Bruce Prichard On WWE’s Talks with Randy Savage in 1996, Attempts To Bring In John Madden For WrestleMania

In the latest episode of Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard spoke about WWE’s attempts to acquire the services of John Madden for color commentary at WrestleMania for several years which didn’t pan out. Here are highlights:

On WWF’s attempts to get John Madden to work Wrestlemania: “John Madden was the color guy for CBS as the time and his manager or assistant manager a friend of mine. John Madden was a big time wrestling fan. He was a bigger Bobby Heenan fan than anything. John loved the business and Vince had been trying to get John I believe to Wrestlemania III, to come in and do color commentary for Wrestlemania. We tried it for every single year up until 98, 99 when we stopped trying because it just wasn’t going to happen. But John was afraid of planes and he would only travel in his big motor coach, big bus that he had. So it just never could materialize but I remember his manager gave me a call one day and said, ‘What do you think if for the All-Madden team we never had a manager, and John would like to have Bobby The Brain Heenan be the manager for the All-Madden team.’ And I thought that was pure genius and threw it by Vince, threw it by Bobby, they both loved it. To this day I think I’ve got somewhere, not readily available, but pretty sure that I have my John Madden All Madden team swag with the jacket, some of the shirts and the ball cap from that game.”

On if there were talks to bring back Randy Savage in 1996: “Yes there was. Randy and I talked and we had gone back and forth on a contract and it fell apart. We were far apart on money and dates. At that time Vince wasn’t big on limited number of dates for talent. You’re either under contract or you’re not. And Randy wanted so many dates, it just got crossways at some point. And I’m the one that had to deliver the message.”

If you use any of these quotes, please credit Something to Wrestle with an h/t to 411mania.com.