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Jesse Ventura Is Back With WWE, Karrion Kross & Will Sasso's Impressions, Hulk Hogan, Vince McMahon
Jesse Ventura (@GovJVentua) is a retired professional wrestler, announcer, WWE Hall of Famer and former Governor of Minnesota. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Minneapolis, MN to talk about his career in politics and how he became the Governor of Minnesota, his professional wrestling career both in the ring and as a commentator, his renewed relationship with WWE, how he got his role in "Predator" with Arnold Schwarzenegger, his career bodyguarding The Grateful Dead and The Rolling Stones, his issues with Hulk Hogan and Vince McMahon, why he owes everything to Cyndi Lauper and more! Plus, Karrion Kross and Will Sasso each do their Jesse Ventura impressions for the man himself!
Quote I'm thinking about: “Be curious, not judgmental.” — Walt Whitman
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"I don't know if it was truly that crazy. I know I had initially contacted Verne Gagne and I received a letter back from him. I listed my whole resume, what I had done, and he told me that at the time, he wasn't running a camp. But if he did run another one, he would invite me. Well, I was at college with my college buddies and we were going to the matches then, it was when I got influenced by Superstar Billy Graham, and without Billy Graham, there would be no Jesse Ventura. I say that unequivocally. Without Superstar there would not be me. So we were just looking and I saw a little ad in the newspaper, pro wrestling school, Seventh Street gym, which was down on Seventh and Hennepin right in the heart of downtown Minneapolis down in the basement. If that's what you're referring to, which I assume you are, it was kind of the Mecca for do I say a few unsavory characters. In fact, my wife at the time, who was my girlfriend, she didn't even like going down there. She might have not walked into that gym because she said she'd look around at these guys there and go Who are these people? And then of course I met Eddie Sharkey, and Eddie's a bit of, you know, Eddie earned a living, God he's still alive, so I don't dare defame him. But let's just say you could buy things from Eddie on discount. I guess that's the best way that I could word it is that Eddie had a way that he could sell to you like vitamins and protein and all of that stuff. And he could beat the prices in the stores by about 50%."
"Wrestling. I think that because that's where I got my initial stardom. And then everything else fell into place after I had my falling out with the WWE, or WWF at the time, and I had a short stint with WCW till Hogan arrived. And then I got the axe, I got backstabbed good by Eric Bischoff."
"My relationship with them now has much improved. We are on the verge right now. I can say this, contracts have been written, contracts have been agreed upon. And all it requires is two signatures, one from them, and one from me. And I will be back with the legends [deal]."
"Fairly quickly, because time is money."
"Yeah, very much so. I think that they're very much more since they merged with the ultimate fighting [UFC] and they're under that one roof now, they're very much more mainstream corporate that you can deal with better because they're more open. It isn't having to tie into the old days of wrestling, for lack of better term, slavery. Because, you know, in the old days of wrestling, you truly were slaves. I don't know, I got a great compliment I heard the other day. Barry Bloom, my former agent, the one I introduced to Vince, I was the first wrestler that made Vince deal with an agent. And I heard Barry was on a podcast and said that all these contracts these guys are getting today, they owe Jesse Ventura a thank you. Because if it weren't for him, they wouldn't be getting them."
"I've always admired Vince, I was at the point in wrestling I was going to quit. We're talking about 1983. I had saved up enough money. I had opened up a weightlifting gym here, Ventura's gym. It was supporting me and it gave me what you need in wrestling at that time. And I'll be very blunt, this is a podcast, it's ‘F You’ money. To where you can say F you and walk away. Well, the gym did that for me. It gave me a leverage. At the time, if they were mistreating me, fine, I'll go run my gym. And we were getting by, my wife and children, the gym was supporting us. So I was at the end of my straw. So when I made the final jump from the AWA to the WWF at the time, I did it fully knowledgeable, this would be it. I simply said, Vince, I want you to guarantee me six years, and he did because I ended up 84 to 90 right on the button almost. Six years before he fired me."
"Vince and I were not totally adversarial. It's just that he couldn't have me around. Because I'm the proverbial stallion that's outside of the corral. You know, he has to have everyone in the corral. That's why I was fired. I owned the rights to Jesse "The Body" Ventura. I have them registered with the United States government and Vince wanted them. I said, No, Jesse Ventura belongs to me. You want them you deal with me. And he couldn't do that because he owned everybody. That's why I called it slavery. Felt like Prince a little bit."
