Vince McMahon Once Pitched The Rock to Wrestle a Live Bear

By Connor Casey

Vince McMahon had a crazy idea for when the WWE became a publicly-traded company back in 2000. His idea, according to Bruce Prichard on the Something to Wrestle podcast, was to have "The Brahma Bull" The Rock take on a live bear right in the middle of Wall Street (in a reference to bear and bull markets in the stock exchange). The matches on Wall Street wound up happening but Rock's match against a Bear (thankfully) fell through. 

"So I'm scratching my head. I called someone in their office that dealt with that type of logistics, and how do you get a street shut down in New York, and so on and so forth? The answer I got was that 'Wall Street had never been shut down like that in the history of Wall Street, you can't shut Wall Street down. Doesn't happen.' Well, 'Vince wants to put a ring up. Vince wants to have this event when we go to the stock exchange.' Ah, 'Bruce, that can't be done.' Well, 'It's not about if it can be done, it's what do we have to do to get it done,' and we got it done," Prichard said (h/t Fightful). 

"We pulled a lot of strings and were able to get --the stars lined up. Clinton was the president at the time, and Clinton was actually speaking in a hotel three blocks from the stock exchange. So there were already roadblocks in place, and a great deal of security already. So while you would think that would be a hindrance, I think that kind of helped us in that they were probably going to block off that area anyway. So we got the other end of it blocked off because it only made sense. A lot of things fell into place. Very, very fortunate. But it was by the hair of our chinny chin chin, and it was there — 'No' was not an acceptable answer," he continued.

Regarding the bear match — "The bear, thank God, was reconsidered on several fronts. Because, first of all, you had the animal rights activists that would probably not look kindly on a wrestling bear. Even though the human rights activists are the ones 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 Stock Exchange the day that 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 and not a bear market, for God's sakes. So we had 'The Brahma Bull' and we didn't have any bears hanging around there. So it was interesting, but we were able to get it done."

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