A former WWE writer has claimed that Kevin Dunn would kill “six weeks of story” if he didn’t think the female stars involved weren’t pretty enough.
For decades Executive Producer Kevin Dunn worked side-by-side with Vince McMahon and held a huge amount of influence within WWE. It has become widely known that Dunn tried to distance himself from “professional wrestling” and embraced “sports entertainment.”
During his two runs with WWE as a writer Freddie Prinze Jr. worked extensively with both McMahon and Dunn. Following the news that Vince McMahon has retired from his WWE duties, Prinze Jr. discussed what it was like to work for the former Chairman on his Wrestling with Freddie podcast.
The actor-turned-writer said that he got the impression that McMahon loved wrestling, often more than his own family, while Dunn never seemed to like wrestling at all.
“It’s a very random low-key era where the numbers weren’t great and people missed out on a few wrestlers peaks like the Beth Phoenix’s of the world. Like she kind of had her peak. It was at a time where Total Divas wasn’t a thing yet, so the women didn’t get that much love.
So if she was gonna get any time as a champion, which she should have had a lot of they’re like, ‘Well, we gotta pair with Santino.’ So then she had like a thing with Santino where they were, they both had a title and Santino would do his comedy stuff and then she would save him when he would like run like a girl,” Freddie recalled.
“So it was this weird, low-key, under-the-radar time where we were all kind of held hostage by the whims of Vince and Kevin Dunn, man. One guy who loves wrestling right with all his heart, more than his family, more than his dogs, and then this other guy who I never got the sense liked wrestling at all.”
Prinze Jr. said that pitching ideas to Kevin Dunn was like “throwing sand against a tidal wave,” recalling that the producer would kill pitches for female stars if he didn’t think they were pretty enough.
“He was trying to turn it into the NFL, or Tyson vs. Holyfield, which is cool, man. But it wasn’t wrestling. So, you just see this room of, they’re probably 20 writers when I worked there, and it was just 20 writers throwing sand against a tidal wave,” Freddie added.
“You could pitch for 20 minutes. Kevin would be like,’ Well, I don’t think she’s pretty,’ and all of a sudden, like six weeks of story, was just gone. It’s like, ‘Well, our champ has to be pretty.’ it’s like, ‘Yo, do you think Mankind was pretty?’ You could throw out a number of how many less-than-handsome male champions have existed, and I shall exceed it. But it would be dead it would just be dead because he would say one thing.”
Following McMahon’s departure from the company it has been reported that Kevin Dunn might be next to leave. Now that Vince has retired, he was replaced by Stephanie McMahon and Nick Khan as co-CEO’s and Triple H as head of creative.
All of these moves could spell trouble for Dunn, who it has been said Stephanie “doesn’t like,” while he doesn’t appear to be a “Triple H guy.”
H/t to Fightful for the transcription.