Bruce Prichard On Why Billy Gunn’s Singles Push Failed, Trying to Get Billy Gunn Over On His Own

– On the latest Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard looked back at WWE Hall of Famer Billy Gunn’s failed singles push in 1999. At that point in time, Gunn and Road Dogg had been moved away from competing as a tag team. Road Dogg had a midcard singles push, but Gunn moved higher up the card and won the 1999 King of the Ring. Billy Gunn would go on to have a brief feud with The Rock that culminated in a “Kiss My Ass” match at SummerSlam 1999.

However, it was clear at this point that fans were not catching onto Gunn as a singles guy. He would have a short feud with Jeff Jarrett before reuniting with Road Dogg and that was pretty much the end of his singles run. Highlights from Prichard, and the full podcast, are below:

On Gunn’s push failing: “This was during a time where we were trying to get something out of Billy Gunn and ad felt that if, you know, Rock’s not gonna be able to get anything out of him, maybe we need to re-look at this. And Billy did have asthma. And as a single performer, we’ve talked about this a lot of times, that Billy was excellent in a tag team. Billy was able to come in and shine, and be that guy in a tag team. Left on his own in a singles atmosphere, during this time frame, it was still new to Billy. And you think about it, his whole career he’d been a tag team guy. You know, brief stints here and there [in singles work] — Rockabilly and all that other horses**t. And yes, Rockabilly was mine, so I can call it horses**t.”

On the point where they gave up on the push: “You’re trying, but there comes a point where, ‘Okay, if he can’t do this with Rock, is he going to be able to do it — is he gonna be able to be that top guy? So at this point, it just didn’t gel, it didn’t work, and yeah there was a feeling that maybe Billy was not ‘The Guy,’ at least in a singles position, to be up at the top of the card. And maybe we need to reevaluate and find him something else, find a new partner, maybe redo the New Age Outlaws. Whatever that may be, to get us to where we want to be with Billy. And this wasn’t it. This really wasn’t working. We continued to try for a little bit, but it just didn’t jive.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.