– Hall of Famer On How There Were Plans For Him To Become NWA World Champion & WWF Champion
During a recent appearance on The Ross Report podcast, WWE Hall of Famer “Million Dollar Man” Ted DiBiase talked about how there were plans for him becoming NWA World Champion and the WWF Champion.
Below are the highlights:
On being in talks of becoming NWA World Champion:
“Here’s the thing, there was a lot of talk, at one time, again, before WWF, about the possibility of being NWA World Heavyweight Champion. Back in those days, whoever was the NWA World Champion, I think they would put it on one guy and they would leave it there for like four years and then they’d go to somebody else.
I think the idea was to move it around a little bit more. And the three names in the hat were Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair, and me.
I don’t know how much truth there is to this, but I was told that the reason, I can’t remember if it was Terry Funk… I can’t remember who the champion was at the time, they were talking about these three guys, but I was told that Crockett begged them to let it be Ric Flair the first time.
He said it was the only way he could get his money, the money back that he was owed, was to have Flair be the champion. And I was like, ‘oh my gosh,’ but, again, I don’t know how much truth there was to that.”
On talks of him becoming WWF Champion at WrestleMania 4:
“There was a lot of talk of that happening at WrestleMania 4. Somehow I win the tournament, and then I have my run with Hulk Hogan, and, of course, in the WWF, as it was known then, if you’re a heel champion, you’re not going to be champion very long.
You’re transitional. You’re either going to give it back to the guy who you took it from, or you’re going to be a transitional champion and you’re going to lose it to the next guy who will be a babyface champion.
And there was talk of that, but Pat Patterson said to me one day, he said, ‘Ted, we’ve kicked this thing around and we thought about it, but in reality, because we’re pushing you so hard, you’re the top heel right now, that’s what the people are going to expect. What if we don’t give him that?
Let’s say you don’t win the tournament and then in your arrogance, you create your own title and just declare yourself the Million Dollar Champion?’ As soon as he said it, I said, ‘do that,’ I said, ‘because that will put more heat on me than anything else we can do.’ And, again, that’s me the businessman going, ‘what’s best for business?’ and ‘what’s going to be the bottom line?’
And that’s what I tell people all the time, ‘it would have been nice to be the world champion,’ I said, ‘yeah, but in this business, the bottom line is titles are props and it’s a business, so what was best for business and what was best for me at the time was to go that other way.'”
– Raw Star On Thinking He Was Going To Be Crushed To Death At Recent PPV
During a recent interview with Ringside Fest, “The Monster Among Men” Braun Strowman talked about getting thrown into a garbage truck at TLC 2017.
Below is what he said:
“It was terrifying because at any given moment, I thought I was going to crushed to be death. Being stuffed in the back of a garbage truck with tons of trash and all of that other stuff at the end of the day was not ideally what I was looking to do. But you know what? I enjoy going out there to do that for you people.”