Buff Bagwell says one sentence from Shane McMahon completely changed his WWE debut.
While speaking to the Kings of the Ring podcast, Bagwell claimed Shane pulled him aside before his infamous match with Booker T and delivered an order he couldn’t believe. Bagwell says he was told not to look at the camera—and if he did, he’d be fired. For Bagwell, that instruction made no sense.
“The next week was Atlanta, Georgia. Now my question to you is if you’re the WWF, would you wait to put Booker T and Buff Bagwell in Atlanta, Georgia or do it in Tacoma, Washington?… The match, the angle was called the invasion. Why not invade Atlanta with Booker T and Buff Bagwell instead? We went on a WWF show and got booed as soon as we walked out. Tragic.
“o they told me, I remember being in the locker room and me and Booker are whispering back there like, ‘Hey man, why are we wrestling this week? Why wouldn’t we wait till next week?’ And nobody was really… you can’t ask them that. We’re just wondering, you know. In the middle of all that wondering why we wouldn’t just wait for a week and be in WCW in Atlanta, Shane McMahon appeared in the locker room. And I mean, as soon as he appeared, I’ve been in this business enough to know that it wasn’t good. And as soon as he appeared, I tried to find a set of eyes that could see Shane McMahon talking to me. And I couldn’t find a set of eyes nowhere.”
Looking into the camera wasn’t just part of his entrance or a random habit. It had become one of the defining traits of his WCW character, something he says fans immediately associated with “Buff Bagwell.” Taking that away, he believes, stripped away a huge part of what made the character work.
“And Shane McMahon goes, ‘Don’t look in the camera.’ And I said, ‘Shane, that’s all I do.’ (laughs) I said, ‘I look in the camera. I talk in the camera. I pose. And I’m a pretty good wrestler. That’s all I do.'”
Bagwell says the conversation got even more serious when Shane made it clear the instruction wasn’t optional.
“He goes, ‘If you look in the camera, you’re fired.'”
Bagwell says he followed the order, even though it meant abandoning one of the biggest parts of his on-screen personality. Looking back, he says the difference is obvious if fans compare his final WCW matches to what happened against Booker T in WWE.
“So what I ask you guys to do is go back and look at the last two matches Marcus Alexander Bagwell had on WCW, or Buff Bagwell, the last two matches, and count how many times I talk in the camera. And then watch the Booker T match. Zero times do I talk or look in the camera because I’m a company guy. I did what they asked me to do.”
Bagwell says the strange atmosphere started before anyone even walked through the curtain. He recalled quietly asking Booker T why WWE was rushing the match in Tacoma instead of waiting one more week for the Atlanta show, where the WCW invasion angle would’ve played out in front of a hometown crowd. Neither of them had an answer.
“The next week was Atlanta, Georgia. Now my question to you is if you’re the WWF, would you wait to put Booker T and Buff Bagwell in Atlanta, Georgia or do it in Tacoma, Washington?… The match, the angle was called the invasion. Why not invade Atlanta with Booker T and Buff Bagwell instead? We went on a WWF show and got booed as soon as we walked out. Tragic. So they told me, I remember being in the locker room and me and Booker are whispering back there like, ‘Hey man, why are we wrestling this week? Why wouldn’t we wait till next week?’… In the middle of all that wondering why we wouldn’t just wait for a week and be in WCW in Atlanta, Shane McMahon appeared in the locker room.”
According to Bagwell, the unusual instructions didn’t stop with him. He claims Booker T was also given directions before the match, although he never found out exactly what they were. Add in unfamiliar announcers and Stacy Keibler unexpectedly introducing both wrestlers, and Bagwell believes the entire presentation felt manufactured instead of letting the WCW invasion unfold naturally.
“And they also had told Book—I never talked to Booker about this—but they also told Booker something… Then it was Arn Anderson and Scott Hudson as the announcers… And then Stacy Keibler, for the first and only time of her career, announces me and Booker T. So it was just very weird. All of it was very strange. I don’t know the answer. I don’t know why. I just know it was very weird to have all of that happen when it looked forced instead of it just naturally happening the next week in Atlanta and the crowd go crazy that Buff Bagwell and Booker T walk out.”
Bagwell has long maintained that his brief WWE run didn’t fall apart because of one match alone. Looking back, he believes a series of creative decisions—including being told to abandon one of his signature traits before he even stepped into the ring—left him in a position where he was no longer performing as the character fans had spent years watching in WCW.
What do you think about Buff Bagwell’s story? Did WWE make a mistake by changing his character so quickly, or was it the right call during the Invasion storyline? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
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