Chris Van Vliet of WSVN-TV interviewed Mr. Anderson before The Legends of Wrestling event at Miccosukee Resort and Gaming in Miami, FL last Saturday. You can check out the entire interview in the video player below, and the following are some highlights:
Why he was fired from WWE:
“I got in trouble. I got in trouble with a bunch of other people. And it is what it is. I didn’t necessarily agree with it at the time and I don’t necessarily agree with it now but I take ownership for it. I did it.”
On steroid use and Chris Benoit:
“People always want to point fingers, and I hate to bring it up, but when Benoit did what he did everyone wanted to point to one thing. Point at the steroids. Well it wasn’t the steroids. It was the steroids and the other drugs and the booze and the lifestyle of being on the road and running it hard and going through injuries and losing people. He lost his best friend. And having an ex wife that was already taking tons of child support an alimony from him. Now if you read the rumors, it looks like Nancy was about to do the same thing to him.”
Getting in trouble in WWE for chewing gum:
“I actually got in trouble. I would regularly get chewed out for chewing gum. And the thing is I chew gum because I get cottonmouth really bad when I wrestle… I would come back and get chewed out on the spot from Vince McMahon like ‘Stop chomping your goddamn gum!'”
Why he “hated” the wrestling business at one point:
“I was navigating a sort of treacherous mine field. I had just lost my dream job. I worked for WWE for four and a half years, spent six years trying to get there. Through some personal missteps, I mean I take 90% of the blame, 95% of the blame, there’s some other things that always play into that. That was just disheartening and I was just tired and exhausted. The WWE schedule is a tough one.”
The work environment in TNA:
“Tons of creative control. It’s just a really laid back atmosphere. Everybody in the locker room gets along. There is no feelings of walking on eggshells. Sometimes I think in the WWE that feeling of the eggshells that everybody talks about is sort of made up in their own heads. And you hear enough people say that and then you think I better watch everything that I do.”
He was supposed to win the WWE Championship before being sidelined with a triceps injury:
“There was a situation where I had the Money in the Bank briefcase at WrestleMania. Got called into the office and was told ‘we’re putting the title on you next week, you’re going to cash in next week against The Undertaker’… Stephanie McMahon called me and told me ‘Ken, you tore your triceps, we’re sending Vince’s jet to pick you up. You’re going to be out for 7 to 8 months. You’re going to have to have this surgically repaired’…. Edge called me a chicken on Monday Night Raw, I put up my briefcase that I had one year to cash in and Edge went on to do what I was going to do. The next day I went down to see Dr. James Andrews and he said that’s not a tear, you didn’t tear your triceps. Sure enough, it was just a large hematoma. It was a bruise. It was like some blood vessels popped in my triceps and just opened up. I was out for maybe a month.”
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
