Way back when, my favorite was Rowdy Roddy Piper... to me, he was just about the best "black hat" ever, and he gave a GREAT interview... I also really liked Goldberg's schtick...
These days, my fave is probably the Undertaker, who had the single best line I've ever heard from a wrestler when, in a confrontation with Kurt Angle, he said:
I'm gonna come down there and kick your teeth so far down your throat you'll be able to chew your own *** out for pi$$in' me off...
I just howled with laughter when I heard that one...
I have had a chance to meet a few rasslers outside the ring, working the hotel biz... one night, I was at work, watching a wrestling show when this guy pulls up in a Chrysler convertible, gets out, and he's this muscle-bound dude with platinum blonde hair, long...
I knew him as soon as he walked in, it was the "other" Nature Boy, Buddy Landell... he noted that I was watching wrestling (it was back in the WCW/WWF days, and Buddy was working for WCW), a WWF show, and I told him that the hour before, they'd had a WCW show on the same network, and I'd seen one of his matches...
He sat and talked with me for the 20 minutes or so the show had left, seemingly enjoying it as a fan as much as I did, telling me stories about some of the wrestlers...
A month or two later, a VERY busy weekend, in came this good looking man of Asian descent, also quite muscular, and I knew him too-- Ricky Steamboat... hotels were jammed all up and down I-81 that night, he'd just come from a gig at Andrews Air Force Base and had a matinee the next day down in Harrisonburg (which was 20 minutes south of the hotel)...
Ricky was thrilled to find out I still had 3 rooms, and told me there were several more wrestlers not far behind him, asked if I could hold the other two... he went out and got on his CB in his car, told them where to head...
I went ahead and checked him in to a room with two double beds, which was all I had left... when he handed me his credit card, I learned what I'd suspected, that "Steamboat" was a stage name... the thing is, his real name would have made a MUCH better stage name-- Richard Blood... but I guess that wouldn't work for a white hat...
He was very quiet, very polite, and told me that I could tell one of the others on their way that they could bunk in with him when they got there... and about 20 minutes later, here came a whole slew of them, including Mick Foley, Diamond Dallas Page, Dustin Rhodes and Eric Watts... all of them gave me credit cards with different names on them; Foley's real name is apparently Armstrong, can't remember Page's last name, but Page is his first name, and Dustin Rhodes is really Dustin Runnels (there may be two L's in there, I don't recall for sure)...
Those boys were all wound up, and a fun-loving bunch, I 'bout to laughed myself silly at them... and the next morning, Dustin cracked up the staff by trying REAL hard to pick up one of our waitresses, get a quickie before they hit the road... the problem is, the waitress he picked was about 300 pounds, and incredibly homely (but a nice, nice lady)... which led us all to conclude the boy had been on the road a LITTLE too long...
