Rick Steiner Speaks on WWE Return, His Brother, Final Nitro, more

- Thanks to AnglesWrestling.com for the folloinwg:

Rick Steiner was an amateur wrestler at the University of Michigan before phoning Verne Gagne when an interest in the pro side was sparked. Gagne told him to see Eddie Sharkey, whose camp Steiner attended for two weeks until finishing his training with Brad Rhegins. After starting with the AWA, Jack Lanza sent Steiner to work for Bill Watts' UWF. Earlier this month, I spoke with Steiner from his Georgia home.

Heath Santo: Where did the 'Dog-faced Gremlin' moniker come from?
Rick Steiner: 'Gremlin' I got from the Freebirds. I used to keep my mouth shut and just watch everybody come and go and do their thing. A couple of times, Buddy came in and started messing around, and (I'd) end up wrestling around with him on the floor. Then I started messing around with Michael and Terry, and Buddy Roberts gave me the name 'Gremlin'. "Pour water on him, and he turns into something else." And then 'Dog-faced' -- Sullivan gave it to me when we were in the Varsity Club.

Santo: You and Scott had developed quite a legacy for the tag team before even coming to the WWF. Did you find that Vince McMahon pushed his own creations harder than the characters born elsewhere? Almost a favoritism of sorts?
Steiner: Yeah, I believe Vince... If you weren't part of his idea, then I don't think he used you as well as he... Because if it was something he came up with, if it didn't work well, then he looked bad. But if you came in there, you already had something established, and he tried to work with it, he could always say, "Well, I gave you the opportunity, but it just didn't work out."

Santo: Why did you and Scott decide to leave and jump to the WWF to begin with?
Steiner: At the time, Bill Watts was in charge and we'd gone through probably, I don't know, four or five bosses. My brother and Bill Watts did not get along, did not see eye to eye, and then when it came time for contract renegotiations, Bill called me up and told me they would negotiate a deal with me, but not with my brother. So at that time, we decided we'd stick together and go up to WWF, so we did.

Santo: Were you satisfied with how the WWF used the Steiner Brothers?
Steiner: Well, I can always look back and wonder what we could've done or what we could've did better, this and that...but the timing I think was bad when we went up there, when Vince was going through all the drug stuff, half his employees taking minors across borders, he was being indicted by the grand jury for all the drug use, and everything going on in the WWF. They had some doctor there on call testing the guys periodically. So I just think it was bad timing, it was a bad time to be up there, and business was kind of down then. My brother and I, we did alright, I just don't think (Vince's) full attention was on wrestling at that time and the business kind of suffered up there during that time.

Santo: Here at ANGLES, we love to hear about the shenanigans that happen outside the ring. Any good road stories?
Steiner: Well, we come back from Fayetteville and we're going back to Charlotte, and it was Sting and I, my brother, and I think Pillman...and then there was the Samoan Swat Team, Heyman, and I think one other person was in that car. They come up along side of us coming back and started shooting off, throwing fireworks at us, so we sped ahead, pulled off at a convenience store to get some eggs, and headed out after them. We caught up to them and started throwing eggs, and then they decided to pull off and get eggs. Before you know it, we had an old egg fight going down the road. Finally, we got ahead of them and stopped, blocked the road, and when they came up on us, we just started throwing eggs. We ended up throwing them inside their car, just totally destroying the rent-a-car. Subsequently, Heyman loses his rights to rent Hertz rent-a-cars anymore. We had a good time, we just got a little out of hand there (laughs).

We had a van one night, following Jake the Snake, Rude, Nash, Nick Patrick, and a couple other guys. It was me, Sting, and my brother, and we followed them in a van. We stayed really low. We got in the middle of nowhere, we rammed the van into their car from behind going down the expressway, and they got a little spooked. They thought it was fans, so they kept pulling over trying to get us to pull over so they could come back, see who it was, get in a fight, beat the hell out of them, or whatever they were going to do. We never would pull over (laughs), we just kept messing with them and messing with them. Finally, we let them go, we got back to the hotel, and they came up and asked us if any fans had chased us or anybody had done anything on the road to us. I said, "No, we didn't see anybody." Jake, he was ready to kill somebody. Rude, he was ready to kill somebody. Finally, at the matches the next night, we told them it was us and they got all pissed off (laughs). Every night, it was something we did.

Santo: There were so many firsts from WCW's creative team. Hulk Hogan turning heel after all those years to launch the nWo faction, for example, and you and Scott splitting up for singles careers. Do you see the breakup of the Steiner Brothers as one of the angles done for cheap shock value, or was it time for it to happen?
Steiner: Well, we'd been together for a while and we were running out of teams to wrestle. I think the team we were wrestling at the time was Harlem Heat, we had wrestled them probably 20 times, and that was getting old. (There) wasn't a lot of established teams coming along that they could bring in and hire, so I talked to a few of the guys, talked to Eric, talked to Sting and a few other people, and we just decided it was time to see what could happen singularly with our careers. We'd pretty much done everything with a tag. I don't know if it was hotshot or not. It worked, my brother did well with it, and I guess it just diversified us a little bit. (Recently), I went to Japan and wrestled a tag again over there for that 30th anniversary. We were received well, and things went well over there. Over the years, I still think people remember us as the tag, the Steiner Brothers, versus the singular thing.

