5 days Ago By Andrew Ravens
On the latest episode of 83 Weeks, Eric Bischoff discussed the infamous promo segment with Tiffany Stratton and Charlotte Flair, among other topics. Here are some highlights: On the unscripted promo segment with Tiffany Stratton and Charlotte Flair: “I don’t think too deep beyond what I see and feel. I’m not interested in the conspiracy theories and all the internet chatter.
.. I just thought it was awkward.
I know I’m often criticized for just putting WWE over at every opportunity. And truthfully, I do because there’s not a lot to criticize. This interview may be the exception [chuckles].
It just — for whatever reason, and it could be something just as innocuous as the fact that they just don’t really have any chemistry. They haven’t worked together long enough. Perhaps they didn’t get time to really work through this the way you would like to.
Or perhaps — and more likely — Tiffany’s green. Regardless of the contents of that interview, she was really forced and it felt very awkward, and she felt to me — now, this is from a producer’s perspective. You’re kind of reading body language, you’re listening to the pace of the delivery, right? If it’s very mechanical, almost like an AI voice, that’s nerves.
That’s just somebody that’s trying so hard not to forget what to say that whatever they do say comes up very choppy and just unnatural. That’s what I took from Tiffany. “I think that things started falling apart and for whatever reason — and let me be the first to tell you.
You’ve heard about ring rust; we all kind of know what that is. Because it’s relatable to any other sport, right? If you haven’t swung a golf club in two years and you go out to play 18 holes competitively, you’re going to know it. Or any other sport.
Wrestling [is] obviously the same when it comes to the physical part, we can all relate to that. Here’s the part that you can’t relate to unless you’ve been in the spot, and that’s out there live in front of people remembering what is often — or having at your control, so to speak — what is often a fairly heavy dose of narrative for live. most of the time, they all handle it well.
This time they didn’t for whatever reason. And my first thought before I even heard — I don’t know what the drama is backstage, I just don’t care. It’s not interesting to me.
It’s just not where my head goes, right. But again, producer Eric says she’s not ready for that kind of pressure.” On Flair: “Charlotte’s been off for a while, and she’s got her own version of ring rust.
Not physically, but until you’ve been in that spot and stood there on top of a little box like a top of a wedding cake, surrounded by — oh, I don’t know, ten, fifteen, 20,000 people, you might not know how that feels. I did..
. When I did my little appearance in NXT in December, I was out there in the middle of the ring with Ridge Holland, and — I can’t remember the name of his opponent at that time. And my promo was pretty easy.
There was nothing complicated about it. In fact, it looked so easy on paper that I went, ‘Okay, got this.’ Not quite like that, but I probably spent a half hour or so looking at it off and on, because it wasn’t that much.
And number two — when I was doing it every week, I could look at a promo like that, about a five-minute promo, and that’s a tennis match, right? Going back and forth, a five-minute promo. I could look at it for about three minutes and have it word for word, if I needed to. “So I spent about a half hour.
I realized, ‘Well, I haven’t done this in a while, let’s make sure. Don’t want to go out there and screw it up.’ Boom, I had it.
I rehearsed it in front of people. I rehearsed it in front of Shawn Michaels. He wanted to hear it.
And I wanted to do that. I wanted to challenge myself a little bit, instead of me just talking to myself in my room, I felt like I had it. And if you go back and watch it, you’ll see it.
I’m about halfway through, and I could not for the life of me remember my line. And Ridge couldn’t react to me until I delivered it. Keep in mind, he’s in developmental.
And what probably was a couple of seconds– which I tried to camouflage by pretending I was working the crowd where I was going, ‘Where the hell am I?’ Ridge, to his credit, saw what was going on. And he jumped in and improvised, and got us through the rest of the promo, and we didn’t miss a beat, and it ended exactly the way it was supposed to end. He saved my ass.
So gee, I’ve only been doing this at a pretty high level for over 30 years, and I froze up like it was the first or second time I ever did it. I only say that because I do think Charlotte struggled. We know she can cut a promo, so it’s not like, ‘Gee, has she forgotten how? What happened?’ What happened is she hasn’t done it in a while.
Tiffany’s green, and it just unraveled. That’s my take.” If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit 83 Weeks with an h/t to 411mania.
com for the transcription..
