Mac Davis brought a viewer question to Teddy Long on Road Trip After Hours. “Scott Lance is saying, what was the hardest bump you ever took, and which one looked like it hurt but was actually a day off?”
Long went straight to the answer. “The hardest bump I ever took was Big Show grabbed me, and I was a referee when I first went to Vince in ’98. And Big Show grabbed me and threw me out of the ring, and he didn’t tell me. So when you don’t tell somebody and you just grab me and here you go with me, then I don’t have time to break my fall or nothing. So I got a chance to grab the second rope, but that was about the only thing I could do. But when I really, when I landed on the outside, it really hurt. And, you know, I’m having trouble with my back now, from probably that back, from that bump right there, I’m telling you.”
Davis sympathized. “Oh yeah.”
Vince McMahon Stopped Long In Gorilla
What happened in the back was, in Long’s telling, more memorable than the bump itself. “It was so good. It wasn’t good, because I never forget — I might have told you this — I come back to gorilla, and Vince stopped me, and he told me. He said, ‘Don’t you ever let anybody grab you and sling you like that.’ And I told him, I just — he grabbed me out of the blue. He never told me.”
Davis processed it. “I remember you tell me that, and I can — I appreciate the fact that Vince McMahon would care enough to tell you, don’t put up with that shit. I don’t care how big they are or who they are, you don’t put up with it.”
Long confirmed it. “Well, he did tell me that.”
The Catch That Saved Long
Long described the only thing he was able to do mid-toss. “I got a chance to grab the second rope, but that was about the only thing I could do.” Without the standard heads-up that comes before a referee gets thrown out of the ring, Long had no way to brace for the landing. The second-rope grab broke some of the momentum, but the floor impact was unprotected.
By the time of the bump Long wasn’t a green referee. He had been officiating in NWA’s Jim Crockett Promotions since 1985, working some of the biggest matches in the territory before transitioning into management roles in WCW. By 1998, he was a veteran returning to the stripes in WWE.
Teddy Long Still Trains Around That Back
Davis transitioned the show into a question about Long’s current fitness routine. Long, asked about his exercise regimen, said the back injury still dictates what he can do. “Basically, I’m in the gym like three days out the week, take one off. You know, y’all had to find out the body needs wrestling. I did. I wish I knew that some years ago. I done tore all my triceps and everything up, you know, by not wrestling. So I’m in the gym three days a week. I take one off. Sometimes I go three days. And if I go up to see Denise for the weekend, I’ll take that weekend off. But that’s it. I’m just doing a little lifting. All our work is upper body. That’s all I got. I can’t work my legs. I don’t want to hurt my little legs, because I love to do my cardio.”
He has pulled back on cardio over the years on his doctor’s advice. “I did for over 20 years. I did an hour of cardio sometimes hour and a half, but my doctor was telling me I was losing too much weight. So I cut it down to 45 minutes now. So between 30 and 45, and that’s it.”
Long made his WWE debut as a referee on the December 21, 1998 episode of Raw is War. Big Show, real name Paul Wight, made his WWE debut on February 14, 1999 at St. Valentine’s Day Massacre: In Your House at the Memphis Pyramid, putting the bump Long described somewhere in 1999 once Big Show was in the ring full-time. Long was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2017 by Ron Simmons and John “Bradshaw” Layfield.
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