Freddie Prinze Jr. Recalls Michael Hayes Telling Him That Undertaker Convinced Vince McMahon To Nix His Michelle McCool Storyline

Freddie Prinze Jr. recalls a Divas Championship storyline that was nixed.

A few weeks ago, The Undertaker made headlines after claiming that he doesn’t use his influence to put his wife, Michelle McCool, in higher positions within the confines of WWE.

During a episode of the Wrestling With Freddie podcast that aired during the summer of 2022, former WWE writer Freddie Prinze Jr. detailed a storyline of his that was approved by Stephanie McMahon, Michael Hayes, and Vince McMahon.

“I have Michelle losing the Divas Championship at the Royal Rumble which happens a few months before WrestleMania and I have her losing with dignity and I have her giving us a real match. I’ve been in the company maybe four months, I didn’t realize the belt meant so much to so many different people – it didn’t mean that much to others, if they had the Intercontinental Title belt they weren’t really in on when they were gonna lose it or not.”

Prinze then recalled the early part of his meeting with Michelle McCool, which seemingly went well.

“I go to work, somewhere in the arena, backstage and Michelle comes up to me and says ‘Stephanie says you want to talk to me about the women’s storyline.’ We sit down in the cafeteria off to the side, and I start pitching to her what it’s gonna be. It wasn’t right on my part. I get to the Royal Rumble and I explain to her that the suggestion is that she drops the title at the Royal Rumble and then I keep telling the story of where it finishes because she deserves to know the whole story.”

According to Prinze, McCool took issue with losing the Diva’s Championship before WrestleMania.

“It gets all the way to WrestleMania which would be Beth and Kia [Kharma] and her face just goes pale. All the color just drops right out of her skin and right away I know I’ve done something terrible. I just don’t know what is it yet because this is hindsight and I was in the moment. So I go ‘what’s wrong?’ and her eyes well up and I’m like ‘what did I do? What did I do?’ and she said ‘I didn’t think I’d be losing the belt before WrestleMania. She was upset, and in hindsight, rightfully so.”

Prinze went on to show some regret in regards to how he handled the situation.

“So here I am with the champion and she’s crying because of me because I didn’t talk to her first to say ‘hey we’re thinking of taking the title off of you at the Royal Rumble so we can get this other – that just sounds horrible even saying it now. So I screwed up, before I got the story approved I probably should have shown it to her although when you hear the end of the story it probably would have gotten killed even sooner. I don’t know what the right move was here but I know I screwed up and she deserved better than that.”

Michael Hayes was the person to eventually let Prinze know that the storyline was no longer happening.

“[Hayes told me] ‘Freddie there’s a problem with your diva’s storyline and we need to talk about it.’ He goes ‘it’s gone.’ I go ‘what do you mean it’s gone man?’ And he goes ‘it’s gone.’ I said ‘what happened?’ He goes ‘well Michelle said that you and her talked and she didn’t really like the story so it’s gone.’ He goes ‘Freddie, she talked to Undertaker, Undertaker talked to Vince, the story’s gone.”

Fans can check out Undertaker’s recent response to the criticism surrounding his podcast by clicking here.

Special thanks to Inside The Ropes for the quote(s) in this article.