Bruce Prichard Questions Why Linda McMahon Was A Part Of WWE WrestleMania 2000

WrestleMania 2000 was billed as "a McMahon in every corner," as the main event saw a fatal four-way WWF Championship match featuring Vince, Linda, Shane, and Stephanie each backing one of the four competitors. While three of the four McMahons were active on-screen characters, one stood out among the bunch. Speaking on Something to Wrestle, Bruce Prichard questioned why Linda McMahon was involved in the main event.

"I think when you looked at–the real question is what the hell Linda was doing there more than anything," Prichard said. "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."

On the subject of the McMahons, Prichard dove into Vince and Shane's iconic feud. According to Prichard, the angle was centered around the idea of a business takeover, and Shane naturally made sense as the opponent for Vince.

"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."

Another storyline Prichard touched on was the mysterious brief case angle with Steve Austin. At King of the Ring '99, Austin wrestled Vince in a ladder match that had control of the company at stake. During their contest, the briefcase containing the company control was raised out of reach just as Austin was fingertips away. While it was never revealed who raised the case, Prichard gave he thoughts on who it should have been.

"Well, that's debatable. We all thought it should have been Boss Man," Prichard said. "Obviously, it wasn't and that was kind of during the time that Boss Man was on his way out. Yeah, it was drizzling s–ts."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Something to Wrestle with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.