Bill DeMott Recalls Nixed WrestleMania 17 Plans For Several WCW Stars
On the recent episode of Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw, former WCW star Bill DeMott (Hugh Morris) explained why WWE nixed plans for a group of WCW stars to debut at WrestleMania 17.
As has been widely reported, fictional WCW owner Shane McMahon was supposed to introduce 10 ex-WCW wrestlers, including DeMott, in an in-ring segment at the Showcase of Immortals.
"I have an opportunity to start my WWE career in the ring at WrestleMania 17 next to Shane McMahon," DeMott began. "They flew us in secret squirrel at two o'clock in the morning to some rinky dink airport and we stayed at a hotel outside the city limits. We got woken up at six o'clock the morning of Mania, and 'You're fired. Get everybody in a lobby, be there in five minutes,' and it was Johnny Ace. 'Get everybody down there. You're all fired.' I'm trying to figure out what happened between the time I landed, and then you're trying to put it together.
"Like I flew in with these couple guys. Nothing happened. You know, we're here in the hotel. Lance Storm comes down. Now he's pissed, which, you know, he's so even keeled, you don't know if he's mad, happy, or breathing half the time, he's just so straight. Now he's talking to me, and he's on fire."
According to DeMott, the wrestlers were fired after their debuts were leaked on the Internet the night before.
"Johnny [Laurinaitis] comes down and says that Kevin Dunn called and to send every one of them home, we got no use for them because someone went on the internet the night before and gave up the 10 names that were showing up in the ring. So we went from going to get the red carpet to being picked up on some kind of little short yellow bus."
Although the in-ring segment was nixed, Bill DeMott still made a brief on-screen appearance at WrestleMania 17 as part of a WCW skybox, during the Vince McMahon vs. Shane McMahon street fight.
"They told us because they flew us in there, they had to show us," DeMott recalled. "I mean, we really got the Bad News Bears treatment. We walked up. They took us to the stairs. No elevators. We had to walk up all those stairs to the skybox.
"When we got there, they told us you can leave your bags in this bus. So we walked up the stairs. Here come the sky boxes. Not that one. Not that one. It was one in the dark that had some stuff they moved from other rooms. There was a cheese and cracker plate and a couple of bottles of coke. We sat there in the dark, and then Shane came out, introduced his friends, and there's a silhouette of me, Lance Storm, and I forget who was sitting next to us, just miserable. So that was our WrestleMania moment."
After an unsuccessful stint as a performer in WWE, Bill DeMott retired from in-ring competition and transitioned into the role of a trainer. Best known for his role as a trainer on WWE's Tough Enough, Demott was also a prominent figure at WWE's developmental territories Deep South Wrestling, Florida Championship Wrestling, and NXT; after working for WWE a total of 10 years between 2001 and 2015, he resigned from the company amid allegations of severe misconduct from over a dozen former trainees, including verbal and physical assault.
H/T to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription