Interview with WCW's Lash LeRoux - FROM THE VAULT

We've decided to give everyone BONUS episodes FROM THE VAULT!  Every other week we will release an OLDER bonus episode from our exclusive site majormarks.com.

This interview was from October 2023 and we check in on WCW Legend Lash LeRoux to see what hes been up to for the last 15 years.  This is an inspiring and interesting chat with someone from our favorite time in wrestling!!!!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Yeah, as Daniel Podcast, The Doctor Show, Fucking Delenda What
Today March.

Speaker 2 (00:20):
Welcome everyone to a very special major wrestling for your podcast.
I'm your host, Matt Cardona, Brian is here, small Mark
Strolling is here. But our guest today w c W
Legend Lash LaRue Lash.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
What's up, my man?

Speaker 4 (00:38):
I'm good man. How in the world are you guys doing.
It's good to see you again to my friend. And
I don't know if I've met the other.

Speaker 5 (00:44):
JEMs or not, so corporal ocasion if I will. I
was thinking about this today. I think we missed you
in Deep South by like weeks.

Speaker 4 (00:53):
Probably, So I think that sounds.

Speaker 6 (00:55):
About right, man, because like.

Speaker 7 (00:58):
You know, at a time, there were some new guys
were in there, not just new guys, but the new
generation was sort of coming in while an old generation.

Speaker 5 (01:05):
Was going out, right, So we got signed in uh
early two thousand and six, and then we reported like
that spring, and I recall, like you know, and these
people that we met there, like Luke Alo's and stuff that, yes,
we had just missed like you and Jindrak, So we
didn't get like interact with you guys, but we had
just missed you guys or we would have been been

(01:27):
De South alumni together.

Speaker 7 (01:29):
That's exactly right. So my Deep South roots go even
deeper than that because Deep South, you know, was sort
of the genesis of what was the power plant in
WW and so that's what kind of got me calling
calling me back there to Deep South a little bit.
And that was my last more last kind of big
hurrah to try to make one more splash before Rodeolph

(01:50):
in Sunset.

Speaker 4 (01:50):
I guess for lack.

Speaker 5 (01:51):
Of right back with Jody Hamilton. Were it all started
for you?

Speaker 4 (01:56):
That's exactly right.

Speaker 7 (01:57):
Man's Amanda Pleedge Jody Assassin professional wrestling.

Speaker 4 (02:02):
That's what I call it.

Speaker 6 (02:04):
Awesome.

Speaker 8 (02:05):
So we actually just met at aw a couple weeks.

Speaker 7 (02:08):
Ago, correct, Yeah, you and I did absolutely well. Yes, yes,
that was uh that was after or either before or after.

Speaker 4 (02:17):
I think I walked down there a little rattle, but yeah.

Speaker 8 (02:20):
Well you locked walked out of the locker room and
everybody said, wow, he's still jacked.

Speaker 7 (02:28):
The best comment I got on that was from Les
Thatcher who saw me last November and less goes.

Speaker 4 (02:35):
Wow, look at you kid.

Speaker 7 (02:36):
You wait until you got out of the business to
get in shape.

Speaker 2 (02:43):
I saw you at a at Starcast I couldn't believe
how jacked you were and you had just worked at
the night before, right.

Speaker 4 (02:51):
Yeah, yeah, well yeah, I'll be honest with you guys,
but yeah, I feel like you guys are being way
too But it's just it's one of those things.

Speaker 7 (02:58):
I went on this journey and my life and I'm
not going to try to wax philosophical on it. But
you know how the wrestling business is, and not to
jump in the deep end too quickly, but man, it
takes you way way up to the highest highs and.

Speaker 6 (03:10):
It takes you to the lowest low We know.

Speaker 7 (03:13):
So little of yourself if you let it. And you
won't believe this, man, But about twenty sixteen, I weighed
three hundred and sixteen pounds. I turned forty years old,
and yeah, yeah, man, I let the injuries.

Speaker 4 (03:28):
I like the depression.

Speaker 7 (03:29):
I like to being out of the business for eight
almost ten years kind of get to me.

Speaker 4 (03:34):
And I didn't have to take my shirt off of
National TV anymore. That was plus. But you know, you
also you take medication to cover up injuries and things
like that.

Speaker 7 (03:41):
And I woke up at forty years old, man, I go,
you know what this is not sustainable, and I just decided, Man,
I'm gonna do something about it right now. And I've
never had an addictive personality, so any medication I was
taking was more physical than it was psychological for me.
So I dropped all that cold turkey started just trying
to lose weight. I lost one hundred pounds and went

(04:02):
from three sixteen to to eleven before I got back
in the gym, fell back in love with working out,
and just just just love to love how I feel now.
I love where that circle has sort of brought me.
And man, just to say, it took me about a
year and a half to do it. Man, But before
I lost that weight, dude, I looked like a Russian
nesting doll.

