The Oral History of WrestleMania — Part Six: Hell-raisers
The following is a continued oral history of unsourced (sorry) quotes from numerous interviews over the years about WrestleManias of the mid-90’s “new generation” era, assembled by Wrestling Club with Darren & Brett, part of the non-profit radio station, WFMU.
Read Part 1: The Granddaddy of ’Em All
Read Part 2: Bigger. Better. Badder.
Read Part 3: What The World Is Watching
Read Part 4: Hulk Still Rules
Read Part 5: The New Generation
AUSTIN 3:16
JIM CORNETTE (manager, promoter)
“Most fans will say Stone Cold Steve Austin was the first anti-hero in pro wrestling, and they’d be wrong — it’s just that Steve did it better, on a bigger stage, in front of more people and more successfully than anyone else, ever.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN (wrestler)
“I told Vince, ‘You got guys here 6’10, 7 feet tall, 300 to 330 pounds,’ I said, ‘I’m 6’2, 250, black trunks, black boots. If you take my personality from me, I can’t compete. If you give me my personality, I can compete with anyone you got.’”
VINCE RUSSO (writer, producer)
“I was a Stunning Steve Austin fan on WCW, you could tell this guy had personality out the ass. And I’ll never forget bro, Vince looked at me and said, ‘I don’t want Steve Austin to ever say a word. He’s the Ringmaster. He says nothing. Ted DiBiase does all his talking.’ And bro, I swear to God, in my mind, I’m like, he’s never seen Austin. He has no idea. And bro, then I would have to go to Steve, and say Steve, this is what Vince wants. But to Austin’s credit, every week, ‘Vince, you gotta give me more, you gotta give me a mic, you gotta give me more, you gotta give me more.’”
JAKE “THE SNAKE” ROBERTS (wrestler)
“I was writing television at the time and I told Vince, ‘That’s your guy right there’ and he’s like ‘Are you kidding? No way, Jake. That guy is middle of the card.’ And I’m like, ‘Really?’ From that point on, I started getting with Steve every night. If I wasn’t in the same town with him, he would call me. I’d go over his match. I’d go over and talk to him about doing different things, and saying different things, and creating, and we put it together. He just had to be himself, basically. That was the problem. They let him be himself and he became Steve Austin.”
PAUL HEYMAN (manager, producer)
“If you truly want to reach for the brass ring, you need to put your balls on the table. If I haven’t sold [McMahon] tickets or pay-per-views or merchandise, it’s not about reaching for the brass ring — my balls are getting chopped off. And you have to be willing to put your balls on the line with that. Now if you are, he’ll let you do it. It’s your funeral. Or it’s you reaching for the brass ring. Either way, it’s a risk that you have to take.”
MICHAEL HAYES (wrestler, producer)
“Austin just came back from hospital and asked me what Jake had said in his promo.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“As I was getting my lip stitched up following my match against Marc Mero, I was told that Jake Roberts just did an interview about me referencing ‘John 3:16.’ I knew the verse, but I also remembered that at football games there was always a fan in the end zone holding up a sign that said ‘John 3:16.’ So, it was a pretty famous quote to begin with, and after I won the tournament it just came to me on the fly. To me, it was pure luck that ‘Austin 3:16’ would become what it did.”
JAKE “THE SNAKE” ROBERTS (wrestler)
“The Austin 3:16 thing, everyone was like, ‘Oh, that must have really upset you.’ Are you kidding me? You know how many people opened the Bible just to check that out who had never even opened a bible before, you know?”
BRUCE PRICHARD (producer)
“The next night when you showed up and we saw all these signs of ‘Austin 3:16’ and everybody’s going like, ‘Oh good god, we’ve got something here.’”
VINCE RUSSO
“I was doing the magazine at the time. I put Austin on the cover of the magazine, it was a black and white, grainy, close up shot, and the blood was in red, and the headline read, ‘Austin 3:16.’ Bro, back then, Vince approved the covers. So I had to go to the television studio with the cover, bro, he looks at me, and I know when Vince is confused. ‘Austin 3:16, what does this mean?’ I said, ‘Vince, this is what he said in the promo, this is it,’ I said, ‘This is money, this is going to be huge.’ Bro, ‘I don’t like it, change it.’ And bro, if you go back, the cover reads ‘Stone Cold Killer’ or something. Bro, he didn’t get the Austin 3:16.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“I remember I used to ask if there were any T-shirt ideas for me and there wouldn’t be. Then, after King of the Ring, I was asked for some ideas and I immediately thought, ‘Put ‘Austin 3:16’ on the front and a skull with ‘Stone Cold’ chiseled into its head on the back.’ I don’t know how many of those were sold, but I know it was the number one selling T-shirt in WWE history.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“[Vince] hated it. Absolutely hated it. Vince felt that the babyface t-shirts should be like pictures of the babyfaces. Cause people wanna support their favorite. My argument was, you’re gonna get more people to buy the shirt if it doesn’t have an image of someone on it. A dude doesn’t wanna wear another dude on his shirt. “The pitch was, and god I remember the meeting sitting in Vince’s office — me and Jim Ross with the merchandise guy saying, ‘this is the shirt.’ This is merchandising, I guarantee you people will buy it. ‘Austin 3:16,’ just simple white block letters on a black shirt. But the overwhelming response for that Austin 3:16, he finally gave in. It sold out everywhere, immediately.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“When I turned from the Ringmaster into Stone Cold, the music that I had to begin with was you know laid back, boring. Oh, it’s terrible. I start to get a little bit a hands-on when I came up with the ‘Stone Cold’ thing and they said, ‘Hey do you have any ideas for some ring music?’ I said, ‘You damn right I do!’ So, I took Rage Against the Machine ‘Bulls on Parade’ to Jim Johnston. I’m not a drug head, but if you could bottle that feeling that I feel when that glass hit and you could sell that, you’d make a lot of damn money.”
JIM JOHNSTON
“[Austin] is such a presence, such a no-BS kind of guy. He’s not going to show up and calmly discuss an issue with you: ‘Gee, I was a little upset the other day when you were talking about me.’ He’s the kind of guy who’s going to bust open the door and come after you. What I had in my mind was someone bursting through a door, crashing the door, and a car crash. I mixed three different glass breaks with the sound of two car crashes.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“Michael ‘P.S.’ Hayes comes up to me right before Monday Night Raw. ‘Hey kid you got a second?’ I’d been using a Million Dollar Dream and he goes, ‘I got something I want to show you.’ So, he showed me the ‘Stone Cold Stunner’ with a couple of an enhancement guys. And so that’s when I started employing it. Couple weeks later, ‘Hey we need a setup move.’ You know Jake ‘the Snake’ does the short arm DDT. He does a short arm clothesline before the DDT. It’s a setup move, so you had the anticipation by adding the kick, you had the anticipation of the Stunner’s next. So, it was a two-stage process. Michael P.S. Hayes came up with both of them.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“Me and Steve Austin used to bet cases of beer on how crazy I could get with my ‘sell’ of his famous Stunner.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“I could’ve explained to you the anatomical, the physiological, the kinesiological aspects that go into performing such a maneuver. I would’ve break it down with you on a scientific and molecular standpoint so you know what the F is going on. Let me break this thing down. Sometimes when you get into your oxygen reserves, what happens? You start to lose your thought process. You can’t perform up to your utmost ability. The beauty is when you kick the guy in the gut, right in the diaphragm, boom! You sap his lung of all the oxygen. All of a sudden, his brain’s like, ‘Ugh… I need to breathe! I’m about halfway blown up! This is deep in the match, I need oxygen.’ Right underneath the jaw you’ve got two holes on eiach side of your jaw, the foramen nerves. That’s where people get knocked out. So when you grab that head, put it on top of your collarbone, the [acromioclavicular] region, your trapezoid, you’re locking that jaw down. Let’s say someone (who’s) 250 pounds hits you with an uppercut. Now let’s take double body weight, 500 pounds, give or take, hitting you with an uppercut — that’s both men’s weights coming down on that shoulder. You hit your ass on the mat, the mat springs you back up, giving that energy a direct path — your vertebrae, your back — through your shoulders to his damn jawbone, wham! Lights out. That’s how scientific it is.”
THE CURTAIN CALL
JIM CORNETTE (manager, producer)
“When [The Kliq] did that curtain call thing, you know, I wasn’t the only one mad. I was throwing my fucking suit bag down the goddamn Madison Square Garden hallway!”
HULK HOGAN (wrestler)
“Diamond Dallas Page was friends with Nash and Hall, and he told Eric that their contracts were up. So, Eric talked to them and brought them in and you could feel the energy of these guys coming down from the big New York promotion. It was kind of like a shot of adrenaline, so we jumped right on it.”
KEVIN NASH (wrestler)
“I love Vince McMahon and what he and the company did for me. I wouldn’t have been in the position to get the money I did from [Ted] Turner if it wasn’t for Vince. Vince is very smart, and that’s why he didn’t go with me 100 percent. He wasn’t sure if I would draw well, and I didn’t draw well. At that point, wrestling was dying. The Hulkamania era was over for Vince, and he was looking for the next big thing.”
SCOTT HALL (wrestler)
“I feel good about what I did. I went to [Vince] man to man, months in advance, asked for the money, gave a written notice, 90 days in advance, and the notice was only that I didn’t want to leave, but I just didn’t want my contract to keep rolling over… I was the guy who left and went to work for the competition and guess what, the competition started winning. I got blamed for taking Kev [Nash] with me.”
KEVIN NASH
“They never went with me. Yes, they made me a household name. At the same time, they didn’t do what they said they were going to do. I was told they wouldn’t take the belt off me for three years.”
VINCE RUSSO
“Bruce was devastated, Vince was devastated, I think they were really caught by surprise because never had they lost stars of that magnitude to a competitor because of dollars and cents. Never.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER (journalist)
“On May 19, 1996, at a house show at Madison Square Garden, the pro wrestling world was altered. There wasn’t much special about the event’s story line: A young Triple H had defeated Razor Ramon earlier that night, and the main event featured WWF champion Shawn Michaels against Diesel in a steel cage. Michaels straddled the fallen Diesel and kissed his forehead. Then Triple H, a heel, entered the ring, and things got decisively stranger. Rather than turn the post-match into a schmozz — a match that ends in a frenzy of kicks and punches, with no decisive finish — Triple H also hugged Shawn and raised his hands in the air. Then Diesel rose from the mat and joined in, and soon all four were hugging.”
SHAWN MICHAELS (wrestler)
“Honestly, it was big to the old-timers in the locker room before it was big anywhere else.”
JIM CORNETTE
“Jerry Brisco was kicking fucking walls. He wanted to fucking stretch all of them as soon as they came back.”
VINCE RUSSO
“I understood completely, but I just felt like they were taking it to the extreme. It was like, guys, like this is a freaking work! These guys are friends, nobody believes this shit is true. You gotta understand, the internet is in full mode right now. There’s no more kayfabe. You can read every day what’s going on in the lives of these people, who’s friends with who, the power the Kliq has in the locker room, bro this shit is all out there now. This isn’t kayfabe stuff anymore.”
