Mr. Kennedy: WWE's Biggest "What If", MITB, Brutal Undertaker Chair Shot, Training Tiffany Stratton

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Ken Anderson (@mrkenanderson) is a professional wrestler previously signed to WWE and known by his ring name Mr. Kennedy. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Indianapolis, IN to talking about his wrestling school " The Academy " and to discuss his WWE career highlights that included winning and losing the Money in the Bank briefcase, nearly being named Mr. McMahon's illegitimate son and feuding with The Undertaker, his signature microphone entrance, why he never returned to WWE, winning the TNA World Championship, training Tiffany Stratton and more!

Give Ken a call: 507-772-2776

Quote I'm thinking about: "You can have results or excuses. Not both." - Arnold Schwarzenegger

On how much longer he intends to wrestle:

"You know, it's funny. When I was in TNA, I had a really bad attitude about the business. I had sort of soured on it, and somebody asked me in an interview, and I was like, 'If I'm still doing this in five years, somebody shoot me.' I kind of look back on that, and I just like, I can't believe I said something like that. I don't know how long, but I'm going to go until the wheels fall off. I mean, not like, 'Hey, you should have retired 15 years ago...' wheels fall off, but I still feel like I have some juice."

On the first time he met Tiffany Stratton:

"So she was friends with Greg Gagne. Greg is a family friend, and Greg reached out to me and said, 'Hey, I've got this girl, she's a power lifter and she does gymnastics and stuff. She's a super athlete, really good look, and I want to train her. Can we come?' So she started coming and, right away, day one, she's one of those people. I was saying earlier, we take our time to get to the flip bumps and stuff like that. But Alex Findley and Tiffany Stratton, day one, they're doing perfect flip bumps, landing perfectly. Gable Steveson, show him how to get up, bump, and then get up a certain way. He did it. I said, get up this way, and he started getting up the wrong way. I said uh uh, then he reversed himself, back down, and got up perfectly the right way. But yeah, Tiffany, day one, there's some stuff people just have instincts for. I think she's one of those people. However, the funny thing was, I don't mean this in a negative way, she didn't have any charisma as far as she just did the work. She didn't have the character stuff down. I have her first promo. I'll have to ask her someday for her permission to put it out there, right? Because it's not good."

On what Gable Steveson was missing:

"I don't think that he loves the wrestling business. I mean, WWE has done the NIL thing for a while. I remember back when, I think when I was there, there was always these rumors that WWE is only taking guys that are six foot one or taller. Then for a while, they wouldn't take anybody that had independent experience. I just think the guys who are successful love this."

On whether he wanted to come back to WWE after being let go:

"I didn’t want to, I swear to God, I had no desire. I think that I never wanted to blow the bridge up completely. But I really had no desire. When I was at TNA, I was like, I'll never go back there. I'll never work for them again. Now it's changed. I would definitely [go back] now."

Was it the animosity?

"Yeah. And I think the animosity was, instead of looking at myself, I was looking at this person did this, and that person did that, and they screwed me. Then at some point I realized I played a hand, a huge hand, in all that."

On when he realized that was the case:

"I don't exactly know what it was. But it was like well, you know those guys who went to Vince and said, 'Hey, we can't work with this guy anymore.' Had I been doing all the right things up until that point, that conversation would have gone differently. The fact was that that was just the straw that broke the camel's back, and Vince was tired of [it all]. There was a lot of negativity around things that I was doing, my attitude, and then that, like, get rid of him."

On being one of the biggest what-ifs in wrestling:

"I guess there's a ton of mistakes that were made along the way. And the one thing, I can't go back, can't change any of that. I can just move forward. And what I can do is hopefully show my students, hey, don't do this. To some degree, we all think that about our kids too. I'm just gonna tell my kid not to do it, and he's gonna listen to me, right? Don't touch the stove. They gotta touch this stove at some point, but hopefully they don't have to put their own hand on it."

