Posted on 6/11/126 by Colin Vassallo
Former WWE star Heidenreich sat down with Chris Van Vliet in
New Orleans, Louisiana to discuss how the viral photo of him
working at Walmart made this interview happen, playing
professional football before signing with WWE, how poetry
became part of his character, being managed by Paul Heyman,
his infamous Michael Cole segment, feuding with The
Undertaker, winning the Tag Team Championships with Road
Warrior Animal as part of the Legion Of Doom, why he was
released from WWE, being in the same NFL training camp as
Goldberg, and much more!
20 years later, how do you feel about this Michael Cole
segment?
“It’ll always be disturbing, there’s no doubt about it. I
mean, it was brought to me, I don’t remember particulars,
but I do remember thinking, man, this is really off the
wall. When you’re training to do vignettes and practicing in
Louisville, you don’t practice for a vignette like that.”
What was the pitch for this segment?
“Well, I mean, they said I was gonna abduct him, bring him
to the back, and then put him in a room. Then I think it was
like you’re gonna act like you were like watching him, and
you’re going one place with it. It’s like you’re going like
it, and then you say, I’m gonna give you a poem. But it
sounds like I’m gonna give him something other than a poem.
I don’t know if it’s innuendos and stuff when you say it,
‘I’ve been watching you, I know what you want, and I’m gonna
give it to you.’ But I look back and all the things that
have been said about all these years, it’s kind of made me
infamous, more than famous. But it’s disturbing still, and
it’s weird.”
I understand there’s some innuendo there, but it looks plain
as day what that is supposed to be:
“Yeah, for sure, man. But I mean, when they bring it to you,
I’m not gonna say no. Like when they said you’re gonna be
with Legion of Doom, I’m like, all right. Whatever they
bring to you, that’s where I was. If they told me to do a
backstage thing or do this, and not killing somebody or
something, where you have to go to jail, I would do it. I’m
gonna do it the best I can.”
How did Michael Cole feel about that segment?
“I guess he was kind of like, this is weird, and joking
around. But he wasn’t like I didn’t like it, off-put or not
wanting to do it. I mean, I could tell he was down for
whatever. It’s like we’re working together, right? It’s a
scene, and we’re building a story. He was whimpering. I
mean, even though it was disturbing and weird and bizarre, I
would have never come up with that on my own. I think it
helped. That thing made me more memorable. People will never
forget that.”
Do you have any regrets about that segment?
“No. I think I did the best performance, I guess. I liked it
the way it ended. He was about to leave, I said, ‘You’re
going to thank me? It was a poem by Heidenreich.’ I thought
it was cool. I ended up calling them disaster pieces after a
while, because I figured they’re so bad instead of
masterpieces, but yeah, I like the character Heidenreich.
Always in my mind, I thought I would go back. I had an idea
to come back. I didn’t even think about telling you this. I
never went back, but I wanted to. I just probably didn’t
know how to approach it to do it. If I would have went back,
could I say the idea I always thought about?”
Of course:
“I thought they would show from my perspective, somebody
watching Vince, almost stalking him, and whatnot, but never
show it’s me. Eventually, I abduct him from the show. I take
him and I put him in a trunk, and I bring him to a building,
and they still don’t know. He’s missing, and then eventually
I have him chained in a building with a light or something,
low light. Then I walk up, and you see the red gloves, and
then I read him a poem. My thing is, you cut me, you took my
life from me, you took my world. That was my world, and I
was gonna abduct him and make him pay, and I guess try to
make him re-sign me or something, but it was gonna be kind
of outside, not just getting back to wrestling, being like
he robbed me of everything. Because it was a big thing.”
You previously mentioned Legion of Doom. How do you get
lined up with Animal and you become a member of Legion of
Doom?
“Well, I remember that they came and told me about it, and
then we started that progression of me doing the hair, and
then I think the spikes or the face paint, I’m not sure how
it went on, but I was progressing with Animal. But my first
paint job was the butterfly effect, which Animal came up
with, which I don’t think they like too much. But the skull
thing was actually given to me by Triple H. He got me and
asked me to come into the back room. So I go into this
locker room and he sits there, it’s bizarre. He’s putting
that skull on my face like real time.”
Triple H was painting you?
“It was his idea. But he puts it on me, and he tells me to
look at it, it’s cool, that skull face. But then we had to
go ask the Undertaker, because he had those things on his
tights at the time, or his pants, that was a skull-type
deal, and he approved it. He said it’s okay, I like it. I
went with that, which I thought that paint job was way
better. I got the spikes. But that was surreal, because in
college, we were LOD fans, or marks. I guess it’s okay to
say mark, I don’t mean anything bad by it. But I had photos
of me and the guy I played college ball with at Mardi Gras,
we made up our homemade LOD spikes and painted our faces,
and it was Mardi Gras day. We went out dressed up like that,
and I had pictures, so I brought one to Animal, this is no
bullsh*t, man. We were LOD, we wanted to be LOD. But now I’m
in LOD, so that was huge.”
How does poetry become the gimmick for Heidenreich?
“All right, poetry. I’ve been writing since college. An
English teacher let me write a story about Jim Morrison’s
poetry, and I got a high grade with it, and that opened my
door. I didn’t think I was good at writing, but I started
writing then. I’ve been writing poems and songs and other
stuff. I don’t know what it is, but I have notebooks full of
crazy stuff, and I think I’m pretty sure I was on a plane
flying with Paul [Heyman], who was sitting behind me. I was
writing a poem. I don’t know if I wrote it to him or
something. I just wrote it. I’m like, I’m gonna slip this
back here, like your note in school or something. He read
it. He’s like, ‘You write poetry?’ I said, yeah man, all the
time. I think I saw the wheels turning in his head. I owe
him a lot. I’m pretty sure he said, hey this guy writes
poems, something off the wall and bizarre, and they liked
them. When I write them normally, I’d ask Vince, he was
involved with me a lot. I’m like, do you want to hear it? He
goes, ‘I know it’s gonna be good.’ I’m like, that’s cool,
man. It made me feel good.”