Arn Anderson Reflects On The Shockmaster’s Botched Debut, What He Would Have Done

On the latest episode of The ARN Show, Arn Anderson talked about the infamous Shockmaster debut in WCW. The famed segment saw Fred Ottman botch his promotional debut by falling through a wall and having his helmet fall off. You can check out the highlights below:

On the segment killing the character: “Yeah, and you can’t threaten somebody after you just fell through a wall, your helmet rolls off. You can’t get up and beat up someone that’s going to instill fear into you. You have that — that horse has left the barn… Well, and here’s the thing, Paul. When we go back and watch this stuff, it’s fine. You know, the thing about it is, you see that the company made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of production errors by not rehearsing stuff properly in enough times, and made a lot of mistakes that hopefully got a lot better as the company grew.”

On what he would have done in that situation: “I’d have got up and looked back in the hole for the guy that tripped me. ‘All right, where’d he go? You see that guy that tripped me?’ I’d have wiggled my way out of it somehow.”

On how Ottman handled the situation: “Fred’s a great guy too, man. For him to for him to absorb that, can you imagine the ribbing he took? I mean, thank God that he just had a temperament that he could — because he was a big bastard, that he didn’t get mad and kill somebody… it had to be a sore subject for a long time… It was a bad choice from day one. Yeah, God, this… You can’t fix this stuff. It wasn’t rehearsed. We didn’t have anybody there that was looking at the good of the talent or the company and go, ‘Guys, we got to find something else. I’m just telling you, before we ever rehearse this, it ain’t going to fly.’”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit The ARN Show with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.