Bruce Pritchard explains how WWE ruined former WWE Champion’s character. The WWE Executive Director did not held back with his discourse.
Charcters in Wrestling today are very different from what they were in the past. Sure there are still some over the top characters, but most of them are realistic with relatable goals and ambition. A couple of decades back however, wrestlers were meant to be larger than life.
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However, when it came to Diesel, the WWE decided to highlight who Kevin Nash, the man playing the part, was instead of adding to his badass aura and mystique. According to WWE Executive Director Bruce Pritchard, this was what eventually killed off the character and should never have been done.
Bruce Pritchard explains how WWE ruined Kevin Nash, a former WWE Champion’s character
During a recent edition of Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard, he discussed the moment Nash’s character siezed being Diesel.
“Well, I don’t think it was necessarily working, and it goes back to day one of ‘okay, here’s Diesel and he’s your champion, and we want him to be this big babyface, so he is going to lead everybody in prayer and then, let’s sing you know, ‘Ho, ho, ho Green, no, what’s the song? We wish you a Merry Christmas; we wish you, yeah!’ And he seized being Diesel.
“It became, (mimics Jim Ross) ‘Well, Kevin Nash, Diesel is Kevin Nash. He was at the East Tennesy playing Basketball, and what a quarter he had that one time when he scored four points.’ All of sudden, everything I loved about Diesel went away because he became Kevin Nash from East Tennessee University and a Basketball player.”
“Everything that was cool about him went away because somebody felt, ‘God damn, we’ve got to credentials. You’ve got to have credentials. You’ve got to have a real story about these guys; he could have been a two-and-a-half-time All-American.’ Nobody gives a fu** about that sh**.
“They thought Diesel was cool; he kicked people’s aes. When he seized to become Diesel, what the fu, you know, when you figure that you mid-term, it’s like, ‘Ah!’ The audience overall, they were intrigued by Diesel. They weren’t intrigued by Kevin Nash at this point in time.”
We killed him right there
Pritchard added that a promotion’s top star was not meant to be relatable but to be admired.
“I remember begging almost not to do that God damn sit-down interview they did way back. ‘Tell me about your college career? Tell me about Kevin?’ We killed him right there. In that moment, we killed what we had spent all that time building. That’s the 100% truth.”
“Pushing that, in order to have a champion people would believe in, you had to give them real things to believe in. You had to tell them a real story, but yet not one time would you sit there and fu***** take Hulk Hogan. ‘And now tell me, Terry? When you were in the band, you played bass, right?’ The fu** would anyone bring that up and why. Why do you want to?
“Diesel was a character; Kevin Nash was a person. The audience was in love with the character. They didn’t know the person. You keep the person mysterious and a mystique. When he becomes just like your buddy who went to college in East Tennessee and played the year on the team, what’s special about him anymore? I could relate to him. You don’t want people to relate to your top megastar.”
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