Scotty Riggs On Short WCW Tag Title Reign, New Day Using Similar Clap, Heat With Nasty Boys, More
Former WCW Tag Team Champion Scotty Riggs was a guest on The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling this week. During the interview, Riggs talked about the origin of The American Males, his heel run in ECW as Scotty Anton, battling his friend RVD, and more. You can download and listen to the full interview by clicking here, they sent us the highlights below:
Reaction to first hearing the American Males theme song:
"We were in Orlando and this was before we worked with Regal and Eaton and we had put some outfits together, got some jeans and had some sequence sewn on them. Sandra Grey who is the seamstress now for WWE had put all of our first couple of outfits together. So they pulled us into this room at the Disney Studios and Jimmy (Hart) is all excited and is all hyper and says 'here's your tune, baby' and it starts up and Marcus and I are like, okay it has a good beat and then when it came in and said 'American Males' we looked at each other and were like 'OH MY GOD'. The funny thing was that the whole deal for me was it was my first gig and we were a team and for Marcus it was his first team where he was actually a team. When he was with Stars and Stripes he was put together with The Patriot but it was already Stars and Stripes. When he got put with 2 Cold (Scorpio) they were doing the dancing thing and he assimilated to his gimmick. The American Males with Marcus it was that we became the gimmick. So Marcus was excited about it and we had that music and I was just excited because it was my first deal. So whether it sounded good or not we loved it."
The American Males clap and 20 years later seeing The New Day use a similar clap:
"It kind of came off the cuff. We always did the forearm bump and we would say and I swear to GOD 'this is cheesy' but let's go out there and get it over. We would look at each other when would do the forearm bump and say 'it's not easy, being this cheesy'. Somehow, I think he started doing the clap thing to get the crowd going so I was right behind him and I started doing it and it was very organic. I look at it nowadays and GOD bless The New Day. They turned 'New Day Sucks' into an over character or an over part of their character. Either they found it or somebody created it and they ran with it, to me I'm just happy to see it go from the 90s to twenty years later they are working it and it is getting over."
Winning the WCW Tag Team Championships:
"In my mind I was saying this is pretty surreal, coming from Memphis wrestling six nights a week and twice on Saturday, driving everywhere putting 70,000 miles on my car, made less than seven grand in the eight months I was there and here I am on the third Nitro ever winning the World Tag Team Championships. So to me it was pretty surreal. Twice during that afternoon, I knew Steve Regal wasn't going to be there because he was on the tour of Japan because they announced that we were wrestling The Blue Bloods for a future title shot. During the day Kevin Sullivan walked up and said 'son, we are changing the finish'. I remember after the match I sat down in a corner of the room and started to get a little teary because it was such a rush to come from where I was, to where I am having the World Tag Team belt in my hand."
Arn Anderson being the voice behind the best advice he ever received:
"I'm standing there teary eyed after winning and of all people Arn Anderson comes around the corner and gave me a little hug and said 'kid, remember when I told you to leave, well look at you now'. Even thinking about it right now, here is a guy that told me to leave and to get better and he was the first to congratulate me for getting my spot with the company. It's kind of weird how the business can come full circle sometimes."
Feeling slighted for holding WCW Tag Titles for only 8 days:
"It was one of those deals where when you look back at the psychology of it, it was a hot shot way of establishing us as a tag team. But in TV time it felt like we held them for like three months because we were doing so many TV tapings in advance. They were having us go out and wrestle matches as World Tag Team Champs and we didn't even have the belts but the voice-over was announcing us as the tag team champions. We always thought there could be more done with us but then we had the influx of The Road Warriors came in, Faces of Fear, Hall and Nash had come in and all these teams that had come in. It kind of sucked because we always had great matches with everybody but they just didn't want to put them back on us for some reason."
Heat with the Nasty Boys when coming into WCW:
"The night before Fall Brawl, we got into Ashville and a lot of times people show up for pay per views the day of and I think at the time The Honky Tonk Man didn't want to put over Johnny B. Badd after they already had the finish and they changed the prerequisite that you have to show up the night before to go over finishes and if you disagreed with them you could figure a way out of it. We worked The Nasty Boys and the Nasty Boys were not pissed but didn't want to put us over on The Main Event show. They weren't happy about it and they let us know they were unhappy about it. When I locked up with Saggs to start off the match he put me in the corner and if you ever watch it there are twenty-two unanswered punches and kicks that were live rounds and that was his way of being a little pissed off with the young guy. He said it was just his way of welcoming us to the company but I had two knots on my head and a bruise on my side from where he was kicking me. Randy Anderson, who was the referee was pissed, his partner Brian was pissed about it and Marcus came in and shoved him. It was all Saggs not wanting to put young guys over."
Riggs also talked about why WCW was crazy, his run as a member of Raven's Flock, becoming Scotty Anton in ECW, wrestling for Dusty Rhodes' TCW, the current state of wrestling, NXT and much much more. You can download and listen to the full interview by clicking here.