Dave McCoy at MSN Entertainment interviewed
THE KING OF INTERVIEWS
Here are some of the highlights:
The Road:
"It's funny because I'll watch those VH1 "Behind the Music" shows and I'll hear these bands say, "After four months on the road, we're ready to crack. We're at each other's throats." I'm thinking, "Four months?" We don't have time when we don't tour. That's the thing that's a bit daunting about what we do. You know, we have WrestleMania 25 coming up and it's our Super Bowl. Once that Super Bowl is over, there is a party, but if you are a top guy you really don't want to go to the party too long because you have to get up the next morning. You have a live TV show the next night, a live "RAW," and it starts all over again. It's a never-ending cycle."
Working for Vince McMahon:
"Well, the good thing is I had a really good relationship with him before I even met Steph. We had a great relationship not only from a talent standpoint, but I used to work a lot with Vince hand-in-hand to create story lines behind the scenes, not just for myself but other guys. But if you have ever met Vince, he's a complex man and it can be trying. There are times he wants to choke me and there are times when I want to choke him.....But we are very careful to separate the two out. I can be in the office and we can have a big drag-out over something to the point where he wants to strangle me, but then two hours later we all go to dinner and it's like nothing ever happened. There is business and personal. If it was going to destroy my personal life, I would walk away from the business. My kids are going to grow up knowing their grandparents. No business or job is that important."
Backstage Work vs. Performing:
"When I come up with a good idea in the back, there's not 70,000 people standing up and cheering. [Laughter.] Usually when I have an idea in the back, it is dismissed and Vince will bring it up later and pretend it is his idea. There's nothing like it. And that is why you see guys like Ric Flair and the older guys and they are still doing it. I get it. Even if they don't need the money, I get it. There is something about going out there and entertaining people and having them go crazy. I don't think that's just our business. I think that is why the Stones still play or AC/DC puts out albums. You see these guys performing, very late in their lives and acting like kids. It's an addictive thing to be able to go out there and do what you do and have that many people express their appreciation for it. It's a trip. If you go to an event, or a WrestleMania, and you sit there and feel that energy and then imagine being on that stage and that energy being directed at you ... it's an amazing, addictive thing."
Heel vs. Babyface:
"If I had my way, I'd have been a heel my whole career. I compare it to Darth Vader by the second or third movie, when he came on, you started saying, "Yeah!" Even though he was trying to kill Luke Skywalker... he was just cool. There was a point in time with my character where I had been here a long time, I had a certain amount of respect [from the fans] and ... you know, I beat up a lot of people and caused mayhem, and to teenagers and kids, that is cool. It just became a cool character and we were struggling ... the worse things we thought I was doing, the louder the audience would cheer me for it. I was coming out and drilling a guy with a sledgehammer and people would go nuts. So I had no choice as people basically turned me. If I thought it would work, I'd turn back in a minute."
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