Buff Bagwell talked to Dominic DeAngelo of WrestleZone. for an exclusive interview before he went on stage to share his wild life in wrestling Thursday night at the historic Doc Holliday’s Saloon in Griffin, GA.
In this second half of the conversation, Bagwell gives a short look as to what it was like the night the WWF came to Panama City the night the company purchased WCW. He also talks about how the Invasion angle was doomed from the start by making Shane McMahon the storyline owner. Quotes are below:
Buff Bagwell on being there for the WWF’s purchase of WCW:
We walked up and we got there and we saw these WWF trucks right? “You gotta be kidding.” So we all split up to people that we know. And we split off to people that we know to find out what’s going on and we go…five minutes of that, they said, “Hey, Shane’s got a meeting in this office right here, in this room.”
It was about 30 minutes long. He laid the facts out at what was going on and about half the people clapped, half didn’t, I didn’t know what to do. I looked at Lex [Luger], Lex wasn’t clapping and I went ahead and clapped anyway like, “Okay…alright I gotcha.” You know?
On Vince mentioning his name on television and what he thought that meant for his future in WWE:
But I got a pop, it was about the second biggest and so that gave me a little hope and when my “big star” fans would say, like Lex, and Sting and those guys, my friends. They’d say, “Buff, if he mentions your name, you’re good to go.” I sign a contract and I fired in two weeks. So I mean probably three total, but I wrestled twice only, once on TV only. So just a really weird deal.
On how the Invasion angle wasn’t believable from the get-go:
Just think about it, everybody in the world knows that if Shane McMahon owns WCW that in the real world Vince bought it and gave it to Shane. That’s why it wasn’t believable out of the gate. Right off the bat, it wasn’t believable because they know Shane didn’t go out and buy WCW, they knew his father bought it and gave it to him for an angle so it became, wrestling became fake again. That could be real for five or six years. Really real again. And it just got uglier and uglier and so you just gotta go with it, you know?
On the ability to adapt and how much he cared about being a tag team champion:
Me and Lex were super tight, me and Scotty Riggs were super tight, Scorpio were super tight, and they were different eras of the business.
It’s really hard to pick a favorite, because I had so much going on, but I will say this, I’m going to pat myself on the back of: do you think Lex Luger and 2 Cold Scorpio are alike? No. Do you think Lex Luger and Riggs are the same? No…so I had to adjust so that’s why I feel positive about it. I had to adjust to make it work, to become world tag team champions. I had to adapt and I’m the one who came up with all our outfits and I’m the one that was the whole brains behind and that’s what makes me feel good about it because I cared and I wanted to do the right thing for WCW, you know?
Full audio of the interview is below:
