We were talking so long about one of my heroes, as somebody who has intersected the worlds [of football and wrestling]. I could never dream to make the contributions to both that Ernie Ladd made.
‘Big Cat’ Ernie Ladd who is both a football Hall of Famer and a wrestling Hall of Famer. But he’s one of the great football players, a great Chargers legend, a great man, a great wrestler, a great wrestling booker, one of the first, maybe the first, black booker who ran a territory.
And Mark and I were talking about this at length. I was telling him how much I love and respect Ernie Ladd, and Henry brought up how close he was with Ernie Ladd, and I didn’t know about that, and how much Ernie Ladd taught [Henry]. [He taught him] about how to work, how [to cut] promos, and [Henry] said, ‘Can you hear the Ernie Ladd in my voice?’
And I never did. But his diction and stuff [is similar]. Not to compare the two…they both want people to come sit under the learning tree and hopefully [Henry] can bring that same kind of legacy of people sitting under the learning tree and learning from Mark Henry like Mark learned from Ernie Ladd.
Sting, who is very much a star of today…I’ll be honest, I don’t know how you could screw it up with Sting. Because I’ve been working with Sting now for the last 7 months. This is the easiest, greatest man that I have ever known. And he wanted to work! He wasn’t looking for a $20 bajillion either, I’ll be honest with you. He would be very useful to any wrestling company in the world, and he wanted to do stuff.
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