The Royals are in Arizona for spring training, which is fortunate for Metro Sports anchor Chris Gough. That's because so is WrestleMania XXVI, the Super Bowl of professional wrestling.
Gough is a former creative writer for World Wrestling Entertainment, and he'll be at University of Phoenix Stadium Sunday to see the show live. I talked with Gough this week about what it was like working with WWE head honcho Vince McMahon and building to the company's biggest show of the year and his thoughts on this year's matches, headlined by the return of Bret "Hitman" Hart to take on McMahon and Shawn Michaels putting his career on the line versus The Undertaker's 17-0 WrestleMania undefeated streak.
After the jump, excerpts from our conversation.
The Pitch: What years were you there working on WrestleMania?
Gough: I was with the company every year from '99 to '03, but for 'Mania, on the writing team, I only did [WrestleMania] X8 because I didn't make it to 19. She [Stephanie McMahon] fired me two weeks before 'Mania. But I had worked on everything leading up to it. It was The Rock [against Hulk] Hogan.
... The other years, I was basically there with them for WrestleManias
15, 16, 17 working for the Web site and doing their Webcasts the whole
week.
Did you get a sense of how a WrestleMania card is put together?
Like I said, I didn't make it to WrestleMania XIX,
but I was more closer to the inner circle for XIX. You basically build
from the bottom up. Vince McMahon personally puts all of his work and
his focus on the main event, which obviously makes sense. And
basically, everything after that falls into place. My dealings with him
though, he focused 99.9 percent on what the main event is going to be,
which that year technically that was Hogan-Vince, but it was also [Kurt} Angle-[Brock] Lesnar as
well. A lot of times it's easier if you have a lot of co-main events
that get the same level of love. I think Vince probably saw
Angle-Lesnar as the box office match of the pay per view.
Do they solicit your ideas? Do they send out an e-mail and say,
'What's your WrestleMania card look like?' How does that even begin?
I
would say probably right after Survivor Series [in November] it kicks
in. Even after WrestleMania the year prior, Vince is already working on
what the main event is going to be the next year. ... When I was there
leading up to XIX, it was basically like because WCW was gone, because
we have like carte blanche of anybody that's available in terms of big
names of the past. You can basically start throwing out names and dream
matches that you would like to see. Hogan-Vince obviously that year was
one because Vince had obviously been a wrestler for a while so that one
came to fruition.
Of course, there's always like matches that
a person is either not physically able to do it, such as an ["Stone
Cold" Steve] Austin-Hogan ... where Austin's neck was too messed up to
come back and work a match with Hogan. But you start off with dream
matches, and at this point, there's not a lot left.
You had
["Nature Boy" Ric] Flair-Shawn [Michaels], which happened years later.
People still have Rock-blank. Rock-Shawn. Rock-Vince. Whatever. Who
knows if he'll eventually come back. I think that he eventually will.
But you start with dream matches, and you work on that and after a
while Vince probably has to schmooze the egos of the two big names that
he wants to put together and hopefully, at the end of the day, you can
get them together to agree on some kind of a finish for a WrestleMania
match. But through the years, I know they've had problems getting
finishes and the matches didn't happen.
I imagine it's a lot easier when Vince is in one of those matches.
Because Vince isn't stupid. He knows better than to put himself over
like a huge star. If anyone thinks there's a shot he's going to beat
Bret Hart, it'd make zero sense. To me, it'd make no sense to beat Bret
Hart. But I guess it's always possible if they want to build to next
month or something. 'Mania used to be ... where angles and story lines
culminated and ended, but because of the process and with angles and
pay-per-views every three weeks, it doesn't seem as final. It really
can't be with the amount of the stuff that they need to keep going
forward with.
This year is a little more of that. You have Undertaker and Michaels wrapping up in some way, and maybe Vince and Bret.
This
year you have a unique situation where you have two matches with four
people ... who have been talking about retirement, have been retired,
worked very limited schedules. This year, you definitely have two
matches that are going to be that way.
Bret is one of the
three guys that I never knew that we'd see back in WWE. Obviously,
that's a big deal to get Bret to come back. The only two guys to that
point now are Macho Man and Ultimate Warrior. ... And with his physical
limitations, he's not going to be around for very long. And this is
good for him, too. He gets to give back to his fans and end it on a
note that he wants to as opposed to the way it ended.
