Stories of last minute script changes and general chaos behind-the-scenes at WWE television have populated our Rumor Roundup since it began. We’ve heard wrestlers talk about it after leaving the company, but we rarely get current employees and contractors discussing it.
That’s what Sami Zayn & Corey Graves did the latest edition of the company’s After The Bell podcast, though.
Their chat has a positive spin — the people who work at WWE are so talented they can pull anything off. But you can sense that noted rabble rouser Zayn struggles with it at times...
Corey Graves: Much like all four Beatles, everyone on the roster is fully prepared to go, ‘We don’t know what we’re doing tonight, that’s alright, we’re gonna go out there and do it anyway. Week after week.
Sami Zayn: If only people knew how good everyone in WWE is. They don’t know, and they’ll never know.
Graves: We say this all the time, things can go crazy on a regular basis, a weekly basis, it happens. We are there, every week, things are constantly in flux and constantly changing. Why is that? Because we have the best team and crew on planet earth and despite all the changes and chaos and variables, we are going to go out and get the job done. Things are constantly changing, but even when something gets blown up, right in the middle of the show, welp, we’ll figure it out and course correct. Between the talent on-screen and the amazing crew backstage and at ringside and every aspect of this business, when we converge and we’re on the same page, you can’t touch it.
Zayn: There are times when I’m frustrated with it, when things are going awry, and I’m frustrated and I’m about to go out and I go, ‘this just shouldn’t happen. This should be the week where it all explodes to where it never happens again.’ It never happens, we always pull it off. It’s a testament to how talented everybody is. It’s crazy. This shouldn’t work, but it does. Just once, I’d love for it to not work so we go, ‘guys, we can’t keep operating this way. We need to have things set beforehand, we can’t have it this close to the wire.’ No, we always pull it off, that’s why it keeps happening.
Graves: Exactly, nothing will ever change until something goes wrong, but the way everyone is firing on all cylinders, nothing truly goes wrong. It’s the beauty of live TV. There was a few weeks back, you’ll know what I’m alluding to, when things changed in a very drastic manner on Monday Night Raw and I walked back through the curtain and I walked up to our fearless leader [Vince McMahon] and he had a grin on his face. ‘Hey, it’s live TV, nothing can go wrong, right?’ He just laughed and shook my hand and went about his business.
Zayn: I think he secretly loves it. He loves the chaos.
Graves: I think he does too. It keeps the crew on their toes.
Hmmm, I wonder what happened “a few weeks back”...
Anyway, that Vincent Kennedy McMahon likes to keep his team “on their toes” with “chaos” pretty much tells you everything you need to know. It definitely tells you the process won’t change until someone else is in charge.
Check out Sami & Corey’s entire conversation here. Thanks to Fightful for transcription.
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