Scotty 2 Hotty was a recent guest on Edge and Christian’s Pod Of Awesomeness, and the former Light Heavyweight and Tag Team Champion talked about how he broke into the wrestling business. Scotty (Scott Taylor) talked about how did his career started, saying he started off as a teenager in his garage before going and getting formal wrestling training:
“When I was about 14 or 15, I met up with a friend of mine who was a wrestling nerd. He had a hookup with a wrestler named Jackie Robinson, who was a wrestler from Maine from way back in the day. This guy was probably 80 years old. We met two other guys at shows he ran, and then we started training in my mom’s garage. I was a backyard guy before there was a word for it. We trained ourselves, we found a tape called “The Secrets of Pro Wrestling” that told us a few little tricks and we learned off that and watching. We built a ring out of a bunch of mattresses we found at the dump. I can only imagine what was on those mattresses, but as a 14-year-old kid, you don’t think about that. All we knew is that we hit the jackpot!
When WWE came to town, I had met someone from the ring crew. A month after I saw him locally, he was on the show acting as a plant for Bad News Brown in his fight with Bret Hart. So, we talked again when they came back to town and we got to help him put together the ring. He went to lunch and he basically winked at us about getting in the ring. So, we got in and messed around for a bit before someone from the building came to throw us out. So yeah, a WWE ring was the first ring I was in.
Only one of the four guys other than me wanted to pursue it. We had gotten the number to the Hart house somehow. We were going to buy our plane tickets the next day to go out there and be trained by the Harts. We got on the phone and Helen Hart told us not to come because it wasn’t being run by the Harts anymore. We went to Kowalski’s a couple of times, just to check it out, but then a guy saw us before a house show one time messing around the ring and asked to book us. That November, around Thanksgiving 1989, he ran a show and that was my first match. It was two wrestling matches and about six boxing matches running head to head with Survivor Series.”
Scotty talked about the early years of his career, mentioning how he was being brought in for WWE’s Light Heavyweight tournament, but struggled at first. Scotty said he wasn’t sure where he fit in, but it ultimately led to bigger things:
“I was brought in for that light heavyweight tournament along with Brian Christopher, Taka Michinoku and a bunch of other guys. I was put in the original light heavyweight tournament and I was eliminated by Kane. I was supposed to wrestle Brian, and this was the era when Kane was just coming out and chokeslamming guys. He just debuted with Paul Bearer. I made my entrance, Kane came down, Tombstoned me, and I was out of the tournament.
My first couple of years, I was still Scott Taylor, Brian and I weren’t even Too Much yet. I was struggling, I couldn’t figure out where I fit in. I was a small guy, I don’t know if there was anyone there smaller than me. I felt like I could have been cut any day. My original contract was guaranteed 14 dates over two years, very little money written into it. I had nothing going on until WrestleMania in Boston. I was sitting home and then WWE called me in. I did an outside thing against Michinoku. I was sitting at home one day and the next I was in a meeting with HBK and Vince.”
When did you feel you were good at wrestling?
“It wasn’t until into the Too Cool/Rikishi thing. I don’t know if it’s just me going back and looking at the video or if it’s really real, but I feel like that Royal Rumble in MSG. That’s when I felt like ‘this thing is hot and I’ve made it’”
When and how did you get your contract?
“I heard on Bruce Prichard’s show that he had gone to a Kowalski show to check out Hunter and that where he saw me. I’m the person involved and I didn’t even know about it. They saw me there, but I had been an extra at WWE for a long time. There was no developmental back then, so WWE would just hire people locally. I was the guy that would fill in in the northeast. I can remember battling Savio Vega and Bret Hart in those days. In 97, Taz called me and asked me about ECW. I was going to go down, but WWE was filming a taped Raw at the same time. I drove down there and spoke with Bruce and said that I’d been working as an extra for a long while. I let them know I was trying out for ECW and I worked a couple of matches with Taz. I called Bruce the next week. That’s when I got the call to be in the Light Heavyweight tournament.
About a year after all that, I got thrown into a WrestleMania tag team battle royale with Brian Christopher as my partner. Before this, I had always been a babyface and Christopher was the top heel in that light heavyweight division. It made no sense, we were just thrown together. I got a coffee that day, no one else was in the room, and then Vince McMahon came over as well. I thanked him for putting me on the show. I told him about my gimmick along with Brian on the indies, which was Scotty 2 Hot and Brian 2 Sexy. He said he’d think about it, and the very next week at TV, we had those gimmicks and we were Too Much.”
The origins of Too Cool:
“We floundered as Too Much for a long while. We saw you guys (E&C) and The Hardys start doing your thing, and then Vince Russo game up to us. He said that we were going to start wearing street clothes and trying to be like the Hardys. Basically, the idea was that we’d wear what we thought was cool, and we were called Too Cool, but we weren’t cool. That was really the only direction we had, in the Spring of 99. It was before Rikishi, the dancing, before “Scotty 2 Hotty”, before all of that. Just, we’re now called Too Cool. We came out with a boombox and screwed either you guys or the Hardys. I can’t remember. The next day, we were at a show and Brian tore his ACL. We were out till October, Bruce called us back in, we helped the Hollys, and that set up for Survivor Series.”
