By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Stevie Richards
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
Video available at Chris Van Vliet’s YouTube Page
On recovering from a spinal infection: “Yeah, it was, it was pretty scary. But also, it was, looking back on it, and obviously 20 20 has hindsight. And, you know, having perspective after the facts were really easy, during it is the hard part. Yeah, it was something that being a wrestler for so many years, and any athlete will understand even entertainers and people in Hollywood who you talk to, when they do stunts or they get injured doing physical things. If there’s a blueprint, and there’s obviously a predictable diagnosis right away of you broke your ankle, you broke your neck, you tore your ACL, it’s pretty easy to see, within a short amount of time. This spine infection was a dormant thing that became a mystery and hit me out of nowhere. And it was something that an illness like that is so unpredictable. And then you factor in my age of 51, you factor in other things that are unpredictable when it comes to an infection, and that moves so quickly when it gets to your spine. That’s what makes it more scary, the unknown, of not only the diagnosis, but the unknown of can I get treated? And then even after treatment, what percentage am I going to be after the treatment is complete? I’m thankful to say that, in a lot of ways, I feel like I’m back to 100 percent, but in a whole bunch of other ways, we’re very early in the stages in my road to recovery.”
On hearing the Right To Censor theme for the first time: “No [I didn’t hate it], I was just happy to have something, and when I heard that music, it’s funny, we talked about it on the first interview. When I had, well, it could be on, I was gonna say it’s never gonna make the volume whatever on [WWE] music, I stopped myself. But when I look at that, like I knew it was an opportunity. I knew I was on TV as a character. And even if it sucked, I had custom entrance music, I had the Titan Tron, and looking at that, Chris, that made me think back to Raven, when I was putting on the half shirt and daisy dukes telling me you’re gonna stand out. You’re completely different. Nobody will ever take your gimmick from you. Because everybody wants to be tough, be a shooter, be a badass. You will corner the market on a specific type of heel, that’s the voice that I heard in my mind. When that music hit. I was like people are gonna hate us so much. This is awesome.”
On Ivory being a part of Right To Censor: “The fact that Ivory was so over as the female in the group, she was way more special than us. As a matter of fact, I would have been all for Ivory being the next leader to replace me because that’s even more heat at the time. You’re looking at a woman bossing these big guys around and a woman, she would have been the original Karen if you think about it.”
On the infamous chair shot to the head of JBL: “You guys with this chair shot. I still feel really bad about that. I mean, we’re laughing about it. But you know, I really do. I mean, John laughs about it now to thank God, but, you know, that’s not what we’re in the business for and you know, people can think the way they want to think. I told this story when I did the interview with James, you were talking about James from WSI. And he asked me about it and I was talking and I literally said, once again, the reason why I have this kind of overthinking mindset, which works with this, I’m talking to John and I said, Dude, you’re so tall, I don’t know if I can hit you properly with the chair with you standing. The dude’s like, what? 6 foot 6, 300 pounds, he’s a monster. I asked him is there any way you can be on one knee or something where I can get you? And he was like, no, no, just lay it in, no big deal. He was totally cool about it. So even in my mind, I knew he’s way up there. I’m not going to be able to hit him fully with the seat. I never knew it was going to be what it was. But I knew it was going to be a live round to some extent that he was going to get.”
Why does Stevie Richards still feel bad about it: “I feel bad about it because it’s not what I was trained to do. I was not trained to hurt people. I was not. I didn’t want a reputation; I never had a reputation for hurting people on purpose. And I knew after this. I mean if Vince released me for hurting him to that degree. It might not have been fair in people’s eyes, but I could understand it because that’s not what we do.”
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