"I will always have a place in my heart for Cyndi Lauper. Because when I was struck down the night before I was supposed to wrestle Hogan for the world title in LA. I was going on a three-match program with him. I would have made untold amount of money, more than I'd ever seen. The night before I get pulmonary emblem, blood clots in my lungs. I'm seven days in intensive care in a San Diego hospital. It was so bad my wife had to fly out. The doctor told her you better fly out here, he may not make it. Well, guess what I faced then? What do you do now? You can come back to Minnesota and you can go up to General Mills and say what? Hire me, I'm an old pro wrestler. What do you do? So I was faced with what will confront every athlete at some point in their time. What do you do when it's over? Now subsequently, I did get back in the ring. I wrestled a little bit more. But it was during that time that Cyndi Lauper was doing the rock and wrestling stuff and was red hot with it. She was doing a concert here in Minneapolis. I called Dave Wolf, I think that was his name, Cyndi’s manager. I called up Cindy and Dave and asked, because what I had done in facing down that my career could be over. I had two little children. The gym was still viable, but what was I going to do? And somebody said to me, you're a great talker why don't you become a sports broadcaster? So I had a friend at Channel 11. Here. In fact, I just ran into him at the hospital. He's 86 years old now Tom Rather. I thanked him. I said, Tom, you helped me with my career and I owe you a debt of thanks forever. I talked to Tom about my situation. He talked to the head guy at Channel 11. They gave me a producer, cameraman man, Emmy Award winning named John Hijack. And the cat of the station says okay, go do something for me. So Cyndi Lauper was coming to town to do a concert. So I called her up and we decided that she would dye my hair multiple colors and we do it on film. So here I am sitting in the chair with Cyndi Lauper by the hairdresser. And that night she unveiled me to the crowd brought me up on stage, showed off my new multicolored hairdo, cuz she was into the punk scene, that was sort of thing. Rock and roll had drifted that way. That was a new extension of rock and roll is what Cyndi Lauper and Girls Just Want to Have Fun. A huge album. Mega hit had like four number-one hits on that album. So I will always have a place in my heart for Cyndi Lauper, she didn't have to do that."
"If I had ballot access and in 50, yeah. See, I have an objection to one of these candidates. And I object to him, and I can say him so you know who it is now. I can object to him, because he is in the wrestling Hall of Fame and I've almost resigned from it on two or three occasions because of that."
"I came to Vince McMahon. I'll reveal this to you. I flew out to Connecticut. I sat in Vince's office with him and Linda, and I proposed the biggest angle the WWF/WWE could have ever done. And it was too big for Vince."
"Vince told me that he would back me on anything political that I wanted to do. So I went out to him and I said, Vince, we can do an angle right now. You can come out with the WWE and say we're going to have our own nominee for president, the WWE party, the World Wrestling Party. Meanwhile, Vince has people in every state, he can send those people, get ballot access, and do what's required to get on the ballot in all 50 states. He could do that for me. I said, then you work the angle Vince where everybody thinks it's going to be you. You're going to be the nominee. But we do something where I come in and say bullsh*t, I'm a governor. I'm the natural WWE candidate for president, then you do a schmoz where Vince and I get two wrestlers to represent us. Whoever wins gets the nomination. My guy beats Vince's guy. I then become the nominee of the World Wrestling Federation for President and I have ballot access in all 50 states because Vince could have done it."
"Well, here's the part that pissed me off and where Vince and I big time separated. I flew home. He didn't even bother to call me to turn me down. I thought that was the most disrespectful thing. First and foremost, when I flew out there, he made me wait an hour. I'm the former Governor. I'm out of office now. Then I shoot him this angle. If he did just called me and said, Jesse, it's too crazy. It's too hokey. I don't think we can do it. I would have said fine. I gave it a try. But he didn't even call me back. That was so disrespectful to me as Governor Jesse Ventura, as Jesse Ventura the man and as Jesse Ventura who made Vince a ton of money."
"I don’t think I could. I don't think I could today because I don't like the stuff. You know what else I don't like today? There ain't no Mean Gene. What do you have today? Oh, they both come walking down these ramps, they stand in the ring and yell and scream at each other and then start cutting meat and beat the sh*t out of each other. It's so predictable."
"My best story of them is that when I became Governor, I had just become Governor sworn in in January, The Stones were here in February. The first declaration I made as Governor of the state of Minnesota, I declared it Rolling Stones Day in Minnesota. They were so honored. I went over that night and Mick Jagger says, No one's ever done this for us. I said, Well, nobody's ever been a bodyguard for you. But my favorite was Keith Richards. Because to me, Keith is The Stones. Mick’s great, he's the frontman, but the Rolling Stones is Keith. And I'll never forget that Keith Richards walked up to me. Here's all disarrayed; he's got this stuff hanging, and you know, it's typical how he looks on stage. Keith walks up to me and he looks at me and he smiles. He goes, so you used the bodyguard us back in 78 and 81, huh? And I said, yep. And he goes, and now you're the Governor. And I went yep, and Keith looked at me in that cockney British accent and he goes, f*cking great. I'll never forget that. I thought if I got the blessing of Keith Richards, I'm home free."
