WWE Hall of Famer “The Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase recently took to an episode of his “Everybody’s Got a Pod” podcast, where he talked about a number of topics including wanting to forget his time as a member of the WWE’s creative team.
DiBiase said, “It’s almost like it’s a time I’d like to forget. The one thing it did do in terms of the way I think is, maybe it made me appreciate what those people do every week. I mean, those writers it’s like, who thinks about all this stuff. And of course, it’s good and bad as far as I’m concerned. It’s kind of like, I’m an old-timer. I’m the last of the old-timer age. A lot of fans say that. And I hear this from a lot of fans, the guys that were in wrestling or in the WWE or whatever from the mid-80s to the mid-90s were the last great era of wrestling. And I have a tendency to agree with that, only because I was part of it. And the difference is, my generation was the last generation that learned our art the old-school way, and the old-school way was basically getting in the ring every night in front of a live crowd and having a match. And of course as a beginner, your opponent is going to be able to lead you. I mean, because we’re talking out there all the time. We’re telling the story, and the story is obviously good versus evil and how that comes out. But it’s nevertheless a story. And we’re talking, we’re communicating all the time. So when they tried to make me part of the creative team, it was very hard for me. Looking back from where I am now, I wonder if it was very hard because of, you know, maybe just me being hard-nosed and ‘Hey, this is the way we did it.’ And I’m from the old school and that’s the way I learned it.”
DiBiase also talked about how it was Stephanie McMahon who told him to be a part of the company’s creative.
“Well, it’s not so creative in terms of — Stephanie was the one that talked me into going ahead and doing this. You know, I tried to tell Stephanie. I said, ‘Steph, that’s not me.’ I said, ‘You tell me the story. You tell me what you want to happen in that ring. And my gift is to go out there and make it happen.’ Now. I mean, look at the acting industry. Look at Hollywood. You know, there are a lot of great actors and they’re great actors. You give them the script, you tell them what you want, bam! And they can do it. But you give them a pen and say, ‘Write the story,’ they’re going to go. ‘That does not compute.’ And that’s me.”
You can check out the complete podcast below.
