By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Brian Blair
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
On Iron Sheik: “It started in Hershey, Pennsylvania, um, where we used to kind of play with each other, take each other down, you know, shoot style different just for a minute, you know, just for maybe one minute of the match. We didn’t want to stick the match up, but just to kind of play with each other. And one of us had, you know, a Tapper, and usually it was me. So, uh, in Hershey, [Sheik] front face locked me and he was cinching down on it. And I remember coming out of the front face lock on him, and I chicken winged him. He kinda got out of that and I wound up with a front face lock on Sheik and all of a sudden he’s trying to get out and he’s going ‘okay’, and taps. Nikolai [Volkoff] started riding his butt so bad. ‘Ah, Sheiky, Sheiky you top in front of 20,000 people. And B Brian Blair F you real good.’ So this kept brewing with Sheik. He’s got a, kind of a different mentality. I mean, You know, the Sheik, he has a whole different psychology, so this really bothered him.”
On Jim Brunzell: “[Hulk] Hogan had called me up and asked me if I knew Jim Brunzell. I said ‘just from the magazines and stuff’, I never had met Jumpin’ Jim. And I knew he was a good tag team wrestler because of Greg Gagne working in the AWA, Terry [Hogan] had just come from the AWA, you know, Vince kind of cherry picked everybody from every territory who drew money. So it was my turn to get plucked. So I agreed to come up. Jim and I were promised the tag team title. It’s a whole other story, but Jimmy had so sued Greg Gagne and Vince because they created action figures, Vince did, and Greg signed the contract, signed Jimmy’s name, handed it back to Vince. Jimmy wound up suing Vince and Greg together and he won the lawsuit. So, he had heat kind of going in. I mean, I guess Vince realized, you know, it was his fault or just as much his fault is Greg’s fault. Jimmy would do things like, Vince came and he was really excited about the Killer Bee t-shirts that they just came out and you had to stare at them for a little bit before, they maybe grow on you a little bit. I know better than, you know, when somebody is excited. I’m not going to rain on their parade and say, ‘Hey, that looks terrible.’ But Jimmy is such a straight shooter. He goes, Vince is excited. ‘What do you think about these t-shirts?’ I got. ‘Wow. Vince those are really nice, I liked those.’ Jimmy goes, ‘I don’t, those are terrible.'”
On the Killer Bees: “I met Jim in Brantford, Ontario, Canada, and we didn’t have a name at that time. We would just be Blair and Brunzell. And, Vince wanted to create a very meaningful tag team division. And so, we met at Bradford and George Scott came up to us and he said, ‘Hey, you guys need to think of a, of a catchy name. Vince wants a catchy name before you go on and you’re on in less than an hour.’ So, uh, George walked away and, well, we were just sitting there and, a few names came up. I started the bees, the bees. Blair Brunzell, and I had remembered the killer bees defense on that Miami Dolphins football team It was like 1972. They had the linebackers all, their last names began with a B, and they were the killer bees. So I said, ‘how about the killer bees?’ Jimmy said ‘The Killer Bees. I like that. I like that. That’s great.’ George hadn’t even left the room and we called him over. He came back. And, uh, I said, to George, ‘how about the Killer Bees?’ And he got a big smile on his face. He goes, ‘I like it. Let me see what Vince thinks.’ So he left, uh, right away and he came back maybe 10 minutes later. And, uh, he says, ‘Hey, that’s it. You guys are the Killer Bees.’ So the bees were born, uh, in Brantford, Ontario. This was couldn’t happen in a million years, but when this is taking place and we’re the Killer Bees, Lanny Poffo was reaching in this big, a bag that he had. So he reaches in and he’s got so many tights in there and he pulls out these black and yellow striped tights. So they were the same tights that we wore and, he happened to have two pairs of them. So Lanny gave us the tights right there. It was just kind of unbelievable how everything meshed together.”
On Bret Hart: “Bret and I had the almost the identical psychology and psychology is learned from a lot of experience of course, but, we always built everything up. We built it up, we built it up until, man, when somebody made that hot tag, boom, the roof came off and, you know, the Hart Foundation knew how to get heat, and the Killer Bees knew how to make a comeback. When people go back to the well, and look at the psychology, and again, the, the Hart Foundation, Bret had wonderful psychology. I had the same kind of psychology that Bret did, and Jimmy was from that same background as well. Jimmy Neidhart, he had, he had great psychology as well. It was like, you know, putting together some pieces that already fit together. When, when Vince, you know, put the Killer Bees and the Hart Foundation together.”
Other topics include Vince McMahon, the WWF, the Iron Sheik, Demolition, Stacked tag division, Paul Orndorff, Hulk Hogan, CWF, Andre the Giant, and more.
You can listen to other shows apart of the TMPT Empire including Shane Douglas’ Triple Threat Podcast, Taking You to School with Dr. Tom Prichard, Talking Tough with Rick Bassman, Taskmaster Talks with Kevin Sullivan, Pro Wrestling 101 with Justin Credible and the University of Dutch with Dutch Mantell.
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