Triple H Skips SmackDown Tapings to Have Dinner with Ronda Rousey
…
Russo welcomes former WWE writer Kristian Harloff to the show.
Harloff says that he was always a huge wrestling fan, and his favourite performer was ‘Macho Man’ Randy Savage. He moved to Los Angeles to become a writer and a stand up comedian, and he met Paul Heyman through a WWE event one evening. He asked Heyman how to get a chance to write for WWE and Heyman told him to write a letter. He told Heyman he already did that, so Heyman told him to write another one.
He wrote the company again, this time including his take on an in-depth ‘Invasion’ angle. This caught the attention of Stephanie McMahon and she flew him into Stanford for an interview.
Russo asks Harloff why he’d want to make the jump from being a stand-up comedian to writing professional wrestling. He says that he always wanted to work for WWE and he had to take the chance. Unfortunately, shortly after arriving in WWE he realized that it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows behind the curtains.
Harloff informs that he got on management’s radar quick, but not in a positive way. During his first pre-show production meeting which was led by Vince McMahon, Harloff raised his hand to ask questions on multiple occasions. Coach came up to him after that and told him to settle down a little bit, because you don’t want to be ‘that’ guy.
Taz opens today’s show speaking about the MizTV segment from last night’s RAW, which featured guest stars LaVar Ball and his two sons. LaVar Ball is a lightning rod in the sporting world right now, and WWE knew that they’d garner the attention of the mainstream sporting media if they had him make a guest appearance on RAW.
Taz says he’s sure that Vince McMahon knew this was going to be horrible, but he was definitely laughing his ass off in the Gorilla position. The positives outweighed the negatives in this situation, and that’s why McMahon loves to do these things from time to time. Regardless of all this, Taz was incredibly annoyed by Ball’s antics and wanted to jump through his television to beat him up.
He adds that he feels very sorry for Lonzo Ball, son of LaVar, who was recently drafted by the Los Angeles Lakers. His father’s heat resulted in him actually getting booed by the WWE audience in his hometown of Los Angeles, and he now has a huge target on his back as he enters his rookie season in the NBA.