The Press Box - Writing (and Covering) Pro Wrestling with WWE’s Bruce Prichard and David Shoemaker

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Bryan and David are back ahead of ‘WrestleMania’ 39 to discuss what it’s like to cover WWE as both a fan and a journalist (0:38). Then, Bryan is joined by executive director of WWE’s creative writing team, Bruce Prichard, to discuss the start of his career, talk through the process of writing for stars like The Rock, Hulk Hogan, and Steve Austin, and then decide which play-by-play announcer he’d like to call a wrestling match (17:00). Hosts: Bryan Curtis and David Shoemaker Guest: Bruce Prichard Producer: Erika Cervantes Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, everyone, it's Ariel Hawani, and I wanted to let you know that each and every week, I'm part of a great program called The Ringer MMA Show. I hosted alongside two absolutely brilliant minds. Their names, Chuck Mendenhall and Pizzie Carroll, and every Thursday, a new episode drops where we preview the weekend in mixed martial arts and react to all the biggest news. Plus, after every UFC pay-per-view, we give you a post-fight show. So this is what you have to do. Just follow the Ringer M-M-M-A show on your Spotify app.

So you don't miss an episode. We'll talk to you then. Hello, media consumers. Welcome to Press Box. Brian Curtis, David Shoemaker, and producer Erica Servantes here. David, you're in Los Angeles. I'm looking at you from across the room. This is weird.

It's very strange. You're here because WrestleMania is here this week. Yes. Biggest event on your journalistic calendar. That's correct, yeah. So we're going to bring on the WWE's Bruce Pritcher. Talk about the art of writing professional wrestling here in just one second. But first, I want to talk to you what it's like to cover this little corner of the sports world.

Okay. Because in 2023, there are basically three beats in sports where writers are covering the sport in front of them. Uh-huh. And also covering this transformational change at the same time. Yeah. College sports. Uh-huh. Golf.

Yeah. And professional wrestling. Okay. So for people who are not wrestling fans, how did wrestling get into this very strange moment? Well, first of all, I should stipulate that I am nothing approaching a wrestling journalist by anybody else's definition. But I sit outside and watch it just like... No, whose definition? This is Bobby the Brain Heenan's. I'm a wrestling journalist. I do podcast journalist. I do podcast about wrestling. I cover wrestling.

I don't break news barely ever and certainly don't report in any kind of written way. I just bullshit about wrestling a lot. But the pro wrestling world is a very strange one. And a lot of it has to do with the way that it's covered. I don't have any access to grind. But I think that looking in from the outside, it's a little bit hard to wrap one's head around. There are a handful of people that cover pro wrestling,

that are pro wrestling journalists. Dave Meltzer is the most famous one. He's been around doing this for a long time. Now you've got folks like Sean Ross Sapp and Mike Johnson. There's a lot of people who do the job and do it really well. But by and large, what they're doing is trafficking in wrestling news, right? And there's this because of the way, the interesting way that the pro wrestling world is set up, you're, you know, breaking stories about people's contract situations or about

storylines that happen or didn't happen or the way that, you know, that the kind of secretive creative process has gone down. Backstage relationships, you know, just like, oh, does, does, Hulk Hogan and Andrejant under the giant really hate each other? Like is that? Because that's actually interesting and that's news. And especially because of this disconnect, this tension between reality and fakery that the pro wrestling world is built on. That is what's most interesting to the wrestling audience, right?

And justifiably so. And all of that sort of what goes without saying is the wins and the losses don't really matter. Right. And like the prep work that a wrestler does to get in shape for a match doesn't matter in the way that it wouldn't another sport, right? A loss doesn't mean that someone's career is actually on the line because they were just asked to do it. So the reason why people's careers are in the balance, their contracts are up and they're going to get more money or less money, it has to do with this really ephemeral or sort of difficult to almost unknowable backstage stuff. It's not the contents of the

sport. So it's just halfway between Hollywood reporter style journalism and the sort of, I guess the sort of like Twitter insider, like the sort of Woge type, you know, journalistic standard from other sports. It's a very weird. It's a very, very weird business. And that's all of that's just background. I mean, right now we're in a weird spot where Vince McMahon, who, you know, took over the WWE or then the WWF, which you renamed the WWF, which became, which you renamed the WWE from his father, but functionally created the modern WWE and most of the modern professional wrestling world last year was pushed out. of the company after

he, and I'm going to quote to Wall Street Journal here, after he quote, agreed to pay more than $12 million over the past 16 years to suppress allegations of sexual misconduct and infidelity, he left WWE and then kind of

by virtue of his position as majority shareholder, forced his way back into the company, a return to the board at the end of last year, or in January. And part of that statement that whatever was that he intended to facilitate the sale of the company when he came back. We'll see if the company is going to be sold.

