Continuing ... Maxx is discussing difficulties with the Nasty Boys...

Maxx: Prior to that, those guys [The Nasty Boys] would come in and tell me and Cactus what they were going to do and how they were going to run the match and what they were going to do to get them over and us over and ... the night he broke his shoulder, I stepped in the dressing room ... and I had had it! I told Mick I had had it and I told Mick, I’m not taking it anymore. He said, ‘Don’t do it tonight...’ and I said bull-crap, I’m doing it, I’m not taking what the Nasty Boys are dishing out any longer. I’m getting my shit in tonight and no one is going to stop me.

We walked in the dressing room and they said, ‘OK, here’s what we’re doing tonight...’ and I said, ‘No, that’s not what we’re doing tonight. What we’re doing tonight is that I’m getting my shit in and either you’re going to let me get it in or I’m going to take it. And if you think you can stop me, then try. But we’re doing it my way tonight because we’ve always done it your way.’ And they said , ‘Whoa, Maxx, you don’t have to be so hard-core about it,’ and I said I did because that’s all they understood.

And we went out there and I’m going to tell you the exact truth to the story right now and I want the wrestling world to officially know that this is the absolute truth of what happened in that match ... I told Knobbs how I was going to throw him and he didn’t pay attention to me. In the middle of me trying to throw him, instead of him being a good rider on the back of the motorcycle, he opted to try and take control of the fall instead of letting me control the fall. And he hurt himself. I did not hurt Knobbs and I did not intentionally set forth to hurt Knobbs. The fact that I was going to do what I was going to do regardless of what he did was only coincidental to what the outcome was which was Knobbs trying to block the blow and he broke his own shoulder and damn near broke his neck because he quit trusting me ... and the reason he quit trusting me was because he knew no one could trust him. And that’s why Brian Knobbs got hurt. Do I feel bad that he hurt his shoulder? Absolutely. Because I’m a caring person who would never intentionally want to hurt somebody--I just couldn’t do it. But Knobbs hurt himself that night because he didn’t trust me enough to control the fall and in turn, hurt himself. And if you watch the match, he goes straight over and I was trying to take him to the side. So once and for all, that’s what happened that night.

They hit me with a table in Chicago just about as hard as you can hit somebody in the head ... they didn’t waste their time doing everything they could do to hurt me, they’re just not tough enough guys to really hurt me.

But the high points with the Nasty Boys, if you’ve ever spent any time with them in their full regalia, in Nasty-Boy-mode, they are genuinely no funnier people on the planet than Knobbs and Saggs ... but unfortunately, they leave a pretty heavy and wide wake in their path.

Pinfalls: What led to your leaving WCW ... did it have anything to do with the Knobbs incident?

Maxx: Immediately after that match, Eric Bischoff comes up to me [yelling] and I told him he’s never been in the ring and you don’t have a clue what it means to be in the ring with these guys night after night ... and from that point foreward, I was buried and they did a good job of it and I don’t care. I really don’t. What did they bury me from? It was difficult--they said some incredibly damming things about me but I tell you what ... the greatest moment of all of that was ... that I never sat in the dressing room with the cliques. Whenever we’d go to shows, whenever we were at Center Stage or in Florida, I always sat with the job guys because they were the best bunch of guys I’ve ever met. They were all trying really hard to get in the business and really cordial guys to be around--they were real guys who would put you up in their homes and offer you a fresh home cooked meal and just be kind to you. And the cliques always treated those guys like crap and they would abuse them.

Vader was classic for abusing the job guys ... and anyone who has ever watched Vader manhandle some of those little guys he worked with, he didn’t give a shit if he broke someone’s neck. And he did it because he didn’t care, because he was big-bad-Leon doing it to a man who was letting him do it. That makes ya tough. Here’s Leon doing this, the Nasty Boys would do this stuff to those guys. The greatest two moments of my life was after I wrestled Knobbs, the next television, when I walked into the dressing room and sat down with the job guys, they stood in line and everyone of them, without saying a word, came up to me as I was putting on my boots on and just shook my hand with tears in their eyes. Because someone finally stood up to the chicken-shit nature of the Nasty Boys and that one guy had somehow redeemed them from the Nasties. And the same thing happened with Vader when I threw him around in a match we did down in Florida--they all did the same thing then.

