By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Perry Saturn
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
When you went to WCW, did you feel like there was a ceiling there? What made it so that you needed to leave? “We all felt that way, and watching matches and stuff now, we were wrong with a lot of the things. Every now and then, Eric would tell them that you have to talk about this, and they wanna talk about the guys in the ring. To us, that was happening all the time. If Eric hadn’t got fired, I’d have never left. I loved working with Eric. Eric really liked me and always took care of me. But we worked all the time. The mid-card guys did everything. In the beginning of the month, first day of the month, they give you your booking sheet for the month. I’m on the road the entire month, so I have no idea when I’m going home, I have to wait to the next booking sheet, and then they’d want to try to elevate one of us, and the group of guys would say, ‘Well, the house shows are down. These guys can’t draw.’ Well, no, the house shows aren’t drawing because you guys aren’t making the house shows. You’re the main event guys, so shit like that was frustrating. But our problem when we left was because Benoit and Sullivan, you know, and we were all getting residual heat for that.”
So when The Radicalz happened in WWE, how quickly did that come together? “Bro, that happened so f—ing fast. I had an internet guy, Jeff, and he called [Bruce] Prichard to see if they were interested. While that was going on, Bill Busch had this meeting telling us that anybody who doesn’t want to be here, they will release them. So we were saying we want to be released, and they were trying to talk us out of it. Prichard called me back an hour later and said, ‘We want you in Connecticut now.’ I’m like, okay, well we got to get out of the building here first. Vince Russo was the booker, and he’d book and have us going over. Mike Graham or Kevin Sullivan would take the match, and they’d have us do the job. We’d get to the back, and Vince would go, ‘What are you guys doing?’ So we said, okay, we don’t want to work with Sullivan or Mike Graham anymore. You know the cartoon Foghorn Leghorn, but the little chicken hawk that wants to fight everybody. That’s Mike Graham. They’d get him drunk in the middle of the day, so he comes up to me and pulls a knife out on me in Cincinnati, Ohio, says he’s going to kill us all, motherf—er is mad, never drew a dime. I called the police and filed a police report. Now we take that and go to Time Warner’s Human Resources Department, and that was it. Bill Busch tried to talk us out of it, and I got worked up and started yelling at him and shit. He wasn’t going to talk us out of it. And once the police came to the building to interview Mike Graham, Bill Busch said, ‘Okay, you guys got to go.'”
Do you have any major regrets about your wrestling career? “Yeah, my career ended maybe a decade too soon because I couldn’t get off the drugs. Somewhere when we went to WWE, I rubbed somebody the wrong way too, because that’s why I did bullshit things. I got the reputation of roughing up the enhancement guys. What nobody hears is before every match, Jerry Briscoe would grab the guy and tell him, ‘Hey, Perry’s really old school. You got to go out there and make him work for it. No-sell some of his stuff.’ They know I’m going to go berserk. I’d come through the back, and they’d be laughing their asses off. Well, now the boys are, like Paul London. He was when he had to work with me. He was worried because now I’m beating everyone up.”
Paul London talks about that match. He loves that match. “Yeah, but he was worried about it. Kevin Kelly asked me if I could help him look good, and he’d like him to get more work. We should all stick together and help each other out, right? Because at one time, some veteran helped me out, right? So I owe him that. But I knew he was nervous, so I didn’t smarten him up about that. I kept him nervous. But the Mike Bell thing was my fault. That hip toss put me on my head. I saw a flash of light, and the next thing I knew he was in the corner, and I was kneeing him. I was blanked out through all that, but it doesn’t matter. I was wrong. You can’t do that.”
When you got to the back after that, Mike Bell match? “They were hot. Tom Prichard was the agent, and he babyfaced me with the heat. ‘Perry, are you okay? We need to make sure he’s okay. I didn’t know he landed on his head like that.’ The next day, my neck was f—ed up. I had to go to the doctor to get my neck looked at, but I wasn’t hurt, and that doesn’t give me the right to do what I did. And Vince [McMahon] told me, ‘Okay, Perry, you have to tell me right now that you’re never going to do that again.’ I go, ‘Vince, I didn’t do it on purpose this time, so I can’t tell you that because I didn’t mean to do it.’ He was getting hot at me, and I’m just not going to tell him something that I don’t believe. If I tell him something, he’s going to know it’s what I believe. Otherwise, I’m not going to say it, because that’s important to me.”
So where did Moppy come from? “My excuse to Vince of why I couldn’t tell him I wouldn’t do it anymore is because I landed on my f—ing head and I had no idea what I was doing. A week later, I’m doing Moppy.”
How’d they pitch that to you? “They didn’t pitch it to me. They had Paul E pitch it to me because I was close with Paul E, and I’m pretty sure they assumed I was going to quit, and I was going to. Paul E explaining it like I’m the village idiot. I go, ‘Paul E, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to look like a f—ing idiot.’ He goes, ‘Perry, you have no choice. You have to do it.’ I go, ‘I can’t do it. I’ll be f—ed.’ He goes, ‘You’ll be f—ed if you don’t do it.’ I go, ‘So I’m f—ed either way then? So I’ll just go home.’ He goes, ‘You won’t be f—ed if you get it over.’ I trusted Paul E, and they never gave me any direction or anything. They just go here’s the mop and do whatever. They called them Saturnisms. I was very serious, especially back then. Every day I wanted to quit, and every day I thought about it. But I kept hearing Paul E say, ‘Not if you get it over.’ No direction at all. I come up with all that shit on my own. The island, Castaway, I make Moppy into the ball, Wilson.”
Did you always know Eddie Guerrero was going to be a star? “He’s the best worker I’ve ever been in the ring with. He’s so good. No matter what you do, he can make you look good. He’s the only person I know that could make anyone look good. Chris was a great worker, but Eddie was great and smooth. No matter what you wanted to do, Eddie could do it.”
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