Man Mountain Rock AKA Maxx Payne sasys the Kliq Dstroyed Many Lives, Talks Steve Miller & Mick Foley Impacting his WWE Run, New Movie Featuring Behind the Scenes WWF Footage, & more

Show: Wrestling Epicenter
Guest: Man Mountain Rock AKA Maxx Payne
Date: 12/15/2025
Your Host: James Walsh

When I, James Walsh, first started in pro wrestling journalism in 1995, I worked for a newsletter sent out by email and the AOL screen name of the guy who ran it was MaxxPayne1. It wasn’t  the actual Darryl Peterson, real name of Man Mountain Rock. But, it was a super fan of his. A few years later, I left his newsletter to join the late Shannon Rose’s site as well as a site run by the also late “Z Man” Tom Zenk who, years prior, was Maxx Payne’s very first WCW opponent. It is weird how the cosmos link people together. Up until a few weeks ago, I had never spoken to the actual Maxx Payne. I now have. There must be a reason the cosmos linked us in some odd, round about way because his story is absolutely amazing. I’m honored to be one of the few he’s taken the time to share it with.

This is the transcript, quote write up, of some of our the second half of our conversation. We spoke for over 2 hours so I decided to divide it into two parts to make it more listener friendly. In this half of the conversation, we discuss his falling out with Mick Foley, his move to the WWF, and dip a little into the wild story about how Steve Miller of the famed Steve Miller Band (Jungle Love, The Joker) and Mick Foley cost him his WWF job. We also discuss his issues with the Nasty Boys in WCW, the failure of his Madison Square Garden performance that he regrets and the vindication of his overseas performances. Oh, and did you know he has a movie coming out? He recorded the infamous backstage environment of the WWF in the glory days of the Kliq. And, this movie will show everyone a little bit of what life was like as a WWF performer in the mid 1990’s in a way never seen before. Stay tuned and keep your eyes out for that movie to drop as it could shake things up a bit, as Vince McMahon used to say!

Below Part 2’s write up, I will include Part 1 in case you missed it And, you can listen to the whole chat which features far more content than quoted below at the YouTube links presented below!

Part 1: https://youtu.be/ddDLgknLZpo
Part 2: https://youtu.be/Q47JTgO1m6w

Check out www.WrestlingEpicenter.com for all of our 910 interviews to this point, but who is counting? Also, check out our store and buy something so we can keep running our site and presenting these wonderful interviews.

MAXX PAYNE PART 2:

On the weird story of Mick Foley crying over a Tori Amos song:
“I’ve heard Jack tell the story. He tells the story the wrong way… He doesn’t remember it correctly. He had this car in New York and it was just a piece of shit. I mean, a piece of shit. So, he didn’t mind traveling with me because I’d drive. And, I had this ’79 Lincoln that I got from Marty Jannetty. It was called Miss Christine. I got it from Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels in when I was in Memphis. I drove it back to Utah and I drove it back down south when I was with WCW. Mick’s car was a piece of shit Chrysler! Anyway, my car had a tape deck. It barely worked. The radio sounded like crap. But, Mick didn’t mind riding with me and he didn’t mind me introducing him to new music. Most of what I was listening to was heavy metal. But, one day, he said, “I like your heavy stuff. I do! But, do you have something that isn’t quite so demobilizing?” (laughs) I think it was kind of his “Come to Jesus” moment with me, right? Well, I did. I had just gotten this EP of Tori Amos. On it, it had covers of various songs. The Rolling Stones, things like that but all done in a new way, the Tori Amos way. Well, she did Smells Like Teen Spirit by Nirvana. But, her version is beautiful. If you didn’t know the song already, you would think this was the original version and it was always hers. It was beautiful! Well, I played that for him. And, I looked over and he had a tear going down his face. It moved him. I mean, the tears were streaming down his face. Anyway, when he tells it, he says it was Cornflake Girl. It wasn’t. Anyway, and this promo is out there somewhere, Mick and I did a promo on WCW TV from Disney when we were doing the Disney run where he tells the story about listening to that song and crying. He tells that exact story because the announcers loved to make fun of us for how f***ing crazy we were. Bobby Heenan was great with that. He really was. Jack says, “And as the tears were running down my face, Maxx Payne, being the good friend he is, did the only thing a good friend should do. He gently reached over, and he smashed my face into the windshield!” You know, because crying would make you a pussy or whatever, right? (laughs) The song part was absolutely true. But, nobody slammed anybody’s face into the windshield!”