JIM CORNETTE
“They took a shit on Vince McMahon’s dining room table, the guy who was paying them. The Madison Square Garden show was to his father and to him. At that time, the yardstick measured success in the business. And just because they had their little ‘Billionaire Boys Tree Club’, they had to go out and expose the business and have a big fucking circle jerk. And okay, who was Vince McMahon going to discipline? It was Kevin Nash’s last night. It was Scott Hall’s last night. Shawn Michaels was the champion. So, Hunter Hearst Helmsley, who was supposed to win the King of the Ring, didn’t win the King of the Ring. Cost him about a hundred to a hundred fifty thousand dollars that year. Probably what he would have made and what he didn’t make. He was punished because he went along with the other three fucking guys.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“Vince [McMahon] wasn’t going to screw Shawn Michaels because Shawn was already cantankerous. He was his World Champion and he needed him happy, so he had to punish somebody, and he punished Triple H. And he told me, two weeks going in the event I was going to win King of the Ring. Had I had not won that event, Austin 3:16 would never have happened. ’Cause Stone Cold Said So’ would never have happened organically, so I don’t know what would have happened. I might have been a midcard guy my whole career. And that’s the bottom line. Who knows what would have happened? I’m just glad it did and I’m glad I got the opportunity.”
JIM CORNETTE
“So, thank you, because, the curtain call, if nothing else, gave us one of the biggest stars in the — well the biggest star in the history of the business.”
DAVID SHOEMAKER
“But the greater irony is that the Kliq’s disregard for pro wrestling tradition sparked a new era of postmodern storytelling, freed from some of the strictures of old-fashioned kayfabe. By breaking the rules, they forced the industry to take a fresh look at itself.”
NEW WORLD ORDER
KEVIN SULLIVAN (bookerman)
“One night in the old Chicago stadium, (Hogan) did an interview with ‘Mean Gene’, and they were booing (Hogan) out of the building. I told (Hogan) he needed to turn heel, Hogan said, ‘absolutely not!”
ERIC BISCHOFF (executive)
“The babyface thing, the Hulkamania thing, wasn’t working. He knew it wasn’t working. I knew it wasn’t working. The fans knew it wasn’t working. Everybody knew it wasn’t working.”
SCOTT HALL (wrestler)
“The night I debuted and came through the crowd, I’m going to give props to Larry Zbyszko. Bischoff would have had them play ring music and send me down the aisle and I would have done it. [Zybszko] went, ‘no, no, he [has] got to come through the crowd. He doesn’t work here!’ And that’s what, to me, made it work. And he said, ‘and when he gets to the ring, he doesn’t beat the other guys up. He just goes to the mic and they stop working because it becomes a shoot.’”
ERIC BISCHOFF
“So Hulk is off doing this movie called Santa With Muscles, right, and while he’s off doing this movie, what’s going on in Atlanta [Georgia] is Scott Hall, Kevin Nash, and the ‘who’s the third guy going to be’, right? I think Kevin just powerbombed me off the stage in Baltimore [Maryland] or something. So, I go out to California, I sat down with him and he goes, ‘so who’s the third man going to be?’ The original third man was going to be Sting because Hulk had already turned me down, right? So, the idea of pitching it to Hulk didn’t even occur to me, like, the farthest thing from my mind.’ I’m thinking, ‘well, I’m not going to tell him because then he’ll tell Jimmy Hart, and Jimmy’ll tell everybody.’ So I said, ‘well, who do you think should be the third man?’ He said, ‘you’re looking at him, brother.’”
HULK HOGAN
“I said ‘You know, if I’m gonna do this thing I’m gonna go all the way with it. No pictures. No autographs. I’m gonna be the worst, nastiest person you’ve ever seen.’”
SCOTT HALL
“To see how excited he was Bash At The Beach and then later at Starrcade when he did a job for [Roddy] Piper in the sleeper. And he didn’t have to, but we talked him into it. We said, ‘just go on Nitro and lie about it.’ Just say, ‘no, I kicked Piper’s ass.’ And to see him so excited again was really cool for me.”
HULK HOGAN
“When you tell people for 20 years that you love them, tell them to ‘train, say your prayers and eat your vitamins,’ believe in yourself and then all of a sudden you stab everybody in the back. I knew there was going to be a huge reaction. The decision to turn heel was, we were either going to crash and burn or this is totally going to reignite the wrestling business, and it did.”
KEVIN NASH (wrestler)
“We hit on all cylinders. We were super violent — they allowed us to be. We used aluminum baseball bats. West-Coast rap was just taking off, so we kind of took a little of that ‘Death Row’ vibe … we just tried to cross as many cultural paths as we could and touch as many people as possible and it worked!”
ROCKY, ROCKY, ROCKY
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (actor, wrestler)
“In 1995, I called my old man when I landed in Miami [after getting cut from the Stampeders] and I said, ‘Dad, you gotta come get me.’ I didn’t have a car at that time. He drove in his little truck from Tampa to Miami, picked me up, and we were on our way up I-75, the famous Alligator Alley, and I thought, Shit, how much money do I even have? Pulled out my wallet, and yeah, I had a five, a one, and some change. I remember thinking, Fuck, all I have is seven bucks. At that time I wanted so much more. Warren Sapp had just signed for millions of dollars in the draft. He was the one that actually beat me out of my position [at Miami] two and a half years earlier. Not to begrudge him at all; we’re still good buddies today and I’m very happy for him. But it was like the success I wanted so badly and worked so hard for for years was happening all around me to everyone else but me.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART (wrestler)
“Like me, he’d resigned himself to trying his hand in the family business. His grandfather, Peter, a tough Samoan powerhouse, had been a very close friend of Stu’s. I told Dwayne that I remembered him as a little kid running around the dressing room when I worked in Hawaii back in the 1980s.”
JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER (wrestler)
“His dad, Rocky Johnson, was a tremendous wrestler and very talented and had a ton of charisma. Rocky grew up around that and I guess that’s where it came from. We knew from the get-go that the kid was gonna be something special.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“In the ’60s and ’70s and early ’80s, the trainers would grind you and eventually they would break something — they would break an ankle in ways that it would heal. It was just the way of the business, to ensure that you learned respect for wrestling. It was crazy. My dad didn’t break anything on me, but he grinded me out every day for months.”
JIM ROSS (announcer)
“He didn’t have any money; so we go down to Florida to meet with him and watch him work out. I take him to lunch at this Cuban place; every female in the joint came to fill up our water glass, and some didn’t even work there. They see this 6'5 stud, built like a cannon, with this wonderful ethnicity.”
RIKISHI (wrestler)
“The Samoan dynasty…we are the biggest family in professional wrestling today.”
AFA (wrestler)
“Yokozuna is my older brother’s son. Samu is my son. Fatu is my sisters son. Yoko is my older brother. Tonga Kid is my nephew too, he is Fatu’s brother. Jimmy Snuka is my cousin. Peter Maivia was my uncle. His daughter married Rocky Johnson.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“When I first started wrestling, the idea was why don’t I call myself Rocky Maivia, out of respect for my father, Rocky Johnson and for my grandpa, Peter Maivia.”
JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER
“I liked the name Rocky Maivia a lot more than I liked [his original name,] Flex Kavana.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“I get a call once from the WWE, saying, ‘Vince [McMahon] would like to see you in Stamford.’ I went to his office and he says, ‘I really think you have a lot of potential, but you’re not ready for the WWE. You should go to Memphis, Tennessee. That’s where I want you to learn the business.’”
JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER
“[WWE] didn’t really have a place to generate new talent or to get them trained. After a while, Vince McMahon realized this Tennessee territory down there may be a good place [he] can use as a training ground for [his] new, up-and-coming wrestlers. They were there, and you didn’t know how long they were going to be there, and you didn’t know when they were going to get the call to leave. That’s what happened with The Rock.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“I had the world’s worst wrestling outfit ever and was so broke I used to cut my own hair, as you can tell by this beautifully f*cked up pineapple cut I used to give myself, yet… NYC and Madison Square Garden embraced me like a son.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I wanted to see this kid make it, and I told him I’d help him all I could. I watched him in the ring that night, and I remember coming back to the dressing room and saying to everyone, ‘Mark my words, three or four years down the road that kid will be the franchise.’ He already had the look and the skill. If he learned to talk, he could be great.”
SHADES OF GRAY
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Vince said ‘give me five minutes and I’ll talk you into [turning heel]’, and I said ‘no thank you, I’m not interested’, but he talked me into it pretty fast because my option as a good guy was that I was going to wrestle Vader for the next year. That was going to be brutal, and I was thinking ‘anything but Vader’. So the heel turn was a difficult choice to make, and I remember Vince stressed to me — and I wonder whether that was the beginning of them trying to tear me down — that ‘you are going to be a hero everywhere else except the United States.’”
JIM ROSS
“They were smart. In the lower 48 so to speak, [The Hart Foundation faction] were gonna be heels. Outside the US, they’re gonna be babyfaces, because they’re saying the truth about what many Americans are. So it worked out pretty well.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“My understanding was when I left that meeting that day was that I was gonna come back, and I was gonna have a bit of a chip on my shoulder towards Shawn and I was gonna start ragging on him for not being a good role model.”
DAVE MELTZER (journalist, critic)
“Originally it was Shawn vs. Bret at Mania, and Bret was going to regain the title.”
JIM ROSS
“Vince always had a soft spot for Shawn because he saw Shawn’s rebellious, anti-establishment attitude as reminiscent of a young Vince. And now he had to navigate the waters of the old WWWF when his old dad owned it. I think there’s something to be said about that. So, Shawn was going down a real bad road, and luckily changed his direction before it got too late.”
