Jim Duggan Opens Up About His Recent Break-In, Vince McMahon's Return, Royal Rumble & More - Exclusive

In 2022, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan showed that he is as tried and true as the two-by-four he waves on his way to the ring. Duggan started his year with another health scare, but the first-ever Royal Rumble winner ultimately tossed cancer over the top rope and got to ring the bell in celebration. Then in December, Wrestling Inc. reported that Duggan had been forced to hold a man at gunpoint after he broke into Duggan's home. Despite his rocky year, the WWE Hall of Famer is happy with what pro wrestling has given to him over the years, and considers himself on the light side of the ring, rather than the dark side that so often commands attention, and he plans on starting 2023 off right with a live watch-along of that first Royal Rumble in 1988. The event will take place on January 24, exclusively on AdFreeShows.com, for subscribers at the $29 level and up.

In a new interview with Dominic DeAngelo, Duggan goes into detail about winning the first Rumble, the wild home break-in, how he feels about Vince McMahon coming back, his time working with Cody Rhodes, and if we could possibly see him draw a number at the 2023 Rumble this weekend.

Well, now with Vince McMahon kind of coming back, did you kind of foresee that happening in a lot of ways with him?

Well, Vince, the guy's a workaholic. Even back in the day when I was with WWF, he was one of the first guys at the building, one of the last guys to leave ... But also then in WWE, Vince again was one of the first guys at the building, one of the last guys to leave. Even when they brought me back into a voiceover or something a few years ago ... I was like, I said something, all of a sudden in the headset, "No, Jim." I'm like, "Wow, holy smokes. The guy's here listening to rehearsals." So I know the guy loves the business. He built that business. It's his baby. I see it hard for him to walk away, because he could have walked away, bought an island in the Caymans somewhere and lived his life. But I think the guy likes to work hard ... I don't follow the whole business too much anymore. That's folks, "Hey, just see what happened on Raw?" I said, after 40 years, the last thing I want to watch when I'm off duty is wrestling.

Why want to tune back in after you've experienced it all, basically?

And it's still popular. And the kids, I think nowadays the kids are better athletes, they're even more businesslike. But I don't think they had the creativity that our generation of guys had. We came up with our own gimmick, Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart was Jim "The Anvil" Neidhart ... Kamala was one of the last of the wrestlers that would scare kids. He would come down to the ring and kids would run away from the ring. Now, no matter who the heel is, he comes down to the ring, the kids all run to the ring. So it was a different business then.

A lot of the wrestlers, it's like what defines them today is the wrestling aspect and not the character, who-you-are-as-a-person aspect. And that's what really drew people. I mean, look at all the names that you were with in the WWF, from Jake the Snake to Hulk Hogan to you, to Ted DiBiase, Million Dollar Man. It was just like, embracing your character.

You can still name 10 guys without thinking about it. Andre the Giant, Bret Hart. I mean just one after another, was just a golden age. I was lucky enough to be part of it ... The appeal of wrestling is crazy amazing. And I get a lot of folks that are closet wrestling fans like, "I'm not a wrestling fan, but aren't you Hacksaw Duggan?"

Well, you've talked about working with all these legends and stuff, and then you talk about working with Dusty's kids and everything. And Cody is like, I know you don't follow the business, but he's reported to return. He's scheduled to return in the Royal Rumble actually, this year. Working with him a little bit, what was your perspective on him in the early days?

Any of the second-generation guys, they're always that much more polished. Like, my generation guys, like Jake the Snake, Ted DiBiase, Curt Hennig, the Von Erichs, they were in the ring when they were 16 years old. I learned an awful lot from guys like Jake and DiBiase, because I didn't get into the ring [until] I was 25, coming out of football. And they're like, "Big Jim Duggan, this guy's going to beat you in 10 minutes." And I'm like, "Well, I can beat him. I know I can beat him."

And of course, a guy I'm working with is going, "Oh my gosh." Poor Johnny Rodz and Jose Estrada in the old WWF, they put up with me. But it took me a while to learn the business. But guys that started in the business earlier — and Cody's one of them, and Goldust [AEW's Dustin Rhodes] — kids that grow up in the business, Rotunda's kids [Bray Wyatt and Bo Dallas], they just understand the business that much better, and that's more polished than a guy like myself.

