|
 First off, this was NOT supposed to be a “substitute” recap, but after putting a GREAT night on hold to come all the way across town to re-set the tape for last night’s shows fucking RODEO is on. Apparently they showed the WWE stuff early and this was on instead. If you came here looking for swipes at Kelsey Grammer I suggest reading FsB’S TAKE from back when the story originally broke. Also, I suggest THE RING POST for new a GREAT new Zenk, plus Ginger, Cammo, Annie and the latest MONDAY NIGHT SUCKS! Plus our boss Yeaghr is responsible for that ruling new banner which I’ll probably nut to later. Thanks dawg. So no Velocity/Recap this week, but I think you’ll enjoy this. Plus thanks to Sheep this is two “non-WWE” posts in a row which makes us look respectable to those annoying purist types. Let’s go. A few weeks ago, a reader approached me with a request. He’d just bought the Vampiro shoot, and wanted to see it recapped. This worked out perfectly for me, since I had a desire to see said video, but didn’t want to order it. Last weekend it arrived in my mailbox, and after a hectic seven days I’m finally ready to sit back and review this puppy. Vampiro has always been an “outsider” in wrestling. Few people have made so many powerful enemies, and been less worried about going public with it. In no way is this more evident than his choice of having controversial tape-trader Bob Barnett (I guy I’ve always had a lot of respect for, even if he never returns my e-mails), rather than one of the celebrity agents so many others have gone with. In this interview he talks about his career, the feuds, the backstabbing, the politics, Rob Fienstein, the Internet, and MORE MORE MORE!! A gajillion thanks to Aaron for sending this along, and as his link of choice he selects MOVIE POOP SHOOT, for Kevin Smith is a deity. Now let’s get into this. NOTE: I’ll try and recap this with as little bias as possible, but let it be known now I’ve been a Vamp mark for many years. Vampiro Shoot Interview (conducted June 16, 2002 by Highspots) Tape begins with a couple of shots of Vampiro Canadiense in Mexico, then on to the good stuff. First thing you can’t HELP but notice is that something is different. Has he put on weight? The glasses, maybe? OOH, he got a haircut. I’m talking BUZZED, dude. Don’t know who the interviewer is, so we’ll call him “ID” for “intimidated dork”. ID calls him one of the most sought after interviews in the business. We begin with the standard “how did you get into the business?” After telling him that they need to do this straight through without editing (Vamp KICKS ASS) he says it was a mix of his boredom with hockey and his love of punk rock, and how those feelings came together when he saw the Road Warriors on AWA. “My God, there was rock and roll and hockey… the perfect mix.” Somehow I can’t picture Gordie Howe throwing pumpkins off a scaffold saying “this one is Beautiful Bobby”, but hey that’s just me. He says he started hanging around the Rougeau’s wrestling promotion trying to meet anyone he could that would give him an “in”, including bugging Abdullah the Butcher until he finally got a shot, quoting Abby as saying “Look, let this guy do something before I kill him.” He became a gofer/ring crew member. He was also pretty much a wrestling dummy, there for the boys to beat the hell out of before going out and doing it to their opponents in front of a crowd. After that company closed he moved to California (tells funny story of Michael Paré of Eddie and the Cruisers asking him to house-sit, then having to live out of his car after the psycho girlfriend threw him out). From there he tells of being a bouncer in a big Hollywood club where he met Milli Vanilli and became their bodyguard (out of respect for Vamp I won’t post the infamous pic that went around the net detailing that time period. Well, that and I couldn’t find it. Tried to use the google image search under “Vampiro gay” and only got the Italian movie poster for “Interview with a Vampire”… which totally cracked me up. He says the experience taught him a lot about show business, because EVERYONE was “living the lie”. He took his rock and roll look to Mexico, where he’d always been told was the place to learn how to wrestle, and although he was first given the spot as sort of a joke, it exploded into one of the biggest gimmicks in the country immediately. He says it was as big as Santos, and got over bigger and quicker than anyone in the history of Mexico and if anyone tries to disagree with that he’s