Episode 505: The Great American Bash 2008 REMIX
🎧 Listen to the full episode on Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard
Jim Ross 2008 Draft
You're on one show, and you're on the premiere show, because you're the premier play-by-play guy. And then they just draft. Don't tell you. All my years, my tenure in the company, they draft me without telling me. We didn't tell anybody. And, you know, wanted a genuine reaction. We got it.
The feeling was for the product, literally for the product, the best reaction with JR is if it's a surprise. I'm not sure that you would have gotten that emotion and to me, I think that emotion was excellent because he cared.
CM Punk Money in the Bank cash-in
It was very controversial. And it was controversial because I don't think that Punk had a lot of people in the locker room that were really pro-Punk. You know, it's a polarizing figure.
WWE release practices
I've always hated from day one, always hated the 'creative has nothing for you.' That was, in my opinion, a cheap way to have to let someone go. Sometimes you just have to say, look, man, we're making cuts.
CM Punk World Heavyweight Championship win
In an effort to shake things up, you want to see surprise on people's faces. You want to see genuine reactions. Have a camera backstage when Punk won the title. There were those like what the hell are you doing? There were those who were happy for him.
McMahon's Millions
The whole idea behind the McMahon's Millions was viewership for people to walk in money. Vince was going to give away a million dollars. Since we were a publicly traded company, he took it out of his personal account and literally it was actually Vince's million dollars and gave it away.
The Dirt Sheet / Social media
It was Miz and Morrison that started all that. It was Miz and Morrison that said, hey, they're not going to do it for me. I'm going to do it on my own, and I'll show you. They would come to me each week and go, hey, Bruce, look at how much, how many people watched our shit? Son of a bitch. Okay, cool.
Shelton Benjamin's ceiling
I think when we take a look with the benefit of hindsight, I think a lot of fans like myself would say man, Shelton Benjamin was incredible. But I think he was missing the connection with the audience. And that's really all there is to it.
Hispanic demographic strategy
Not to covet, not to cater to the Hispanic audience, my opinion, not good business. So yes, we were very cognizant of it and always trying to grow it as best that we can. I think having Eddie Guerrero, where we had Eddie at the time, Ray following that, it was definitely a conscious effort.
Talent creative input
When all the talent does is complain and moan that this doesn't work, that sucks, this sucks, then that's a bad input. And with Shawn and with Jericho both, they had input. They had specific things they wanted to do and worked with the team to be able to get everything out there.
Second generation talent
Nepotism, if anything, probably would have been what took so long. I don't think that a lot of times that second generation talent in the beginning... they don't always make it because they're being compared to what came before them.
