Ring Rust Radio: If you could pick anyone to wrestle against for a retirement match, who would it be and why?
Buff Bagwell: So many people to pick from. Steve Austin. He would be the majority of the draw, but that’s not the reason why I would work with him. Steve and I had a lot of tag matches together with Brian Pillman and Too Cold Scorpio, and we worked a lot of matches with those guys. We were always friends and respected each other so of course it would be a good match and a good draw. Before the film, I never saw Vince in there with the thumb up, thumb down deal. I had never seen that because I was in Panama City Beach, Florida, when that happened. When he goes through that whole list of guys, Buff Bagwell got a pretty good pop. When he asked the crowd there about Bagwell, I was really proud of that. It meant that I meant something to those people and that pop made me feel really good. We’re all human and love to get over with the crowd.
Ring Rust Radio: A lot of fans look back and wonder how you would’ve fit in WWE and how they would’ve used you had your stay not been short. Were you ever given any indication of what storylines or feuds you might have been involved with, or is there anything you would’ve liked to have done in that respect?
Buff Bagwell: Well of course everybody wants to see how Buff Bagwell could have evolved in WWE. It was more of at the time, “Hey you guys are the invasion, play off the enemy thing, put you and Booker out there, and just roll with it.” As time changed, they were very good at connecting to an audience and be able to change. I think I was pretty good at it. If you look at Marcus Alexander Bagwell who broke into the business, to Mark Bagwell the tag team guy, to the evolution of Buff, I think I could have very well fit in there to make those changes as generations of fans change. I think I would have been perfect for that. I was always open minded, not afraid to make an ass out of myself, wasn’t scared to be a jester and I didn’t need to be the man, I just wanted to be part of the team. It would be very hard today to go out and wrestle wearing a top hat to the ring. I got a top hat over brother. You know how many people would book me and then ask, “Do you have the top hat with you?” It’s got its own case and flies with me on Delta.
Ring Rust Radio: I enjoyed your run with Lex Luger as Totally Buffed. It made perfect sense given your physiques and you two were part of the reason I started to go to work out when I was a teenager. Is there one moment or match that stands out to you the most from you career?
Buff Bagwell: I was still working singles matches, and something that really gave me an opportunity for a major push was working a lot of singles matches with Chris Benoit. All of a sudden when I was working with Chris, who was a very technical wrestler, they got to see Mark Bagwell do the up-and-overs, fish out of water, the reversals, the pin and the boom boom boom. I go to the back and they never knew I could do any of that. Chris Benoit gave me the opportunity when I worked with him to show that I could go with someone like him. Vader was in the back and came up with the idea of putting me with Scorpio thinking it was a good idea. So a match that I did with Chris to show I could do the aerial moves, led to me and Scorpio doing tag team moves that people like the Hardy’s ended up doing after us. That gave me my break into my tag team run. Before then I was getting beat up by the Dangerous Alliance and then getting saved by Sting. The match that sticks out the most in my career would be the tag match when I broke my neck with Scott Steiner. It brought a lot of attention on me, but I felt WCW really dropped the ball with it. They really could have took it and made it a reality driven type of wrestling angle. I was telling them to follow me to surgery and film these things. It wasn’t about getting myself over, but WCW taking advantage of me breaking my neck on live TV. Take advantage of doing that even they want me to flip on the people afterwards, but put some investment into it. To break my neck on live TV then make a comeback and they really didn’t even focus on that as well as they could have. I would of said the same thing had it been anybody that broke their neck on TV, it just happened to be me that it happened to.
Nick was born and raised in Detroit, Michigan, and lived there until the age of 18, when he decided to pack his flack jacket and move to New York City.
