Brad Maddox Says Vince McMahon Was Surprisingly Easy To Talk With

In an interview with WrestlingInc, Brad Maddox spoke about his firing, not being used by WWE and if Vince McMahon is “intimidating”. Here are highlights:

On being fired for saying “cocky pricks”: “Yeah. It was to the general mass of Indianapolis (laughs). My job at that time being the opening dark match is to get the crowd riled up and responsive. You don’t really have the general rules of TV. I can talk directly to the audience, I can talk about their football team, I can call them smelly, get them worked up. I threw that in there at the end, not thinking it was a terrible word to use, and I guess it was.”

On if the issue was that he didn’t have permission: “Yeah, that would be the difference. They get stuff OK’d, and I didn’t talk to anyone ahead of time. I never thought anything of it. I’ve never used ‘prick’ as a curse word. I’ve never thought of it as inappropriate. It’s a lot like saying ‘screw you.’ I didn’t think much of it.”

On the plan for his debut: “I dont think there was a whole lot of a plan. I think they needed someone to fill a role for CM Punk’s storyline. CM Punk needed another dastardly way to win a match. At the time I thought they had a plan and there would be character development coming out of it. Looking back, I realize there wasn’t a plan, because it was about CM Punk. I should have went into it realizing it’s not so much about me. I could have been more proactive speaking to Vince and speaking to head writers and making sure there is a direction and communicating more. They know I’m not a referee, I trained to be a referee like a week. I’m a trained wrestler who has been in the developmental system for years now, and I’m pretty good at what I do, so is there going to be a plan going forward? There really wasn’t. The reason I stuck around is because Vince threw a promo at me about a week later and was mildly impressed, so it just morphed into a speaking role as a GM.”

On if Vince McMahon was intimidating: “I don’t know if there was a change in the locker room over the past couple decades. I hear stories of lines of guys waiting to talk to him, and there was never that when I was there. I think the stigma kind of grew that Vince is kind of un-accessible. I never went and knocked on his door the first year I was there. It wasn’t until they sent me home for a while, that I decided I was going to talk to Vince and do the things that you should do. When I did it, Vince was surprisingly very easy to talk to. He likes when people have the balls to talk to him and take their careers in their own hands instead of relying on writers.”