WWE Hall of Famer Larry Zbyszko answered questions on AdFreeShows.com. In addition to answering fan questions, he discussed the film “The Unbreakable Bunch,” in which Ernest Miller, himself, and several other wrestlers star:
“Ray Lloyd, Luther Biggs, had been working their butts off for some years to get this movie going. They wrote it, and then they had to get financed. At the end of 2009, we filmed it and it really came out great. I mean, it’s a movie about wrestlers saving a town from aliens, but it’s not a wrestling movie. It’s kind of a science fiction action movie with emotion and you’ll find yourself laughing when you don’t expect to. I mean, it was really well done. It’s a family friendly movie. Nothing dirty, nothing raunchy. I mean, if you’re not a wrestling fan, you’re gonna love it too because it’s not about wrestling. But it was really well done. I’ve been dying to see it. As soon as we finished it, like at the end of 2019 right before Christmas, a couple of months later this stupid COVID hit and slowed it down a little bit with the editing, but there was the guy alone editing in the booth. So it’s finally all done with the editing and the sound and the music and the special effects, and I hear it’s going to come out October 13th. I can’t wait to see it.”
Two movies he should have been in:
“I should have been in two big movies. I’ll tell you a story quickly. Alright, 1976 or something I was wrestling in California a little bit. I was wrestling a man and I got a message to talk to some producer in the audience. So after the match, I went to talk to this guy. He said, ‘Hey, I’m making my first movie. It’s a low budget movie, but I’d like to have you in it because I like the way you look and move.’ So I said, ‘Okay.’ So I went down to his office which turned out to be a crap hole and got a script and read it and I’m going, oh my God. Three weeks in the desert shooting this movie for hardly any money for the guy’s independent little movie. It’s eating babies and stuff. I said, ‘Oh God.’ So I nicely told the guy I couldn’t do it. I was busy. It turned out the guy’s name was West Craven and it was his first movie, ‘The Hills Have Eyes.’ It became a classic and I’m supposed to be it.”
“Then some years ago in like the mid 80s or something. I got a message at the NWA office to call Jerry Reed. I’m thinking Jerry Reed? The only Jerry Reed I know is the country western singer, unless it’s Jerry Reed the IRS guide. So I call this number and it’s Jerry Reed the singer. He says, ‘Son, you’re my favorite guy.’ We talked and he wanted me to be in the last Smokey and the Bandit movie they were going to make because Jackie Gleason just died and they wanted me to play the part of a young a**hole sheriff after the bandit in the last movie. But right when they were going to do the last movie, that’s when Burt Reynolds went off the deep end taking all the Halcyon pills and getting divorced from Loni and getting wiped out, so they never made the movie. So I was supposed to be in the Hills Have Eyes and the last Smokey and the Bandit never happened, but The Unbreakable Bunch, I’m in like the whole movie and I can’t wait to see the thing.”
Transitioning from wrestling to announcing:
“I was wrestling with Arn. In WCW, me and Arn were the Enforcers. I wasn’t big on tag teams throughout my career, but when I wrestled with Arn, I was like 40 years old, 41 years old, and a couple of knee scopes. Me and Arn made a great team. Arn is great and people bought the Enforcers. When me and Arn walked out, the crowd went nuts like it was back in 1980. Me and Arn were doing good and should have went on longer, but then Bill Watts came in to run WCW and he was an a**hole and he was proud of it. I never got along with him, but he started this group, The Dangerous Alliance. Stone Cold before he was Stone Cold and Rick Rude and Bobby Eaton, a great utility guy. But I didn’t like being a part of the group because you are only as good as the whole group. So what I did was I took myself out of the group by telling the Turner people ‘Oh, my knee hurts.’ So I went and got another knee scope and took myself out of the group. I was home floating in the pool rehabbing. I got a call from some producer that said, ‘Hey, Larry. Can you do us a favor? Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura just quit. Can you come down to TBS and voice over a couple of pre-tape shows for the syndicated market?’ So I said, ‘Okay, great. I’ll come down and do a couple.’ I never planned on it. I never did it before. So I did a couple shows doing the color and all of a sudden the door smashes open and a producer comes in and says, ‘Larry, you are the best guy we ever heard. You want to be a color guy? We’ll give you this much a year.’ ‘Okay’, so I mean, that’s how it started. I didn’t plan it. It was just meant to be and saved my body from abuse of getting too old.”
The NWO angle:
“Well, to be honest with you, I’m the one that programmed the whole angle. They had a meeting in the back one day and I found out what was going on with Scott Hall coming in and they had some ideas. Then Eric looked around and said, ‘Anybody got anything to say’, and I raised my hand and he went, ‘Oh God, what?’ and I laid out a different idea. I programmed the whole beginning how Scott Hall came in, and then Nash and Syxx-Pac. Eric goes, ‘Oh God, your ideas are so good and I thought about mine for months, eh.’ He listened to me and I’m the one that programmed the whole beginning of the NWO and even in promos, right before it happened, they came out and I went, ‘Oh my God. There’s gonna be a New World Order in wrestling.’ Eric heard that and it stuck in his head and said, ‘That’s a perfect name for this.’ So, you know, inadvertently I named the NWO and I programmed the whole beginning of that scenario that got to be the hottest, biggest thing in wrestling. So I really was responsible for some good sh*t in the wrestling business.”
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