Speaker 4 (04:21):
I looked like last.

Speaker 6 (04:24):
That's awesome.

Speaker 2 (04:25):
Well, I mean you look you look fucking great now.
And when I saw you at Sarcas, you had just
worked for GCW. So are you back in the ring
or what's going on here?

Speaker 4 (04:33):
So far that's been a one off man, So to
be honest with you, Matt, here's the deal. Man. The
way that that whole thing happened for me was.

Speaker 7 (04:39):
This, When I left the wrestling business, I truly left
the wrestling business. I literally, you know, and that thing
is a cumulative effect. I mean, for most people, unless
you've been extremely blessed in this wrestling business, you don't
sit there and plan out your retirement, right, you sit
there and you go it just hits you one day,
or you get a back, that injury that's taking you

(05:01):
out of the ring, or maybe more often than not,
I think it's a combination.

Speaker 4 (05:04):
Of all those things. Right, it's in three and those
things start mounting up, while at the same time, maybe
the phone's ringing a little less, while at the same
time you're thinking.

Speaker 7 (05:14):
A lot less of your work and who you are
and your value as a wrestler and where your place
is in the business. And mentally you get down and
you get down and you get down till one day
you just decide, Man, this ain't for me anymore. And
you've got a million excuses why it's not. And it
could be the injuries, it could be you know, any
other issues that come along. And for me, man, I'm
wrestling and a little independent in Alabama and I'm wrestling

(05:38):
Bull bu Cannon and we were the main event. Yeah,
and I know me at Barry's gonna have a great
batch so I'll walk up to him and I said, dude,
you're gonna be my last match. I'm retiring tonight. Of
course you are, yeah, and he just hugs me, laughs
about it. His reactions about to say, as yours. I
literally had that match. We finished the match, I rolled
out of the ring. I didn't cut up promo, I
didn't do anything, and I never got a ring again

(06:01):
until thirteen years later, which was about this past July.

Speaker 4 (06:05):
I think it was.

Speaker 7 (06:06):
You know, I do the podcast with Conrad Thompson, the
whole ad free show thing, and he did his Top
Guy weekend up and Hunt's fa Alabama, which is not
too far from me, and he knows I don't do
autograph signing. I wasn't doing appearances. I wasn't wrestling. I
wasn't taking any bookings because when I swore off wrestling

(06:26):
and said I was done with wrestling, I was done
with all of it. And and you know, I very
rarely even did interviews like this, and so I went
to draw.

Speaker 4 (06:34):
Caricatures for him.

Speaker 7 (06:35):
He talked to me into that he goes just draw
caricatures and be kind of in the corner. So I
interacted with the fans forgot how awesome it is interacting
with the fans man when they're genuine and it's good
and they love you and appreciate you.

Speaker 4 (06:48):
So I'm just drawing all day and keeping my mouth shut. Meanwhile,
they did this mock indie show where they had Eric Bischoff,
Jeff Jarrett, you know, road Dog, and these guy Kevin
Sullivan get together and book a show based on the
local talent that they had, and then they put on
the show in front of the fans. So long story short,

(07:08):
at the end of the day, when we got through wrestling,
or they got through having the show, it was over.
The building's empty, the ring was empty. We're all about
to leave.

Speaker 7 (07:18):
And I looked at Conrad and I go, you know,
I haven't even taken a bump or been in a
ring in thirteen years.

Speaker 4 (07:23):
And he goes, there's no way. I go, yeah, trust
and I need to get in there and just take
a balt see what it feels like. Yeah.

Speaker 7 (07:29):
I stepped in the ring. Kyle took a back bump,
and I went, man, you know that didn't feel too bad.
I backed up into the corner, just took one step
and took a front bump and went that's all right,
grab one of the guys that had a max that night,
shot him in the ropes through a dropkick and the
hot for there Tomy was there, hit him right on
the nose and it felt like riding the bike.

Speaker 4 (07:50):
And so I popped up and Conrad's filming this whole thing,
because he goes, you, legit, haven't been in the ring
in thirteen years ago. This is fresh, so it's raw.
He sticks the microphone my face. I looked at it
and I went, man, I'm here for a little bit
of fun my dad and the son. Maybe one more run.
I ain't done. I ain't done. I then I realized
that have the sidebirds No but.

