Vince McMahon is no stranger to trying risky things in the world of wrestling. According to former WWE creative team member Court Bauer, that also meant spending a shocking amount of money.
Speaking during a recent appearance on The Wrestling Perspective podcast, Bauer spoke about an old segment that occurred between The Boogeyman and JBL, and saw worms rain down onto the ring and all over JBL. According to Bauer, times like that were when McMahon would not be afraid to spend a “significant amount of money.”
“There are times when Vince [McMahon] will try something and spend a significant amount of money. It doesn’t work and he just says, ‘All right. Well we tried it’, and you’re like, wow, that could have funded a half-a-year for my company back in the day,” said Bauer. “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 and 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.”
Bauer then revealed the price of the worms, a staggering $30,000, and said that while Vince was shocked in the moment, moments like that were “excessive” and “on a totally different level” at WWE compared to any other company.
“‘How much was it?’. He goes, ‘Well sir, that was $30,000’, and Vince’s jaw drops,” said Bauer. “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. 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”.
