Bob Holly Talks Brock Lesnar Breaking His Neck, CM Punk, If He'll Join TNA, Working For Vince
Bob Holly was recently interviewed by Joshua Modaberi of Wrestling 101. Here are some highlights:
His original gimmick at Thurman "Sparky" Plugg: "Honestly it was a gimmick in wrestling but I really do race cars in real life. Back in the eighties and early nineties everything in wrestling had a cartoon character theme to it. When I had a meeting with Vince (McMahon) and JJ Dillon they hired me and said they would send my contract in the mail, when it arrived it had Thurman 'Sparky' Plug on it.
"I just kind of laughed and thought are you kidding me, yeah it was a corny gimmick because Vince and JJ liked the idea that I was a race car driver so they wanted to play off of that. The thing is what I tell everybody is that you can't sit there and tell me if they gave you a goofy name like that you would turn them down and say no I'm not going to come to work for you because of that name. The WWE is where everybody wants to be and I just thought to myself, I'll go with it and we'll just take it from there and see what happens. I wasn't too crazy about the gimmick because I had to be someone I really didn't like portraying. In wrestling if you're not comfortable portraying somebody you're not going to put a hundred percent into it. I went to Vince about it and we discussed it, he was all for changing it."
Brock Lesnar breaking his neck: "Let me clear something up, people write stupid s–t on the internet all the time saying me and Brock didn't get along, me and him got along just fine and we worked well together. I did break my neck during a match with Brock but he called me all the time whilst I was in the hospital checking up on me. People say that he did it on purpose and I got what I deserved, let me tell you something no one deserves to get a broken neck number one, and he didn't do it on purpose!"
Working with CM Punk on the ECW brand: "At first our styles didn't really match up that well but then once we started working together more we started to really gel together. I enjoyed working with him, I really liked the guy."
Vince McMahon as a boss: "He was a good boss, he knew what he wanted and you did what he asked of you but you had liberty to talk about it. He was very easy to talk to, a lot of people find it hard to talk to him but for me he was easy to talk to. He kept me around for 16 years and I thank Vince for giving me the opportunity to be there for so long because he could've easily got rid of me several times if he wanted to. He has always taken care of me when I was hurt and I never had to worry about anything, he's always been good to me, he really has.
"A lot of people don't like him but he's a businessman, very smart. When it comes down to wrestling he knows what he's doing, that's why you don't really question what he wants. If you have any ideas or anything like that you throw them at him but there's really no reason to question him because look at the empire he has created."
Working for TNA: "I did some stuff for TNA recently; I did one of these One Night Only PPV's for them, which I enjoyed immensely. Everybody over there was so nice to me and I teamed up with James Storm and Magnus. It was a completely different vibe there, nobody had any pressure on them, no stress, and everybody was enjoying their jobs. I might be doing some more stuff with them in the future so hopefully you can look out for me popping up in TNA."
Source: Wrestling 101