Scott Hall had quite the history-changing career in the wrestling ring and it all started with Hiro Matsuda and Barry Windham in Tampa Bay, FL.
On a recent episode of 83 Weeks via AdFreeShows, Conrad Thompson and Eric Bischoff went against the grain of their usual format by having a special “third man” appear on the show and it was none other than The Bad Guy whom Eric obviously has strong ties to. Eric, who was familiar with Hall’s Diamond Studd roots, asks Scott how did he actually end up getting into the squared circle fold.
“I was trained by Hiro Matsuda in Tampa,” Hall told his former boss.
“I was living in Tampa bouncing in bars and I used to go to the wrestling shows every Tuesday night in Tampa and every Wednesday morning I’d go down to the Sportatorium on North Albany and watch the TV tapings and I ran into Barry Windham who’s a huge star at that time, still is to me, but at that time, red hot.”
Scott notes during that time especially, Tampa had a lot of sports teams going on, therefore there were a lot of “muscle heads” walking around, but he and Barry hit it off.
“I said, ‘Hey Barry Windham, how you doing man?’ He said, ‘Hey, you’re a big son of gun. What do you do, man?’ I said, ‘I’m trying to do what you do,’ and so I met him at the Sportatorium and was the first time jumping in the ring. With Matsuda, you just did calisthenics.”
Scott said he garnered a great education from Barry just by being on the road with him, “Doing this old school thing,” he said. “Sit in the back with the case of beer, you’re the beer kicker. You just keep the driver and the guy in the front seat loaded with fresh beers and sit around and watch and I would watch them talking to each other before the matches.”
“I remember when I was first breaking in, I’d watch the matches on TV and I’d go, ‘How can they remember all that stuff? Like how can you remember move after move and what to do and what he’s going to do’ and then I realized later you just talk to the guy. You just talk to him. No one can tell. It was just wa such an eye-opening experience to me. Barry was so good to me and he introduced me to Dusty and I actually had my first match in Charlotte territory when Dusty was there and I was just so lucky that when I broke in late ’84 I never had another job besides pro wrestling. Ever. And like a lot of guys these days, there’s only wrestling on weekends. Back when I was working, there was wrestling every night of the week.”
Transcription credit should go to @DominicDeAngelo of WrestleZone
You can check out the full episode of 83 Weeks below, chico.