On his music in his movie:
“The experiences are where rock and roll comes from. Richie Blackmore said something and I’ve always carried this with me. He said, “No one can play anything original. It doesn’t exist. All you can do is play you and what you have stolen from your experiences.” I know that is true because I’ve written songs in under 15 minutes and gone back and looked at them and I’d be like, “I have NO IDEA where the f*** that came from!” But, it comes from experiences. Nothing is original. So, when you hear Tori Amos do Smells like Teen Spirit, it doesn’t sound anything like Nirvana. Nothing. If you listen to the song and hear the chord progressions, it isn’t remotely the same song. But, seriously, if you haven’t heard it, you owe it to yourself to go and listen to it. And, that song introduced Jack (Mick Foley) to Tori Amos. Now, he’s met her, he’s friends with her… Hell, I think he’s got a key to her house for God sakes. (laughs)”

On what happened between he and Brian Knobbs of the Nasty Boys:
“You know, that is another moment in life where I got the blame for something I didn’t do. And, I’ve told him this, I’ve told both of the Nasty Boys to their face. “What happened happened because you didn’t listen to me and you didn’t trust me.” If you go back and watch it, you’ll see that I have Brian’s arm trapped and I’m going to throw him over his left side. He decided he was going to control the f***ing bump… I have thrown Vader over with that same spot! Anyway, this particular evening, we were in Albany, Georgia, and Mick and them were all going over the f***ing match. I went over and I said…. Quite frankly, I didn’t ever get to get my shit in. So, I went over and I was like, “No, that’s not what is going to happen. What is going to happen is I’m going to throw you, we’re going to do this, this, and this. This happens all the time. You guys put together the match and you don’t include me. I’m sitting over here and you don’t include me. So, tonight, I’m going to get my shit in and you’re going to go with me or you’re going to pay the price.” You reach a point in the wrestling business…. Well, the Nasty Boys, and anybody who has ever been in the wrestling business knows this, they’re notorious. They were stiff as f***. And, Arn Anderson used to say this all the time. He’d say, “They’re stiff as f*** and their stuff looks like shit!” (laughs) That was the irony of working with the Nasty Boys. But, because they were the Nasty Boys, they were over as f*** heels. That’s just who they are.”

On his complicated relationship with the Nasty Boys:
“I’ll be the first to tell you I f***ing love Brian Knobbs and I love Jerry Saggs. I always have loved both of them with all my heart. That was always the problem. They were my kind of people. They were druggies. We were all druggies together. Mick didn’t party at all! And, they loved the music we would play. Nick Patrick (referee) and I would jam on the road and the Nasty Boys would come and sit with us and listen. Jerry would eventually leave but Brian would sit and listen to us for hours!”

On Nick Patrick being a rocker surprising James Walsh:
“Oh, man! When I first went to WCW, Sting hooked me up with Joe (Nick Patrick, Joe Hamilton being his real name) and we hit it off immediately. He had this storage shed in Jonesboro, Georgia and we would go down there, get blasted, and jam for hours and hurs! We would play Aerosmith, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Metallica… Oh, Nick Patrick is one Hell of a guitar player! And, he ended up being in my band Living Insanity!”

On the story involving Steve Miller and how it impacted his music and wrestling career:
“Oh, Jesus Christ! You’re going to want to have me back on when my movie comes out. Because, that is a story you’re going to listen to because it is insane. Steve Miller…. (James interrupts asking if it is Steve Miller as in “The Joker”) “That’s the Steve Miller in question, yes. Oh, The Joker. You have to go with “The Joker” because that’s one of the best f***ing bass lines in history, right? Let me tell you what, let me let you go back to asking questions because you have an agenda and questions to ask. And, I will try to fill in parts of the Steve Miller story. Suffice to say, I was writing an album. I knew I had an album I had to write while I was still with WCW that would be the soundtrack to a movie I hadn’t made yet. So, the drummer I told you about that I was in college with, I’ve really known him since I was in the 4th grade. He’s the drummer, Nick Patrick is on the songs, and “Road Dogg” Brian James is the singer. When, my movie finally comes out, all of these songs that I wrote and recorded down in Atlanta will be a part of it as the soundtrack to the movie. Ironically, I wrote the soundtrack before I filmed the movie!”

