Freddie Prinze Jr. reflects on his days working for WWE, including how he ultimately won JBL over.
Freddie Prinze Jr. recently appeared on the Ariel Helwani Show where he discussed his tenure as a WWE writer, as well as his respective relationships with Triple H, JBL and others. Helwani asked if Prinze was concerned about speaking about his WWE past and upsetting people on his new podcast, Wrestling With Freddie, but Prinze said that it wasn’t an issue. Prinze then spoke about he had a strained relationship with Triple H and shared how he was tested by Bruce Prichard and Vince McMahon in the early days.
“We were all pretty straightforward with one another, I feel the Jeff Hardy storyline was the end of any relationship that I had with Hunter and I’m pretty open about that, but it wasn’t a secret. [Triple H] was very against it, he didn’t feel like we could count on Jeff, Hunter is a company man and I felt creatively it was worth the risk and he didn’t. In hindsight, Jeff was released from the company less than a year later because he got in more trouble, so I never blamed him for it,” Prinze said, “but at the time when I worked there, he wasn’t having it. I don’t worry about talking about that now, it’s like 12 years later, he’s a successful guy, I’m a successful guy, we don’t care about that stuff and it’s not a podcast where I crap on everyone.
“I had a great experience there, man and I’m very open about the Bruce Prichard stuff, he just threw me into the pool and threw me to the wolves and didn’t want to teach me anything but that’s just his philosophy. You can either hack it or you’re gone and I’m an old school guy, so I respond to that,” he noted. “I don’t want a million compliments and everyone telling me that I can do it, I want you to think that I’m nothing, so every time that I do something great, you have to sit there and suck it and just take it.”
Prinze also shared how JBL referred to him as “Scooby” until the two eventually found a level of respect for one another.
“I’m tight with JBL, we’re cool but I mean that dude wouldn’t give me the respect of my own name… it was just ‘Scooby’ and that was my name. I was like, ‘We’re not going to have that, or you’re not going to like the name that I have for you, brother.’ Eventually Vince [McMahon] made us work together and [JBL] no sold this promo that Vince wanted him to do and he did it his way and I took the bullet in guerrilla,” he explained.
“Vince was just cussing me out and I’m sitting next to him and he was like ‘why’d you slide your bullsh-t in here?!’ and I was just like, ‘Man… ’ and JBL’s burying me but I was just going to eat it. At the end of the day, I gotta take risks and if you hate me, you hate me but I gotta take a shot and he yelled at me to get out and JBL comes back,” Prinze said. “And the first thing he tells Vince is, ‘Hey that was my fault, I did my own thing’ and Vince kind of liked that I ate shit even though it wasn’t my fault and then we were real, real tight after that and be treated me a lot different.”
Read More: Freddie Prinze Jr. To Launch WWFreddie: The ‘Wrestling With Freddie’ Podcast
