As noted recently, Jesse Ventura did a rare interview with INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet. We have more highlights below.
Jesse Ventura on if he’s back with WWE:
“My relationship with them now has much improved. We are on the verge right now, I can say this, contracts have been written, contracts have been agreed upon and all it requires is two signatures, one from them, and one from me and I will be back with the legends (deal).”
On if Vince McMahon not being in WWE is a factor with him returning:
“Yeah, very much so. I think that they’re very much more since they merged with the Ultimate Fighting and they’re under that one roof now, they’re very much more mainstream corporate that you can deal with better because they’re more open. It isn’t having to tie into the old days of wrestling, for lack of a better term, slavery, because, you know, in the old days of wrestling, you truly were slaves. I got a great compliment I heard the other day. Barry Bloom, my former agent, the one I introduced to Vince, I was the first wrestler that made Vince deal with an agent and I heard Barry was on a podcast and said that all these contracts these guys are getting today, they owe Jesse Ventura a thank you because if it weren’t for him, they wouldn’t be getting them.”
What was his relationship with Vince like before he left WWE:
“I’ve always admired Vince. I was at the point in wrestling I was going to quit. We’re talking about 1983. I had saved up enough money. I had opened up a weightlifting gym here, Ventura’s gym. It was supporting me and it gave me what you need in wrestling at that time. I’ll be very blunt, this is a podcast, it’s ‘F You’ money where you can say F you and walk away. Well, the gym did that for me. It gave me leverage. At the time, if they were mistreating me, fine, I’ll go run my gym and we were getting by, my wife and children, the gym was supporting us. So I was at the end of my straw. So when I made the final jump from the AWA to the WWF at the time, I did it fully knowledgeable, this would be it. I simply said, ‘Vince, I want you to guarantee me six years’, and he did because I ended up ’84 to ’90 right on the button almost. Six years before he fired me.”
On the angle Ventura pitched to Vince:
“Vince told me that he would back me on anything political that I wanted to do. So I went out to him and I said, ‘Vince, we can do an angle right now. You can come out with the WWE and say we’re going to have our own nominee for president, the WWE party, the World Wrestling Party.’ Meanwhile, Vince has people in every state. He can send those people, get ballot access, and do what’s required to get on the ballot in all 50 states. He could do that for me. I said, ‘Then you work the angle, Vince, where everybody thinks it’s going to be you. You’re going to be the nominee, but we do something where I come in and say bullsh*t. I’m a governor. I’m the natural WWE candidate for president.’ Then you do a schmoz where Vince and I get two wrestlers to represent us. Whoever wins gets the nomination. My guy beats Vince’s guy. I then become the nominee of the World Wrestling Federation for President and I have ballot access in all 50 states because Vince could have done it.”
On why it didn’t happen:
“Well, here’s the part that pissed me off and where Vince and I big-time separated. I flew home. He didn’t even bother to call me to turn me down. I thought that was the most disrespectful thing. First and foremost, when I flew out there, he made me wait an hour. I’m the former Governor. I’m out of office now. Then I shoot him this angle. If he just called me and said, ‘Jesse, it’s too crazy. It’s too hokey. I don’t think we can do it’, I would have said, ‘Fine. I gave it a try’, but he didn’t even call me back. That was so disrespectful to me as Governor Jesse Ventura, as Jesse Ventura the man and as Jesse Ventura who made Vince a ton of money.”
On if Ventura would ever bury the hatchet with Hulk Hogan because Hogan ratted him out to Vince McMahon in the ‘80s that Ventura was trying to unionize the wrestlers:
“No. He betrayed me.” He would go on to say, “When you have a guy who’s as narcissistic as Donald Trump, it ain’t gonna happen until I hear an apology from him (Hogan). He’s the narcissist like Hogan. You know, birds of a feather flock together. I heard he was at the Republican Convention. I already heard about that, Hogan was there. Somebody wrote here they’d have done better with Doink the Clown. It was in the paper here. They said, ‘Doink the Clown would have been better.’”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article please credit Chris Van Vliet with a h/t to WrestlingNews.co for the transcription.
