WWE News: Teddy Long Reveals Why WWE Axed A Major Angle And How He Became ‘SmackDown’ GM

Teddy Long spent nearly a decade with the NWA and WCW before debuting as a referee in the WWE in 1998. He donned the black-and-white pinstripes for Vince McMahon until September of 2002 when he was pulled off the road and eventually repackaged as a heel manager. Long then served in an authoritative or general managerial role on Monday Night RAW, SmackDown, and ECW from 2004 to 2014, but he was most prominently as the GM of SmackDown during that time period.

Teddy Long made his final appearance on SmackDown on July 19, 2013, but wasn’t released from the WWE until June of 2014. Long joined Evan Bourne, Brodus Clay, Curt Hawkins, Camacho, Yoshi Tatsu, Aksana, Drew McIntyre, Jinder Mahal, JTG, and referee Marc Harris in the massive “Black Thursday” cuts on June 12, 2014.

As noted, Teddy Long’s most memorable WWE run came during his long stint as SmackDown GM. From a storyline perspective, Long replaced Kurt Angle in the role and became the first ever African-American general manager in the history of the company. Long was a recent guest on the Pancakes and Powerslams Podcast, where he revealed that he fell into the GM job purely by accident.

Thanks to ProWrestling.net for the following transcription.

“I really don’t know why [it] happened. I’m being honest with you. One time, I remember I came out, I did a promo on Tommy Dreamer when I walked out with D’Lo Brown, and I think that was the first time Vince had the opportunity to see my skills and see I could really talk. So I remember coming back into the Gorilla Position where Vince was sitting. He calls me over and says to me, ‘I can’t believe I had you right under my nose all this time.’ The General Manager spot was something that they never [told] me ahead of time that I was gonna be. Nobody came to say, well this is the idea, this is what we’re thinking about, this is the direction we’re gonna go in, you’re gonna be General Manager. Nobody told me nothing.”

We’ve seen or heard a trend recently of WWE’s penchant to decide on something and try to run with it last minute rather than spend the necessary time to prepare to make sure it runs smoothly. Most notably, when WWE decided to reveal Hornswoggle as the anonymous RAW GM and change his entire character, he could not pull it off, and there wasn’t enough time to invest to make sure he did.

Here’s another case of a rushed GM promotion, but Teddy Long had more success, as he continued his description of how it all went down.

“All I did is I walked in one day, and I guess maybe an hour before we got ready to go on, the writers came up to me and told me I was gonna be General Manager tonight; Vince is gonna make you General Manager. I was nervous as I could be, I was real nervous, because I’m like, Jesus Christ! I’ve never been in this position before! And I already understood working with Vince, you don’t play, you got to be able to get out there to perform. So, to me, I’m looking at it as this is a big responsibility, but I can’t say no! I can’t tell Vince I don’t want to be the General Manager and he’ll give it to somebody else. When they told me, I just thought about it, and was like, hey, I’m on and running. That’s exactly how that happened. I had no idea.”

In 2007, Teddy Long entered into an on-screen relationship with Kristal Marshall that was culminating with a wedding during an episode of SmackDown. Long suffered a heart attack (in kayfabe), and the “marriage” was never made official. However, Long revealed that there was much more planned for the story, including why Marshall was let go shortly after the “wedding.”

“What the angle was supposed to be is that after I had the heart attack, Vickie (Guerrero) and Kristal were supposed to take over. They were supposed to start running Smackdown, and I was going to be gone for a while. We really did it again, but we did it again with Vickie and Dolph Ziggler. Vickie and Crystal were supposed to be running the show, I was gonna be gone for awhile, and they were gonna run it in the ground. Then, I was gonna make a big comeback and take over Smackdown again. But what happened I think with Kristal, she was dating Bobby Lashley at the time. So, at the time, we’re doing this spiel on Smackdown, we were together and supposed to get married and everything is supposed to be real, so you’re supposed to protect what you’re doing on TV, and she didn’t do that. She started going to Raw and waiting on Bobby and then everybody at the end, when people were leaving, they would see her with Bobby Lashley. So she disposed everything. You’re supposed to marry me and, like I said, she didn’t really protect the storyline and what we were doing on TV. So that’s where it went sour.”