Knox County Mayor and WWE Superstar Kane (Glenn Jacobs) was ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin’s guest on a recent edition of The Steve Austin Show. The Big Red Machine opened up about his earlier Isaac Yankem and fake Diesel gimmicks, as well as the inception of the Kane character and his relationship with both Vince McMahon and The Undertaker. Highlights appear below:
(Transcription Credit: Michael McClead, WrestleZone)
On His Wrestling School W/ Tom Prichard:
Tom Prichard is one of the top trainers in the entire world. He’s just awesome and it’s one of those things where people would always come up to me and go, ‘How do I get into the wrestling business?’ Well, to get to WWE you’re gonna have to go to the Performance Center, but Booker T’s got a great school in Houston, Lance Storm has a wonderful place in Calgary. Well, those are in Houston and Calgary. I thought to myself, ‘You know, Tom Prichard is just sitting here in Knoxville and he’s one of the very best in the world.’ Again, those are guys that I trust. There’s some others around, but specifically those two guys. I’m telling people to go south for miles. Why don’t we just do it here? I think it’s gonna be a great partnership. Tom has trained people like Kurt Angle. He’s trained all these different Superstars. For me, at this point, this business has been very good to me. Sometimes I worry about the pipeline of talent, anything I can do to help talent get into it the right way because a lot of people aren’t going to take the right path. Anything I can do to help folks get into it the right way, I think is beneficial to all of us and that’s really the reason why. For me, it’s just a waste of Tom’s talents not to be doing this and that was also a big motivator.
On What He Initially Planned On Doing With His College Education & Why He Chose Wrestling Instead:
I was thinking about teaching. What happened with me is that I had always been a fan of wrestling ever since I was a little kid. I sort of fell off in high school. We lived out in the country. We didn’t have cable TV. It was one of those things where if the wind was blowing right on a Saturday night, I could watch All Star Wrestling out of Kansas City…. I got to high school and go to a friend’s house and every once in awhile we’d get to watch NWA and WWF, at the time, but I wanted to play basketball. I went to college on a basketball scholarship. I didn’t lift weights in high school, so I was a skinny kid when I graduated. I started lifting weights between my senior year of high school and first year of college. I put on 30 pounds, I think, over the summer and I just kept on putting weight. By the time I was a senior in college, I weighed 290 pounds. The football coach comes to me and is like, ‘What are you doing? You need to play this.’ It was a Division II school, small school and I still had eligibility left to play football and I started playing football. Not to toot my horn, but I was a great football player because I had all those years of playing basketball. I had the athleticism. I had the strength and the size and everything. I was getting looks from NFL teams and I thought I was gonna play in the NFL, but then I blew my knee out, first practice of game week and that pretty much ended my football career. I was thinking, ‘What else can I do?’ I’d always been a fan of wrestling. [Hulk] Hogan was super hot and thought I’d give it a try. I thought I’d be good at it. That’s how I got into the world of professional wrestling.
His Legitimate Size & Weight:
I’m 6’8” and right now I weight about 290, 295. The heaviest I’ve ever been has been about 320.
His Best Weight Lifting Numbers:
I was never a great squatter or dead lifter. I was OK. I could squat probably about 600, deadlift about 550. I was a good bench. My best bench was 525. That was straight, no bench press suit or anything like that. It was just a raw bench. Being so tall, it’s not like I have a power lifter’s body
On Jim Cornette’s Legendary Temper:
Al Snow and George South had a TV match, which was Al’s debut on Smoky Mountain Wrestling. They go out and Jim told them to have a ten minute, do lots of high spots and Al was gonna beat George with his finish, a leg lariat off the top rope or something like that. They go out and they did the handshake spot for five minutes, where the heel’s gonna shake and Cornette’s sitting there and watching it and he’s like, ‘The thing about Al is he’s a great wrestler, but he’s not used to TV and having lots of action in a match.’ So they come back and Jim goes, ‘It’s not exactly what I wanted guys.’ George – this is probably the first time in the history of the business that a babyface called out a heel like this – but he sends George back out, who says, ‘Al Snow, I bet you can’t beat me twice in one night.’ They were supposed to do a couple high spots and Al just rolls George up or whatever. So they go back out and they do one high spot and one thing and then Al rolls George up. Cornette, he was like a volcano, he slowly starts cursing. Everybody is leaving the room and I’m sitting there like, ‘What in the hell is going on here?’ All of a sudden his face starts changing into all these shades of red and finally just purple and he’s throwing stuff and going off and I’m like, ‘What in the world is going on, man?’ Then come Al and George and Jimmy. He just swallows and looks them in the eye and says, ‘Guys, that wasn’t exactly what I wanted, but I’ll make it work.’ That’s when I knew I stepped into a different world than what I was used to.
On His Wife’s Support Throughout The Years [Jacobs Has Been Married To The Same Woman Since 1995]:
She’s just very grounded. She never got involved in any of the drama, which I tried to avoid as well because that’s really what does it, right? We all have to remember that we’re just people doing a job at the end of the day. A lot of times the guys talk about how hard it is to be on the road and it is, but it’s just as hard on your family. I’ve been very fortunate because Crystal is very strong and just grounded. She’s not afraid to tell you something is B.S. She understands all that stuff and never bought in to any of the things that kind of go along with stuff. People start thinking that they’re bigger than business or that they’re a Superstar. Crystal never bought into any of that and that’s probably why I never did either because she wouldn’t let me, frankly. Also, I made a commitment an no matter what our relationship has always been the most important thing, more than the career, more than anything else.
There’s more on the next page including Jacobs opening about his relationship with both Vince McMahon and The Undertaker and going into detail about the inception of the Kane character.
