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Lorsque la WWE a joint la bourse de New York, en 2000, Vince McMahon a suggéré l’idée de faire lutter The Rock contre un ours en plein milieu de Wall Street.
Oui, un ours.
C’est le vice-président senior de la WWE, Bruce Prichard, qui a fait cette confidence sur son podcast Something to Wrestle.
Prichard raconte que McMahon est venu le voir dans son bureau pour partager son idée. Il aurait fait fermer le secteur de Wall Street, pour ainsi y installer un ring et y tenir des matchs à midi. Les matchs auraient été diffusés sur WWF.com.
Par la suite, MxMahon a soutenu qu’un ours comme adversaire de The Rock pourrait attirer l’attention.
“The ring on Wall Street is when we moved from NASDAQ to the New York Stock Exchange [in October 2000],” Prichard said. “Vince came into my office on a Thursday, and I believe it was going to be a Tuesday or a Wednesday that we were going to be on the New York Stock Exchange, to ring the bell on the Stock Exchange, and Vince wanted to put a ring in the middle of Wall Street. Shut Wall Street down and put a ring there and have matches at noon. Huge spectacle, we’re gonna go live on WWF.com, so it’s like, okay, cool. I thought he was just kind of telling me this. So I knew that ‘Okay we need to put on a show, we need to come up with something.
“But what he was telling me was ‘Hey, I want to do this, get it done.’ As he trails off he goes ‘and I want a bear…! I want The Rock to wrestle a bear.’ The Brahma Bull versus the bear. The honest to God living wrestling bear which used to be an attraction back in the day.”
Prichard mentionne qu’un ring a bel et bien été installé sur Wall Street, mais sans matchs de lutte et bien sûr aucun ours.
Prichard a souligné que les groupes activistes pour les droits des animaux auraient protesté fortement, de même que ceux pour les droits de l’homme. Il ajoute que l’ours gagne toujours dans de telles circonstances.
Prichard then explained why the idea didn’t materialize, even though WWE did put a ring in the middle of Wall Street as part of the bell ringing ceremony to join NYSE. WWE had gone public a year earlier, and was initially listed on NASDAQ.
“The bear, thank God, was reconsidered on several fronts,” Prichard recalled. “Because, first of all, you had the animal rights activists that would not look kindly on a wrestling bear. Even though the human rights activists that probably should have been alarmed. Because trust me… the bear always goes over. So anyway, as we’re getting closer to this, the idea becomes ‘well, do you really want a bear hanging around on the New York Exchange the day your stock goes public?’ Well, ‘the bear was out today on the New York Stock Exchange.’
“No you don’t want that. You want the ‘Brahma Bull’. You know, it’s a bullish market not a bear market, for God’s sakes. So we had the ‘Brahma Bull’ we didn’t have any bears having around there.”
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