Turning Dreams Into Reality
Watching Georgia Championship Wrestling at the age of seven with his father in Savannah, a future star of the ’80s and ’90s was at the genesis of learning his future trade, idolising the likes of Bobo Brazil, Ric Flair and Ricky Steamboat. Growing up playing football, basketball and baseball, and obtaining a degree in business management – Scott Antol AKA Scotty Riggs was ultimately lured into a career as a professional wrestler.
The Dallas Cowboys fan was trained by Ted ‘The Nightmare’ Allen in 1992 – a man who also coached Arn Anderson, Tracey Smothers and Big Bossman – for around 3-4 months. He then hooked up with South Atlantic Pro, promoted by Greg Price. This is where he met and struck up an immediate friendship with Rob Van Dam and began to meet different promoters.
“I learned in the ring, on the road,” he told me in a 2007 episode of the PWB Podcast, detailing his career across an absorbing 90-minute shoot interview.
“I kept learning every week, on the road. I spent Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday working independents, and got six months experience under my belt.”
Ole Anderson was booking WCW at the time and got introduced to Antol by referee Randy Anderson. A potential door had been opened, whilst he gained more experience in USWA under Jerry Lawler, as well as Florida, Virginia, Kentucky and some of the Northeast.
He would drive from Atlanta to New Jersey and work 3-4 shows before driving back with the legendary Manny Fernandez, learning untold riches by picking his brains about character development. As well as that, he was also driving with Jake ‘The Snake’ and other future stars of the sport.
He worked several shows for WCW until in 1994, on advice from Arn Anderson who said Eric Bischoff was “pigeon-holing” Riggs, he left and spent January and February of 1997 touring New Japan Pro Wrestling.
“You’re not going to break through the ceiling unless you leave here and let people see you in a different light,” Anderson told him. But he thankfully knew the door was open for a return. Life was a learning experience for the young upstart.
“Even when I got in WCW with Marcus Bagwell, the guys that we travelled with for almost four years was Sting and Lex Luger,” Riggs explained. “I was very, very blessed to be put with guys who knew the sport and the ins and outs of the business aspect of it, and worked with the top guys in the sport itself.”
He improved by asking questions and listening to the answers given. Billy Jack Haynes critiqued lots of his matches in Memphis. A few years after his debut, having worked with Smoky Mountain Wrestling, some NWA television tapings, dark matches in WCW and the indies, things were about to change.
“When I had my chance to go to WCW, I was ready. In one sense, I was polished, but still had a lot to learn.”
“Here I was, a guy from Savannah, Georgia who, as an 8-year-old, loved wrestling and then turned it into a life. It’s paid off very well for me.”
The Big Leagues
He signed a deal with World Championship Wrestling in 1995 – ditching his early in-ring moniker of Scott Studd to become Scotty Riggs – and quickly captured the world tag-team titles in September with his partner, Marcus Bagwell. The American Males defeated Harlem Heat but dropped the straps back to Booker T and Stevie Ray the following month.
“The minute we got in the ring, we knew what each other was thinking,” he said, in reference to his and Marcus’ in-ring chemistry. “It was one of the most insane things you’ve ever seen, from match one.”
“We just clicked,” Riggs continued. “Jimmy Hart saw it. Kevin Sullivan saw it, and everyone on the booking committee was like ‘oh my gosh.’ This team has got gold on it.”
“The problem was, Anderson, Sullivan, Hart, they were looking at the American Males as The Fantastics, The Rock ‘N’ Roll Express, teams from the ’80s that were purebred, white babyface teams from corporate America, which me and Marcus weren’t.”
It didn’t fit their personality or the way wrestling and society was changing. They didn’t like the squeaky-clean image that WCW wanted them to portray.
“The chemistry was great. Working with Marcus was great, but the American Males gimmick and how they did it sucked.” The women cheered for them and the men booed them.
Scotty wanted them to be a heel duo but the WCW tag division didn’t have too many babyface tandems at the time, thus their request wasn’t green-lit by the office. Marcus turned heel becoming Buff Bagwell in the manner Scotty wished the team had done.
“I loved Marcus to death like a brother, but Buff was an ass. I don’t really appreciate Buff a whole lot. There are two different personalities to Marcus.”
Riggs’ next stage of his WCW run included a feud with Raven that eventually led to him joining The Flock in 1997.
“I loved working with Raven.”
However, a drop toe hold administered by Raven to Riggs on a steel chair in a match of theirs resulted in a gruesome eye injury. Instead of planting his face on the flat of the steel, it hit the edge.
“The injury with the eye was real. No matter what every internet person said, every ragsheet and every smart mark ever said, it was one of those things where my eye actually got bruised.”
“I had blurred vision in it and the bright lights of TV gave me headaches, and I had to wear the patch,” he revealed. “They also gave me an opaque contact lens to cover it, so I was actually legally blind in that eye for about a year, year-and-a-half when I wore the eye patch.”
