Larry Zbyszko Recalls 'The Good Ol' Days' Of Being Stabbed And Shot At

"No matter what they believed in wrestling, they thought Larry Zbyszko was a super a-hole, real life," Larry Zbyszko said on the "Insiders Edge" podcast.

"People really loved Bruno [Sammartino.] They really hated me," the WWE Hall of Famer said "We'd be in arenas and there'd be riots that would break out, especially if I cheated and won the match. It wasn't like today where there's big barriers all set up and the audience is smart and a different mindset."

Zbyszko went on to recount a match he had with former WWF star Ivan Putski. During the bout, a fan in the crowd was heckling Putski. "He was yelling things like, 'Hey, Putski! You're mother's really ugly!'" Zbyszko recalled. "'I slept with your sister!' Something stupid. Putski didn't care. We just kept wrestling. Then the guy says, 'Hey, Putski! You're short!' So Putski loses his mind, jumps out of the ring and starts punching this fan."

According to Zbyszko, once the fight was broken up, he saw an opportunity to get some heat from the crowd. "So I gave him a low blow, the ref wasn't looking, and pinned him 1-2-3, and there was a riot that broke out. People were jumping in the ring, trying to get me, and I jumped out of the side of the ring to the dressing room, and one of the secrets was, during the riot, if you act crazy [imitates a crazy person] the people have second thoughts about coming at you." 

Zbyszko recounted that when he was doing his "crazy routine" to get to the back, he got hit by an 80-year-old with crutches, and then an even more shocking attack happened directly after. "All a sudden, it felt like someone kicked me in the butt, and I turn around and the cops are taking some guy away," Zbyszko said.

According to the former AWA World Champion, he thought nothing of the assault until he went backstage. "I put my hand by my butt and I felt this thing, and it was a knife blade," said Zbyszko, who described it as a Japanese wooden knife. "It wasn't like a Bowie Knife, but when I turned to hit the guy, I broke the blade off in my ass." Zbyszko added that the scariest part was getting the tetanus shot after.

"I got stabbed at. I got shot at. I've had my car smashed, I used to have to hide in people's trunks and be driven into someone's trunk so they wouldn't know I was there," Zbyszko said with a laugh. "Good ol' days."