WCW Star Alex Wright Feared Troubled Future So Turned Down WWE

Alex Wright Discusses the Benoit Tragedy, the passing of Eddie Guerrero and Brian Pillman, turning down the WWE, Triple H, Sabu, the Paul Roma incident and more

Former WCW superstar, Alex Wright recently sat down with Steve and the Scum on WGD Weekly and discussed his entire career in the wrestling business, touching on many topics including some high profile deaths among his friends and coworkers, as well as several controversial incidents he was involved with during his tenure in World Championship Wrestling. You can hear the interview in its entirety here:

Highlights of this interview include Alex talking about:

Working with Chris Benoit and hearing of the tragic incident surrounding his death: “…Benoit was a very tough wrestler, very hard in the ring, a lot of intensity, but I liked that kind of style…It was very sad hearing about Benoit. It was shocking, you know, because I met a person that was totally different, you know, and so it was kind of unbelievable that this had happened…”

Eddie Guerrero: “…I met Dean (Malenko) and Eddie in my time in Japan, with new Japan, wrestling in the Super J Cup…I went over there with Pillman, but I didn’t know anyone else there…when I met Dean and Eddie…they said, ‘Do you want to go party?’ and of course a young kid always wants to party…so we went to a party place in Tokyo, we are sitting there ordering our drinks and suddenly they tell a waitress to take a picture of us. Suddenly, they both give me a kiss on the cheek. I said, ‘Oh my god, I didn’t know those guys, what are they doing with me.’ So, they were kind of ribbing me all of the time in the beginning…Eddie was like a friend to me, and I also liked Chavo…I did a lot of road trips with them…it was very shocking to hear about Eddie’s death, I was very, very sad…when you travel a lot at times with them and you see them more than your own family, it becomes somewhat your family. You take care of each other,
you train together, you party together, and it was sad hearing about Eddie…”

Brian Pillman’s passing: “…Pillman died when I was over there…I was staying at the same hotel that night, so that was a shock to me, you know, because he was a young guy…everybody was very sad…”

Working with Triple H in 1994 when both were rookies in WCW and his view on him now: “…Triple H, or at that time, Jean-Paul Levesque, he was very cool and a very nice guy. I had a lot of fun working with him and there was no real competition between us. We were both young and we both wanted to do our best and we both wanted to show the veterans, and of course Bischoff, that we can do it and that we have the right to be on the pay per views and the shows…(There are always) haters and jealous people, but when I met him and I’m sure it is still the same, he loved the sport, just like I did…if you look now at WWE, you see the new WWE Performance Center, and that just shows how Triple H wants to secure the future for the sport and the upcoming talent…”

Turning down WWE: “…When Vince McMahon bought WCW, he couldn’t buy my contract and what WWE offered for a buyout was not enough for me to say, ‘OK, I’ll go to WWE’…WWE approached me afterwards twice and I was very honored for that and actually very happy, but on the other side, I told them thank you very much…but right now, I’m not able to do that, what you want from me. I’m a guy when I step in the ring, I want to give 180 percent, for the promotion, for the fans, and for myself also and if I can’t do that, I will not step in the ring…at the time, going straight on the road for so long, plus the backstage politics…I was married, I wanted to have kids…I said, if I don’t now use the time to regenerate, mentally and physically, I most likely will end up like some of my other colleagues…that’s why I said no to WWE…”

Working with Sabu during his brief WCW run in 1995: “…I really was looking forward to working with him…I must say I really enjoy that kind of style of match…I liked high flying, I’m a young guy, I liked to take risks at that time and it was really fun working with Sabu…he was a legend, a hardcore legend, every time a guy like me steps in the ring with a guy like that, I can profit from it…He wasn’t just a loose cannon inside the ring, he was a loose cannon outside the ring, also…WCW didn’t like, I guess, people that they couldn’t control too much and you never knew what Sabu was gonna do when it was live TV…”

The Paul Roma SuperBrawl incident: “…I grew up to be very respectful to the veterans in the locker room…of course Paul was a veteran at that time…Somehow, the WCW office and Paul had some issues going, which I didn’t know about, working against me and the storylines they had planned, maybe he didn’t like that…He didn’t really want to work with me, which is really very sad because we could’ve had a really, really good match. Well, since he didn’t do what the office wanted from him, then he just got more or less fired…I just wanted to do my best…whatever happened between the office and him, I don’t know…”

These highlights are just a small sampling of the honesty and openness which Alex spoke on each of these topics and numerous others on in his appearance on WGD Weekly with Steve and the Scum. He also talks about his start in wrestling at age three, being helped in his early WCW days by Sting, Ric Flair, Bobby Eaton, and Arn Anderson, his feud with Arn, the techno dancing gimmick, a fluke injury during a match with Prince Iaukea that left him blind, the Berlyn gimmick being created with Dusty Rhodes and Dallas Page, Buff Bagwell and the match that never happened at Fall Brawl, Eric Bischoff, Vince Russo, David Arquette, the WCW New Blood era, backstage politics in WCW, traveling with Kidman and Disco Inferno, his new training facility and wrestling organization, and so much more.

WGD Weekly with Steve and the Scum presents new material every Sunday, where they sit down with a different figure from the “glory days” of wrestling. All of the past shows, as well as their new ones when they debut are available at WGD Weekly’s Facebook page that can be viewed here: https://www.facebook.com/WGDWeekly. All of their shows are also available on their YouTube channel and iTunes.