During the latest episode of Insight with Chris Van Vliet, former WWE star Gangrel talks on his involvement at Rusev’s KECH Wrestling Academy in Nashville and rumors he’d like to clear up.
The interview was conducted at the wrestling academy.
Gangrel stated that Rusev would not start the school unless he (Gangrel) came in and ran it with him.
“I talk to him sometimes; he’ll tell you we’re partners. I’m not so sure what we are, but he’s definitely the guy to put all the money into it. He’s definitely the founder of it, but he said he wouldn’t start it unless I came in and ran it with him or would be the head trainer. So, here I am trying to make all that happen. It’s doing good. We’ve been open a month, he’s on tour. He’s been on tour in Europe, I think that’s towards wrapping up. It’s been a pretty long WWE European trip. He should be back here at the beginning of July, he plans on doing a lot of time in and out, so we plan on rotating in and out. So if I’m here two weeks, I’ll be here, and then when he rotates in, he’ll be here for two weeks that I’m not here, so it’s scheduled down through the summer to be two and two with each other. He’s still in LA, he’s still happily married, and his wife’s out there doing a lot of stuff, different content things, acting, stuff like that.”
“He comes in and I go, ‘You could teach them just as much as I could teach.’ He goes, ‘No, I need you here.’ I go, ‘No, you could teach them, you’re in the current product. You know what they want, you’re living it, you’re in it 24/7 you’re all in, you know what they’re looking for.’ But what I give them is the foundation. I’m a foundation and a footwork guy, so I’m a slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I’ll spend hours and hours on right foot drops and feeds and footwork and stuff like that. I know that a few of my students have had tryouts, and they’ll go, ‘Who trained you?’ They’ll go Gangrel. They’ll go, ‘Oh, I figured, because we could tell by the footwork.’ So I’m not boasting, but I’m just saying, I’m a foundation and a footwork guy. All the extra stuff, all the flips and the flops, and any attitude, that’s gonna come, that’s who they are, it’s gonna be an extension to who they are, and they’re gonna find that. But I’m there to instill a foundation, so when they come in here, and I’ll say, give me six extra months. I don’t believe in the three-month program, you’re out, or eight weeks, or twelve weeks. I’m the same way as I talk about slow is smooth, smooth as fast. I want you to be slow in the beginning, give you a foundation, and then I believe the back side. So I tell them, if you give me six extra months, I’ll save you six years of time. So they get their footwork right in the beginning, just a slow, slow build, get that foundation in, and then when they get past the ropes and stuff, when they get to that stuff like that, it’s gonna just fall into place, because the footwork’s there.”
On how he got the name Gangrel:
“That was a dicey one, there. So it was 87 or 88, I started at WWE, doing jobs. I worked Big Boss Man. So I’ve always been around WWE since I was a kid, doing enhancement matches, and then I had a tryout in 91 as the Vampire King, because I came from Puerto Rico, and they just laughed at it. But then Jerry Lawler came up to me, and he goes, ‘I think that’s cool. Do you want to come work in Memphis?’ Then I went down and started working in Memphis with Lawler. So did the whole Memphis loop, and when they were still a territory at the end, so that came around. So was always doing the vampire thing, but I was always pushing it to them, ‘You guys don’t get it? You could be a vampire and get your butt kicked every day of the week. As long as you’re cool doing it, people are still gonna like you.’ They’re like, ‘No, we don’t get it.’ I was constantly sending them stuff, material on culture and stuff, RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons, but with the vampires called Masquerade. So I’d send them stuff like that, and then eventually they were like, ok. I was on an All Japan tour, they hired me, I lost all this weight, I was like 228, and they signed me. They said they had some stuff for me, and when I signed, they told me I was gonna sit home for a year. But then it was Vince Russo, I guess he called me up on a Friday and said, hey, can you still do the vampire thing. Of course, but I had permanent fangs, I got rid of the fangs. I had a skullet, I’m glad I got rid of that, because I looked a lot like Brian Knobbs. So I got rid of that, I grew my hair in, but I didn’t tell him I didn’t have [fangs]. I don’t know if he realized that they weren’t permanent or whatever. So he called me up on a Friday, and then he goes the flight is for Saturday. So this is Friday evening at five. So I run out to Hot Topic. So I go in Hot Topic, and I’m like they want some kind of shirt. So that’s where the white puffy shirt came from, the suede pants and all that. I got little gimmick fangs out of Hot Topic, they sold fangs right at the counter back then. So because I didn’t have fangs anymore, I said I’m just going to make these work, figure it out, fake it till you make it, figure it out. So then I come out, and I go, what do I gotta do for boots? You know what’s next to Hot Topic? Journeys. So I roll into Journeys. There’s a pair of new rocks. I go these are cool, these boots and all that. Then I go to a Renaissance fair. So I found the shin guards to put over the boots and stuff like that, so I come up with all that, but while this was all going on, this is a Friday night, right? So they filmed on a Sunday, was a Sunday Night Heat, I think they actually filmed it on Sunday, and find out that well, they had to come up with a name, and I gave them all this material and research, but I heard Vince McMahon say I like the name Gangrel.”
