WWE Hall of Famer Jim Ross discussed his experience with the WWE creative team in 1995 during an episode of his podcast, “Grilling JR.”
Ross said, “Bruce [Prichard] was in them more often than not. Patterson was in them more often than not. Because Pat pulled back from all of his administrative duties. He didn’t do payroll, he didn’t do all — he did help write TV. And after time went by, I did the booking of that live events, and Pat just did TV.”
He continued, “So that settled things in a little bit, because we all had a job and something to do that was important and had a deadline. When you do first run TV man, the motor never stops. And if Vince is having a good day, then we all had a good day. If Vince is being interrupted too many times, or you got bad news on a phone call, etc. then none of us had a good day. That’s when you’d order lunch and dinner on two different trips at the deli, because it was the closest thing to decent food. Homemade bread. Bruce and I loved it because we could eat whatever the hell we wanted.”
Ross added, “Patterson was the same, basically. But we all have bad eating habits, and we knew those days are going to be bitches, going to be tough, but they had to get done.”
On Vince going over creative and changing it:
“I remember many times when we were going on the road and had we thought that TV was done. And then Vince would read it over a few times, decide he didn’t like it. So when we flew into the TV town the night before the show, we went to his room to rewrite television that we thought we’d finished yesterday. So it could get frustrating, especially when you’re in a creative mode. And the other thing about this is he’ll say, ‘I want so-and-so and so-and-so to wrestle, or to have an angle or do an interview.’ Well, we’d look on our travel information, and they weren’t booked. So all of a sudden, now you’re in a higher airplane ticket rate. There’s no advance purchase. Sometimes you get to TV and you say, ‘Oh s**t, we didn’t call this guy.’ So we had to get on the phone and call the guy who thought he had a day off and fly in the day of into the TV town, and do Superstars and Challenge and all that stuff. So it was just days before the live show, but it was interesting. I’m glad that little deli was just down the street.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
