Teddy Long On Working With Vince McMahon – ‘I’d Never Let Him Down’
During a recent interview with WrestleBinge, WWE Hall of Famer Theodore ‘Teddy’ Long recalled working with Vince McMahon in WWE.
The former SmackDown General Manager revealed that he would rehearse his promos without a script to stand out from the crowd and to impress Mr. McMahon.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On the angle where he was kidnapped by The Undertaker: I’ll tell you a good story. When I was doing that angle with The Undertaker, where he kidnapped me and everything. They called ‘Taker first, and then they got me and the writers said they wanted me in Vince’s office. So I had the chance to go and sit down and meet Vince and ‘Taker and go over this whole thing. I was thinking, ‘Wow, look at the position I’m in, sitting with Vince and ‘Taker’. I don’t say anything and then Vince [McMahon] goes over and says ‘Are you going to say anything?’. So I’m like, I don’t know what to say. They kept talking about the match, and I chimed in one little thing and I just looked at Vince and he’s like ‘God damn it! Let’s do that!”
On how it made him feel special: “I thought about that all day. I was sitting in there with two icons and going over something, so that made me feel really special. That’s why I said, I’m not going to let this man down, I’m never going to mess this job up. And I never messed the job up – there were just people that didn’t want me there.”
Teddy Long on how he used to rehearse promos without a script for Vince McMahon: “But I did that to impress Vince [McMahon], to let Vince know that ‘Hey, I got this.’ And Vince was very secure about Kayfabe. Nobody honors kayfabe anymore now, but Vince always wanted it to be real. So every time I walked out without a paper, you had maintenance people, you had a lot of people in the arena that are watching the rehearsals, and they see everybody else with a paper, then they’re going to be like, ‘They all had that paper, but Teddy Long didn’t, he’s real.’ So that’s another reason why I did it.”
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