By Jason Powell, ProWrestling.net Editor (@prowrestlingnet)
Insight With Chris Van Vliet with guest Eric Bugenhagen (f/k/a Rick Boogs)
Host: Chris Van Vliet
Podcast available via Podcasts.Apple.com
So how’d you get on the radar for American Gladiators? “I just found an email address for a casting director that was involved in that. Emailed them, ‘Hey, my name is Eric Bugenhagen. I hoist, heft, and heave mega loads.’ Sent some clips and stuff whatnot, told him what I’ve done in the past. They said, Okay, we’ll set you up with the Zoom call. So give me the Zoom call a couple of days later, and I don’t know what to expect. Luckily, I have the 20,000 hours of promo practice from the WWE Performance Center. If that Performance Center has done anything well, for me, I don’t know about anyone else, but grinding those promos in. Because I learned if you wanted to stand out in that business, you got to be different.”
You got all the promo practice like you’re talking about, how did you blow them away in that Zoom call? “First and foremost, I know you gotta have a gimmick. You gotta be recognizable. ‘Who is this guy?’ One sentence: Who is he? So what I pitched was, I’m The Max. I’m The Maximum. Maximum entertainment value, maximum intensity, right? So I said, ‘I am The Maximum, aka The Max, you will call me The Max.’ They asked me a bunch of questions about where I’m from, if you had 30 seconds or whatever, you just whooped someone’s ass, what would you say? That kind of stuff. So I felt like it was grand slam home run. But then months go by, and I never hear back, and I’m like, wow, now I can see why WWE fired me. I just don’t have what it takes. But apparently, they were just extending. They wanted to be sure they had the cream of the crop.”
That’s how casting goes a lot of times. You’ll audition for something, think you nailed it, then it’s like six months to a year later… “So I think it was a week or two [later]. It’s like, we got the in-person tryout. It’s gonna be push-ups, sit-ups, pull-ups. There might be some wrestling. So all I did, because I’m a man of specificity, I understand the thing called specificity. Alright, normally I lift heavy barbells. Lots of deadlift variations. I’m like, for this, next couple of weeks, all I’m doing is push-ups, planks, sit-ups, and the wrestling part I had. So when I went to that tryout, if Amazon Prime is watching this, Amazon MGM, release the tryout footage. Release the footage. Please put it on YouTube or something like that. The Bull’s tryout, the first thing I did was as many push ups you can do in 60 seconds. I hit 100, or maybe it was 99. After the try-out, it was like you got the most push-ups. I weighed, I think it was 274 or something, 100 push-ups. Then we did pull-ups. I think I got 36 or 37, just put myself over. Sit-ups, I can’t remember, but I did okay with these gym class sit-ups. Hadn’t done those since gym class, PE elementary school. The rope, climb up and down as fast as you can twice in a row. It’s a big rope too, and then a little tussling, like it was sumo wrestling stuff. I mean, I’m a Greco-Roman state champion.”
Are you done with wrestling? “I don’t think so, man.”
Because you haven’t wrestled in almost exactly three years as we sit here right now, and when you were on the show two and a half years ago, you weren’t really sure? “I was a little soiled, sour flavor in my mouth.”
Are you a little more open to it now? “Yeah. I mean, as I get older and wiser. Three years, you’ve almost graduated high school. That’s a freshman to a senior. Look at how much you’ve developed in that point in time. Or in college, baby-faced freshman to, like, grizzled, a real man. I’m going out to the real world. But I’m also glad, though, because if anything would have happened, it’s hard, man, pro wrestling is tough. What if I had a kink in my shoulder, I can’t do the tryout, I can’t do any push-ups. So I missed the try-out for American Gladiators because of that. Or what if I can go but I got a kink in my shoulder, and I can only do six push-ups instead of 100.”
Do you think your knee is not at 100% still? “No, definitely not. I don’t know if it’ll ever be. But my 90% is still exceptional. I’m running now. I’m trying, because it’s one of those things that I’m like, Okay, I’ve lifted, I’ve done tons of rehab. Obviously, I did rehab for a year after surgery, and I’ve gotten very strong again. Still doesn’t have the snappiness. What have I not done? I need to sprint on it. I need to get that frickin tendon rigidity, stiffness, recoil, snappiness, and how do you get that?”
Do you feel like you wrestled differently after that injury? “100%. Just slower. Because if you think about it, tendons are basically what make you athletic. It’s not your muscles. It’s strong tendons, jumping, and stuff like that, sprinting and all that. That’s power, and you don’t have to be a big, bulbous balloon man to have power. You just have to have freaking stiff, strong tendons. So when you lose that, it’s like, yeah, I could squat. I think when I returned, I was able to squat 600 pounds, but jumping rope? I couldn’t do it for more than 10 seconds because my knee, just the tendon was like jello.”
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