In an interview with The Orlando Sentinel, Sgt. Slaughter talked about his heel run in the early 90s as an Iraqi sympathizer. The highlights are down below:
On celebrities refusing to talk to him: “When I got to L.A., Willie Nelson, Regis Philbin, Alex Trebek, and Donald Trump were all there, and I knew them all. They wouldn’t say anything to me for the longest time. Finally Willie walks up to me and said, ‘Sarge, I can’t believe you’re an Iraqi sympathizer.’ He was really caught up in it. That was a real feather in our campaign cover [cap].”
On how it changed his personal life: “I called her [Sgt. Slaughter’s wife] when I got to Philadelphia, and she said, ‘What did you do?’ She started laughing. ‘I told you this wasn’t a good idea.’ When I got to my house later in the week, there was a Winnebago with 4 guys who pulled open their jackets and showed me they were packing. They said they’d walk the perimeter of my house, take my children to school and stay with them and take my wife to the grocery store and the mall. I said, ‘You can be here, but I’m not too sure about the other stuff.’ As soon as I walk in she was waiting for me (arms crossed) and said, ‘These kids aren’t going to school with armed security.’ And they didn’t. But they provided a sense of security for me when I wasn’t home.”
On what things were like before WWE’s performance center: “We didn’t have the Performance Center when I started. We just came from the regional territories, promoters would see who was there, call the regional promoter up, see if he needed a hero or a villain, and they’d show up. We would get to the locker room and know some of the talent that was there, but some we’d never seen before. We’d have to work things out ourselves, with no time to go into a recording booth and work on our promos or anything like that.”