Speaker 7 (08:13):
Still, and he plastered it up on Twitter and it
got a little bit of traction. And I got a
call from GCW and Brett Lauderdale and hey, what about.

Speaker 4 (08:22):
Having one more match and when we do star Cast.

Speaker 7 (08:24):
And at the same time Conrad was asking me to
be a part of star Cast. So I'd be there
for the weekend anyway, maybe get to see some old
friends at ae W and just see what shakes down.

Speaker 4 (08:34):
You know, at least I won't be fifty.

Speaker 7 (08:36):
Five wondering if I could have had one more run
so so far that's been the only match and the
only time out.

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Wow, I mean, man, you wrestled Joey Janella?

Speaker 4 (08:45):
Right, yeah, sure did. Man. We did about fifteen minutes
and whoa, just the splits, the whole deal. You know,
I was. I was shot first time in the ring.

Speaker 7 (08:54):
I promise you, guys, man, and now I'm one of
those guys I believe playing this game of life with
your cards face up and being completely transparent. I didn't
get in the ring and buff around. I didn't train around.
I didn't have time because.

Speaker 6 (09:06):
My character sinned.

Speaker 7 (09:08):
My artwork is so busy, and I'm on the road
so much. I just slim in the ring. I said,
let's go out there and see what happens.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
You know, now, do you have that match? You know?

Speaker 2 (09:18):
Are you bit by that wrestling bug again? Do you
want to have another match? Or what's the deal? Are
you just playing it by ears? Staying in shape? See
what happens?

Speaker 7 (09:26):
All the above, Matt, Because here's the weird thing, and
you know, not that Brown knows or anything like that,
but being completely honest with you. As I get older,
one of the things I really am impressed with when
I watch you, and I'm admired from afar is how
you're handling the business aspect of the wrestling business, because
I truly believe that one of the problems with my
generation of wrestlers was this. We came in during the

(09:49):
contract era and came in during the era of television,
and and you know, trying to make the spot and
learn to be a TV wrestler. That we all became
pretty good wrestling talents. For us to be on that level,
I mean, you learn how to work on match, you
learn the psychology, you learn to be a good worker,
but you really don't learn the wrestling business.

Speaker 4 (10:07):
And man, I didn't realize that after I was out
of it, you know.

Speaker 7 (10:10):
And as I get older, you know, you spend the
first half of your career being about the wrestling aspect
of the wrestling business. Just give me a shot, give
me some TV time, put me in the ring, dude,
I'll get over and then the money will come later.

Speaker 4 (10:23):
And now the money don't always come later, you know.

Speaker 7 (10:26):
And as you get widow gets smaller and smaller, man, dude,
you go, I better start thinking about the business side
of things. And I'm blessed now that I work so
hard to build up this caricature business that I have
that I honestly do as well off of it right
now as I did when I wrestled for WCW financially.

(10:46):
Oh yeah, and I would love to make one more run.
I would love to marry those things together from a
branding perspective to make myself more desirable to book as
a caricature artist. But you know, I have to balance
that thing where if someone like g c W comes
calling and they want to they want me to do
a one off match or an indie promotion invites me out,
I'm I'm flattered by that.

Speaker 4 (11:07):
I love that. I want to be a part of it.
But oftentimes I can make more.

Speaker 7 (11:11):
Money going and drawing that day than I can going
and drawing in the ring.

Speaker 3 (11:16):
Well I love that.

Speaker 8 (11:18):
So for a lot of people that might not know
what what is the what is the drawing business? What
exactly are you doing right now?

Speaker 5 (11:25):
I always remember your your spots in WW magazine from
when I was in high.

Speaker 4 (11:29):
School exactly you doo of it all, man, dude.

Speaker 7 (11:32):
Here's the thing is the way it all started for
me was I was a big fan growing up of
Mad magazine. Like I loved artwork, and I always loved
to draw, and uh, that was never a big mark
for comic books. I love the characters in the comic books.
But if you came to me showed me that you
drew Batman, dude, he's got a square ahead and a
lot of details. You're not impressing me with your artistic

(11:53):
ability on that one. You know, the storytelling is phenomenal,
but the face itself, you know, when I'm tracing those
things out of a comic book, that didn't impress me
as much as Mad magazine that would spoofed these movies
and TV shows and for that to work, just like
the actor or the wrestler, or if they put Hogan
on the cover or whatever, and you're going, wow, you
don't even have to tell me that that's Tom Cruise

(12:15):
in Top Gun. That looks just freaking like Tom Cruise.
So I carried that with me when I wrestled for WCW.
You know, you guys know how it is. You got
to be in a different town every night. You got
to be at the building at nude for a show
that doesn't go live on TV.

