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Bruce Prichard On Mick Foley’s First WWE Championship, Tony Shiavone’s Nitro Comments, & Why Vince McMahon Changed His Mind About Foley

 

On What Tony Schiavone Could Have Said Instead:

You can say a whole lot of things. You can say exactly what he did. You can say anything along the lines of, ‘Cactus Jack used to be here,’ and demean him that way, whatever they want to do. My point is Tony was doing what he was told. Tony has a job as a commentator and he is going to follow the orders of the executive producer.

 

On Where This Particular Rock vs Foley Match Ranks In Their Rich History Of Matches:

As far as story, this is one of the greatest ever, just because of the story itself. As far as technical and a match and things like that I go back to the Royal Rumble ‘I Quit’ Match which I absolutely hated [laughter] all the chair shots. That match was incredible and one thing about Rock and Mick is Mick always had Rock beat the living sh*t out of hiim and Rock didn’t have any problem with that.

 

On Fans Anticipating Something Big That Night & Getting The Unexpected In Return:

You’ve got everybody – the top guys – everybody is at ringside. They’re into it and the guys at ringside are into it. The audience is on its feet and they’re into this sh*t, as well. You feel something’s gotta happen and there was usually a feeling that guaranteed by the end of the night sh*t’s going down and we always had sh*t going down. This was something that I don’t think anybody really expected. A lot of times it was the promise of something happening and people thinking, ‘OK, how are they gonna swerve me?’ It’s what it became a lot of times. It became not what’s gonna happen, but what’s gonna be the swerve, what’s gonna be the switch at the end? This one night the swerve was, f*ck man, the baby face does it.

 

On Mick Foley Being The Ultimate Underdog & Outside Interference Not Tarnishing The Victory:

It does [tell the story of the ultimate underdog] and here he is overcoming every single one of the odds. He’s got everybody on the outside fighting against him. He’s fighting the best, who nails him with a belt and no one expects this underdog to actually overcome here, so yes, I don’t think [interference] tarnishes it at all. If you had, the heels out there for example and the babyfaces running out, but it’s almost like equal teams. It’s almost like a tag team match in some ways because you’ve got everybody out there from the beginning and even still the babyfaces are outnumbered.

 

On Why People Tuned In Despite Knowing The Outcome In Advance:

I think even knowing in advance people still had to see it. They had to see how the hell they did it. How did they do it? And you’re not disappointed even when you know. ‘Mick Foley’s gonna win.’ How’s he gonna win? How’s that gonna look? How’s that gonna f*cking play out? On that I think that we definitely delivered.

 

On Mick Foley Deserving To Be WWE Champion:

To me it’s one of the greatest stories in the world because when you take a look at the human beings behind the characters, if there was a human being that deserved it, it was Mick Foley.

On Giving The Audience What They Wanted W/ Unpredictability:

They’re not predicting everything. They’re not sitting there going, ‘OK, I know what’s going to happen.’ Sh*t was unpredictable and I think that’s what the audience wanted. They wanted to be surprised and they wanted to be entertained and in my opinion, this show, that match did exactly that. It entertained and it told one hell of a good story.

 

On How The Show Will Go Down In History:

That will go down as one of the best RAWs of all time.

 

Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard is up for the 2018 WrestleZone Podcast of the Year Award. Readers may vote HERE and can listen to Something to Wrestle in its entirety below:

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