“Just be quiet” – Ex-WWE star claims Bruce Prichard told her to never speak

Bruce Prichard has delivered instructions to hundreds of superstars during his combined 25 years working for WWE. In a recent interview, former WWE star Terri Runnels recalled how the creative team member once gave her a command that she strongly disagreed with.

Runnels worked for WWE between 1996 and 2004. The 56-year-old debuted as Marlena, the on-screen valet of her then-husband Dustin Rhodes, aka Goldust. She used to watch his matches from a director’s chair at ringside while seductively smoking a cigar.

In an interview with Monte & The Pharaoh, Runnels said Prichard told her not to speak on television:

“I remember so vividly Prichard saying to me backstage, ‘Listen, we like you as a part of him [Goldust], but we don’t want to hear from you, so just be quiet.’ Exactly like that. In my mind, I’m thinking, ‘Well, my husband is not a great talker like his daddy,’ so in my heritage of this business, I am the mic.”

The Goldust-Marlena act was widely viewed as a success. The duo won the prize for WWE’s Best Couple at the 1997 Slammy Awards, beating Marc Mero & Sable and Chyna & Triple H.

Bruce Prichard once claimed on his Something To Wrestle With podcast that Vince McMahon came up with Terri Runnels’ Marlena character.

However, according to Runnels, she was responsible for the creation of the persona without any input from McMahon.

“As much as I love Prichard, I swear to God I heard one of his like seven-hour podcasts on Dustin. He’s like, ‘Vince created Marlena.’ Vince didn’t create fuck all of Marlena!”

In the same interview, Runnels gave her thoughts on the way Triple H handled his break-up with Chyna in the early 2000s.

Seth Rollins: WWE World Heavyweight Title Needed Due To Part-Time Undisputed Champion

Seth Rollins made history in WWE once again when he defeated AJ Styles in a tournament finals match at WWE Night of Champions to become the new World Heavyweight Champion. Fans and pundits alike have heavily debated the title’s introduction in the wake of Roman Reigns keeping two world titles himself despite being on a part-time schedule. Rollins was not shy in calling out his former tag team partner during a recent appearance on “WWE’s The Bump.”

“This title doesn’t exist if our industry and our company isn’t so healthy across the board,” Rollins said. “There was a need for a title on Monday nights. There was a need because everybody is so good.” He named AJ Styles, Sheamus, Drew McIntyre, GUNTHER, Cody Rhodes, Kevin Owens, and Sami Zayn as some of the other top guys in the company. “We needed a prize to fight for since our Universal Champion wants to keep his part-time schedule. We gotta have a title. I was more than thrilled to have it and to usher in this era of change.” To differentiate himself, Rollins said that he wants everyone chasing him to the top and wants the challenge more than ever after years of Reigns hand-picking his opponents. 

Following the WWE Draft that kicked off at the end of April, WWE’s Chief Content Officer Triple H appeared on “Raw” to introduce the company’s latest world championship, seeing as though Reigns was going to be exclusive to “SmackDown.” Reigns just passed the 1,000-day mark in his Universal title reign that began in August 2020. Along the way, he picked up the WWE Championship in a unification match against Brock Lesnar that headlined WrestleMania 38. As of now, there’s no end in sight for the longest reign of the modern era.

Carmella Explains How She Came Up With Her Gimmick

To compensate for her lack of wrestling experience coming into WWE, Carmella quickly carved out a solid foundation of character work to set herself apart. As a result, the moon-walking, trash-talking, “Princess of Staten Island” was born. Recently speaking with Scott McGlynn, the former “SmackDown” Women’s Champion revealed the original concept, and motivation, behind her popular persona.

“I came up with Carmella because I did not come from wrestling,” she explained. “A lot of the girls at the point when I started, they all came from a different avenue of wrestling and I never had any background in wrestling at all. So I thought, ‘Well, then my thing that I need to be really strong in is my character, and I really just wanted to bring it.'”

Channeling her Boston roots, Carmella (real name Leah Van Dale) transformed herself into a “mob wife” character reminiscent of the figures on “The Real Housewives of New Jersey.” After further research into mob-related shows such as “The Sopranos,” Carmella admitted she wanted her on-screen image to “look amazing” and “over the top,” with a knack for trash-talking.

“I’m really grateful that my character is just — that’s what people know me by,” she added. “They know that Carmella talks a lot of trash. She does the moonwalk, she looks the part. It’s so much fun.”

After parting with her “Princess of Staten Island” gimmick in late 2020, Carmella took on a more glamorous, self-absorbed, role, donning the moniker of “The Most Beautiful Woman in All of WWE.” In early 2023, though, Carmella reappeared as her former self as she rejoined the ranks of “Raw.”

Rey Mysterio Reveals Who Created His Iconic WWE Entrance

Take a bow, Dean Malenko.

Rey Mysterio has revealed, via an interview with WWE’s ‘The Bump’, that ex-WCW favourite Dean was the man who invented his flashy ‘pop-up’ entrance back in 2002. Former four-time Cruiserweight Champ and current AEW producer Malenko spoke up during meetings before Rey’s company debut.

Vince McMahon and other members of WWE’s creative team wanted to do something special for Mysterio, but they had no clue how to make his entrance stand out. It was Dean who suggested that they encapsulate his high-flying style by letting the promotion’s hardcore fanbase know exactly what they were about to bell-to-bell.

