Undeniable evidence that at one time, WWE wrestlers did not learn their promos from a script
While checking some of this blog’s stats recently, I saw that a visitor had gotten to my website via a search about whether WWE promos are scripted.
Certainly these days most of them are, which in many ways is obvious given their lack of fire and real emotion. Sure, there are exceptions. I’d be willing to bet Edge’s retirement speech on Monday Night Raw wasn’t entirely memorized by him ahead of time. He went with the flow, reacted to the fans, and got a more memorable promo out it.
Regardless of the interview arrangements today, I can guarantee you that in the 1980s, WWF promos were not scripted beyond maybe a loose idea of what the wrestlers would talk about. I don’t present my evidence based on memories of great interviews. Rather, I remember some unusual promos that in no way could have possibly been remembered off a script.
Some examples include:
- Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka’s off-the-wall Madison Square Garden house show promo concerning a match with Sgt. Slaughter
- “Dr. D” David Schultz’s racial baiting as he and Rowdy Roddy Piper talk about a fight against “Mr. USA” Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson
- Magnificent Muraco’s zany powdered doughnut interview (which I remember quite well from when it originally aired)
The exception to such free-falling promos was Saturday Night’s Main Event, where you could clearly see some of the wrestlers reading their lines off cue cards.
When you compare, say, any of Roddy Piper’s local house show promos to, well, anything that would’ve appeared on SNME or one of the late-80s PPVs, you can see in an instant which were scripted and directed and which were coked-up off-the-cuff (and excellent) promos.