SUNNY (manager)
“I was the source for a lot of heat. I was a big source of heat between Shawn and Bret. A lot of base heat between them is me. Because Shawn thought I was banging Bret… but I wasn’t. Bret and I were just really good friends.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Cornette and I were in Vince’s office when Shawn burst into the room holding two huge clumps of hair. We’re thinking, ‘What the hell is that? A small animal?.’ Shawn went on to talk about ‘unsafe working conditions’ and ‘he’s not going to take it anymore’ ‘he’s gonna go home,’ ‘Bret Hart attacked him.’ I don’t know if there were any witnesses to see how the fight actually started. That’s something that I think only those two really know what happened. Both have told the story that they got into a hockey fight with Bret putting Shawn through a false wall and they fell into a shower and Pat Patterson walked in and got in-between them. I don’t know if there were a lot of punches thrown. A lot of hair pulled out. I think both guys were reprimanded and scolded but I don’t think there were any monetary fines Vince just want to get beyond it. ‘Move on and get over yourselves. If we had gotten Bret and Shawn together and nipped it in the bud — I don’t think anyone on the outside really understood how far it had gotten. There was animosity and if we really knew it was really that bad — we looked at it as it was much ado about nothing.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“The WWF had been blitzing San Antonio for weeks in an all-out effort to fill up the Alamo Dome for the Royal Rumble on January 19, 1997. In the end, it was one of the most papered shows in the history of the WWF, but they did pack the Dome to the rafters. Stone Cold was one of the first combatants in the battle royal, and the story was that he was unstoppable. He whooped ass on nearly everyone, but I happened to catch Austin off guard and tossed him over the top rope, eliminating him, but the referees were conveniently distracted by Terry Funk and Mankind, who were brawling on the floor. Austin shot back under the ropes and into the ring and flipped Taker and Sid out, just as I dumped out the fake Diesel. Technically, I had just won the coveted title shot at WrestleMania XIII, but Steve came from behind, threw me out and was awarded the win instead. As per the plan, he hightailed it back to the dressing room as I went absolutely nuts in the ring, manhandling the referees. I followed the storyline, once again complaining on mic that I’d been screwed. This was all great heat for Steve, and I went along, though I was wondering where the payoff was for me.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“They’re very hard matches to work, but I always look forward to them to see the execution and planning behind them to see how they unfold and who WWE has their designs on with the chess pieces going into WrestleMania.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Vince gave me that yuk-yuk laugh. ‘Well, you probably think this is crazy, but you’ll screw Shawn this Thursday at Lowell TV so Sid wins the belt. Then in the final four, at In Your House, Shawn will screw you out of winning, and from there Taker will work with Sid at Mania for the belt, and Shawn will put his hair up in a ladder match, and you’ll cut it all off.’ I was a bit stunned at how casual he was. “So, it’s not me and Shawn at WrestleMania XIII for the belt?”
JIM ROSS
“I don’t know if he lost his smile because he was injured or lost his smile because he couldn’t handle the pressure. He was influenced by outside sources that liked to poke gas on his fire. I don’t know…So once you get the message of what’s going to happen in the production meeting that morning, it was like, geez, that’s pretty extreme. Maybe you give him the benefit of the doubt. Maybe something is really wrong. We didn’t know. But I always thought his feelings were hurt more than his knee or his back or whatever, and I don’t know exactly why. He had a hard time handling and accepting the responsibility of being the top guy in the territory.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“Nothing good was going on in my life I can tell you that much… The ‘losing my smile’ moment… I lived a lot of my life on this live show [Raw], a lot of my ups and a lot of my downs, the good, the bad, the struggle; all of those things, I lived all that openly and wasn’t smart enough to hide it and hide behind a character so to speak. I guess I wasn’t a good enough actor. It was better for me to be who I was and share the things that were going on; at least, in some respect to the WWE audience.”
BRET HART
“He walked out without so much as a limp and with the heartbreaking trickle of the occasional tear, he talked of having lived his dream. Fans jeered him, so the cameras cut to close-ups of girls crying. He said he simply had to listen to his doctors. He’d not only hurt his knee, he had ‘lost his smile’ over the last few months and was going home to find it. Every wrestler standing with me rolled his eyes as Shawn forfeited the title, handing the belt to Vince.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“Thankfully, for me, whatever 25–30 years later it all turned out okay, but I think that is one of the things that separated me from somebody else, that there was an honesty whether good or bad in Shawn Michaels that he was sharing some real life stuff that was going on with me. It meant a lot to the people.”
BRET HART
“They ended up throwing me and ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin together about three weeks before the pay per view. It was kind of an ice-cold storyline.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“I hear Vince say, ‘Yeah, in a submission match it’ll be Bret ‘The Hitman’ Hart versus ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin.’ And that was news to me because I was watching the broadcast and didn’t know a damn thing about it.”
WRESTLEMANIA 13
JIM ROSS
“[Rosemont Horizon has] an indescribable feel, quite frankly. The building’s got a personality, and it reflects the personalities of those sitting in the seats. For me, I’ve never performed or worked in a more memorable arena. The building’s got a personality that’s living and breathing, and the atmosphere is really amazing. It makes you glad to come to work that day.”
FATAL FOUR-WAY ELIMINATION MATCH: DOUG FURNAS & PHIL LAFON vs THE HEADBANGERS vs THE NEW BLACKJACKS vs THE GODWINNS
DAN KROFFAT (wrestler)
“Giant Baba put [Furnas & LaFon] together as a tag team. We were both hungry. We were young, hungry, strong.”
JOHN BRADSHAW LAYFIELD (wrestler)
“Blackjack Mulligan didn’t want me and Barry to be the New Blackjacks. Lanza was all for it. Lanza did the promos for us. They asked Lanza to be our manager and he refused. He didn’t want to be in the ring anymore or on television.”
PHINEAS GODWINN (wrestler)
“Hillbilly Jim was the best. It’s good to have somebody that had been around forever. We learned a lot from him. Actually, when we first started, they put us on the road with The Bushwackers in eight-man tags. We got to learn the whole kids thing. No matter win, lose, or whatever, after the match, you bring the kids in, and everybody dances and has fun. We learned a lot from them and Hillbilly.”
HEADBANGER MOSH (wrestler)
“Jim Cornette went to a Danzig concert and saw these guys stage diving, which is kind of funny because I love that kind of music and I’ve been to those kinds of concerts. He said, ‘You guys are from the Northeast. You have these attitudes.’ So he was the one who created [The Headbangers] and we started it down in Smoky Mountain. At first we just wore shorts and boots and from there we went to a thrift store and we were like, ‘For the hell of it we should just buy skirts and see what kind of reaction we get...’”
WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP: ROCKY MAIVIA vs THE SULTAN
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“The company made me Intercontinental Champion. A month later, we go to the annual biggest event, WrestleMania 13. By the time I got to Chicago, 16,000 people were chanting ‘Rocky sucks.’ I remember laying there in the ring and the referee said to me ‘Don’t listen to them.’ It was crippling for me.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Honky Tonk Man did the commentary for this match, and spent the match trying to put himself over at the expense of the match. They showed Tony Atlas in the audience watching this match but he played no part in the match, and also showed Lou Albano sitting next to Arnold Skaaland at ringside. After the match, as Jim Ross was interviewing Maivia, Sultan jumped Maivia and Ross took a bump. Sultan attacked Maivia with the title belt and did a splash off the top. Iron Sheik came in and put the camel clutch on Maivia until out of the crowd came Rocky Johnson, at the age of 55, to make the save doing his 1970s Ali shuffle. Sultan hit Johnson with the flag pole and they ripped his shirt off and were beating him up until Maivia cleaned house and father and son hugged.”
GOLDUST vs TRIPLE H
JIM ROSS
“Triple H, still known then as Hunter Hearst Helmsley, was being accompanied to the ring by the 200-pound, “monster” female Chyna. Many fans still remember the massive Chyna bear-hugging and shaking Goldust’s real life wife ‘Marlena,’ Terri Runnels, like a rag doll at ringside.”
GERRY BLAIS (personal trainer)
“From the minute we walked through [the door of Killer Kowalski’s training school], [Kowalski] couldn’t stop staring at Joanie. He had this look in his eyes like, She’s different. She’s special. It was the weirdest chemistry I’ve ever seen. He knew. He just knew.”
TRIPLE H (wrestler, executive)
“We had gone to Vince [McMahon] and he hated the idea [of using Chyna as a bodyguard]. He just couldn’t see a woman in that role, but we badgered him until he decided [it was OK to] bring her in with me.”
STEPHANIE MCMAHON (executive, performer)
“[Triple H] didn’t care what other people thought about her. I mean, he was in love with her.”
JIM ROSS
“The business had never seen anything like her… Initially, a lot of old-timers, including myself, didn’t think it was appropriate. But she overcame all of that apprehension and proved people wrong. Chyna was a trailblazer. She broke all kinds of barriers.”
JANET LAQUE (Chyna’s mother)
“I’m very, very proud of her, as my daughter, for having the intestinal fortitude to do that. Joanie was one of a kind, that she broke the barrier in not only the wrestling field but for women across the board.”
WWF TAG TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP: MANKIND & VADER vs OWEN HART & BRITISH BULLDOG
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Another new face trudging around the dressing room was a frumpy curiosity called Cactus Jack. Everyone called him Jack, but his name was actually Mick Foley. He was a big kid from Long Island, New York, with a scruffy beard and bushy, long black hair. He was one of only a handful of guys who I thought had a similar imagination for the business as I do. He was already a hard-core legend famous for his crazy, violent matches in ECW, WCW and Japan. But I found him to be a friendly guy, well read and intelligent, a far cry from the lunatic character he played so persuasively.”
TRIPLE H
“There were some of them that looked like maybe there were 25 people there. And Mick was in all this C4-exploding barbed wire. It was just, ‘For our next trick, folks, we’re going to set this table up with barbed wire and we’re going to set this explosive, and then he’s going to throw me through it, OK? Ready?’ And they would go do it.”
THE SANDMAN
“It was like poetry working with Cactus Jack. We didn’t get along, but he was just so easy to work with. We wouldn’t have to set anything up, we’d just go out there.”
MICK FOLEY
“I only found out a few years ago that my hiring was a gradual concession by Mr. McMahon to the constant pressure applied by the head of talent relations, Jim Ross. It was an acquiescence with a caveat; ‘OK, I’ll hire him… but I’m covering up his face!’”
JIM ROSS
“The mask was an interesting thing because it was a leather deal, stunk like hell. You know leather doesn’t retain perspiration very well, it gets gnarly. He was invested in the gimmick because this was his opportunity to finally get into the biggest game that he ever wanted to play in and that I was all for.”
MICK FOLEY
“Vince ribbed with me in a good-natured way about [a proposed match with Marc Mero], and especially the line about missing WrestleMania. Then Vince asked in all sincerity if I had a better idea. I said, ‘Vader’s kind of been written off, but that’s only because his head’s been messed around with so much. Let him do what he does best, and I guarantee, I’ll show you a match you won’t believe.’ On that night, the Mankind/Vader team was born, and it gave me a WrestleMania matchup with Owen Hart and the Bulldog, and a little bit of pride.”
SUBMISSION MATCH: BRET “THE HITMAN” HART vs “STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“That was a big disappointment, at first, for Steve and me. We’d just fought at the Survivor Series, and even though we loved working together, he was looking for someone new to work with and I was looking for Shawn… yet it ended up as one of the greatest nights I ever had.”
JIM ROSS
“Even though the undefeated-at-WrestleMania Undertaker challenging Psycho Sid for the WWF title was the main event, it was the Submission Match between Austin vs. Hart that stole WrestleMania XIII. This will forever be remembered for the perfectly executed “double turn” involving Bret Hart and Austin.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“Before I had that submission match with Bret Hart, I came to [Al Snow] again. I said, ‘hey man, I’ve got a submission match. Dude, you know my style. It has changed a little bit from USWA/WCW to [WWE] and I got dumped on my head, but I was never a scientific wonder. I was a mechanic, but I didn’t know any submission moves. So, we talked and he gave me a couple. I think the one that I ended up using, I don’t even know what it was called, so anyway, Al Snow was a very big part of WrestleMania 13.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Vince had finally hired Ken Shamrock, lending the credibility he brought with him as champion of the brutal world of Ultimate Fighting.”
