Scott Hall Interview

You and Kevin joined WCW, did you know beforehand the third guy joining the nWo at Bash at the Beach was going to be Hulk Hogan?

Talking with Eric Bischoff, the idea was that we wanted Hulk to do it but at that time Hulk had creative control written in his contract, meaning he didn’t have to do anything that he didn’t want too. Hulk having been a hero his whole career we weren’t sure he would embrace becoming a villain and in fact the night of the PPV Kevin and I went to the ring against Macho Man Randy Savage, God rest his soul, Lex Luger and Sting, and Hulk was on his way to the arena on a private jet because he had been in California filming a movie.

We had never met Hulk, we had never spoken to him over the phone or anything, Bischoff couldn’t reach him because he was in the air, so we weren’t sure if Hulk was even going to do it. We’re in the ring, Hulks not at the building yet and the backup plan was that if Hulk doesn’t come then Sting was going to turn, but I was really happy when Hulks music played because I don’t think it would have been anywhere near as successful without Hulk.

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How much fun was it being a part of the nWo for so many years?

I’ve got to admit when I left WWE I didn’t really want to leave I wanted to talk to Vince about the terms in my contact, it wasn’t as much about money more about if I could have some days off. I was working 25 days a month at that time and it wasn’t like five days off in a row, it was like two and a half at a time.

I lived on the east coast in the US, the tour would usually end in California, the night before you might wrestle in Los Angles. The next day you wake up and it’s your day off and you’re in LA, I’ve got to travel all the way across the US to Florida and that’s six hours out of my day off, then you’ve got one day to romance your wife, try to hang out with your kids and the next day your packing ready to go back on the road, so it was kind of brutal. Don’t get me wrong it wasn’t like anybody held a gun to my head and forced me to do it, I wanted to do it but I was just hoping that after working hard for several years, then maybe I could have a few more days off but that wasn’t the way Vince saw it at that time, I asked and he said no.

I had no idea the nWo thing was going to work, I knew I was going to be getting good money, and I knew I would be getting days off. I thought creatively it might not be that satisfying, I had no idea all that stuff was going to work, Kev didn’t know, Hulk didn’t know, Bischoff didn’t know, so it was really pleasing that it blew up like that. In my mind when things happen organically they are way better, with the nWo we were making it up, it was live TV every Monday, sometimes we didn’t know what we were going to do till five minutes before we went on air.

What were some of your highlights in WCW?

I’m not asking for any sympathy because I remember a funny line from Bobby Heenan, he said, ‘if you’re looking for sympathy it’s between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.’ So I’m not asking for sympathy but I suffer from a brain deficit, there not sure if it is from the multiple seizures I’ve had in the last ten years, I led a reckless lifestyle for a long time and then I’ve had multiple concussions from where I’ve been hit on the head a lot, it’s a show but you still get your bell rung.

I suffer from a lot of memory loss and I can’t remember a lot of my career, but that is what’s so cool about this internet age. People send me pictures and YouTube clips of matches asking if I remember, most of the time I don’t but I’ll watch and think that was pretty cool or that was fun. It’s hard for me to nail down certain things, every day I see something new on the internet that I was involved in that I don’t remember.

The fake part of my life was going really well, it was the real part, my personal life where I was struggling. I didn’t have any coping skills, developed sometimes failure is hard to deal with, but people don’t realise sometimes success is hard to deal with. I came from a humble background, I didn’t have much education, I never had any money, so when people threw a huge amount of money at me I didn’t really know how to handle it. I just brought a lot of stuff, I brought people a lot of stuff, I blew a lot, I saved a lot, but I didn’t develop any coping skills along the way to act like an adult, I was like a kid inside a grown man’s body.

In 2002 you returned to WWE with Kevin Nash and Hulk Hogan as the nWo, what was it like returning to WWE after so many years?

At that point both of my kids were living with me, I was divorced by then and I had custody of the kids and I was digging being the stay at home dad, we had a nice house out in the country, my daughter was into horses and my son was into paintball guns.

When Vince called he said he had been talking to Kev and Hulk, and he said he wanted ‘The Bad Guy’, and we worked out a deal where I just worked 10 days a month and I was well compensated. I remember talking to Kev and Hulk before we went there and then we flew up for a meeting with Vince and we all stayed at the same hotel and he had a conversation over dinner that night talking about if we thought Vince was really going to push the nWo thing, because he didn’t create it and that’s basically admitting Eric Bischoff is smarter than him.