On why he left WCW:
“I did not see WWE in my future. I thought I was going to stay with WCW for a long time. But, situations changed. And, Mick Foley was hugely responsible for a lot of those changes. It broke my heart when Mick and I split as a team. I have found out since that how Mick feels about me is different from how I thought he did.”

On Eric Bischoff not liking him:
“Eric never liked he. He just didn’t like me. I don’t know if it was just because of the thing with the Nasty Boys. But, he never liked me. He’s made no bones about it on his podcast either. Whenever I come up, he’s not shy about saying he just never liked me. I remember he watched one of the matches with me and Mick against the Nasty Boys. He remarked on everybody else in the match and didn’t say a single thing about me. Nothing good, anyway.”

On not bringing Maxx Payne to WWE and instead becoming Man Mountain Rock:
“If I have one regret in my entire career in the professional wrestling business, it is that I didn’t walk out of negotiations when they said they didn’t want me to be the Maxx Payne character. They said it was too close to the Undertaker. It is one time I wish I had said “No, I’m not going to do that. You’re not going to tell me what to do with this character. I know Heavy Metal kids. And, Heavy Metal kids are going to love this f***ing character!” I’m not a tie dye guy. Don’t get me wrong, I like tie dye shirts. But, I’ll be f***ed if I ever wanted to be a wrestler wearing tie dye. I’m going to credit Mick Foley again for something he said. He said for whatever reason, the powers that be seemed determined in defrocking me.”

On the Kliq’s power in WWE:
“I had some serious power working against me set on destroying me. You don’t have to believe me. When my movie finally comes out, you will see The Kliq openly mocking me on videotape. These guys hated me! I mean, Triple H, Kevin Nash, Scott Hall. It is clearly evident just how much these guys hated me. They were determined to defrock me. You’ve seen the results. There are a lot of guys who have lost their lives because of how those guys treated them in the WWF. And, yeah, of course some of those people had other problems. But, I would say this to the Kliq’s face. When you treat people the way they treated people, it is no surprised that some who devoted their entire f***ing lives to making money as a professional wrestler would take their lives because they were completely and utterly destroyed in public. It is no surprise that people lost their lives because of the way they were treated by the Kliq. I was almost one of those guys. I was just lucky that I had a big enough ego and enough fear of God that I couldn’t take my own life.”

On dealing with the torment of the Kliq:
“That is how f***ing depressed I was. All i ever wanted to do was be in the WWF. And, even more, all I ever wanted to do was work behind the scenes. I have experience in film and TV production. Why wouldn’t someone with my experience be welcomed back? They’ve welcomed back so many people who did all kinds of f***ing things. But, for some reason, I’m the ugliest and dirtiest thing that ever walked through the doors of the WWF. I have to live with that. I don’t have a choice! I’ve had to for 30 years! When I left the wrestling business, I never got another f***ing call from anybody in the wrestling business.”

On Big Dick Dudley looking a lot like Man Mountain Rock shortly ater he left WWE in ECW:
“There were a lot of forces against me. To know the whole story, you really have to know the Steve Miller story in full and how Mick Foley played a part in that. I never got a call from Paul Heyman. Never. You would have thought I’d fit in there. Never got a call.”

On the nWo merchandise resembling the Maxx Payne gear:
“How f***ing cool would it have been for me to perform the nWo theme song and play the nWo to the ring? And, on top of it all, if you look at my gear when I was Maxx Payne, you’ll see WFO on it. Ironically, WFO, nWo…. Ironically, the guy who made my gear, a guy named McWilliams (I apologize if I got that name wrong) out of Chicago. He made some of my gear designs when I was Maxx Payne. He got hsi start making heavy metal T shirts in the 80’s. Well, he ended up making the nWo merchandise designs. And, I really believe, I really believe to this day… One day I wore a T shirt on WCW TV that had his 800 number on the back of it. I really believe Eric Bischoff got his number from the back of my T shirt. I’m sure he’d say I’m a pathetic liar. But, I believe that. For anybody that doesn’t believe there was somebody that looked like the nWo long before there was an nWo, go watch any Maxx Payne match!”