Pinfalls: Speaking of Vader, how was it working with him?

Maxx: He treated me with kid gloves. Anyone who was tough, Leon treated them with total respect. Leon was the classic example of what a bully is--he would push anyone around he thought he could push around easily. But if he didn’t think he could push them around easily, but if he didn’t think he could push them around, let me assure you, Leon wouldn’t even try. Anyone who doubts that, I could tell you three or four stories to concrete that ... I don’t think I need to but anyone in the business will tell you that. He would never try and push around someone he didn’t think he could push around.

Pinfalls: So, what led to you joining the WWF?

Maxx: I’m pretty sure it was the Nasty Boy thing .. and you know, I told Mick Foley one day when we were driving down the road that the business is at a point where it has to change. The business is so bad right now, what is it going to take to move forward? I said I only saw one way for the business to move forward--and that was to dump kayfabe once and for all and to tell fans the truth. Hogan should had done it when he was on Arsenio Hall and exposed it and said, ok let’s move on ... he could had done the whole world a favor. He didn’t have the sack to sit on Arsenio to say that I did steroids, I was wrong, the wrestling business is fixed (not fake, let me define that) let’s move on from here because we are the greatest entertainment on the planet. I think people would had loved him for that...

And I told Mick, until the wrestling business does this, until they set kayfabe aside, and expose the business so that the question of whether it’s fake or not is completely eliminated from the vocabulary of people, the wrestling business cannot move forward. Fans need to come in and willingly suspend their disbelief and say, ‘OK, I’m here ... entertain me!’ And I’ll never forget Mick saying, ‘You know Maxx, you’re wrong dude, that’s what’s wrong ... too many people know the secrets,’ and I told Mick that this was backwards thinking. You cannot go backwards until it is moved as far forward as it can ... let’s give wrestling fans enough respect--they are more educated than that and they deserve to not be treated as if they are ignorant ... and I’ll never forget Mick telling me what a fool I was for thinking that way. Well, obviously he doesn’t feel that way anymore. He has since recounted and I’ve actually heard him speak almost verbatim the same thing I’m saying now.

And I know for a fact that when I sat in Vince’s office for the first time and I told Vince the exact things I’m telling you know--and I told him the willing suspense of disbelief and he quickly adhered to that and shortly after that he started running the WWF promos where he exposed the business.

Pinfalls: Is it true that Rick Rude was responsible for getting you into the WWF?

Maxx: He actually was. I had a house in Marietta, Georgia on the North side of town and Rude and I were just ... God rest his soul ... there was something so incredibly unique about that man. He had great qualities--he had the old-timer qualities and was a progressive, new thinker. I’ll never forget, he came to my house the morning after I got fired and ... I told him they cut me loose and he said, ‘Hold on a second’ ... then said, ‘Hi Beverly, is Vince in? Vince, Rick Rude here. Hey, I’ve got a guy here you need to meet.’ And that was it--that’s exactly how it happened. Vince flew me up three times and we talked.

And I could not convince them ... I begged them, literally begged them to let me be Maxx Payne. I begged them to let me continue doing the ‘Payne Killer’ and once again ... I never believed I wouldn’t be able to convince them ... but I couldn’t get through to them. Partially because I had a gimmick that was so different. No one ever did a gimmick like mine and still haven’t to this day.

Pinfalls: Who came up with the Man Mountain Rock name?

