The Brood was a 3-man stable in WWE (WWF at the time) with a vampire theme that saw success at the height of the Attitude Era. The Brood is generally remembered for two things; Bloodbaths in which they would douse an opponent in “blood” and being the jumping-off point for the careers of WWE Legends Edge and Christian. The duo made up The Brood with leader Gangrel.
On the latest episode of their E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness podcast, Edge and Christian re-united with their Broodmate. The discussion touched on a number of topics, but one of the most intersting was Gangrel’s revealing that WWE Chairman Vince McMahon does not like vampires.
“Vince McMahon told me himself I’ll never use the vampire character, like, ‘get rid of the fangs’ because I was an idiot… ‘so make sure you trim down, grow the hair out, and we’ll definitely give you a job, but just not a vampire.’ And they did.
I was sitting home [for] a week, sitting home. Vince Russo called up. I don’t know if it was when he got that creative control thing, that brief 30 days or whatever it was. I’m real fuzzy on that kind of stuff. And he said, ‘hey, are you still doing that vampire thing?’ I said, ‘are you kidding me?’ So on a Friday night, I got everything ready for that Sunday to debut against of all people, mi amigo, Scotty 2 Hotty.”
Gangrel, who has surgically implanted vampire fangs, also revealed that the concept for The Brood was meant to emulate the vampire movie The Lost Boys.
“I was really big on The Brood because of The Lost Boys.” Gangrel recalled, “I came up with it through The Lost Boys. And I said, ‘man, they don’t even [have] to win! It’s going to be cool. When they get their asses kicked, I’m telling you people will like them.’ And they were like, ‘no.’ I said, ‘old man, I’m telling you nobody hates a vampire.’ And I heard everybody say they hate vampires.”
Since leaving WWE in 2001, Gangrel has appeared all over the globe for various independent promotions, as well as made occasional one-off appearances in WWE.
