wrestling

Bruce Prichard Discusses nWo’s Failure in WWE, Claims Triple H Advocated Their Return

February 25, 2017 | Posted by Jeffrey Harris
New World Order nWo Bash at the Beach Hulk Hogan, Lex Luger Image Credit: WWE

– During a recent edition of Something to Wrestle With Bruce Prichard, Prichard discussed the failure of NWO in WWE. Below are some highlights (transcript via WrestlingInc.com).

Prichard on NWO in WWE: “I think it was a failure. The nWo experiment in the WWF was a failure. I think the idea was good. The execution was not. There are a lot of things, hindsight being 20/20, that maybe we should have done a little differently. It just wasn’t meant to be. … I do remember something a little bit about that, but these were simply just conversations taking place, ‘hey, what are you doing?’, ‘when’s your deal up?’, ‘would be interested in going to work when your deal’s up and coming back and making some money?’. I don’t know that Scott was in the greatest place at the time. But I do remember rumblings back and forth and a conversation with Shane, that Shane was pretty disillusioned as far as doing anything.”

Prichard on HHH advocating for Nash, Hall, and Hulk Hogan to come back: “[Nash’s] name was brought up from time to time, but the sentiments were always pretty much the same and that’s what they were, that they just would be a cancer in the locker room and do we need that right now with the locker room that we have? That was unanimous for the most part. The agents, the writers, everybody. Somewhat, yeah [that was McMahon’s opinion as well]. It probably wasn’t Triple H’s take, no. Triple H was an advocate for them to come back.”

“Vince’s philosophy was ‘have a happy dressing room – if you have a happy dressing room, I don’t care what the business is as long as I don’t have a bunch of strife and bulls–t in the dressing room’. We had a happy dressing room at that time. We had guys working together, making money, and busting their ass. There was concern about bringing in a disruptive force that might have jeopardized that.”

Prichard on Hall and Nash being inseparable at No Way Out: “Hall and Nash were inseparable that day. I definitely remember that. But they all tried to make themselves a part of the crew. They tried to talk to everybody, to say, ‘hey man, we’re just here to work, brother, and brother, brother, brother, brother, brother, and not cause waves.’ But they were nice as could be. I remember I had missed a could of TVs. It was one of my first TVs back. And they came up to me and said, ‘hey, I understand that you voted against us to come in.’ And I corrected them right away. I said, ‘no, I wasn’t a part of that vote.’ I said, ‘but I would’ve just for the record, so we know the reason why and the reason why was because in their past incarnation, they had been disruptive and we didn’t want that again in the locker room.’ And that was it. ‘But the decision was made, you are here, let’s make it work.'”

Prichard on the plan being to have nWo as Vince McMahon’s henchman, but Vince McMahon did not want to play an Eric Bischoff role with the group: “That’s interesting. That question was asked and the response was ‘what? Good God, no!’ Vince has that weird thing about him. He doesn’t want to do anything like the other guys did, but ‘let’s bring back the guys that kicked our ass for all these, those many weeks, in the ratings. So that’ll be enough. That’ll be enough of that. I don’t want to recreate too much of it.’ It was just weird. It was weird.”

On the plan for Austin vs. Scott Hall to possibly set up Austin vs. Hogan later on: “I think everybody agreed that Austin/Hulk was the bigger match [than Hogan vs. The Rock] that we had to get to, so the feeling was, ‘why give it to them first? Let’s build it even more’ when you’ve got Rock right here and they were interchangeable at that point in their careers. So the idea, from our vantage point, was to do Hulk and Rock and then eventually get to Hulk and Austin at some point, whether that be the next WrestleMania or not.”

On Austin not being in a good place: “Well, there [are] also a lot of things that people didn’t know and Steve had health issues. Steve wasn’t in a good place. Steve wasn’t in a good place mentally. Steve wasn’t in a good place physically as well, so add that to the nWo situation with Scott Hall not being there, the no chemistry. It was a perfect storm for a s–tty match.”

Prichard on Nash’s quad tear: “It just goes back to the nWo storyline coming in was snakebit and just the hits kept coming. So Kevin getting hurt and tearing his quad was the nail in the coffin for the nWo experiment in WWE.”

His thoughts on The Rock vs. Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 18: “That crowd was on their feet the entire match. They loved it. I thought both guys did a great job of kind of switching roles. They tried to get them. They tried to get them in that traditional… with what they went into the match story, but both guys adapted and they went with the crowd. Hogan went babyface and Rock went heel, but it’s one of the… it is a teaching tool for young talents to go and watch how these two guys listened to the audience, they changed how the match was laid out, and went with it, and didn’t let the audience get to them. They took the audience for a hell of a ride and that was the main event of the show for sure.”

Prichard on Triple H volunteering to work with Hulk Hogan and put him in the title picture: “Triple H definitely wanted to work with Hulk. Triple H volunteered [to do the honors] and I want to say that it was Triple H’s idea to put Hogan in that picture because of the reaction he got, ‘oh my God! To work with that babyface Hulk Hogan as hot as he was at that point?’ Yeah, that was good s–t.”

His thoughts on Hogan winning the world title at Backlash 2002: “I thought it was a great decision for nostalgic purposes. Hulk was probably the hottest talent in the company at the time. The audience was so happy to see him back. They were getting behind [him]. They were buying every damn thing he did.”