From: scheid@danzan.EBay.Sun.COM (David Scheid)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Subject: Arn Anderson - a Repost
Date: 28 Jan 1993 18:42:31 GMT
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Distribution: na
Reply-To: scheid@danzan.EBay.Sun.COM
NNTP-Posting-Host: danzan.ebay.sun.com


The following was posted by Gary Will and is reposted for those
interested and as a bit of nostalgia for one of the great wrestlers
of our time (now that he is temporarily on the shelf and I'm sure
we all wish him well). 

---
Dave Scheid - All Disclaimers Apply


--------------
From yonatan@csri.toronto.edu (Gary Will) 
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Subject: Arn Anderson Interview
Date: 27 Nov 91 20:47:47 GMT


 
PRO WRITER VS. PRO WRESTLER:
FASHION EXPERT LOUISE LIONE PINS THE ENFORCER TO THE MAT WITH
QUESTIONS WE'VE ALL WANTED TO ASK
Louise Lione, Charlotte Observer, November 15, 1991
 
Lione, Observer fashion writer, interviews a professional wrestler.
Hilarious, no? That's what my editor thought. What a hoot. Well listen
smarty-pants, I'm not such a stranger to this stuff as you thought.
When my son wrestled for Myers Park, I was so rabid I wore a T-shirt
that said "Mamma Lione" in big letters across the back.
 
I enjoyed my telephone interview with Arn Anderson, Charlotte resident
and professional wrestler also known as "The Enforcer."
 
Anderson - one of the stars of World Championship Wrestling - was on
tour, in Los Angeles at that moment last week.
 
Here are the highlights from our hourlong conversation:
 
 Q. Why do you do this? Is it fun? Or work?
 A. It's a healthy way of life. Plus the perks that go along with it. It's
hard being away from your family. But we go to every major city in the
country and it's kind of like a working vacation actually.  Just the fact
that you are a "celebrity" opens a lot of doors for you. And you make a
lot of business contacts.
 
 Q.  Tell me a little bit about life on the road.
 A.  We're probably on the road 200 days a year. I was in Atlanta
yesterday, L.A. today. San Jose tomorrow. Chicago the following day.
Minneapolis following Chicago. Then all the way back to Atlanta Monday
to do TV taping. It goes on from there. We go to Albany, Ga., for
another day of TV taping. Then we have a day off Wednesday.
    Thursday I believe is Fayetteville. Charlotte is Friday. Charleston is
Saturday. Greensboro Sunday. That's an easy schedule. That's all
driving out of home, down and back. It's the flying that kills you.
    We probably fly 200,000 miles a year. Our driving has really been
cut down. I probably drive 30,000 miles a year.
 
 Q.  What do you drive?
 A.  I have a Mercedes.
 
 Q.  I would think you'd be exhausted most of the time. How do you
prepare for a match? How do you train? Do you "practice" anything?
 A.  As far as being in the ring and practicing wrestling - that doesn't
exist. It's on-the-job training. We go to the gym for weight and
cardiovascular workouts virtually five days a week, six days a week. I
usually train for an hour and a half, two hours, a day.
 
 Q.  Professional wrestling seems so violent. I can't watch. Is it as
violent as it seems?
 A. It's very violent and it's very dangerous.
 
 Q.  Do you guys ever get hurt?
 A.  All the time. February a year ago I had a herniated disk in my
neck. I was out four months. If you took any random five guys that
have been in the business, say, 10 years and put them on an X-ray
machine, any doctor in America would probably term them disabled.
    We're like any other athletes. Your pain threshold is so much higher
than the average person's because being hurt is the norm rather than
the exception.
 
 Q.  But isn't professional wrestling also fake? Do you guys take acting
 lessons?
 A.  This has been an ongoing struggle. ... Are we paid to lose? Let me
put it this way -- I've never been asked to throw a match.
 
 Q.  But what about all the dramatics and stuff?
 A.  There are a lot of different characters in every personality and
you're allowed to manifest whatever character you want to be.
    If you want to be a good guy, you can be a good guy. If you want
to be bad guy, you can be a bad guy.
    That's each person's perception. I am viewed as a bad guy. But in
any arena across this country I still get 50 percent of the cheers.
 
 Q.  How do you be a bad guy?
 A.  It's how you're perceived. Children and older people would perceive
me as a bad guy because I wrestle a lot rougher than some of the other
wrestlers. So they say, "Hey, the guy's got a mean streak."
    Then the guys my age and your athletes, truck drivers,
construction workers that are at the matches - I'm more or less their
favorite because they appreciate the rougher style.
 
 Q.  What's your win-lose record?
 A.  I have no idea. I win more than I lose. I'm currently one half of
the world tag team champions, with my partner, Larry Zbyszko.
 
 Q.  What is tag-team wrestling?
 A.  This is two guys wrestling two guys. Rather than one-on-one it's
two-on-two.
 
 Q.  For people like me who think this is all a put-on, what's the one
thing we should watch for in these matches, but don't.
 
 A.  I don't defend our business. All I tell anyone is to watch my match
and if they see anything in my match that's phony or put on.  I more
or less defy anyone to watch my match from ringside and tell me to my
face that they saw anything that didn't look exactly what it was --
completely legitimate.
    I just defend myself. I don't try to defend everyone else. And I
don't say guys haven't been paid to take a dive. I'm sure it happens,
just like any other sport.
 
