Ken Shamrock On How It Was To Work With The Rock, Steroids, WWF Not Doing Well When He First Signed
Ken Shamrock joined Brandon 'Scoop B' Robinson and Jake Brown on the Brown and Scoop podcast on CBS Radio's Play.it network. You can check out the full interview in the video above or download the audio here, they sent us these highlights:
WWF:
"When I first came in, it wasn't doing that well. The ratings weren't there. Once I got there, I think Vince had this thought of trying to cross the lines... walk on the edge of what you can and can not do and say on TV. He pushed the envelope on that. He built characters that were no nonsense, badass characters. It really changed the face of wrestling on that attitude era. It was the best time in wrestling. People could be proud that they watched wrestling. They didn't have to be embarrassed and say 'yeah, I watched wrestling.' There was a lot of closet fans for a long time in pro wrestling."
STILL GOING IN 50'S:
"It's more the way I was raised, where I came from, and just my nature. I'm a warrior at heart. A lot of other people do it for money or they want stardom and fame, because they want to be famous or they just want to be on TV, and they just happen to have the skills to be a good fighter. How you find out who somebody is whether or not they are a true warrior, a true competitor all the way through...is people that don't know how to walk away or say I'm retired. Those are the ones that are purebred warriors. They don't know anything else."
"I think it's pretty clear to me and I know it's clear to the fans and clear to the promoters...that I am not the level that I used to be. People think I'm ignorant or something. 'Oh, you're all washed up. You shouldn't be fighting again.' I hear all these things and I say 'dude I know this. I know all this' But you can't tell me to stop breathing. You can't tell me to stop being me. As long as there's something out there for me or somebody offers me something that's reasonable, people that I want to fight, not just anybody, it's gotta make sense...but as long as those fights come around I will continue to keep being me."
"People go fishing and hunting and playing basketball and hiking and skydiving and all kinds of things that can hurt you seriously, and they don't have to stop doing that when they get older."
THE ROCK:
"Working with him, I became a better wrestler because there was so much knowledge from his father, from the family, and from him that I was able to pick up through wrestling. His mic skills, the way he played his character, I got to learn quite a bit in that area from him by working with him. He was a tremendous talent. You see him now in the movies. He was definitely one of those gems. I got to be able to work a program with him for a year or so and that was precious times. You get opportunities like that, you have to learn. You got to be grabbing things from these people. I don't care how good you become in anything, you always are going to learn. You should always be trying to learn. I was really blessed to have those opportunities. The Rock was definitely one of my highlights to be able to work with him in the ring and learn from him."
PEDS:
"This thing has been allowed to go on for 20-plus years in the MMA world and the other sports world 50-60 years. Now all of a sudden, people are starting to act like they don't know. Once you allow something that has gone on for so long, it doesn't stop overnight. They're trying to do something here without gradually going into it. They just want to go in and block it and say it's all better. Well, that's just not possible, especially for the guys that are top stars that have used it probably even in a sensible way under a doctor's care, where it's more of a replacement therapy. I know that's what I was doing. You get over 40-something years old, your hormones are just not the same. It's a fine line. There's guy that abuse it and there are guys that are doing it for health reasons and for recovery reasons. Let's just say it happens...no more PED usage, everybody goes off of it. People are not looking at the big picture here. What's gonna happen is we're going to go back 20 years of athleticism. You take all of the PEDs out of sports and clean it up and we're going back to college, junior college days in athleticism across the board, except for a few individuals. That's what's going to happen. I do not believe that the fan base understands what it is they are asking for. Because the reason why all the seats are filled in all these arenas and all over the world is because of what they get to see these athletes do that is phenomenal and that won't be the same."
"The ones that go on it under a doctor's care are going to be okay. The ones that have to get it on the black market because they can't afford a doctor, that's where the danger comes in. Because now they can't go under a doctor's care and it's illegal. No doctors are going to put them on testosterone placement as a fighter they're not going to do it. They're just not going to jeopardize their career. These guys are going to go on the black market to get it, underground, they're not going to tell people about it, they're not going to get the physicals or the blood work done because they feel like they're going to get caught. There's no doctor there to help them."
STEROIDS NOW VS THEN:
"I think there was a time when it was about the same. I think people learn how to cheat more. Anytime that there's a lot of money involved, and this is why I think there's an unfairness, there's a way that people can hide or cheat with the more money that you have. The guys that are coming up, it's just tough. To me, I have a hard time understanding some of the policies that these guys want to bring in when they say no tolerance. I think now with Brock getting caught, I think we're getting there. I think this is going to be no tolerance. For a long, long time you can look to the guys that were doing the stuff, but they weren't being tested. But then they picked guys that were making a lot of money in a title fight, and they would test just the money fights, because they would get a percentage of the purse, if they came up dirty. The no tolerance policy I agree with, I think it should be done. If it truly goes down as a no tolerance and that they truly do get rid of the PEDs and the steroid use and it's gone, people need to realize that they're not going to get the type of things you're seeing now with sports and athletes, because as we all know, it helps you perform at a higher level.