Bruce Prichard Recalls Sabu Almost Appearing In The 1996 WWE Royal Rumble

Royal Rumble 1996 was won by Shawn Michaels, firmly defeating his former friend and rival, Diesel (Kevin Nash), and picking up his second Royal Rumble win in the process. But that wasn't the only big moment originally scheduled for the match. According to Bruce Prichard, the '96 Rumble was supposed to have opened the door for Sabu to debut in the promotion, 10 years before he actually did.

"I contacted [Paul Heyman] first, told him I'd like to use Sabu," Prichard recalled during an episode of his "Something To Wrestle" podcast. "So I called Sabu and said: 'Hey, we'd like to use you in the Rumble."

Prichard noted that there was an idea to let Sabu eliminate himself, in order to protect the legitimacy he had in ECW, but there was a roadblock he ultimately couldn't overcome.

"Sabu says to me, 'I don't have a problem with it but you need to speak to my uncle, The Sheik," he recalled, adding that Sabu believed that his uncle would know whether or not it would benefit his career, but for some reason wasn't keen on speaking to him himself. "He says, 'Yeah, nah, it's not good for him!' Okay? 'Well, hey, thank you for your time.' Hangs up."

"It just ended there, I was like: 'F*** this!'" Prichard said, noting that he's never enjoyed dealing with agents or managers and always wanted to deal directly with talent.

After that phone call, Prichard gave up on bringing Sabu in for the '96 Rumble, postponing the ECW legend's WWE debut until 2006 ahead of the ECW One Night Stand pay-per-view.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Something To Wrestle" and provide a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.