KEN SHAMROCK (wrestler, fighter)
“MMA was becoming this underground hit. I became the first ever MMA Champion in Japan and the very first MMA Superfight Champion in the United States.”
ROYCE GRACIE (fighter)
“The world wants to know — who is the best fighter? Everyone wants to know, who would win, Muhammad Ali or Bruce Lee? People have this curiosity, and that was what UFC was.”
JIM CORNETTE
“Shamrock was a submission specialist.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“Bob Meyrowitz and I once had a conversation about me being paid what I deserved when the UFC started reaching that next level. They did get to the next level, but UFC also seemed to take a step backward, because every place they went they were always in court trying to defend themselves to have the show. I couldn’t make the money I need to make to continue in MMA and do the things we were doing. I decided to do something else, not knowing at the time it would be pro wrestling, but it ended up being pro wrestling — thank God.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“Ken Shamrock coming in from the UFC was the perfect guy to ref this match.
KEN SHAMROCK (fighter, wrestler)
“Vince came up with the idea to try to rub me up against a guy like Bret Hart who started to have a bad attitude, and a guy like Stone Cold Steve Austin who they were trying to turn into an imitation of a no-holds-barred type, I don’t give a crap type of person, personality, and wrestler. He brought me in because he looked at the landscape about what was going on in the world.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“The WrestleMania 13 match with Austin was pro wrestling’s version of the best MMA fight. It looked like a real toe-to-toe brawl.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Vince wanted real. He wanted legitimacy. He wanted real.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I arrived at the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago at about 10 a.m. for WrestleMania XIII. Vince had just let Stone Cold in on my heel turn and our role reversal, and he and I sat on the ring apron blankly staring at each other. Steve appeared anxious about how we’d go about telling our respective stories. I started tossing out ideas, and together we began piecing our match together. I told him if my new heel turn was going to seem for real, we had to go toe-to-toe right off the bell, onto the floor, over the barricade and up into the stands. Such an approach would make it all feel like a shoot.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“The only way this match could work was if they — Hart and Austin — apologized before because they were going to hit each other. And they did.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“The fans would be close, so we’d have to keep our work tight. I looked him in the eye and said, ‘What would really make this a great match would be for you to get a little juice.’ Steve uneasily admitted that he’d never done that before, but he offered to try.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“We left the finish room. I kind of walked around the arena for a little bit, came back and talked to Vince about 15 minutes later. I said, ‘Hey Vince, are you sure this finish is going to work?’ And he goes, ‘Steve, I’m telling you it’ll work.’”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“The plan was that he was going to pass out in the sharpshooter but never submit, and we both needed to figure out the best way to do that. I smiled at Steve and said, ‘Have you ever seen the scene in that movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest where Jack Nicholson’s character tries to pull that heavy, bolted-down sink out of the floor and throw it out the widow so he can escape the nut house and go watch the World Series? You want him to succeed so badly, but as hard as he tries, he simply can’t. That was the scene that made him, and that’s what we’re going to do with you.’ Steve was relying on me because he knew he could trust me.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“It was basically, by and large, for the most part, called in the ring.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Bret’s a master at painting a picture in the ring.”
JIM CORNETTE
“It felt like an old-school NWA wrestling match. It wasn’t a sports entertainment match.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“They literally beat the hell out of each other. It was a fight.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I spat out the blade from where it was tucked between my upper lip and gum. As we slugged it out on the floor, I said, ‘It’s time!’ I faintly heard him say, ‘Maybe we shouldn’t.’ I reversed his throw and told him, ‘It’s too late!’ I hurled him crashing hard into the timekeeper, and he barreled into the steel barricade. I calmly stepped over Steve, with Vince looking right at me and screaming fans only inches away. I grabbed his head and beat him with my fists like rubber hammers. Then I cut him perfectly, less than a half-inch long and as deep as a dime slot. No one saw a thing. The blood spurted out of his head as I gave him a serious thrashing.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“That was a special added ingredient.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Despite all the vicious attacks he’d put me through, the crowd was now cheering for him as he fought to hang on. I retrieved the chair I’d discarded earlier and repeatedly smashed him in the knee, like I was bent on destroying him. I was actually doing the best I could to hit his knee brace every time.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“The fans started to turn on Bret as the match progressed. It was unbelievable.”
SAMI ZAYN (wrestler)
“I was 13 years old when this match happened, and I cannot state enough how much of a Bret Hart fan I was. But even I, Bret Hart’s staunchest supporter, found it hard to not get behind Austin in that match.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“After twenty minutes we went into the finish… Twisting him into my sharpshooter, I wrenched backward with all I had. Blood gushed out of his forehead, but Stone Cold refused to give in and somehow found the will to resist me. The crowd joined with him in one long, groaning gasp! He slowly forced me to topple to the mat, but could he kick out of the hold that had never failed me? No! The Hitman held on with unyielding determination! The fans cheered him on, but like Jack Nicholson in Cuckoo’s Nest he just could not lift that sink. When I steadied myself on my feet and clamped the sharpshooter on even tighter, I broke every heart that Stone Cold had just won.”
SAMI ZAYN
“For me to even question my unabashed hero and almost side with whom I viewed as the ultimate enemy, how could one match do that? It’s a masterpiece.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“In the end, Austin didn’t submit but was rendered unconscious. Shamrock stopped the match and raised my hand. The bell sounded. I coldly began to attack his knees, then stepped into the sharpshooter to give him some more, but before I could, Shamrock gripped me around the waist and threw me down hard to the mat.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“When I belly-to-bellied Bret, it was huge. It was almost like at that point it turned. It was one of those good feelings. A true wow, ‘this is electric’ moment.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I was right back up and furious, with the taste of blood on my lips, and Ken and I squared off with fists clenched. He challenged me to bring it on, and the Chicago crowd came unglued.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Bret just suddenly takes that one step back, showing that respect to Shamrock. And right there, everything he had done up until that point, that made your heel. Cause he backed up.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“I feel blessed that I was able to be part of that. It was one of the best matches I’ve ever seen to this day. It was just perfect.”
CHRIS JERICHO
“One of my favorite matches in WrestleMania history, if not my favorite.”
TYSON KIDD (wrestler)
“Every single moment after the match ended meant so much to every performer involved. Bret turned into the ultimate bad guy and Steve Austin was the top good guy in the entire WWE. Ken Shamrock became a WWE Superstar. When I need to feel inspired, I turn on this match.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“I’ve got a lot of respect for Bret as a person and everything he did as a pro wrestler. Every day you work with Bret, you could learn something. We had 100 percent trust in each other and 100 percent respect for each other. He’s a badass guy, and every night was a good night with Hart. That’s the damn truth. I wish him all the best. I love that guy. I got so much respect for him. He truly is one of the best ever — an absolute artist in the ring. I hold him in very high regard, and he’s a very dear friend.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“Steve even calls me once in a while and goes, ‘I got our match on.’ He always tells me it’s his favorite he’s ever had, and it’s the same for me. That match with Austin and the Iron Man with Shawn are my two favorite matches of all time. It’s just so beautiful to watch that story unfold between Steve and me. Watching how I went in the hero and he entered as the bad guy, then 35 minutes later, we switched places and he was the good guy and I was the bad guy. It’s a really fascinating time period. I’ve always felt that Steve was good enough to make it on his own anyway, but I do like to think I played a role in helping him.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“It was the greatest match of my career.”
CHICAGO STREET FIGHT: THE LEGION OF DOOM & AHMED JOHNSON vs THE NATION OF DOMINATION
JIM ROSS
“I would say the one word that comes to my mind when I think about Ron Simmons and his legacy is respect. I don’t know if anybody in the locker rooms, any locker room that he was in, that wouldn’t agree that Ron Simmons was a very respected athlete and a man’s man.”
RON SIMMONS (wrestler)
“I was the first black man to wear the World Heavyweight Championship and even to this day I sometimes have to catch myself to make sure that was real.”
D’LO BROWN (wrestler)
“Looking at someone like Ron Simmons on TV, I saw a man who looked like me and he opened that door for me to believe I could be in wrestling.”
JIM ROSS
“The Nation of Domination was all about race. I didn’t like that aspect of it. But I did like the fact that some deserving dudes were getting an opportunity to become stars and that theory worked.”
RON SIMMONS
“You had to keep that separation with [Nation of Islam] to let them know [it was] no disrespect, because there was a time where we were in Chicago, I was at the [hotel] front desk doing something, I’m [dressed] in full Faarooq [gear], and lo and behold they were having a conference there. So, [one of the members] spotted me at the desk, and said, ‘This is wonderful! Would you come in, brother, and just say a few things for the crowd, just to get the conference started?’ That’s how strongly it came over.”
CLARENCE MASON
“If you look at what happened between Faarooq and Ahmed Johnson, they played that step-it-and-fetch-it Uncle Tom routine.”
RON SIMMONS
“I said, “You want this militant type, but you don’t want [my persona] to be too offensive that he alienates everybody.” So, in order to do that, we sprinkled [the group] with Crush, Savio Vega — all different nationalities.”
ROAD WARRIOR ANIMAL (wrestler)
“Crush had been completely repackaged since the Demolition days.”
D’LO BROWN
“When I first joined The Nation, I was alongside Savio Vega, Crush, Clarence Mason and PG-13 for about three or four months. I came in around January 1997 and by March, I was at my first WrestleMania.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Since it was in Chicago, the ‘home town’ Road Warriors got a super pop.”
COLT CABANA (wrestler)
“Even though I was there to witness one of the greatest matches in ‘Mania history, my favorite moment was the Chicago Street Fight. The match itself was what it was. But it stood out to me for one specific reason. This was my first WrestleMania moment. As the action made its way towards our seats, I realized Hawk was right next to me. I was from Chicago and this was a Chicago street fight. It’s gotta be legal right? So captured forever on the tapes of WrestleMania 13, you can see me, 16-year-old Colt Cabana, give four solid punches to the back of Hawk, forever cementing my legacy at WrestleMania.”
WWF CHAMPIONSHIP: THE UNDERTAKER vs PSYCHO SID
PSYCHO SID (wrestler)
“That was a really cool time, the business had been down a little bit and I had taken a little bit of time off due to a neck injury. When I came back a few changes had been made. Believe it or not I think Jake Roberts had a lot to do with that, we was working with Vince (McMahon) a lot at the time. Things got hot, got fun, and I got a chance to sort of be the first person to be heel and face at the same time, I would work as a heel one night and a babyface the next night. The fans especially the fans in the northeast are pretty educated and opinionated, and it was a pretty good feeling hearing people cheering me as a heel.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Shawn Michaels came out to do commentary and got the big ring entrance. Right in front of the camera, Michaels did the [“two sweet”] sign. The next night on WCW’s Nitro, Kevin Nash said on the air as he was making to the ring for his interview, ‘HBK, right back at you.’ Before the match started, Bret Hart came out and yelled at Michaels, saying he was a pussy and a faker, yelled at the Undertaker saying that when he slammed the door on him last Monday he slammed the door on their friendship, and told Sid that he knows he’s the real champion. Sid wound up power bombing Bret and they took him out.”
