Posted in: Sports, TV, WWE | Tagged: court bauer, jbl, john bradshaw layfield, mlw, Smackdown, The Boogeyman, Vince McMahon, worms, wrestling, wwe

When Former WWE Boss Vince McMahon Spent $30,000 On Worms

Former WWE head honcho Vince McMahon is, if nothing else, a curious fellow.  There were times he seemed to have his finger on the pulse of pop culture and created a great product, but then there are the stories that make it sound as if he had just landed on Earth in a spaceship a week ago.  For every Hulk Hogan or "Stone Cold" Steve Austin he's has a hand in creating, there are also stories about him not knowing what burritos are.  Apparently, he's also not big on finding out how much something will cost before doing it either, as a newly-told story reveals he spent an absurd amount of money for a segment involving worms.

In a recent episode of the Wrestling Perspective Podcast, former WWE writer and current MLW owner Court Bauer told a funny story about a time when Vince McMahon approved a segment on the January 26, 2006 episode of SmackDown where The Boogeyman would terrify JBL by dumping thousands of worms on him in the ring from above.  "One time we had a thing where The Boogeyman, who loved to eat worms – not really, but it was part of the gimmick, and we had these worms fall from the ceiling in the arena and JBL's rolling around in them because, of course, the heel's terrified of the worms."

Apparently, Vince McMahon was all for it and loved the result… until he found out how much they had just spent on the worms. "Vince is laughing, going, 'Oh, that's great' and it's raining worms in the arena and he turns to us and goes, 'How much were those worms? That's a lot of worms', and we go over and get the production assistant or the writer's assistant.  'How much was it?'. He goes, 'Well, sir, that was $30,000', and Vince's jaw drops. He was like, '$30,000 for worms?'. 'Well they were out of normal worms, so we had to go organic', and he just looked shocked."

Despite proudly flaunting to everyone his billionaire status, even Vince McMahon knew spending $30,000 on worms for a comedy segment wasn't a good move.  "He's like, I can't believe we just blew $30,000, and there's John Layfield rolling in the worms, and he's crying, and everyone's laughing, but it's like, he was shocked, and I think that assistant was fired soon thereafter, but the show went on. You think about a lot of companies are gagged to spend that kind of money, it's excessive. At WWE, it's on a totally different level".

So even Vince McMahon isn't immune to sticker shock, it seems, at least when it involves slimy bugs for The Boogeyman to munch on.  Check out the video of the segment below.

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