The persona was spoken about by Bruce Prichard.
WWE’s WrestleMania 24 event was the focus of the latest Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard podcast. During the conversation, Prichard spoke about former WWE writer Chris DeJoseph and his on-screen role as ‘Big Dick Johnson’.
Prichard stated that himself and Paul ‘Triple H’ Levesque ‘might have’ come up with that character and it was inspired by a role that was played by the late Chris Farley. Prichard recalled the first time DeJoseph performed the character for Vince McMahon and added that DeJoseph and all involved almost got themselves fired for it.
I’ve always gotten along with Chris (DeJoseph). Chris is a nice guy… (Prichard laughed when asked what he thought of DeJoseph as ‘Big Dick Johnson’). Um… I mean, Paul Levesque and I might have kind of come up with that a little bit. It was… God, what was his name?… Chris Farley. Patrick Swayze thing, yes, and I’m looking at it and first time that we did it, he did it with Vince (McMahon) with the oil and everything. Almost got him fired, almost got all of us fired after that one.
The Florida Citrus Bowl (Camping World Stadium) played host to WrestleMania 24. Prichard dove into how tasking it was to set up the backstage area in that stadium and mentioned that half-a-million dollars was spent on palm trees for the stage setup.
Sh*t hole (Prichard described the WrestleMania 24 stadium)… Well, you get a hole and then you sh*t in it and therefore acts like a sh*t hole, and that’s kind of what that stadium was like. It was a hole that was dilapidated. It had no dressing rooms, it had no backstage area of any kind whatsoever. We had to repair it. We had to build an entire backstage city with showers and bathrooms and buses and tents and portable rooms and bathrooms and showers and things of that nature. Build walkways, so you’re not just walking through the mud and the dirt.
It was a hell of a deal (that’s why we did the show there despite the hassle). It was a hell of a deal and I think it was the first one in Florida… That was a big deal and it was an historic stadium if you will. But I think we spent almost a half-a-million dollars on palm trees around the top of it, when all was said and done. Aesthetically, we put a lot of time, effort and expense into making it look presentable on-camera and if you go back and you look at the WrestleManias that have been held in that stadium compared to anything else held there, I think you would say, that’s that? But what people don’t see is the backstage and there were no offices. Like I said, we had to build walkways so that you’re not just walking through the grass and the dirt and the mud and all the crap. We had to build actual just walkways to dressing rooms and to bathrooms and everything else. It was not ideal and I don’t think that, yeah, it wasn’t some place I really would go, gosh! We gotta go back there and the fact that it was open air. I know it’s Florida, but it’s April and it’s humid and it rains so that’s another thing, you didn’t have air conditioning anywhere except in the rooms and the buses and all the stuff that we built. It wasn’t any air conditioning, anywhere. So it was a challenge to say the least.
This year’s WrestleMania emanated from SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California and POST Wrestling’s night one and two reviews can be watched by clicking on the highlighted event nights.
If the quotes in this article are used, please credit Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard with an H/T to POST Wrestling for the transcriptions.
