Bruce Prichard On Steve Austin As The Ringmaster, Pairing With Ted DiBiase, WWE’s Plan For The Ultimate Warrior’s Return In 1996

In a recent edition of Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard discussed the decision to bring in Steve Austin as The Ringmaster, his pairing with Ted DiBiase, WWE’s plan for The Ultimate Warrior’s return in 1996, and much more. You can read his comments below.

Bruce Prichard on Steve Austin being fired by WCW and the decision to bring him to WWE as The Ringmaster: “Probably the best thing that ever happened to Steve in his career if you were to ask him. He’d tell you he’d probably like to thank Eric Bischoff for making that decision and firing him at that time because it did get Steve off his ass and made Steve motivated to go somewhere else and do something else. No doubt about it, Austin always had it in him to be a top guy. If you were to ask pretty much anyone who had been in the ring with Steve Austin prior to this and anyone that had watched Steve from afar, there was a twinkle in Steve’s eye and you saw that there was no doubt that Steve had the ability to be not just a top guy but the top guy.

“Steve coming in after the stuff he did in ECW and his personality got out, and I think for the underground folks that watched ECW at the time, it was like, ‘Holy shit, you’ve gotta see this’ because Steve was just freestyling on Eric Bischoff and WCW. It was a holy shit kind of deal. But Steve coming in as the Ringmaster, it was a wrestler’s gimmick is how we looked at it and looking for something a little different with Steve. But wanting to bring him in with his own championship right up with the Million Dollar Championship with DiBiase. Give him instant credibility, get him into the mix on top right away because we knew that once Steve got there, he would deliver. You didn’t need to have the normal build because you put him with a guy like DiBiase and it gave him instant credibility.”

On WWE’s plan for bringing back The Ultimate Warrior in 1996: “We knew were negotiating with Warrior and looking at Warrior to come back and trying to figure out what that was gonna look like. It was looking at Warrior as an attraction and not overusing him and trying to say, ‘OK, if he’s going to come back and you’re going to utilize him, what’s the best way to use him?’ The best way in our opinion was not to use this guy every single night at live events or maybe not every pay-per-view but use him judiciously. It was unique thinking in how we’d thought about the business in the past because normally you sign someone, it’s like, ‘OK, let’s go to work.’ If they’re a draw, you get them out there on every show. This was trying to look at an Andre the Giant type attraction with Warrior and utilize him when you needed him.”

If using any of the above quotes, please credit Something to Wrestle with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.