got it all “documented on paper and video” (a claim he uses every time he says something that history doesn’t exactly view the same way he does). He also says that he changed the demographic of the crowd, from the “Mexican version of beer swilling rednecks” to teenage girls, which made him hated by the wrestlers and the male fans but got him lots of press (and presumably laid an awful lot). He says that all his early success was based on the look and the press (which was helped by him dating singers and actresses… and if you’ve ever watched Telemundo you know what a lucky fuck he was to be doing that), definitely not because of the wrestling. He points out that even today he takes bumps different because no one would show him the right way to do them since everyone hated him so much. He eventually stopped wrestling to learn martial arts, then went to Japan and when he returned he no longer sucked and began to get male fans because he was working stiff now. After that he quit for a couple of years to tour in a rock band. “I basically did it just to get drunk and high and get girls. I was an idiot for a long time.” He admits that he had too much success at a young age and that led to a lot of injuries and overdoses. He’d have to shoot up morphine to go into the ring, then take 20 halcyons to go to sleep, then do hits of speed before doing the next morning’s radio show. He says he was bottoming out when he met his wife who changed everything. He mentions Antonio Pena booking him onto a soap opera which he took one look at and said “oh HELL no”… then he giggles that Konnan wound up doing it. ID jumps upon the opportunity to lead him into the details on his famous heat with ODELAY! Hot damn, here we go. He says that K-Dog wished him dead for a decade. “I don’t think that the Devil hated God more than Konnan hated me”, he muses. He says it wasn’t so much two-way, that he more just avoided confronting him because it wasn’t as big a deal to him. They were two young guys who had gotten over huge, and Konnan felt it was competition. He says he was blocked politically everywhere in the world because of it, including not wrestling for 2 ½ years in WCW. He says they locked themselves in a room for a day with the intent to either kill each other or the situation, and now they are friends with no heat at all. “I wish I could tell you more. I don’t agree with some of the things he does… I mean I’m a weird guy, he’s a WEIRD MUTHA FUCKER… but I got nothing but love for him. We both march to the beat of our own drummers, they’re just different drummers”. They ask about his friends in the business. He says he doesn’t have any, then corrects himself and says “Norman Smiley”. That would’ve set me off on a tirade before the GATHERING, but now it’s all good. Art Barr is mentioned, and he states that he was a dear friend but that he couldn’t be around him near the end because it was so obvious what was going to happen. He was beeped by Norman Smiley who told him through tears what had happened. He was the one who went to the room to clean it out before the police showed up, and in doing so read his diary. He tells both the interviewer and anyone watching not to bother asking what was in there. He’s asked if Art’s death was a wake-up call for him. “I used more”, he answered. Guess they won’t be using that answer on any RADD commercials any time soon. He then goes off on the business and all the shit that goes on there and how drugs become the only way to block yourself off from it. “Then I met my wife, and I stopped the rock and roll… and I stopped hanging out with friends… and I stopped doing dru… well, it took me awhile then I stopped doing HARD drugs”. He replaced that with the drive for perfection, and now he’s a total perfectionist in the ring. He says you don’t realize how deep you are into a lifestyle until it’s too late. Man, all this talk of drugs… excuse me for a moment while I go live a lifestyle (not to be confused with MMN’s “lifestlye… no romantic evenings with Midouri Sours and Judy Garland movies here). He calls fame the most addictive drug in the world, but you become everything you were once against. He says what makes it worse is that wrestling is such an evil business. “Especially American indy old school wrestlers. They’re like from the Devil. They’re just all bad people.” I LOVE THIS GUY SO MUCH!! He says it’s hard to go from team sports, where you care about your buddy, to a business where there’s so much bullshit and backstabbing and paranoia because of massive