Santo: Two shoulder operations were performed because the problem you were suffering from wasn't corrected the first time. How did the injury initially come about, and what convinced you to have the procedure done again?
Steiner: It happened to me in Colorado Springs when we were up there wrestling, I wrestled a match doing that stuff with my brother and Bagwell. I don't know how it happened, but it tore a rotator cuff. I didn't know it at the time, and then I went to the next night, wrestled, and then I went home. Turner's doctor at the time, I can't remember his name, we all went to see him and supposedly, he reattached it. Two weeks later, my shoulder got infected and I had to have IVs in my shoulder for, I don't know, three or four weeks to get rid of the infection. Then finally I got released, and the first time I went back, I wrestled my brother and the Giant at the Halloween Havoc in Las Vegas, came off the top rope, and it came off again. I came home, and I knew right away, I knew I felt... I was never going to go back to Turner's doctors again, so I ended up seeing Dr. Andrews in Alabama and did an MRI on my shoulder. He told me it had come off again, some things weren't done right, and he didn't know what he could do for me, but he did his best. He went in, looked at it, and reattached it rightthis time, and it's been good ever since.

Santo: Rumors were flying prior to WCW's Sin pay-per-view in Indianapolis that you would be the mystery partner in the four-way main event. Animal ended up being unmasked, but were there ever plans for you to be in that role?
Steiner: Well, at the beginning, Eric, my brother, and... They were coming up with something, and the obvious partner would've been me, but from the very beginning, they wanted to get somebody else in there. My brother brought up Animal's name, and of course, Johnny Ace, at the time, was helping with ideas and stuff and... So, I mean, they were going to use me as the obvious choice, but they had already planned to get Joe and use somebody else in that spot. It was only for a few shots anyway. They were going to bring him in, just use him for a few times, and it was going to be over, so I wouldn't have fit that scenario.

Santo: Were you backstage at the final Nitro in Panama City Beach?
Steiner: Yeah.

Santo: What was the atmosphere like back there?
Steiner: For the veterans, the guys that had been up there, been around Shane, and been up to WWF before, it was like, "Yeah, the same old bullshit. Here comes Shane, gonna give his speech." We'd already been through it before, so his "giving you the opportunity to do something in the WWF," everybody knew that speech didn't fly anymore. The young guys, of course, the guys who hadn't been up there yet, they were pretty optimistic. They were (doing) the usual sucking up, kissing ass, hellos, goodbyes...you know, all that shit going on. There's, I think, four or five of us that didn't even work that were supposed to, so we just ended up getting in a car and headed home. Some of us were still under contract, so that day wasn't the end of all ends, so we knew we had a little bit of time left. We had all been counting on Eric to come through with his deal, and then when it didn't and then McMahon stepped in and took it over, we knew it was over, because now he's monopolized the business. Either work for him or you don't, you get paid what he wants you paid or forget about it. So it was pretty bad.

Santo: What ended up happening to your WCW contract when the company was bought?
Steiner: There were probably eight or nine of us that had contracts, and Vince didn't pick none of that up. He just, for some ridiculous price, bought library and movie... The TV shows and some other stuff. The rest of us on contract, we were just left to sit there and let time elapse. Some of the marks -- Flair, Booker, and Dallas Page -- they decided to take 50 or 60 cents on the dollar, give it up, and then re-sign another deal with Vince. Those were your options.

Santo: How much time did you have on your deal?
Steiner: They were bought in April and I had until January.

Santo: Is there any interest from WWE, or vice versa?
Steiner: They wanted everybody. They wanted everybody to come across, and they wanted everybody to make the transition when their deal was up. Half of us had already been there, so we knew what the deal was. We all had some pretty sweet deals from WCW, and we knew those deals were never going to happen again. It was pretty much an eye-opener. They individually contacted everybody, but never pursued it after the deal was up.

Santo: Do you have any interest to go back?
Steiner: Hopefully I can maintain this Japan thing. The days, and just the whole business right now is just at a down. I think Vince's TV is (at) its lowest ever, and the product he has on there right now, I just... You know, you never say never, you've got to do what you've got to do, but I've been up there once and I think I'm at that age where Vince... He wants the 20-year-olds, not the mid-30-year-old guys anymore. I'm one of those guys that (has) already ingrained in my head what he's about, and (I've) already been up there, so I know what he's about. He likes to be a big influence on them young guys. So I don't know, I don't think he has any interest in me, really.