Pat Patterson urged Vince McMahon to give Dolph Ziggler a bigger push

This week on “Talk Is Jericho,” Chris Jericho was joined by Dave Meltzer and they paid tribute to Pat Patterson. They talked about Patterson’s life and career and how he may be the second most influential person in modern wrestling history behind Vince McMahon.

Meltzer noted that Patterson was someone who everyone liked and he was not a company “yes” man. Jericho added that Patterson would push for certain people, including Dolph Ziggler. Jericho says he believes that certain people didn’t get pushed because McMahon wanted to pull a rib even though it was a detriment to the company.

Meltzer said, “there’s always gonna be some people who don’t like you but for the most part, it always felt like everybody liked to be around him.”

Meltzer also noted that Patterson could get away with certain jokes because everyone knew they were harmless. Jericho added, “he could get away with those things because he was not a yes man. He didn’t claim to be, didn’t want to be so you would always get the direct opinion from Pat. I know sometimes it led to heat like Dolph Ziggler. Pat would always stand up for Dolph Ziggler in the booking meetings. [He would say], ‘we gotta push Dolph, we gotta push Dolph, we gotta push Dolph.'”

Jericho continued, “I think that almost led to Dolph getting heat for it to where they would start doing the opposite just to piss Pat off just to have him lose a lot. You know how Vince thinks. Let’s rib Pat and bury Dolph Ziggler because it’s funny to me even though it’s a detriment to your company to do that. He was very vocal about certain talent and because he had no filter and didn’t care, I think sometimes the people he was trying to push kind of got caught in the crossfire.”

Jericho also talked about Patterson’s love of karaoke, what he did behind-the-scenes in WWE and then Dave Meltzer joined the show to talk about Patterson’s life and career including what Pat knew about the Montreal Screwjob. Meltzer also said that in addition to the Royal Rumble, he believes that Patterson came up with the Iron Man match.

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If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Talk Is Jericho with a h/t to PWrestling.com for the transcription