On a recent edition of his “Everybody’s Got A Pod” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase Sr. spoke about WWE shifting towards the new generation following the departure of Hulk Hogan in 1994.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On WWE rebounding after Hulk Hogan leaving WWE for WCW in 1994: “I’ll say it now, and I said it back then. I said, ‘Don’t ever think that you are going to pull one on Vince McMahon.’ Vince McMahon is resilient. You know, I would say this. What Vince really knows about wrestling in terms of finishes and all that kind of stuff and what have you — that’s not Vince. He’s not really a wrestler. What he is is an extremely good marketer for his product. And if he’s got to take a turn and go in another direction to do that, he’ll do it. And he did it.”
On whether he felt wrestling had already peaked: “You know, I’m not really sure. I didn’t think that wrestling would ever go away again. I don’t care what you are, anything that’s in television programming has its ups and its downs and it’s in-betweens. And I definitely think that Hulk Hogan leaving the WWE and going to Turner was definitely, I think a shocker for everybody. And I mean, it’s kind of like the Million Dollar Man says, everybody’s got a prize.”
On Paul Bearer: “Oh, he’s a great guy. Great individual, and he was very good at what he did. And what a lot of people don’t know is that, legitimately, he was a mortician. He had really been a mortician so it was like, none of that graveyard stuff fooled him…. yeah, he was a very good guy.”
