On the ‘Unleashed’ version of the Steve Austin Show podcast, Austin interviews former WWE and WCW wrestler Paul Roma, which you can listen to its entirety at this link. Below are a few of the highlights:
On How He Got Interested in Pro Wrestling:
My father had asked me, he said hey listen, why don’t you do this? He had wrestling on, and said, ‘You’re big enough,’ I said, I’m not going to do that s**t, he said, just think about it, and I told him that it’s bulls**t. I walked away. I was a Marshall in the system, and a former pro fighter came up to me and said, hey listen, I know somebody in the wrestling business, I think you should be a wrestler, and that intrigued me a little bit. I went to a local show for the WWF and then I went to a wrestling school, and after wrestling school, since they didn’t teach you that much; I really got my notoriety when Mr. Fuji took me under his wing and started training me and got my big break.
On His Pro Wrestling Training:
Tony Altomare didn’t teach me anything but to stand there and take bumps. There was nothing really really, I used my athletic ability to enhance everything and anything I did, whether it was somebody running across the ropes and straddle somebody, they go for a backdrop and you straddle them; it was like running a hurdle. I started doing flips and backdrops, landing on my feet and running up the ropes, walking up the ropes and things like that, so I just enhanced everything and worked on my dropkicking ability because I knew I could get the height, I just had to make it look pretty. Tony was really old school, he was creating guys for meat, for the big names to chop up.
On Learning About the Business From Mr. Fuji:
Fuji saw me. I used to go to New Haven, Connetecuit and they used to tell you to bring your gear, so I brought my gear, and Mr. Fuji said, hey listen, I need some help moving, so I said, sure, just let me know when I will help you, so he told me. I said to him that I know you have to move your entire house and pack it in your truck, so why don’t I get some people to help and he said fine, well, all and all I showed up to help him and apparently he didn’t expect me to help him because one of the ribs with the boys is that you tell him that you are going to show up and then leave him hanging, so I showed up and he thanked me. He said, hey listen, next time you are in New Haven, get there early and I will work with you, so I got there early and we worked for an hour and a half/two hours and we kept that steady going and he just continued on and started showing me different things and teaching me about ring psychology and this is why you don’t do that and why you do this and so forth, and don’t take any useless bumps, and followed him down in Tennessee working in one of the rings down there. Every time I was on the road and he was there we would travel together, even if I wasn’t booked we would travel to New Hampshire or Maine, pretty much wherever he was wrestling, and he would get me a deal where he would say, hey listen, I don’t want to wrestle tonight, put Paul in my place so I go in and work and he would critique my match all the way home, 3-4 hours just talking wrestling. We really hit it off, and I was just one of those stand-up guys, a man of my word.
On Almost Quitting WWF For His Low Pay:
When you did TV Tapings you got $50 because they felt like you were getting the exposure that paid well more than you can ever get. Then, when I got my chance it actually happened in New York. I walked up to Mr. Fuji after doing the job and I told him that I was done, and he said, okay so are you going home? I said, no Fuji you don’t understand, I’m done, I said I had enough of this. I look better than these guys, I can work, my body looks better than all of theirs, I didn’t care, I was a young and cocky guy, and he goes, well wait, I said, no, I had enough. I’m making these guys that work like crap look good because they’re beating me, and I’ve had enough, it’s not going to happen. They don’t want to do anything with me and I’m good with it. He said, wait, let me talk to Caesar [Vince McMahon], he goes just go home, don’t think like that and I’ll talk to him, so then he talked to Vince and they gave me some bookings and you pick up $200-$300 a night, for a week. One night I did 3 shows and I got $900 for one night, you figured back in 1985 that was really good money and I said, wow, I can get used to this, and I started getting more and more. At that point, if you’re going to get beat, it doesn’t hurt as much because at least you are making it up in your pockets.