Knowing Vince like I did for those years I just never thought that he’s going to use his TV to promote someone else’s idea and sure enough he didn’t. The angle that was given to us when, Kev, Hulk and I walked in with a big meeting with Vince at Titan Towers in Stamford, Connecticut was that at WrestleMania X8 he wanted me to wrestle Stone Cold Steve Austin with Kev on the outside and Hulk was going to wrestle The Rock. He wanted Hulk to pass the torch to The Rock and for me and Kev to screw Stone Cold, sounded great to me.

That was months prior, the night before the PPV we are summoned to Vince’s hotel suite and he wants to discuss finishes for the show the following day. I was thinking I already knew the finish, but now he said he wanted Hulk to pass the torch to Rock and he now wanted Steve to go over, he asked if I minded and I said absolutely not.

At that point I had been being a good boy as well, I wasn’t drinking because I thought it was a great opportunity and at that point, I remember looking at Kev and Hulkster and said I’ll meet them in the bar. My kids were living with me, but I didn’t have a female in my life that I really cared about and I was just so frustrated and so lost and again no coping skills, here comes a stressful situation and I’m disappointed and I don’t know how to act. At the time I was like f**k this I’m so out of here and Kev was going at least turn up for the show, at least go to the show, I was going to go and produce the best match I could but I wasn’t going to hang around any longer than that, Kev said we’ll see what happens but it was just downhill from there.

If my fake life isn’t pleasing for me and my personal life is a struggle then why am I travelling all over the world, I might as well be at home in Florida fishing. That’s what happened there, it was a great opportunity but I’ve never been just all about the money, if I’m creatively not satisfied then I don’t want to play.

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What was it like working with Steve Austin in the build-up to that WrestleMania match?

Steve is one of the biggest stars to ever come along in wrestling history, great guy in and out of the ring. Wrestling Steve was a pleasure, he was so popular and was so much fun and we did great business, every town we went to leading up to WrestleMania we had matches together because we had never wrestled each other before so we began to feel out each other’s timing and see what we wanted to take to WrestleMania.

We wrestled about six or seven times before we got to Mania and when we were added to the card at various towns around the US we sold an additional $100,000 worth of tickets. So that was great and we delivered our part, we gave the people good matches and interviews and entertaining segments, I really enjoyed working with Steve, I just didn’t like being told one thing and having it changed at the last minute.

How would you compare Vince McMahon and Eric Bischoff as bosses?

It’s no secret that Vince McMahon comes from a long line of wrestling promoters, his grandfather was a promoter, his father was a promoter and Vince is a promoter, his children are involved in the business, his son in law Triple H is basically running the day-to-day operations of WWE now and I think he deserves to.

The way I’ll express it is Vince is like your boss, Eric Bischoff is younger, he’s a different kind of cat and he was really hungry at the time when we met him because WCW had not been successful before. He took a gamble laid down some big money and got us in and it worked, then he was able to have more leverage, make more decisions and grow his empire, it was kind of mismanaged in the long run but at the time it was great.

To me Eric is like a guy, he’s like a dude, whereas Vince is the boss. I’ve had many ‘f**k you’ conversations with Eric, he was just like one of the guys he wasn’t like a boss.

Do you think we’ll ever see the original members of the nWo inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame?

I look at it like this, I never really cared that much about any individual accolades, you’ve got to remember it’s not like the fans decide. It’s not based on television ratings or ticket sales or anything like that, it’s a couple of guys sitting around an office in Stamford, Connecticut who determine who goes in the Hall of Fame and who doesn’t.

It doesn’t have that much weight to me, it doesn’t hold a significance for me, it’s not like when this guy was on television the ratings were good, or when he was at house shows he sold this amount of tickets, or when he headlined a PPV it generated this many buys. It’s not anything concrete, it’s just a couple of guys around a table in Connecticut drinking coffee, it’s a popularity contest. It doesn’t really matter to me, I learned early on in the wrestling industry, I never really cared about being popular in the locker-room, I always knew it wasn’t show-friends it’s show-business.

You’ve had a few spells with TNA, what were your experiences of TNA like?

I was on the very first TNA PPV ever, which was from Birmingham, Alabama and at that time Jeff Jarrett’s dad Jerry Jarrett was the owner and the boss and I have known Jerry from early on in my wrestling career and I had worked for his wrestling promotion in Tennessee, I have a lot of respect for Jerry Jarrett, he is a really smart guy and I like being around smart people. I jumped at the chance to be near Jerry Jarrett and it was real fun, I only signed a short term contract, something like three shows.

The company then changed hands and I only went back a few times after that to do some stuff with Kev and Sean Waltman. I know Dixie carter who runs TNA now is a wonderful lady and she is passionate about wrestling and I hear that Hulk and Eric have more control over the company now which I think is a good thing because those two guys are proven winners.

