Bruce Prichard talked about the 1989 Royal Rumble on a recent episode of Something To Wrestle. The WWE’s interest in Lex Luger in late 1988, Big John Stuff’s retirement in 1988, Andre’s plans for 1989, and the format of a Royal Rumble match were all topics covered by Prichard. Here are the highlights.
On Vince McMahon’s opinion on Lex Luger in late 1988:
“I don’t think that there was anything ‘oh my god I’ve got to have Lex Luger’ Luger definitely had the look, definitely had the charisma, but I don’t think there was anything there as no overtures made at that time and nobody was saying ‘anybody know Lex? We got to get Lex. We need to talk to Lex let him know we’re interested. There was none of that. Not to my knowledge at that time.”
On Big John Studd retiring in ’88:
“I think he realized when you retire you don’t get paid. You know it wasn’t like he was 65 and was going to collect Social Security. I thought you asked why he came back. I think he was just done. I think he was just burnt out and wanting to get off the road. It was a different business and you worked everyday. Those days off were few and far between, but you wanted to work everyday. The more you worked the more you made. The more you made the more you worked.”
On the plan for Andre in ’89:
“Oh the plan was to get back to Studd and Andre. Yeah, and we did, and John left again. He could not take it. Andre just beat the s*** out of him every night. He didn’t like John. Just his mere presence. I think that’s pretty accurate.”
On structuring the Royal Rumble match:
“Well, at this point in time it was mainly Pat and Vince that would kind of lay everything out and then I would got through it with a television eye and kind of look at things. Only later when I came back in 90s the Rumble was something that Pat was very passionate about and I loved working on the Rumble with Pat. So, the match itself we would sit there and we would write and just try to come up with the stories that you have how they’re represented and then create new stories out of things that could happen in the Royal Rumble match itself. So, once you have all of that laid out then you just kind of put it together. You know it’s like timing to me. Timing is not something and laying out a Royal Rumble is not something that you can just ‘ah, go write me a Royal Rumble.’ It’s not that easy to do it correctly. It’s a feel versus this is how you do it.”
You can check out the complete podcast below:
(h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription)
