On the latest episode of the “Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard” podcast, the focus of discussion was WrestleMania 24, and Prichard had a few anecdotes pertaining to the coinciding Hall of Fame ceremony in 2008.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson inducted his father, Rocky Johnson, and his grandfather, Peter Maivia, at the 2008 Hall of Fame ceremony. Recalling there being ‘family drama’ and ‘turmoil’ surrounding The Rock at this time, Prichard said:
“Rock, there was a lot of turmoil with Rock that night (at the 2008 WWE Hall of Fame ceremony) just in general… Just with his family. There was a lot of family drama going on at the time and Rock was flying in just trying to get there at a decent hour and busting his ass to get there and stuff and I think that, you know, he was doing us a huge favor by coming in and doing this and when I say he was doing us a huge favor, it was great to have him. I think he would have walked over hot coals and swam there if he had to, you know, to induct his grandfather and his father.
“We were just happy to have him and it’s The Rock and I think he felt a little bit, sometimes rushed… I just felt like he felt rushed in some ways and frustrated at some things and it was like, dude, this is your night. Just don’t worry about sh*t because nothing means — if you’re worried about how much time you’re gonna have or where you’re gonna have it, don’t worry about that. You’ll have every second you could possibly want and/or need and whatever you want. It’s your night. It’s your night for your dad, it’s your night for your grandfather. Enjoy it, so it was dealing with a lot of that and things of that nature.”
Prichard also revealed that he almost inducted The Briscos, Jack & Gerald/Jerry, into the Hall of Fame that year, and why WWE ultimately went ahead with JBL being the one to do the honors. Prichard said,
“Another crazy thing was Jack and Jerry (Brisco) wanted me to induct them into the (WWE) Hall of Fame, and they asked for me to induct them into the Hall of Fame but the feeling was they wanted someone on television, little more name recognition which I completely understood and I actually had originally suggested (John) Bradshaw (Layfield) and somebody suggested they wanted The Hardy brothers to induct them because they were brothers and they were like The Briscos, but there’s just no connection there and then Jeff had his unfortunate situation and Bradshaw was back in. So, I’m basically writing John’s speech for him and feeding him all these one-liners on The Briscos so that was an awful lot of fun.”
On the same episode, Bruce Prichard also shared why Ric Flair and Shawn Michaels, despite backstage discussions pertaining to the topic, did not main event WrestleMania 24. You can check out what he had to say here.
