Former WWE referee Earl Hebner recently spoke with WrestlingNews.co’s Steve Fall on a number of topics including his Mount Rushmore of wrestlers.
Hebner said, “Steve Austin, Undertaker, Ric Flair, he’s my hero, and Hulk Hogan.”
On Randy Savage vs. Ultimate Warrior at WrestleMania VII:
“Well, you can say that Randy gave me a script probably thicker than my book before the match. I probably read it about maybe two weeks before the match because I had to deal with Randy. The Ultimate Warrior, it was just a waste of time me sitting with him trying to get stuff out of him on what he’s doing because he never even knew what direction he was going in. So it was basically me Randy leading that match.”
On Nailz attacking Vince McMahon due to the SummerSlam 1992 pay:
“I was right there and saw it all in Green Bay, Wisconsin. He had Vince McMahon up against the wall like a chicken going into a Perdue chicken line. If it hadn’t been for Slaughter being in there or close by, he would have messed Vince up. It was over a payday. They paid Bossman more than they paid Nailz and Nailz found out. The rooms were down in a basement. He came down the steps. He went into Vince’s office and all I could hear was screaming and hollering. I looked in there and he had Vince up against the wall. He said, ‘I want my money.’ He said more than that, but I’m making it polite. ‘You f’d me. You paid him this. I deserve that.’ After that, Vince always had an agent in his room. He was never left alone or he had them at the door.”
“I wish Slaughter would have never gone in there and saved him. I would love to see him whip his ass.”
On if he feels th 1999 Over The Edge show should have been stopped after the traggic passing of Owen Hart:
“Anytime there’s a death in any sport, I think it should be stopped and cut off. There’s always tomorrow. You can always go back tomorrow. If you had a big thunderstorm, power outages, you wouldn’t have the show, right? Okay, so what’s the big deal? A man lost his life and you’re still gonna have the show? It’s horrible. It’s called money.”
On Vince McMahon’s reaction when they brought Hart through gorilla after his fall:
“He’s sitting right where he was. When it all happened, he saw it and he never moved. He stayed right there. When they brought Owen through the gorilla, he was in that same chair. He might have stood up, I can’t remember, but he never made a way to get closer like everybody else was.”
On how Owen Hart had plans of retiring in 1999:
“The year Owen passed away, he was building a brand new house. He had told me and probably a lot of other people that at the end of that year, he was going to retire and go home with his family because of the new house he built.”
On how Owen Hart feelt towards him after the Montreal Screwjob:
“Owen truthfully came up to me and said, ‘I want you to know something. I’m not mad at you. I have no hard feelings about what happened. We’re still friends. I understand.’ I said, ‘Well, I really appreciate that.’”
On receiving an offer to go to WCW around 1995 or 1996:
“My brother and I had a deal to go if we wanted to. The thing was that before Vince went public, it was like a family company. My brother and I were so loyal to Vince that we turned the deal down. We went into Vince’s office and somebody had let it out of the bag. We went in there and sat down with Vince. He said, ‘Here’s the pad on the table. Write down what you want. I’ll be back in a little while. What do you want to make?’ We told him and he said, ‘Okay. You got it.’ I told my brother, ‘Hell, we should have wrote more.'”
On Rick Rude beating up the Ultimate Warrior:
“I was in Savannah, Georgia. We had a house show and then we had a pay-per-view the next day. The Warrior cut a promo on Rude and Rude was at the building. As soon as the Warrior got there, Rude started telling me this, that, and the other. The Warrior got outta hand with his mouth and Rude beat the sh*t out of him right there in the building. He beat him around the ring and he was screaming, ‘Earl, get him off me. Earl, get him off me.’ Rude was a tough guy. He’ll kick your ass, and that’s what he did to the Warrior.”
You can check out Hebner’s comments in the video below.
