Posted on 7/08/125 by Colin Vassallo
Steve Blackman sat down with Chris Van Vliet in Harrisburg,
PA to discuss being known as one of the toughest wrestlers
in the locker room, becoming seriously ill and coming very
close to dying before he signed with WWE, his match with
Shane McMahon at SummerSlam 2000 and McMahon’s fall, showing
his comedic side with Al Snow as part of Head Cheese, the
real story behind his fight with JBL at an airport in St.
Louis, being a part of the infamous Brawl For All
tournament, what he is doing now, whether a WWE return could
be possible and more!
On the SummerSlam 2000 match with Shane McMahon:
“That was pretty much the plan. I don’t remember much being
discussed differently than what we did. Most people don’t
realize, it was rare that I’d go out there and talk about
the match and stuff in the ring before we go out and do an
appearance. I didn’t really walk through much with people.
That was a rare one when we went out there to go up to the
TitanTron, we actually climbed up and that’s high. And the
worst thing was, there was nothing on the floor from the
TitanTron until you’re seven feet, eight feet away. Then
there was a mat the size of a bed way out here. And I’m
like, ‘He’s going to land on that backwards from up there?
What if he falls straight down?’ This one guy, he’s one of
the stunt coordinators, goes, ‘If he just steps back and
falls this way, he’ll land out there.’ I’m like, You’re
kidding me, right? I said, well that’s insane to me. So they
said, ‘Okay, we’ll do it.’ He didn’t drop, but he said,
Okay, he’ll do that. And I said, All right.
So we get up there the next day, I hit him with my stick,
and he drops. Well, I’m supposed to drop an elbow on him,
and I’m like, I have two feet to land there. How am I going
to drop an elbow on this guy from 50 or 60 feet, whatever we
were. I shimmy down, I might have still been 25 feet up. So
I shimmy down halfway and jump from there and landed. But
what happened is, overnight, somebody encased the mat with
three-quarter-inch plywood around it. So if you have a limb
sticking out, it’s just going to snap off. So I had to land
right there, drop an elbow on him and try not to completely
pancake him. So I landed there, hit him with the elbow and
pulled it off. But during the match, our runners would grab
props anywhere, and sometimes they were real street signs.
I’d be like, ‘Guys, where are you grabbing this stuff? This
is a real street sign.’ [They said] ‘Well, don’t ask Steve.’
So he gets out there, he hit me with a street sign one time.
If you watch that match, it felt like it ripped the nose off
my face. That metal thing just went peeling right down my
face. I thought, Holy hell. Then Test and Albert interfered,
you know, we had a good match. Everybody was getting beat on
in that one.”
On who pitched the Shane fall:
“Well, it had to be him. I don’t think it was his dad. It
had to be Shane. And never forget we were out there going
over it and talking about it. I’m like, I’ll crack him,
crack him, crack him. But the worst part was that I was so
sweaty from the match for 15 minutes, trying to hold on to
those bars. I was just drenched in sweat. I kept worrying
about slipping and dropping, so that’s why I stopped where I
did, held the bar and then cracked him because I just kept
sweating so bad. We were out there, I’ll never forget, Vince
is like, ‘You need to get that stick out of the way. If you
crack him and your stick’s here, and he drops, he’s going to
[fall differently].’ I said, You know what, you’re right. So
it’s good you thought of that. I had to crack him and make
sure I got the stick out of the way so he didn’t land on it
and flip or something like that. It hits me, because you
think of crazy little things like that that you wouldn’t
most of the time.”
On being in pain throughout his WWE career:
“Yes. I think it would be like Monday I’d wrestle and get a
migraine, and I don’t mean a little headache where, oh, I
have a headache. No, I mean feels like you’re being stabbed
in your head. Throw up, lay down, throw up, lay down, go to
bed. The next day, sleep all day, wrestle the next day, the
migraine again, go through that next day resting. So it’d be
like every other day I’d have a migraine. I’m not being
funny, but you can’t imagine what it’s like getting
forearmed or body slammed when you have a migraine, you feel
like a grenade went off in your head. I wrestled Kane one
night in a hardcore match. I landed on the back of my head
on the floor. My foot got caught. I jumped off the rail,
kicked him, my shoe hit him on the chest, and I landed on my
back. The migraine kicked in in one second, just shot up
through my spine. Every time he hit me, I felt like a
grenade was going off, and that was the beginning of the
match. We had 15 minutes more to go, and I’m like, Oh my
God. I’m just fighting through it, fighting through it. I’d
sit out in the hall and just squeeze my head. And then a
night in a hotel, I’d literally lie on my side. Sometimes
I’d have a baseball in my bag. I’d put a baseball under my
back, try to lay on it. I’d find a spot where I could pinch
off the nerve going to my head. So finally, after about an
hour, I could fall asleep, and then sleep the whole night
and the next day I would just be tired from the pain, but
I’d wrestle again, and that’s what I went through for
years.”
“I’m going to say, 80% of my run. It was brutal. I’m like,
Man, if I had that stuff done before I went back, it
wouldn’t have got much worse in there. But if I’d had that
done and then gone back, I just could’ve done a lot more.
There were nights where I wanted to do more crazy stuff, and
I just couldn’t. My head hurt too bad. So I just do what I
could to get by. But the hardcore stuff worked out great for
me, because I could just showcase weapons and speed and
things like that. It sounds funny, but I was getting cracked
as much as them, but it was still easier on my neck.”
On Head Cheese:
“I don’t know how that came about, but it got over. The
vignettes were comical. People popped like crazy on them.
It’s funny because it got over great for three months,
here’s another one, we were going to get the tag belts at
that time. And one of the guys in the office said something
to, I don’t know if it was Vince or whoever was pulling the
shots that night, it’s usually Vince, said, ‘I don’t think
we should give him the belts yet.’ And they just squashed it
and squashed our gimmick. I don’t want to say who it was,
that’s not me, but I’m like, Really, dude? I didn’t find out
till a year later. But I’m thinking that’s brutal. So he
goes up there and uses some clout to put a stop to it.”
On whether he realized it would be that popular:
“I did not. It did. It got a heck of a pop. That place
popped. Al was a comical guy, so the stuff that he would
have me do and stuff, it was entertaining. I’d get to the
arena and they’d be like, ‘Steve, you’re going to milk a cow
tonight.’ I said, ‘Yeah, sure, I am.’ I’d walk to the locker
room, then I’m on the farm milking a cow. The next week of
TV, they’re like, ‘Steve, you’re doing a comedy skit at a
retirement home.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, sure, I am.’ And yeah,
that woman’s yelling that unscripted ‘Blackman, you suck!’
You remember that? I just remember her yelling that at me.
So it was funny, it was going well, and then someone stepped
in and squashed it after a few months.”