WrestleZone.com reader “Mister” sent along the following …
VAMPIRO DETAILS ALLEGED MONEY LAUNDERING IN THE EARLY 80s, MILLI VANILLI SCANDAL
After a feud that lasted 2 decades, two wrestlers that absolutely hated each other sit down for the first time to discuss their feud, their journeys and some incredible stories never heard before in part 1 of a 3 part conversation on this week’s episode of MLW Radio presented by WWNLive.com. Konnan and Court Bauer discuss everything from Milli Vanilli to Abdullah the Butcher and the early days of AAA with Vampiro.
Vampiro also spoke about how he first got into the wrestling business:
“In Montreal, they had the International Wrestling [Association], we’re talking ’81 or ’82, when WWE didn’t even have national television. They were just a local promotion out of New York and the bigger of the two was the promotion in Montreal. Vince’s dad had his company out of Toronto for tax reasons. Everything was easy to do in Canada. There was a lot of, uh, money laundering would be the easiest way to say it, because of the casinos along the border in Quebec. I remember seeing a lot of big shows with Ric Flair in Quebec City and Hulk Hogan with Rick Martel in Montreal. Everything was kind of like the independent circuit back then.”
“I was a young kid and I was training. At the gyms, the guys would come in and I would sell them steroids or whatever else I could, just to hustle and try to get into the dressing room. I was just hanging out. I would set up the ring and they would let me sell programs. I would kind of take bumps with the guys and try to get into the business. The only guy that would really talk to me was Abdullah the Butcher. He showed me some stuff. I was like 13 when all of this was going on. I kind of started out real young.”
As a member of Milli Vanilli’s entourage, Vampiro also shared what went down that led to the scandalous downfall of the 1990s group Milli Vanilli:
“They were doing a show in Detroit and they were on stage and the tape broke. The tape got stuck and they were on stage and things started to get crazy. The record producer was pissed off. So when that tape broke in Detroit, he came over from Europe and said he wanted his cut of the money and if you don’t [pay] I’m going to expose you. So from town to town it was like a cat and house game. One day he caught us in Montreal and it all went down hill from there. He came to the room and said I’ll give you 24 hours to make this right or I’m going to expose you to the world.”
The new episode of MLW Radio is available for free at: www.MLW.com and on iTunes each and every Monday. You can also find more information about the show at: http://facebook.com/majorleaguewrestling.
