A common criticism of the current WWE product is that all of the promos feel scripted and not very genuine. Back in the Attitude Era, guys like Stone Cold Steve Austin and the Rock would have laughed if someone wrote their words for them. In today’s WWE (in a PG atmosphere), almost every WWE star has their words scripted. Brad Maddox who worked with the WWE from 2010-2015 in different capacities, gave fans a bit of an insight into the WWE’s scripted promos.
Here is what he said:
“The problem with a lot of the promos nowadays is that not only do [wrestlers] not believe in what they’re talking about, they don’t even know what they’re talking about because it’s not even their words. I wish I could take back every promo I did on Raw or SmackDown, because I was always handed an exact word-for-word script, full pages written out. My first promo killed me, because I was trying to memorize every word of it. You only have a few hours to memorize a page of words, and try to make it seem at all genuine, which is not easy. Every now and then I would ask the writers, ‘Do I have to say this exact thing?’ They would say, ‘Well. It was written by Vince himself, so yeah.’ There’s a bunch of writers, and they would be interchangeable depending on the week or the month. [There is sort of a high turnaround], and I wouldn’t know what would happen to these guys, whether they would get sick of it and quit, or what. I know they were frustrated as well, because everything has to be run through Vince or [HHH], so they didn’t have a lot of freedom themselves. I’m sure they’re talented [writers], but they really didn’t have a job to do, other than run back and forth between performer and Vince” (Source: Pancakes and Powerslams: Episode 218).
The WWE writers get a lot of slack from fans for being poor at their jobs. I think the blame should really go towards Vince who sounds like he enjoys micromanaging talent. Everything goes through him and the writers could have amazing ideas but get nixed by Vince who isn’t into it. I wish the WWE would give their talent more creative freedom and I think we would see more genuine and likable characters.
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Let us know what you think about the Brad Maddox comments or anything to do with scripted promos in the WWE in the comment section below!
