Freddie Prinze Jr. Recalls Kevin Dunn Killing WWE Pitches Because the Women Weren’t ‘Pretty’

Freddie Prinze Jr. recently discussed working with Kevin Dunn in WWE and how frustrating it could be to see him kill story pitches because the female talent involved wasn’t “pretty.” Prinze discussed working with Vince McMahon, Kevin Dunn and others in the latest episode of his Wrestling With Freddie podcast and noted compared the writing team pitching ideas to Dunn as “throwing sand at a tidal wave.”

Prinze, who worked with WWE on the creative team from 2008 to 2009 and then came back in late 2010 through 2012, talked about the differences between working with McMahon and Dunn and more. You can check out the highlights below, per Fightful:

On the attitude toward the women’s division turing that era: “It’s a very random low-key era where the numbers weren’t great and people missed out on a few wrestlers peaks like the Beth Phoenixs of the world. Like she kind of had her peak. It was at a time where Total Divas wasn’t a thing yet, so the women didn’t get that much love. So if she was gonna get any time as a champion, which she should have had a lot of they’re like, ‘Well, we gotta pair with Santino.’ So then she had like a thing with Santino where they were, they both had a title and Santino would do his comedy stuff and then she would save him when he would like run like a girl. So it was this weird, low-key, under-the-radar time where we were all kind of held hostage by the whims of Vince and Kevin Dunn, man. One guy who loves wrestling right with all his heart, more than his family, more than his dogs, and then this other guy who I never got the sense liked wrestling at all.

On Dunn: “He was trying to turn it into the NFL, or Tyson vs. Holyfield, which is cool, man. But it wasn’t wrestling. So, you just see this room of, they’re probably 20 writers when I worked there, and it was just 20 writers throwing sand against a tidal wave. You could pitch for 20 minutes. Kevin would be like, ‘Well, I don’t think she’s pretty,’ and all of a sudden, like six weeks of story, was just gone. It’s like, ‘Well, our champ has to be pretty.’ it’s like, ‘Yo, do you think Mankind was pretty?’ You could throw out a number of how many less-than-handsome male champions have existed, and I shall exceed it. But it would be dead it would just be dead because he would say one thing.”