Kevin Kelly was recently interviewed on the Ross Report with Jim Ross. You might remember Kevin for his time as a backstage interviewer in WWE. Most notably, he was involved in the ‘Pillman’s Got A Gun’ segment with Brian Pillman and Steve Austin. Kelly would also be a frequent target of verbal abuse for the Rock in backstage segments.
On The Ross Report, Kelly says that about 70% of the Rock’s promos were scripted:
“He worked with Brian Gewirtz and they would go off and craft it. Now, I think Brian would probably start with… I’m not sure how much he had, but by the time Rock and I got together, he would say, ‘alright, ask me this and I’m going to ask you this,’ ‘I’m going to ask you this, Rock,’ ‘yes, I’ll cut you off here and I’ll say this and you say this’. We’ll play with it that way, so I think he had quite a bit of it memorized by the time I would say 70% memorized and then, 30% was just kind of off the cuff”
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On promos today, and how talented the Rock really is:
“It’s the difference now between the way The Rock captivated the audience, held the audience, used the audience, as opposed to nowadays where the crowd can hijack a live promo, and the talent may not be strong enough to get it back. Rock had that gift to be able to heel on the crowd and make the crowd love him even more for it and he could push through and get to the point. It’s amazing how you see, generationally, how skilled he was in that regard”
You can check out the full podcast here. H/T to WrestlingInc for the transcription.
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