Former WWE announcer/current AAA announcer Hugo Savinovich was interviewed on the Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast.
Savinovich talked about the issues with WWE in Saudi Arabia, Hell in a Cell 1998 with Mankind and The Undertaker, the WrestleMania 19 chairshot from Hulk Hogan and more.
Here are some highlights:
Savinovich was asked to give his thoughts on Vince McMahon and the WWE:
“He goes by his instinct. He made billions living like that. I think that the whole problem is that WWE became such a successful, gigantic monster that even Vince can’t control it anymore. It is so huge that WWE doesn’t have to fear any competition but itself. It is so huge. When you create weekly shows, and you have so many responsibilities at a time, he has so many other things that he’s doing. He did that stuff with the XFL that was close to a billion dollars. It’s a lot of pain. Even if you don’t want to admit it, it sets up frustration.
For a creative mind, frustration will get you in a position where it’s like one of those writers that gets a mental block for a while. You can be in a beautiful villa to write the book of your life, and yet no ideas come. I think that Vince has been through so much stuff, and then the dream of creating that football league didn’t happen twice, just so much responsibility, that I think it’s taken its toll. That’s the pressure. He could be crazy, yet he is a guy that doesn’t really rest. Maybe he sleeps three or four hours a day. He’s not a bad person. He’s opposite to what many people describe him to be. He’s brilliant, but that’s the case with many brilliant people. Sometimes it can get you in trouble because you can have a brilliant idea, but it might not necessarily work for that situation, and you have to be checking out what the market tells you.
Right now, that’s the problem. You have the U.S.A. market with this huge, one billion dollar contract with the networks for five years, but then that’s just part of this world because WWE is the whole world. You have to please a lot of tough customers. It’s very, very hard. Maybe I’m a dreamer, but I still believe that he has, like a great fighter, he still has that one more round for another good run of the company. People say he is going to let it go, but I think he still has time for a big comeback and let it go high again on the creative standard. The creative standard is way down. I think that he can still do it. He’s brilliant. He’s not a bad person. He’s a very nice guy. I believe that one day we will really know more of the goodness of him than the stories that talk bad about him.”
Hugo commenting on being one of the first to break the news of the WWE-Saudi Arabia “hostage situation”:
“The whole problem was that they finally had to do a settlement of 39 million dollars. Their main lawyer wanted to destroy my reputation saying that all I wanted to do was get hits from the people and my pages. I do have Lucha Libre online, between Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, and Instagram, we have over 1,100.000 followers. We have reached sometimes like 30 million in a period of time, but we don’t draw you in so when you hit, we get money.
We are in the business of creating this atmosphere as any other people who produce contents for communication sites. We do see the bigger site of where we are going, but at the time, it wasn’t like the lawyer described it. I said, ‘This came from WWE.’ Some of the wrestlers and their wives were talking. I said, ‘Right now, if you really look at it, it’s not like that country has a big reputation of honesty.’
They had come through that murder of its own citizen at the Embassy in Turkey. I said, ‘I don’t know if this will stand in a court case because in a kingdom if the king says the sky is red, you’re going to have to say the sky is red.’ My whole point is I didn’t invent it. That’s what I was told. I was not using this to get any money. I did not charge anybody any money to do interviews. To me, they hurt my feelings. I was going through depression and anxiety. I had lost my wife. I was under treatment. For me to do something like that with people that I really love, because they were my family for over 17 years, that is not me. Every time they try to say that I’m wrong, I prove them wrong. Finally, they settled a deal for 39 million dollars, and that’s it.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
TMPT welcomes in for the feature show @HugoSavinovich Host John Poz and Hugo will discuss his career in pro wrestling, his time in #WWE, Hell in a Cell 1998, #VinceMcMahon, #AAA #Konnan #WrestleMania 19 and so much more!https://t.co/J4CCzDZmSV pic.twitter.com/P5uQ2VWUHB
— John ‘Poz’ Pozarowski (@TwoManPowerTrip) August 26, 2021