Speaker 4 (12:28):
Until seven pm. You got some time, you.

Speaker 7 (12:32):
Know, unless you're playing cards or doing something else. I
started looking at those dry erase boards in the back
and I bought me a pack of markers and began
just drawing the guys in the back and Kurt hitting
of course, you know, being the consummate river that he was.
Anything that is humorous like that, that kind of pokes
the bear he loves, and he's going to encourage and

(12:54):
he'd sit there man constantly go draw, Hogan.

Speaker 4 (12:58):
Okay, I'm like two years old, and he's going, now draw,
I'm really old, drawing with an oxygen mask walker and
oh boy, Yeah, he gave me this great line that
he said, hey, look, you tell me you don't write
the news. You just reported. And so you know, Bill
After and Ross Foreman and some other publishers and editors
for wrestling the magazines saw that, and that started me

(13:20):
doing the cartoons. Well.

Speaker 7 (13:22):
It was very forgiving for me because at that point
I was not a professional artist. I was a wrestler
that could sort of draw. So that was the pull
and the novelty, and I parlayed that over the course
of about ten or twelve years of doing that month
in a month out and teaching myself to be better
and better into me having some skills when I left wrestling,

(13:43):
and so I would early two thousands to answer the
question a little bit more directly about the caricature business.

Speaker 4 (13:50):
Everybody had a blog.

Speaker 7 (13:52):
So all these caricature artists that I hadn'tmired, including Mad
magazine artists and guys like that Theme Park caricature artist,
all of them, they would have these blogs and they
post their working man just like a mark. I'd send
them a little message and go, hey, dude, why'd you
draw this nose like this? And this is really cool?
Here's my drawing. What do you think about this? You
got any kind of advice or encouragement? In ninety percent

(14:14):
of the time, to be honest, you know, not to
Most of their reactions would be wait a second, is
this last?

Speaker 4 (14:21):
LaRue the wrestler and Big Wrestlings fan.

Speaker 7 (14:25):
They start asking me about wrestling, and I go, ask
me anything you want about wrestling, as long as I
can ask you about caricature.

Speaker 4 (14:30):
And then I found out caricature artists have a union.
They've got an organization.

Speaker 5 (14:36):
Yes, yes, this man, you gotta way better than being
one of the boys.

Speaker 4 (14:40):
Jesus, Well, here's the thing, man, you're one of the boys.
Here's what I hated about Edie wrestling.

Speaker 7 (14:44):
And again it goes back to why I admire what
you doing so much, madness that the thing I hated
the most about when the phone did bring is having
to talk to a promoter and sit there and value
myself on what I think I can get from the
promoter versus what the promoter's going to try to pay
me and then go back and then you worry about
overpricing yourself, and you worry about under pricing yourself. Man

(15:06):
for me, and there there's a standard market rate for
caricature artists, and they know what they've got. So if
I don't charge what the standard rate is, I get
blackballed because now I'm undercutting all the other boys in
the business.

Speaker 6 (15:19):
That's crazy.

Speaker 7 (15:19):
They don't want me around, you know. And so we
all kind of work together in that regard. And so
I do caricatures. I do black and white version on
paper like you see at a theme park that's really
really fast. Or I do a digital version where I
draw directly on an iPad, I have a flat screen
TV behind me. I print it out four by six
on a little lanyard and the name tag people wear

(15:41):
at these uh at these shows and these trade shows
are their caricature plus the company's name imprinted on there,
plus the booth number and the whole deal. And more
often than not, I also get recognized from wrestling, so
they feel like they get a two fur. So they'll
fly me all over the United States and do a
three day deal there and and work their booth to

(16:01):
try to compete with the other boos and draw people
to their booth.

Speaker 5 (16:05):
How much money can you get done in like a day,
like at what's the most amount of Like?

Speaker 7 (16:10):
Yeah, so this is generally what I average. I average
one face when I'm doing black and white really quick,
just on a sheet of paper, and I do it
on a twelve by eighteen sheet of paper with just
a Crayola marker. And man, I just did them yesterday,
did a wedding last night Memphis. I do one face
every three and a half minutes.

Speaker 4 (16:27):
That, yeah, that's exactly right. It's fast. You have to
be because I do a lot of campus Arkansas.

Speaker 7 (16:34):
State on Wednesday, and so as soon as you show up,
they know the caricature artists is going to be there.
They'll be five hundred deep in students and you're there
for four hours, and it's one person right up the
other man, just.

