Bruce Prichard On Thinking WWE Had More Time Before Rock Would Leave For Hollywood, Reaction to Scorpion King’s Success

– On the latest Something to Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard talked about the era when The Rock was just about to become a movie star and thinking WWE had more time with him. In 2001, Rock was breaking into film with his role in The Mummy Returns. He gave an interview to Access Hollywood where he said he would “certainly juggle both [wrestling and movies] as long as I can. Then The Scorpion King became a hit and that all changed.

Highlights from the discussion, as well as the full podcast, are below:

On how long they thought Rock would do both movies and wrestling: “Well, we thought we had maybe another five years of it, at least. You look at it, and you’re saying, ‘Okay. How big can he really get?’ Hulk went through the same thing. Hulk went through the surge of, he does No Holds Barred, critically-acclaimed, man. You know, s**t. Everybody wanted Hulk after No Holds Barred. And he went on and did a few movies, and we thought, ‘Oh my god! We’ll lose him too.’ But he still stuck around. So we thought the same thing would kind of happen with Rock.”

On if they really thought Rock would be the same situation as Hogan: “To Hollywood, yes. It really was. But after Scorpion King, then it was like, ‘Ruh-roh. They like him a lot! He’s gonna be [a] big star. F**k.'”

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.