WWE Senior Vice President Bruce Prichard recently addressed several topics on an episode of his podcast, “Something to Wrestle With.”
One of the key points he discussed was the authentic off-screen friendship and chemistry between WWE Hall of Famer and NXT executive Shawn Michaels and WWE Chief Content Officer Paul “Triple H” Levesque.
Prichard said, “Absolutely. Look, the two were friends, and they traveled together. They hung out together, and they had great chemistry off-screen. So they were friends, and it’s like guys working against one another. The best of friends are always going to have the best of programs, because they know each other so well, and you can communicate without speaking. And if you know your opponent well enough, you become great friends. And if you know your friend well enough, you become great opponents. They were great friends on screen that made a terrific dynamic. People believed it. They believed that they were best friends. They believed that they were a unit.”
On the theory that DX was a direct response to the nWo:
“You know, I really think it was more of a, ‘Hey, we’re buddies. I’d love to do this on-screen.’ I don’t know that any of it was in direct response to the nWo. It was in the fact that, ‘Hey, this was a new heel faction that was being built.’ It was more so the connection, the friendship, the chemistry that was taking place off-screen. It’s like, “Eh, let’s get that on screen.’ And you let things grow from there. And I think that people look sometimes at similarities and things. And, ‘Well, there’s four guys. So there’s four guys over there, four guys. That’s a copy.’ You know, it’s not always the case and sometimes it’s — but look man, it’s gonna draw comparisons no matter what the f**k you do. But they were on screen — throw Chyna in there too. You know, the three of them traveled together, did everything together and hung out together. So it was just a natural, it was just an extension of what they did off-screen, on-screen.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
