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Bruce Prichard Reveals Why He Hated The Rock & Mankind’s ‘This Is Your Life’ Segment, Who Came Up With The Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection, Being Pissed At Russo

September 8, 2020 | Posted by Blake Lovell
The Rock and Sock Connection - Mick Foley Image Credit: WWE

In a recent edition of Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard discussed The Rock and Mankind’s ‘This Is Your Life’ segment on RAW in 1999, why he hated it, the idea behind the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection, and much more. You can read his comments below.

On why he hated the ‘This is Your Life’ segment with The Rock and Mankind: “I’ve never watched it since I watched it live that night. I was so pissed off. I was pissed off at Russo, I was pissed off at Rock, I was pissed off at Foley, I was pissed off at anybody that was standing in front of me. It went 14 minutes heavy over its allotted time. Bad. Her’s the thing – OK great, after the fact, it did a great rating. But the effect it had on the rest of the television show was horrendous because now you’re having two or three-minute segments and matches are getting cut. Essentially they went two segments over. And that is probably one of my pet peeves a lot of times with writers. Ya know, Russo didn’t care. He didn’t have to rewrite it and he didn’t have to fix it. He was ‘Oh well it was great, bro.’ No, it really wasn’t great. And the after effect that it has on the rest of the show and other talent – talent are pissed off and you’re live. There’s only so much you can do. Yeah, I was pissed off at Rock, I was pissed at Mick, I was pissed at everybody. I just didn’t think it was good and it was disrespectful to the rest of the talent on the show. It was disrespectful to those of us who had to fix it.”

On the idea behind the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection: “I don’t know 100 percent. I think it was Mick Foley’s idea or the germ of Mick’s idea of saying ‘What if’ and it was very similar to what we did with Steve and Mick way back when and the Mankind thing. But this was something that was gonna hopefully have a little bit longer shelf life and both guys had a chemistry and they’d shown they had a chemistry working against each other. So the Rock ‘n’ Sock Connection became – here’s the other side of that coin, these two guys had chemistry and made magic together whether they were against one another or working with each other. Always highly entertaining and always ready to step up to the plate.”

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