On missing out on becoming World Champion:

"So, I had won the briefcase, and they had me say on TV that I was going to cash it in next year at WrestleMania, and that was the plan. At the time, I don't know if things have changed, but it's literally week by week, the writing for the most part, because things change so rapidly. So it's just kind of like, Hey, we're thinking about doing this, but you never know what curveballs are going to be thrown at you. So then one night after SmackDown, I got a call from Michael Hayes. He said, 'Vince needs to see you in his office.' So I walked in and Vince and Stephanie laid out the scenario. 'Hey, Taker’s hurt.' I think he tore his biceps. He was the champion at the time. 'He needs to have surgery. He needs to go away.' Then they laid out the scenario for the next week on SmackDown. He was going to have a cage match with Mark Henry, or Batista or somebody like that. He was going to barely squeak out, somebody else was going to come out and do some more damage to him, and then I was going to come out and pick the bones, cash in the briefcase, cover him, 1 2 3. So then I remember that night going out with, nobody knew about this, except for a few people, and Michael Cole and Mark Carrano were the only two that knew. For some reason, I didn't make it a habit, or I just generally didn't hang out with these guys, but we went out to the bar that night, and they were kind of like toasting me. 'Here's to hard work kid.' I just had this weird feeling. And then the next week, we did a double shot in Poughkeepsie on a house show on a Saturday. First show, I'm in an eight-man tag. Batista gives me a little clothesline, I went down, and I felt something pop in my tricep, and I rolled out to the floor, and it just started swelling up, right away. And I remember Finley standing there going, 'That doesn't look good.' By the time I got downstairs, my arm was swollen, was starting to change colors, which is weird, because that usually takes a couple of days. Honswoggle drove me to the ER in I think it was Erie, Pennsylvania, then I went to the hotel room. Next day, Stephanie called me. She said, 'Ken, you tore your tricep off the bone. You're going to have to have surgery. You're going to go away for nine months. We still need to get that title off of Taker, though, so we're sending the jet to come pick you up. You're going to come to Penn State. Edge is going to challenge you for your briefcase, and then he's going to go on and do what you were supposed to do.' Okay, that's the way the cookie crumbles, whatever, that's business. Flew there, got wrapped up. I couldn't move my arm. It was kind of like, what can you do? Not much. So Edge beat me up, I think he jumped me on the ramp, rolled me in the ring, ding, ding, ding, spear, 1 2 3. So then the next day, I go down to Birmingham, Alabama, sitting on Doctor Andrews' table, and he just feeling my arm, and he goes, 'That's not a tear.' Excuse me? 'No, I don't think that's a tear.' Then he took another MRI. It was just a large hematoma. It was just a bunch of blood vessels that popped. So MVP says you were a misdiagnosis away from becoming World Champion."

On becoming TNA World Champion:

"I've said this before. Like you just said, it's not exactly the same, but that doesn't mean that I wasn't proud of that. At the end of the day, it's a prop, if you don't understand that, The Rock just put out the tweet and said it's a complete work. It always is. It's fiction. If you don't understand that. So I didn't really win anything, but at some point it's like all these people felt that you could carry the [company]."

On always being able to catch the microphone in his entrance:

"I didn’t. There's a really funny video, because they used to mess with me. They drop it real slow sometimes, or sometimes they just drop it. There's one time where they dropped it fast and I missed it, the thing goes swinging. I just look up, there it is. I just knew where my mark was. It was one of those things too. I think for the most part, every day it was different in every ring, or in every arena. So I'd just get in there and check it and make sure. Or they'd come up and say, like, hey, it's a little farther to the back today."

