THE STONE COLD TRUTH (38 page)

But they’ve got to understand how the business works, and that the talent can’t be turned into robots. They actually have to feel and learn and educate themselves. They have to be placed in different situations and get a chance to respond to them in order to turn into competent hands, whether they’re heels or babyfaces.

So yeah, I run my mouth a lot, and I say what I feel, but I understand they have a job to do and they’re working their asses off to do it. We’re coming from different backgrounds, but I think everybody’s on the same page now. We all have the same goal and that’s for WWE to be successful.

The way I look at it, a wrestling gig is similar to a comedian’s, going on the road and doing a one-night stand in a different town every night. If I’m a stand-up comic and I tell a joke, the one thing I’m going to do is pause before the second joke until the audience is done laughing at the first one. I want to get a laugh for each of my jokes. I’m not going to even think about telling the second joke until the laughter dies down.

If I tell enough jokes from my A material and the fans aren’t buying it, then I gotta move to new material. Maybe they’re not buying my generic humor, but they’re buying my blue humor. And this audience tonight wants to hear F-bombs or locker-room humor. So I make an
audible call based on what I’ve heard and what I’ve observed. I change my routine.

It’s like a concert. I went to see Fleetwood Mac one time and I didn’t want to hear their new songs. I sat through them, I didn’t hate them, but I really got into their classics. And I think they could tell the audience really got into their classics. But instead of giving them to us, it was like, “We’re going to play these songs in this order, come hell or high water.”

If you lay out a wrestling match like Fleetwood Mac did with their playlist of songs, saying, “We ain’t changing this. The fans can sit on their ass, we don’t care,” you’re cheating the fans.

That’s what most people don’t understand about wrestling. If you memorize your match in the back and you go out and do it verbatim, and the fans don’t buy it, you’ve cheated them. You didn’t listen to them, you didn’t observe them, you didn’t see what got them going and what didn’t. One of the best things we can start doing on the road right now is give the talent the finish of the match and that’s it. Bingo. Let them talk about it. And as they work their match, let them listen to the crowd and work with them.

I’ve also got a few pet peeves about the business. Imagine that. I don’t like guys being late for work, but then again, I am a real time fanatic. I was always one of the first guys in the building my whole career.

I can’t stand guys complaining all the time, bitching that they’re not getting a break. Every now and then it’s warranted, but more often than not it’s a lack of work ethic or a lack of something else. Maybe a lack of talent. But they’re going to bitch about it, even so. And sometimes all the backstabbing and the politics and the BS gets a little old.

Sometimes a guy hasn’t been in the ring in a while, and the guy comes to the arena and he’s not in good ring shape. I remember when I first came to WWE, I wasn’t in ring shape and I was working with Savio Vega. Damn, I just ran out of gas. I was completely blown up.

There is no excuse to not be in condition in this business. There’s no excuse for that at all. Of course, once you get on the road, all of the travel and the drinking and everything like that catches up to you. But as an excuse to be out of shape? No.

I mean, there are no prerequisites to get into pro wrestling. You don’t have to have a college degree. You can be a car mechanic, you can be a football player, a schoolteacher, a Harvard graduate, whatever. You can be anything and get into this business, if you have talent. But once you get into the wrestling business, you’d better be in shape, and you’d better have your head on straight.

As I have said, my match against The Rock at
WrestleMania XIX
might have been my last. If I’m smart, I won’t wrestle again.

Kurt Angle recently underwent a new type of surgery pioneered by a doctor in Pittsburgh. This doctor told Kurt he would be able to return to the ring in a few months, and sure enough, four months later he was wrestling again. So I went to talk to this doctor in June 2003, to see if he could do anything for me.

But unlike Dr. Youngblood in San Antonio, who had done my earlier surgery, as well as Chris Benoit’s, Rhyno’s, Edge’s, Lita’s, and Scotty 2 Hotty’s, this doctor wanted to shave my discs. That didn’t sound right to me, so I thanked the doctor and left, and decided to stay with the medical team I have.

I may be done with wrestling per se, but I like to create. Could I be involved in a booking meeting by conference call? Or could I work with whoever is head of merchandise? Could they send me ideas and ask me to critique them? Could I watch the shows and come up with ideas and gimmicks for all the merchandising possibilities? Yeah, I could like to do all that.

I’d like to be a consultant to Vince McMahon on a regular basis, despite the genius that he is, and tell him what I think about certain things they’re doing. And I wouldn’t be a yes-man. I think I know this business pretty well and will tell him straight out if something sucks.

I could talk to the guys as they come back from their matches and ask them about what they did, and help them to get it better next time. Or I could help with interview stuff. I could help people develop their characters, find out who they are and find a character they can grow with.

I told Vince on that XFL football deal, “Whew, man, why are you doing this?”

But you know, it wasn’t my job to advise him about that. If it was, I’d have said, “Vince, damn it, focus on the product. Don’t get involved with that other crap. Focus on wrestling.”

It could be something like that. I don’t know. It’s hard to say. How do you help a genius out, except as a trusted advisor to him?

I would especially like to help build the career of whoever turns out to be the “next” Stone Cold Steve Austin. And if he’s good enough, I hope he breaks every one of my records.

I don’t think there’s one guy on this roster who wouldn’t want to have my level of success in the ring. If there is, we really ought to try to convince him to do something else for a living, because he’s never going to make it. If you’re not in WWE to become the champion and succeed, then you’re in the wrong business.

