Brian Gewirtz made an appearance on The Ariel Helwani Show to discuss a wide range of topics.
During it, the former WWE head writer noted that Taz was initially going to be revealed as the person who hit Steve Austin with a car. Rikishi was the one revealed as the attacker to write Austin off television due to his neck surgery in 2000.
“Let’s see. How do I put this? The amount of people who were gonna freakin run over Stone Cold Steve Austin at some point, you know, you could fill a jury with them and have alternates. There were a lot of people and it kept switching. It was kind of like a hot potato.”
He continued, “I remember at one point Vince looked at me and was like, ‘Taz.’ At one point, it was gonna be Taz. Okay, great. Let’s make it Taz. Then, you know, for whatever reason, the next week, it’s someone different. I wouldn’t call that necessarily a success. Rikishi is a Hall of Fame performer, but he’s likable and a natural babyface, and people want to like him. Sometimes you just don’t know until you try. Then ultimately, it was Rikishi, but Triple H was behind it all along, and you know, it went back to the natural order of things.”
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription