Former WWE Producer Reveals Scrapped Plans For Attitude Era Podcast
If you ever dreamed of tuning into a podcast where your favorite modern-day pro wrestlers discussed the greatness of the WWE Attitude Era, you were close to getting it. Former WWE podcast producer Dan Ryckert recently left the company and fired up his Twitch stream Tuesday night to play video games and talk pro wrestling. The latter was something he was careful not to do while gainfully employed by WWE. Ryckert, who is now back with his old website Giant Bomb, talked about his overall experience at WWE, which at times, could be frustrating.
"I did have a lot of good experiences at WWE and to be fair, the team that I worked with, everyone that I worked with was excellent," Rycket said. "We had a podcast team there, we're all there trying to do our best, make stuff. We weren't allowed to do stuff, piloted a bunch of stuff that never made the light of day."
One of those ideas was going to scratch that nostalgia itch, something Johnny Gargano happened to mention on his Twitch stream.
"I piloted an Attitude Era podcast with Adam Cole, Johnny Gargano, Dakota Kai, and Stokely Hathaway (formerly Malcolm Bivens) and it was f*cking great. It was really, really good. We did a super-fun episode of an Attitude Era rewatch podcast with those four incredibly talented individuals who are also not there anymore, but it was great. It was just incredible and that's just one little taste of like the type of things that I was piloting and making that never got greenlit.
Ryckert and his team did have plenty of ideas, but from his vantage, the corporate hierarchy is why a lot of pitches and ideas didn't break through.
"Trust me it was a revolving door at that place," Ryckert said when it came to management. "I survived a lot of mass layoffs there. My bosses were great. My producers and the audio editors and video guys and everything, everyone was awesome to work with. The problems were way up there."
Ryckert ended up playing some Nintendo 64 classics in "WWF No Mercy" and "WCW/NWO Revenge," but before he did, he made it clear he holds no ill will despite his creativity getting stifled.
"I'm not going to be sour grapes or anything, but I didn't really get to do anything there except for working with The New Day. The New Day were excellent. I loved working with those guys. They are incredible, all three of those guys were the absolute best. I keep in touch with them. Love those dudes."
If you use any of the quotes in this article, please give a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.