Shawn and 'Taker have been talking about retiring for years. That's
what's so intriguing about that match because it has been a situation
where Shawn, I thought he was done 10 or 11 years ago, and he's been
back working a pretty regular schedule for the last eight or nine
years. And 'Taker, he's getting up there in his 40s. He's a big guy.
Harder on a big guy than it is a small guy. So, I know a lot of people
assume that 'Taker keeps the streak and Shawn Michaels retires, but I
don't know. I don't know if I'd like that or not. ... If 'Taker wins it
both times after last year's phenomenal match where Shawn, I don't know
how many super kicks he gave [Undertaker] until he finally lost. Two or
three? But if Shawn does lose, it has to be in spectacular fashion,
which Shawn is usually pretty good with.
Do you think this is the end for Shawn Michaels?
You
know, he's talked about it for a longtime. ... He's my all-time
favorite wrestler. It's great that he got his start here in Kansas
City. That's always cool to think that he's been going on for 25 years
when he first started in KC. But he's still one of the consistently top
five box office guys in the company, and if he does retire, I can still
see him occasionally coming back for a big match. When he quasi retired
before, he came back in the commissioner role, so it didn't seem right
that he didn't have any kind of in ring ability. ... I don't know. He's
talked about it. It's rumored. I"m assuming that's what's probably
going to happen. But as in retirement matches in WWE or wrestling in
general don't last very long. I see him retiring like Mick Foley did.
Take some time off, come back for some big matches down the road.
When you were on the team doing the writing, was "The Streak" talked about at that point?
Oh
yeah. Gone are the days of the streaks in wrestling. If you went back
20 years, you had Tatanka, Mr. Perfect, still unbeaten. And ... the
Goldberg streak was a huge streak as well. But to be able to win for
almost two decades ... at WrestleMania is a pretty big deal. But so is
Shawn Michaels' career. So I guess if you're going to book that match,
I'd assume that you'd have 'Taker go over and Shawn retires because you
can always take back retirement. But you can't take back a loss in the
streak.
Was Bret Hart's name brought up much when you were writing?
When
I was on the team, it actually was brought up. But I believe he had his
stroke prior to me being on the team, trying to remember when that was,
but I know he was off WCW in 2000, 2001 because of the whole Goldberg
concussion thing. And then he had this mini-stroke or whatever. It had
been discussed to have Bret come back and have that as a possibility.
That was always open. Vince never disliked Bret. It was always the
other way around. So we had to talk Bret into doing. And even back
then, they were talking about putting [Bret's father] Stu Hart or even
Bret himself in the Hall of Fame, but I think that at that time Bret
had sort of told Vince that he didn't feel comfortable physically. He
was still showing the effects of what he'd gone through medically, so
he didn't want to come back at that point. But the crack was open then.
But it made sense when I heard that he was coming back. After
he wrote his book, and another crack was when they let Bret come back
and do his three DVD set that he put out a few years ago.
What were some of the main story lines that you worked on leading into WrestleMania?
was the Brock Lesnar-Kurt Angle thing was the big dream match there.
You have two legitimate bad asses going at it where there are
legitimate amateur backgrounds. There's a legendary match that took
place behind-the-scenes where Angle actually got the better of Brock,
amateur wrestling-style, and I believe beat him in a possible
submission match at the time. Even through they were friends and allies
because they both enjoyed having the legitimate wrestling background
and they both respected one another, it got to the point where there
was some big-time competition brewing between the two of them because
of each of them having different qualifications. Him being a gold
medalist and Brock being a monster of a human being unlike of anything
I've seen in wrestling.
The Hogan-Vince match was coming
together before I left as well because Hogan had come in, been with the
NWO and turned into the red-and-yellow again after he turned face
basically after WrestleMania X8 ... It was just another one of those
matches that had to happen when you knew Vince was open to working and
putting some of these guys over that he had a legendary battle with.
Hogan-Vince was one of the top of list outside of Hogan-Austin, which
has never been done.
