Arn Anderson discussed the infamous Shockmaster debut in WCW on a recent episode of ‘The ARN Show.’ Here are some highlights from his comments:
Regarding the segment killing the Shockmaster character, Anderson acknowledged that once the debut went awry with Fred Ottman falling through a wall and losing his helmet, it became impossible to instill fear or credibility in the character.
“Yeah, and you can’t threaten somebody after you just fell through a wall, your helmet rolls off. You can’t get up and beat up someone that’s going to instill fear into you. You have that — that horse has left the barn… Well, and here’s the thing, Paul. When we go back and watch this stuff, it’s fine. You know, the thing about it is, you see that the company made a lot of mistakes. There were a lot of production errors by not rehearsing stuff properly in enough times, and made a lot of mistakes that hopefully got a lot better as the company grew.”
When asked what he would have done in Ottman’s situation, Anderson humorously suggested,
“I’d have got up and looked back in the hole for the guy that tripped me. ‘All right, where’d he go? You see that guy that tripped me?’ I’d have wiggled my way out of it somehow.”
Anderson then praised Fred Ottman’s temperament for handling the situation with composure, despite the intense ribbing he must have endured.
“Fred’s a great guy too, man. For him to for him to absorb that, can you imagine the ribbing he took? I mean, thank God that he just had a temperament that he could — because he was a big bastard, that he didn’t get mad and kill somebody… it had to be a sore subject for a long time… It was a bad choice from day one. Yeah, God, this… You can’t fix this stuff. It wasn’t rehearsed. We didn’t have anybody there that was looking at the good of the talent or the company and go, ‘Guys, we got to find something else. I’m just telling you, before we ever rehearse this, it ain’t going to fly.’”
(h/t 411mania)