Bruce Prichard says “listening” to wrestling fans that buy tickets is the best advice he has received

While appearing on Cody Rhodes’ podcast, longtime WWE executive Bruce Prichard was asked about the best advice he received from wrestling promoter Paul Bosch. Here was Prichard’s response…

“Paul listened to the audience… You’re listening to the people that are buying the tickets, and that’s key. Listen to the folks that are buying tickets and watching the television show, not the ones that just want to critique it. They will tell you what’s working and what isn’t working. And you can either take the opinion of, ‘Well, I know better than them,’ or you can have that open mind and say, ‘Wow, I didn’t look at it like that.’ If you listen, the audience will always help you and tell you what’s working and what isn’t working. You just have to be honest enough and open enough to listen. I think that was an important thing that Paul did.

Paul loved to come out and talk to the people buying tickets, find out what they were into. ‘What do you like? Who’s your favorite? Really? Why? Who do you not like? Is there anybody out there you’d like to see?’ He would listen, and then he would say, ‘Okay, hey, Bruce, find this guy,’ or whatever. Then we would go in search of that. So you would bring the audience what they were clamoring for. And our job is to piss them off at times, too. If you piss them off, that’s good—you just don’t want to piss off the audience in the wrong way. Listening is the best advice I’ve ever gotten from the most successful people before me.”