Okay, I learned three things about HBK while watching this interview today.
1) He bladed like HELL even when he was only 20 years old and in the AWA.
2) He and Bret were actually friends, and the whole situation was actually just a big "worked-shoot" to fool the dirtsheets, which ended up getting entirely out of hand and lead to real-life heat between the two.
3) HBK chews tobacco. Halfway through it, they cut out, and when they came back, Shawn had a huge wad in his mouth, and kept spitting it into a cup every now and then. Blecch.

Okay, so the tape starts out with the entrance of HBK when he refereed for FMW in Japan, sometime in 1999 I think. Then they start the interview. First, HBK talks about how he got started in wrestling, how he went and talked to his father's friend when he was 17, and they wanted him to wait until he was the legal age in Texas to become a wrestler (19). He went to college, got crappy grades (in his own words, he wasn't really doing anything except getting drunk regularly, LOL), decided he didn't want to keep wasting his father's money in college, and so he was introduced to Jose Lothario. He trained with Jose for all of two months. By then he knew the basics so well that all that was left to do was to start wrestling professionally. He joined Bill Watts' promotion (the name of which escapes me right now). He says that Bill Watts was really strict. He didn't know that all the guys in the company were supposed to attend every taping, and when he didn't see his name on the list, he didn't show up. He was asked the next day why he didn't show up, and said that he didn't think he was scheduled. He was told that they always have to be at the shows. His next paycheck, he was fined $50 for not showing up that one time. He complained to Bill Watts that he had not known at the time, and Bill Watts' reply was, "Well, you know now." Not a nice guy (if you've read Mick's book, you get a REAL clue of how warped this guy was, LOL).

Eventually, HBK made his way (with Marty Jannety) to the WWF. He was 23, Marty was 25. They were fired literally like a day after they started there. They went down to a bar, and some older wrestler started harassing them about their reps for being heavy partiers. They tried to avoid him, but he kept nagging them about it (while biting chunks off his glass with his bare teeth, by the way). Finally, Shawn says something like, "Yeah, you wanna see how much we like to party?" and breaks a single glass over his head. Then they left. A woman that was with the older guy left with Marty, though, which didn't sit too well with the older guy. The next day he started bitching at Marty about the woman going with him. He ended up spreading a story around about how Shawn and Marty had completely trashed a bar, throwing glasses all over the place, etc. Vince called them to his office in Stamford. They were wearing snake-skinned cowboy boots, which were a big style with wrestlers back then. Vince came in, and goes, "Those are some nice boots." Marty and Shawn thanked him for the compliment. Vince goes, "They're made for walking, ya know." Marty and Shawn were like, "Oh no, please!" LOL. Then, Vince told them to relax. He invited them to come into his office. Then he fired them. Hee hee, who says Vince didn't turn heel until after the Montreal incident?

On Hulk Hogan: Shawn says that he could tell from the start that Hogan was always a worker. Nothing that ever came out of his mouth was the truth, he always had an agenda to everything that he did. He also had his own locker room.

They come to talking about the eventual split of the Rockers and what lead to it. There were a certain number of wrestlers picked to be part of a photo shoot for some cereal box or whatever. It was the Rockers, the Road Warriors, and two other singles wrestlers. They were to be paid $5,000 each for the photo shoot. The singles wrestlers got their five grand each. The Road Warriors got their five grand each. Shawn and Marty were told that, since they were a team, they would split the five grand. They got wind of Road Warriors getting their five grand each though, and Marty got pissed. He threatened to leave and go to WCW, blah blah blah. Shawn was going to stick with his friend, but Dusty Rhodes said that he could only pay them like $80,000 a year or some other chinsy-ass amount, and they were already making $130,000 a year, so that would've been a definite step down. Shawn didn't want to do it. Marty Jannety, he says, was always quick to burn bridges like that over ridiculous things. Vince told Shawn that he was going to be a star one day, and if he wanted to leave and go to WCW, that was okay, but he would always have a career in the WWF. Shawn told him that he thought it was time to split up with Marty and become a singles wrestler, which was always his dream. Marty didn't deal well with the split, he didn't know what would happen to him. Shawn said that Marty was always a great worker and could've been a big star, but that he just started to give up after the split. The idea for the barbershop skit (where HBK superkicked Marty through the window) had been an idea they had had for the Nasty Boys, but decided to use it for this instead. And then HBK became a singles wrestler.

