After being released from WWE in February 2019, reportedly for letting Alicia Fox wrestle while intoxicated, Arn Anderson starting making appearances for All Elite Wrestling, and last week started playing the role of Cody’s coach on AEW Dynamite. On the most recent episode of his podcast with Conrad Thompson, “ARN,” Anderson discussed when he knew his time at WWE, where he was a producer, was coming to an end.
Anderson said he knew his time in WWE was wrapping up “probably four years, somewhere in there, before I got canned.” He explained:
I was getting blamed for stuff that was perceived to be my fault that wasn’t my fault. My opinion was not valued.
You know, something I’m not sure that everybody knows… is besides our duties on the road when you’re a producer and you’re traveling all those miles and going out on Friday and sometimes driving a thousand miles before you get to Raw and then you got another three hundred that night and you drive and you’ve got to be there early for Smackdown, on top of all that they would send the show out sometimes on Sunday night, so after you had already put in a thousand miles, you had already did a show, you had driven to Raw… then you would get an email and you would have to critique the show.
Anderson described the process of critiquing the show and the impact he saw that work have:
You would have to read through a three-hour Raw, give your opinions, suggestions. Same thing with Smackdown. Now, it doesn’t matter that it’s four in the morning and you’re dead tired. But that’s all the producers. Very rarely in those last four years would anything that any one of us had offered – because you would get a sheet with the producer suggestions and names that go by them – and they never would use any of those suggestions, and I knew when my opinion was no longer valued…
It was almost like it was creative versus the producers, which is the farthest thing from the truth. We were doing all we could do to support their ideas. A lot of them we disagreed with and we’d voiced it and it would get kicked around the room, but by the time it got back to the beginning, it would just be what was written originally.
Anderson continued that he was made to feel like one of “you WCW guys” even though he had worked for WWE for eighteen years and that he was “always getting my head bitten off for things that weren’t my fault.” His ideas were also shot down as “stupid” but the one voice that mattered backstage, Vince McMahon:
At the end of the day, it was an audience of one who we were performing for, across the board… “You only have to please an audience of one.” And we know who the audience of one is. So, if you’re not trying to give the audience what they want, if you’re just trying to tip-toe around what you know he wants and requires, it’s a difficult minefield. It really is.
You can listen to the whole ARN clip here.