On knowing Hornswoggle would be safe on that ladder bump:

"I didn't [laughs]. I was hoping to. No, it was something that I had. So when I made my debut, it was supposed to be a dark match against Funaki. He was going to Super Kick me, 1 2 3, it was just going to be dark. Dave Lagana walks up. This is right after Dreamer called me and said, they want to see you. Vince walked by me. Dave walked by me. He goes, Hey, there's a change. I immediately thought they cut the match. That's cool, whatever. Then he was like, 'We need to come up with a finisher for you, because you're going over, and this is going to be televised now on Velocity, welcome aboard.' So right away, Fit Finlay was our producer. And he's like, what can you do? And I was like, I do the Finlay roll off the second rope. And Funaki [looked shocked]. I was like, 'Please, if you just hold on to me, squeeze tight, I'll take care of you. I'll set you down gently, no problem. I promise.' He trusted me, and when we came back through the curtain after doing it, he was like, Oh, I didn't feel anything, was great. So I knew that I could do it safely, and I knew that I could. Hornswoggle is probably one of the heavier guys that I've done that too. I'm kidding! Then you're in an awkward position trying to get him, scoop him up the other ladder. So we had to really walk through that a couple of times. Luckily, it's WrestleMania. I'm sure it's the same way now, but they would have a big ballroom with a couple of rings, crash pads, extra ladders and stuff like that, so you could go practice and try some things."

On a stiff chair shot from The Undertaker:

"It didn’t hurt. I feel like WWE has erased that from their [history], you can only find that on YouTube. Every once in a while it gets scrubbed and taken down, because I've tried looking it up a few times, and it's actually sometimes it's kind of hard to find or to get a good copy of it." 

How did that not hurt? 

"Because instead of holding both legs, you hold just one set of legs. Get your thumbs inside. Then when you hit it, it just opens up. It just kind of folds. It wasn't bad. He was one of the lightest guys I've ever worked with on anything, nothing he ever did connected."

On the exploding microphone with The Undertaker:

"Magic! No, there was a guy in WWE, that was his job, magic department. If you go backstage, it says magic. It was like he was in charge of anytime there was a special effect that something needed to explode or blow up. He was the guy that did it."

It didn’t look safe:

"It was. The way he rigged it. He just said, as soon as you go to pull it back, we're going to set it off. I think we tried it during the day. It was fine. It didn't hurt."

On the Signature Pharmacy scandal:

"I got home, I literally walked in my door and I got a call from Johnny. 'Hey Vince needs to see you in Stanford this afternoon, just go to the airport. We don't even have a flight booked for you. We'll figure it all out. We'll keep in touch with you.' So I just jump back in the car and went right back to the airport. I'm like, here we go, this is it, big time, baby. Things are going to start changing. The car picks me up, takes me to Titan towers. And as I'm pulling in, I see Chavo and Funaki and a couple of other guys. 'What are you guys doing here?' 'I don't know. They told me I had to come.' Then I think it was Chavo who said, 'Whatever it is, I don't think it's good.' I'm trying to think what it is. Then there was 10 of us, I think, sitting outside Vince's office, one by one. We were like, whoever goes in, come out, smarten everybody up. Tell us what it is. Edge was the first guy to go in. He went and he was in there for about five minutes, and he came back out and he goes, 'I can't say anything. It's not good.' So then I was like, fourth, fifth, to go in, and that was the Signature Pharmacies thing. The thing was when they instituted the wellness policy, you get all these people, there was a lot of us that had been using PEDs for a long time, and you just suddenly go cold turkey. So there were people, you can see it if you watch video from then, people shrinking, shriveling up. We are still running that hard schedule too, four or five days a week, or doing overseas tours and stuff. It's tough on your body, and it's also tough when you go into this, especially with testosterone. You go from this synthetic testosterone to your body has shut down making testosterone on its own. So now your testosterone is depleted. So we asked what can we do? Hey, as long as you go and get a prescription, a doctor's prescription, you're good. Then all these wellness clinics around the country, so that's what I did. That's what a bunch of us did. So I went and I had blood work done. The doctor prescribed me these things, and I started taking them. I didn't even fail a test. It was just because my name was attached to this thing, it was on ESPN, I remember. But the thing was, the problem was that because I explained that in the office to Vince. He’s like, 'We instituted the wellness policy on this day. Why are you still taking this stuff?' I explained it to him, and then he goes, 'Yeah, but you can't have an online pharmacy fill your [prescription].' That was in the wellness policy. I was like, I didn't know that. My doctor filled it, he was using an online pharmacy. So that was that."

What is Mr. Kennedy grateful for?

“My wife, my kids and my health.”

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