JIM ROSS
“The Undertaker-Sid main event and show-closer became a no-holds barred contest for the WWE title and, again, WWE game-planning was spot on as Hart and Michaels — who was “injured” and unable to wrestle on the card — were reasserted into the title-match picture with a pre-match confrontation that would eventually lead to their controversial WWE title bout a few months later at the Survivor Series that became known as the Montreal Screw Job.”
A NEW ATTITUDE
VINCE RUSSO
“Here’s a great story of how the ‘Attitude Era’ actually started. It was Vince’s birthday — I had to get him something. What do you buy a millionaire? So, I bought him a t-Shirt that said, ‘Keep your ATTITUDE to yourself — I have enough of my own.’ That was literally weeks before the ‘Attitude Era’ was born.”
ERIC BISCHOFF
“Everything that makes Raw distinctive [today] — from its [multiple] hour live format; its backstage interview segments — and above all its reality-based storylines — was introduced first on Nitro. Nitro beat Raw in the ratings eighty-something weeks running. Then Vince caught on to what we were doing, and the real battle began…”
TRIPLE H
“Pull back to before Raw. Go back to Superstars and Challenge. You come up with one match or angle that’s the focal point in the show. Everything else is just ‘who needs the love, who needs an enhancement match.’ When I first came in there, you’d wrestle four times in one taping. Sometimes you’d wrestle a fifth time for a Coliseum Home Video exclusive. You’d get there early, do some print stuff, take pictures, whatever. Maybe you’d shoot an angle. And after your matches, you’d go downstairs and you’d wait your turn to do your market-specific promos. You’d be in there until three in the morning and then you’d move on to the next day. But with Raw everything was different. Bad for the jobbers, yeah, but the show became the draw. It wasn’t just a promotional vehicle to get you to go to live shows anymore. And even then, there were a lot less pay-per-views.”
JIM JOHNSTON (music director)
“The whole Raw Is War era, that started with the sirens and went down into this hellish basement where cataclysmic events are happening. That was like scoring a film trailer. I worked with the producers of the video on that, so they were showing me stuff or telling me, ‘Austin’s going to come in here, the place is going to be on fire, things blowing up.’”
JIM ROSS
“I worked with Vince [McMahon] and Jerry Lawler. That was new. Three men in a booth was new for me. Not being the lead guy was new. It was a great, refreshing start. A reboot.”
JERRY “THE KING” LAWLER
“I have literally worked with all of the greats, but I obviously had a long and storied career with Good ‘ol JR, Jim Ross — we had such longevity. It was so easy working with him and I still get a hundred tweets a day saying: ‘JR and The King were the greatest team ever.’”
TRIPLE H
“Some people just have chemistry with each other. Jerry’s knowledge and understanding of the business, but also, Jerry’s so quick-witted. Just can turn situations humorous, and the inflection he can put in his voice — he’s just great at what it is. And yet sitting next to JR as the straight man, who, when it comes to passion and intensity of sort of being that background music of what we were doing at that time. There’s nobody, especially in that time frame, who had that passion, that energy that JR did.”
EDGE (wrestler)
“When Rock was being shoved down everybody’s throat, when he was Rocky Maivia with the pineapple [haircut] on the top of his head, as the babyface guy, they turned on it.”
JOHN BRADSHAW LAYFIELD (wrestler)
“He came in and he was such a good-looking guy, incredibly talented and incredibly athletic, but it just didn’t work. Rocky kind of had no chance.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON (wrestler)
“Hearing 10,000 people chanting ‘Rocky Sucks’ is never going to make you feel good about yourself. Then I started to realize it wasn’t me they didn’t like it was this character — who was nothing like me. The crowd want you to be real. While I was injured, I had a conversation with Vince [McMahon] who said they hate you anyway, so let’s bring you back as a bad guy.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Russo didn’t really have anything for him and came into my office and said, ‘you got any ideas for Rocky Maivia?’ I said ‘Yeah, turn him heel and put him with The Nation.’ He said, ‘but he’s not black’ and I said, ‘he’s black Samoan. Give him the microphone and let him cut a damn promo.’ And JR says ‘Well, goddamn, Rocky should just talk about how The Rock says this, The Rock says that. Refer to himself in the third person.’”
CHARLES WRIGHT (wrestler)
“Vince said he was going to put him in The Nation and once [fans] got through hating the kid, he would be the biggest thing wrestling had ever seen. That’s a testament to Vince, because he was right.”
MARK HENRY
“Ron Simmons was the one who said, ‘Look, you need to know your role and if you can shut your mouth…’and Dwayne took that and made it.”
JOHN BRADSHAW LAYFIELD
“Ron Simmons had a lot to do with Rock’s success. Ron was a great mentor to him in The Nation and a lot of the stuff that Rock said he got through banter in the back with Ron. I think Ron had a lot to do with Rocky having so much success.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“I remember Austin saying about Rock, ‘I don’t think lifting his eyebrow and a couple of cute sayings is really going to get you over.’ But it did.”
MARK HENRY
“A lot of times, you’d be talking to [Dwayne] in the car about anything and then all of a sudden it would be one-hundred percent silence. Then, you’d look over there and he’d have a look on his face. You’d be like, ‘Man, what you thinking about?’ and he’d go, ‘I’m tryna figure out how to get this in my match.’ He lived wrestling, twenty-four hours a day. That was the difference between him and everybody else. Even when he wasn’t wrestling, he was thinking about it. So, that’s why he was who he was.”
ALEXA BLISS (wrestler)
“There was a time when my mom didn’t let me watch wrestling because I tried telling her to suck it.”
X-PAC
“Everybody was in the third grade or eighth grade or whatever the hell grade it was and they were getting suspended [for doing the crotch chop].”
VINCE RUSSO
“Here’s the seed. This came from Vince, bro. I wish I could sit here and say it came from me. The nWo was freaking hot, and Vince turned to me. And he said to me, he goes, ‘Vince, why aren’t we doing the same thing?’ And his point was, ‘Vince, we have the guys. We have the cool guys, and they’re younger!’ You’ve got a bunch of old men doing the nWo. This is what Vince said, ‘They’re old guys, bro. We can do the same exact thing, and we actually have guys that are young and hip.’”
TRIPLE H
“DX was something that, before Kevin [Nash] and Scott [Hall] left, at the time we all talked about using ‘The Kliq’ as it was — kind of morphing that into television, since it was so out there anyway. But things worked out the way they did — they left, and the timing was right. Shawn and I still wanted to do it. Vince saw the value in it, I guess, and finally let us go at it. By that point in time I was looking for a heater, and we had brought Chyna.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Your average audience member would remember Rick Rude from a few years ago when he had been with the company. Rude could come in kind of pre-made, and actually, I thought it was a pretty good package with Rick Rude.
TRIPLE H
“I believe the name came from Shane. The first time I ever heard it was from Shane. Bret [Hart] had said we were nothing but a bunch of degenerates, right? Like, we were just losers, a bunch of degenerates, but [Bret] had said this backstage. But Shane was saying to somebody these guys represent, like, they’re young and this is kids today, they’re like Generation X, man. They are that thing.”
VINCE RUSSO
“I would give Shane credit for the music. I remember we were in the parking garage at Titan Tower. And Shane [says], ‘Vince, come in my car, come in my car, I want you to hear [Rage Against the Machine]. This is like what I’m thinking about for DX.’”
TRIPLE H
“Both Shawn [Michaels] and I were at a point in our careers where we were like, ‘I just don’t care. I’m just gonna go out there and do whatever I feel like doing.’ At that time, we were constantly being threatened. We were pointing at our crotch and saying ‘suck it’ and mooning and doing all this crazy shit and coming back and having Vince just screaming at us like, ‘What are you guys doing? I’m gonna fire you.’’
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Vince takes a turn, and this is where the whole ‘attitude,’ slogan, era, everything came out. Because Vince gets JR and I in a room and starts pointing at Shawn and saying, ‘What he’s doing, it’s showing attitude. We need more attitude! That’s attitude, pal! And everybody on the roster needs to find some attitude!’ And attitude became the catchphrase over the next few years. Off of that one promo.”
MICK FOLEY
“I don’t know if it was like a dramatic departure from what WWE had been doing. I think the characters became more believable, more relatable. And I think a key thing, more so than the word ‘Attitude,’ was that you had four or five characters all hitting their stride at the same time. And we played off each other really well. We pushed each other. There was a definite competition among each other, and we all seemed to bring out the best in one another. So it was a competition and a camaraderie, and I think it was more the chemistry of those top five or six guys than any one word.”
TRIPLE H
“It’s hard for me to not look at the Attitude Era and say how great it was, for us as performers, for the company [and] for the fans. Prior to the Attitude Era, we would talk in the locker room and be reminiscing, [saying] ‘You ever think it’ll get as big as it was in the ‘80s?’ And [then] six months later, everywhere we turned, it was sold out and people were going crazy. But when I look back at that time…I go, ‘How could that era have not been a success?’ You had Shawn Michaels and the Undertaker and Bret Hart. And you had Mick Foley, Rock, Austin, DX, me…you just had so many just legendary, unbelievable performers.”
THAT’S GOTTA BE KANE!
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Glenn [Jacobs] was greener than grass. Glenn was greener than the Christmas tree outfit that he wore as the Christmas Creature from Tennessee, which was a green unitard, from head to toe with tinsel and balls hanging down from it. But we liked the size and there was potential. Plus, he was a super nice guy.”
JIM ROSS
“[Jacobs’ other gimmick] Doctor Yankem was never gonna work out. It was another stupid gimmick!”
KANE
“They had this idea. Kevin Nash and Scott Hall had recently gone to WCW. As it was, Jim Ross had found some replacements. It was me and Rick Bognar, he was in ECW and had a character that parodied Razor Ramon and did it really well. They brought us in. A lot of people thought Faux Diesel and Razor Ramon was fatally flawed. I didn’t think so. I thought it was a good concept. The thing was, Jim Ross was never going to be a bad guy to our audience, especially at that time.”
JIM ROSS
“Made no sense. So eye-rolling, nobody could attach to it, because they don’t wanna be embarrassed that they’re a fan of something so bad. And it wasn’t Glenn’s fault, the gimmick was so bad.”
KANE
“Undertaker needed an opponent for an upcoming pay per view. I was working in USWA at the time for Jerry Lawler, and I can’t remember if it was Bruce Prichard or Jim Cornette who called me, but I was told to stand by. I got another call later that week and I was told Vince really liked this idea and it wasn’t going to be a one-off, that it’s was going to be a storyline. From there, we were off to the races.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“I just started freestyling. What if the Undertaker had a brother that he thought was dead, but in reality, he lived, and he’s … hated the Undertaker his entire life.”
