Well, you know, I always watched wrestling when I was a kid. A lot of those guys you kind of looked up to when you were growing up and stuff. I wrestled in college and in high school. I also wrestled as a little kid, so I thought [professional wresting] was kind of "low craft" there for a little while, just because it was more of a show instead of real wrestling, like amateur wrestling. Then I got a chance to try and play pro football. It's just something that's hard to get out of you. You enjoy getting in the limelight. It's just hard to leave that. I enjoy contact. I enjoy contact-type sports and action. I've always enjoyed physical sports such as football, wrestling. I've never really been a basketball-type person. Every time you do something you get fouled. I always fouled out. So, this is a chance to do something I enjoy. I enjoy athletics. It's been so hard here in the last few years coaching and not participating. I always enjoyed competing, so this is a chance to get out and do things again, while I'm still young. When you get older, if you regret not taking the chance to do it, you always look back and say, "Why didn't I do that?"

I went to college at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. I went to high school at North Westside High School in Omaha, Nebraska. Our arch rival was where Ted DiBiase went to high school. He went to high school at Creighton Prep. And of course, one of the old guys that I used to get a charge out of, Baron Von Raschke, he went to Omaha North High School. He was an all-state wrestler there. Then he wrestled at the University of Nebraska. He was captain at the University of Nebraska.

I don't know where Ted DiBiase went to college, but I bet he did. He's very wealthy, you know. A lot of the money he's made was not from wrestling. He made a good living at wrestling, but you had to have good money to afford to go to Creighton Prep. You either have to get scholarships like some kids do, or your parents have to have money. His sister went to high school a couple of years ahead of me at Westside, and most of the people in that area are pretty well off. I'm sure DiBiase went to college somewhere, probably got his degree in business or finance. The money he's made in wrestling, I guess he's done a lot of investing. He has a home in Bel Air. It's true, he really is the "Million Dollar Man." Hulk Hogan is still the richest, him and Ric Flair, they make the most, but DiBiase's just as well-off as they are, because all the money he's made is in investments and business. But he hasn't made all his money from wrestling. He invested a lot of it and made it from other things. He's done very well. But, he went to Creighton Prep High School, and I went to Westside. I wrestled there and played football. Then I wrestled at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and played football there.

The guy I always liked when I was growing up was Billy "Superstar" Graham. I really liked him. Then, of course, the one guy out of Kansas City, who's been around forever, is "Handsome" Harley Race. I always remember "Bulldog" Bob Brown and Bob Geigel, and all those guys. But who I really liked a lot was "Superstar" Billy Graham. I always liked him because he–I was into weight training–he was really one of the first wrestlers to lift weights. At that time it was very good because a lot of guys didn't lift because they felt it made you musclebound. But now they all have pretty good physiques. The whole thing about weight training has changed in this country. Weight training and fitness, I mean, the whole outlook as far as weight training as a part of life has changed in this country during the past. Being obese is not an American thing right now. Being in shape or looking decent ... the wrestlers who do good are the big muscular ones. But if you're fit and look good, you're still going to do good too because you look athletic. Americans just don't get off watching the big fat people wrestle. Back in the old days, now, they used to like watching big, old fat guys. I think the way the country looks at it now, they look at people being in shape because of the fitness training going on throughout the country.

Someone said I could probably go 20 years because of my shape and size. I'll go around 10 for sure if my health holds out. Even though it's a show, and I'm sure we all realize that, there's still some high-risk things that people do, and guys do get hurt. I was talking to the Terry Taylor. He's had six scopes since he's been wrestling. Just because of making the wrong move at the wrong time the wrong way. Most of the guys in the WWF wrestle five nights a week. When you're on the mat that much, and when you try to put on a show, it's just like anything, you're an athlete, you get out there, you get your adrenaline going, and you try to do that extra thing just to show off for the crowd–"Wow!"–you know what I'm saying? And when you do that, you take more of a chance for injury.

I usually train six days a week. A lot of it is body building, so you look good. Because you want to go out there, and you want to look good for the crowd. I do flexibility work too. For wrestling, you need flexibility along with the look. Most of the body builders do this, and that's why their workouts are used by a lot of the wrestlers, because of the flexibility. Everything is done with a full range of movement, which helps your flexibility while you are strengthening your muscle.

