Bruce Prichard On WWE Booking The Steve Austin Vs. Eric Bischoff "Redneck Triathlon"
Bad Blood 2003 featured plenty of memorable moments like Mick Foley refereeing a Hell In A Cell match and still bleeding all over the place. Some fans will always remember the segments between Eric Bischoff and Steve Austin where they took part in the Redneck Triathlon.
Bruce Prichard recently discussed Bad Blood 2003 in-depth on Something To Wrestle With and talked about the reasoning behind the segment. They had huge stars who where feuding but couldn't work a match and on top of that, there was also an issue with creative at the time.
"Okay, lemme preface this with I talked to a few people that were working with me during this timeframe in the company," Bruce Prichard explained as he admitted "parts of it that were extremely brutal. I'm going back to jog my memory on this, 'what the hell were we doing here?' We all had the general consensus of this was a time in the company where creative even hated creative.
"We were trying to get by. We were writing shows to get through the next day and just be done with it and move on to the next week. It was painful sometimes but it was not always the best and the triathlon, the Redneck Triathlon was you had Steve [Austin] who was going through some injury stuff so Steve couldn't take any offense. Steve could give somebody something but he couldn't take anything. So Steve was being protected that way from physicality. Now you've got Eric [Bischoff] who was a heel and Vince wanted to keep Steve good and he had to have them both on TV all the time."
Austin and Bischoff were key figures in WWE's television programming at the time. However, WWE creative had to devise a way for the two pro wrestling legends to face off against each other without getting physical in the ring, so they just envisioned the two playing a few games instead.
"We had an idea early on of what it could be," Prichard continued explaining how the Redneck Triathlon was created. "They could compete in an Olympics of sorts in Texas, you know? The Texas Olympics. Then Vince came up with the Redneck Triathlon and that's how we came to it."
In the end, The Redneck Triathlon consisted of three events: a belching contest, a pie eating contest, and a pigpen contest. The belching was prerecorded and over-the-top, Mae Young ended up hitting Bischoff with a bronco buster in the pie eating contest, and the pigpen contest was supposed to be a singing contest with ZZ Top getting involved, but plans were changed and they just decided to throw Bischoff into a messy pigpen full of nastiness. Austin ended up winning the Redneck Triathlon after he picked up the first and third events but forfeited the second because he decided to hit Mae Young with a Stone Cold Stunner instead. Prichard noted that "the original ideas behind it were different than what actually took place."
If you use any portion of the quotes in this article please credit Something To Wrestle With Bruce Prichard with a H/T to Wrestling Inc for the transcription
Source: Something To Wrestle With