 Q.   Do you think people like me have misconceptions about
professional wrestling?
 A.  There's always been that question ever since wrestling first started
-- is it fake?  Like I said, I don't defend the business. But you'll also
never make me believe that the World Series wasn't fixed. How could
they take a zillion fans to the last out of the last game and string us
along -- where Atlanta won every game in Atlanta and Minneapolis won
every game in Minneapolis? Seems cynical, but it seems like to me they
were getting every marketing, every advertising dollar they could out
of the series.
 
 Q.  Do you wear a costume?
 A.  I just wear a pair of wrestling trunks and a pair of wrestling
boots. Plain and simple. What you see is what you get. No Hollywood
here.
 
 Q.  How do you decide on your "look?"
 A.  To be honest with you, I don't have any idea how some of these
guys arrive at what they actually want to portray to the public.  My
personal opinion is that there's a little too much of the hot-dogging or
Hollywooding or whatever you want to call it. Because once they take off
the flowers or lay down the snake or whatever they choose to be, it's
just man against man and none of that stuff will help you once the bell
rings.
 
 Q.  What made you decide to go plain and not fancy?
 A.  I saw this coming - the appeal to our audience now is primarily an
appeal to kids. Because kids are the predominance of our TV viewing
audience.
    Let's face it, on Saturday morning when our show plays, who's
home? Kids. Kids like cartoon characters.
    So a young guy who's breaking in now, even if he's a good athlete,
if he can further himself marketing-wise by developing some type of
cartoon persona, whether it's through his outfit of costume or whatever
-- that has a lot of appeal now.
    But once again, once you take off the costume, now you've gotta win
the match. And there's winners and there's losers.
    I just decided that basically that's all I need. My performance
speaks for itself. My credibility is based on my performance nightly
over a long period of time.
 
 Q.  A lot of wrestlers have special holds they use. How special are
they, really? What are yours?
 A.  They're called finishing maneuvers. I use a DDT and a Spinebuster.
 
 Q.  Is that with a capital S?
 A. Yes. If it's ever put on you, you'll exclaim, "Capital S!" What you're
going for is the jugular. It's the same thing as a long bomb in football.
Quick touchdown. Quick win. Same scenario.
 
 Q.  So what is the DDT?
 A.  The only way I can describe it is, you grab someone by their head
under your arm and just fall straight down, right into the mat.
 
 Q.  And the Spinebuster?
 A.  A variation of the belly-to-belly suplex.
 
 Q.  And what's that? Or should I just get Tom Sorensen to describe it
to me?
 A.  Yeah, you better get Tom Sorensen to describe it to you.
 
    (Sports writer Sorensen: "I think that's when you drive somebody
into the mat. Ask (Ken) Garfield. I'm more on the artistic side of
wrestling." Staff writer Garfield: "I think suplex is when you pick
somebody up and you drop 'em on their back. (Arts writer) Tony Brown
might know." Never mind.)
 
 Q.  What would you like to be if you weren't a pro wrestler?
 A.  Probably a mattress-tester. (Big sigh.) I'm dying to lay down for a
month.
 
Arn Anderson says his main motivation in wrestling is his bank account.
 Q.  How is your bank account?
 A.  Very nice. I'll do over $250,000 this year.
 
 Q.  What would you like people to know about you or about wrestling
that you think they might not know?
 A.  Wrestling is a business and I'm a businessman. And you either
appreciate my work ethic - maybe not my methods sometimes - and I
just want to be remembered as a guy who learned to do his trade as
well as he possibly could.
 
    (Anderson would like to stay in the business once he's out of the
ring - management, broadcasting, whatever. He talks about the things
wrestling has enabled him to do - take a few, not many, nice vacations.
Meet his wife. Meet a lot of great guys he might not have met
otherwise.)
 
 A.  You mention those things, but don't talk about material things.
 Q.  You know, it's funny. You always dream about getting a Mercedes
and you get one and you find out it's just a car.  Basically, this is
such a grind that you learn to appreciate the slower and more peaceful
things in life.
 
 
 In the squared circle
 Name: Arn Anderson
 Real name: Off the record. "It's the only way to have any privacy."
 Stats: Age: 33, height: 6-foot-1; weight: 245
 Background: Originally from Minneapolis. Wrestled at the University of
 Minnesota, left college to turn pro. He has been wrestling for 10 years.
 
 He says he's related by marriage to wrestlers Gene Anderson, who died
recently at 52, and Ole Anderson. He took their name when he got into
the business.
 "It was just a natural transition, with the other members of the family.
I didn't know until they approached me with a contract and an offer.
They said, The opening is here. If you're ready, there's a spot for
you."
 
 Residence: Has lived in Charlotte since 1985. Resides in Charlotte's
Carmel Commons area.
 Family: Married. Father of a 6-year-old son.
 In his spare time: "When I'm home I more or less just melt into my
family and my home. I don't like to go anywhere really - I go to a
movie, to dinner. Just much more low-key than anyone would believe. I
don't do the bar scene or any of that kind of stuff. I take my son to
Celebration Station."
 
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling