During the latest edition of Something To Wrestle legendary personality Bruce Prichard spoke about the infamous Undertaker and Diamond Dallas Page stalker storyline from 2001. Hear his thoughts on the subject below.
How they came up with the Undertaker and DDP stalker angle:
“I did. I thought it was a completely great idea. In hindsight, it was fucking horrible and not one of the stellar moments. Looking at different ways and different things – I’m a big true crime aficionado, and I like to read about different things and creepy shit like that. Stalkers are creepy. When you read about some of the things stalkers would do and how they would stalk their prey – there’s a great book I would recommend get, it’s called The Last Victim. It was written by a guy who wanted to be an FBI profiler, and he would write letters to convicted serial killers in the character that he thought they would respond to and the type of people he would think they would be attracted to. I just study that kind of stuff and enjoy it. The stalker gimmick was a creepy thing where we had seen Taker’s wife and you were really going to get to someone – that someone is in your home and they’re there and have evidence of being in your home. That’s a sick, creepy feeling that they were right there and you didn’t know it. That was the idea behind it. I don’t know that we did the best job portraying that, obviously not in hindsight. It didn’t work by any stretch of the imagination. I don’t know if it was the talent involved or the story or the idea in general. That one was a flop. That was all mine.”
On the King of the Ring 2001 brawl:
“Here’s the bottom line, give me the history of the two major companies in the world and one absorbing the other by purchasing the other and give me the counter to it. Again, on the other side of that coin, you’re looking at an audience and you’ve got to look at it from the WWE audience’s eyes. The WWE audience, for the most part, they didn’t know a lot of these WCW guys. Whether you want to admit that or not because you follow everything – that’s a much smaller audience. To the WWE audience, these were also-rans in many, many respects. Frankly, we didn’t get the big stars. Page coming in, first of all, the storyline wasn’t great. But you’re coming in on top with the Undertaker. So, it doesn’t get any bigger than that. One guy coming in working on top with the Undertaker, it’s not gonna get any bigger than that. For the audience looking at DDP and when you matched them up, it’s like, ‘OK, who’s gonna win that fight?’ The guy you thought was gonna win that fight is gonna win that fight the first time. It’s not one and done here. This was to continue on and tell a story.”
Discusses if there were other storyline options for DDP to debut to:
“I’m sure there were. I don’t think anything was as big. I know DDP always talks about how he wanted to be the People’s Champion against whatever the hell with Rock. That wasn’t going to happen. Coming in on top with Taker, it’s like, how do you get any higher than that? That is what it is.”
(H/T and transcribed by 411 Mania)