KANE
“I remember initially they wanted to name the character ‘Inferno’, which I was like, ‘Inferno? That ain’t good at all’ but Bruce Prichard had always been a fan of the name ‘Kane’. In fact, Undertaker was originally named Kane and Bruce’s son is named Kane.”
JIM CORNETTE
“I thought what if he was like Michael Myers, the main character in Halloween. This guy is somewhat inhuman, he doesn’t feel pain, he doesn’t feel remorse.”
KANE
“Paul was the guy who bridged The Undertaker and Kane. Months before Kane ever debuted, Paul Bearer was the one planting the seeds in people’s minds. Then the focus shifts to Undertaker versus Shawn Michaels in the first-ever Hell in a Cell, so people forgot about Kane.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“I think in some ways, when we were younger, we were frustrated because we had so much unbelievable natural chemistry in the ring with each other, and had zero of it outside the ring.”
THE UNDERTAKER (wrestler)
“If Shawn Michaels back then was on fire, I probably wouldn’t piss on him to put him out. But, that being said, there is no one that I would rather be in the ring with than Shawn Michaels. When it came to bell time and we were looking across the ring at each other, we knew it was going to be something really special.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“It’s not like there was a bunch of animosity. We were just two very different personalities.I was very outgoing, which is to say I was overly obnoxious, and Mark’s always been a very quiet, laid-back kind of guy. A very Cool Hand Luke, very Clint Eastwood-ish type, and I was not.”
JIM ROSS
“Vince told me that we were gonna do this new match, and we were gonna build a new cage. It didn’t have a name. It didn’t have Hell in a Cell.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“The chemistry was there. We decided to throw some gasoline on that story. We knew it had to go to something big. The next logical step was in a cage, but we wanted it to be different. All I could remember was making mention of the fact that I had seen this Buzz Sawyer, Tommy Rich match in the Omni when they had a cage with the roof on it.”
KANE
“We walked to the ring earlier in the day — myself, Vince, Bruce Prichard, Jim Cornette and Mark — and we talked about how we wanted it to go down. I didn’t really say much, I listened.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“The first time we saw it was that day of the pay per view, walking into St. Louis and looking at that thing like, wow. That is cool, and of course, the first thing I said was I gotta get on top.”
THE UNDERTAKER
“The whole thing was designed for Kane’s debut. You’re gonna keep all outside interference out, and boom, here comes Kane. For Kane to come in and do what no one else could do, which is rip the door off and come face-to-face with his brother. I still think it’s one of the most iconic stare downs ever. It’s a story that lasted 23 years, and one of the greatest stories ever told.”
KANE
“It’s one of those moments: You have Vince McMahon is screaming, ’It’s gotta be Kane’ and I’m walking out to the ring with Paul Bearer. It was just a wonderful time, and it might have been the best debut in WWE history, actually.”
JIM CORNETTE
“We were leading to the WrestleMania the next March. I said, “Lets not blow it straight away, let’s build it and have some patience.” So for once, possibly the only time, I got my way, we were able to build it to WrestleMania.”
THE MONTREAL SCREWJOB
VINCE MCMAHON
“Bret screwed Bret.”
VINCE RUSSO
“Eric Bischoff went after Bret Hart not because he wanted Bret Hart, because he was going after Vince McMahon. You know, Bret Hart was such a huge star and icon in the WWF. That’s what Eric Bischoff wanted.”
DAVE MELTZER
“If Bret had stayed, he certainly would have had another run with Austin when he was champion.”
KEVIN ECK (writer)
“The match that has come to be known as the Montreal Screwjob is one of the most talked about and controversial matches of all time. The story of the Survivor Series main event has been well documented. Hart, the WWF world champion at the time, had signed with WCW days earlier, after having been released from his contract by WWF chairman Vince McMahon, who felt he could no longer afford to pay Hart’s high salary.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“I just recall, up to that point, there being big scuttlebutt all over like ‘Dun dun dun — what’s going to happen with Bret leaving? And then of course was, I guess, an infamous phone call between myself and Hunter and Vince — I want to say it was just the week before. There was certainly no talk of it, for me, one way or another, until that phone call the week before Survivor Series.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“It was a pretty close-knit group who knew about the screw job. Vince, Triple H, and Shawn were the three who planned it, and they got Jerry Brisco to come up with a plan when to execute the finish.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“[It was] probably the most uncomfortable day I’ve ever had in the wrestling business. By the time the day comes, the decision has been made. But no one knows how it’s going to get done until Bret and I sit down to start discussing the match — none of this can actually go into play until we do that. And so it was just an uncomfortable day knowing what you know, [how others] assume it’s going to happen, and then you having to be the one to orchestrate it all.”
KEVIN ECK
“Prior to the match, Hart, who had a creative-control clause in his contract, told McMahon he didn’t want to lose the title in his native Canada and agreed to a double-disqualification finish. During the match, however, Michaels caught “the Hitman” in the Sharpshooter, Hart’s finishing maneuver, and McMahon, who was at ringside, claimed Hart had submitted and ordered referee Earl Hebner to ring the bell. Afterward, Hart reportedly decked McMahon in the locker room.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“On my right was the Undertaker, and Shawn was on his right. Shawn was sitting in the corner holding his head in his hands balling his eyes out. He cried like a baby the whole time. I always knew Shawn was guilty, but I wanted to find out for sure before I did something about it. It was the most beautiful uppercut punch you could ever imagine. I actually thought it would miss and go right up the side of his head, but I popped him right up like a cork was under his jaw and lifted him right off the hand. I broke my right hand just beneath the knuckle and knocked Vince out cold. He thought he would come out of that OK, but he didn’t plan on an upper cut. They dragged Vince out of the room, and it was pretty much done.”
MICK FOLEY
“I wanted Owen to know that his family had my support. ‘Owen, I’m not going to the show tomorrow, and a lot of other guys aren’t either. Vince is going to at least have to apologize tomorrow or else he won’t have much of a company.’ I watched Raw with great anticipation that night, but was devastated to see that instead of admitting their mistake, the World Wrestling Federation was actually playing it up. They were mocking Bret, and I was disgusted. One by one, I saw wrestlers appear on the screen who told me only one night earlier that they wouldn’t be working anymore. My show of rebellion just wasn’t going to work.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“That just isn’t the kind of attention and focus one desires. It just isn’t a real enjoyable moment to be part of the absolutely most infamous thing in wrestling. The absolute biggest thing ever in the wrestling business just went down and, holy cow, I can hardly imagine the impact, and the freefall, and the consequences of what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
MICK FOLEY
“I received a call from Jim Cornette, and we talked for close to two hours. He made me see that even if none of us approved of what Vince had done, we had to understand that he did what he felt was best for the company. WCW was hell-bent on destroying Vince by any means necessary, and when it came to Vince McMahon, Ted Turner did indeed have very deep pockets. I had seen the World Wrestling Federation Women’s champion show up on Nitro with her belt, and throw it in the garbage. It wouldn’t be beneath the WCW to offer Brett a couple of hundred extra grand to do it as well. The Federation had always been able to make its world title mean something-without it, the company would be in a gigantic hole.”
BRET “THE HITMAN” HART
“I look at it myself in some ways as my crowning moment. My moment to stand up and say I’m a businessman and I’m gonna protect myself and you don’t have the right to destroy me.”
KEVIN NASH
“The Montreal screwjob was a work.”
BRET HART
“Kevin Nash wasn’t there. You know, if you want to know what really happened at the Screwjob, ask Undertaker. He’s one of the last guys alive that was in the room. I think anyone that thinks that it was a work is either an idiot or they’re just trying to provoke a reaction. You know, anyone that knows anything about me knows that’s a pretty touchy subject. I went through a lot in my lifetime and the Screwjob, as I look at it, it was a victory for me. I mean, I got nothing but integrity.”
ERIC BISCHOFF
“Bret showed up in WCW, it makes me laugh when he says he didn’t like how he was treated because we paid him a lot of money and treated him extremely well. He’s just a miserable guy. He has a giant hole in his soul, and he’s going to have to fill it with hate for somebody. When he came to work for me, he hated Vince McMahon. He hated everybody in the McMahon family; he hated Shawn Michaels; he didn’t want to work with Hulk Hogan. He hated Ric Flair, he hated Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, he hated everybody, and I had to listen to that. It was a major effort to get him and Flair on the same page; which wasn’t because of Ric, it was because of Bret; he just hated everybody.”
KEVIN ECK
“In the fallout, the angle has subsequently been imitated numerous times. Michaels, who always had denied being in on the double-cross, admitted that he was. And Hebner still hears chants of ‘You Screwed Bret.’”
VINCE MCMAHON
“After [the Montreal Screwjob] occurred I was summarily booed out of the building and so then I said, “Hmm, maybe we’re on to something here.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“To hit his smart ass with a Stunner meant everything to me.”
JIM CORNETTE
“Vince McMahon wasn’t a heel to the TV audience, and in actual fact was still barely acknowledged as more than the TV announcer for RAW, much less the boss of the whole company. Even though he had been mentioned as the owner of the WWF in mainstream news pieces about the company since the expansion in 1984, and even casual fans knew he was the boss in real life, he was never presented so on TV. In that world, Vince was the TV announcer, and various WWF ‘presidents’ like Jack Tunney or Gorilla Monsoon were shown making big matches or decisions. Nevertheless, Vince didn’t do physical angles back then, so the reaction to the stunner was huge.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“Maybe if you remember he almost slipped out. Almost lost him. He’s so uncoordinated. It could’ve been a botch that ruined everything but we got it. And that crowd just came unglued. But yeah that was the magic stunner heard round the world.”
WRESTLEMANIA XIV
ERIC BISCHOFF
“WrestleMania is the nucleus of their brand. Going back into the ‘80’s and early ‘90’s, programming was all written and stories were designed with WrestleMania in mind. Even when you were competing against WrestleMania, you were still looking forward to it. WCW’s pay per views paled in comparison, so while you looked forward to it, but being in the industry, you knew you were going to be judged by it. That was a hard threshold to overcome. That particular WrestleMania was so frustrating. It was close to devastating. Vince McMahon made it clear in the lead up to WrestleMania that he was going to counter what we were doing to him at WCW… I knew then he was setting himself up to kick our a — , and he did a great job doing just that.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Besides Michaels’ back injury, the other major real story was the condition of Earl Hebner, scheduled to take a bump in the main event. Hebner was rushed to the New England Medical Center and at last word was in the Intensive Care Unit due to what was believed to have been a brain aneurism. Apparently he was fine on Friday, but the day before the show was in bad shape and taken to the hospital. Many of the WWF officials visited him in the hospital and reports are that he didn’t appear to recognize anyone.”
