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Bruce Prichard Says Paul Heyman Was Against WWE Buying WCW

December 25, 2016 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Paul Heyman Image Credit: WWE

– Bruce Prichard discussed WCW’s sale to WWE on the latest episode of his Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard podcast. Highlights are below:

On WWE’s interest in purchasing WCW: “The interest, just so it’s clear, what we were interested in was if there was a possibility that it could remain on TNT. The time slot was interesting. Being on another network was interesting. Being able to take the brand and expand it on an already established time slot, on an already established network. So that was attractive at that time. When we found out that wasn’t really going to be a possibility, it changed to the library.”

On what the plan would have been: “Preliminarily, the whole idea was to have two completely different, separate brands, with different creative teams, actually, different marketing teams, the whole nine yards. That was the pie in the sky, ‘oh my God, if we could only do this and pull it off.’ Obviously, that didn’t happen.”

On ideas that were discussed about making a standalone WCW show: “There was discussion of having the Monday Night RAW slot be WCW and the SmackDown spot be WWF. There were a lot of different plans discussed, and, obviously, a lot of them scrapped and different things that came up. We didn’t have a lot of talent we ended up taking from them that was marquee talent.”

On Vince asking Paul Heyman his opinion on buying WCW: “‘Well, sir, WCW is a dead brand. It’s dead!’ And he just kind of… Yeah, Paul did kind of [s–t on the idea]. He buried it. I think in Paul’s burial, I think that, and this is Bruce saying it. This is not what Paul said, nor did I have any conversation with Paul. My interpretation of Paul’s burial was that I think Paul felt that Vince should have done that with ECW. ‘WCW is a dead brand,’ but ECW was a dead brand. Invest whatever kind of money to pay for WCW, take that same money and give it to keep ECW alive. And that’s my interpretation. That’s my conjecture.”

On getting several WCW wrestling rings in the sale: “Some of [the rings] went to talent. I believe Rock got one in Florida. I think Taker got one in Texas. I think Booker T ended up with one, but Booker T ended up with his, I think, for Mark to work with Booker. I think Booker ended up with some of those rings, eventually. But it was there. We figured we might be able to use them and we did use some of them for shows where we needed smaller rings and things of that nature, used them for developmental, some of the places that had smaller venues.”