You have also wrestled over in Japan what were those experiences like?

After the nWo stuff in WCW, I went over to Japan for a while and for me, those were some of my happiest times. I did about six or seven tours for NJPW and I really enjoyed that, they were the first ones to ever give me any sort of a break in wrestling and it was kind of cool to go back there all these years later having been successful and being like their boy having turned out to be a big star.

It was great to go back and help the company that helped me and work with some of their young guys, put them over and teach them what I knew about wrestling. The thing I loved the most about Japan aside from being such a beautiful country is that all the drama and political backstabbing and stuff that goes on in the locker-room wasn’t going on over there. Well, it was going on but the Japanese guys were stabbing each other in the back, the locker-room with the foreigners (Americans, Europeans and Mexicans) we were all cool.

I was having a blast, I got my money, was on the road with good people and really enjoyed that, I would wrestle in Japan my whole career if I could do things again.

Your son Cody is following in your footsteps by becoming a wrestler, what advice have you been giving him?

Well, his mother is not too thrilled that he has chosen this career path because she blames wrestling for all the troubles our marriage had and all the problems I’ve had. I’ve never had a real job, I’ve worked at strip clubs and I’ve been a wrestler, so I’ve never had a straight job, I’m not an educated guy, I don’t think college is for everybody.

Cody has no interest in going to college, he’s 6’8″, 268lbs and he’s only 21-years-old, he hasn’t even filled out yet, he’s going to be a monster. He was an amateur wrestler in high school where he was really good, he’s had about seven pro matches, he’s ahead of the curb.

Here at the crib, he has got to learn from Jake (Roberts) who is a genius when it comes to wrestling, I didn’t do too badly myself and Dally is the big star. I couldn’t be happier, for me it’s as if I get to live vicariously through Cody now, and it’s going to be so cool to teach him things and watch him travel around the world. I feel like I get to see things again for the first time but through Cody’s eyes, Cody hasn’t ever been to New York City, I can’t wait to roll into New York City with Cody and watch his eyes light up, he’s never been to LA, Chicago, Philly or Boston.

He’s never been anywhere so it’s going to be so cool to travel with Cody, we are already getting a lot of offers where I can go and sign autographs and Cody can wrestle. I’m looking at getting him booked in the UK, Brian Dixon is a big-time wrestling promoter in the UK and I’ll like to get Cody ready and then approach Mr. Dixon and we’ll see if he’s interested in taking Cody on. Then we want to hit Japan, get Cody working in Japan and then down the road WWE is obviously every wrestler’s goal.

I couldn’t be happier, I have a daughter as well, my daughter Cassidy is 18-years-old and has recently graduated from high school.

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Who are some of the current wrestlers that really stand out for you at the moment?

As far current stars go, I like this kid Fandango, I think he is funny, I think he is a great athlete and I wish him nothing but success. I like the Prime Time Players, particularly Titus O’Neil, the guy is a stud, a great athlete and I expect big things out of him. I’m a Ryback fan, he has the potential to be a huge star, no disrespect to him but at the moment he is a little bit inexperienced, a little bit green is a term we use in the industry.

In my opinion, the glare of the spotlight can either make things blossom or that bright light can wilt things, you either blossom or you shrivel up and you die.

I’ve only started watching wrestling again in the last couple of months but I think the business is in good hands, there are some great young hungry guys out there who are going to carry the business forward into the next decade. I know with Triple H running the company he’s a smart guy and he loves the wrestling business, so I think WWE is in good hands.

Can we expect to see you and Kevin Nash touring doing spoken word shows?

Kev and I have been talking on the phone and he’s already got a lot of stuff lined up because Kev has been hustling the Indy scene while I’ve just been sat at home. We’ve already got some really interesting offers and Kev has talked to some promoters in the UK about lining some things up and were definitely going to do it and we’re going to do it right. Right now the format we’re looking at is kind of like a night with The Outsiders, we’re thinking maybe dinner, followed by a Q&A session, then a photo op and then a signing.

I’m really excited about that because like I said when I’ve spoken to Kev on the phone, I’ll be able to pull my end of the deal. Now that my head is clear I bring a lot to the table and I look forward to meeting fans and I’m just so excited I get another chance for my dreams to come true, I live the kind of life most guys only dream of and I get to do it all over again and I couldn’t be happier.

For more information on DDP Yoga follow him on Twitter @RealDDP & @DDPYoga and visit DDPYoga.com

Scott Hall Interview

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