One of the legends in the professional wrestling business was Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller. He competed in both WCW and WWE.
Recently during an interview with Jeremy Lambert & Stephen Jensen on Fightful’s The Spotlight, Miller revealed that he was making a lot of money in the short period that he worked in WCW. He competed from 1997 to 2001 at the former wrestling promotion.
“Those four or five years I was in WCW, I made a hell of a lot of money. I made enough money to where I said, ‘This is enough, I can leave wrestling now.’ When they decided to sell to WWE, I got paid another three years just to sit at home. I had three years of payment. That was enough money from wrestling to where I could go back in, teach karate, have money set aside for retirement and everything. Out of nowhere, Johnny Ace gave me a call and said, ‘You need to come up to WWE. There is an opportunity up here. I think they’ll like you up here.'” [H/T Fightful]
Vince McMahon supposedly didn’t know who Ernest ‘The Cat’ Miller was
During the same interview, Miller revealed that he was low-balled by WWE with an offer of $220,000 a year. Miller claimed that he was making that in a month in WCW.
“I said, ‘I don’t know if that’s what I want to do. If they like me, they know who I am.’ Johnny Ace [John Laurinaitis] said, ‘Vince [Vince McMahon] doesn’t know who you are.’ ‘Vince knows who I am.’ We talked a couple more times. They offered me a real kind of low-ball, wasn’t a lot of money, not enough money to make me come there and be happy. It was about $220,000 a year. I was making that in one month in WCW. I said, that’s bottom pay, but you get pay-per-view and all this stuff I used to get in WCW. If you hit this rating, you get a bump up and they give you a little more money. He talked me into it. I said, ‘I’m going to go up there so I can say I worked in the two largest companies in wrestling,'” Ernest Miller said. [H/T Fightful]
Eventually, Miller signed with WWE and worked there for a couple of years.
What was your favorite moment involving ‘The Cat’?
