Sticking up for the boys.

Taken from a Ted DiBiase interview….

They come and they ask for the autograph and it's like, "Well, it's for my nephew." It's for this or for that. and if you let them talk long enough, you realize they watch every week and they're a fan. It's like, why be ashamed of that? Yes, wrestling is entertainment.

The art of what we do, the ability to make that crowd stand up and sit down and orchestrate them and have them sitting on the edge of their seats, or you got them going one way and then all of the sudden you give them something out of left field and they go, "Oh, wow!" | think that people in other areas of entertainment appreciate that. I think we're probably more appreciated by other athletes and other entertainers more than we are the general public.

We are sports entertainment. We are no different than going to a movie. You go to the movie to be entertained and you are entertained. The more realistic you can make that movie, the more you're entertained by it. That's the way ! look at that.

Having a brand new car and in one year's time putting 65,000 miles on that car and not driving every week. That's just the weeks that I drove I accumulated 65,000 miles in a year. Making people step back and hoping they would step back and go, "You know, wow, I didn't realize these guys had to work that hard for what they got."

As a matter of fact, I may have said this in the book. When Terry Funk did Paradise Alley, years ago, with Sylvester Stallone, I was one of the wrestlers that went out there, one of the extras in the one montage scene. They called him the Salami Kid. He was fighting his way up the ranks up the old club wrestling. I was one of those guys. Anyway, there were a lot of extras on the set and everything, and guys were making wisecracks about wrestling. Stallone stopped the whole deal. He said, "Hey, that's it. I don't want to hear another word. I don't want to hear another comment or crude remark made in reference to these guys. Because the reality of it is, what we're doing here in a couple of days would take Hollywood stunt men three weeks to do. These guys are the greatest improv guys in acting today." I thought, "Finally somebody stood up and said it." I was kind of proud of that.