Mr. Kennedy Recalls Batista Hugging Him And Telling Him He Was Going To Win The World Championship Off Of Him

Ken Anderson, formerly known as Mr. Kennedy during his short but memorable stint with WWE, recently spoke with Chris Van Vliet about what the original plans were for him when he won the Money in the Bank briefcase at WrestleMania 23.

“The idea was I would cash in at next year’s WrestleMania. That was the plan. I only had it a month and a half, two months maybe, and they came to me. I was riding with Matt Hardy. We had left the building early, which was unlike us. We usually stayed until the very end. For whatever reason, we left early, and I got a call from Michael Hayes. He said, ‘Where are you guys? I need you to come back. Vince needs to talk to you in his office.’ So, I scurried back to the building and I was walking into his office. By the time we got back there, everybody had pretty much filed out, so it was an empty building.

I remember Batista coming out of Vince’s office, and we passed each other in the hall and he just came up to me and gave me a big hug, and he’s like, ‘You deserve it, bro.’ And I played stupid, I was like, ‘What do you mean? What do you mean?’ He’s like, ‘Just go in there, I want them to tell you'. I went in and it was Vince and Stephanie. They said, ‘Look, we had planned on having Taker as the champion for a really long time. Unfortunately, he’s injured, and he needs to have surgery. So, we are going to….’ He laid out the scenario basically and he’s like, ‘You’re going to cash in your briefcase, we’re going to have a new champion.’ And I remember him telling me – they were high on Batista at the time. That was their guy. They felt like Batista needed to chase for a while, and they said, ‘When we feel the time is right, we’re going to put it on Batista, but we don’t know how long that could be. It could be like a month, or five months, or six months, or whatever.’ I remember I just said, ‘Look, I appreciate you guys saying that, but this is business and I’ll do what’s necessary.’”

Unfortunately, that was Kennedy's world title opportunity closing as he would suffer an injury and drop the briefcase to Edge, and ultimately never win a world title in WWE despite being immensely popular at the time.

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