On being told Maxx Payne was too close to the Undertaker:
“I was wearing black. I had the skull and cross bones. Undertaker wasn’t wearing T shirts. He wasn’t heavy metal. Taker was Taker! He wore his Taker garb. His gloves. That is why Undertaker was f***ing magical. He was a heavy metal guy without really having to do that. Taker was Taker! I was Maxx Payne. I didn’t really look like The Undertaker. I didn’t work like the Undertaker! To me, Maxx Payne was completely different.”

On if he got along with Jim Johnston, WWE’s music guy:
“The worst f***ing part of going to the WWF, aside from not being Maxx Payne, was Jim Johnston. Jim Johnston made it clear that he thought my shit f***ing sucked. He didn’t want to use any of it. So, all of the music, all of the backing tracks… Everything except when I went to the ring playing the guitar myself, all of it was Jim Johnston’s work and I f***ing hated it! He used this thing called the “doubler” on guitar. I HATED, with a capital f***ing H, HATED the sound he created for Man Mountain Rock. Jim Johnston knows about as much about creating a good heavy metal sound as Dolly f***ing Parton does. It wasn’t cool blues! It wasn’t cool metal! It just f***ing sucked!”

On ideas for vignettes:
“I had this idea. This cool idea where I would stand in front of these big speakers, like the beginning of Back to the Future with the one big speaker? The video is out there. We did it. But, it was Jim on the guitar. YOu want to talk about taking everything that you believe and stand for away from you?”

On his disappointing Madison Square Garden experience:
“The crem de la crem, the ultimate was Vince McMahon was bound and determined to get me to play in MSG. That was the moment that was going to f***ing decide if my gimmick was going to be successful or not. That was it. If I go out and get cheered like everywhere else, then that’s it. But, if I go out and … Well, they send me out there in Madison Square Garden. They gave me one Marshall and one fourplex. On top of all of that, they want me to play over the live f***ing PA system! Do you know how much f***ing delay there is over the live PA system? I don’t give a f*** who you are, you cannot play over the live PA system! I begged Vince McMahon, i said, “PLEASE, I do not want to go out there and do this. It is going to fail!” I didn’t like the sound of the amplifier they gave me, I didn’t like the set up. I knew you couldn’t play it over the f***ing PA system properly. And, he said, “You’re going to go out there and do it.” Well, I did. And, it is the only time in the history of my gimmick that I was ever booed. It only happened once and it was right there in MSG. I went out, I started to play, the crowd started making noise, and I couldn’t hear myself play. It sounded like shit! And, it failed. If Vince had put me out there with a proper set up where I would have monitors in front of me and a professional set up like a rock and roll band, if they would have had me go through a professional system instead of the house’s PA system, which would have been the whole point of my gimmick! That I was a legitimate rock and roll guy! I would have blown their f***ing minds that night. It embarrassed me. And, you know what it was, brother? It was another cog in the downward spiral of the Maxx Payne character.”

On the end of his WWE career:
“Steve Miller cost me my career in the WWF. Steve Miller, the rock star, and, to a certain extent, Mick Foley had a hand in it too. I love Mick. I do. I’m not burying him. I never have. But, what is the sense in lying about it anymore? My movie is going to come out and there are going to be a lot of questions about it. And, Mick Foley and Steve Miller were on the Jimmy Kimmel Live show and they talked about it on national television. I should send you the link I have that. It is unreal.”

On his movie:
“I guarantee it will be released within the next six months to a year. I’ve turned it over and that is the nature of the deal that I’ve signed. I asked Vince McMahon before my last tour, because I knew I was leaving, if I could take a video camera with me and record backstage. To my surprise, he said yes. I’ll never forget, and it is in the movie, Rene Goulet is on there when I first turn the camera on. He goes, “What the f*** are you doing? Turn that shit off.” I said, “Vince said I can do this.” He said, “Oh yeah? Wait right there.” He went, he called Vince, and he came back and had nothing to say about it. I recorded the backstage experience of that last tour with the WWF. You see everything. And, it is going to open a lot of eyes.”