Speaker 4 (16:47):
Boom boom, boom, boom boom.

Speaker 7 (16:49):
And then when I do the digital, the digital is
full color, it's a little bit more involved.

Speaker 4 (16:54):
It takes me probably about eight minutes to draw each person.

Speaker 7 (16:58):
And so these companies will book me out for volume
and quality, man, and and for the interaction and just
an experience for their guests to have this thing going
on at whatever party, event or anything it is.

Speaker 4 (17:11):
Man and I get paid by the hour.

Speaker 6 (17:13):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (17:14):
The Connie and me is thinking, oh my god, why
are you not at every wrestling convention charge of these marks,
like Jimmy comes up, you draw Jimmy, you sign it.
Steve comes up, yet, you draw Steve, you sign it.
And then you're eight your eight by tens a right
there too. If they want to, you know, buy that there.
It is ready to go. That's exactly right. And I
tried to kind of I've thought about that for a long.

Speaker 7 (17:36):
Period of time, and I've tried to make that happen
a little bit there at star Cast when I was
just a couple of tables down from you, Matt, and
I don't think people quite got it yet, you.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
Know what I mean.

Speaker 7 (17:47):
And that's the other thing that will happen. Sometimes I'll
go to a wedding. Weddings are really big right now,
but most people haven't realized it's become a thing in weddings.
So all go into the cocktail hour and most people
will walk by and they think you're gonna make fun
of them. They think it's like the TikTok videos where
you u's nothing but a big schnoz and the goat
keys and the whole deal.

Speaker 4 (18:08):
And so they walk buy and they go, hey, you
want to draw it, and they'll go maybe later, Well,
you'll get a couple of brave people be the first
people to sit down, and once they see the quality
and they see what you're turning, everybody starts lining up.
You got to get a few out there, you know.

Speaker 3 (18:24):
Wow?

Speaker 2 (18:25):
And how did this turn into a podcast? And especially
one with Conrad on his network?

Speaker 7 (18:30):
So Conrad hit me up pre covid, I would say
maybe a year year and a half before when he
was first talking about doing the paywall and doing adfree
shows dot com, and he hit me with the idea
of finding out a way to do where I could
draw a live for the wrestling fans and talk about
whatever it is I'm drawing, and he kind of had

(18:51):
the genesis and the idea for the show. And at
that time, Man, I was just in a place where
I still was a bidder is toong of a word, man,
because I've never been a bitter person in my life
at all.

Speaker 4 (19:03):
I just have it.

Speaker 7 (19:04):
But you know, I just didn't feel good about wrestling, man,
And I didn't want to have anything to do with wrestling,
and I didn't want to do anything even remotely connected
to wrestling. And the excuse I would give to him,
and give to anybody else that would listen, was this,
I don't want to be around the wrestling business. And
if I do a podcast, it's going to lead to interviews.
If I do interviews, it's going to lead to promos.
Promo is going to lead to autograph signings. Autograph signings

(19:26):
are going to lead to me having matches. Matches are
going to lead to me back in the business.

Speaker 6 (19:29):
Again, this sounds.

Speaker 4 (19:32):
Yeah, which is exactly what eventually wind up happening. Right,
So I said no the first time, and then they
hit me up about two years later, and uh right
right in the towards the end of COVID, I think
is when they started hitting me up about asking about
doing We've been doing the podcast, I think now for
about two years, and uh, in that time, it felt

(19:53):
right At that Tommy was right. I was in a
better place.

Speaker 7 (19:56):
I had my feet underneath me a little bit more
where I had to have done enough digital that I
had an idea of my mind of what that podcast
could look like. And I still don't feel like I
have done it complete justice yet. In fact, I've just
built a studio in my house, just one room over
from where I'm at right now, where I'm trying to
equip that out and get the right equipment, the right

(20:17):
sound equipment, the right cameras, because I think that there's
a way where I could do it where my entire
behind me would be the green screen so people can
see what I'm drawing as I'm drawing it live.

Speaker 6 (20:27):
You know.

Speaker 4 (20:28):
I think there's a lot of opportunities there. But that's
how it kind of turned.

Speaker 7 (20:32):
Into us doing this podcast, and that turned into me
interacting with fans again.

Speaker 4 (20:36):
And I remembered, man that you.

Speaker 7 (20:39):
Know, when you push all the bad stuff away and
you get away from the negativity, and you distilled the
wrestling business now to its purest form, which is are
the fans enjoying what I'm doing?

Speaker 4 (20:49):
Is it getting over? Is the interaction here?

