Bruce Prichard recently talked about a wide range of topics on his Something To Wrestle With podcast.
During it, Prichard shared his thoughts on the Great American Bash as a PPV and whether he was surprised Vince McMahon booked the event in WWE since it was an NWA/WCW idea.
“It wasn’t the idea. I don’t think that the names were anything. Again, it wasn’t his creation, and it wasn’t new, and it felt like you’re banking on someone else’s equity that they have in that name. Sometimes good, sometimes bad. And I loved the name. I always loved the name Great American Bash. That was the perfect 4th of July spectacular, the Great American Bash. It’s attraction driven. Not enough people wanted to see it. It’s that simple. It wasn’t something that people were intrigued enough to put their money down and sit down and watch, so they didn’t. And you know, with the rest of them, yeah, we just did more games last year. In place of the Survivor series. It’s not that it’s somebody else’s creation; it’s either something that either needs to be understood or that wasn’t as successful as people would like to believe. You know, Great American Bash was something that Dusty did, that was you go back and look at the original concept, it was David Allen Co and country. Yeah. Country bands. You know, on one end of a football field, you had a stage set up for a country concert, and on the other half of the stadium, they had a ring, and they had wrestling matches. That was the Great American Bash. If you like country music and wrestling, man, that’s the perfect night out. If you want one or the other, it’s shitty, you know, because if I have to sit through the wrestling to get to the concert, then your matches aren’t going to be something that people are gonna be invested in. And then, if people are only there for the matches, and don’t wanna see the concert, then how’s that make that performer feel? So, you know, you look at it, and you look at the early success. Later in later years, it became just another pay-per-view event. I liked the name, but it didn’t fit some of them. And some of them were so identifiable with WCW that it would cause confusion in the marketplace that now it’s WWE. Halloween havoc. And that’s just confusing if people identify that still with WCW. You don’t want, you don’t want whatever you’re doing to be identified with another brand. And I think that’s the main reason.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.