EC3 pitches "No More Mr. Nice Guy" gimmick for WWE Hall of Famer (Exclusive)
EC3 worked for WWE between 2009 and 2013 before returning for another spell with the company between 2018 and 2020. The 41-year-old recently addressed how he would have booked Ricky Steamboat if the Hall of Famer wrestled in WWE's Attitude Era in the late 1990s.
WWE creative team member Bruce Prichard said on Something to Wrestle that Steamboat would have failed in those days due to his lack of personality. Vince Russo, WWE's head writer at the start of the Attitude Era, disagrees with Prichard and thinks Steamboat could have been a bad guy.
On Sportskeeda's The Wrestling Outlaws, EC3 sided with Russo and explained how he would have turned Steamboat heel:
"I would actually call Ricky Steamboat Mr. Nice Guy and I'd build him up. Exactly the same, he keeps getting scr*wed, light bulb goes off, then he's like, 'Enough,' then he becomes No More Mr. Nice Guy and now he just has a leather jacket on instead." [2:59 – 3:14]
Watch the video above to hear Russo's insight on why some wrestlers take a long time to develop meaningful on-screen personas.
EC3 highlights a key WWE creative issue
In the same episode, Vince Russo recalled how Sean Waltman, aka X-Pac, "couldn't put a sentence together" during promo rehearsals earlier in his career. The former D-Generation X member eventually improved on the microphone and went on to become a two-time WWE Hall of Famer.
EC3 added that WWE's creative team sometimes miscasts wrestlers by booking them in storylines that don't suit their characters:
"During modern times, though, I think Ricky definitely could have hang if the creative behind him was putting him in the position to succeed. With Vince saying he had to work with guys an extended period of time to get them ready, what I think a lot of creative doesn't do is get to know the people and then put them in the best positions where they can succeed, or find that one thing inside them that they can bring out and then work around that." [3:16 – 3:43]
Ricky Steamboat was one of the most popular babyfaces in the wrestling business in the 1980s. The former Intercontinental Champion was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2009.
Do you think Ricky Steamboat could have turned heel in the Attitude Era? Hit the discuss button and let us know.
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