On any regrets he has about his wrestling career:
“I wish Vince McMahon had gotten the chance to see my gimmick done right. If things had been different in Madison Square Garden, the story would be different. But, with the circumstances as they were, Vince McMahon never felt it. He never felt the energy of the crowd when I would play. He just never felt it. But, it wsa fate. Had it not been due to fate, in the movie, I get to play in front of the crowd. Had it not been for an incident between Owen Hart and Louie Spicolli, God rest both of their souls, I would not have gotten to play in Europe on the WWF Full Metal Tour! It was called the Full Metal Tour! They wanted to do a battle royal. That pissed off all of the guys. No one wanted to sit around all show backstage in their gear to go back out. So, I said to Rene Goulet, “I can go out there and play for 15 minutes.” He said, “Wait right there” and guess what he did? He went and called Vince, Vince said it was OK. And, it was great. It was vindicating. It was what Madison Square Garden should have been. I wish Vince had felt that.”

On the one thing he got wrong in his movie:
“In the movie, I say “The mighty shall fall” talking about the Kliq. Well, taht didn’t happen. They basically are in charge of the entire industry now. They did not fall.”

On what he wants people who were fans of his to think of him:
“I do have PTSD. I do. And, I know that I do because my career was full of coulda, shoulda, woulda’s. But, you can go back and you can see the train coming off of the rails. But, I do know this. I couldn’t have done anything different. I did what I did. After WWF, I did go back to Europe. I did wrestle again. But, my heart was just not in it. I had been to the show. And, I didn’t want to go from being to the show only to go back down to the minors. So, I went home. And, because I went home, I got to see my kids grow up and graduate. I got to be there for them. And, reguardless what my relationship is with them now, I know I was there when it mattered most.”

PART 1:

On the “State of Euphoria” introduction:
“Oh man, I’ve not heard that introduction since I left WCW. Thank you for that! I’ll never forget when Gary Michael Cappetta came up to me. He said, “Where should I say you’re from?” I said, “How about the State of Euphoria?” He just looked at me like, “Oh God, that’s good!” (laughs)”

On getting his first action figure recently hopefully soon to release:
“I am excited. I’m anxiously waiting like everyone else to see it happen. The guy who is making it, he’s a great guy, he does a lot of these. I’m excited to see the finished action figure. It is awesome to finally get an action figure! I’m hoping, if the Man Mountain Rock figure sells well, I can convince him to make a Maxx Payne action figure as well.”

On learning to play guitar:
“Well, my guitar playing started at a pretty early age. Unfortunately for me, my brothers had said they wanted to take up a musical instrument and then the instrument would end up in the corner collecting dust. So, my parents didn’t take my guitar playing too seriously when I was young. But, I started relatively young and kept tinkering with it. My brother had literally bought a guitar, silver style guitar and had that with a broken amp, he handed that down to me hoping that would pacify me. It didn’t. But, I kept tinkering around with the guitar and finally, my parents got me guitar lessons. The lessons were still like with the dog on the page and you are to follow the notes,. It was like (singing) “Rubin, Rubin, I’ve been thinkin’!” And, I wanted to be playing Alice Cooper, not that those stupid old songs. So, I wanted to continue learning but I repressed it. Then, I went to college. And, my roommate in college was a drummer. In fat, I’ll tell you how good of a drummer he was. He is currently in a band called No Quarter, it is an international Led Zeppelin tribute band. Anyway, he was a good collegiate wrestler. I had talked him into coming to this school. And, one day, we were sitting around smoking a joint and he looked at me and he said, “I don’t want to hear this story from you no more (about playing guitar) if you don’t even have the balls to go out and buy a guitar and learn to play rock and roll.” Well, that struck a chord with me… (laughs) Well, I had built this truck. And, the truck had like a thousand dollar stereo in it. I went down to the guitar shop and I traded in my thousand dollar stereo for a guitar and an amplifier. It was like a Fender Squire and a little side-kick amplifier. I’ll never forget the look on his face when he came home and saw that I had done it. It was like, “Hey, mother f***er! Say your shit now!” (laughs)”

