Paul London appeared on INSIGHT with Chris Van Vliet for an interview this week.
The following are some of the highlights:
After you got signed, your first televised appearance, the first time we see you on TV, is a segment with Vince McMahon: “But that was not the first time I met Vince McMahon. So I was also a professional plant. Because I was a plant in WCW, after the Perry Saturn match, I was also a plant for SmackDown. This is leading up to WrestleMania 18. So Undertaker is a heel, Flair is a babyface. They stumble into the crowd. Flair goes to punch Undertaker, Taker moves, he decks a fan, I’m the fan. So he decks me. It’s a live SmackDown. We go upstairs, we’re coming back in like, two minutes. ‘Okay, you’re gonna say that man punched me.’ I’m like, Flair, right? ‘Don’t say his name.’ The f*ck kind of a fan am I who deosn’t know his name?! I’m wearing a Stone Cold shirt. I want the wheeling, jet stealing, limo driving… that dude, the money dude, yeah, he hit me. ‘No, say that man [Undertaker] hit me.’ Okay. So at the end of that night in San Antonio, all the local guys are waiting to say, ‘Oh, thank you.’ We’re all waiting. So Vince is power walking. He’s got shoulder pads in his suit, and I’m last. So Vince is walking, everyone is like ‘Oh, thank you sir. Remember me and hire me and change my life forever. Thank you sir.’ I went in for an aggressive handshake, and this is what I did. I went in for an aggressive handshake on Vince McMahon. I caught these two [fingers], but I had committed to it. I was already committed. He wiped my handshake off and power walked off. I was like, I’m f*cked. Never working here. I’m done. I’m done. I just clipped his two fingers. He didn’t say anything to me. So when I got to Hartford, I think that’s where they said I was from. This is before the dress code, and I had gotten called up to do house shows after two months, and out of the blue, I got to the TV taping, I expected to have a dark match with Brian teaming against whoever. I remember Arn Anderson came up to me. He’s like, ‘You ready kid? Your big day today.’ Oh, really, what’s going on? He’s like, ‘You might want to go get some better clothes, you got this thing with Vince.’ Oh my God. So I ran across the street. I don’t know if it was Brooks Brothers or something, I don’t know, but I spent money on slacks and basically what you see in that shot. I wasn’t gonna remind him I’m the guy who grabbed two fingers a couple of years ago. But he was cool, he seemed to like it. It seemed fine.”
So the first time we see you in a televised match right after that segment with Vince. It’s Brock Lesnar, and it’s for the WWE Championship:
“I think that stemmed out of that thing where he had decimated Brian [Kendrick]. He took that crazy F5 into the ring post bump, which is still, I have no idea how he did that. He even took a weird back bump from the floor up against the turnbuckles. Brian did an amazing job, incredible worker. But then he did the thing with Zach Gowen, where he bled him out like a stuck pig. Then it was me. But the same thing happened where I’m in the ring with Brock going over it. Arn is the agent. I love Arn Anderson. I actually have one of his trading cards, I carry it with me everywhere. But he’s like, ‘What can you do, kid? Gotta make this guy look like a son of a bitch.’ I’m like, I think he’s doing a pretty good job on his own. He doesn’t have a neck. He’s shaped like Ram Man. And I’m like, ‘Well, if he clotheslines me right off the bat, I can do a 360.’ So I wouldn’t say Brock took a liking to me, but we were always cool, always cool after that. I mean, he wouldn’t say hi to anybody a lot of times, but he was always cool to me.”
You have one of the greatest Royal Rumble eliminations of all time:
“It wasn’t as glorious as that. But at the time, they hated it. Royal Rumble is my favorite event. That was my favorite of the traditional four, as it should be still, pay-per-views. And you know, that was one of the four pillars, Royal Rumble, Survivor Series, WrestleMania and SummerSlam. So Royal Rumble is my favorite. That was in the first magazine I ever picked up, coverage of the Royal Rumble. So I had to figure out what pro wrestling was. I had to figure out what the hell a battle royal was through images in a magazine, and it was just these Gladiators, and it appears that they’re trying to tip each other out over the top. I love the Royal Rumble. We get to the building, I think it was in Fresno. How does this work? How does the Royal Rumble, the battle royal of all battle royals. How does it work? I was super intrigued. Get us into the room. There’s these big dry erase boards with like 30 names here, and like 30 names here, it was basically like, in parentheses, I think, who’s eliminating you, and I love Snitsky. Always have Gene’s always been awesome. I love him. He’s who I would hire to be Jason Voorhees. But that’s just me.”
He was a punter before WWE:
“I believe it. So when I saw him eliminating me, it wasn’t like I wanted Shawn to super kick me out or whatever. But I think this is well after his ‘Not my fault stuff.’ So I thought I feel like that was just kind of like an afterthought. Well, who’s gonna eliminate [London]? Well, just have him [Snitsky] take this guy. That’s what it felt like. So I thought, well, how can we do this? I love David and Goliath. Easiest story to tell in wrestling. So easy. I said to my students all the time, and so it was a matter of just, how do I get [eliminated]? There are moments in that spot that I don’t like. There’s a pube of hesitation on my part before he clotheslines me, but that was my idea. Gene’s like, ‘You know I’m gonna have to bring it.’ I was like, ‘Yeah, please, as long as you bring it here [on my chest], not here [on my face].”
