On the latest “Kliq This” podcast, WWE Hall Of Famer Kevin Nash told Sean Oliver what it was like to walk into a locker room in his early years in wrestling and seeing guys like Harley Race and other tough wrestlers holding court.
“I would just love to take Buddy Landel and put him in a WWE locker room. This is Buddy in his prime. And then him going over Seth Rollins that night…Buddy could work his ass off. There were so many guys in the locker room. Well, number one like you walk in the locker room and yeah, Harley was smoking but he was one of 11. I’ve never walked into a locker room in my life and like cigarette smoke was prevalent.”
Sean Oliver said that it was a time when wrestlers were not standing around a monitor and they weren’t going over spots.
Nash continued, “When I broke in it was you’d walk in and you’d be with the heels. You weren’t putting sh*t together. So when you’re green, it’s just like you just — all I was told when somebody that’s got more seniority and he walks in the room give me a chair. Because I gave mine and I gave my chair to Harley and he just said, ‘who broke you in?’ I said Jody Hamilton and he says ‘its good to see you got broke in right.'”
Nash continued, “Then I watched him go through that whole lacing the boots and with you know — ‘And I told that mother f**ker.’ I was just like, Wow. What a great he was.”
Sean Oliver asked if wrestlers were drinking before matches around the time Nash started in the business. Nash said he didn’t see that until years later.
He said, “I never saw anybody drink until the NWO started. That was like the first time I saw guys like when we actually like would sit around and drink beers [at the show]. It was funny because Kurt Angle and I would always like to have a couple of beers. Like even at TNA we would have a beer…It was just like part of the ritual before because nothing’s better than the beer when you get out of the ring…Curt Hennig used to do it the best. Curt would have the singlet down and wipe the top of the beer can off. He’d pop it, take that big gulp and go, ‘coldest f**king beer I’ve ever had in my life, best beer I’ve had in my life.’ And you just be like ‘good for you. I still gotta work.'”
Oliver asked how smokers could go out and wrestle 45 minutes. Nash said, “I remember when [Rick] Rude came from New York, from WWE. Deuce (Madusa) was walking him to the ring…So he’s sitting there and he’s got the long red robe on. He had that kind of poodle mullet. He had that curly hair. He’s walking back and forth, taking a drag, take a drag, take a drag. it was time to go and he turned that thing sideways, about last blow it out and suck it back in. She popped the curtain open, he’d come out and drag and shoot that smoke out of his nose into the spotlight…The ongoing joke was always like, we’d be someplace and somebody would say, ‘I’m f**king get hot man. I’m about to go off. I’m about to get like Rude. It was an ongoing joke, I was always like, ‘Dude, you have no idea how tough I am. I’m like Rude.’
Nash put over the Minnesota wrestlers as being extra tough and then he wondered aloud why Demolition is not in the WWE Hall Of Fame.
“They were all tough,” Nash said about the Minnesota wrestlers. “Even like a guy like Barry Darsow, just a sweetheart of a guy. Would hook your eye in a heartbeat. I mean, how is Demolition not in the Hall of Fame?”
There have been rumors that Vince McMahon would not put Demolition in the WWE Hall Of Fame because Darsow and Bill Eadie were named as part of a class action lawsuit against WWE that alleged that wrestlers incurred traumatic brain injuries during their time in the company. The lawsuit was dismissed by US District Judge Vanessa Lynne Bryant in September 2018.
Now with Stephanie McMahon and Triple H running the company, perhaps the door will open for them to get the induction.
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