Freddie Prinze Talks About his WWE Creative Experience, Being Hazed, Vince McMahon, John Cena

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Fformer WWE creative team member Freddie Prinze Jr. recently appeared as a guest on Chris Jericho’s Talk Is Jericho podcast. Below are some more highlights from the podcast, with Prinze talking about his time as a WWE creative team member, working with Vince McMahon, the problems with censors, and more (highlight transcripts via WrestlingInc.com).

Prinze on having to gain the respect of WWE talent when he started working there: “I was very straight forward and humble to the point that just about every guy on the roster thought I was full of s–t. And MVP hated me when I started there because he just thought I was some Hollywood bulls–t guy. I remember the first time I saw [John] Cena, who couldn’t stand me [from] the first day I was there. He called me Ashton Kutcher every day for, like, three months. And then, finally, like, month four or five, I don’t remember how far down the road it was, one of my guys cut an amazing promo in the ring and as soon as he finished, I took my headset off and I was sitting there next to Vince [and McMahon said], ‘ah, good job’, which is the best complement he gives, and John goes, ‘hey, I’m glad you’re here’ and I was like, ‘oh, okay. Right on.’ I didn’t want to sell too much because I was t going to give it to him!”

Prinze on the WWE Universe being Vince McMahon’s toy box: “I don’t mean this in a bad way. I mean this in a very positive way. [The WWE Universe]’s Vince’s toy box. He’s a big kid. He opens up the toy box, he pulls out the toys he likes to play with most at that time, and those ones get great stories and they get great titles and he cares a lot about them. I’m not saying he treats them like toys. I’m painting the Toy Story 2 analogy.”

Prinze on being very protective of Kane’s dialogue: “[McMahon] is so psycho with Kane, like, he’s more sensitive with Kane’s dialogue than anyone in the company. It used to frustrate me to no end. Just a word, like, if you write the word, ‘destroy,’ [McMahon would say], ‘Kane would never say ‘destroy,’ Freddie! He would say ‘eviscerate.’ And it wasn’t him trying to be psycho. When I was there, he had kid gloves with Kane and if you put a ‘the’ in the wrong place, it was like a kid saying, ‘don’t play with my toy like that! I said be gentle!’”

Prinze on the problem with Broadcast Standards & Practices hampering WWE and its writers: “Censors suck. They just suck and I know WWE is in control, but they still have a buyer and that buyer is USA [Network]. And USA has Standards and Practices and censors and you cannot do what wrestling did in its golden age, where it was say whatever you want on the camera mic, it doesn’t matter. Like, you can’t do that. You will get fined on a weekly basis. Like, [USA Network] need wrestling. It rates higher than their other shows. But they’re the boss and when they say, ‘you can’t do this’, you really can’t do that.”

Jonathan Widro is the owner and founder of Inside Pulse. Over a decade ago he burst onto the scene with a pro-WCW reporting style that earned him the nickname WCWidro. Check him out on Twitter for mostly inane non sequiturs