Nick Patrick Shares Whose Idea It Was For Him To Become The nWo’s Referee

Nick Patrick loved his time as the nWo’s referee.

The former WCW referee recently joined Chris Van Vliet, where he discussed a number of topics, including his time as the nWo’s referee. According to Patrick, the idea was originally Kevin Sullivan’s, also noting that the story was meant to play out for longer than it did. However, when the crowd reacted so strongly to Patrick clipping Lex Luger’s knees during a tag match against The Outsiders at Hog Wild ’96, they had to speed things up.

“That was Kevin Sullivan’s idea. He approached Eric [Bischoff] and I guess they two of them pretty much hatched it, but for the most part, at the beginning, almost everything was Kevin. He was the one that came to me and told me what they wanted me to do. They actually wanted it to progress a little slower than it did. But, man, it just ignited all of a sudden and people were pissed off at me. I think the one where they realized where they had to quit milking it and start going with it was when we were at Sturgess. Lex [Luger] went to rack a guy and he clipped me with his feet and I went down. I went down and i took his knee out, clipped his knee. Was it an accident? Was it not an accident? I’d been denying all these things, but when that happened, from that point on, they [the audience] were hot at me. Milking it and trying to do it slow wasn’t going to work anymore. So they went ahead and green lighted it and, man, I ended up getting some heat out of that thing. That was a lot of fun. That was probably the most fun I had in the business other than, you know, when you’re learning and beginning working stages. That’s awesome fun too. As far as being in an international company where it pretty much all becomes about business, that was the most fun I had working for big companies,” Patrick said.

Patrick served as the nWo referee until April ’97 at Spring Stampede when he was attacked by Kevin Nash after counting a clean win for Diamond Dallas Page over Randy Savage.

Patrick would also work for the WWE after their purchase of WCW, remaining with the company until August 2008. He would announce his retirement in February 2009.

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