drug use. “You don’t believe me? Look at how many people in the last 15 years have been murdered or overdosed. It’s a business that caters to… like everyone in here is like a criminal… (NOTE: He points out that it’s different in Japan. Although we can’t forget their biggest star ever was also murdered “gangland style”) “I’m not trying to make any friends here so you can all go fuck yourself. “It's a hard place to be around, especially if you want to be a family man you want to be sincere and you want to be proud of what you do. I mean, you go into the dressing rooms and its like you're in prison [in WCW]. You can't look at nobody in the eye and you can't say shit and you can't do shit and you never know who's going to [makes stabbing motion] get you. ”It's real evil. Man, I got fucked over so much in WCW. I was supposed to win a World Title, I was supposed to win the US title, I was supposed to have a certain push, I was supposed to have a certain angle... Man, the stuff that happened there, it's like "you guys are like children. This is a JOB. What the fuck is wrong with you people? You egomaniac insecure inbred lying fucking bastards... ”You want to be a good person, and… the power and the TV and the steroid use and roid rage and the lying and it's like "fuck man, I got into this because I was YOUR FAN. You were like God to me. And I go to shake your hand... and I've gotten very far in this business, it's been real good to me, and you won't even shake my hand? FUCK YOU!" You hate the thing you love, and that's the bad part of fame... because EVERYBODY is a piece of shit. It's sad, and it's terrible, and I became that, and it took me a lifetime to get out of it.” WOW! And one thing I can’t stress enough throughout the course of this, there’s no way that quotes and paraphrasing can capture the emotion coming out here. This a special tape. The ECW segment begins with them saying “they were trying to bring you into ECW” and he corrects them real quick. He says he kept the phone bill as a momento to show the $340 worth of phone messages he left to Paul E. telling him to call back. He says Paul called him exactly one time… and said “hold on, I’ll call you right back.” And he NEVER heard from him again. (I’m sure that’s true too. I’ve heard tapes of Paul E., and phone games are his specialty). He mentions getting fired from WCW and telling him he was going to show up the next day with ICP and Paul was so fired up he told him “I got you plane tickets and everything” and he was like “Don’t bullshit me, I’m just telling you this right now, you don’t have plane tickets yet” then he never called back. It’s pointed out other people may have a different story but he’s got it on paper. “ECW NEVER WANTED ME, and I tried like a bitch to get in there”. He says that sometimes the people who are supposed to be protecting them do the most damage, but says that everyone has feelings about Bob Barnett but he’s got Vamp’s back and so fuck everyone. He says that nothing played into the ECW story except that Paul didn’t want him. He quotes from Joey Styles saying “he didn’t want Vampiro because he was erratic”, which Vamp points out all creative people are (too true there, bro). He speculates that promoters have a problem with how much control he has over his character because it’s who he really is. “Vince Russo was trying to make me a vampire monster, and I was like ‘man… fuck, you don’t get it.” He says “I’m a fan of vampires, but that’s not what my character is. I don’t drink blood, are you mental?” He then claims to have invented the Undertaker gimmick, saying he told George Steele about coffins and Vampire gimmicks and they told him he was too young and green, and then two days later Undertaker debuts. Now, I love ya Vamp… but I saw Undertaker’s debut. And if it happened two days later you were about a month late in getting it to them judging by the how much went into the UT production. PS: That’s documented on tape too. The announcers try to get Vamp to tell it, but they wind up telling him the story of leaving Japan because one of the wrestler’s wives came onto him. From there he tells of meeting Sonny Ono and begging him to get him an audition with WCW since Konnan had him buried, and when he did Jimmy Hart marked out for him. They low-balled him but Bischoff gave him a figure he was happy with and he started the next night. He tells of DDP dissing him and reminding him he’d asked Vamp to let him come to the ring with him in his manager days before giving him a “fuck