Sid Justice was a recent guest on Prime Time With Sean Mooney. You can read a few transcribed highlights and listen to the clip below:
(Transcription credit to Bill Pritchard for Wrestlezone.com)
This is how it went down—I don’t lie Sean, I think it’s stupid to lie—this is what happened. I’m in WCW, Dusty Rhodes is being told he’s going to be the new booker. He’s leaving WWF and coming back to WCW. Now, he sends in Magnum TA to take over for him until he could get there. So, Magnum says to me, ‘you’re going to be Dusty’s man’. They’re pushing me really big at this point in WCW.
Dusty comes in for our first face-to-face meeting, and he says ‘listen, I want you to go to Jim Herd, and I want them to sign you to a new contract, and I want you here. You’re going to be everything’ which in Dusty’s way of saying things is really cool. This was maybe one of the greatest moments of my life to hear someone cared that much about me. He said ‘we’re going to do this, we’re going to do that; you’re going to be everything, Sid. You just go to them and sign a contract, and I know that you’re going to be here.’
Now, at the time, I’m only making $250,000 a year. That’s good money because nobody else is making that kind of money there, just a couple of people. We come to an agreement, I think it was they offered me $500,000, and this was a long time ago. I’m thinking ‘OK’ and I go home and talk to my wife. Now when they opened this door, they opened this door where I could call Vince [McMahon]. I wanted [Hulk] Hogan’s spot, and I think that I can take that. So [I decide] that I’m going to call Vince McMahon, and [my wife] is like ‘no, no, no!’ but I said I’m going to try this.
I called Titan’s offices and they asked who this is, and I said ‘my name is Sid Vicious, I want to talk to Vince McMahon’. I’m not bullshitting you, in thi—in three seconds—he was on the phone. Within 45 minutes, I left my house and I was on a jet and in his office that afternoon. He sits down and says ‘well Sid, we don’t give guaranteed money, but here’s the magic wand, and you tell us what you want.’ I told him that I wanted Hogan’s spot and he said ‘it’s yours.’ I said OK, let me go home and talk to my wife about it and get back to you about it.
I asked what kind of money we could talk about it, and he made some examples with merchandise he did and with Wrestlemanias, things like that. When he said that Wrestlemania was going to bring the same that I would make in a year in WCW, he suggested that. He didn’t say for sure, but he’d said what Hogan had made.
I go home and the contract is nothing guaranteed, I guarantee you a day of work for $250. So, by the time I get home, Sean, WCW has caught wind of this somehow. Now they’ve offered me $750,000 guaranteed, and this is the first time ever. I said ‘you know what, fuck Vince McMahon, I’m going to sign that tomorrow.’ I leave—this is probably the biggest mistake of my life—I’m leaving, the phone rings, and my wife answers the phone. She says it’s Vince and I said tell him I’m gone. She says I already told him you’re here. I get on the phone and he says ‘Sid, it’s Vince. Are you on your way to sign that contract?’ and I said yes I am. I said I didn’t call you back and want to put you in the middle, and try and play the middle game. I said ‘Mr. McMahon, this is more money than I could ever dream of, and I’m going to sign the deal.’ His exact words to me [were] ‘Sid, you’ll never get this opportunity again.’ So, on the way from there to the CNN Towers [WCW Headquarters], I made my mind up to take that chance, and it was a big mistake.
I never made that kind of money there [in WWF]; I made $150,000 for Wrestlemania. I made good money, but I don’t think I made $750,000. It was a big mistake. When I look back on it, it was the only real mistake I made in the business.
