By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Mantaur (Mike Halac)
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
Signing with the WWF: “I started wrestling in the CWA over in Europe in 91, 92, and I wrestled over there every year and I was over there, oh, I would say the winter of 95. And Ted DiBiase just came off TV after the 1-2-3 Kid beat him on Monday night Raw. So that was when his release was up. So he came over to Europe and wrestled a championship over there and, both Ted and I are originally from Omaha, Nebraska. We are both SOB South Omaha bullies. I looked after Ted when he came over to Austria, over to Vienna, and he was there for like five or six days and I took really good care of him. He said, listen man, he says, you’re a big dude. And he said, you fly around man, you’re very good on your feet. He said, I love your work. He said, I’m sure Vince (McMahon) love you. He said, gimme a call two weeks before you’re leaving here on your way home. And he says, and I’ll give Vince a call and, and he’ll have a look at you. I was like, okay. And so I, I called him, so about two and a half months went by. Two, three months went by, I finished the tour. Couple weeks before the end, I called Teddy up. I said, Teddy, I’ll be home a week before Christmas. He was like, okay, great. I’ll let Vince know. And so literally I got the letter on the 26th of December. FedEx order to fly out on the 27th.”
On Vince McMahon: I remember doing the first TV shot, I forget where we were and I was right in the Gorilla position. And Vince McMahon says, ‘This f—ing thing is massive’. And they was like, no Vince, no Vince, no Vince, no Vince. And he was like, ‘f—‘. He was like, ‘we gotta scratch this shit’, and I remember I grabbed him f—ing by his triceps and biceps, and I shook him and I’m talking to him through the mouth. I said, ‘Vince, I got this…. don’t you worry, I got this’. And he was like, ‘Okay, kid, if you say’, so he said, good luck. And I went out there, climbed up the f—ing, he’s like, ‘what’s your plan?’ I was like, ‘I’m gonna climb up the corner’. And he climbed right back down on the inside. So when you actually see it, You know, it probably took me a little while to get up and climb up the f—ing corner and climb down on the inside. And so they, they showed to me taking my two steps up, and then they cut it to where I was taking the last step down on television. It made it look realistic and it worked out great. And I didn’t trip and fall and, you know, all good.
On Bruce Prichard: Bruce was the number one guy and then he ran everything through f—ing Vince. So, you know, it was Bruce’s idea. And, you know, Bruce was a backstabbing prick. You know, he had collected, he f—ing acted like he like Im gonna smack you in your face, but he really didn’t. For some reason, something rubbed him wrong. I don’t know. I used to drive up and down the f—ing road with (Dr.) Tom (Prichard) and, you know, used to smoke a lot of f—ing weed. And maybe that’s why he didn’t like me. Because he knew that if I was right with his brother and I was smoking weed and, you know, it was illegal until they were tested. And, you know, so yeah, Bruce, Prichard was a f—ing prick.
Bret Hart: “Bret Hart brings me back to do the Truth Commission gimmick, right? And so he called me up, I was wrestling in Germany. He called me up and he said, ‘Mike’, he’s like, ‘I want you to be a part of this six man tag’. He says, ‘I’ve got two greenhorns and yourself.’ And he says, ‘And I got a guy that does the commercials in South Africa, and he says he’s gonna be the mouthpiece. He’s gonna, we’re gonna make him the, you guys are, be the soldiers. And you’ve already been on TV, so we’re gonna put a mask on you’. I was like, ‘Do you think that’s really gonna matter, Bret’? He’s like, ‘Listen, this is just how we, how we drew it up’. I said, okay. So they put a mask on me. He says, ‘We want you to train these guys. We’re gonna send you to Memphis for six months or so, and guys get to give it down and then we’ll call you up and, and we’ll go with that.'”
On the Mantaur gimmick: “I really love that character. And you know, this was before Mr. Hughes, and so I would’ve been the first Mr. Hughes, but they, you know, they wanted to do this Half Man, Half Beast. They were in that gimmick mode at that timeframe, right? And so they were trying to create fun, I don’t know, characters… One day I, after I wore the f—ing bullhead for five or six times, I showed up to television and they says, well, we wanna change up the gimmick. I was like, well, f— it. Thank God for that, man. You know, I’m tired of wearing that f—ing Bullhead. And so then we want to cut your hair into horns and put makeup on your face. And I was like, okay. So, uh, Jerry ‘The King’ Lawler got his clippers out, we went in the locker room, he shaved the f—ing horns on, and then it took me, probably about two weeks to reshape ’em to where they were absolutely perfect, cuz I’m totally anal about shit like that. You know, I’m not gonna go out there with one horn up here and one horn down here. You know what I mean? That’s so f—ing stupid. And so it took me, you know, a week or two to kinda trim it up and get ’em to where they were perfect. But once I got ’em, and I just shaved them every f—ing day and that’s how I walked around with f—ing horns on my head for a year.”
Other topics include breaking into the business, WWF, Vince McMahon, Bruce Prichard, the Mantaur gimmick, The Kliq, Bret Hart, CWA, Europe, Bruiser Mastino gimmick, Otto Wanz, Chris Benoit, and more.
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