DAVID SAHADI (producer)
“[The “Legends” video that aired] featured some WWF legends such as Freddie Blassie, Gorilla Monsoon, Killer Kowalski, Pat Patterson, and Ernie Ladd. It was right at the turning point for the WWE, where the era of ‘Attitude’ was taking off. The premise of the commercial was to represent the passing of the torch from the older generation to the newer one. The legends were sitting in seats at an empty arena. The copy was as follows: ‘I can still hear the echoes cheering my name; but today, I cheer for them.’ I remember playing the spot for Vince, and halfway through the spot he was saying, ‘Damn.’ I had no idea whether he liked it or not. Vince actually left the room. I had asked Shane [McMahon] whether Vince liked it or not, and Shane said, ‘you got him.’ I went outside to see tears in Vince’s eyes and he hugged and thanked me. Vince always had a soft spot in his heart for his dad and the legends. The spot meant so much to him that even a while later he was still visibly shaken by it.”
DAVE MELTZER
“The announcing saw Jim Ross at his best, which translated means pro wrestling announcing at its state-of-the-art level. He brought the main event, which was a good match, getting it over almost as the stuff classics are remembered as, and even made the poor semifinal match seem like two men in an epic performance. He blew by Jerry Lawler like a runaway train, not allowing him to get in the way of someone who, even more than Michaels, had decided this was his night to prove something.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“I had a sit-down interview with the infamous Gennifer Flowers, and she had asked me if I were the judge and jury, how would I handle something. I can’t remember, whatever was happening in society at that time, she asked me about that. I said, ‘well first of all, if I were the judge and jury I’d be a hung jury [wink], if you know what I mean,’ and then I said, out of the blue, ‘if you smell what I’m cookin.’ That kind of took off into part of the lexicon.”
15-TEAM BATTLE ROYAL
DAVE MELTZER
“The match was so non-descript that they never even bothered telling us who was in there in the first place. The real story was the new look of LOD, with Sunny dressed in very little as the new manager of the duo.”
SUNNY
“Working with LOD was awesome and a dream come true. I grew up with old-school wrestling, so I knew who the Road Warriors were. I was very impressed that I got to work with them. When it came time to make my costume, which had to tie in with theirs, I couldn’t believe how tiny it was, as it was just moulded leather and chains — and the most uncomfortable thing I’ve ever worn. But I have to say, it looked damn good!”
JIM CORNETTE
“Tammy was scary good at ringside. I like Tammy…because I’ve recognized — and have told her this to her face many times — that she’s a cunt. And she KNOWS she’s a cunt. She’s a miserable cunt. Tammy, she could rub people the wrong way in about two fractions of a second…”
SUNNY
“I was the most downloaded human on America Online which was unbelievable. When they told me I beat Pam Anderson I thought they were kidding. At that point I did let it go to my head and got a little too big for my britches.”
HENRY GODWINN
“She did a lot of lying. She could be a very evil person. She had so much heat. In Germany, they had to send her home a week early because somebody shit in her food.”
ROAD WARRIOR ANIMAL
“I think it was a very delicate situation. Because Sunny had issues too and everyone knew it. Hawk and I, besides Paul Ellering, we didn’t need any manager. Nobody is gonna believe that a girl is gonna control the Road Warriors, the Legion of Doom at the time.”
WWF LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP: TAKA MICHINOKU vs AGUILA
TAKA MICHINOKU (wrestler)
“The Great Sasuke was making his WWE debut and needed an opponent. He recommended me. It was a great opportunity. I was very excited for the American lifestyle and to learn about a different culture. Being the [WWF Light Heavyweight] Champion was fine, but I had some trouble getting used to the American style of wrestling.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“WCW presented [a Light Heavyweight division] as it was special. We didn’t do that. We almost presented it as an afterthought. Vince was like, ‘they don’t want to watch somebody that looks like their next door neighbor.’”
VAUGHN JOHNSON (writer)
“Lawler spent the majority of the Light Heavyweight title match between Taka Michinoku and Aguila hyping up Brian Christopher. That’s because Christopher is Lawler’s real-life son. Also, Aguila eventually took off the mask and became Essa Rios.”
DAVE MELTZER
“It was way too much to expect putting a guy with less than one year of real experience, and that being almost nothing but lucha trios matches where he just did his flying spots and got out, to do an American style singles match at Wrestlemania, even limited to six minutes. Taka did about as good a job as possible of steadying the match, but it was a bad idea that couldn’t be saved.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“I convinced the entire locker room that Taka was in the Yakuza in Japan. And they said, ‘There’s no way because he’s not missing any digits.’ I said, ‘No, no, no, no. Because he’s a big star in Japan, they cut off his toes. So if you ever watch when Taka goes in to take a shower or Taka takes his shoes off, he’s got a couple toes missing!’ You would not believe how many times people would try and [see Taka’s feet]. Of course I smartened Taka up to it. So Taka would sit over there and kayfabe. And he would make sure and look around before he took his socks off.”
WWF EUROPEAN CHAMPIONSHIP: TRIPLE H vs OWEN HART
TRIPLE H
“He’s one of the best guys I’ve ever been in the ring with. Owen was an incredible performer.”
MARTHA HART (Owen’s wife)
“WWF, they just had introduced a few years before that, contracts, where you were locked in for five years. Owen was locked into his contract. He requested he be let go to when everything happened with his brother. They said no. They weren’t going to let him go. It was a very onerous contract where it only benefited the company, not the wrestler.”
JIM ROSS
“In Vince’s eyes, Owen didn’t have this animal magnetism that Bret possessed. Owen Hart was a great worker but maybe he didn’t have that zest of charisma to the level that Bret had and that is what he was being compared to. Maybe Shawn and Hunter just wanted to get away from the Hart thing. They rode that horse a long time.”
MIXED TAG TEAM MATCH: THE ARTIST FORMERLY KNOWN AS GOLDUST & LUNA vs SABLE & “MARVELOUS” MARC MERO
MARC MERO
“Vince [McMahon] gave me everything at the time. I got a signing bonus, a guaranteed contract, and he allowed me… well, one of the things I wanted in my contract was that I wanted my wife to fly everywhere I flew, which was unheard of in [pro] wrestling, like, taking your wife on the road. Remember, [at the time] she’s not even part of the show. She’s not even part of the WWE — she’s just my wife, but I wanted her with me because I did not want to go through a divorce. I watched too many people ruin their marriages being on the road and I had already been into drugs, and the women, and all of the craziness in life. I did not want that to happen to my new marriage, so I put that as part of my contract. I said, ‘I want guaranteed money, I want a signing bonus, and I want my wife to go everywhere I go.’ And Vince said, ‘I have never heard that before’ and he gave me everything I wanted.”
ERIC BISCHOFF
“I never thought about bringing her in as a talent, because if you would’ve met her back then she was quiet, just shy, almost extremely introverted.”
MARC MERO
“We walked into Vince’s office and when he saw [Sable] he said, ‘I’ve got to put you on TV.”
SABLE (wrestler, model)
“Sable was like my alter ego. She was the person that allowed Rena to do everything that Rena didn’t have the guts to do. I think it was just a hunger at the time for women to return to wrestling and the fans just ate it up and they continue to do so.”
LUNA VACHON
“Sable wasn’t a wrestler until I made her one. A real wrestler can wrestle a mop, and make it look like the mop is kicking their ass, and that’s what happened that night. She beat us, and when we got to the back, there was champagne and confetti, and everyone wanted to celebrate with Sable. I kept walking until Owen Hart came up to me and told me I had just put on the match of my life. It meant a lot to have someone like him say that to me.”
DAVE MELTZER
“The pin-up wife of Marc Mero, put in the ring as a participant for the first time, was the true show stealer, thanks to some great work by her opposite number, Luna, she did what she could do, avoided what she couldn’t.”
LUNA VACHON
“Can you imagine going to the Super Bowl and being told not to tackle your opponent and that if you catch the ball, you’re going to get fired? It was my only choreographed match in my 23 years in wrestling.”
WWF INTERCONTINENTAL CHAMPIONSHIP: KEN SHAMROCK vs THE ROCK
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“He was always one of my favs. Our big program was the first of my career and always grateful to him for being a stand-up guy, beast and businessman.”
KEN SHAMROCK
“He was like a sponge. He was learning a whole lot. He’s a professional and pays attention to details. We had great matches — I mean really tremendous matches. And for that, I truly appreciate the time I had with him.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Shamrock came back with a belly-to-belly and an ankle lock and Maivia tapped out. It was then announced the decision was reversed due to Shamrock putting the hold on after the match. Shamrock went nuts again, knocking Maivia off the stretcher and pounding on him some more before leaving.”
DWAYNE “THE ROCK” JOHNSON
“Pat Patterson took me aside and said, ‘Tonight, as you’re getting carried out, I want you to lay on the gurney like a douche bag. You’re dead like a douche bag. You’re still going to be the champion, but I want you out like a douche bag.’”
KEN SHAMROCK
“There are a lot of questions about a lot of different things that didn’t happen. You bring up the Dan Severn [match] — why didn’t that happen? You could bring up Stone Cold, and Bret Hart with his technical skills and his submission skills. Why didn’t that happen? There were just a lot of things that didn’t happen, especially after you saw the program me and Rock put together and him being able to move up from that. It would have been a great opportunity for me to put something together with anybody.”
DUMPSTER MATCH FOR WWF TAG TEAM TITLES: CACTUS JACK & CHAINSAW CHARLIE vs NEW AGE OUTLAWS
MICK FOLEY
“I felt as if my career was at a crossroads. I knew that Vince was a big fan of both Mankind and the Dude, but I felt personally that Cactus Jack could draw the most interest and money. I came up with the idea of the best of seven deathmatch tournament. I imagined a press conference where Terry Funk and I would pull these ridiculous matches out of a fish bowl. ‘Mr. Funk has just chosen a bed of nails match,’ the announcer would say. After six matches were picked, the fans would be allowed to choose the stipulations for the final showdown. Now, I’ll admit, I was going to tamper with the votes just a bit, so that the finale would be a rematch of our Kawasaki Stadium classic — a no rope, barbed wire, barbed wire board, C4 explosive, exploding ring death match. I pictured it airing on WrestleMania via satellite live from Terry’s Double Cross Ranch near Amarillo, Texas.”
VINCE RUSSO
“Cornette pitched some kind of an angle where somebody is ringside in a box for weeks. And Jim is telling Vince, this is Jim’s exact quote: ‘Oh come on Vince! You know that anybody who comes out of a box is over!’ Jim was pushing for Terry Funk to come into the WWE. So Vince… Ok, we’ll just bring Terry Funk in and we’ll just put him in a box. We called him ‘Chainsaw Charlie’ just so he could chainsaw himself out of the box! Unfortunately for Terry, it was a 100% rib on Jim Cornette.”
MICK FOLEY
“Vince was planning a huge surprise, which would turn out to be Mike Tyson, and he was expecting a lot of mainstream media to be covering the event. He didn’t think that having two human beings blow each other up would be the best way to expose our product to this new audience. In retrospect, he was probably right. They still wanted the Funker, but they wanted him as my tag team partner.”
