Bruce Prichard had an interesting discussion about 1993 and how difficult of a year it was on the most recent episode of his “Something To Wrestle” podcast. He detailed Lex Luger’s push and other limitations that the WWE was working with that year, as well as Sabu’s WWE tryout. Here are the highlights:

On The Struggles The WWE Faced In 1993:

I don’t know if it was, ‘oh, no’. It was certainly, ‘oh, no. It’s not Lex [Luger]’ because it was really during a period where Vince McMahon tried to have that replacement for Hulk Hogan. He was looking for so many years where we thought; ‘what would you do if it were Hulk Hogan?’ Lex Luger was the anointed one, especially during this time. He just wasn’t living up to the potential. He wasn’t drawing people. They weren’t clamoring to see more of Lex Luger. They weren’t cheering him and going bananas when he came out, so it was Vince McMahon wanting to show us, and we just kept pushing Lex.

On Luger Not Beating Yokozuna For The Title At Summerslam 1993:

This was about the time where the doubt started to come in because we did SummerSlam, and that was what it was. But Vince McMahon wasn’t ready to put the championship on him, and now we are going, boy, he didn’t come out with that well, and I don’t know if this is the guy. There were doubts.

On The Challenges That Vince’s Federal Indictment Brought About:

Limitations were, Vince McMahon did not want to bring on some new talent because of the impending trial. Vince did not feel that it was fair to say to the talent that he was going to bring them in but he doesn’t know what is going to happen with the outcome of this United States federal government trial.

We were told, this is the players that you have; this is what you have; make it work. Every once in a while we were able to bring somebody in who understood that and was really ready to come in, but that was few and far between. We didn’t have the latitude to just go out and hire people. If you hired someone new it took a lot of time and it cost money, which is what we didn’t have to spend at the time. Every dollar had to be accounted for.

On Sabu’s WWE Tryout:

Well, we had heard [of Sabu], and again he didn’t have quite the reputation at the time. I had just seen him because he looked like a younger version of The Sheik [Sabu’s uncle]. He had a look of a menacing heel that you can pair with just about anybody. We were looking for talent that could work with Lex Luger in the anti-American role.

He had talent. He being Sabu; we just wanted him. I think everybody liked him from a talent standpoint, but it wasn’t a fit at the time. This was before there were some wild, crazy stories about him at the time.

You can listen to the full episode of “Something To Wrestle” by clicking HERE

Credit: Something To Wrestle. H/T WrestlingInc.