WWE Exec Bruce Prichard Looks To Dispel Vince McMahon Misconception

Fans and pundits have long heard stories of creative frustrations under the Vince McMahon regime. The rumor had always been that McMahon often took fully realized episodes of his shows and completely scrapped them hours before airtime, forcing the writers to scramble for new storylines and segments, sometimes even during the show itself.

But on a recent "Something to Wrestle" podcast, Bruce Prichard tried to shift blame away from McMahon on the issue of in-show changes, stating that he was usually responsible for those.

"I did that more than Vince McMahon ever has," Prichard said. "I probably have done it more in a year than Vince McMahon has in a lifetime. Because that's what I do when we're live and we have to rearrange because of timing or because of injuries. People don't understand it, because they think that, 'Oh, you got control over everything,' but you don't have control over someone getting hurt. Sometimes you don't have control over someone going 18 minutes heavy in a segment ... 18 minutes is the equivalent of three segments on the show that you have to make up. You still have to take those commercial breaks. You still have to make all this work."

Many on the WWE writing team have lamented "writing for an audience of one" when McMahon was in charge, given that his mind could change depending on which way the wind was blowing. Prichard attempted to defend the longstanding narrative of McMahon tearing up scripts last minute.

"There was a need, maybe, in his mind, [that] until that show is on the air, live, you have an opportunity to make it better," Prichard said. "Now, that's all relative and that's all personal feeling. I think that the general feeling was that we can make it better, and you're going to keep going and relook at it until it's on the air."