Former WWE Creative Writer Kevin Eck Comments On What Led To Hornswoggle Becoming RAW GM

Former WWE creative writer Kevin Eck has written a new blog post explaining what led to Hornswoggle becoming the anonymous RAW General Manager. Here are highlights:

On his idea for who the RAW GM would be: “My choice for the anonymous one was Kevin Nash. My idea was that Mr. McMahon put Nash in charge of Raw because he wanted someone that would stir things up with both babyfaces and heels.”

On how his idea would work: “The story was that Nash, who was in TNA when the anonymous Raw GM began appearing on Raw, had to keep his identity a secret because he was under contract with another wrestling company. I figured Nash was a logical choice for the role and a big enough name that it wouldn’t be a disappointment. For the reveal, my idea was that one of the wrestlers had learned that the anonymous Raw GM was sending emails from a production truck outside the arena. Inside the truck, the anonymous GM was hidden behind a curtain. As the wrestler approached the curtain, the GM sent an email that said, “Ignore that man behind the curtain.” When the curtain was pulled back, Nash was there in a wizard’s hat, a clever nod to his infamous run as Oz in WCW.”

On the GM angle being dropped: “As it turned out, the anonymous Raw GM story line was dropped without a conclusion the month before I started working for WWE. To my knowledge, there never was a firm plan regarding the identity of the GM. Every now and then during my first several months on the job, someone on the creative team would pitch an idea to tie up the loose end and reveal who the anonymous Raw GM was. I recall that one suggestion was for it to be Shawn Michaels. Whenever we presented one of those ideas to Vince McMahon, he would always shoot them down and say that the audience had moved on and didn’t really care anymore who the anonymous Raw GM was.”

On how it became Hornswoggle: “Recalling how bad it was when the payoff to the story line of Mr. McMahon’s illegitimate son was Hornswoggle, one of the head writers jokingly said during a brain-storming session with the creative team that Hornswoggle should be the anonymous RAW GM. We all started laughing and throwing out suggestions for how it would play out and what the back story would be. It was all so ridiculous that the head writer actually thought it could be a so-bad-it’s-good scenario that Vince just might go for. The idea was that after Hornswoggle was outed as the GM, he’d reveal who he truly was. Saying that his name was Lou Manfredini (the last name of one of the writers), he would speak with a W.C. Fields-like accent, chomp on cigars and refer to women as “dames.” He would say that he hated being the lovable Hornswoggle character, but playing the role was what he had to do to get a job with WWE. Being the anonymous Raw GM gave him the opportunity to mess with all the Superstars that (in his mind) laughed at him because of his size and treated him more like a mascot than a person. We had planned on making Hornswoggle a heel manager going forward. The idea was pitched to Vince, and sure enough, he OK’d it. There was only one problem: Hornswoggle couldn’t pull it off. I was the writer assigned to work with Hornswoggle the night on the reveal on Raw. He did take after take as the Lou Manfredini character backstage, but he still sounded like Hornswoggle. It just wasn’t working, and one of the producers went to Vince and told him so. In Hornswoggle’s defense, it’s not like we gave him weeks to prepare for the role. Vince decided that we would still do the segment, but after Hornswoggle was revealed as the anonymous Raw GM, that would be the end of it. Sadly, Lou Manfredini would never see the light of day. Understandably, Hornswoggle was pretty bummed about it.”

On Vince’s reaction to the angle failing: “So instead of a train wreck segment that could’ve been entertaining, it ended up just being a train wreck. In fact, it was so bad that Vince apologized to Jerry Lawler for involving him in it.”