That. Is. Genius.

The best wrestling entrances around set the tone for what’s to come. For example, The Undertaker’s slow walk and mannerisms complemented his original in-ring style. Malenko figured that leaning on Rey’s ability to fly around the place would be a great idea, and he was right.

Mysterio is thankful to Dean for speaking up in the first place and giving him one of the most eye-popping visuals on WWE programming before he’d even established himself as one of the most exciting performers on the roster.

What a story.

Disney Helped Create The NWO?!

The nWo logo (pictured above) is one of the most iconic in pro wrestling history.

That simple black and white monochrome design has been imitated countless times since landing in the mid-1990s, and with good reason. The blocky style and grittiness of it all stood out back in an otherwise-colourful WCW of ’96 – that was deliberate, of course.

Eric Bischoff and Kevin Nash recently discussed who created the legendary logo on the former’s ’83 Weeks’ podcast. Almost unbelievably, designers at Disney’s MGM Studios were responsible. They were handed a short brief by Bisch and WCW producer Craig Leathers, and Disney’s artists went to work.

They handed back a document of seven or eight designs. One of them, the final product, stood out to everyone in WCW immediately. The whole team, including Hulk Hogan, Scott Hall and Nash himself, knew straight away that they had the vibe they’d been seeking.

Leathers and Bischoff thanked Disney’s wizards for their efforts and the nWo logo was born.

Nash said it best when he joked, “Imagine somebody at Disney coming up with an idea”. WCW smartly outsourced that one to the best!

Bobby Lashley Reveals Who Came Up With “The Hurt Business” Name

WWE Champion Bobby Lashley recently spoke with Tony Maglio of The Wrap. Before his run with MVP and The Hurt Business, Lashley was in a storyline with Lana and Miro, fka Rusev, and he was asked if that storyline helped or hurt his run.

“Look, I’ve been in the business for about 17 years. And there’s a lot of people that watch the business for years,” Lashley noted. “But there’s only a few people that have been like a crucial figure in the business for a long time…I talked to people about it when I came back into wrestling and everybody knows my character. They know Bobby is tough, Bobby was in the military, Bobby has that wrestling national champion place in the world. So I’m a machine in that sense. But the one thing that I’ve never been able to do is just relax. And I think a lot of those storylines I did at the beginning was to really make me chill out and relax.

“This is a different day and age. Even though my character is rough, still I’m able to enjoy it a lot more. Before I was so machine, so locked in. It’s like, ‘Here, let’s throw in some storylines over here to make him feel completely uncomfortable and to be able to relax and then be able to come into something.’ And when I say that, I say that because a lot of the people looking at it got pissed off about it. I was going into it and I was a little taken back. But then when I sat back and I actually realized, because I had a talk with Vince, and he told me, ‘Man, I want you to just go out there and have fun.’ And that was one thing that you have to do. And a lot of times when you tell somebody to go out there and have fun, that’s not going to resonate, that’s not going to sink in.

“Then you have a bunch of us just beating people up even more. But to be able to loosen up, this is entertainment. We’re fighting, but it’s entertainment. So in order to have entertainment, you have got to be able to loosen up. Because the crowd can feel where you’re coming from. And even though I went into this real dastardly, mean character, people could feel it because I’m able to get in more touch with — I don’t want to say emotions and go straight into acting — but into that, just relaxing and having fun with the character. So I think everything that I did led me up to where I am now. So I think everything helped.”

Lashley was later paired with MVP. The two had worked together on Impact as part of the Beat Down Clan, and Lashley revealed who came up with the name “The Hurt Business”.

“It was me. I was thinking about this before, I was thinking about the whole thing before,” Lashley revealed. “Originally, a boxing coach that I had down in Coconut Creek at American Top Team. He used to always wear this T-shirt and I was like, man, that is incredible man, that needs to be in WWE because that’s my character. I just need a group. So I just loved it forever. And this was several years back, several, several years back, and I held onto it. And when we came, I was still holding onto it. And I was like man, I wanted to do something like that, but I need the right people involved.

“And then when MVP had that Royal Rumble, he was only going to do that, but when he was there, we had worked before and I told him, ‘Man, you know what character you are… you are kind of a mix between Suge Knight, and Don King.’ I said, ‘If you mix all those up that is you.’ And I told him about this and then me and him got together and he was like, ‘We can make a real little faction out of this.’ And of course we thought about Shelton (Benjamin), because Shelton wasn’t really doing anything, everybody knows how good Shelton is but everything really depends on timing and finding the right role for you. I was like, man we got to bring Shelton, because Shelton gets it. And then we needed a young boy to come up, and Cedric (Alexander) is phenomenal.

“But when we went to go look for The Hurt Business at that time, I was like, man, let’s try The Hurt Business, and we sent it in and then when it came back it shocked us. Like, what? Nobody has it? Nobody copyrighted it or nothing… And the merch guy came up to me and was like, ‘Bro, you’ll never believe it, it is open.’ I said let’s go, let’s start printing. And as soon as we put it out, the T-shirts went like crazy at the beginning. Black and gold, The Hurt Business, it was beautiful. And then our group just kind of formed from there. And then before I ran with it, I called my boxing coach down there at Coconut Creek and I asked for his blessing and he was like, ‘Use the name, just send me a few T-shirts.’ I said cool.”