During a recent edition of Something To Wrestle With, Bruce Prichard discussed Jeff Jarrett and The Road Dogg quitting the WWE after In Your House 2, how Vince reacted and how they were told about it. Here’s what he had to say:
Not real happy. I wasn’t real happy. My brother was actually the one who came up to gorilla to tell me, he said, ‘Yeah, Jeff and Brian just left and said they quit.’ I was like, ‘OK, great,’ and continued on with the show.”
I would call it stupidity. I would call it naïveté, didn’t think it through, believed in somebody that obviously had an axe to grind and had a history of just being Jerry Jarrett. To that extent, look, we all have to make our own decisions, and Brian and Jeff made a decision based on whatever information, whatever they were told and sold, if you will. I believe it was the wrong decision, but I also know from our vantage point that every step of the way, they were aware of what we were going to do, how we were going to do it, and had input into it.
So it was a shock to me, it was a shock to Pat [Patterson], but it also hurt. That was one that hurt because all you had to do was say, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ or, ‘Can we do it a different way?’ or something like that. Versus, just saying, ‘Oh, well, Vince didn’t talk to us, and we didn’t like the way it was going,’ and you never made an attempt, at least that we know of, to talk to Vince and tell him that, and you had many, many opportunities to tell us and instead you yeah-yeahed us to death to the point that we felt everybody was on board and everybody was good to go. So to that, shame on you, and we move on. It wasn’t received well by me, I can definitely tell you that.
I talked to Jeff about it when he came back and I’ve talked to Jeff about it over the years. I think we agree to disagree and I think that Jeff realizes now that that wasn’t the greatest move in the world to make. So being in a position of being a promoter and being in a position of trying to do a television show and work with a lot of talent, and then have somebody treat you like that, all of a sudden you go, ‘Oh wow, maybe I didn’t handle that the best way.’ So I don’t agree with the way Jeff and Road Dogg handled it, in any way, shape, or form, and wish it wouldn’t have happened because I think the angle on the story we had laid out would have been awesome.
Lawler pulled us over on the side of the road to inform us that Brian and Jeff were in Jerry Jarrett’s hot tub drinking champagne, and they’ve quit, they’re not coming back, they’re gonna start in WCW, and that was Jerry Jarrett to Jerry Lawler and Jerry Lawler to us.
You can listen below:
Credit: Something To Wrestle With. H/T 411Mania.