Speaker 7 (20:51):
We're making that connection whatever it is, whether I want
them to fear me, or I want them to love me,
or I want them to laugh at me, or I
want them to hate me, whatever that connect is. Man,
Once you get that back and it's genuine and you're
being yourself and they're they're accepting it.

Speaker 4 (21:06):
Man, they're giving you that feedback. They know the language back.

Speaker 6 (21:10):
You know.

Speaker 4 (21:10):
Wow, I forgot how good this can be when it's good.

Speaker 6 (21:13):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 2 (21:14):
Well I'm glad you're you're back in the business and
you're all positive. But I do have to bring up
one negative thing. No wrestling figures, no action figure.

Speaker 6 (21:23):
Never got a figure, Yeah yeah, you got figure out.

Speaker 7 (21:27):
The only ones I've got are the ones that are
kind of indie made, I guess were lack of a
better way of putting it. You know that that people
through the years have just kind of made the tribute
action figures, iizing stuff, you know, And again that goes
back to the business minded me. One of the things
I've thought about about trying to make one more run
is I would just like to be relevant enough, you know,

(21:49):
to have that little bit of merchandise. I've learned to
appreciate mailbox money when you're not actually bumping.

Speaker 4 (21:56):
Just go out there, and I need more of that.

Speaker 2 (22:00):
Yeah, So let's let's backtrack a little bit, because you know,
obviously you were a WCW. Were you a fan growing
up or was this you watch on TV and you're like, WHOA,
I can get into this because you were you were
you started the power plant, right.

Speaker 7 (22:15):
Yeah, absolutely, and so extraordinary story if you guys don't
mind me telling it, if.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
You'll showl with me for a second. But when I
was a kid, I was a huge fan.

Speaker 7 (22:24):
I'm younger than most people probably think I am because
I started the wrestling business so young.

Speaker 4 (22:29):
And I also, for whatever reason, got tight casted with
the older guys.

Speaker 7 (22:33):
Like even when they brought it in the new Blood and WCW,
the new Blood were all ten years older than I
was at the time. Started when I was like eighteen,
I was youngest guy WCW had under contract at the
time when I started, and I you know, I started
about eighteen, retired when I was about thirty two or
something like that. I'm forty six now forty seven. Yeah,

(22:54):
So I just I got I got in early and
got out young. And that's why most people when they
think back to the nineties, they think I must be
older than I really am.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
I would have thought that too, until I looked at
your Wikipedia today exactly.

Speaker 7 (23:08):
So I was a child of the eighties, and I
was a whole a maniac like everybody else, and was
there for WrestleMania one and the WrestleMania three and all
these iconic stepping stones and wrestling and became a huge
wrestling fan all throughout my childhood. But I came from
a really, really poor home, and I started working when
I was nine years old. My first job was washing

(23:29):
cars and got grass at nineteen years old, then working
on construction crews cleaning up around homes that were being
built when I was ten and eleven years old, and
then actually building houses when I was twelve and thirteen.

Speaker 4 (23:41):
And I played sports also during all this. All throughout high.

Speaker 7 (23:44):
School, played football, wrestled, and my junior and senior year
of high school, I was homeless.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
When I was twelve years old.

Speaker 7 (23:52):
My mom had a boyfriend that on the property we
lived in and he beat her up, and I was
too young to do anything about it. When I was fifteen,
he tried to do it again and I took a
baseball back to him, and I wasn't too young to
do anything about it then. And my family all love
each other. My mom loved us as best she could.
She raised her kids really, really well. She had five

(24:13):
kids and quit school in the eighth grade. So we
live in houses that didn't have running water, electricity, just
because we couldn't afford it. And so when that riding
on the wall kind of came and I knew it
was untenable really for me to stay home any longer.
I started taking care of myself. And I still had
a great relationship with my mom and my family. It
was just kind of an understood thing, even though it
wasn't stated that, hey man, I'm better off financially just

(24:36):
working and taking care of myself.

Speaker 4 (24:38):
So the company I worked for also had some clothing stores.

Speaker 7 (24:41):
And I slept behind the cash register from midnight to
five am. Yeah, and that was my job. I was
security and they gave me a company vehicle.

Speaker 4 (24:50):
I would leave there.

Speaker 7 (24:50):
I'd lock it up and I'd drive down the hill
to the high school that I played football at, and
I could take a shower in the athletics department because
I did athletics, And then after school, I'd go to
football practice. After football practice, I'd go home with a
buddy I played football with. I'd eat dinner with his family, shower,
do whatever homework I had, and then be back up
at the store at midnight to sleep there from midnight

(25:13):
to five am.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
Those were my hours.

