Long-time actor turned independent wrestler David Arquette recently spoke with Chris Van Vilet to promote his new wrestling documentary “You Cannot Kill David Arquette,” and discuss a multitude of topics including his infamous WCW championship reign. Highlights are below.
Reiterates that he was vocal about NOT winning the WCW championship:
“Yea, but I also could have said no. I didn’t really know how much I could have said no. I’m an actor so people tell me here’s your role. This is what you read. This is where you stand. Then we bring our little piece into it and say well, what if, blah blah blah. I could have said no, but then I wouldn’t have been able to be a part of it. The equivalent of a Hollywood script is you read the script and if you say, ‘yeah, I don’t think my character would do this.’ That’s not really how it works. Sometimes if you say that and you shut the set down for an hour debating that and then you find little ways of doing it anyway or not doing certain things. There’s little tricks to it. In this case, I did say it was a terrible idea. We just never knew it was going to be taken as bad as it was. We thought people would be like, hahah, this is fun and ridiculous. But discrediting the belt and the legacy and the fact it was held by all these different people and that it was me, an actor from Hollywood who wasn’t perceived as not being tough at all, wasn’t good.”
How the title win was used to promote the Ready to Rumble movie:
“I thought it would be more of a comedy spot, but obviously when it comes to something as important as the belt, I really just wanted to be part of the guys. It was the reason why I did the movie in the first place.”
On why he started wrestling regularly:
“Back then people were mad at me. That’s where it started where I wanted to prove myself. Then I would go through years of watching wrestling and getting mad about everything. I would go to an event and have someone be rude. I would say I’m never watching wrestling again. Then I would tune back in. When I had my stents put in my heart, I came out of the hospital and I told my wife I had been thinking of wrestling. She was like, what? I love this and I just want to prove myself. It was one of these major things I was thinking about as I was going into surgery and coming out of it. I was thinking about my family, my highlights and some of the bad things that have happened in my life. I was thinking I wish the wrestling thing had been different. That told me there is something there and something I need to resolve. I knew I had to lose weight so if I’m going to lose weight, let me do it while training to be a wrestler.”
Full interview can be found below. (H/T and transcribed by Wrestling News)