On his Mic Check podcast, Ken Anderson shared the story of why he first decided to bleach his hair blonde, a look that would become his signature for much of his career. He revealed that the change was a direct result of some harsh but crucial advice from WWE legend Steve Keirn and that the new look immediately caught the attention of a previously skeptical Jim Cornette.
“I just always liked that look when I was a kid, like, you know, the Billy Idol look,” Anderson said of his initial inspiration. “If you look at when I first started in WWE, I sort of did the spikes.” After a few years on the independents, he had gone back to his natural hair color, a decision that Keirn, who was visiting OVW as a producer, immediately identified as a mistake.
“I remember Steve said, ‘Look at you. You, you know, like you’re built well, you have a great look, but you just kind of look like a guy,'” Anderson recalled. “And he goes, ‘I think that a wrestler… you need to, when you walk into a restaurant or a hotel or a gym, people look at you and go, ‘I don’t know what that guy does, but he’s somebody.””
Anderson took the advice to heart. “I went home that night, I bleached my hair blonde again, and I bleached my goatee, and I came back the next day, and he was like, ‘That’s what I’m talking about,'” he said.
The new look also had an immediate impact on his standing with OVW booker, Jim Cornette, who Anderson said was “pissed” about the change but immediately put him in a new tag team called “The Blonde Bombers.” The new role came with his first real promo opportunity, a chance he seized with both hands.
“He gave me a microphone that night, and that was the first time that I ever got an opportunity, and I was like, ‘I’m gonna f—ing go,'” he remembered. “It was the first time that I was able to show character. I remember coming back through the curtain, and he was like, ‘Where the f— has that guy been?’ That sort of started turning… it was that point where he started actually, like, ‘Huh, maybe I could…’ And then, like, the next week, he gave me another promo, I think, and then he got fired the next week.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Mic Check with Ken Anderson with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