“The fans accepted me a lot more in that persona as just Riggs in The Flock. I actually got hotter chicks and had more fun on the road,” he joked.
He hit it off with Perry Saturn over time and Raven used his pull to help Riggs politically backstage.
“We had more steam than the NWO at one point, when we were fighting Benoit. We’d sit at ringside and fans would curse at us all show long. They’d throw stuff at us and we actually had to fight our way out of the Gerogia Dome when Hogan wrestled Goldberg. Me and Saturn wrestled Benoit and McMichael on that one, and we won through Raven cheating.”
“We actually had to fight our way out of that crowd. We had to push guys away and throw punches at people, just trying to protect ourselves because they wanted to jump on us and the cops were barely helping us.”
They weren’t the cool bad guys, just regular bad guys who the fans really wanted to see lose: essentially old school heels. This was heat Jim Cornette would have been proud of.
Riggs believed the NWO started to harbour jealousy at the heat The Flock were attaining. They were subsequently squashed and the faction was disbanded in 1998. Riggs stated that the NWO believed The Flock “stole their thunder”.
“The business side started rearing its head at that time.”
Kevin Nash, who possessed considerable clout in the locker room and in creative meetings, said he wanted Riggs to go back to being a pretty boy.
Nash informed Riggs: “We want you to go back to being a pretty boy and using a mirror. You’re too good looking of a guy. We need you to be the good looking guy again.”
“This sucks,” was Riggs’ response. But he did the best he could with it. The fans didn’t buy his narcissism gimmick as his contract neared expiration in 1999. JJ Dillon told him he would get a raise as part of a two-year deal (with a third year being an option), but the contract offer was eventually pulled.
Terry Taylor wanted Riggs to lose to a locally known wrestler in Fort Myers off-TV in preparation for Scott Hall to face him at a later date. Riggs didn’t want to do the job, as everyone knew Hall wasn’t going to lose to the local wrestler, so sacrificing Riggs seemed strange to him.
“I told him he can kiss his own ass, if he can reach it,” he remarked. “I told him to get out of my face and don’t even play that game with me. You’re not going to manipulate me.”
A New Chapter
He was released in late-1999 and ventured to Extreme Championship Wrestling, now wrestling as Scotty Anton, in search of a new adventure with a friendlier team behind the scenes. It was a promotion happy to entrust him with more freedom to be himself.
“When I went to ECW, they all worked together as a team.”
The ECW family knew that if the company was successful, the wrestlers would be successful. They were all pulling in the right direction. The passion and creativity in ECW was a breath of fresh air. They all wanted to be there and ply their craft, unlike in WCW.
“I wish I could’ve gone there earlier in my career because it would’ve helped me develop more of a persona, more of who I was.”
“Raven’s been Raven since the early ’90s and he hasn’t really changed,” he told me. “He’s changed his look but he’s always been Raven. Rob Van Dam’s been the same for 10-12 years (20-22 nowadays). Scotty Riggs didn’t become Scotty Riggs until around the time I was in ECW, and working for Dusty Rhodes in TCW (Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling).”
His close relationship with ECW stalwart Rob Van Dam resulted in Paul Heyman booking a feud for Anton versus the face of ECW by the summer of 2000. Riggs joined ECW with a torn tricep and spent his early days outside the ropes until he turned on RVD and cost him his first loss in two years at Hardcore Heaven 2000, pushing him off the turnbuckle onto the same leg he’d broken previously. RVD apparently wanted it to be Riggs and Jerry Lynn responsible for that loss.
They wrestled each other at the Heatwave pay-per-view in a quality near 20-minute clash. Their feud had been fun, but it came with a physical price.
“The first time he hit me with a Van Terminator was in Kansas City, and he broke my nose. He hit the chair and the top of the chair came crashing down right into my face and broke my nose in two places.”
“I’ve had my nose broken three times in wrestling, and twice was by Rob. Once was in ’93 from a kick he hit me right in the face with, splatted my nose. Then once was with the Van Terminator. So, you’ve got to like when your real best friend breaks your nose two out of three times.”
He finished up with ECW by the end of 2000 and subsequently worked for Dusty Rhodes’ TCW where he traded three heavyweight title reigns with Barry Windham and Dustin Rhodes.
He drifted away from the sport by 2003, but did wrestle a run for AWA World-1 South in 2007 as well as an ECW reunion show in 2009.
Redemption
Over a decade later, former tag partner and good friend, Bagwell invited him to DDP’s accountability crib when he found out Scotty had been living in his car following the foreclosure of his house. It took some persuasion, but he eventually accepted the offer.
He’d suffered physically and mentally in the preceding years and was in a dark place – even contemplating suicide. DDP and his Yoga programme transformed Scotty’s body and a connection of DDP’s offered him a new set of teeth to help Scotty regain his smile.
Swathes of positivity and belief had been regained, so much in fact, that a stunning return to the ring in a new version of Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling happened in February of 2024. He participated in an all-star eight-man tag match and enjoyed every minute of it.