Bruce Prichard on How Close Sting Was to Coming to WWF, Why King of the Ring PPV Was Canceled

– Bruce Prichard did a new Q&A on his Something to Wrestle With podcast. Some highlights are below:

On why the Royal Rumble winner goes on to face the champion at Wrestlemania: “The idea was made by me, and it was a way to give the Royal Rumble a little bit of meaning. For years, the Rumble was used as, kind of like the King of the Ring, almost like a championship in a way. He ended up having bragging rights and the idea could be, why not have it be for something? That something being a shot at the WWF Championship, and the first year we did it was before Wrestlemania 9 where we had Yokozuna going over and that honor going to him where he ended up facing Bret Hart at Wrestlemania.”

On Why the King of the Ring PPV was discontinued: “Vince McMahon didn’t like it. It was probably our lowest sales pay per view of the year, which is crazy because in the territorial days, the summer months were money months and for WWF the summer months were slower months. The Pay Per Views during the summer didn’t do all that well, and King of the Ring wasn’t a large grossing pay per view, so Vince wasn’t really excited about it, and decided to change it up.”

On the 1992 transition away from Hulk Hogan to Bret Hart: “There was no list. It was simply a move at the time to skew to see who can face Ric Flair. Business was down and Vince McMahon wanted to find someone new to face Ric Flair, someone fresh, and wanted to move in a different direction. Bret Hart got the nod due to his popularity, especially internationally. So we thought we’d give him the nod and see how he did everywhere else as champion.”

On whether the storyline was always for Jeff Jarrett to be caught not singing: “Yes. That was the idea, and it was going to be revealed. We actually had recorded a music video with Road Dogg singing the song because Road Dogg was the one who actually sang the song. The storyline was that Jeff had used Road Dogg and stole the song, and that it would all come out that Jeff was a phony who never sang the song to set up the feud between the two.”

On the most difficult stunt to put together: “As far as stunts, that in itself is a podcast. I’d have to say, in the stunt world, which I look at them differently than anyone else does. Having to put a ring on Wall Street and finding out on a Thursday that Vince McMahon wanted to put a ring on Wall Street in front of New York Stock Exchange; Wall Street had never closed down in the history of Wall Street, and we closed it down on Noon on a Tuesday and Wednesday afternoon and to get that thing together, that is a podcast on its own to discuss.”

On interest in bringing in The Great Muta in the late ‘8’s and early ’90s: “There was interest, and Pat Patterson and I went to a WCW show in 89. Pat and I went to the event and one of the accomplishments was to get to Gary Hart to see if there was any interest, but there wasn’t any.”

On if he ever got close to bringing Sting to the WWF: “Yes, I was interested in bringing him in. It was with the Main Event in Milwaukee, all I remember was being sick as a dog with two big pitchers of orange juice in my room. February of 1989, and we had been going back and forth to negotiate with Steve [Sting] to bring him in but talks always dropped. But yes, there have always been talk of bringing him in over the years, but Sting is a loyal guy, stayed where he is and did really well for himself.”