Post by Pennyroyal_Tea (admin) on Jun 23, 2004 13:43:53 GMT -5
The following are excerpts from the Lilsboys interview with Ultimate Warrior. To read the rest of the interview, go to www.thesun.co.uk/article/0,,2003560001-2004282273,00.html.
Do you miss the wrestling business and why did you leave?
I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss wrestling.
Running out in front of 80,000 people at Wembley and having them cheering you - there's no drug you can take to get that kind of high.
I also miss always working to develop and create your character behind the scenes.
But in the early 1990s – about a year and a half after my match with Hogan – I started having professional fall-outs with Vince McMahon.
I ended up having three of them, 1996 was the last one and that was the final time I ever wrestled in the WWE.
I was living in Arizona at the time and had been out of the business for three years. I wasn't look to come back as I had a big health club there and I was developing other entrepreneurial projects like a comic and a training school.
But I met up with Linda McMahon and we agreed on a really unique contract.
It was only four pages long and said they were going to pay me a flat fee to capitalise on me as a wrestler and I was going to use their marketing and merchandise to plug in my other projects.
Then after four or five months they started violating the terms of the agreement and I didn't have any choice but to leave.
The same weekend that the sh*t hit the fan, where they really stepped way over the line and I knew there was a plot to get me, I got a call at my gym from my dad's wife saying he was on his deathbed.
I hadn't seen my dad for years - Vince and Linda had acted like surrogate parents - and everything that happened made me realise it was never going to work and I should just go my own way.
That fall-out led to a breach of contract lawsuit, which I pursued in a five year litigation and means I'm the only ex-WWE wrestler who owns his own intellectual property.
What are you doing now and how has wrestling helped you forge a new career?
When I got into the wrestling business I pursued it like anything else in my life, as a goal. I knew while I was paying my dues, and working the small independent territories, that I had something different.
I had a physique that was different to other people's and I knew if I wrapped that in a colourful, vivid and intense character it would work.
When I finally reached the ultimate goal, no pun intended, of fighting Hogan at WrestleMania VI, I was already starting to look beyond the ring.
As Ultimate Warrior was evolving as a character, I was also evolving and maturing as a man.
At that point, Vince McMahon had a really unique opportunity to be an incredible mentor for me, but instead he revealed himself to be unethical and unprofessional.
I didn't quite understand it at the time, that's why I came back twice and gave him the benefit of the doubt, but in 1996 it showed its full ugly face.
At that point I had already taken entrepreneurial steps and thought about how I could use the investment I'd made in Ultimate Warrior outside the ring.
I used some of the success I'd had from professional wrestling to invest in myself, and I went on a self-learning journey and became interested in the great books of the western world and all the great philosophers.
Part of that was building a speaking career, giving talks at schools and colleges about using your mind not muscle.
To have done something so intense and physical like wrestling, that left an impression on people that still stays today, and then to use my brain in the same way – I said "this is where my new career lies".
That's what I've been doing for the last five or six years, and it's been very successful.
Do you miss the wrestling business and why did you leave?
I'd be lying if I said I didn't miss wrestling.
Running out in front of 80,000 people at Wembley and having them cheering you - there's no drug you can take to get that kind of high.
I also miss always working to develop and create your character behind the scenes.
But in the early 1990s – about a year and a half after my match with Hogan – I started having professional fall-outs with Vince McMahon.
I ended up having three of them, 1996 was the last one and that was the final time I ever wrestled in the WWE.
I was living in Arizona at the time and had been out of the business for three years. I wasn't look to come back as I had a big health club there and I was developing other entrepreneurial projects like a comic and a training school.
But I met up with Linda McMahon and we agreed on a really unique contract.
It was only four pages long and said they were going to pay me a flat fee to capitalise on me as a wrestler and I was going to use their marketing and merchandise to plug in my other projects.
Then after four or five months they started violating the terms of the agreement and I didn't have any choice but to leave.
The same weekend that the sh*t hit the fan, where they really stepped way over the line and I knew there was a plot to get me, I got a call at my gym from my dad's wife saying he was on his deathbed.
I hadn't seen my dad for years - Vince and Linda had acted like surrogate parents - and everything that happened made me realise it was never going to work and I should just go my own way.
That fall-out led to a breach of contract lawsuit, which I pursued in a five year litigation and means I'm the only ex-WWE wrestler who owns his own intellectual property.
What are you doing now and how has wrestling helped you forge a new career?
When I got into the wrestling business I pursued it like anything else in my life, as a goal. I knew while I was paying my dues, and working the small independent territories, that I had something different.
I had a physique that was different to other people's and I knew if I wrapped that in a colourful, vivid and intense character it would work.
When I finally reached the ultimate goal, no pun intended, of fighting Hogan at WrestleMania VI, I was already starting to look beyond the ring.
As Ultimate Warrior was evolving as a character, I was also evolving and maturing as a man.
At that point, Vince McMahon had a really unique opportunity to be an incredible mentor for me, but instead he revealed himself to be unethical and unprofessional.
I didn't quite understand it at the time, that's why I came back twice and gave him the benefit of the doubt, but in 1996 it showed its full ugly face.
At that point I had already taken entrepreneurial steps and thought about how I could use the investment I'd made in Ultimate Warrior outside the ring.
I used some of the success I'd had from professional wrestling to invest in myself, and I went on a self-learning journey and became interested in the great books of the western world and all the great philosophers.
Part of that was building a speaking career, giving talks at schools and colleges about using your mind not muscle.
To have done something so intense and physical like wrestling, that left an impression on people that still stays today, and then to use my brain in the same way – I said "this is where my new career lies".
That's what I've been doing for the last five or six years, and it's been very successful.