Bruce Prichard Tells Sad Story About Pat Patterson at King of the Ring 1998

When discussing the legendary 1998 WWE King of the Ring pay-per-view where Undertaker and Mick Foley competed in the Hell in a Cell Match, Bruce Prichard revealed the following story about WWE Hall of Famer Pat Patterson on a recent edition of Something to Wrestle with Bruce Prichard:

Bruce Prichard on what was happening backstage during the Hell in a Cell match and how he found out during the match that Pat Patterson had just found out that his longtime partner was dead:

“I knew the two big bumps and I knew the finish but I didn’t know what they were gonna do immediately after the bump into the ring. I’m screaming backstage for Pat Patterson. I’m going f–king nuts and I’m angry at this point because Pat’s the agent for the match and he’s not there at Gorilla to talk me through the thing. And Jerry Briscoe comes to me and sits down and says, ‘what do you want?’ I said, ‘I’ve gotta know what the hell what we’re doing here, what was planned here, what can we cut out? What can we do? What’s going on? Where the f–k is Pat?’ Jerry just looks at me and says, ‘he got a call about Louis.’ Louis was Pat’s partner for many, many years, 35 plus years. It shut me down I looked at him and said, ‘oh my god, is Louis okay?’ Jerry just looks at me and said, ‘he’s dead.'”

Prichard on his emotional reaction to the situation:

“I’m screaming like an asshole and a lunatic for Pat not knowing what had happened. I think Jerry knew I don’t even know if Vince [McMahon] knew at that point. Just that calm comes over ya and it’s a surreal feeling because all this other s–t that you think is so important becomes really unimportant and your priorities go just… it was just f–ked up. So in all of that, Pat’s getting a phone call that Louie has passed. I’m yelling for Pat, ‘where the f–k are you?’ to talk me through this wrestling match and Briscoe gives me the news as cool and as calmly as somebody can do that and just looked at me and was like, ‘let’s just get through this’ because to everybody else that didn’t matter and we just got through it. Then you’re looking at guys in the ring that are putting their bodies on the line and risking their life literally taking bumps and doing this crazy s–t that you wonder, wow is it all worth all that?”

Prichard on how the loss for Pat Patterson put things into perspective:

“You know it put s–t into perspective I guess because for the moment you’re worried about a wrestling show and then in the midst of this wrestling show you see a couple of your friends out there risking their life and doing this incredible stunt work I guess you could call it but stuntmen wouldn’t be as crazy to do the things Mick Foley did and in the middle of that real life is happening backstage and you just gotta put your smile on and move on and keep going and not let anybody know. The Rock… cause Rock and Pat were very close and thank god he was there to be with Pat and s–t and I think Linda McMahon was there. But it was just a lot of s–t, that’s the untold portion of the Hell In A Cell in Pittsburg that night and everything else going on and Pat losing Louie what was just a crazy, crazy night.”