you”, and Sting vetoing his big debut. Then Konnan and Nash suggested sending him home so that’s what happened. We’re up to the story of the “legendary” Sting/Vamp feud that Russo came up with during the “New Blood” days. He says Sting basically demanded that Vamp be more of a heel because he was getting luv from the Mexican and Juggalo fans. He thinks it may have gone better if Sting had been able to have some say in the angle so his ego’d be pacified, but instead killed it completely. Vamp didn’t like it because it was loaded with “stupid shit” (in WCW? Psshaw). He also points out that having him cut promos was stupid, since the whole point of being alternative is that they don’t talk much. He said WCW didn’t think the redneck fans would get it. He talks about the difference between how foreign stars are treated in Japan and Mexico compared to here. Yeah, sadly there’s way too many US fans that can’t take to anyone if they “talk funny”. It compares to here where Sting and Booker T wouldn’t even shake his hand. He recalls the irony in thinking he’d watched all these guys wrestle in 50 seat studios while they had 25,000 people showing up. Hey, dude… that was the MUTHA SHIP! He then bashes WCW some more, with every word being so richly deserved. TIME FOR SOME CLOWN LUV!! Eric tells him it was his big shot and he laughed after all he’d seen, and gets introduced to ICP “and we were like brothers from the second we met”. He talks about their first night together, and WCW freaking out because the pop was so huge (any juggalo who saw it remembers it forver… it was in fucking IOWA and the place gave them a fucking Goldberg ovation). They turned down the crowd noise immediately and after that started making ICP fans take off their jerseys and leave their posters outside… “because there was no Hulk Hogan merchandise, or Goldberg, just ICP everywhere.” Yeah, they’re held down by the man at every opportunity. I can relate. He puts over ICP big time, calling them “bigger fans than you and I put together”, and JCW because it’s there for ICP fans and not to draw in outsiders. He then says “JCW draws more than WCW in it’s heyday.” HUH? Well, if you mean “heyday” as say 92 where they drew 80 people to the Omni maybe, but otherwise… Oh never mind… IT’S DOCUMENTED! Ha, that’s starting to really crack me up every time I hear it. He does point out how hot the tapes are compared to WWE ones, which isn’t QUITE as much of a stretch… until he calls Vol. 1 and 2 “the highest-selling tapes in the history of wrestling”, which may be true but only if you just count sales from the ICP website. He calls JCW a good time, and everyone is friends, and it doesn’t matter who’s got the belt and all fans just play along. In short, it’s what “wrestling should be”. Word up. ‘Til I’m dead in the ground, yo. From there it’s onto some of the things he was promised. He makes mention of Jeff Jarrett refusing to drop the US Title to him (“because I wasn’t on his level”. There’s that and a “fuck you” to anyone who feels sorry for him because that meany Austin didn’t want to do business with him). He also says they blocked the Misfits, and how them playing at a PPV was going to be “huge”. Now, I dig the Misfits, even their current incarnation… but MAN that sucked. Oh GOD Jerry Only was just… oh man hold on, I need to ram my head against a wall and repress that whole era again like I had until just now. … … K, back. Where was I? Oh yeah, so in conclusion that is why I think this last match between Bret and Shawn is going to be AMAZING. The WWF and its fans are going to miss the hell out of the Hit Man, but I’m sure they’ll be classy in the way they say “goodbye”. *shakes head* Uh oh… may have repressed a little too much there. Anyway, he also says ICP playing on there would’ve been huge. I can say with absolute honesty I would’ve rather seen either of those bands play than any musical act WCW ever had… and I’m STILL glad neither ever played on Nitro. He also talks about being in the arena a whole day, just to be told the match had been cut to six minutes, then getting it to the ring and being told to take it home a minute in because his opponent was “retarded” (didn’t realize Vamp had heat with Saturn… go fig). They ask if the WWF ever called him. He says “yeah, they called me specifically to say they had no interest in me” (ha, I remember them doing that to Balls Mahoney too). He says that is because of a few guys working there. When it’s pointed out Konnan doesn’t work there, he answers “other guys… no one