Brad Maddox on the Line That Got Him Fired From WWE
Would you consider that the biggest regret of your WWE career?
When I heard about the angle, I just thought that this should be a really big deal. If you’re watching the Super Bowl and a Seahawk is returning an interception for a game-winning touchdown, and the referee trips him up at the 15-yard line and the Broncos win, that’s going to be the entirety of SportsCenter and ESPN for the next two months, right? That’s a huge thing. I thought they would do more with it. I should have made the push and knocked on Vince’s door and asked if we’re going to make the most of this. I should have asked if he knew if I could hold my own, and had been trained in your developmental system for three years. But I didn’t do that. I talked to writers about it, but they weren’t the right people.
Was that because you were new and didn’t want to overstep your bounds?
I thought that I could get stuff done without going to Vince directly. More, it was just being afraid to do it. After they “fired” me off of TV, off the general manager role, it was shortly after that they stopped traveling me, and I sat at home for eight or nine months. It was during that period that I decided that I didn’t care how things were supposed to go or supposed to work, if I got my chance to get back there that I would go straight to Vince, and I’d talk to him as much as I could. I would take things into my own hands – which I did when I got back on the road. If I had done that at the right time, when I was hot, things probably would have gone a lot differently.
When they transitioned you to the GM role, what were your thoughts?
I missed wrestling the whole time. As soon as I came up and started transitioning into a referee, I missed it immediately. I kind of felt like I was at the peak of my wrestling abilities when they brought me up. So I immediately missed it. On the other hand, it was pretty surreal getting to work directly with Vince and Triple H and Stephanie every week. I have awesome experiences just going over promos with Vince in his office. It was really cool. It held me over, but I’ve missed wrestling for about three years now.
It seems like from what you’re saying, you had a pretty good experience working with Vince. Do you feel like he’s more accessible and open-minded than his reputation leads people to believe?
If that reputation is still around, then it’s a myth. He likes guys who knock on his door. He’s a creative mastermind, so he likes it when you come in and pitch him an idea so he can sit there and think about it with you. You can talk about the creative side of wrestling with him. I think there’s a stigma that Vince’s door is more intimidating than he is. When I came back, I wasn’t afraid to knock on his door anymore, but I was delighted that once I did, he was really easy to talk to. He was really easy to pitch ideas to, and he was listening to what you just pitched him, and he would give feedback. He might give you different ideas. He was really cool to work with.
After the GM angle, why do you think it was so difficult for you to get you back on television?
I really don’t know. I think it was partially that I needed to pitch a little bit stronger ahead of time. I needed to work with Vince at that time. I had heard that one of the reasons they wanted to get me out of the GM role was so I could start wrestling again. But you can’t leave your fate in other people’s hands. And those writers, they have their hands full. They’ve got a full roster of guys that they have to plan out every week. Then everything has to be run through Vince. It’s really just a matter of knowing that since I wasn’t one of the more important guys, I had to pitch harder at the right time.
What were some of the ideas you were pitching to get back on TV?
I did this one thing where I acted like I was lost in a cave, in Mexico. I put these videos out online. Then it turns out that I wasn’t lost, it was just a publicity stunt. It turns out that I had lost my mind, but it wasn’t because I was stuck in a cave, it was from being stuck at home. I wanted to turn into a guy who just flipped out from falling off his mantle as being the most important man on Raw to a guy who lost his dream job and everything else with it. A guy who became mentally unstable, though not in a Dean Ambrose way. I messed around with some split-personality stuff as well. I like to try to get creative, and sometimes I go too far outside the box. Those were some of my favorite pitches.