On musical skill coming from his mother:
“We all have regrets in life. One of those was that I can still remember everything about playing the piano. But, at 5 years old, I refused to practice because my mtoher wanted me to. I wish I had practiced. Anyway, I remember when my mother took me to go see the movie The Sting in the early 1970’s. There was a song called The Entertainer written by Marvin Hamlisch in it. In fact, it won the Oscar. Well, my mother came in the house, sat down at the piano, and played that song note for note from memory. That was really impressive. I wish I had realized how impressive that really was when I was young. But, she could play anything! She would hear that melody and she could replicate it. She could play Bohemian Rapsody! She loved Queen! She wasn’t of the era of rock and roll. But, she loved Queen, especially A Night at the Opera. I remember driving around in her Lincoln and listening to Queen while it was raining and lightning out – She hated lightning. But, we would listen to A Night at the Opera and talk about it and bonded over it. She loved Queen!”

On applying his mother’s natural skill to the guitar:
“I realized I could figure out a lot of songs on the guitar. I knew nothing about playing guitar. But, I realized I could kind of listen to them and figure them out. I’ll tell you, the first solo I ever learned was the Motels’ “Only the Lonely.” I can still hear that in my head. And, if I can hear it in my head, I can play it sort of how my mother could on the piano. Then I started tinkering with a song by Atlanta Rhythm Section called Spooky which was kind of their take on Love Potion #9.”

On getting better with the guitar:
“My wife, at the time, got me Guitar Player magazine. I don’t think it is still going. In fact, I think Guitar World might be the last one still standing. Anyway, she got me this edition and it had an interview with Eddie Van Halen. In that interview, he said, “If you want to learn to play guitar, if you want to play rock and roll, all you really need to know is 1, 4, 5.” All rock and roll, especially the older stuff from Chuck Berry onward, centered around what he called 1, 4, 5. That’s the blues! Anyway, in that same article, I also learned how to do it without learning to read music because I learned tablature.”

On being a collegiate wrestler:
“I put myself through college on a collegiate wrestling scholarship. Part of the reason I went to Iowa State was because they had a commercial television station. I wanted to learn production of television and film. What better place to learn than at a commercial television station?”

On losing Louie Spicolli:
“I was on the phone with him the night before he died. I begged him to stop but he was too far gone. He was very betrayed by the wrestling business. Another classic example of “The Kliq” taking advantage of somebody at that time. It devastated Louie. He was in the throws of some very serious drug addiction. It broke my heart, man. I begged him to stop… He’s in my movie that is going to be coming out very, very soon. But, Louie was a very special guy and it was all because of Bill Anderson. I have a soft spot in my heart for Bill Anderson.”

On learning under Red Bastien:
“You know, I have nothing but good things to say about learning under Red. He was old school minded for that, I look back with nothing but admiration. And, as far as wrestlers go, he seemed to have a lot of integrity in terms of how he took care of me. To have someone like that to be a mentor, man, I have nothing but nice things to say about him.”

On the death of the territories:
“You could say it is a bad thing. But, I’m also an evolutionist. Was it bad? Well, at the time, yes especially for the local talent that was looking to improve and have a place to work to do so. But, on the other hand, would the territories have failed if something better hadn’t come along that had something to offer the people? If the WWF show wasn’t better than the territory, the TV stations wouldn’t have taken it over the territory show. At that time, the territories were stumbling dinosaurs. Wrestling has to evolve. And, it is evolving right now.”

On how open wrestling is with no more kayfabe:
“You see it right now with the WWE Unreal series. It is the same as the movie I have ready to come out. I thought of this 30 years ago! I believed 30 years ago that the biggest problem in pro wrestling was continuing to try to preserve kayfabe. I always believed kayfabe was bullshit. I always did. There is no need for it anymore. WWE Unreal proved it. Fans will gladly suspend their disbelief while watching the show. They can know how every aspect of it works now and still go out and spend thousands of dollars to go see a WrestleMania. WWE Unreal proved it! Every single aspect of it is planned. That part, kayfabe, is now irrelevant. And now, with that out of the way, in my opinion, wrestling can now go to heights that it never dreamed of!”

On working in the WWF as an enhancement talent in the late 1980’s:
“I did that and I did that because of Bill Anderson. He was the West Coast enhancement guy. He booked all of us for those appearances. The downside was there were no territories for us to go work. So, the only place to get some experience and go work with any regularity was to go and do those enhancement matches. I was getting nowhere after Japan. I had gone to Memphis. But, what better way to get more exposure than to go and rub elbows with the WWF doing enhancement matches?’

