WWE Hall of Famer Bob Backlund recently appeared on the Two Man Power Trip podcast to discuss various topics. Here are the highlights.
Thoughts on Hulk Hogan:
I thought that he didn’t meet the standards and I know Bruno would have thought if I had been doing all that goofy stuff he was doing he wouldn’t have liked me being champion and I’m sure that Bruno feels the same way. He (Hulk) didn’t meet the standards outside the ring to be able to represent the WWF. Did the WWE fire him recently? Because, I would have fired him thirty years ago. He was saying one thing and doing another.
Being asked to turn heel by Vince McMahon Jr. in 1984:
I said no. I said no because I had a daughter that was six years old at the time and I didn’t want to have her have problems in school. I’ve heard a lot from the Savoldi’s. Mario Savoldi said that they had a lot of problems when his Dad was a bad guy and I didn’t want to do the same thing to our daughter and also I sponsored Bob Backlund’s kids tournaments and I made a lot of promises to kids that I wasn’t going to be doing this and that and would be doing good things they could be proud of and I didn’t want to let them down either.
The 1992 return and the plans to finally turn heel:
I went in there to do the “All American Boy” again. But it was also the time that I said I wanted to be bad now. I wanted to be bad because the good guys were lying, cheating and swearing. Let me be bad by being good and I became a bad guy by being a good person.
You can listen to the entire interview here:
