The Spirit Squad became infamous shortly after they made their WWE debut, and they were quickly thrust into the main event scene.
On paper the idea of male cheerleaders succeeding in WWE seems pretty far fetched, but former WWE Superstar Ken Doane, better known to WWE fans as Kenny Dykstra recently told ESPN that Vince McMahon had faith in the gimmick from the very beginning.
“[McMahon] turned and said, ‘Guys, this is my idea. It’s gonna work because I’m telling you it will work,'” said Doane in his best McMahon impersonation. “He said, ‘I want cheerleaders. Male cheerleaders. There’s nothing that gets more heat than male cheerleaders.’ I kinda looked at the other guys out of the corner of my eye like, ‘Is this a joke? This is a good joke. You guys went all the way out to get Vince in on this?'”
Luckily the gimmick worked out for everyone involved, and the Spirit Squad found themselves involved in a high profile feud with DX. Doane went on to say that he learned a lot about how to tell a story while working with Shawn Michaels and Triple H.
“It was amazing,” Doane said. “I remember we would always joke around when we first started working [with DX], ‘I wanna take the superkick — let me take the superkick.’ Secretly we’re all fans. Of course we’re going to be fans of Shawn Michaels and Triple H, so we’d trade off. It was fun. Just learning so much in there — how to slow down, how to tell a story, and also, too, what I learned a lot from Shawn and Hunter was how to work a main event.”