likes in me in this business” other than fans and promoters who want a good show. He says he’s glad, since he’d never relinquish control of the Vampiro character and isn’t into the exploiting and violence against women the company does now. “I wouldn’t be body slammed into a pile of dogshit”, he says. “I have a daughter watching. I’m a wrestler; they’re a soap opera. I don’t need them and they don’t need me”. Asked what power the net has over wrestling Vamp answers “Wrestlers are the biggest marks for themselves there are” (boy I hear that a lot too). He says he’s no different, he’s on his laptop all the time reading what people say about him (hope so, dude… cause I’m damn sure sending you a copy of this). He says the people who spend all their time analyzing it “are fucked… GET A LIFE!” (hey, don’t look at me… I have a social life… er, again). He says a lot of net folk are nutcases (well, guilty as charged there) and he’s some folks who are suicidal over wrestling. Before Monday, I couldn’t have said I’d ever seen the same thing. Now to All Japan Wrestling, (once) home of the greatest wrestling on the planet. He says he was set to sign a long-term deal with him but his wife came down with cancer and he had to fly home. He had to quit because wrestling will never mean more than family, which is nothing but admirable. GREAT story of Kawada. He talks of watching the tapes and knowing what an incredibly stiff worker he was, so they go in and are trading blows and he comes off the ring with a shot that sends the legend right out of the ring, and when Kawada came back to kill him he looked like he was going to take it and instead sent the guy flying. “I started laughing my ass off… of course after that he got up and kicked my ass. You had to be there.” Same goes for this segment, listening to him relate it alone is worth the price of the tape. He says the Japanese press and the Internet ate him alive for leaving (calling him a liar and a chicken), which sucks because of all he’s been through in the business… from injuries to brain damage. ID says it sounds like he hears his critics louder than his fans. He responds by saying they just speak so much louder. He says he’s the guy that stays late and signs autographs for hours and talks to the fans and it hurts to hear him bashed because he needed to take care of things at home. “It wasn’t Goldberg… it wasn’t Shane Douglas, who’d cut a 45 minute promo about how he built wrestling and then scoot the fuck out the back door”. LINE OF THE TAPE: “I read ‘oh he doesn’t know how to wrestle and he sucks anyway and he’s overrated’, well FUCK YEAH I’m overrated. It’s not my fault. YOU GUYS put me on the pedestal. I’m just trying to have fun.” NOBODY else would say that. I’d say this is making him one of my favorite wrestlers but he was already pretty fucking high on that list anyway. He says because of his injuries he’s had to move away from the flip floppity shit and now he’s really into the strong-style wrestling. He says Meltzer claims it’s a lie he trained with Matt Fury but Matt sells tapes on his website of them sparring. He shaved his head because his wife said he’d be cuter with short hair, and how he could’ve made a mint losing it in a hair vs. hair match but the gesture means more to him. He said the hair represented living under a car and being an outsider forever and to lose it to put somebody over wouldn’t have felt right. He says the Mexicans were freaked when he showed up bald, and even tonight people thought he was some neo Nazi skinhead about to cut a promo about Mein Kampf. Apparently at the show this was taped after Bam Bam Bigelow had walked out. Vamp says it was the wrong thing to do but he’s always going to love Bam Bam because cause he saved kids lives in a fire. Still, it sucked because he basically declined to do a job to one of the biggest up and coming stars in Japan. He said he wrestled him instead and got knocked cold twice, which he doesn’t seem to mind so why should we? Then he laughs about kicking Hogan in the face and pissing him off. They ask if he’d like to use this time to vent on anyone in particular. He says Dave Meltzer, even though he bashes him, is super cool. He says all the wrestlers hate him but they’re the ones subscribing. “He’ll be the first one to say ‘look man, you were a fat lazy mother fucker out there today’, and I love him for that”. BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! He fucking SHREDS Rob Feinstein. Telling him he sucks dick and that his writer in Toronto