Claim: Vince McMahon didn’t see HBK as WWE Champion

Former WWE backstage guru Bruce Prichard recently appeared on Sam Roberts Wrestling Podcast, here are the highlights…

On Vince McMahon Not Seeing Shawn Michaels as a Face or Champion:

“There [are] a lot of situations where we pitched big, sweeping, just simple things like, ‘Shawn Michaels is going to be a babyface.’ [McMahon replied] ‘that little son of a b—h? He’ll never be a babyface in this company!’ And he didn’t see it till after WrestleMania 11. Vince gets in the car and says, ‘Goddamnit, guys, we have a babyface on our hands! Why am I the only one that sees this?’ And Pat [Patterson] and I are looking at each other, going, ‘we were told never to bring that idea up ever again.’ It’s crazy, but I just, God, Pat especially, and Pat was probably the first one that actually made the statement, ‘I can see Shawn Michaels as WWF Champion.’ Yeah, Vince didn’t see Shawn as the WWF Champion at that time. In particular, he didn’t see Shawn as a babyface. But there was an undercurrent there that here you’ve got a guy that is going out, stealing the show every night with whoever he worked with, and the audience after a while began to respect him, so Shawn was doing that every night. It’s kind of like, even Bret Hart, who no matter who Bret was in the ring with, Bret was going to get his match out of him and Bret was going to get that match over no matter what he had to do and they respect that.”

On HBK Rising to The Top via Talent & Balls:

“He had the balls to say it every night and to say it to Vince to be defiant, to say it to the rest of the talent, to stand up for himself and his friends, a lot of people would call that going against the grain and selfish, but Vince looked at it as he had balls and after a while, you couldn’t deny that he was that good.”

transcript via wrestlinginc.com