If so, you'd think it would come out sometime after WrestleMania, but he's just been sort of looming in the background where since his exit, WW creatively, has sort of been on a role and business-wise seems to sort of be on a role too, all of which is culminating at WrestleMania this year, which is in Los Angeles, two nights, Saturday and Sunday night at so-fifference. stadium. It's going to be a huge event. I'm already out here working on doing interviews and preview shows and stuff for this huge event. But yeah, I mean, when we get back together next year to do this same podcast, you know, do these same podcast and interviews, WW might be owned by Endeavor or Disney or the, you know, Saudi investment fund. Like, we don't know where this is going. It's a very weird It's a very weird time pro wrestling because of that Also, to talk about the journalists' side of it all

All of those All of the controversy surrounding Vince McMahon last year All the stuff that was uncovered about him Was reported by the Wall Street Journal Not a professional wrestling journalist But that makes sense because like I said That's the structure of pro wrestling journalism I mean it's not there

Those aren't stories that they're generally covering And there are stories that mainstream media outlets should be covering Also, a lot of that stuff comes out because of deliberate leaks to mainstream media outlets that will make the most impact. I think it makes much more of an impact when the Wall Street Journal covers it. And the sale will be covered in the same fashion. You know, there are definitely insiders that have inklings about where the sale might be going. But my guess is when the news really drops, it'll be a big outlet like the Wall Street Journal that gets the jump on that story too. So when you're talking about wrestling, week to week, how do you think, on the one hand, about the

the story of Vince McMahon that you just laid out. Yeah. And on the other hand, the story of here is the wrestling television shows that the company is putting out all the time. How do I think about it? It's tough. You know, I'm working on, working on, as in like, helping out with a little bit, this Vince McMahon documentary, too, which I guess I can say that because Bill talks about it

on his podcast. But it's one of the weird tensions in doing it is like trying to draw a distinction or locate the distinction between Vince McMahon, the person, and WWU, the company. Because they're big swaths of the story of Vince McMahon, where there's nothing to talk about except what's happening on screen in WWE. That's because that's who Vince McMahon is. He just sort of seems to have, you know, he seems to wholly absorb himself in his work and his, well, whatever, I guess there's other things going on too.

But, and he's also an on-screen character, right? So, I mean, not every week and certainly not in the recent, in the very recent past, but he's an on-screen character. So when you're talking about Vince McMahon and what's going to happen, well, he gets covered as both the guy who was previously the creative head of the company. He wrote, was in charge of writing all the content. He was a character on the screen. And then he's also the dude who's like, you know, signing the checks and stuff, you know.

So, I mean, it's a really bizarre. I mean, I compare it to the Hollywood reporter, but it would be like if, what, like Brad Pitt was the next president of Disney, and he was also acting in all the Disney shows and like, you know, being and performing in all the Disney movies. And playing the head of Disney. As his character. Right.

And a show. It's a very bizarre way to sort of, well, it's impossible to compare anything to that. I mean, really, like, what do you compare that to? It's like, I don't know, man. It's very bizarre. It's like Roger Goodell and Walt Disney mixed together. I mean, the last one I had for you was when you think about your audience, is listening to the podcast.

How much do they want you to talk about the Vince McMahon story, this larger story, and how much do they want you to say, well, here's what's coming up, here are the matches, here are my thoughts on the creative direction of the WW. It's a good question. I think sort of all the above, I mean, one of the things that we figured out when we first started doing wrestling podcasts is what people really care about is,

just like with anything else. But I think at doing a wrestling podcast, we were sort of on the front end of 50s. of figuring this stuff out. People want you to sort of be their friend who they talk about this stuff with, right? So we noticed that, like, you know, we would do a match by,

we would do a podcast after a Monday Night Raw and talk about all the matches. And sometimes we'd go on a, have an episode where we just got off on a tangent or maybe the main event was such a big deal. We only talked about the main event. And then you'd hear it from people. Just like, I want to hear what you said,

what do you think about all of the stuff that happened on the show, not just the one thing. And we're like, what, do you want to see, like a three-hour show? And they're like, yes, please. Like, just talk about all the things.