sucks dick and they basically are down for sucking the dick. Of course it’s only “speculation” that he sucked off Victor Quinones, much like the story of Tommy Rich winning the NWA Title. Hahahaha!! That’s great. More about his wife, and how beautiful she is. He saw her in the crowd and told Norman Smiley he was going to marry her. She was apparently really young, because he had to wait until she was legal. They ask him about his biggest matches in Mexico, and he says that the biggest match ever was the one where Rob Feinstein sucked off Victor Quinones. The Highspots dude starts to worry he’s going to get sued. Vampiro tells him it’s Rob’s fault. “Don’t suck dick and pay your bills, bitch”. He then talks about Pantero Morgan’s match where he was faucet jobbing and making people vomit in the crowd. HA! Someone had to run out of the theater during “Jackass” to avoid doing the same thing Friday (PS: OMG SEE THAT FUCKING MOVIE!!) He says they wound up doing the hair match so many times he did it twice in one day, shaving it short in one city and bald in the other. He also talks about his title wins and beating Carlos Colon’s kid in WWC, and his match against “Stink” where he set him on fire. He puts over Muta and said how sad it was when he had to job to “Pootietood”. He then makes him swear he won’t edit out the Rob stuff. They talk about a match ID saw live, where he ripped the mask of Dr. Wagner (you see clips of it after the interview is over). It caused a massive fight backstage because he tried to yank it off without gimmicking it first. He blames it on a rib by his brother Silver King, rather than revenge for an old injury. The story involves lots of funny political Mexican stuff. YOU MUST BUY THIS TAPE!! Since ID has completely run out of questions, the cameraman has to get things going, asking about heat with Juventud and “stealing his move”. Vamp says “You mean the move Taka Michinoku invented ten years before either of us used it, that one?” He says Juvi was like a massive Vamp mark in Mexico and then when the get to WCW he raises a stink that the “Juvi Driver” couldn’t be used by anyone else. It turned into a real ugly situation and when Vamp said he didn’t care, Juvi then tried to make nice. “He’s gay too, by the way… well, bisexual”. Hey, I don’t back the verity of ANYTHING said on here, I just recap it. But would it REALLY surprise you? He’s asked if it’s true that lots of wrestlers were blackballed from Mexico because of WCW and confirms they were. He says he doesn’t think he is, he just doesn’t want to go back. He says he wasn’t really involved in the story and he should probably ask Konnan who was right in the center of things. Vamp says he’s finally waking up, and is ready to start really going off, and THE NIMROD FROM HIGHSPOTS TELLS HIM THEY NEED TO WRAP IT UP BECAUSE THEY’RE OUT OF TAPE!! Fuck, Vamp even says “stick another one in there and keep this mother fucker going” AND THE PENIS WANTS TO WRAP IT!! Do you think when Barbara Walters interviewed Fidel Castro he said “now I want to tell you about when Kennedy sucked Nixon’s dick” she said “I’m sorry, we’re running out of tape?” NO!! Oh MAN I’m so infuriated I’m removing all the highspots links and making you actually type in the words if you want to buy it. Dude, just because the Supreme Court said wrestling guys aren’t journalists THAT DOESN’T MEAN YOU DON’T TRY!! Unbelievable. Vamp closes by saying people may have gotten the wrong idea about him because he’s a quiet guy and doesn’t hang out with the other wrestlers so much but he loves this business and the fans and if people need to start attacking him and attack someone else or themselves or start believing in God and go to church. His last words are to thank those who love him and exclaim he expects a thank you from Rob Feinstein for helping him come out of the closet. BWAHAHAHAHA again. After that we get clips of some of his matches which I’m not going to recap. I tried to cover the basics of the tape without giving too much away, because I promise you there’s SO MUCH MORE, and just saying a sentence or two about a five-minute story he’s obviously really in to IN NO WAY conveys how entertaining it is to hear it from his mouth. Knowing that Vampiro will not be working with the WWE is all I have to hear to be convinced how important it is to have a legitimate alternative to it. May your best days be ahead of you, Vamp. Oh, OK… ONE LINK: . It’s VERY worth it. Barbwire Mike Did I mention he’s a juggalo too? WICKED CLOWNS, BITCH!! |