He talks about being paired with Sherri as a manager. Shawn says she was pretty scary and stiff as hell with wrestlers, she'd just be like, "Throw him out here! Give him to me!!!" and then she'd start kicking away with her high heels and clawing... ::shudder::. They actually show footage of her later on after the interview, and she screams like a BANSHEE. To quote William Regal, it's bloody awful.

Now, he come to the ladder match at Wrestlemania with Scott Hall. He says it had been his idea, and they took it to Vince and he let them do it. He says it was really the match that put him on the map, and it's one of the greatest matches of his career. He said that he thought it was one of the most, if not THE most, memorable part of Wrestlemania X.

We come to the Kliq. Hee hee, where to start? He says that the biggest misconception people have about the Kliq is their POWER. He says that, in the end, it was always, ALWAYS, alwayalwaysalways VINCE who made the decision. The Kliq just gave him ideas. They were just five guys who were very close friends, and they loved the business and just wanted it to do good. If they though something sucked, they told Vince about it. They thought Shane Douglas' gimmick sucked, and suggested ways for him to improve it, and he just never took it well, and that was the beginning of their heat with him. The one time that Vince McMahon flew out to a house show was not, as the Torch and all the other sheets reported, because the Kliq was threatening to strike, but because they had asked him to come down to talk to him about what they thought should be changed. Shawn says that they all met up in a hotel room with a list of all the wrestlers' names, and they told Vince who they thought could work, and who couldn't It didn't get anybody hired or fired, but they basically just gave their opinions on what should be changed for the better. That was pretty much all they Kliq did, according to Shawn, was to give their input; they just gave it more than anybody else because they CARED more than anybody else. It made a lot of people uncomfortable, like Chris Candido (who, Shawn says, was "more concerned with whatever the fuck his girlfriend was doing than with his career), and Shawn says a lot of people were paranoid. He says it was funny that, only when he became a top guy, did people (the sheets, especially) start saying he had "power" backstage. He said that he had given Vince ideas for big things before that had been used, like the ladder match, and that hadn't been considered "power". He says that, at one point, he was actually sitting up in Stamford WRITING RAW, and they didn't say he had "power". The "power bullshit" didn't start until he got on top. Not really surprising, if you think about it. HBK really surprised me in the interview, he came off a lot more intelligent and insightful than I had expected, and he made a lot of good points which I wish more people could hear. He also bashed the sheets a great deal, which is always good.

On the Rock: Shawn had no idea that there was any heat between he and the Rock. He actually looked completely stunned when the interviewer let it known that the sheets were reporting heat between them. He said, "I like Duane. He's a nice, talented kid." He said that his comments that had bashed Rocky and Austin on Byte This were just crap, the he always, and I have to quote this because I was LMAO at this part, "I always fuck around on internet shows. I always fuck around and bullshit people because I know the sheets and the internet writers will run with it. It's a nice way to keep your name out there ::laughs::". He says that he was talking to Austin on the phone, and he asked Austin if Austin had any heat on him, and Austin goes, "Why?". Shawn told him about his Byte This comments, and Austin laughs and goes, "So basically you were just sitting up at the house, fucking around?" And they just basically laughed about it. His gripe on Byte This had been that Austin didn't do the job for Hunter like he was supposed to at Summerslam, but Shawn said in truth he doesn't give a damn who anybody jobs to. He said he only says things like that to stir up controversy. Obviously, it works.

When asked if he was surprised by Hunter's success: "Nah. Of course not. I'm not surprised by anybody's success up there. I can't really think of anybody that's in a spot up there that they shouldn't be in. Hunter's always been a great talent and I always knew he'd be a World Champion someday."

On steroids and painkillers in wrestling: Shawn says that he has never taken steroids. He has taken over-the-counter prescription painkillers though, and that they are common in wrestling because wrestlers are in a pain a lot but don't want to sit home if they don't have to. He says they never won't be a big part of wrestling. Shawn says that Vince has always been extremely strict on drug-testing, and didn't loosen that up even if you were a main eventer.

Now, on to the parts of the tape concerning the Bret Hart, Montreal, etc. Literally about half of the tape dealt with this stuff, so here it goes.