In wrestling, I think it's kinda fun being the bad guy. The crowd really gets into the bad guy, and the bad guy sets the tone of the match, because he's got to get that crowd to hate him. So when the good guy does moves, he gets the crowd cheering for him. But I could be a good guy too. To me, it's one or the other. If you're a bad guy, you're hated but you get control of things, but if you're a good guy, the crowd loves you. You're a fan favorite. To me it doesn't matter. It's just kinda fun to watch the crowd get so pissed off. The [wrestlers] get stuff thrown at them. The old ladies call you everything but a normal human being. You just put it behind you and keep going, but it's kinda funny. I just get a charge out of it, as long as they don't put any knives or guns out there.

That has happened before. You know, Jesse "The Body" Ventura–I can't remember what town it was–but somebody just hated him so bad, somebody jumped out over the barriers when he was coming in, with a knife, and security had to grab [Ventura] and tell him to get out of there. That stuff does happen. You go to "Wrestlemania" and you always see security. It is not so much for the good guys but the bad guys. Bruiser Brody was over in Puerto Rico and was killed by another wrestler. I can't remember his name, but he was a guy who wrestled Bruiser a lot. Evidently Bruiser was kind of a renegade, and those two guys got into it. I guess they really must have gotten upset at each other. [This wrestler] went back and called Bruiser, just to talk to him back in the shower, and knifed him to death. It wasn't a fan, it was a wrestler back in the showers. Bruiser, a lot of times, I guess, was very egotistical, and he got upset at people. That's just what I've heard. I've never known him or anything.

What [money] you make depends on how famous you are. Hulk [Hogan], I guess, made seven or eight million dollars just wrestling last year. He's got his movie and all his little things, you know. Every time somebody buys a Nintendo [game] he gets something off it because he's on the cover of it. Ric Flair makes a lot of money too. Starting now you can make a decent living, $27,000 to $30,000 a year. A lot of people live on less. But you get in the WWF, and the NWA, you can usually make around $60,000. Even the guys who get beat all the time, they earn in the 60s.... [T]his one guy ... I've seen him win one match in about three years. [I asked him], "What are you making?"

He said, "I make about 60 or 70 grand a year." You know, depending on how many matches he wrestles. And he's not even one of the top billers. Top billers make over six figures easy.

Here in Topeka, every time Hulk comes up it's packed over in the Civic Center. This is not a real wrestling town, it's not like Kansas City. Kansas City's a real boxing and wrestling town. Topeka's more of your ... you know, people are more elite here. Tennis, golf, they're more of that type, you know what I'm saying? Yet, when the WWF comes to town, they'll always have a good crowd. They bring either the Hulk or Macho Man [Randy Savage] in, and that place is packed. And that's not even for a wrestling town. For example, I understood that the WWF alone made last year, because of pay-per-view and everything, made $300 million. That's gross. I think they netted over $150 million after everything, after paying their overhead and taxes....

That's just one organization. That's not counting what the NWA does. You got your WWF, NWA puts on two or three shows a night, then you got AWA, you got this one where I'm going up to in Portland, Pacific Northwest Wrestling, and it's a sublet of the NWA. Then you've got all your independent promoters around the country.... And then you've got Japan, Puerto Rico, Europe. When you start to look at it, you've got all these organizations worldwide, you got all these independent promoters, you got Canada too, Mexico, I mean, it's done worldwide. I don't know how many shows are going on tonight.

There's [wrestling schools] all over the country. I went to the one in Chicago ... you got one in Minneapolis. There's one back East, there's one out West. Before you can get into the business and start being part of it, you have to go to school and learn how to fall right. It's kind of like, almost like judo in a way, where you gotta learn how to fall and do things so that when you do get in a real-life match, you don't hurt yourself. Your chances of injury are less, plus the guy you're wrestling against. You learn how to do the moves right. The thing that I had to really work on is falling so you don't hurt yourself. In a way it's just like football. I didn't step out on the football field and play football. I had to practice and practice and practice.

I want to come up with [a move] called "the Equalizer." Since I'm called the Equalizer, I want to come up with some kind of Equalizer move. I do power-slams as a finisher. I can do a drop-kick or something like that, or a karate kick-type thing. I've done different things to win a match. I just want to eventually develop a move that's just done by the Equalizer, and it's called the Equalizer. But it's too early in my career to really have that down pat.

