WWE Legend Demolition Smash Thanks Iconic Promoter For Early Career Help

Before he was one half of the legendary WWE tag team Demolition, Demolition Smash got his start in Mid South Wrestling in 1983, working under the name Crusher Darsow. After going nowhere for a year, Smash got a boost when he turned heel, becoming a Russian sympathizer named Krusher Kruschev. Over the next few years, he would become a top heel in territories like Mid South, Florida Championship Wrestling, and Jim Crockett Promotions, winning a combined six singles and tag titles in the process.

In an interview with "Wrestling Shoot Interviews," however, Smash admitted that he was a bit hesitant when Mid South promoter, Bill Watts, first approached him with the Russian idea.

"It was a little scary," Smash said. "I just was in the business...a year and a half, and I didn't have a clue what I was doing. When I was a babyface in that territory, I couldn't do a promo. It was hard to do a wrestling match. Everything was hard. And when he [Watts] says 'Barry, I'm going to make you a Russian sympathizer. You're going to be with Nikolai Volkoff, and you're going to hold the shovel up and you're going to tell everybody, you're going to bury everybody in America.' He says 'You're going to have so much heat, you're going to learn how to work.' 

"When he said that, I was so fired up, and it was like a light went on. And I learned how to work real fast, 'cause you had to. As soon as Nikolai and I got a little more heat on somebody, the crowds were in on us. And I mean...it was so easy, the wrestling business all of a sudden came to me. And...that next year, when I was there, I really learned how to work."

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit "Wrestling Shoot Interviews" with a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription