Bruce Prichard reveals the creative influence Maurice "Mad Dog" Vachon had on Shawn Michaels and Diesel's No Holds Barred WWF Championship Match from In Your House 7: Good Friends, Better Enemies.
Speaking on the latest episode of his Something To Wrestle podcast (via AdFreeShows), the Executive Director of Raw and SmackDown reviewed the April 1996 event and the main event bout between the "Two Dudes with Attitudes." Prichard says that Pat Patterson was involved in putting everything together, but that it was WWE Hall of Famer Maurice Vachon who came up with the idea to use his prosthetic leg as a prop. Here is what happened:
"We were there [in Omaha], Mad Dog lived in Omaha and was always there, and had lost his leg in a horrible accident where he was out cutting his grass along the road, someone hit him and he lost his leg. Like left him on the side of the road to die and they had to amputate his leg and so Mad Dog had a prosthetic leg... Mad Dog was sitting there and we're [Bruce Prichard and Pat Patterson] talking to him -- I always had a real good relationship with Maurice through the years [imitates his accent]. He was just a classy, really great, great guy. It was actually Maurice's idea, [imitating Vachon] 'Why don't you take the leg, use the leg, they rip it off of me. I don't give a f*ck.' We're sitting there and we're laughing about it. Then we start to think about it and ran it by Vince [McMahon] and said, 'Hey, what do you think if...?' He goes, 'Well, if Maurice is good with it, run it by the talent.' Then we ran it by the talent and of course they f*cking loved it. It was unique. It was a different spot."
It was Diesel who attacked Vachon and took his leg, but Michaels got the last laugh, using the leg as a baseball bat to knock out his opponent and retain the WWF Championship. According to Prichard, all Vachon had to do was unlatch his leg, which made it easier for Diesel to remove it.
Diesel (Kevin Nash) would finish up with the WWF soon after, debuting in WCW on June 10, 1996. He, along with the rest of the original nWo members, was recently inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class of 2020.
An upcoming episode of WWE Untold focuses on Shawn Michaels and Diesel. A review of the docu-special by Fightful's Sean Ross Sapp can be seen here.
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