Bruce Prichard On Almost Becoming Bobby Heenan Jr., How the Creation Of Raw Came About

On a recent edition of Something To Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard discussed nearly going to WCW before returning to the World Wrestling Federation in September 1992. Bruce also talked about his first night back in Hershey, which included Ric Flair and Randy Savage having to redo a WWF World Championship match. Below are some highlights.

On being offered to manage Barbarian in WCW in 1992: “Correctamundo. With the carrot dangled that I would eventually manage old stunning, Hollywood Steve Austin.”

On possibly assuming the role of Bobby Heenan Jr.: “Yeah, that was during a time when Flair came in, okay, and Bobby managed him. But Bobby had already retired from being on the road and they needed somebody to be with him all the time. Ric was killing him, Bobby couldn’t drink like that anymore and was looking to come off the road… So we came up with the idea, because whenever we were together people would ask ‘oh, is he your son?’ I would call Bobby dad and he’d call me son… Didn’t happen. Did not happen. For a while we thought it was going to happen, but last minute it didn’t. They had Perfect, too.”

On his return to the WWF post-SummerSlam: “When Vince called me about coming back, he was leaving for the UK the next day. It was just way too soon to do that. I was going to start in Hershey, Pennsylvania the first TV taping after SummerSlam.”

On the Randy Savage/Ric Flair fiasco at the Hershey taping: “Yeah, it stunk. It was the opportunity to make Ric and for Ric to overcome. They went out and had a house show match. It was not good. It was not a television match. There was no intensity to it. Savage had no fire after the fact. They were both going through the motions. There was a feeling that it wasn’t intense enough.”

On having them redo the match: “Yeah, well, have them go out and redo parts of the match to spice things up.”

On Vince possibly wanting a different presentation other than Flair: “I think the bloom was off the rose for Ric at that time. I don’t think Ric was feeling good. Ric was experiencing vertigo and Ric wasn’t in the best shape. I think Ric was a victim of confidence issues, as well. I think it was just a combination of everything.”

On Prime Time Wrestling: “Prime Time had turned into a guest show because they would just bring in talent to sit around a table and do in and outs before different matches. The format went from Bobby and Gorilla to this roundtable format that didn’t click. It just really didn’t click. We were looking for different things… It just wasn’t good. It was a compilation show with a compilation panel. There was no consistency to the show other than Vince and Bobby. We were looking for ways to save money and a different presentation of the show, which is where the germ of RAW came from.”

On the creation of RAW: “It was more of a cost cutting measure. It was looking at ways to produce the show without doing it on the road. Delivering a product that was unique and different. Unique and different would be going live. We wanted to do it in a unique setting a smaller more intimate setting than the big arenas. The original, original concept was to build a studio where are current television studio was in the warehouse section and to make that an arena that would hold maybe five hundred or thousand people. Build the studio with all the perfect lighting and everything we need right there. Tour the Northeast, which is where we were focusing on at the time, and that would save money as another stop on the tour. Going to the Manhattan Center certainly didn’t accomplish that. The Manhattan Center was extremely expensive and a tough proposition. Had to take the ring up seven floors on an elevator, a passenger elevator at that. It was tough.”