Up there [Chicago] I worked for a lot of independent promoters, three different independent promoters. I'd usually be in a semi-main event, or a tag team with another guy. The main event was always someone like Baron Von Raschke ... or "the High-Flyer" Jim Brunzell. So I worked with three or four of those people up there. [The Portland promotion] is the first true organization that I will be in, that wrestles every night and the whole bit. I mean, it's a full-time organization.

My wife is a school teacher, so she won't have any problem getting a job. I'll be home during the days, just gone at night sometimes. The thing is to spend quality time with your family. My son is more excited than my wife. Hey, your whole sport's based on children. Wrestling's greatest fans for the most part are kids. I'll be with old people sometimes and they'll watch either boxing or wrestling. Or, your roughnecks, your hard-rock people, or your country people, tough-ass suckers, they like wrestling too. But still, kids think it's the greatest thing. You know, we all did.

Most of your wrestling organizations are like the NWA. Where I'm going, the PNW, they're exactly like the NWA because they're off of that organization. The AWA [the now-defunct Minnesota-based American Wrestling Association] is very comparable to the NWA, but it's really gone downhill the past five years compared to what it was before the WWF. The WWF killed the AWA. The NWA's just too strong and too powerful, the WWF can't affect them. The one that [the WWF] nailed was the AWA. But that's partly the AWA's fault. Who'd they have? Hulk Hogan was in the AWA until [Rocky II]. He was [AWA owner] Verne Gagne's property. Then Verne Gagne got mad at him after he made that movie because he didn't think that was the way wrestling should be portrayed. The WWF saw this chance and took it. You know, Vince McMahon took an organization that was just like the AWA. They were back East, and the AWA was in the Midwest. And he took Hulk Hogan and went worldwide with it, and then gobbled up the AWA. The NWA, see, they were always number one. Plus, they've got the backing of Ted Turner, and he's one of the richest people in this country, and you ain't gonna outdo that. But you gotta give Vince McMahon credit, he saw a gold mine and took advantage of it. He took that organization from $6 million to what it's worth–it's net worth is over $250 million today. And he's done it because of one guy. And the sad thing of it was, Verne Gagne had that guy. At one time they were making a lot of money, too. They were just as strong as the WWF at one time.

One guy changed the whole atmosphere. "Wrestlemania" is the same as "Hulkamania," I mean, it's all the same thing. One person I know works security when wrestling comes to town. He says it's so funny, when all the wrestlers are there and they're all doing they're thing, when Hulk Hogan walks in, it's like Christ has walked in. It's like, "Hey, the man's here, listen to what he says." He's not a great wrestler, he's just big and powerful and strong. The crowd gets behind him. And those kids love him. My son thinks he's the greatest thing that walks. He thinks his dad could whip anybody except Hulk Hogan. I think there are many wrestlers who are better than Hulk Hogan, but they're not Hulk Hogan. But, without Hulk Hogan, I don't know if the WWF could be where it's at.

Back in the 1960s, wrestling was really big, and in the 1970s. Then it kind of died in the middle of the 1970s, then when Hulkamania came it brought wrestling back. The WWF has some great wrestlers. [The WWF] has gone, because of the advertisement, and the marketing, they've gone more for the show, for Hollywood. They've Hollywooded, they've glitterized it. And because of that, guy's don't wrestle like they can. They've got good talent, and they've bought out good talent from other organizations. The NWA and all your other wrestling organizations are still into wrestling. Arn Anderson went back to the NWA [from the WWF]. He went to the WWF for one reason, to make some more money. We were talking when he was here, and he just said, "It was such an increase in money, I couldn't afford not to take it."

And he said, "I like wrestling." You know, he was a collegiate wrestler at the University of Minnesota.

He said, "You'll see me back in the NWA."

But the AWA ain't what it used to be. I mean, it doesn't have the talent. Anytime they get somebody good, before you know it he's in the WWF. But if you want to go watch true wrestling at its finest, you go to those other organizations. Then you're going to watch true wrestling at its finest. If you're into the show business, you want to watch the WWF. It all depends on what the individual wants to see.