...
of the divisions that I was working on was the women's division. ... We
had Victoria and Trish Stratus going through hardcore matches leading
up to a triple threat at 'Mania. ...The women's championship match was
one that I personally worked on a lot as well and I actually thought,
back then, that the women's division was getting over as more of a
legit competition. I was proud of being apart of that. The women were
getting over as sort of legitimate bad asses I guess. They were doing
the hardcore type stuff and the women's division was showcased in a
different way.
...
As a worker in WWE, and being a part of
it, not part of the writing team but being like a producer for all of
their web stuff, WrestleMania 17 was definitely the best WrestleMania.
But second only to WrestleMania III, in my opinion. They're both good
in their own ways -- old school, new school -- but 17 set a benchmark
for the new generation. Everything there was great. You had Vince vs.
Shane [McMahon]. You had the gimmick battle royal, which is a throwback
to the old school. You had Rock vs. Austin. I believe Jericho had a
title match on there. ... That was one of the best. I believe Kurt
Angle and [Chris] Benoit had a match too. That card is great.
What's the atmosphere like leading up to this event? Is there a lot of pressure as a member of the writing team?
There
is a lot of pressure because you know that it's the biggest show of the
year. At that point, there's a lot of focus on how many pay-per-view
buys that you're going to be getting. They're always shooting to get to
a half-a-million to a million mark. Can we get a million pay-per-view
buys? Which in wrestling is pretty unheard of. ... It is a lot of
pressure, and knowing that this is the show and all the fans look at it
as the show and so it's going to end some rivalries and begin some new
ones. It's definitely harder than any other month there. ...
WrestleMania takes a minimum of four to six months of formulating what
you think is going to be on that card. It's the only real super card
left in America. There used to be more super cards back in the day
where you could build, build, build and have a huge blow off. But with
all the WWE shows that they have and the hours of programming, it's
hard to get jacked up for any big show besides WrestleMania. ... That
can literally make or break the entire year for WWE. If they had a bad
WrestleMania and nobody cared about any of the matches, that would
really, really hurt their domestic year.
Is there any time to comedown after the show?
Another
thing we planned out for WrestleMania, Vince had a condo -- and by
condo, I mean mansion -- in Boca Raton, Florida, and we'd go down
there, and we stayed for like a week there. It was to take us out of
the corporate setting in Stamford, and plan the big things that we
wanted to do for WrestleMania. So that was another big prep thing that
you didn't do any other time but that time of the year.
As far
as the comedown, there was a huge party wherever the show is, and all
the boys are there, Vince. Everybody's just celebrating, usually pretty
happy about how everything went. It's a big load off everybody once
it's done and everything goes well. But like everything in WWE, it just
keeps chugging along. After the weekend, you still have Raw the next
night. And that Raw has always been a significantly big Raw because so
that's sort of the beginning of the next chapter, the next year. It
just continues. It's like winning a big game in the playoffs. You can
celebrate it for a few hours, but then it's, OK, back to work.
Are you looking forward to this year's card?
is the first year in a while that I've been looking forward to
WrestleMania. A lot more than normal. There's been some big matches in
the last five years, but I say this might be my most anticipated
WrestleMania since 17 or pry X8. I'm a huge Shawn Michaels and
Undertaker fan because I'm an old school fan. Any time those guys
wrestle, it's great. I've actually always been a huge Bret Hart fan
too, and the culmination of all the years of being a fan and
understanding what the Bret Hart-Vince rivalry is and Shawn
Michaels-Undertaker doing in 2010. Triple H is shockingly taking a
backseat this year at WrestleMania taking Sheamus. It's still a bigger
match but definitely not top of the card for him. ... I've really been
into Batista's character. I love him as a heel now, and I think that's
hilarious. I've never been a big Batista fan but now I am more. ... And
I love the CM Punk-[Rey] Mysterio match because CM Punk has finally
brought that evil cult figure that we've seen with Raven and Jake The
Snake. I love how he's bringing that back. WWE went through a period in
the late '90s where factions were the rage. But ever since then, they
don't have factions anymore. And I think it's a missing art. I love it.
You love the gang mentality and the Straight Edge Society along with
Batista's character have been the two in the handful of months that
excite me on top of the old school guys.
Showing 1-1 of 1
like
dislike
