What preparation should a potential trainee do before getting into a school?
Look at yourself first. Look in the mirror. In today’s wrestling world, if you don’t like a formidable athlete, they’re not going to mess with you. If you’re some skinny guy, you need to pick up muscle mass. If you’re a fat guy, you need to lose weight. Look in the mirror. You know you’re wasting your time if you’re skinny or fat. They’re not hiring fat or skinny guys unless you’re related to somebody, or you know somebody, or you’re off a reality show or an old NFL player. The very first thing they look at is your body. So don’t be kidding yourself if you’re a fat stack of shit that they’re going to hire you. They won’t even look at your wrestling because first impressions are everything.
If you’re wanting to be in a wrestling school when you’re 18 years old, you can build up your body beautifully from 15 to 18. So don’t take those stupid steroid shit because all my buddies who took them, they’re all dead, D-E-A-D, dead, and you can’t take them when you’re there anyway. So you might as well do it the right way. You need to learn to watch what you eat and learn to get some kind of discipline in training.
Now you need to do some homework. Do you live in America, do you live in England, do you live in some other country. If you live in England, there’s a lot of fine schools there. Do your homework.
You say “my ultimate goal is to get to WWE, no matter what anyone else tells you.” So who gets people to WWE? All I can tell you is that in OVW we’ve got 61 people there to WWE and TNA and these aren’t people that are hired or chosen, these are people that walked in the doors to beginners class and went to my class. Some got jobs as referees, girl wrestlers, guy wrestlers and also personnel. But I make you all go to class anyway to learn to be a wrestler so that you can understand this shit.
We do a television show on Wednesday nights, we’ve done a show for 15 years, so you learn to do television. Plus we do live arena events, at least two a week, so you’re learning to wrestle in front of live audiences three times a week. Then you’ve got your training classes and your training classes is where you learn. So when you’re looking into wrestling school, you’ve got to look at are they offering a television show?
Who are the instructors? Do you know the instructors? In today’s world you can Google anybody — if they were legit you know it. You can’t bullshit the Internet. If they have basically no credentials, you’ll know that. So they can tell you all the stories in the world, but you can look them all up.
Now let’s say I’m in England, that’s a good place to learn your basics. But then what you want to do from there is save up your money and go to a school that can maybe do television and house shows to learn that and basically learn the American style because, even though I think personally the old World of Sport wrestling was the greatest wrestling in the world, everybody copies what’s on TV and that’s WWE and that’s the way it is.
Now we’re looking at costs etc. Would I rather have this guy train me 10 minutes down the road, but he ain’t got a ring, he’s just got mats and he ain’t really been there, but I’m learning something and it’s better than nothing. You can either go to Harvard on a scholarship or you can go to Illinois Valley Community College. It’s all about dollars and cents and how much money you have. If you want this, you need to go out and get a job, two jobs or whatever and save your money so that you’ve got money for school, you’ve got money to fall back on when you’ve got to move, you’ve got to get a place to stay, you need that money cushion to where it’s “here’s my money for tuition, I don’t have to worry about that.”
What’s the biggest mistake trainees make?
They quit training. It’s like in any sport, in Major League Baseball they practice everyday. NBA, they practice every day. NFL, they practice every day. What guys do is they go to wrestling school, they get smartened up, they learn their moves, and as long as they’re going to class, their stuff is sharp, it’s crisp. Then all of a sudden the older guys start poisoning their mind, especially because the older guys have given up. “Oh you ain’t gonna make it, there ain’t no reason to go to class, just hang out with us and train, we’ll go to the gym, we’ll go to the tits bar, and we’ll call everybody ‘brother’. As soon as you quit going to class, you’re the shits. In any sport, if your fundamentals are gone, you lose it. You don’t take six weeks off in the NFL and step back in and play. You play the game the way you practice, and without practice you ain’t worth a shit.
Should a trainee worry about adjusting to different rings if they relocate for training?
I’ve worked in 14 foot rings in England and I’ve worked in 24 foot boxing rings too. Once you know how to work, it’s no big deal. I remember working in South Africa in a 24 foot boxing ring with real rope ropes, and there were four of them, and the Mexicans there were killing themselves because all they knew was lucha and they didn’t know what they hell to do [in that ring.] When you really know how to work, you know how to learn different kinds of styles: you can work slow and methodical, you can work a hold, you can make a bump mean something, blah blah blah. Wrestling is a continually learning experience where you learn what do and also what not to do. So you’re not going to do the same highspots in a 14 foot ring as in a 24 foot ring: you’ve got to change the psychology of everything.
