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Bruce Prichard on How Vince McMahon Handled Running WWE During the Looming Steroid Trial of 1994
– During the latest edition of his Something to Wrestle podcast, Bruce Prichard discussed WrestleMania 10 and the business that was going on at WWE at the time, including Vince McMahon facing legal issues with the steroid trial of 1994. Below are some highlights.
Bruce Prichard on how the US government came after WWE, Vince McMahon, and the business in 1994: “You know, I think the fact that we were still doing business in some respects was grand because the government was trying to do anything and everything they could to disrupt the business. They were attacking people, employees, within the company. They were trying to find anybody that they could to just say something bad. If you had something bad to say about Titan Sports or Vince McMahon, they wanted to talk to you, and they wanted to try to spin whatever that was into their case to portray this big, bad company as the evil empire. Throughout this whole thing, I think there were folks on both sides who thought, “OK. We’re going to fight. We’re gonna get through this,” and those that thought, “Oh my god. It’s the end of the world. Chicken Little. The sky is falling.” But the government did everything they could. I mean, god, they went after us. They went after us personally in a lot of respects. It was a fight that I don’t know a lot of people would’ve come out the way that we did.”
Prichard on how the threat of the looming trial influenced Vince McMahon in putting together WrestleMania 10: “Being as close to it as I was, I don’t know that there really was that much of a difference from the previous year and years past. Yes, there was kind of a dark cloud hanging over and looming over wherever you went. It was almost like Linus or Schroeder or whoever the f*** it was on Charlie Brown. But Vince was adamant that it wasn’t going to affect business. We had to continue on, and we had to do business and what was best for business at the time. While we had that edict, there were still certain things that you couldn’t do, and there were still certain restraints on budget and what have you.”
“So, you’re careful, and you’re thinking for a lot of people on the outside of the company who didn’t want to be associated with the WWF. They thought, ‘OK. Well god, we don’t want to touch them.’ We were this ostracized child over here that no one wanted to touch. That was fighting an uphill battle, but you just persevere. You put your head down and you keep going forward. So myself, I think Pat [Patterson], Vince, it was — maybe it bothered us. Maybe it did affect us, but we never sold it. And we kept going as if it’s business as usual.”
Prichard on what the legal issues changed: “I’ll tell you what changed. We didn’t have the availability to bring in outside talent. We didn’t have the availability to sign new talent because Vince didn’t feel confident in saying, ‘Hey, here’s our future.’ That stopped for a while as far as trying to bring in new talent and recruiting. Other than that, he was fighting for his life. He was fighting for his life on one front with the government, and on the other front on the business side, staying and trying to conduct business as usual. And as hard as it was, you still had to come in and just do your job and do the best that you could to continue. And you couldn’t let the outsider — those who lived it, yes, we had a lot of s*** on us, but you just had to forget about it. You had to move on because when you know the truth about things, and you read the newspaper and it’s full of untruths and just likes that they were telling about the company, and about Vince and about people that you know and have done business with. It was just just horses*** in so many ways, that you just go, ‘F*** ’em.’ And you move on because what you were reading out there wasn’t real in our world, so you just keep forging forward and move ahead.”
If using the above quotes, please use a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.