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 Vince McMahon wanting to change wrestling by taking WWE, then-WWF, national by buying up or trying to run territories out of business in the 1980s.
“I don’t know. It’s like, you know, I was once told Vince doesn’t like wrestling. And it’s kind of like, you know, like, kind of like wrestling is the bastard child of the entertainment industry. We’re the lowest thing on the totem pole. Right. And I can’t remember who said this to me, but he told Vince is always trying to make it something more acceptable. You know, like, you know, to elevate it somehow in class. Yes. I don’t know, but I disagree with that. Wrestling is wrestling. Give them what they want to see, you know, the story is not about what’s happening in the locker room or what happened out in the, in the parking lot. The story is about the match between the two guys. Yes. In the ring. And now, that changed a lot too. And this is where I understand, Vince, you know, the way you used to learn wrestling is you did it. You learned how to take the basic bumps, but you would start in the business on the opening match. But the other guy in the ring was someone who was seasoned and could lead you. And so you would work night after night slowly and, and, and methodically, you would start to pick it up and learn it too, you know, to the point where it became second nature. But that was taken away because the territories all died, you know, once they couldn’t, nobody could compete with Vince. And so, there were no more territories to go to after a while. And so where do you, where do you start? Do you know? And that’s, that’s the thing it’s kind of like, you know, I began in mid-south, got exposed to a lot of great talent, but then I went back to Amarillo, and then I went to Kansas City, I wrestled Pat O’Connor and Harley Race and, gosh. I got exposed to a lot of great talent.”
If you use any portion of the quotes from this article, please credit with an h/t to Wrestling Headlines for the transcription.