What was a notable difference in the training process in your era compared with today?
Hell, I’m wrestling my first match and I don’t know if it’s real or not. They’re telling me to go over: I don’t know what that means. I see some guy in the corner of the dressing room putting a blade on his finger and I’m thinking he’s gonna cut me with it. Then this old guy gets in the ring with me and tells me to grab his arm, and I’m like “fuck, I’m not that goddamn stupid [to fall for it].” Then he fucking hits me BAM and it doesn’t even hurt and he goes “Sell!” He hits me again real hard in the ear and I’m selling for real and he says “That’s better” and I go “Hmmm…”
Is there a magic moment when wrestling makes sense, or is it a more gradual process?
Oh no, it’s like a lightbulb moment when you finally start getting it. I was the worst wrestler in the history of wrestling because I didn’t go to a wrestling school. I was going to go to Verne Gagne’s class — he’d accepted me — but I wasn’t going to go until the next year and in the meantime I bullshitted my way in by getting my good looking ring gear and I was just a young good-looking kid, good athlete. I wasn’t even smart to the business! I finally hooked up with the Poffos and started working with them full-time in ’78 in the Maritimes, then Randy booked me into Nashville to work for Nick Gulas, where I turned heel. As soon as I turned heel, that’s where I started getting it. All of a sudden it started making sense what he would tell me. When you’re a babyface you just shut the fuck up and listen and he tells you every move to make. As a heel, now you’re the quarterback on this thing. If that match is good, it’s on you; if the match is bad, it’s on you. So you don’t try to have the same match with everybody: if a guy only does five things well, then only do those five things. And it was really broken down, the structure of a match, how you would run a show, how you book backwards to get your finish.
Does watching different types of wrestling help with developing your own skills?
I lived in Indiana, so I could get Dick the Bruiser’s wrestling, which was a sort of Northern style booking, and I could get Louisville wrestling, which was Nick Gulas and a Southern style wrestling. Indianapolis only ran every three weeks, so it was more just basic wrestling and Dick the Bruiser would come in and there was some violence and whatever. In Louisville they’d be back every week, so there’d be a Texas Death match, a street fight, a title match, 2/3 fall match, a six-man tag, wild blood and guts. I grew up on both so learned the different style. I learned to work the different styles, which is where you learn to adapt and become a real pro.
How can you improve your wrestling skills at the same pace today as back in the days of multiple full-time territories?
You can’t. You have to work five, six days a week to get good and you can’t do it. When you go to indy shows, guys are marks and they’re hoping to wrestle twice a month and all they want to do is get their shit in. They want to imitate somebody on TV, show they can do a huracanrana or fly to the floor, because they’re just playing wrestling. It’s hard to learn a craft — it’s like either you play organised basketball, or the old man throws a ball out and the kids play sandlot ball. As an independent, either you don’t know and you’re goofing off, or you used to know and now you’re old and you’re going to rely on short cuts for reaction where you don’t have to do nothing and you’ve got to worry about defending yourself from some guy who’s trying to do a bunch of stupid shit. It’s really, really hard and it’s not fair, but I can’t help the way it is. It’s sad the way it is. It’s like if you wanted to play in the NBA but there’s no division one basketball any more. What do you do? It’s tough, it really is, but everybody who’s made WWE, they all had a story. I did a seminar at Santino’s school last month and Cesaro was there and telling people how it took 12 years to get where he’s at, 12 years. So it’s a dream, but he never gave up. You have tremendous financial setbacks, tremendous personal setbacks — if you’ve got a woman, forget it, she’s gonna leave you for some guy that’s got a real job — but if you’ve got that dream of being a professional wrestler, you’ve just gotta go for it.
How would Rip Rogers adjust if he came along today and wanted to get into wrestling with only one real major promotion to work for and one route in?
Hell, it’s simple now: I know what they want! They want a young athletic-looking guy, they want him coming in with long hair because they can always cut it. I’m gonna be shaved, tan, I’m gonna be jacked like Mr Universe. I’m gonna be the most co-ordinated athlete they’ve ever seen, because wrestling’s not real, they can teach it to you: a fifth grade can do wrestling moves, it’s no big deal. So all I’ve gotta do is have a good attitude, be the first one there, the last one to leave, bust my balls, say yes sir, and eventually I will get there.
