Legendary Four Horsemen member Tully Blanchard was a recent guest on Prime Time w/ Sean Mooney. Blanchard opened up like never before on a myriad of professional wrestling topics including his time as a Four Horsemen, who he believes made up the the very best Four Horsemen lineup, & the life altering effects of his failed WWE drug test.
Host Sean Mooney praised Blanchard’s abilities as a heel and wondered where the inspiration for his heel persona came from.
Blanchard replied,
“I thought about this stuff all day everyday. I would watch a movie and something happened in a movie that got an emotion out of me, I said, ‘Whew, Ok.’ I know that Erica [Kane] on whatever Young & The Restless [All My Children] I think it was. Erica was on this thing. She was an unbelievable heel and I catch myself sitting on the edge of the couch going, “What a rotten [purposefully unintelligible].” Back in those days I would elaborate and then I’d sit back and go, “OK, she got that emotion out of me by saying that and doing that. I’d say, ‘OK, that’s where I need to go.’ It was stuff like that.”
Blanchard used his persona to his own benefit, as it was instrumental in his successful run as an original member of the iconic Four Horsemen.
The WWE Hall of Famer revealed what he believed to be the best incarnation of that legendary group,
“The best combination was the group with Barry [Windham]. Barry, Arn [Anderson], myself, and Ric [Flair]. The ones that got inducted in the Hall of Fame. You had the best performers that could do absolutely anything. Ole [Anderson], in his vein, was a great worker and a great performer; but, you had to deal with Ole and in that vein, he couldn’t go out and do the stuff that we could do, fly around and get beat up and get press slammed by The Road Warriors and all that kind of stuff. Whereas when Barry became part of the group, he became the other single. I shifted to the single to being Arn’s partner and then you had a tag team that had a big guy and a smaller guy that could do anything. We could wrestle the two most powerful guys on the planet – The Road Warriors – and people would buy tickets and we could wrestle Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson and they’d buy a ticket and anything in between. Then you had Barry, who was one of the greatest performers of all time anyway. You certainly had Flair who could work with anybody. That was by far the best group.”
What does Blanchard think of the later incarnations of the Horsemen?
“They tried to put any number of people with Flair and call them the 4-Horsemen and when Arn went back they almost got it going; but, the formula was changed because all the other groups that were greatly successful, the formula was Arn, Ric, and Tully. That was the nucleus and the other guy could be Ole or [Lex] Luger when he was starting. Then Barry. We were all very successful, so after that the only change, they changed the formula. Even though they were trying to pour the juice to it, it didn’t work. It came closer to working because you had Ric and Arn. You had two of the three.”
Although his tenure in the group was a great success, Blanchard ultimately left WCW for what he hoped were greener pastures in the WWE. Blanchard’s Four Horsemen partner Arn Anderson came with him and the two were named The Brain Busters, after their new manager Bobby “The Brain” Heenan.
Blanchard elaborated on how the Brain Busters name came about and how little input he actually had in the decision,
“You don’t have any input. It wasn’t [pitched]. It was just there.”