Maxx: They did. I hated it. Absolutely hated it--it didn’t fit me. I didn’t like the mentality, I didn’t like the music ... I just didn’t like the direction they took me. I wanted to stay on the darkside. You know, I’ve got pictures on my web site, if you don’t believe me, go look at them, doing dark before ‘Taker even dawned his first pair of shorts in the business. Go to my web site, the Memphis link ... in 1988 I went to Memphis and did Maxx Payne with the full black robe, Motley Crue paint, black hair and gloves and it is very ironic ... and I’m not trying to say in any way shape or form that the Undertaker stole my gimmick but the Undertaker obviously looked at my gimmick because he followed me in Memphis as ‘The Master of Pain’ .. after I left Memphis, he came there as ‘The Master of Pain’ so there is obviously some connection there. But I loved doing the dark thing and did it from the beginning, partly because I grew-up loving Alice Cooper. And that’s always what I thought would sell in the wrestling business--unfortunately, I was just 10 years behind.

Pinfalls: At what point did you decide you were going to start filming on the road and did you foresee it at the time, as a potential movie?

Maxx: Well, originally, I did it for Vince. I wanted video proof of the reaction I would get in Germany because everything else we tried in the United States had failed and a lot of it was out of my control. I wasn’t Maxx Payne any longer--I was Man Mountain Rock. And they put me in a lot of situations that I was so uncomfortable in and I couldn’t let the real me shine through, which was the Maxx Payne character.

Initially I took the camera for two reasons ... even now, I’m not sure why I was so adamant and vehement about taking it with me as I was. I’m going to give credit to my roots as a film-maker. I just knew that nothing had been done like that--there wasn’t even the thought of a video that looked like that in the world. This was in 1995, sometime before ‘Wrestling with Shadows’ and ‘Beyond the Mat’ came out. First, I wanted to prove to Vince that my gimmick was over in Europe and that if we perfected and toned it, we could make the thing work in the U.S. And also, I wanted to be the first guy to carry a camera in the ring and document from the wrestler’s perspective to look at ‘them’ with ‘them’ being the fans. And I also wanted a documentary of behind-the-scenes of wrestling ... so I really went out on a limb ... I plotted this thing ... I was the video-grapher, the director, the producer, the editor, the sound guy, I did everything. I was a one man movie crew. And I wanted to capture, looking back in retrospect, the emotion of what I was going through on the road at the time and I was really up in the air about what was about to happen--I really just didn’t know.

Pinfalls: At the time, were there any wrestlers who were uncomfortable with the filming?

Maxx: The answer to that is no. None have contacted me now. Everyone who is on camera knew that it wasn’t a WWF camera that it was my personal video camera I took on the road ... if they didn’t want to be on camera, they would had told me to get out and never come back. Nobody did that. With the exception of Bam Bam, who’d say, ‘Get that fucking camera off,’ then play up to the camera for the next 15 minutes, so it meant nothing. All the agents knew I was doing it ... hence the reason I think it is so profound and why I think people will line up in droves to see it, because there are some really incredible moments that go on in this thing. And that’s why six and a half years later, I’ve decided the time is right to put forth the effort to get this thing out so the world can see a perspective that the wrestling world for sure isn’t going to let you see.

Pinfalls: Has the exact release date for ‘The Thing that Should Not Be’ been finalized?

Maxx: I was going to try and get it out by late Fall but my goal now and the reality of it is that I’d really like to enter it in ... the Sundance festival in January of 2002. The interest that has been generated so far has been phenomenal. Every e-mail I have received has been positive and you can go and look at my guest book on my web site. With the exception of a few wrestlers, obviously employees of the WWF who wrote nasty crap on my web site, every single thing has been positive. I say to any nay-sayer out there, if you think I have a vendetta you’re crazy. I have such a great life right now ... but the reality is that I have a movie that I think the world should see. Reality based TV and reality based film-work is at it’s highest point ever and it’s very ironic that I did this almost seven years ago ... and that is what ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’ is, reality based television at it’s finest.

Pinfalls: How many hours of film was shot compared to how much you are going to use in the movie?