"Do not rely on that sport. Do not rely on that lifestyle. Educate yourself, get a degree have something because it's going to end and it's going to end probably sooner than you want it to."
"No."
"I don’t know, he betrayed me."
"But this was just prior to WrestleMania 2. We were all in a dressing room and there was nobody from the office. I waited and I got up on a chair. I told everybody now is our time to unionize. I said all the publicity is gone out on WrestleMania, if we refuse to wrestle unless union negotiators are brought in, it's federal law, they have to be brought in. It's the law. Then I said if we can get the Charlotte guys to join us, we can fight. We can freeze them, freeze Vince, and force them to do collective bargaining and we can finally get a union. I gave my impassioned speech. The next day I go home, my phone rings. It's Vince. [He says] 'What the? Union?' I said, Vince, 'I'm not talking about just fighting you.' This was 1980s, I said 'Right now I pay $5,000 a year for health care for my family. If we had a union, I might only have to pay $1250, because there's strength in numbers.' I said, 'What about all the guys I've seen that give 30 years to this business and in the end, they ain't got a pot to piss in or a window to throw it out of? If we had a union, maybe they could retire with $500 a month.' You know what did it for me? I was in Las Vegas, and I got on an elevator. And you know who got on the elevator with me? A great big offensive guard from the Oakland Raiders by the name of Gene Upshaw. Do you know who Gene Upshaw was? Head of the NFL Players Association. I got on that elevator and I said, 'Hi, Gene. Jesse, nice to meet you.' Gene’s finger went up in the air and he goes, 'You boys need a union.' And I said, I know. Gene Upshaw sparked me and said you boys need a union. I said I know we do. So I stood up, I gave my impassioned thing to unionize. Vince called me on the carpet the next day. I didn't care, I was going to do Predator. Then when I came back to Vince, I told Vince 'You don't have to worry about me speaking out on union anymore.' He goes, 'Really? Why not?' I said 'I got mine, Screen Actors Guild. I now get health benefits retirement right now with the little sh*t that I did in Hollywood.' I'm retired on over $50,000 a year from SAG. I get over $50,000 a year right now. I'm collecting it. It's my retirement. So when I came back to Vince, I said 'You don't need to worry about me if these dummies don't want to protect themselves, screw them.' I tried. I said I got my SAG card and I'm on retirement right now. I started at age 70. Started collecting and I made it up to where I make over $50,000 a year in SAG retirement. Then I have AFTRA retirement too. Which is the broadcaster's. And you know, I could never figure this one out. But then it came to me. Since wrestling's on TV every week, why weren't they required to join AFTRA? You want to know why? Health care. You think AFTRA wants to bring in 1,000 wrestlers into their healthcare system? It would bankrupt them? That's solely that can be the only reason. Because they're on TV every week on television. Why aren't they required to join AFTRA?
But getting back to the Hogan thing. What ended up happening was this and that's why I know he did it. Because when I sued the WWF over royalties for videotape, I used to say to Vince all the time, Vince, 'How come everything I do in Hollywood I get royalties and everything I do for you, I get nothing? Why is that? Why are you different than Hollywood? Could it be a union? Could that be the difference?' So getting to what had happened was when I sued the WWF, we had to take Vince's deposition. So me and my lawyer flew to Connecticut. Now, I can't say nothing, because you sit in a deposition, I got to stay silent. But I told my attorney the whole story. I said, if you can find out who ratted me, who was the rat? Who was the stooge? Who is the office stooge that stooged me to the office? So we sat down deposing Vince, and it got halfway through it and a lawyer can ask anything. And my attorney says to Vince, Mr. McMahon, he said, 'Has there ever been a union in wrestling?' And Vince goes, No. [He asked] Has anyone ever tried to form one? And Vince paused a moment. He said, Yeah, I think Jesse Ventura spouted his mouth off about it one time years ago. My attorney said, really? How did you know? Did you hear Mr. Ventura talk about unionizing? And Vince said no, my attorney said well, then how did you know? With no hesitation, Vince answered 'Hulk Hogan told me.' Now he's under sworn deposition here. He's under sworn deposition to tell the truth. There was no hesitation Hulk Hogan told me. Vince also admitted it to Larry King, because Larry King brought it up. Is it true that Hulk Hogan is the one that ratted Jesse Ventura when he tried to unionize wrestling? And Vince said, yeah."
"When you have a guy who's as narcissistic as Donald Trump, it ain't gonna happen until I hear an apology from him. [From Hulk Hogan?] Yeah. [What does Donald Trump have to do with that?] He's the narcissist like Hogan. You know, birds of a feather flock together. I heard he was at the Republican Convention. I already heard about that, Hogan was there. Somebody wrote here, they'd have done better with Doink the Clown. It was in the paper here, Doink the Clown would have been better."
“My wife, my children and to still be alive.”