Wrestling podcasts run really long. Yeah, they do. I'll just say as a rule. But yeah, but so you kind of have to talk about everything. But I think that just like any good friendship and the nature of any like real constructive conversation, you kind of take things separately, right? If you have, if you and I are just out for dinner and we're having a conversation or just, or we're just hanging out, we don't, like, it doesn't matter if like we have a, you know,

if something bad happened in the day, we're not just talking about the bad thing, and we don't have to interject the bad thing in every conversation about a good thing that goes on, you know? It's important that you talk about the stuff that really matters. Because for a wrestling fan, especially one of my level for him, this is such a huge part of their life,

you have to deal honestly and seriously and soberly with, like, bad things that happen. But for me personally, I also feel like I got to enjoy what I'm doing, too. And, like, if I'm not, like, a fan who's having a good time, I'm going to be really shitty at my job. So I deal with, so I kind of want to talk about everything, but like the real world stuff, I kind of keep separate from just the, my fanboying out about the product. I mean, you were there, you were physically there when I started this journey, 10 whatever plus years ago.

Yeah. Writing as the masked man and had a column called Dead Wrestler of the Week. There are a lot of people, people inside WWE who hated me for having the temerity to name the column Dead Wrestler of the Week. Of course, when they read the pieces, I hope they're really, realize that these were love letters. By the way, only in journal, this isn't quite an only in journalism word, but couching, the, the, the way that you frame your stories that you write of your own stories as love

letters is a really interesting thing that we can go into. People do this all the time. Yeah, it's usually to defend something that people think is a hit piece. It's really a love letter. Yeah. But like my entire wrestling, writing, podcasting career is based on me writing about this really, like the most horrific thing in pro wrestling history, which is just like the series of deaths of pro wrestlers

that like has always defined the company. Yeah, early deaths of pro wrestlers. And of course, the deaths of Chris Binwana, his family, and Eddie Guerrero really hit like an apex that was hard to deal with as a wrestling fan. I wrote about it, whenever people ask me about it, like that chapter, I wrote about Binwan Guerrero together was the last one I wrote. I put it off and put it off and put it off until I think it already submitted the rest of the book and was way past my deadline. I was like, I have to go write this piece. It's impossible

to deal with. It's really hard. But I still watched wrestling every week. The fact that I was like, like, literally in a coffee shop, like, crying while I wrote this thing didn't affect the fact that like I'm a wrestling fan, you know, it doesn't make, it doesn't necessarily make it hard to watch. So you got to, you got to, like, you know, separate those things out. Also, by the way, since we're on a podcast about media, you also have to, it is interesting watching people try to figure out the line and separating the journalism, like the journalist and fan divide. And I've told this story before, probably told it on this podcast, but I have one of my favorite wrestling memories was when WrestleMania was in San Jose. And I went up and I started the show

in the, in the press box, no name drop intended there. And was up there with all these other wrestling writers from various outlets. People, they'll know when they hear this. But all wrestling fans. Wrestling writers are inherently wrestling fans. And we're all up there in the opening match to the night of Battle Royal, or was it a ladder match that Daniel Bryan won? Ladder match. And

he had just made a big return from an injury. He was a huge fan favorite. And when he won the match, I mean the crowd, the people gathered together in the press box went nuts. Jumped out of their chairs, fist pumping, cheering, and turned around. And there is someone who

works for the stadium, works for the team. who works as a media outreach person who just like her face went white and it was really at the seeing journalists show such bias in what they were. Show any emotion at all. Never heard a cheer in the press box in 20 years. But that's the difference between wrestling journalism

and everything else. We are fans. Like that's why we do this and it's inextricable from the way that you appreciate the product because I always say, you know, a good guy's not a good guy unless he's getting cheered. And a bad guy's not a bad guy

unless he's getting booed, you know? If you write about movies, it's okay to get swept up in the closing act. You know, it's okay to, you know, do a little fist pump to yourself when people in Armageddon are putting the flags out the windows or whatever.

You know, it's supposed to make us emotional. That's the way you respond. Wrestling is just a very extreme version of that. Let us bring on Bruce Pritchard. And make sure I explain Bruce Pritchard's role in this whole pageant that is professional wrestling correctly. he gets to the WWF, as it was then called, in 1987.

Yeah. He is with the company for big chunks of time between now and then. Yeah, initially he was working as like a TV producer, basically. But like, you know, at that point in particular, the company is so small that every job mean, you know, their job title is sort of meaningless. I mean, when trying to describe what you really do. He then created this on-screen character of a red-faced televangelious, televangelious. televangelist knockoff in the late 80s called Brother Love. Televangelists were a big deal then. Again, evidence of the size of the company when being a guy

who produces pre-taped video segments is even that person is only inches away from being on camera as a major character. That made me so mad when I was a kid, dude. Oh, brother love, man. He would start talking and I'd be like, why is he talking? Yeah. Why are the baby-faced wrestlers, the good guys having to answer questions from this crooked interviewer. That doesn't make any sense to me. It doesn't. Why wouldn't they just refuse to go on the brother love show? Why wouldn't they seek a more sympathetic outlet?

