Posted on 8/26/126 by Colin Vassallo
Former ECW star Little Gudio, who also wrestled as Nunzio in
WWE, sat down with Chris Van Vliet in New Jersey to discuss
which name he is better known as, how he was able to make it
in wrestling despite being undersized, slapping Brock Lesnar
in a backstage segment, his iconic Last Ride from The
Undertaker, winning the Cruiserweight Championship at a
house show, still wrestling today, briefly being a WWE
referee and more!
Why couldn’t you be Little Guido in WWE?
“Well, when I got there, Paul Heyman got me a job there. So
he called me one day. This is when I didn’t have a job
because when all the companies closed down within like a
month, we all lost our jobs. I was a smaller guy. I wasn’t a
top guy. I wasn’t RVD. So now I’m going against WCW closed,
you got all the top stars in WCW. You got all the top stars
in ECW, the Van Dams, the Dreamers, all the big guys,
Ravens. I kind of got pushed to the side. I was trying to
keep in contact with Paul and stuff, but he was on the verge
of getting his job. He was starting with WWE, so I kind of
got put on the side. They were doing this whole thing, the
invasion angle, and I was just a smaller guy. So once
everything faded out and they pushed people aside, I got a
call one day from Paul Heyman. So I was calling him for a
while. Let me backtrack. I was calling him for a while, and
finally nothing was working. So I just let it go. I didn’t
want to bother him anymore, a lot going on. One day, me and
my wife were sitting in a restaurant, and my phone rings,
and I look at it, and it says Paul E. So I haven’t talked to
him in a couple of years. So I answer the phone. He goes,
‘Congratulations!’ I’m like, hey, Paul, what’s up? He goes,
‘Congratulations.’ I said, ‘What are you talking about?’ He
goes, ‘I told you I’d get you a job.’ Okay? He goes, ‘John
Laurinaitis will be calling you in a couple of weeks. Answer
your phone.’ Okay, and he hung up.”
So why weren’t you Little Guido in WWE?
“Right. Well, from when I talked to Paul, he was talking to
how I got it. Something like he was talking to Vince. He’s
like, ‘Oh, I got this guy Nunzio, small guy. He’s gonna be a
limousine driver.’ He was saying something, but he came up
with the Nunzio thing. So I never questioned it. I was just
happy I was getting a phone call. So where Paul got the
Nunzio thing, I don’t want to sit here and say it. I really
don’t know. I don’t know why he didn’t keep it, Little
Guido, because I think Paul owned ECW, so it wasn’t like a
trademark thing.”
What’s your favorite moment from your time in WWE?
“I would say WrestleMania 20. I mean, I was able to perform
in WrestleMania 20. My father used to, so going back a
little bit when I was 10, 11, 12 years old, my dad, at the
time, they used to do the Garden every month. It used to be
televised every other month, so it was a house show, a
televised house show. In the beginning, my dad used to take
me to all the non-televised ones because we used to have MSG
channels, so I could watch those from home. So my father was
taking me to Madison Square Garden all the time, and he
brought me to the first WrestleMania, which I know Tommy
Dreamer was there. So my father brought me to WrestleMania
One, and then who ever knew I would perform 20 years later.
Now I wrestled in the Garden a bunch of times before
WrestleMania 20 because I was with WWE already and we did
shows there, TVs and stuff. But just because it’s
WrestleMania, so I would say that was like the biggest
highlight. And then my mother and father came, of course, my
mother never used to come when my father used to bring me
when I was a kid. But that was a big thing.”
Did you know how long Taker was going to have you up that
last ride?
“No, no, no. I didn’t know how long, but I did take the last
ride from him a couple times already on house shows and
stuff like that. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I never
did that on a house show. I just did it. It just happened. I
mean, things that just happen end up being great. When you
try to push it on the people and make it happen, sometimes
it doesn’t work.”
Goldberg spears you in half at the Royal Rumble! It might be
one of Goldberg’s best spears ever.
“He did mention that in an interview he was doing. Somebody
asked him about some of the best spears, he mentioned me in
it. I knew it was coming, I didn’t know how he was going to
hit me because I never took it before, so one thing I knew I
didn’t want to keep my feet planted. As he’s coming, I
wanted to kind of jump a little bit to get off my feet so he
could take me into the air compared to me having my feet
planted and just going back, so I didn’t know how to take
it; I just took it. That was it. It was stiff, but I’d
rather it be stiff than look bad.”
You slapped Brock Lesnar too! How did that all come
together?
“We were doing something with The Big Show and stuff, and at
that time, I think they had the FBI going after everybody
because we were a little group. Coming back to what I’m
saying. Good thing I was in that group because it made me do
all these different scenarios that if I was in the
cruiserweight division, I would never have been able to do.
We were doing some shows with him. I forgot exactly how it
came about, but that promo came up, and I don’t know what it
really led to. I was poking him, and they said, ‘Slap him in
the back of the head.’ I’m not slapping the back of the
head. I slapped him in his back. That’s what made the loud
noise. I didn’t slap him in the head, and I knew Brock, he
was very good to me. But because the writer was telling me
to do it. I said, no, I’m not slapping him in the back of
the head. So I went for the back and I hit him hard, and it
made a huge noise, and he was okay with it. That’s when we
locked him in. Another story, if you watch it, when Chuck
drove the high-low, he f*cking broke the wall. Vince had to
pay for that because Chuck don’t know how to drive a high-
low. So we were trying to lock him in, and he drove through
the wall. He broke that wall, which Vince McMahon
unfortunately had to pay for.”
So you’re still wrestling to this day?
“I am. I do some independent shows and stuff like that. It’s
a lot harder. I mean, I’m not old at all. I’m 54, I don’t
act like I’m old because anybody in their 50s, it’s not old
anymore. But for wrestling, you got to be careful. It’s not
my full-time gig, so I do some part-time stuff. I have other
stuff going on, so that’s what I’m doing.”