 …the challenges of life as a
wrestler:
Being on the road, now that I have a family,
is the hardest part. In the early years, it was just the uncertainty as to where
the next job would come from—all the culture shock that comes with being a
20-year-old kid walking the streets of Tokyo with no work visa and no money,
trying to figure out how the hell I got there.
There's no
unemployment insurance if you don't have a job in wrestling. You really have to
be committed, to have a love and a passion for the sport, a belief in yourself
that you can do it. That belief gets shaken and tossed around many, many times.
You can't let go of that. If you do, you're done.
…the fate of Ralphus, his "valet" from his
unhappy WCW tenure:
You know what, man? I'm not sure
what happened to him. If I had to guess, he's probably serving fries somewhere
in a truck stop in Peoria. He was such a unique-looking guy. He had a face that
needed to be on radio, so I took him to TV instead. He became a big star. I
don't think he had any idea what was going on the whole time.
[WCW bookers] didn't get what I was doing, because they
didn't really care. I was so far under the radar that there were no boundaries
on what I could or couldn't do. They just said, "Yeah, whatever."
…the differences between various wrestling
federations around the world:
In Mexico, wrestling is
part of the cultural fabric. The guys wear masks and they are real-life
superheroes. Santo is a cultural icon in Mexico the way JFK is in the United
States, and that's not an exaggeration. The atmosphere there is a little
cartoonish, but in an action-adventure way.
In Japan, fans
wear suits and ties to matches. They analyze everything very closely. They don't
make any noise, because they're studying. The first time I went to Japan, I was
like, "Do I suck? Why isn't anybody cheering?" The U.S. is somewhere between the
two. ECW had a hard-core, barbaric-type audience, like Romans watching the
Christians being torn apart by lions.
…his
(temporary?) retirement from wrestling:
I didn't really
miss it, because I was mentally burned out after 15 straight years. Physically,
they used to call me the Canadian hockey puck, because I never got hurt. But I
was fried. If pizza's your favorite meal and you eat it every day, pretty soon
you're going to say, "Please, no more pizza for a while." After a while, you get
hungry for pizza again, and you start thinking about it.
 …his gig as a jack-of-all-trades VH1
pundit:
I have a real ability-slash-curse to remember
everything about nothing, an ability to spew nonsensical bullshit about stuff
that doesn't matter. You don't get a script for I Love the
80s or any of those shows; you just have to do it on complete memory.
It's found a niche.
…how he'd feel about
returning to wrestling in the wake of the deaths of close friends Eddie Guerrero
and Chris Benoit:
I think it'd be a tribute to those
guys. I take a lot of pride in the fact that there's a certain style that guys
like myself, Eddie, Dean Malenko, and Lance Storm wrestle. There are not a lot
of people left that are a hybrid of the Mexican, European, Japanese, American,
and Canadian styles. I'd be flying the flag for them. On a very different scale,
it's like with Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr right now: There are only a few
guys who can actually say they were a Beatle. Maybe that's my duty, to go back
and try to impart a little bit of that style to the younger guys.
…his pick for the best wrestler in the world,
circa late 2007:
If you're going on just pure ability,
there are a couple guys in Ring of Honor I like to watch, like Bryan Danielson.
Shawn Michaels is probably still the best in the world. He knows exactly what to
do and when to do it. From an excitement standpoint, you can't discount John
Cena. He always has good matches, and he works hard. People either love him or
hate him—that's the ultimate goal in wrestling, to get a reaction. I think A.J.
Styles is very underrated. When and if the day comes that I wrestle again, there
are a lot of intriguing matchups.
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