His original in-ring name and how the Gangrel name caused legal issues in WWE
“Vampire Warrior. He goes, I like the name Gangrel. Well, this was a weekend. Nobody ran it through legal. Nobody ran the name through legal. So that Sunday Night Heat, Monday came, they had a lawsuit for like $5 million. So I don’t know if you noticed that in all the WWE magazines it would say Masquerade White Wolf by White Wolf Gangrel, and they had to do that for five years, and so I feel like when that deal ran up, so did mine. I feel like I had a black mark on my name from that Gangrel name, so they had to pay for that certain amount. They never contested it in court or anything, because I guess they realized, yeah, we screwed up. I heard they let that whole legal department go that was involved in that, they all got heat, but I don’t know the real story. You could hear the whispers, but I feel like I got a lot of heat from it, but I weathered it out, and it came and gone, so then eventually, when that all ran out, they let me go. Nobody paid attention to the name Gangrel, so then just kept watching it, watching it, and then, and then I had a lawyer. I just filed on the trademark, nobody fought it. So I ended up with the Gangrel name since 2018 I’ve had it that long now.”
On WrestleMania 39 appearance rumors, Edge’s Brood entrance with another theme song and no appearance from Gangrel.
“I’m not sure, but I think maybe it might have been Hunter. Some people said Vince, but I think it might have been Hunter. Somebody kiboshed it. So when that didn’t go down, he left the next year to AEW. Then he wanted to make sure that he’s a guy that wants to have his way. Don’t tell him no on something, he’s gonna figure it out. So in AEW, he had me come back and come up to the ring and stuff like that.”
On Adam Copeland trying hard to get him (Gangrel) to part of WrestleMania 39 and Van Vliet’s comments from Copeland saying he was told fans would not remember him (Gangrel).
“That’s what they said, that’s what he said. But I think it was a little bit more to it. I don’t know what it is, but I think it was a little bit more. It’s weird too, because I was just speaking of the name, you know, the nostalgia deals they have. So I went through that. I’m not going to mention the person the officer’s going through, but it was all lined up. It was right down to the final things, and then, when the last version should be signed, they come through. It came to me and said, ‘Do you have a letter from White Wolf saying that you can use the name, that they relinquish the name to you?’ I go, you have lawyers after lawyers, they clearly could see that I have the trademark registered and all that stuff. ‘You don’t have a letter?’ I go, no, and then I never heard back from them again. So it’s something weird, it’s a little bit more to it. Maybe if you could figure it out in your investigative journals, you could tell me, but at this point I’ve motored on and done my own thing for so long. It would be great to go back in some kind of form or fashion and do something, of course, that would be awesome. I’m sure the money’s great, and it gives you longevity to be on that powerful TV, but at the same time I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been busy. I wrestled more than I wrestled. Then with the two schools, and then committing to a lot to this school here too, more so out of the two. I’m here trying to get this going. It’s been insane.”
On what rumors he would like to clear up:
“I don’t know if that was the rumor. I think the rumor was they said Vince saw my stomach and said, ‘Ah, he’s got to go.’ I think that was the rumor. No, I don’t know. They hired me back, I got burnt. I sat home all that time, and then they let me go. Then they hired me back, told me I was going to be on the Syfy Channel. They said, ‘You’re going to be a big star on ECW. You’re going to come in, you’re going to have a group, Kevin Thorn, Shelly Martinez.’ I said, great. I went home, never heard from them. I was signed back, never heard from him, never did an appearance on TV or anything. So, there’s no shirts, or there’s no nothing. Then I see Kevin Thorn comes on, and then Shelley comes on with him, and I got let go. Then I get a call from Johnny Ace, going, ‘It never really took off, it didn’t work out.’ I said save it, I’m gonna go back to England next week. So it was nothing. They brought me back for Sci-Fi, I never did any TVs, I never did anything.”
He was also never fired for not tucking in his shirt, because he said he never tucked it in.
All quotes are courtesy of Insight with Chris Van Vliet.
Gangrel also talks on still wrestling at 57 years old, The Brood, the attitude era and more! You can watch the full interview below.