Speaker 6 (25:15):
That's great.

Speaker 7 (25:15):
So that was my schedule. Yeah, all throughout high school,
we want to state championship. And when undefeated at football
at Alabama that year, so it was like a rudy
story man, and I want to stay championship in amateur
wrestling as well. But I was so busy living life
and surviving and plus wrestling in the early ninety sucked,
so I wasn't really watching it as much. And then

(25:39):
about nineteen ninety five is when I graduated high school.

Speaker 4 (25:43):
About ninety six, I started college.

Speaker 7 (25:45):
I was already engaged by then to who would be
my future wife, and so we settled in a little
bit more and we were about to start college together,
and I had more stability in my life and all
of a sudden, WCW had Monday Night Drove.

Speaker 4 (26:00):
It had just started.

Speaker 7 (26:01):
They had all the guys I grew up with under
that umbrella, right they had Now the nWo is just hit.
My mind's blown because I'm watching hul Cogan turnhel and
now he's a bad guy.

Speaker 4 (26:12):
You know what's this all about?

Speaker 7 (26:13):
And they got Rick Flair, they got Lex Luger, they
got Steamed, they got Roddy Poker, they got the Macho Man,
and then on the undercard, they got.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
Stuff I've never seen in wrestling before.

Speaker 7 (26:22):
When you see like Billy Kidman and Ray Minsterio Junior
Wrestling and even guys like just go Inferno. We're entertaining
his activity, man, And to watch that stuff play out,
you know, and I'm going, this was a good product
from top to bottom. And then right in the middle
that sen my main event slide. You had guys like
Eddie Guerrero, Chris bin Wan, Chris Jericho, Dee Malinko or

(26:45):
Wrestling weekend and week out, and You're going, man, this
is just a great product top to bottom. And I
watched for maybe three weeks or four weeks, and then
I saw the promos that were running for the power
Plant and they open tryouts, and my mentality at the
time literally was Atlanta is a drive away from me.
I'll never make it professional wrestling. I don't know anything

(27:06):
about professional wrestling. I didn't even know at the time
this will work, you know, I didn't I've never been
to a show, backstage, nothing.

Speaker 4 (27:14):
I just thought, man, what a great story to have
for the rest of my life if I go on
a tryout and I meet Steam or I shake his hand,
or meet Rick Flair, and I didn't know what to expect.
So I got this open tryout at the power Plan.

Speaker 7 (27:27):
Those were three day long tryouts, and anything you guys
ever heard about about how bad and brutal it was
is absolutely not over exaggerated or overstated. And Sarge, I
don't know if you guys have ever met Sarge. You know,
with Sergeant Buddy Lee Parker, Dwayne Bruce. Yeah, he was

(27:47):
a legitimate like coast Guard drill sergeant. And so he
would come in this fire club that was like five six,
two hundred and thirty pounds and built like a Rubets cube,
and he would just come in and go grab a bucket,
Grab a buck what's the And they had these five
gallon paint buckets. You flipped them upside down and you
did free squats, and you started with reps of fifty

(28:08):
drop down push ups, roll over sit ups, run in place,
reps of fifty again continuously until.

Speaker 4 (28:13):
You built up the five hundred squats. And I'm looking
in the tryout class.

Speaker 7 (28:18):
Yeah, yeah, So there was like twenty four guys in
the tryout class, and I would say it was a
mix of guys that were like college athletes that weren't
quite good enough for the pros, like football players and
those types of athletes they knew they were wanting to
go pro, but they wanted to continue to be an athlete,
or the bodybuilders that wanted something to do in the
off season to make money, and they thought they had

(28:40):
to look. Or you'd have raw boned guys that were
just naturally six foot eight, four hundred pounds and had
tattoos and.

Speaker 4 (28:46):
Mohawks and thought they had to look.

Speaker 7 (28:49):
In their mind, all those guys thought if I checked
the boxes, they're gonna see me and just sign me
to a contract, you know. And I'm looking around and
I'm watching drills, you know, Serge get in their face
and when they're falling out and cramping up because they
can't do anymore squats, you know, or the juice gets
to them and they're locked up, they're blood or whatever.

Speaker 6 (29:12):
You know.

Speaker 7 (29:12):
He would get down in their face. But look, you
called us. We didn't call you if you can't do
it out here, and he's just running them off one
after the other. It took about the first half of
the first day for me to realize this was a
war of attrition, and I looked around, went, oh, that's
the game. Well, I've been through some stuff in my
life by then. You may ask me to leave, but

(29:34):
I'm not gonna quit, you know, I'm not that guy. Yeah,
So that was my mentality.

