Bruce Prichard revealed on a new Something To Wrestle With podcast that Vince Russo and Ed Ferrara pitched an idea in the late 90’s for Bruce to return to WWE TV on Raw as Kane’s manager.
“We actually had an idea for me to come back and end up managing Kane with dark red hair… Now, this was 1997-ish, maybe ’98, so it had to be right after that [Kane debuted at Badd Blood in October 1997]. Shortly after that. But the idea was that my hair was red, basically, the color of Undertaker’s hair and the idea was that I was going to come back under the auspices of helping the Undertaker feud with his brother Kane.
We would basically do a kind of a switch, but after the promos, Vince [McMahon], classic Vince. Can tell you that you’re a piece of shit and that it really sucks by telling you how great you are. Then you walk away feeling good but just shit all over. [Immitating McMahon] Goddamnit pal, that’s not a heel promo, that’s a babyface promo. Goddamn that was strong. Strong, Strong. Way to go.”
Fightful transcribed Prichard’s comments. Prichard also questioned having Linda McMahon involved in the Vince McMahon vs. Shane McMahon match and storyline from WrestleMania 17.
“I think when you looked at–the real question is what the hell Linda was doing there more than anything. Linda was the reluctant performer of the group and as we’ll see a year later in the storyline with Linda in the wheelchair, Linda stole the show in the group.
Linda was the one you looked at the most and said, ‘Ah, which one doesn’t belong here in the performing area?’ It was something I don’t think [she] enjoyed doing, but the rest of them, it kind of was peanut butter and jelly. They fit like a glove in the business. They were just naturals. They belong.”
He also said about Shane vs. Vince and getting the WCW sale involved, “Well, I think when you look at storylines and you look at hostile takeovers and what have you with family members a lot of times,” Prichard said. “It happens every day in big business. So, the idea was to have one of his family members actually go down and scoop it out from under him.
The logical person at that point was Shane because we had the match coming up with Vince and Shane at WrestleMania. It was able to feed into that storyline and later on, Stephanie with ECW and what have you. The kids vs. the dad scenario that came up from that, but Shane was a strong character.
There was back in crazy days of scenarios of ‘what if’s’, of ‘what if we bought WCW?’ and ‘what if we ran as a completely separate entity?’,” Prichard said. “Just those kind of scenarios took us back to Shane being the one to buy it out from Vince and if Vince only knew that Shane got it for $350 instead of the $295 that Vince was offering, then I bet Vince would’ve gone to $360.”
