WWE Senior Vice President Bruce Prichard recently took to an episode of his โSomething To Wrestle Withโ podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including WWE Hall of Famer “Stone Cold” Steve Austin being the leader of the Alliance.
Prichard said, โYou know, I did [like it] from this vantage point: we got to do different stuff, and we got to do different things. And you got to feel โ you know, once Steve really understood, โTheyโre not going to let you turn heel, man. Theyโre going to love you and love everything you do.โ We started playing, and we got to play with this character from the standpoint of, Steve did comedy. Steve was just completely off the cuff. And even when he would do bad comedy and laugh at himself, that was funny s**t because people didnโt get it. So it was different, it was different than what he had been. So for that, I liked it.โ
On WWE losing momentum in 2001 after purchasing WCW:
โYeah, because we had โ look, we had a completely different plan coming out of WrestleMania. We had a plan of Steve and Triple H running roughshod over everybody and being the main focus. And it just kind of blew up as soon as soon as Hunter tore his quad, and heโs out. And the Invasion, you have a vision, you have hope anyway. I donโt know if there was so much a vision as there was a hope that this WCW thing, with talent that came in from WCW after the buyout, was going to be accepted. And that the audience would believe them as a threat and that the audience wanted to see them. Instead, we got the guys that the audience didnโt want to see, which was evident while they were at WCW. They certainly werenโt making any changes or big waves in WCW at the time. So what would make you think they were going to make waves coming up here? And they didnโt, and it just wasnโt good.โ
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)