And becoming champion isn’t just a matter of carrying the hardware or making more money. It’s the opportunity to assume a position of leadership. It’s the chance to become responsible more than anyone else for putting an ass in the seats every eighteen inches. In old-school wrestling lingo, that means a full house is there to see
you.

WWE is a billion-dollar corporation trusting you with the responsibility of representing that company. I don’t think most guys realize just how much money you can make in that position. I never knew how much money I could make.

I always tell guys to listen to the audience and go with it. But there’s so much posturing and gesturing in the ring, and guys looking over their shoulder at the crowd when it’s not time to look at the crowd yet. And some guys shouldn’t be looking at the crowd at
all
because they don’t have the wrestling part down yet.

I understand that guys are trying to work a hundred miles an hour, but they’re actually working too hard. They’re working harder rather than working smarter. And nothing makes sense. They’re trying to get noticed, but they’re going about it the wrong way. They’re trying to hustle, hustle, hustle, so they can draw some attention and be the “next guy.”

I wonder how many guys actually practice their promos in the car, or at home, or in their head in the gym or on their way to the grocery
store? How many guys actually think about their character? I don’t think enough guys are putting in time on their own to get better. That’s all I used to think about. What was I going to say or do next? It’s like playing chess. Plan several moves ahead and don’t just wait on them. Also let Creative know your ideas, or they may get wasted.

Besides getting your character going and concentrating on wrestling, young wrestlers need to establish a relationship with Vince and J.R., and with Kevin Dunn and his Creative group. You become noticed much more at that level than you do in the ring. If I’ve got a billion-dollar company, I’m not going to trust some guy I don’t know a damn thing about. I’m not going to say, “Hey, here’s my billion-dollar company. I’m going to give you the responsibility of maintaining my reputation and my company’s success, even though I don’t know who or what you are.”

I’d like to see the business enjoy another surge in popularity, but the only way that’s going to happen is for some of these guys to do their homework. They need to
be
who and what they are and let WWE magnify that, put a rocket pack on the back of it and market the hell out of it.

Unfortunately, a lot of young talent are hanging back right now, while WWE needs those new number one, two and three guys to step forward and start taking over. It’s there for them. On the other hand, the boys may lack the confidence to voice their opinions because the show is so writer heavy now.

That goes to what I was saying about guys doing their own promos—having the chance to use their hearts and their brains depending on the situation they’re in. That’s the way you get different personalities, not by one guy writing all the promos. If a wrestler is good and he’s got natural talent and ability, he’ll succeed and be a star. If he sucks, he’ll fall to the side.

If you have one writer speaking for several talents, yeah, he meets with me in person and he knows that I’m from Texas and that I drink beer, and that The Rock is flamboyant, and that Triple H is going to talk about The Game or something like that. He’s got an inkling of what to say, but he doesn’t really know any of us.

You can read all the stuff I’ve spit out over the years. That was all
straight up out of my brain. If you had ten other guys, fifteen other guys, doing what I did and spitting their own stuff out of their brains, who knows how many guys you’d have knocking home runs out of the park?

I’d like to see the business get bigger, like it was a few years ago. The only way it’s going to do that is if we have a whole lot of characters people care about—characters with lots of differences. It would also be nice to shave some of the size out there. Everybody’s got big physiques now. Back in the old days, there were all sorts of body types.

And guys gotta sell.
Not selling offensive moves kills the business. Hell, selling in the proper degree is a lost art. The boys who perfect it will take a huge jump forward to the Promised Land.

I remember talking to veteran wrestler Tojo Yamamoto in Dallas at the Sportatorium a long time ago. He said, “You have to know how to sell.”

Then he told me to grab his ear. I grabbed his ear and he went crazy with pain and sank to the floor. I thought I had really hurt him.

Then he looked up at me and smiled. “You get it?” he said.

All I did was touch his earlobe and he made it look like I was tearing it off. A lightbulb went off in my head. I got it! I didn’t hurt you, but boy, you made it look like I hurt you!

If a guy doesn’t sell his punches, what does he have to do to hurt his opponent? Use a steel chair? So he hits his opponent with a steel chair. Okay. The main event comes and they use the steel chair—big deal, a steel chair was already used.

There’s got to be a pecking order of moves established and used. All the bells and whistles and toys should be saved for the semi-main and main event. That’s it, hands down. The first four matches or so ought to stay in the damn ring. That’s their spot on the card, that’s their role. Stay in the ring, put on a wrestling match and do the finish.

That’s the way it ought to be. That’s what our business ought to be doing now. At least that’s how I see it, and I think I know what I’m talking about.

The other trap for young guys is they don’t keep their heads straight. I’ve seen people come in here and have some success and go haywire. They haven’t even scratched the surface of the success that I,
or a lot of other others, have had, but they go ego crazy. They’ve been on TV a couple of times, and all of a sudden they think they’re the center of the universe.

The way my parents raised me, I take everything for what it is. I’ve been away from this business a few times, and each time it was like the world had been yanked out from under me. So I just try to keep a level head nowadays.

I can’t stand to be with people who are overbearing and have a big head. Should they have an ego? Yeah, everyone’s going to have an ego to a degree. But I don’t get the big head. I know I’m just like everyone else. I’ve just been very fortunate.

Hell, anybody in that locker room today could be as successful or even
more
successful than I was. They just have to come up with the right idea, the right gimmick. I came up with a character that fits and works for me. I’m certainly not a rocket scientist. I got lucky.

But I made sure that all the right people knew what I was thinking.