Well, they helped carry on the legacy too, and preserve a lot of what the old mentality is.

That's true. I got to tell you though, brother, I have two daughters, and thank goodness neither one wanted to be in wrestling ... They're like, "Dad, I want to wrestle." I said, "Well, everybody wants to wrestle at the Royal Rumble, but you got to do Minot, North Dakota after a 10-hour drive with 20 people in the building" ... It's a tough business for a guy. It's a real hard business for a girl. I think that's one thing also a lot of folks don't realize is how competitive professional wrestling is. And they'll say, "Hey, I'm going to be a wrestler." I said, well, if you look at it as a businessman, if you're going to make a living at it — think of it. There's 1500 NFL football players playing. There's 500 NBA basketball players. There's what, 150 WWE/AEW wrestlers? They're television shows. They're more competitive than sports, and it's not just kids from America. You got kids from Japan, Australia, Europe. Wrestling is an extremely, extremely competitive business. And one of the huge misconceptions there, "Well you guys are all good friends, aren't you?" Oh yeah. We all compete for the same money. We're real good friends. It's business. I mean, something happens to your buddy, you're sorry it's him, but you're glad it's not me. I mean, it's a dog-eat-dog, like any business. It's a tough one, though.

Absolutely.

But it's been a good one for me and for a lot and for a lot of guys. Tito Santana, my good friend [Roddy] Piper. There's a lot of success stories in our business, but you don't hear about it.

I'm so happy to hear that everything was okay with you, too. After your incident with the break-in and all that stuff. How do you feel?

Yeah, it was terrifying. We were here at the house. We were going on the road the next day. My wife Debra was in the bedroom packing. I was in the living room watching TV. We're down a dirt road. We got 10 acres all fenced in with a big gate. We're 50 yards off the road, off the dirt road, but the only house on the whole road with Christmas lights on. And all of a sudden, there was this huge pounding on the door, on the front porch and me and Debra were running.

And as I get to the foyer, the doors break open. And this ... 25, 26-year-old man comes falling through the front door because there was a step to come in the house. And he tripped over the step. So when he fell in, now I'm coming at him, if he had a gun, he would've shot me because I couldn't have stopped myself. I was charging him. And he got up and on his knees and I got him. I got him by the throat and the arm. And for some reason, I'm running him out of the house and I'm throwing him out of the house, out of the porch. And now he's screaming, "Help me, help." And Debra thinks he's afraid of me, that I'm going to kill him. I said, "Watch him," she puts her foot on him. I reached inside the house, we got ducks and chickens. I got a pond. So I have the big .44, Model 29. The "Dirty Harry," exact "Dirty Harry" gun.

Hell yeah.

It's just because it's so loud to scare off the foxes. But that's right there on the front door. So I grab that and I got this guy, I got him spread eagled on the front porch. Debra, I tell her, "Turn off the light. Turn off the light." She turns off the light. So now I hear two guys out on the street yelling, "We're going to get you. We're going to kill you." And so my first impression was obviously a home invasion. So that's just when I got my gun, I'm waiting for at the back door. Nobody came in. So I went back to this guy. So now I'm thinking, "Well he's a drug dealer or something. And these guys are going, what did he bring to my house? Are these people coming in my house to kill him?" So Debra's on the phone with 911. We got to deal next week with a sheriff here. We're going to go back and meet the dispatcher and the deputies that responded. But she was like, "Send the firetruck, send the ambulance, send everybody."

Of course Nasty Boy [Brian] Knobbs calls me, he says, "Duggan, how much you pay that guy to break in your house with all the publicity you got?" It was funny. I think obviously you got the ball rolling for me. But it was all the conservative channels, One American News, Newsmax, Fox, they all had it, but none of the liberal stations covered it because it was pro-police, pro-gun. But it's funny, the coverage that I got out of it, and like I said, this coming week, we're doing a local deal with a local TV media. So yeah, I got a lot of media out of it, that's for sure.