He starts out the topic by saying that he and Bret were always friends originally. Then, right before the Iron Man Match, Bret came over to him and told him that he wanted them to work a giant shoot feud that would even fool the dirtsheets. He said that he was going to start talking trash about Shawn, and that Shawn shouldn't take anything he said personally, and that everything was fine between them. Then, right after the Iron Man Match, Bret just stormed out of the building. He didn't even stay around for the post-Wrestlemania party that's always a tradition.

Then the trash-talk started. Shawn says it was all Bret. He'd just go around saying crap about Shawn being an asshole, and called him a faggot quite a few times. Shawn said he didn't mind the other stuff, but he did mind being called gay because it upset his parents, and he asked Bret to stop that. He said, despite what Bret will tell people, Bret never had a problem with calling people "faggots" and "gay" and that he used those words quite frequently. Bret was also talking about Shawn's family to get the shoot going even more strong. Shawn thought that it was starting to go too far and he couldn't even tell if Bret really meant it or not anymore. He said Bret could say whatever he wanted about him, but that he should leave his family out. Shawn says that he never once said anything in reply to Bret's verbal barrages, except for the "Sunny days" comment. That was what lead to their fight in the locker room that ended up with Shawn leaving and many people thinking he was going to quit. The one thing that Shawn said in response to Bret was that Bret had had some "Sunny days", meaning he had slept with Tammy Sytch (then known as "Sunny"). Bret got pissed off because that comment had caused problems with HIS family. He confronted Shawn about it in the locker room. He just basically came up to him and shoved him from behind and said "Why you fucking with my family?". Shawn didn't know what he was talking about. Bret pushed him again and said again, "Why you fucking with my family?". Yes, that's right, "Mr. Family Values" has quite a mouth. God, you should hear him in the segment they show of HIS interview. LMAO. Anyway, Bret eventually swings at Shawn, and Shawn ducks. Shawn says that he remembers laughing after that, he thought it was funny that Bret had missed, LOL, and then Bret came at him and they just started brawling. A whole bunch of people from the locker room poured in to break it up, and while they were pulling them apart, Bret yells, "Don't fuck with my family!!!" and Shawn yells back, "Why, because you're fucking with Sunny?". Just kind of jokingly, but Bret was flipping out, LoL. That whole thing lead to Shawn leaving for awhile, until things cooled off a bit.

Another reason he left and relinquished the World Title (with that infamous "I lost my smile" speech) was because of his knee injury. He said he had been feeling a lot of pain in his knee lately, and he went to Dr. James Andrews, and Andrews told him that it was very bad and he would at least have to take time off, but if he didn't do something, he'd be done for in wrestling. The plan was to have Shawn and Bret in a rematch at Wrestlemania XIII. Because of the heat with Bret now, Shawn didn't feel comfortable wrestling Bret with a knee injury; he thought Bret might try something to hurt him. So he took some time off, then came back, and DX was formed. Unfortunately, HBK never goes into depth about DX, dammit. If he had rambled for half an hour about DX, I would've been greatly pleased, but he just refers to it as a part of the Bret Hart Saga, "And then we formed DX, and then...". Grrrrrrrr.

Shawn says that he was never, NEVER asked to lay down for Bret Hart, except one time in like 1993 or 1994, and he did it. The plan was never for him to drop the belt at Wrestlemania XIII to Bret, which is what most of the sheets thought and attributed that to why he left. He says when he cried when he relinquished the belt, they were real tears, because he really thought he was done with wrestling. But he says he was never asked to job to Bret except that one time.

He says Bret was wired during the whole day of the Survivor Series incident for the filming of "Wrestling With Shadows", and when Bret came and they had a long talk, he was obviously wired during that as well. Shawn says that part was not aired for the "Wrestling With Shadows" documentary, because it would have shown that Bret was at fault for what happened later on.

Shawn says that after Bret started being difficult about jobbing, he was talking on the phone with Vince and Hunter at the same time, they were having a three-way (conversation, hee hee :)). Vince wanted to know what Shawn thought about jobbing to Bret. He said when they asked Hunter what he thought, Hunter's reply was, and I quote, "Fuck that. It's fucking stupid." LOOOOOL gotta love Hunt. Shawn says the whole thing was stupid, because Bret was going to WCW, and Survivor Series was supposed to be his last night, not the next night on Raw. They just didn't think he would show up to forfeit the title, and thought it was pointless to job to a guy who was leaving, and Vince didn't want to allow himself to be put in a position to be embarrassed. He says the idea that Pat Patterson laid out for him and Bret (Shawn implied that Pat was in on it the whole time), was for Hunter and Chyna to interfere in the end and it would be a DQ with everybody brawling.

