Mr. Kennedy, aka Ken Anderson, recalls some advice given to him by WWE's Chairman.
In the mid-2000s, Mr. Kennedy was a rising star on WWE SmackDown. In Wrestlemania 23, he won the Money in the Bank briefcase and was supposed to cash in the very next year in the main event. Injuries and other misfortunes ultimately lead to a very different future for Ken Anderson but for a brief period of time, he was on the fast track to success.
Speaking with Sportskeeda, Mr. Kennedy recalls when Vince McMahon gave him some advice regarding humorous elements of his presentation.
"One of the things that stands out to me was early on when I first debuted, I was really over-the-top, and sort of comedic in my delivery of everything,” Ken began. “I remember him (Vince McMahon) trying to tell me like, you've got to stop trying to be funny and entertaining. I remember thinking that isn't that the point of what we're trying to do here, to just be entertaining? He was like, and I said well, with all due respect, he goes, 'funny doesn't draw money.’”
He continued, “He goes, 'nobody ever drew big bucks being funny, goofy and doing comedy stuff.' I was like, with all due respect, but I'm a huge fan of The Rock, and it feels to me that almost every one of the Rock's promos were funny. He said 'yeah, but the thing about The Rock was that he sort of hamstrung himself when he started cutting those funny promos like he did that,' one of my favorite promos ever was The Rock talking to Billy Gunn about The King of The Ring, you remember that? I know it verbatim so I could do it, I've seen it so many times.
“It was really, really funny, and he said that, after he did that, it's like fans always expect you to do that and now you have to deliver that, you have to have that delivery every single night. It's just really hard to do when you are running 52 weeks a year. So, I think that was an interesting piece of advice. There were times I think where funny is appropriate, but overall, the comedy characters, unfortunately, always seem to be secondary characters."
On the flipside of an interaction like this, Vince McMahon recently complimented Dominik Mysterio's debut match at SummerSlam 2020. Learn more at this link.
