Bruce Prichard regrets that Papa Shango was a character whose heyday was during one of Bruce’s hiatuses from WWE.
Bruce Prichard is the current executive director of WWE television and since 1987 has been a part of the creative brain trust in WWE with a few “hiatuses” breaking up his three separate tenures with the company.
The first “hiatus” would come shortly after WrestleMania in 1991. Ultimate Warrior would dispatch the Brother Love character and Bruce Prichard would be fired from WWE. During this time, Bruce became a part of the Global Wrestling Federation promotion and even briefly entertained an offer from WCW where he would become a manager of Barbarian and Steve Austin.
During this time, WWE debuted the character of Papa Shango. Played by Charles Wright, aka The Godfather, Papa Shango was a voodoo priest largely Sharon similarities with from the character of “Baron Samedi” from the James Bond film, “Live and Let Die.”
Shango’s most notable moment in his WWE run would see him put a curse on the Ultimate Warrior which would ultimately see the former WWE champion projectile vomit during one of WWE’s syndicated television programs in 1992.
Speaking on a Q&A episode of his podcast, Bruce Prichard spoke about the many different Voodoo elements he would have pitched for the character to incorporate into his stick had he been with the company during the major push of Papa Shango.
"Oh God, you know it was, I would laugh and do the voodoo shit and anybody that's a Gilligan's Island fan, when the Tribal Chief and the voodoo guy came on the island and made voodoo dolls out of all the seven castaways and shit. I wanted to do shit like that. I wasn't there. I was just laughing going, 'I wanted him to do like a voodoo doll of whoever he was working with and have the guy take bumps and shit.' Papa Shango never touching him and stuff like that. Wanted to do the stick pin in the voodoo and then have Warrior start puking and shit, but I wanted to see all that. You know what I mean? Stuff like that. Just really hokey things that all of you would have shit on."
Bruce would come back to WWE shortly after the 1992 SummerSlam. At that event, Shango defeated Tito Santana in a match that was only shown to the Coliseum Home Video audience. Later, Charles Wright would be repackaged as Kama before being renamed Kama Mustafa, and then The Godfather and finally, The Goodfather.
Charles Wright would be inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2016 and appear at the 2020 Survivor Series as part of the final farewell of The Undertaker.
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