On the latest episode of his “The ARN Show,” Arn Anderson reflected on Erik Watts being given a significant push by his father, Bill Watts, in WCW, starting in December 1992, but questioned the approach, which turned the audience against Erik due to its lopsided nature, leading to a challenging situation for the young wrestler. Anderson said,
“If you have the ability to give your son a push, why would you do it in the face of making it so lopsided that you turned the audience on Erik? And I feel like that’s what happened. Not his fault, you know. His dad wanted to use that vehicle to give him a huge push. But you gotta understand wrestling fans and what they will accept. Do you ever have an NFL team go 0-16, and then go 16-0? Of course, you don’t. What you don’t do is on the other end of that is you go 0-16, and then you go 8-8, and you work your way up the ladder. And you know, finally you get to that maybe, that 16-1 or 15-1 or whatever it is, 16-0 is pretty tough to pull off. And you can push and push and push so hard and so much, and the audience will just spit it out. You know, it just makes them nauseous.”
“I think wrestling fans are like any other sports fans, they want you to earn your way to a championship. They don’t want it handed to you, they don’t want it — you know, the referees are less than, which causes the team to win. They want you to earn it. And claw, and dig your way to the top. And just beating everybody you come in contact with is probably not the right way to go. And I felt bad for Erik because he’s just doing what his dad said.”
When asked if there was pressure to get Erik over, Anderson explained that while Bill Watts didn’t explicitly state the desire to push his son, the message was clear, and the situation was tough for the established talent who felt it was a step backward for the promotion. He added,
“No, it’s — I mean, Bill didn’t gather us up and say, ‘Hey, I wanna push my kid.’ But you knew where it came from, and whoever was carrying the word, the “booker” at the time, was the carrier of the word. And it was pretty clear what was going on… You know, nobody was gonna do it. We didn’t blame Erik. Nobody blamed Erik. We knew it was a bad situation to be in. It was a tough situation to be in. But still, you had that, ‘Hey, you know, I’ve got myself to a certain level; I’m established in the business. This has taken a step back.’ Because it’s hard to — when a guy’s that green, it’s hard to make him look like he’s not.”
Anderson further addressed whether Erik was given a cold shoulder backstage, expressing his hope that he treated Erik with understanding and support, recognizing that it was not the young wrestler’s fault and that they were all navigating a difficult situation. He said,
“I hope I never treated him like that because we knew it was not his fault. I hope I never — you know, that would be just putting the boots on a guy that’s already in a tough situation. I hope I was never that guy. I hope I was welcoming, and trying to help him and put him in a situation to where he could at least relax enough to do the best he could.”
Anderson then shared his thoughts on whether Erik should’ve gone with a different name, expressing that more time and training to be better prepared for TV appearances would have been a preferable approach. He said,
“No, I would’ve just given him more time training. Getting ready, have him be more prepared when he showed up on TV. Once you’re on national television on that show, the bird is out of the cage.”
Anderson also discussed his memorable shoot promo about Erik Watts, where he openly discussed the issues in WCW at the time, including talent releases and lowball contract offers, which ultimately led to the difficult timing of his own contract renewal coinciding with an injury. He stated,
“Some of this stuff I remember crystal clear. And again, it wasn’t just me that was getting picked on. Talent was being let go, they were getting lowball offers on contracts as each contract came due. The guys were getting different deals, but they were all being cut. Nobody was getting more money. Nobody was making more money. ‘Hey, I’d like to give you a raise.’ It doesn’t matter your history. It doesn’t matter how over you were, your drawing ability, your working ability, your ability to talk, being a representative of the company. None of that was considered. It was just, ‘How can we cut the payroll?’ And I was gonna be — you know, the timing was, it just so happened that my contract was running out and I had an injury. That’s a bad combination.”
