Bruce Prichard Blasts WWE’s “Worst Idea Ever”
Bruce Prichard has recalled how difficult it was to be part of one of the worst ideas in WWE history.
The “Billionaire Ted” skits aired on WWE television in early 1996 as a way to counter WCW, which had gone right after WWE by putting WCW Monday Nitro on the air in September 1995 to counter WWE Monday Night Raw.
Those Billionaire Ted “comedy” segments were done to insult WCW’s owner, Ted Turner, while also introducing characters like The Huckster (Hulk Hogan) and the Nacho Man (“Macho Man” Randy Savage). Since Hogan and Savage were WWE guys who jumped to WCW, WWE’s idea for comedy was to mock them for being too old as guys in their 40s who were still wrestling.
On the WrestleMania 12 pre-show, The Huckster and Nacho Man had a match in which both of them “died,” because, in the WWE comedy world, people dying in a ring is supposedly funny. It was obviously a parody, but it certainly was in bad taste as well.
Bruce Prichard is a longtime WWE employee who has spent most of the last decade as an Executive Director. From the mid-1980s until 2008, he was also part of the creative team and served in other roles.
During a recent episode of his Something To Wrestle podcast, Bruce Prichard explained how much he hated the Billionaire Ted skits.
“Quite possibly one of the worst ideas I’d ever heard. And this is also where all the geniuses of the Billionaire Ted skits bailed out. [David] Sahadi couldn’t be found for miles anywhere near this, didn’t want to touch it. Nobody did. Vince didn’t even want to touch it. He promoted the goddamn thing, put it out there, but nobody wanted to touch it.”
When Bruce Prichard was approached about overseeing the Huckster/Nacho Man match, he suggested they just cancel it since everybody knew it was so bad.
“And it was, ‘Bruce, need you to make this thing happen.’ And this, gave me an overview of kind of, Here’s what I want.’
I was like, ‘Why don’t we just cancel it? Why don’t we just say billionaire Ted, Huckster, Nacho are all dead and not going to happen something, anything? Just don’t do this. Please God, don’t do it.’”
“Everybody Was Ecstatic It Was Over” – Bruce Prichard
The fans watching didn’t like the Billionaire Ted skits, and according to Bruce Prichard, the feeling in WWE was ecstasy when the skits were finally done.
“I think everybody was happy. I think everybody was ecstatic that it was over. And by that time, I think had a different Huckster at that point in the match. Was different than the one we had used all the other time because he had to work. It was embarrassing. It was really embarrassing, it was not good.
I may be able to watch it now and chuckle at it. But at the time — and again, because nobody wanted to touch it. All the geniuses thought it was so funny in the beginning, nobody wanted to touch it. Vince was like, ‘No no, just — Bruce, just go get it over with.’
“And I did, by God, I killed all of them, killed every single last one of them. And used every — took all the s**t, the shoe and everything that they had done, and rolled it all into one. And shot it right there in the studio. Didn’t have to leave anywhere, anything.
And brought some people that weren’t working, and ‘Come on out and sit.’ And, ‘let’s go. Just go.’ Just not a lot of reshoots. Just do. ‘This, get some cutaways, put it together, next.’”