Freddie Prinze Jr. Recalls Vince McMahon Ribbing USA, Drafting John Cena To SmackDown

Pranks in professional wrestling are common, and Vince McMahon himself hasn't been shy about getting involved in some over the years with different wrestlers. However, on "Wrestling with Freddie," Freddie Prinze Jr. revealed that McMahon would also pull ribs on the television networks that he worked with, simply because he found it funny to do.

"Vince would mess with them," Prinze said about the television networks. "On the draft one year he drafted John Cena, which was the only ratings that Monday Night Raw would get, he drafted him to Friday Night SmackDown, and USA freaked out and started calling." Even though Cena did end up drafted back to "WWE Raw" later on that night with the final pick of the 2011 draft, that had nothing to do with the calls that got made. Prinze confirmed that it was already in the script to happen, and was always part of McMahon's plan, as this was just done purposefully for a prank. However, Prinze does believe that doing it was the stupidest idea possible, because of the impact it had on the draft itself and how people viewed it. 

"It delegitimizes the entire draft process that they do every year," Prinze said. "Like that could actually happen 'No, we want him, no we want him,' just every draft pick, and he did it just to screw with the people."

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Wrestling With Freddie" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.