BILLY GUNN
“For me and Brian, it was never really the wrestling. It was about how involved or how interactive can we be with the people. Hence Brian’s whole little front monologue that he did, and saying stuff like that was amazing. And everybody in the building, even the people that worked the building and were working security and backstage, they were also all saying the stuff. At the time, me and Brian were just having fun.”
MICK FOLEY
“We had a famous ride in a Dumpster, courtesy of the Outlaws. I had a match with Terry just for the hell of it, which culminated in my flying elbow onto the fallen Funker from the side of the Titantron into a Dumpster. With both of us incapacitated, the Outlaws shut the lid and wheeled us off the ramp, leading to a crash landing on the cold, hard concrete below.”
BILLY GUNN
“When people ask me, ‘Well, what’s your favorite match’ or ‘What’s your favorite moment,’ it’s that. Because that literally put us on the map. I don’t know what it was, it was a different feeling after that night. It was a different vibe to what we were doing. We actually tossed them like twelve feet off of a stage. It was a long way, and I think people were amazed at how crazy that was. And that’s what it was. It literally made me and Brian.”
MICK FOLEY
“Also, we did have a tremendous Dumpster Match with the Outlaws at Mania, which saw us capture the belts and helped set the stage for the next part of my career. With the help of a forklift, we were able to dump both Gunn and Dogg into a backstage Dumpster for the tag team championship. Unfortunately, Terry had suffered a bad injury to his lower back when, at fifty-four years of age, he was powerbombed off the ring apron into the Dumpster below. Within minutes of the fall, his back was visibly bruised, and within hours, had filled with liquid. He somehow was able to get through the next night at Raw, but it would be the last time that Funk and Cactus would team.”
ROAD DOGG
“It was the biggest payday I ever got to that point. Probably the biggest one he ever got.”
THE UNDERTAKER vs KANE
JIM ROSS
“It marked the first appearance at WrestleMania by MLB legend Pete Rose, as guest ring announcer, who insulted the Boston faithful with a classic line, ‘I left Bill Buckner tickets but he couldn’t bend over to pick them up.’ That verbal dagger was followed by the arrival of Kane, who promptly delivered a Tombstone Piledriver to Rose in the first of three Rose appearances at WrestleMania events all involving Pete and Kane.”
PETE ROSE (baseball player)
“That gig paid $50,000.”
KANE
“The cool thing about that too was we ended up doing a lot of stuff together. Pete was involved in two more WrestleManias after that. We did some commercials and stuff. So my career has been intertwined with Undertaker and somehow Pete Rose.”
VAUGHN JOHNSON
“After Rose was dragged out of the ring, The Undertaker made one of the most spectacular entrances in WrestleMania history to that point. As usual, Undertaker took his time getting to the ring, but this was the first time he used the druids as apart of his entrance at WrestleMania.”
KANE
“At WrestleMania 14 in Boston against The Undertaker that was a huge high point in my career and an absolute highlight of my career.”
THE UNDERTAKER
“I think it was one of our better matches.”
KANE
“I believe that the story of Undertaker and Kane was some of the most epic storytelling WWE he’s ever done. It was something out of Greek mythology and of course that was the culmination of that whole story and for that reason it made it very special.”
WWF CHAMPIONSHIP: “STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN vs SHAWN MICHAELS
TRIPLE H
“Mike Tyson was probably — positively or negatively — the most recognizable face on the planet: the ‘baddest man on the planet.’”
VINCE RUSSO
“Vince’s decision to bring Tyson in to WWE when he was suspended for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear was freaking genius. Who knows what Vince spent, but that money he spent catapulted WWE.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“You knew it was going to be big, you knew it was going to help obviously the pay per view, having done a fair amount of those WrestleManias with ‘stars’, this one felt like this was going to be one that really worked to our advantage.”
VINCE RUSSO
“Vince McMahon was selling Tyson on how bad his PR is at the moment, but that if he came to WWE, we will make you a huge babyface, and put you in a huge babyface light. We have to help you with your PR and get people back on your side. Steve Austin was the huge babyface. . I said, ‘If Mike Tyson reveals he is with DX we just threw a giant monkey wrench into the mix.’ Vince McMahon thought it was cool, but when it was all set and done we would have to bring Tyson back to that babyface side, which was his concern. I said to him, ‘Vince, you can’t pass up on this moment. You can’t pass up the Tyson and Austin face to face, you can’t pass that up,’ and thank God Vince went with it.”
TRIPLE H
“You had Steve Austin, whom fans were just gravitating to in a way they’d never done before, walking out and flipping off Mike Tyson. That was the shove heard ’round the world. Everyone started talking about what we were doing.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“Mike and I hit it off right away. We didn’t sit there and have BS sessions every time we did something together. But Mike was a historian and fan of the business, and he knew a lot more about the business than most of the guys in the locker room. I wondered at WrestleMania XIV if the moment would be too big for him; would he handle the pressure? Hell, Mike is ready for any big moment. I was glad to do business with him.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Mike Tyson was really important because that turned WrestleMania from like 300,000 buys to 700,000 buys, at the level it’s been.”
JIM ROSS
“Michaels entered WrestleMania XIV the WWE champion, after winning the championship in controversial fashion at the 1997 Survivor Series in Montreal vs. Bret Hart. The uber-talented HBK hadn’t wrestled since severely injuring his back in January at the Royal Rumble in a casket match vs. The Undertaker.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“The animosity was…at the situation. It was at Vince. The career is over, I’m dropping the title, it was palpable that this was going to be big…there was absolutely nothing good going on with me, so I was a dick to everybody… My whole intention at WrestleMania XIV was to drop the belt to Steve, but I was going to make everybody sweat it out and make them think I wasn’t. Obviously, I got that accomplished. That’s extremely unprofessional, but that’s exactly who I was and what I was doing.”
JIM CORNETTE
“This Mania stands out for the image of Undertaker sitting at the monitor with his fists taped, apparently giving indication of what he’d do if Michaels didn’t do business the proper way.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“Mark went to everybody and told them, ‘If this doesn’t go down the way it should, I’m going to have a big problem and Shawn is going to have a big problem.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“Undertaker was seated directly in front of me and he sat there and wrapped his hands as Shawn Michaels made his way to the ring. And there was a subliminal message there, ‘I’m going to be right here when you come back to make sure you do business’. That was the message. That was the message the entire locker room took and that did happen. And Undertaker was sitting right in front of gorilla [position]. He didn’t say anything to Shawn, nothing. But Undertaker had just finished his match, sat there and just wrapped his hands.”
DAVE MELTZER
“Michaels tried to gut out a classic performance. While attempting to will himself to the level of classic matches that he’s become famous for on big shows, Michaels re-injured his back early, gutted out a good, but not great match with a banged-up Austin. He had vertebrae damage going into the match which no doubt was aggravated by the early bumps. The pain etched on his face, as if he was willing himself simply not to pass out before leaving center stage, and yet was still able to be entertaining, was the real story of the show.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“When the whole thing started, it was excruciating. You have had that unbelievable pain going down your leg, the leg feels like it’s dragging, and I guess for me that was the thing that…pain for me — mentally, I could always deal with pain. Mobility and feeling heavy…that more than anything bothers me, frustrates me, and that’s the thing that also added to my frustration and my attitude and everything then…knowing that, the one thing that I always had, even if I was the biggest prick in the world, I could always go out there and just rip it down and tear it up, and I knew that was not going to happen this time. That, more than anything, bothered me and affected my psyche more than anything else.”
VINCE RUSSO
“He was in agony and his back was hurting. I was watching that match like everyone else, and I was literally concerned with Shawn’s health because of his back, and I remember watching that match and all of a sudden in the middle of the match Shawn does a kick-up, and when I saw that; half of me was like, you SOB, and the other half was like let’s write that off to an adrenaline rush, it’s WrestleMania, it’s in the heat of the moment, the guy isn’t feeling a thing.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“We ended up doing basically what [Austin] and Hunter had been doing at house shows. Just because I wasn’t even there mentally, had no drive to come up with something good and creative, I was never like that, even if I was in the ring with someone I didn’t like, my ring performance was never affected by that standpoint because that’s one thing that I wouldn’t let suffer. The fact that it wasn’t ripping the house down bothered me. The fact that the company was moving on bothered me…”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“It popped the building pretty good, not quite as good as I would like to.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“I’m not big on the whole ‘regret’ thing…I don’t like to change anything because it might change where I’m at [now], but if you could have one do-over, that match has always been one of those things.”
JIM ROSS
“Tyson’s surprising right cross that decked HBK was another highlight of the pay-per-view. It was Tyson’s first punch since the fight where Iron Mike bit Evander Holyfield’s ear months earlier.”
VINCE MCMAHON
“With Tyson there, we got extraordinary publicity. And if nothing else, that’s what Mike brought to us. So it increased our awareness as a brand in and of itself, notwithstanding the attraction.”
KEVIN ECK
“Tyson’s involvement attracted tremendous mainstream coverage to the event, and the infamous boxer gave a rub to Austin the way Mr. T did for Hogan in 1985. The match not only was a coronation for Austin and kicked off his feud with WWF chairman Vince McMahon, which was largely responsible for the WWF overtaking WCW in the ratings, but it also was the apparent swan song for Michaels.”
SHAWN MICHAELS
“It wasn’t until I got home and I just got away from it all, that I think it finally sort of…I got a little relaxed and sort of felt like the weight of the world was off my shoulders.”
“STONE COLD” STEVE AUSTIN
“I said, ‘God damnit, that was not very good.’ Vince goes, ‘Don’t worry about it, tomorrow on Monday Night we will be off and running.’”
JIM ROSS
“The Austin vs. Michaels match may not have been the masterpiece each star would have ideally wanted, but it accomplished all that it was supposed to. That was to pass the torch to the Texas Rattlesnake and to see if Austin’s title reign could lead WWE past WCW in the Monday night, TV ratings war.”
BRUCE PRICHARD
“The fact that we didn’t have Shawn and the fact that we really couldn’t start a program with anyone else, we knew in the back of our mind we were going to go with Mick Foley versus Steve post-WrestleMania, but on the way there, you’ve got the entire Mr. McMahon character.”
JIM ROSS
“With Bret Hart gone to WCW and Michaels sidelined for four years with a back injury, WWE hit the reset button with Austin as the WWE champion, which led to the Attitude Era, featuring Mr. McMahon as Stone Cold’s top antagonist, the ascension of such future Hall of Fame talents as the already legendary Undertaker, The Rock, HHH, DX, Mick Foley and a heightened focus on the Divas, including the popularity of Sable, among others.”
Next:
PART SEVEN (coming soon)
Back to:
PART ONE: The Grandaddy of ’Em All, PART TWO: Bigger. Badder. Better., PART THREE: What The World Is Watching, PART FOUR: Hulk Still Rules, PART FIVE: The New Generation
Wrestling Club with Darren & Brett is a podcast produced by WFMU.
