Former Smackdown Creative Head Says He Suggested Randy Savage for the Hall of Fame

On the creative teams thoughts about being told to come up with ideas for using Eddie Guerrero’s death: “It was awkward, and this is true universally for the writing team. Every single week on both shows, we were, like, ‘Isn’t this too much? Come on. Isn’t this too much?’ Vince’s reaction was, ‘God damn. Eddie would want this. This is what we’re doing and this is where we’re going with it.’ Every single time — from Rey (Mysterio) dedicating his victory at the Royal Rumble and competing at WrestleMania, the Randy (Orton) promo, running him down for No Way Out — all of those things are things that Vince said Eddie would want. He truly believes this. I don’t think it was just for business because he certainly heard from all of us ‘isn’t this too much’ a lot.”

On what made Vince stop doing it: “Time, I guess? I think after Rey won the title? No, because we kept the program going with the Chavo (Guerrero)/Rey stuff after that. In my time there, he didn’t stop I guess. [laughs] That’s the best way to say it. By the time I left, right before the beginning of 2007, I guess we were still using it.”

On Rey Mysterio jobbing out during his first title run: “It was awful. [laughs] My biggest regret from my time writing and my time as head writer is the way we treated Rey. Vince had this image in his head of Rey being a very much, underneath guy. ‘Gosh, I’m so lucky to be champion’ guy. He decided that and we — and I — tried to do my best to give Vince what he wanted but try to keep it on Rey and I wish I had worked harder on it. I knew at the time that this wasn’t going to work. You can’t make a champion out of a guy that thinks he’s won the lotto and that made Rey so weak. Don’t get me wrong. I loved working with King Booker and working on that angle. I thought it was fantastic. We just wanted to do that much later in the year at, like, Survivor Series and it felt rushed. It felt like it didn’t do a good service to Rey and it’s one of the few things I worked on there — even some of the pretty bad things — that I regret not working harder on and fighting for Rey to get a better run.”

On producing the Trish Stratus/Mickie James segments: “That’s the flip-side of this. Of all the stuff I contributed to, it’s one of the things I’m — by far — the most proud of there. They’re both extraordinarily talented women. Brian (Gewirtz), who co-wrote a lot of those sequences with me, was on top of his game. We did some stuff that still lives on my demo reel. The ‘Temple To Trish’ deal with Mickie in her locker room had been all done up as a temple to Trish Stratus. It’s still one of my favorite things.”

On the current Diva storylines: “I think the ‘Pinup Strong’ thing that Beth (Phoenix) and Natalya were doing was so freaking good, and then they split them up and do the stupid fart thing. But I really felt like there was something there and that you could turn either one of them and have another great program. But, you know, that didn’t happen. I believe that whether it’s knockouts or divas — or Shimmers especially — women’s wrestling can draw. What we did with the Mickie and Trish program absolutely proves that. We were getting show opener’s and mid-point cross over segments. We were doing great in the ratings. We were drawing money throughout that program. You’d think the lesson would be — here, we can tie this in to a Triple H thing. You would think that the lesson would be, ‘Oh, women can draw. Let’s keep the women’s division strong. We can continue to draw.’ Or, you can take the approach of one of the things that Hunter said, which was, ‘Giving them all this time; doesn’t that take away from the men?’ You’re just like, ‘You douche. You are a part of the same company. It’s your own business, for crying out loud!'”

On why Divas aren’t given the chance anymore: “Vince doesn’t think anybody can be Trish and Lita right now. I’m not saying that’s the case, I have no idea. Therefore, he de-elevates the division so that it’s nothing but eye-candy. Then he says, ‘God damn. Why don’t I have a Trish? I can’t push anything until I have one of them.’ You’ve got to let them build. Beth and Natalya and Kharma, when she gets back, and I even think Tamina and AJ and a few of the other women could really be strong workers. And for God’s sake, I’m begging him to watch a Shimmer show to show (him) how some awesome story telling can lead to some really good matches that audiences are completely into. Or just go back and watch the Mickie/Trish angle. They could be doing so much more with that division and it’s incredibly frustrating as a fan of women’s wrestling to see how they just drop the ball again and again and again.”

On his favorite angles he worked on: “I really loved doing Palmer Cannon and the new talent initiative when we changed networks (to UPN). Palmer Cannon was this network executive who came in. It really was Brian (Mailhot) and he was really fun to work with. The network had decided that it had control of the show and it was going to make Teddy (Long) go through the show and do a new talent initiative. We brought in The Boogeyman and all of these Mexican minis. It was absolute chaos and super-duper fun and ended much too soon, I say. It was really the two or three segments a week that were related to that. We had this outside character that could order anything — we could just do the craziest s–t for no reason whatsoever. It was fantastic.”

On Smackdown being deliberately pushed into “B-brand” status after Brock Lesnar left: “If you were to ask Vince or Steph right now, they would probably give you the same answer they gave us at the time. Both Dave Lagana and I at times when they raided us for talent, would say, ‘We’re always going to be the B show if you treat us like the farm team. Don’t you want us to pull more eye balls?’ And I think, to some degree, that’s not the case. I think they do, for whatever weird reason — several times back when I was there, Smackdown drew bigger audiences. Bigger live audiences than Raw drew. Almost immediately when that happens, all of a sudden, talent gets raided and it really does feel like you’re working for the triple A team for Raw. You build a guy, you get him over and then he goes to Raw.”

On Mark Henry’s de-push: “Yeah, it really bugs me. I kind of have the feeling that I suspect Punk will retain at WrestleMania and I would not be at all surprised if Mark Henry would be a long-term presence. Because they did a little taste of the match back in November. You could see in terms of the big-man-little-man dynamic, they could do just an awesome man vs. monster match. So, I’m hoping they’re going to rebuild Henry and get him there…From what I understand, Mark got hurt so they needed to take the title off of him because he needed time to recover. Then let him go and take time to recover. Don’t have him going out every week and being beaten to get guys over. Mark had just gotten over as the unstoppable monster as it was. He got through the program with Orton and then he got hurt. You could have easily got him out and had him come back like a house of fire at WrestleMania. You could have done any number of things. But, no. You had to go completely tear the guy down and now — if you are rebuilding him — you’re starting from a much lower place then if he just lost the title to Daniel Bryan, disappeared for three months and now he’s back and killing people. I just think they’ve done a terrible disservice to a guy who drew almost half a million new viewers to Smackdown! during a traditionally down period in the fall.”

On Randy Savage: “I actually did (pitch Randy Savage ideas). I was never told [not to do that] in so many words. I had no clue. I’ve heard all the same stories, none of which I will repeat. I have no clue and I know there are a ton of mutually exclusive stories which makes me think. Urban legend. But, when we were talking about Hall of Fame for WrestleMania 22, we were all asked to write lists and I absolutely put Savage on that list. Nobody said anything about it but it was surely made plain, ‘No.’ It was just a flat no. Then, I can’t remember who it was, maybe it was Hayes. He said, ‘Yeah. Next year, don’t do that.'”