Bruce Prichard On Backstage Resentment To The Rock When He Won WWE Title & The Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club

On a recent edition of Bruce Prichard’s Podcast Something to Wrestle With (transcript via Wrestling Inc) Prichard talked about the Rock’s rise to fame during the Attitude Era and the resulting jealousy from his fellow superstars.

On Backstage Resentment To The Rock When He Won WWE Title: “It was everyone else that had that reaction,” Prichard said. “I think that because they didn’t [make The Rock kiss McMahon’s ass] there’s probably a segment of the locker room who’s already jealous of the kid who’s come in and in two years is on top of the world. Sure, he’s already a good-looking son of a b—, he walks through like he’s king s— because he was king s—, yeah, but a nicer guy. And from the day that he started up to today you pretty much had the same guy. He never really got a big head, he was nice to everybody, but I think that there was still a jealousy of, ‘Oh f— him he’s only been in the business two years and I’ve been in it for ten years, or I’ve been in for 15 years, why aren’t they pushing me like they’re pushing him? Look at him getting all this s—.’ Now why this kid? I’ve been busting my ass here for all these years now,'” Prichard imitated. “It was a general feeling in the locker room with a lot of the new guys coming in. There was resentment against Bret Hart almost for the opposite. When we made Bret Hart champion, the resentment towards Bret was, ‘What the f— man? He’s been a midcard tag-team guy his whole career, why is he getting the belt?’ You know it’s whoever is on top, whoever is achieving success at the time. Those that are not achieving that success and feel that it’s due them are gonna complain and say, ‘Oh that should have been me, so in my opinion, that’s what was going on at the time as far as dealing with Dwayne Johnson. During that time, it was the same Dwayne Johnson that had walked in and had his tryout in Houston, Texas all those years ago, and busting his ass in the warehouse, and then got overlooked, first went out and s–t the bed. Rocky died and then returned to make the most of it and became successful. Yeah, I just think it was jealousy more than anything else and people looking for anything to hang their hat on you.”

On The Vince McMahon Kiss My Ass Club: “Let’s address the kissing his ass thing,” Prichard said. “That was actually brought up, and it wasn’t Rock [against it], it was a lot of people including myself, Pat Patterson, Jerry Brisco, there were a lot of people that felt that if you do that to him right now, that it’s gonna kill him. It’s gonna kill him as a heel, it’s gonna kill him as a competitor. From this vantage point, exactly what you just said, he’s two gears in and we didn’t know exactly what we have here. We feel we’ve got lightning in a bottle.”