The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Robert Fuller
Hosts: John and Chad
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
The origin of the Colonel Robert Parker character: The first night I went in as The Colonel, I was going to tease that Sid (Vicious) was coming in few weeks and we worked a segment with Van Hammer where he grabbed me and I told him that he would regret putting his hands on me. Afterwards, I had called and I asked Sid what he thought and he said I needed to be more like Foghorn Leghorn. So I went and got some Foghorn Leghorn tapes and got some Mark Twain books and took some quotes out of them and when I went to TV next week, I was Foghorn Leghorn. Sid said he didn’t want anyone to recognize me and just see the white suit and the white hat and hear the lingo and just think that maybe that guy looks familiar but I don’t know who he is and that’s what I did and I did that for seven years.
The night of the infamous Las Vegas wedding angle with Sherri Martel on Monday Nitro: Yeah, it real crazy. Not so much the wrestling part but the interviews and the stuff that we did. The night we got married in Las Vegas and we did the marriage thing and this kind of sums up the whole deal with Sherri. I had been through a lot with Sherri and we were at the little white chapel and they’ve got all the trucks and trailers out there and we are in the trailers getting ready to do the shoot and Sherri is not there, Sherri is missing. When she shows up at the last second she is stoned. They came to me and asked if I had seen Sherri yet and I asked no, is she here? They told me she is here, but not HERE and we can’t do the angle. So I went up to her and she was incoherent and I said boys, you roll it and Sherri you don’t say a thing. But that was Sherri, she was just as stoned as a gourd. But we worked well together and I didn’t care. If she was a little bit looped, she liked me and she would listen to me.
Working a program and matches with WWE Hall of Famer Madusa: I never had to have a single match with Sherri. As always Harlem Heat and her and me and Buck and we would have interactions in the ring but not something like the Madusa matches. The Madusa matches I had to go in and work the whole match with her. Madusa is one heck of a worker, she is really good in the ring and we put a lot of thought into what we were doing in our match. When we started we went on the loop and worked against one another and when we first started she had little respect for men and she would kick me as hard as she could and she was a real terror but I would tell her to do all the stuff you want to do but when it is time to get some heat I am going to beat you up a little bit.
Working as part of a booking committee in WCW and the problems with pitching ideas to talent: I worked in the office with Bill Dundee, Greg Gagne, Mike Graham and Tony Schiavone. We were the writers. We were a booking committee. Also Jim Barnett was a sit in sometimes and Eric Bischoff was the head man and we would run all of our ideas past him. When I worked there we programmed our stuff the way I like to do it and that is a couple of months ahead of time because we had to get all of our TV’s in order and to be way ahead. But it was kind of tough when you had an idea for a guy and have something that you really believed in. One example was Johnny B. Badd. Johnny had been in Atlanta for a long time and his character wasn’t getting over and it wasn’t doing him any good so they wanted to maybe switch him baby face. I said lets work an angle where we shave his head and he is not Johnny B. Badd anymore and they all said they didn’t like it and I told them you need to like it because I need people to find sympathy for him and I need people to the point where they see he’s not riding high anymore and is down so low you can see his plight and his dilemma and his heartbreak. So they go and talk about it with Johnny and Johnny said no. When they came back and told me I said who is running this damn place? Why do we sit here in this room and draw these ideas up? I need to talk to him and sell him on this idea and if he doesn’t like it and is never going to draw you a quarter, fire him. After that I just got up and it’s a famous line I look at these guys and after about a year of working in the office said “boys, baby’s got a pot roast on” and I went out the door and never went back.
Other topics include Fuller’s family history in the wrestling business, how cutthroat the early days of the business were, the Continental wrestling territory, working Memphis, The Studd Stable, working WCW and managing multiple talents, moving to the WWE with Jeff Jarrett, and more.
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