On a recent edition of his “Everybody’s Got A Pod” podcast, WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase Sr. discussed Vince McMahon changing the wrestling business in pursuit of attracting younger fans to WWE, the transformation of One Man Gang into Akeem, and more.
You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:
On whether he thought it was a good idea for One Man Gang’s transform into the Akeem gimmick: “I wasn’t sure at first.”
On Vince McMahon trying to attract younger fans: “Back to Vince’s way of looking at things, it’s kind of like — you know, I was old. I came from the old school. I mean, I grew up in the wrestling industry. My father was a wrestler. And it’s kind of like, it’s not broken, don’t fix it. But what it took me a while to come to grips with was that what Vince was doing in terms of changing wrestling was like, ‘Yeah, look, we are sports entertainment. We’re not–‘ Because we try to protect it all the time. And we even knew that an educated person, especially an educated guy that’s never been in a real fight, could watch wrestling for a minute and go, ‘No.’ But the whole point was now, he was trying to market his product to a younger audience because now he’s going to come out with action figures, dolls and all of the merchandise. And so he’s trying to attract the young crowd. And that’s why Hulk Hogan becomes this bigger-than-life hero and all that.”
On whether it was time to drop the One Man Gang gimmick: “For those reasons, yeah, Akeem. Okay, let’s do it now. I thought he did okay.”
On his relationship with Akeem: “I mean, not like a bosom buddy but close enough to where I could talk to him man to man.”