Maxx: What I’d like to do is that I have three and one-half hours of video tape and I’m going to whittle it down to about 90 minutes or an hour. I want it to be very intense but I’m not afraid to let you see almost all of it. And I recorded a lot of what I did in terms of music playing and that makes up for probably 45 minutes to an hour of the running time of the tape. I won’t show all of that, just little segments from each night I played. But there is no wrestling in it at all--not one wrestling scene in it at all. It’s a completely behind-the-scenes look. I want to release it how we release it at Sundance then follow-up with a DVD and a director’s cut and take it up to 90 minutes or two hours and give you as much as I possibly can and then narrate behind it and those sorts of things .. .so that’s where we’re at in terms of length and what I’d like to try and accomplish in the future.

Pinfalls: What are three things that Maxx Payne would recommend for anyone with a dream?

Maxx: (1) Never give up ... If you have a dream and the only way you will fail is if you surrender. (2) That happiness is not money ... I’ve watched guys who were miserable bastards who then got money and were just rich and miserable because money didn’t make them happy. And (3) no matter what, to quote a line from the movie ‘Wyatt Earp,’ when Gene Hackman says to the Earp family as they are sitting back in Missouri eating dinner at the dinner table and they are all laughing and making fun of their dad, he says, ‘Remember one thing children ... there is blood and everyone else is strangers.’ For me, the greatest thing that could had ever happened to me was the fact that I left the wrestling business. Because I happened to be fortunate enough to leave the wrestling business at a time when my mother and father were at the twighlight of their lives and I came back to Utah and watched them both grow old and die. And I was standing by both their sides when they passed away. And I watched my children grow-up and become state champion wrestlers and do all the things in life that I surely would had missed had I been the kind of wrestler that I was attempting to be at the time. What I mean by that is, I believe you can still have both but you’re going to have to work 15 times as hard to be in the wrestling business and keep your family. And so I say to any wrestler out there ... for your own self sanity, never ever ever forget the most important thing in your life is your family. And I thank the Lord every day that I still have mine because I was literally moments away from losing everything that meant anything to me in my life and that’s my family.

Pinfalls: And finally, what's the most frequently asked question posed by fans and if you could answer it one last time and never have to answer it again, what would that question be?

Maxx: The age old question in professional wrestling is ... ‘Is wrestling fake?’ The answer that I would have to give to every wrestling fan is no, wrestling is not fake. What I mean by that is this ... wrestling is an incredibly difficult business that requires intense diligence, intense effort and every molecule of intestinal fortitude you have to deal with the rejection, the pain, the lifestyle and all of the things that make the business hard. It never ends. So, when a fan asks a wrestler, ‘Is wrestling fake?’ ... I want this question eliminated from anyone and everyone ... don’t ask a wrestler if wrestling is fake because the answer is no. It is not fake--it takes something out of you every time you climb in the ring and you may not even be able to explain what that something is. Is wrestling fixed? Absolutely. No question about it. The finishes are known, the things we do in the ring are know, but that doesn’t make it any less difficult. Like a ballerina who knows every single move they do in ‘Swan Lake,’ it makes it no less difficult of a task to perform that task.

I think that wrestling fans are already there but part of what ‘The Thing That Should Not Be’ will do is continue to move in that direction ... because there is another pinnacle out there in terms of how big wrestling can be and I believe that wrestling has a lot of growing pains in the future. And it has to continue to grow and move away from the question, ‘Is it fake,’ and more towards the question of: How do I entertain you and how do I entertain you responsibly without destroying the American ideal of house and family. So I say to anyone out there, in fairness to any wrestler who has given their life, has worked their tail off to get where they are at and who sacrifices their body parts and soul to entertain you ... give them enough respect to know that professional wrestling is very difficult and it is not fake. It is fixed, but not fake.


For more information on Maxx and his upcoming film, "The Thing That Should Not Be," check out his web site at: www.maxxpayne.com





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