Posted on 10/06/126 by Colin Vassallo
Scott Garland, better known to fans as Scotty 2 Hotty, sat
down with Chris Van Vliet in Orlando, Florida to discuss The
Attitude Era, how he was paired with Brian Christopher,
Rikishi joining Too Cool, how The Worm became his finisher,
the iconic Royal Rumble dance spot, still wrestling now and
teaming with his son Keegan, wanting to live to be 100 years
old, and more!
You’re still wrestling!
“I love it. Yeah, it’s crazy. I tell this story a lot. I
remember being in Europe somewhere on a tour bus. The WWE
tours. You go from town to town on a tour bus, and it’s like
3 o’clock in the morning. I’m standing at the front of the
bus with Tim White, and I remember telling him then. I was
probably in my mid-20s. I remember saying I’m going to be
done doing this when I’m 30. Now I just turned 53. I started
when I was 15, I love it. It’s never been about the money
for me. It’s just doing something I’m passionate about and
doing something that I love, and I get to do it, and I feel
like I can still go, and I do it at a respectable level. I
always said when I have to start wearing a shirt to the ring
and not taking it off, that’s when I’m going to stop. I
don’t even know if that’s true anymore because I love it so
much. But yeah, it’s awesome.”
It’s so cool seeing your son Keegan in the ring. Was this
something he always wanted to do?
“No, not really. I mean, of course, he grew up around it. He
was born in ’04, so I was still with WWE at the time. He
grew up around WWE the first few years of his life, and then
I went out on the independents for 9 or 10 years, and then
back to WWE as coach now with AEW. Butso he’s been a part of
it, and he’s grown up, and he never really had interest in
doing it, and I never wanted to pressure him to do it. I’m
not one of those guys [where I think] ‘I don’t want my kids
doing it.’ It’s been so good to me. I’ve done so many cool
things because of wrestling. I want my kids to be happy.
I’ve never been, ‘Oh, they gotta go for a job with money.
They gotta concentrate on money.’ Of course, you want to be
financially secure, but I want them to be happy with
whatever they do in life. I wanted him to ask me about doing
it. One day we were in the gym, and he started talking about
it on a treadmill. I remember it was the first time he said
it. Then Ace Steel ended up opening up his school, the
foundation in Orlando. I worked with Ace at that Performance
Center when I was there as a coach, and I knew what a good
coach he was. I didn’t want to train him myself. I wanted
him to go through it from the ground up and do the training.
I never did that. I was a backyard wrestler basically before
there was a word for backyard wrestling. I was self-taught
in my mom’s garage. We had literally 18 mattresses in this
garage, [actually] 20 because we had a mattress in each
corner, and then we had three-by-three rows of three by 2
high, with a sheet of plywood in between to stabilize a
little bit. And my buddies and I kind of self-taught
ourselves.”
Why was Rikishi added to Too Cool?
“I don’t know. I remember Michael Hayes coming up to us,
because the last thing he had done on WWE television was the
Sultan, and then he had been sent down to Memphis and he was
wrestling there, and I think he was kind of doing the
Rikishi gimmick a little bit there. I might be wrong, but I
know they said he was going to come out and save us. He’s
got this thong on, and I’m like, this doesn’t make any
sense. He doesn’t fit what Brian and I have been doing. I
go, I don’t see this working. But that first night, man,
it’s one of those things you can’t even describe it, or feel
like you can come up with and go I know this is going to
work. We did the dance, I always say it was magic.”
You had a magical moment at the Royal Rumble 2000, where
it’s Rikishi, it’s Brian Christopher in the ring, and then
your music hits. So you got all three members of Too Cool,
and then the music hits, and it’s just what a great moment.
“Again, that was a defining moment, and what made our
career.”
The crowd knew exactly what was going to happen.
“Yeah, it was the right timing. I think if it was probably
two weeks earlier, it wouldn’t have got that reaction. But
we just had those four or five weeks, whatever it was, to
condition the audience to what was coming, and they knew
when it was only the three of us, they knew what was coming.
It was New York City, where either they love you or they
hate you. I’ve been on both sides of that, where I was the
new guy, and I’m the white meat babyface trying to get over
in New York when I first started, and going out there, and
they boo you out of the building as a babyface to the other
side where they love you. If you can get New York to love
you, you can get anybody to love you.”
Do you know how much longer you want to wrestle for?
“I told you I’m going to live to 100, but just as long as I
can present in a professional manner, and look the part and
feel the part, I will continue.”
What about a match in AEW?
“So I’ve done a couple of dark matches. I’m not against
wrestling; I just want it to be the right thing. I’m very, I
don’t know if protective’s the right word, but I feel like
what I’ve done up to this point. I don’t want to sound like
I think I’m this top guy or this mega star, but I feel like
what I do have, what I’ve created in the time that I’ve been
doing it, is something special. I don’t want to water that
down. I want it to mean something. I almost feel like I’d be
best used in a nostalgia role, but in a not used all the
time [role]. A mystery opponent, or in the gauntlet battle
royal, or just one-offs here and there. I think that’s where
I would best be suited. The talent at AEW is so good, and
their style is so insane and awesome. I don’t know how I
would fit in.”