Freddie Prinze Jr. Recalls WWE Pitch That Turned Triple H Against Him
On this week's Wrestling with Freddie podcast from iHeart Media's My Cultra Network, former WWE creative team member Freddie Prinze Jr. was riding solo to discuss his time working with Jeff Hardy.
The particular topic in question was that of Jeff Hardy's road to the WWE Championship in 2008, which Prinze Jr. scripted. Freddie revealed there was some reluctance from Triple H, in particular, who shot the idea down.
"So I start pitching why this is a good idea [in a production meeting]," Prinze Jr. said. "I'm telling you, this is an honest story, we've done nothing but tell the truth. If he has a relapse, if he goes down again, you take the title off him. You've taken it off him before for stuff like that on smaller belts. I said we've taken it off of other people in a day. I said we can pull this off. You know, I'm giving this passionate plea, it's about five minutes long, and then Hunter starts shooting it down, again. You know, I don't want it to be a fight. I don't want it to be an argument. I don't want to have enemies in the company, but I don't want this whole story that we've built up to let the fans of Jeff Hardy down."
Freddie revealed that Triple H questioned Jeff's reliability, but Freddie responded by providing Jeff Hardy's latest merchandise sales, in which he was more popular than The Game at that time. In the end, Vince excused the meeting, and discussed it with Bruce Prichard, Kevin Dunn, and Triple H in private, as Freddie waited outside.
"We're waiting outside, we wanna know the answer," Freddie explained. "The production meeting on this day was on the same floor as a VIP cafeteria, so there's like this empty cafeteria behind us. A lot of free space. I'm sitting there and looking at Freebird [Michael P.S Hayes] and I go 'what do you think?' and he goes 'I don't know, you did your best!' He's like trying to prep me for failure. So now I'm like shoot, man, this is not gonna happen. This is seriously getting killed right now?
"Listen, again, Hunter was proven right at the end of the day. I mean Jeff got in trouble less than a year after this happened. They gave him the other belt after that, the other championship. And then he got in trouble and then got in bigger trouble and had to leave the company for a while. So at the end of the day, he was right, but all of a sudden the door swings open and only Hunter comes out, and he doesn't even look at me. Right, and he walks by. So this now means two things; one, this dude doesn't like me anymore or is probably going to work against me now, which is what happened. Or two, Jeff's going to be the World Heavyweight Champion!"
If you use any quotes from this article, please credit Wrestling with Freddie with an h/t to Wrestling Inc for the transcription.