Well, their baby faces to the PR department too, I guess. Just made no sense. But it was absolutely brilliant. As you say, he was a producer. He was also a writer. He's part of the creative juices of professional wrestling. He got increasingly involved in creative as the year's war on, and then just like everybody else in the pro wrestling business got fired a couple of times.

along the way and came back to the job. Now he's, I guess in one of the intervening periods started the most famous, the most popular wrestling podcast in the world called Something to Ressel with. And now he's back. If you ever see a documentary about WWE, one of their in-house documentaries or elsewhere,

whenever there's that footage of the wrestler coming backstage right after a match or going out onto the entrance ramp, he's one of the guys sitting there at the computer terminal right in front of, right behind the curtain. He's an integral part of the machine. In short, he does everything. So we talked about how to write professional wrestling, how shows get written, how big the writer's rooms are,

those sort of things. And also, is it easier to make a crowd cheer or make a crowd boo? Here's Bruce Pritcher. All right, Bruce, you were the executive director of the WWE creative writing team. What does your job entail? Wow. It's crazy because the executive director title encompasses so many aspects of the business. I oversee the creative writing team. I oversee the creative aspects that go into what you see on television each and every week, what you see in premium live events. In addition to that, I also oversee the creative for live events. So if there's an event that comes to your hometown, that is not televised, I also oversee what is going to take place in your town.

In addition to that, gosh, celebrity integrations and things of that nature. So chief cook and bottle washer is probably a better title than description of what I do. How many people are on your writing team? Wow. Why would you have to ask me a question? I don't know. I would say, I think we are roughly at 28. All in. All in. So this year's WrestleMania main event is Roman Raines versus Cody Rhodes.

How long ago do you and your team decide that's it? That's going to be our main event. Well, you know, you can look into the crystal ball a year ahead of time and think to yourself, what would be a great attraction? And that takes many machinations where you look at. Here's your ideal scenario. Here's where I'd really love to go and where we think we will be. However, as you start on that journey, you're dealing with human beings and you're dealing

with flesh and blood and bones. So along the way, a lot of things can happen that will change that trajectory. People could get hurt. Different things could come up. So what your wish list is is oftentimes different than what. what you ultimately end up with. I would say that getting to this place where we are started probably in August. That's when you could crystal ball your way here and say if things go like we think they are,

we'd like to wind up here at WrestleMania. I think we were really shooting for that and trying to make things work so that by the time we got to WrestleMania, we were looking at it in August. Yes. When you started with the then WWF in the 80s, you could build to a big match at WrestleMania very slowly over a period of months and months, given how fast things move. How long do you get to build to a match like that now? You know, it's crazy because you go back and you look at all the time, as you just pointed out,

that we had. You had time between major pay-per-views where your television wasn't as aggressive and it wasn't the same style that we produced today. We had syndicated television that was altogether different than Monday Night Raw and Smackdown that are live, live, and you can change on the dime. So you have a lot more time. You could plan and you could be able to say,

okay, this is what I want to do week after week after week. Shoot it in three-week interval. So you knew you had at least three weeks worth of television. If someone got hurt in that time, usually they had time to men before you got to that next three weeks. Now, if someone gets hurt in the first week and you're not going to have them until the fourth week, that kind of blows up your plans. But back in the day, yeah, we definitely planned out ahead of time. And even still today, we like to look at what is the end goal? Where do we want to be at the end of this story?

What's the ending? And work backwards. And I think that when you look at the bloodline story and integrating Sammy Zane into that, Kevin Owens, and now how Cody is integrated into that, it's very, very deep storytelling. And there were so many hints and there were so many things along the way that when you look back at it and go, oh, hey, wow, I remember that. That meant this. And you start putting the pieces together.

I think if we were to go back and try and do a package, if you will, of the bloodline story over the last nine or ten months, whatever it is, that people would go, wow, that. really was a very detailed and intricate story that we told. Let's take an episode of live television, like you mentioned, Raw or SmackDown. How far ahead of time does your team get to write that episode? The answer to that question is we go week to week a lot of times. We will map out pretty much from premium live event, premium live events, storylines that we are looking to do and hope that we can accomplish certain things along the way.

And as I said, you work backwards from a main attraction that you would want to have at a premium live event. How are we going to get there over this four or five weeks of television? So you try to map that out. I think that, again, when you look at dealing with human beings and the input, I know when the show is written, usually on a Monday night in about 11.01 p.m. Then, okay, that show was written and that show's done. About 10 o'clock on a Friday night because it's always evolving and it's ever changing.

