During the latest edition of his “Something to Wrestle” podcast, Bruce Prichard commented on where WWE went wrong with Diesel’s character, the Curtain Call, and more. You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On Vince McMahon changing his stance on Diesel: “I don’t think you can pinpoint any one night. I think it’s an accumulation of more than one night. It’s a feeling. It’s a trend. It’s when those boos and or that lack of enthusiasm from the audience over time, you go, ‘OK, shit. This isn’t working.’ You can’t just go off of one night’s response.”
On where he thinks WWE went wrong on the Diesel character: “Well, I don’t think it was necessarily working, and it goes back to day one of ‘OK, here’s Diesel and he’s your champion, and we want him to be this big babyface, so he is going to lead everybody in prayer and then, let’s sing…..and he seized being Diesel. It became, [mimics Jim Ross], ‘Well, Kevin Nash, Diesel is Kevin Nash. He was at Tennessee playing basketball, and what a quarter he had that one time when he scored four points.’ All of sudden, everything I loved about Diesel went away because he became Kevin Nash, a basketball player that got hurt. Everything that was cool about him went away because somebody felt, ‘God damn, we’ve got to credentials. You’ve got to have credentials. You’ve got to tell a real story about these guys. He could have been a two-time All-American.’ Nobody gives a fuck about that shit. They thought Diesel was cool and kicked people’s asses. When he seized to become Diesel….the audience overall, they were intrigued by Diesel. They weren’t intrigued by Kevin Nash at this point in time.
On why he thinks Diesel’s sit-down interview with Jim Ross destroyed the character: “I remember begging almost not to do that God damn sit-down interview they did way back. ‘Tell me about your college career? Tell me about Kevin?’ We killed him right there. In that moment, we killed what we had spent all that time building. That’s the 100% truth. [Jim Ross] was pushing that in order to have a champion that people would believe in, you had to give them real things to believe in. They had to know the real story. But yet not one time would you sit there and take Hulk Hogan and go, ‘Tell me, Terry. When you were in the band, you played bass, right?’ Who would bring that up and why? Why do you want to? Diesel was a character. Kevin Nash was a person. The audience was in love with the character. They didn’t know the person. You keep the person mysterious and a mystique. When he becomes just like your buddy that went to college and played a year on the team, what’s special about him anymore? You don’t want people to relate to your top megastars.”
On the reaction to The Kliq’s ‘Curtain Call’ at Madison Square Garden: “I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I didn’t know anything about it until it actually happened when the guys went out and was kind of like, ‘What the fuck?’ Shawn went down and went the kiss, and Diesel popped up. They all hugged and started going around the ring and we left. That’s all I saw…..I think we went out and ate afterwards, and I know Jim Cornette was with us. He was not happy. I wasn’t happy. Vince wasn’t happy. You can bitch about it all you want, but it was done. At that point, what are you gonna do, fire them?”
(h/t – 411 Wrestling)
