WWE Hall of Famer “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase recently took to an episode of his “Everybody’s Got a Pod” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including what he does when someone calls wrestling fake.
DiBiase said, “No, it’s kind of like — I mean, every situation is different. In other words, by the time Vince came along — and I’ll be honest with you, Vince was really right. You know, it’s like, how many people watch wrestling and really believe it? Not too many. If you’re a good storyteller, you draw the people into the story you’re telling them, everybody loves a good guy, boos the bad guy, and that was always part of wrestling. If you’re a heel, and you’re the kind of hell that gets a lot of heat, you better be a tough S.O.B., too. Because you never know when you’re gonna get tested by a fan.”
“For me, it was only a couple of times. And it was — the way it was said, the indignant way it was said? It’s like, ‘Ah, you guys are just a bunch of phonies.’ And I grabbed this one guy, I grabbed him by both his collars. And I literally picked him up off the ground and put his back against a wall in a bathroom. I mean, his feet are dangling this far off the ground. And what I did first was, I just opened-hand slapped him as hard as I could. And then I picked him up, put him against the wall. I said, ‘Was that fake, dumbass?’ [laughs] And I would do that. It’s the way [it’s done]. If it’s done in a smart-ass way, you’re gonna get it. Don’t tell me that I’m a fake. I would like to see anybody get in the ring and do half the s**t that we used to do without getting hurt. I mean, there’s an art to what we do.”
On if he would have put hands on an interviewer who said wrestling was fake:
“I mean, if somebody said to me in a very disrespectful way, ‘Well, it’s all a bunch of fake bulls**t,’ or something like that? I’d have throttled hi, for sure… And again, you’re talking about attacking the business that I grew up in, and attacking it in a disrespectful way. There’s a whole lot of people who understand that wrestling is show business. But they like it, and they have a respect for what they see us do out there.”
On whether he ever got into a backstage fight:
“No. I can’t remember any confrontation, really, with any wrestler like that. It just didn’t happen. You know, I would — I can’t think of anybody that I didn’t get along with. I mean, there were some names, or a couple of guys or whatever. I didn’t like them, or thought they were full of crap, you know. Then I would just go my own way. But I mean, I don’t know there was, no.”
You can check out the complete podcast in the video below.
(H/T to 411Mania.com for transcribing the above quotes)