And that's the beauty of live television. Okay, so like two weeks from now, let's say you will have a rough idea of maybe what you want to accomplish on that week. But in terms of putting the words down on the page, that will happen right before the days leading up, maybe even the day of the actual television show. Absolutely. Sometimes during the actual production of the television show. Again, because it is, that's the beauty of live television. You can look out and go, okay, this is a live crowd tonight.

And maybe we want to try something a little different. And as you get closer to it, it's that game day feeling where, man, you're in the moment. And what we thought was going to work too. weeks ago as we are now closer to it, we're thinking, what if we went this way? And you can try it. You can bounce it off of the crowd and measure where they go and then make that determination midstream. So it's the beauty of live TV. I heard you say on a podcast once that you think of yourself as a good editor of other people's scripts. What makes you a good editor? time time and experience um i've i've been doing this i've been i've been in the wrestling business

getting the payday since i was 10 years old um just celebrated my 60th birthday and my 50th year actually being paid from this business so very proud of that and i think that that is more of feel a lot of times. Some of it you can teach. Some of it is a feel. I've had people ask me, it's like, how do you determine what goes where and how long something should be? And a lot of times, I cannot explain it.

I know how to do it, but a lot of times it's just my gut. And that comes from doing it as long as I've done it. And it's a feeling of what has worked in the past. It's knowing how to read a live audience and having a feel. And I think to even dig a little deeper in your question, the days of starting with a blank piece of paper for me are I could still do it, but I'm much better tearing up someone else's work, if that makes any sense at all.

I find it difficult to start with that blank piece of paper anymore. And it's much easier to have a staff of extremely talented writers and producers that I'm very fortunate to have. So by that, I'm able to cheat and take their work and fine-tune it and make it the best that it can be. And it's tough to start with the blank pages because you've stared at so many blank pages. over the course of your career? Yes, that blank piece of paper is very difficult. And kudos to them. And I think that's one of the advantages

to having several people from different backgrounds be a part of the creative team, because they all bring different experiences to the table. And then you take it all and you can mold it and make it into a television show. And it's not one man or one, one woman's view of what it's going to be. When it gets down to it, there's only going to be pretty much two of us that are going

to approve it and move it on, but we take input from everyone. And again, I'm very lucky to have the crew that I have working with us, and they are, without a doubt, I think, the best in entertainment. I don't think that there's another group of writers and producers that can do what we do on a weekly basis and work as hard as they do and produce the way they do. Here's something I've always wondered, Bruce. If a wrestler walks into the ring with a microphone to cut a promo, as they say in the business, how much of what he says is actually on a scripted page and how much is he taking ideas that he knows you want him to get to? and sort of freelancing on his own from there. It really depends upon the talent.

It depends upon the talent as to what they're comfortable with. There are certain superstars that you can say, here's the idea that we want to get across, and here's your microphone, go. You have a blank canvas, go paint a picture. And you have the confidence in them to go do that. There are also superstars that want to know, man, what do you want me to say?

Help me say this better than how I'm saying it. And we have a crew of writers that will help get that out of them. Every promo, everything that you hear is really an extension of who that superstar is. And we just try to embellish it. We try to help them along and keep them on track to tell the best story they can. This is your character. we're going to give you words. If you want to help us to help you shape it,

we'll help you with that. But ultimately it's your character and you have to go out and execute. And the character has to be able to feel that. And that's why characters that are just an extension of real human being are the best and the purest form of what we do, because they can feel. What would I do? We used to laugh at Scott Hall.

because Scott Hall, you talk to Scott about doing something and he would say, Scott Hall doesn't have a problem with that man, but would Razor do that? And you have to put that hat on, and you have to put the hat on of the character and go, okay, that's a good point.

Is this something, because Scott can do this very well, should Razor do it. And you have to separate yourself from the human being and write for the character and the superstar of themselves. We've seen WW performers that you've worked with over the years become some of the most famous people

in American culture, Hulk Hogan, Steve Austin, The Rock, on and on. As they get big, do they gain a measure of control over what they're saying and doing on the screen? Yes, they definitely do. And it comes with confidence, too. the more confident that they become. And you have to also earn that respect and earn that spot, if you will,

to earn the trust that we know we can give you something and we can give you an idea. And you're going to take that idea and mold it, make it your own, and make it even better. So when they come to you and say, Bruce, I don't want to do that. I don't think this is a good idea. How do you convince somebody like that? No, no, no, no, it's a good idea. Trust me. Go out and try it and you'll see that I'm right in the end.

First of all, I'll listen, and I will listen as to why they think differently. And if they have a good point, you know what, we may be wrong. And it may be something that we may want to change, because as a writer and as a producer, you have in your head how you want it to be. And this is the only way it can be. when someone else who's got to go out and perform that looks at and go, I'm not feeling it. What if we tried it this way? So the first thing you have to do is you have to listen to them and listen to why they feel the way they do.