Forgot to point this out earlier, but Shawn did say that Bret didn't arrive at the building that day until 5:00, he was VERY late. Moron, he gave them plenty of time to set him up, LOL. I woulda been the first one there on a day like that.

Shawn says that Bret didn't want to let Shawn put him in any holds or submissions, he was very suspicious of something being planned out like that.

He says that Bret Hart being beaten in his own country with his own move sent a message.

Now, I thought this part was humorous. He says that the DX Bret Hart Midget skit had been a joke between he and Hunter. He said they were just joking around with each other, and agreed that that would be too outrageous for that situation, and then, "Fucking Russo went and booked it." LMAO, he HATED Russo. Shawn says that Russo was very unpopular because he was just a radio talk show host when Shawn and others were working their asses off in the ring every night, and that Russo would always act above the wrestlers. Russo would get very offended if you disagreed with/didn't like his ideas. He'd come up and ask your opinion. You'd tell him it sucks. He'd flip out. He thinks Russo was a complete asshole.

Now, HBK's opinion of Jim Cornette. Another funny part of the interview. He says that Cornette was always against him, was always the traditionalist and hated the way wrestling was going, and hated Shawn for being such a big part of the way wrestling was changing. He said Cornette would go around saying things about him behind his back and just constantly trashing him (kind of like an American version of Bret Hart, only he dresses bad). He said that at one point he went up to Cornette and said something like, "I know you don't like me, but if you're gonna talk shit, say it to my face, 'cause I'll say it to yours. I don't like you, I think you're a prick, and if you have a problem with me, say it to my face."

On Sid: He says Sid was not a good worker, but he'd always be the first one to admit that. He says Sid never gave himself more credit than he really deserved. I don't recall what else he said about Sid at that point, because I was laughing too hard, having remembered reading an interview with Sid last year where he said "I honestly believe that I am the hardest worker in the business today."

On Bulldog: Said he loved working with Davey, and had always wanted to work a long program with him, but never got the chance.

On Owen: He said that Owen was always a good guy, that he wanted to do a long program with Owen as well. He said it was Vince's idea to take Owen out of the program with Shawn and put him against Hunter, because he didn't see Owen as main-event material. He said Owen didn't like that, but didn't complain. Shawn said that the Owen vs. Hunter storyline was just meant as a way to help Hunter get over, and that Owen's thing with Shawn was just meant to be one match. He said that the night Owen died, he was in Hawaii filming for Pacific Blue. He came out and a guy on the set told him what had happened to Owen. He called his wife, called McMahon, paged Hunter. He said he watched the Owen Hart Memorial Show the next night on Raw and cried right along with the rest of the boys.

The interview basically ends out with him talking about the TWA, Rob Van Dam, and that's about it. The wad of tobacco barely shrank in the hour and a half that he had it.

There were some nice extras on the tape that were pretty nice. They showed some of HBK's matches from when he was 20 years old, teaming with Marty Jannety against Doug Sommers and "Playboy" Buddy Rogers (managed by Sherri Martel). They bladed like you wouldn't believe, LOL. Sherri was terribly loud at ringside, especially during the cage match they showed, shrieking at the top of her lungs for them to "END IT!!!!!!!!!" when the men were getting their asses kicked. The matches were really good though. They also showed matches the Rockers had in Japan, complete with Japanese commentary (no English whatsoever, it was really cool if you like Japanese stuff like I do). The Japanese crowd's really kill me though, they like never cheer for ANYTHING. They don't react for a face's comeback against a heel like American crowds do. The only emotion they ever showed was when guys were backdropped on the walkway, and then they all went "OOOOOOOOOOoooooooohhhhhh" really loudly. LOL. The other feature was "Bret Responds", a clip from his shoot interview tape where he responds to what HBK said in his about the Montreal incident. Bret came off as very bitter and full of crap, and they only showed like two minutes of it! :P

Hope you liked my recap. That tape was a lot of fun, I highly recommend it. Except for The Wad, HBK looked great. If I can remember correctly, he was wearing a red t-shirt, and for about half of it, a San Antonio Spurs cap. Later, he took the cap off and his hair was in a ponytail for the whole thing. He played with his hair a lot, taking it out of the ponytail and putting it right back in. Funny how I pick out these little things, but oh well. :)

Rewind