On the pros and cons of Memphis Wrestling:
“Well, I wasn’t making any money. I still have my pay stub from Memphis. It was like $200. S, you weren’t making money. But, working in Memphis Wrestling is where I really learned about the wrestling business. Being on the road, learning to deal with Lawler, his comebacks. I had the belt. In fact, I had two belts at one time in Memphis. IT was hard as f***! But, I had nothing but good memories in Memphis.”

On trying to find a place to plant his feet:
“Everywhere I went, the territory closed down. Red got me booked in Montreal, they closed down. Stu Hart called me (ding a Stu Hart impression), “Why don’t you come up here, you big salty bastard?” I thought Memphis was long road trips, my God! I had heard all the stories. I was roommates with Chris Benoit. But, I was scared to death of Calgary. It is so massive. I just couldn’t do it. I couldn’t. It was the last sacrifices I couldn’t make after working in Memphis and not making much money. So, I knew if I went to Calgary, everything would fall apart. So, I started trying to run my own territory at home and hoped that would get me out. It didn’t. If it wasn’t for Chris Benoit getting me booked in Europe, I don’t know what I would have done.”

On Chris Benoit:
“Chris Benoit got me booked on a tour of Europe. If it wasn’t for that, I don’t know what I would have done. I say this whenever I start talking about Chris Benoit… You have to be careful what you say. It is like saying, you know, Adolph Hitler did something good. You know? Who cares that he built the f***ing Autobahn. He’s responsible for the deaths of 50 million people! Chris Benoit’s legacy is tarnished and nothing can repair it. And, rightfully so. But, the Chris Benoit that I knew, that got me booked, that stayed with me in Atlanta. He wouldn’t have done those things. So, the good things he did for me, it would besmirch his name in my mind if I didn’t give him credit for those things. But, it doesn’t take away from the hideous nature of his demise.”

On Chris Benoit’s death resulting in change:
“I’m very forgiving in that when it was discovered what was wrong with Chris, he was very important in uncovering the truth of the devastation of CTE. Everybody wanted to say it was due to steroids. But, it was really due to the multiple concussions he had. I mean, 2/3rds of his brain was damaged from concussions. The reason center of his brainw as literally destroyed. I’m not making any excuses for what he did. All I’m saying is if you don’t understand the damage that is done by severe concussions and how it damages your brain, you don’t really understand what happened to Chris Benoit. And, you see now that CTE is taken very seriously by all pro sports including the NFL.”

On Bill Watts:
“I can’t say anything bad about the Cowboy because he gave me my job! Basically, after he gave me my job, that was the last time I ever saw him! I just wish he realized what he had. To be honest, I could be really mad at him. He really f***ed up with me. He let a lot of money go off the table. If he had realized what was going on when I was playing the National Anthem, he could’ve made money he couldn’t have evend reamed of.”

On if WCW took advantage the National Anthem moment:
“I have always said if someone like Vader had come out and smashed my guitar while I was playing the National Anthem, could you imagine the heat that would have gotten? That would have started a feud that could probably still be happening today! They only let me play the guitar a one other time in WCW after that. The f***ing crowd went nuts! Nuts! I just don’t think they got it.”

On playing the National Anthem on guitar before a WCW PPV and the fans loving it:
“It was huge. I went out and played and as I played, you could tell the fans realized I was really playing. And, they got really into it! Before I went out to do it, Jesse Ventura came up to me and he was like, “Are you going to throw in a little Hendrix?” I was like, “yeah, man!” And, I did, especially at the end, paid homage to Hendrix’s version. Everybody who plays the National Anthem on the guitar is paying tribute to Hendrix’s version in some way. I didn’t play it exactly like him because, who could? But, that was huge!”

On Jesse Ventura:
“I come from a Union background. So, if you say the word “Union” in wrestling circles, it doesn’t turn out well. I liked Jesse Ventura. He was always nice to me. I remember riding the elevator with him and him telling me the story about him and Gene Upshaw, the guy who started the NFL Players Union the year of the strike. He had Hogan on board, he said, up until they got to Vince McMahon’s door. But, I liked Jesse.”