Then if they're completely wrong, you put your salesman hat on and you go on to explain to them why you feel that the other way is the best way to. do it. And you need to have reasons to back it up. We don't just put words on a paper and say, here, go do this. Here's why we would like you to do this. Here's how we see you doing this as well, which is very important on top of everything. So it's, we listen. And a lot of times we do change if someone feels differently than what we originally had. Pride of authorship is the worst enemy in the world when it comes to creative. You have to be able to let go and listen. And understand that everything is going to be a compromise of sorts or a team effort of sorts. Yes. Absolutely. You got to the WWF in 1987. Who have been your favorite wrestlers to write for? Wow. You know,

I go back and I look at the talent through the years and I love doing things. I love doing things with Undertaker, that's kind of a gimmy. And as you go through the years to be able to work with the stone cold Steve Austin, Steve and I used to just sit in a room and look at what we had. And I think that nine times out of 10, Steve would look at it, go, goddamn this sucks. And I would have to convince him as to why it didn't suck or what else have we got? you know, what else can we do?

And through talking it through and going through it, nine times out of ten also, it would be, hey, you guys are live in a minute. Hope that now through talking through this forever long that would be, he's got it. Steve had a great gut. Still has a great gut. And being able to then deliver when the red light comes on is a big, big thing. John Sina, holy cow, you know, John Sina was another one who knew his audience, knew who he was talking to, guys like that that really understand their characters and understand the audience. And I loved working with guys that were willing to try new things.

Is it more fun to write material for good guys, the baby faces, or the bad guys? guys the heels. Oh my God. Who wants to be a good guy? I'm a heel at heart, so it's much easier for me to come up with a persona or come up with words and descriptors that will help a heal much more than someone that the crowd truly adores, because that's a tricky situation. Not everybody is going to like unanimously somebody just because we say this is a good guy you have to like it

no man they've got to do so much more to get the audience behind them and that's a art form it really depends on the performer so for me I want to write for a bad guy every day of the week

so it's easier to get the crowd to hate somebody than to get the crowd to like somebody without a doubt much easy It's hard to get them to love you. What's your favorite big story arc? You've had a hand in writing over the years. When I go back and think about great stories that you got to see that you lay out for several months and then you see it come to fruition is the mega powers exploding, Russellmania 5.

And it was Hulk Hogan and Randy Savage with Miss Elizabeth basically in the middle of these. two. But we started doing things in like August at SummerSlam. We knew where we were going at WrestleMania for WrestleMania 5. But we did little tidbits along the way. And I knew the story that we were going to tell when we got to WrestleMania, when they finally did explode, but how we would go back to, all right, this happened at Somerslam. Oh, my God, you know, Hulk steadied Elizabeth on Randy's shoulder, or Hulk gives Elizabeth a side look. You're lost in your eyes.

Those were tidbits. Not everybody knew what we were doing, but the talent knew, and they suddenly gave those to us throughout that entire run. And then when you told the story as a whole, the audience can go back and go, you know what? He did have lust in his eyes. Or if you're going to see it through Hogan's eyes, oh my God, no, he didn't. He was just making sure that she was okay. The best stories are when you can see it through both sets of eyeballs and you can relate to both. It's like, it's got a good point.

Oh, yeah, well, he's got a good point too. And those are the best and most difficult to write sometimes. When I think about that story, what's amazing about it is how simple the idea is underneath it. My best friend is making eyes at my girlfriend. Everybody has felt some version of that over the years. When I look back at your career, there's so many that are just so simple. You mentioned Stone Cold against Mr. McMahon in the late 90s. My boss is an asshole. That's kind of what that story is.

Do a hundred different chapters of it, but that's what the story. is, right? People can relate. Brett and Owen Hart, brothers fighting. If you have a sibling, everybody can relate to that. No matter what, you have brothers fight, family fights. That's relatable. And you want to have something that people can relate to. Your boss is an asshole. It's easy to relate to for a lot of people. And who wouldn't want to come in, kick their boss in the gut, stun them, and then drink a beer over. When you're thinking of these storylines, do you try to boil it down to that one sentence like that, that one idea? Yes, because you have to have the core and you have to have the emotion behind the story.

And if there's not emotion and passion in the story that the audience can feel and participate, it's a harder sell. And everybody has a mom and dad. so when you start thinking about Undertaker and Kane even that was just crazy made up going along what ifs could happen that all of a sudden became an unbelievably rich backstory for Kane Undertaker has a brother that he thought was dead

he took his name in the very beginning of his career He dropped it. Wait a minute. His brother wasn't dead. His manager who brought Undertaker through the early stages of his career, actually was taking care of his baby brother this whole time. And he didn't know he was alive. His baby brother looks at him and goes, oh, my God, my big brother doesn't care about me.

