In a recent edition of Bruce Prichard's Podcast
Something to Wrestle With, Prichard talked about Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson's rise to fame during the Attitude Era of WWE, as well as the resulting jealousy from his fellow superstars in the locker room.
Vince McMahon's "Kiss My Ass Club" was created at
Survivor Series 2001. As the name suggests, McMahon would order people to show their respect and loyalty by having to kiss his backside. If anyone tried to protest joining the club, McMahon would threaten to fire or suspend them.
The club almost started years earlier. After
The Rock won the WWF Championship and aligned himself with Vince at the
Survivor Series in 1998, there was reportedly an idea to have The Rock kiss Vince's derriere. The angle never happened and there were reports that Rock had refused to go through with the angle. Prichard explained that The Rock wasn't the one against the angle, but rather, Prichard and fellow management didn't want to tarnish the stardom The Rock was reaching.
"Let's address the kissing his ass thing," Prichard said. "That was actually brought up, and it wasn't Rock [against it], it was a lot of people including myself, Pat Patterson, Jerry Brisco, there were a lot of people that felt that if you do that to him right now, that it's gonna kill him. It's gonna kill him as a heel, it's gonna kill him as a competitor. From this vantage point, exactly what you just said, he's two gears in and we didn't know exactly what we have here. We feel we've got lightning in a bottle."