Nick Patrick reflects on working as the nWo’s referee during his time with WCW.
Patrick spoke on this topic during a recent interview with Chris Van Vilet, where he revealed that Kevin Sullivan was the one who originally came up with the idea for him to turn heel as an official and help the powerful faction out during their matchups.
That was Kevin Sullivan’s idea. He approached Eric [Bischoff] and I guess they two of them pretty much hatched it, but for the most part, at the beginning, almost everything was Kevin. He was the one that came to me and told me what they wanted me to do. They actually wanted it to progress a little slower than it did. But, man, it just ignited all of a sudden and people were pissed off at me.
Patrick says that the original plan was to slow play his turn, but that a staged incident with Lex Luger helped facilitate the turn a little faster.
I think the one where they realized where they had to quit milking it and start going with it was when we were at Sturgess. Lex [Luger] went to rack a guy and he clipped me with his feet and I went down. I went down and i took his knee out, clipped his knee. Was it an accident? Was it not an accident? I’d been denying all these things, but when that happened, from that point on, they [the audience] were hot at me. Milking it and trying to do it slow wasn’t going to work anymore. So they went ahead and green lighted it and, man, I ended up getting some heat out of that thing. That was a lot of fun.
Finally, Patrick says that he looks back on that period of his career as the most fun he’s ever had in the business.
That was probably the most fun I had in the business other than, you know, when you’re learning and beginning working stages. That’s awesome fun too. As far as being in an international company where it pretty much all becomes about business, that was the most fun I had working for big companies.
Elsewhere in the interview, Patrick spoke about wrestling matchups against legendary official Earl Hebner and future Hall of Famer Chris Jericho. You can read about that here, or check out the full interview below.
(Special thanks to Chris Van Vilet for sending over quotes)
