By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Erik Watts
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
On his father Bill Watts: “I did call up my father and said, Hey dad, I’d love to bounce around the ring to see what the hell it feels like. He goes, ‘Hey son, no free lunches. I got a great friend of mine named Jody Hamilton, The Masked Assassin, and he’s got a, a little school on the south side of Atlanta, and if you wanna bounce around in the ring, I’ll give you the number and you can call him and, and see.’ But he goes, But listen to me, son, doesn’t matter who you are or what you are, you, you’ve gotta make your way into that school. And, and you have to do the time in the school before… You know, because I was thinking, hey, just get in the ring and just run around the ropes and do some stuff. But no, I had to actually get enrolled into this school.”
On Dusty Rhodes: “Dusty Rhodes called me, because he’s the one that set up, one or two of my first matches after I’d been trained for like 22 days, 23 days. I was driving back to Louisville to go back to college. He said, ‘Hey baby, I, I want you to get in the ring’. And I’m like, what? I’ve only been in the ring 23 days, but I did it. And then he said ‘Hey, the next day is this, and the next day is this.’ And on the third day that I wrestled all these towns on the way to Louisville, and he called me, he said, ‘Hey, baby, what was it like?’ And I said, Dream, I’ve never felt anything like that. And he said, ‘You’re F’d’ I said, excuse me, sir. He goes, you’re done. I go, sir. He goes, you’re never gonna find anything to take you to where you are. No natural high. No high, high, no anything. He goes maybe, maybe being there for one of your children’s births. And literally he was right. He said there’s nothing more engaging and more stimulating than being there for a crowd to tell a story, to hear them cheer, boo cry, laugh, and, and he was so right.”
On WCW: “When I signed with WCW, there was a rumor that I, I signed for a seven-figure contract and that I demanded a 944 Turbo Porsche as a signing bonus. Oh my God. Okay. I did drive a 944 Turbo that I earned through all my business endeavors when I was 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, before I went to college, and I did get a sweetheart deal, it just so happened that the Porsche, they gave me a great trade-in on my Trans Am and the Porsche was the University of Louisville Cardinal Red. And so I did get an incredible deal. But baby, my Porsche was a 1987, 944 Turbo. What athlete in this world would demand a million-dollar contract and say, can you buy me a five-year-old Porsche? So then my dad got pissed and he actually went and took my contract and posted it at the TV arenas.”
On the WWF: “ Vince [McMahon] paid a whole bunch of money to a marketing company to say, what are the kind of names that stick with people and people remember, and blah, blah, blah. And the marketing came back and said things that rhyme, and things that repeat themselves. And, as soon as I heard that, I go, oh, schnikes. When I tried that was Eric Watts and Chad Fortune. Man. We didn’t even know what our names were gonna be for a long time. But if you think about it, Troy and Travis, Techno Team 2000. That’s a lot of T’s brother. Skip and Zip. The Body Donnas, Bart and Billy, The Smoking G…. I was like, okay, we’re doing overkill, right? Like, like everything was going to freaking rhyme, right?”
Other topics include breaking into the business, his dad Bill Watts, Dusty Rhodes, WCW, DDP, WWF, Vince McMahon, Techno Team 2000, Chad Fortune, ECW, TNA, and more.
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