Ken Patera on his new book, living with Ric Flair, winning the WWE Intercontinental Championship

By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)

The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Ken Patera
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com

Ken Patera on his new book: “I’ve had family members, I’ve had multiple friends and colleagues of mine for years and years, ‘Patera, with all your knowledge, you ought to write a book.’ I was never really into writing a book. And then about four years ago, I got a hold of Kenny Casanova, and he didn’t have time to write it, but he eventually wound up writing the majority of it, but he put me on to a new guy that he had hired as a writer, I guess. But the guy had just dropped the ball, you know? I figured it’d be about two years. And we started off fantastic. We gave tons of information and everything, but then he dropped the ball. He didn’t, he changed everything. That might be my fault, because I gave him leeway to write it as a novel instead of, you know, like a wrestling book. And he put so much of his own philosophy in there. He just got carried away and so we went back and corrected a lot of it.”

On Ric Flair: “Ric and I were real close friends prior to being in wrestling, we had a house that we shared with a couple other people. And God, I’ll tell you, that was the original animal house that was in God, what year? 1971… And it was party time every night. You’ve heard stories of Ric Flair. He was maybe a little worse than prior to becoming a wrestler. I think he toned it down about one percent.”

Being WWE Intercontinental Champion: “I’m gonna have to pat myself on the back here. When I won the intercontinental belt from Pat Patterson, now Pat Patterson never won it, when I beat him for the Intercontinental championship belt, who did I beat? I didn’t beat a champion, so I was the first champion of the Intercontinental belt. A couple weeks later, I was in St. Louis and I won the Missouri State Championship, which had the same prestige practically as a NWA or the WWF Championship belt. So I was the only one in wrestling history to own the intercontinental belt and the Missouri State Championship Belt at the same time.”

Other topics include breaking into the business, AWA, Verne Gagne, Ric Flair, WWF, Vince McMahon, Hulk Hogan, Bob Backlund, Bruno Sammartino, Pat Patterson, winning the WWF Intercontinental Title, his new book, and more.