Why doesn't he visit me? Done. Slightly more elaborate. You know, not all of us have. My God, my dead brother is really alive. But I get the point. Really? You didn't have like a funeral director that set the house on fire and they took your baby brother or raised you and told you bad things about it?

What a boring life. It's it's almost like an elevator pitch for movie. You know, they say every successful movie, you can get an elevator and explain it in a couple of seconds. It's kind of the same thing with the wrestling feud, right? If it takes more than a few seconds to explain what's going on, maybe it's not quite as effective as one that could be explained. And if it takes too much explanation, that's not good either. Because if you have to explain it and you can't watch it and get it, then you kind of lost me there too. We've talked about these big feuds that have dramatic arcs over a period of weeks or months.

Do you want every episode of television to have its own dramatic arc? Yes, you do. And I'm also from the school of, I like cliffhangers. And I think that whether a lot of people will think of a cliffhanger at the end of the show and literally stagecoach is going off the cliff, oh my God, what's going to happen? I think that you can have cliffhangers in the middle of a program, especially when your program is three hours long. there's different ways to tell stories,

but I believe you should always lead the audience wanting more. So the dramatic arc for an episode of television often, we're going to introduce whatever the issue or problem with the night is in the opening sketch. We're going to tease it or refer to it over the course of the evening, maybe have those many cliffhangers you're talking about, and then have some kind of dramatic cliffhanger at the end or some kind of open-ended question to get us to come back,

get the viewers to come back next week. Every good book, every good movie has a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the best have an ending that leaves you one anymore. Let's say there's an episode of Raw coming up. How much of the card do you want to give the audience in advance, and how much do you want to keep in your back pocket so they'll have to tune in and find out what happens? Probably 50-50, frankly. I believe in promotion, and I believe that you should let your audience know what's coming up

and give them an idea of reasons why to tune in. Once they tune in, I also believe that you need to give them reasons to stay tuned and reasons that, oh my gosh, I didn't expect that. I tuned in for this, but now I'm going to get this much more.

And you're serving many masters in that regard. Enough to get him in the door, but not too much where you tell them everything that's going to happen. Exactly. Your boss is Triple H, whom you've worked with for over a period of many, many years. How is your working relationship with him different from ones you've had in the company in the past? Well, it's funny because through working with Triple H in the past, he was a talent.

And, you know, I was the writer-producer. And now working with Triple H is, you know, he is my boss and he's the head of creative. And I'm going to work with him collaborating now on creative. for other talents. And his mind, even going back then, he always had a mind for other talent and other ideas. What if we did this? What if we did that?

If we would have an issue with, how do we get out of this? Or can you help me prolong this or things of that nature? Paul was always one that could come in and help us get there. And it's funny when we reach a, like a stalemate sometimes and you're dealing with a difficulty and he'll look at me and go, God, I hope I wasn't that difficult when I was a talent. I look at him and go, yes, you were.

Actually, yeah, you were horrible. But it came from a place of wanting it to be the best. I have, without a doubt, enjoyed the time working with Paul here because it's different. it's fun and not to say that it wasn't fun before because it was. I don't ever want to have to go to work and I never really have had to go to work. So for it to continue to be fun and to be able to have your ideas share and work back and forth to where it's encouraged, it's been a blast. And I think that Paul is pretty much underrated as far as his creativity. and leadership in that regard.

Vince McMahon returned to the WW's board earlier this year. Does he offer any creative input in that role? He hasn't yet. He made it to one TV and had really nothing to say other than great show. Thank you guys. So in that regard, he is busy working on the business end of things and has given us free reign on the creative end of things to handle it. And I think we've been a pretty good job so far.

Before you go, I have to ask you about your time in front of the camera as well. Because in 1988, you appeared on WWF television in a white suit with slick back hair looking like the televangelists. I grew up watching on UHF stations in Texas. What made you create the character called Brother Love? It was a character that we always did. Eddie Gilbert and I, you talk about on TV in Texas on Sunday nights. it's pretty much all you would get. We did TV in Tulsa, Oklahoma on Sunday nights,

and in Tulsa, it's even worse. All you had was the evangelical characters. And their ability to talk people into the church and to talk people into giving them money, I found fascinating. And I also looked at them as though they were full of it, for the most part. And I emulated that because I did not like them. I watched them because they were captivated, and I didn't like them.

And I wanted to create a character that embodied all of the negative that I saw in each of those characters. And that was Brother Love. Brother Love was Smarmy. He had that Southern accent or Texas accent, in your case, perhaps. Did you want him to be annoying? Is that part of the character? You think so? Yeah, he was meant to be annoying, without a doubt.

