knew what the character was and what I wanted to portray. Usually I would work with Vince a lot of times if we had a catch phrase on the “out.” For example, I was at the Holiday Inn in Nashville talking on the phone to Vince trying to figure out what we’re going to do with Jeff Jarrett because we were supposed to have all these locations lined up, but when I got there nothing had been done. I didn’t have permission to do any of that, so I knew I had to run and gun and I wasn’t really confident in Jeff’s abilities to get it done, so I needed to keep it simple. I think I referred to him as “JJ,” and Vince said, “Spell his name for me, there’s something there.” I said, ‘J-e-double f, J-a-double r-e-double t.” He asked me to spell it again. He said, “Man, there’s something there with those doubles.” I said, “Well, instead of calling him ‘JJ,’ let’s call him ‘Double-J.’ He said, “That’s it.” That was the conversation the night before the vignettes. Then I got with Jeff and told him what I wanted him to do. I used the same philosophy that I did with Ted DiBiase. I said, “Ted, I don’t care what else you do, but you have to nail at the end, ‘Everybody’s got a price for The Million Dollar Man.’ I don’t want people to forget that” and I did the same thing with Jeff Jarrett. I said, “I don’t care what you do in the middle, but at the end, you say you’re “the world’s greatest entertainer, the world’s greatest singer, the world’s greatest wrestler, J-e-double f, J-a-double r-e-double t, Double-J, Jeff Jarrett.” I made him say that so many times over and over and over again that it just became part of his common-speak. You ask if there were any scripts? No, those vignettes were me, Jeff Jarrett and a camera man walking down Broadway in Nashville. They were repairing the Ryman Auditorium and the door was open. I walked in and told Jeff to go up on the stage and bash the place and let’s get the hell out. When people working there saw a camera and him, they thought of course we have permission, that’s how we did it.”
