By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with Jimmy Hart
Host: JP John Poz
Twitter: @TwoManPowerTrip
Website: www.tmptempire.com
Interview available at Tmptow.podomatic.com
Name a person or team that he’d like to manage if he was still active in the wrestling scene: “Yeah, Pretty Deadly. I like those kids, you know why? Because they remind me of my era, they talk big, they get knocked around, but they’re colorful. They’re not real big giant guys, I like them. I think they can draw some really big money, I’d love to — if I had a chance to do it again, that’s who I’d like to be with.”
On the best managers of all time: “Jimmy Cornette, Bobby Heenan of course, Lou Albano, Paul Heyman. There are just so many of them that I’d put way before Jimmy Hart.”
On Paul Heyman: “I’m just telling you how I really feel (there are plenty of managers that were better than I was). The guy that hosts the thing, Stephen A. Smith, he said, ‘Heyman, I’d like to be a manager like you’ and he said, ‘You can’t. I’m the GOAT.’ He said, ‘Well what about Bobby Heenan?’ And he said, ‘Ah, screw Bobby Heenan.’ Then Heyman went, ‘And Jimmy Hart, he’s still alive. The Lord hasn’t answered my prayers yet’ (Hart laughed). I went, ‘Oh my God.’ But it’s okay, it is what it is. I still love Paul, he’s the greatest… This day in time, you gotta be so careful what you say, so you don’t get any feedback from anybody going, hey, you wished another guy was dead.”
On how he would like to be remembered: “I would like for people to go, ‘What a wild and crazy guy he was. He entertained us. We loved his music. He gave us everything he could give us. Every time we met him and saw him, he was so nice to us and gracious and never had a bad thing to say about anybody.’ That’s basically about it.”
Turning down an offer to do an episode of Dark Side of the Ring on Brutus Beefcake: “In this day and age, especially since people want the drama and want to hear the bad things, I turned down a show. They had Brutus Beefcake. They were doing a Dark Side of the Ring on him. They came to me about doing Dark Side of the Ring. I said, ‘Look, I’ll do Happy Side of the Ring, but not Dark Side of the Ring.’ We worked so hard to get a WWE Hall of Fame ring. When we got on stage, they had great videos of us and they inducted us in a class with all the people that we were with back in the day. Then we have our peers in the audience and so many fans see us and they do so well to put us over. Why would I want to tear it down?’
Other topics include breaking into the business, the Hart Foundation, the WWF, WWE, Vince McMahon, Honky Tonk Man, SummerSlam, who he would like to manage from today’s crop of Superstars, Paul Heyman, Roman Reigns, and more.
I don’t recall a feature length Dark Side of The Ring Episode on Brutus Beefcake. There could have been one in an earlier season and I just can’t recall it off of the top of my head, but Beefcake has definitely been a talking head in a few episodes that were featured around other people in later seasons.