Ted Dibiase recently talked about a wide range of topics on his Everybody’s Got a Pod.
During it, the WWE Hall of Famer talked about his reaction to Ted Turner getting into wrestling by buying Jim Crockett Promotions and launching WCW:
“Well, here’s the way I look at it. And, of course, I get to grow up. Competition is always good for the talent, because if there’s only one show on the market and you don’t have any place else like the old territorial days , if you had a difference with the promoter or whatever, you could give your notice and go somewhere else. But now if you have an argument with the front office, you either do what you’re told or you’re fired. It’s like there’s only one place to go. But now with this new thing coming on it’s always good for the talent and it did end up being that way because now you got guys that are getting they’re signing contracts for X amount of dollars up until. That happened with the Turner Organization. I know my contract with Vince. Basically, it just basically said he owned me but where else was I going to go and where else was I going to make it, especially now that I saw it coming? Everybody with half a brain saw it coming. All the territories were going to go away because they couldn’t compete with him. Yep. And they did. They all slowly died out. And well, like I said the telltale thing for me was when Bill Watts sold out to Jim Crockett and Bill’s a sharp guy. You know, a lot of guys that worked for him didn’t like him, slave drivers, this and that and the other. I didn’t like it either. But, hey, you know, not everybody loves their boss. But the other thing I knew about Bill was that he knew the wrestling business just better than just about anybody because I would look at our shows and try to compare them to the other territorial shows. And they didn’t, they didn’t even compete. So anyway.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit Everybody’s Got a Pod with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.