And you'll know this one. I mean, the majority of Brother Love's influence came from Robert Tilton out of Dallas. Sure. I remember Robert Tilton. Oh, yeah, success in life. And I was trying to find WWF matches and stumble across that. Yep. What did it feel like to stand in an arena and be booed?

Oh, glorious. Absolutely glorious. to be able to captivate an audience just in general, to have the opportunity to stand in front of a live audience that is focused on you and listening to every word that comes out of your mouth and to blow the roof off an arena when you were getting your ass kicked

is a feeling unlike nothing else. And that is a high for people that, that may do drugs that go, oh my God, there's nothing like that high, man. You know, there is no high that can equate to being in front of a live audience and to own that audience and be able to take them up, break them down,

and get those reactions. The satisfaction is I have pushed these people's buttons effectively. Absolutely. And the first night I ever did Brother Love, I had to do three Brother Love one night. We taped three television shows per night. And on the third Brother Love, people were coming over the rail trying to get to me. I had angered them so much.

Now, back in the good old days, you know, if you will, you know, that's when, oh, hey, man, they really hate you. You know, they're coming over the railings at you. Nowadays, we don't encourage that at all, but that was a true test. And in one night, a brand new character, I was able to push their buttons enough that they wanted to physically do harm. I have no idea who this guy was before tonight, but I now want to harm him because he has annoyed me and angered me so much. Yes. And people watching this now, they're hearing this now, they can probably get that same feeling from the interview. I wanted to arm to him.

Bruce, I interview a lot of announcers on this podcast from the world of sports, the Al Michaels, Jim Nance types. If you could pick one play-by-play announcer to call a wrestling match from your time in the business, who would it be? Wow. This will shock a lot of people. Vince, only because Vince, when you go back, Vince was the worst play-by-play guy in the world. Absolutely the worst.

Back. Body drop. Oh, hell, he didn't even do that. Oh, my, what have I do? Ah, that's from there. Let's get that. Never call the hole. Never called the move.

But what Vince did was tell stories. And his over-the-top storytelling, I didn't appreciate it until much later in life. And when you go back and listen to it, and it makes you chuckle. But it was great storytelling. And sometimes I think that commentators and play-by-play guys get too wrapped up in, you know, all nice arm drags, got an arm bar, side headlock take over. It's TV.

I'm watching it. I can see what they're doing. Tell me a story. Get me involved. Tell me why I care. Or tell me about what's going on so I can make the determination of whether I want to care or not. the best are our storytellers. I loved listening to Guerrilla Monsu

because he told you stories. All right, you get to pick one color analyst now to color wrestling match. Who would that be? Bobby Heenan. Bobby Heenan all day long. Bobby had the beautiful art of even his enemies. Bobby was able to paint his enemies with a brush

that made them larger than life and a hill to overcome. It was just a true art form, and I don't think anyone did it better than Bobby Heather. Got to be one of the funniest people, period, to have been on television during that period. Yes, he was able to mix humor and wit, but also knowledge. And he could talk people into an arena. All right. You mentioned you've been in the wrestling business since age 10.

So let's end here. How do you want to be remembered in this business when you're finally done with it? I just hope people remember me in general, frankly. I don't know that I really don't know that I ever got. Originally I did. Originally I got in for the fame. I wanted to be a wrestler. I wanted to be a performer.

And I found out in an early age, and it's a lot more fun on this side because you're not just one performer. You get to be everybody. And you get to write for everybody. therefore you can live vicariously through the stars that you put on television. And to me, that that's a kick. If I help one guy be better, then that's an accomplishment.

And I think that when you say, what would I want to be remembered by? I don't have that answer. I just would like to be remembered. I'd like to be in the conversation. And so much of what I've done through the years, I try to stay in that. the background because I think that it's a talent that should be in the forefront. Now, when I'm a talent, look, I want all the glory in the world. I want to be out there. I want to do my thing and have fun with that. But for my day-to-day job of what I do here, if everyone else is successful

and the company is successful, then I'm doing my job and we're doing okay. Bruce Bridgett. Thanks for coming on the press box. I don't get a plug. Something to wrestle with Bruce Pritchard? I mean, I listen to you and Bill and everybody. I just want one shameless plug. Bruce Pritchard telling stories over on something to wrestle with with Bruce Pritchard. Yes, thank you for that. Wherever fine podcasts are found. That's the press box. I'm Brian Curtis. Production Magic by Erica Servantis. Spring break next week, Monday through Wednesday, and then David Shoemaker and I are back Thursday with more lukewarm takes about the media. then, David. See you later, Brian.