Speaker 4 (29:39):
And once I realized that was the thing, I was
like a Rick flair Mark at that point because every
squat I wasn't just doing them. I would do them
and go oooh, I wanted to be there.

Speaker 7 (29:52):
And at the end of three day trap well, at
the end of the first day there were sixteen guys left,
second day, eight guys showed up. End of the second
there was maybe six five six guys left, and then
the third day and all of it was just ten
hours of exactly what I just described and the third
day there was two guys left. Me and one other

(30:12):
guy were the only two that showed up, and we
did the same thing I described for the first half
of the morning. Then we finally rolled into the ring
for the first time. They didn't they still k faved everything.
They didn't tell us nothing about the wrestling business. They
taught us very quickly how to run the ropes, taught
us how to take a back bump, how to take
a front bump, and see if we were athletic enough

(30:33):
to pull that off. And then they pulled us into
Jody Hamilton's office and then you sat down with the
Winston Churchill Professional Wrestling.

Speaker 4 (30:41):
And you know he would do the dealry and lean
back and he'd take us off, hold his hands over
his start and look, kid, we're not promising you'll ever
have a job in a wrestling business. I'm not telling
you you're gonna be on TV telling you that you're
going to be a big superstar. You are not a

(31:04):
wc W wrestler. But if you want to pay us
three grand, you've shown us enough to prove to us
that you have.

Speaker 3 (31:11):
To pay.

Speaker 6 (31:14):
Unreal count shit.

Speaker 7 (31:16):
Well, my mentality at the time was this, and honestly
was this. I go, you know what, you pay for
any training you get in this world. I don't care
if you want to be a doctor or if you
want to be a welder, You're going to pay for
some kind of training or schooling. And if I really
thought that I could have any kind of career of
professional wrestling, and for whatever reason, it felt natural to me.
It felt like it came natural to me, just did

(31:38):
from the first time I stepped in the ring.

Speaker 4 (31:40):
It felt right. So I said, you know what, this
is my best bet for training.

Speaker 7 (31:44):
I'm not there's no place I can go that's bigger
than WCW was at the time.

Speaker 4 (31:48):
And get better training. There just wasn't.

Speaker 7 (31:51):
And so I go, you know what, I'm gonna get
this thing a shot, and I'm a bet on myself.

Speaker 4 (31:55):
I had fifteen hundred dollars in my savings account.

Speaker 7 (31:59):
I gave that to w CW and Ted Turner also
owned see an In Center, so I worked the rest
of it off moving furniture.

Speaker 4 (32:05):
At the c an N Center.

Speaker 7 (32:06):
And I was from Alabama to Atlanta, two hours there,
two hours back, ten hours a day, five days a
week for about ten months before I had my first match.

Speaker 5 (32:18):
So my two questions are one, who was the other guy?
Did he ever make it? And what was like the
actual training like when they let you in?

Speaker 4 (32:27):
Yeah, never saw him again.

Speaker 7 (32:28):
So what happens is they brought us into the office individually,
So I don't know what they said to him, if
it was the same spill they gave to me, which
it probably was, but I never saw him again after
that last day.

Speaker 6 (32:39):
That's incredible, yow.

Speaker 7 (32:40):
And so the guys that came after me that very
very quickly after that, I don't know how this fell
the way that it fell, But like the very next month,
they had another training, you know, exactly would have these
things monthly. These tryouts were monthly, and then the next
month that tryout through there was Mike Sanders trial Ale Sanders,

(33:02):
you know, and the power plant with us, and then
not long after that was Alan Funk, and then right
whatever Alan Funk was Elix Skipper, and then Mark Jennerak,
and then Chuck Palumbo and then Sean o'harron not too
long after that. We just all kind of came through
together about the same time. And I was the first
of that crew, so to speak, and I was probably

(33:23):
the first of that crew that kind of got a
little bit of a break.

Speaker 3 (33:29):
So, yeah, we want to.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Ask you about your obviously your your wrestling career, but
we have some questions from the fans. I think the
questions might come up organically, right Mark.

Speaker 8 (33:37):
Yeah, yeah, sure, I mean there's a lot. I mean
we've actually, uh you know, answered a lot of them already.

Speaker 4 (33:42):
But you got all right, guys, met So you know,
we asked.

Speaker 8 (33:48):
Our fans in our little Facebook group to ask you
some questions. So these aren't going to be sort of
in order or anything. They're just gonna be kind of
all over the place. But uh so here we go.
So Chesley Gobar says, did you enjoy the corporal Cajun
persona or not? How much input did you have in
that gimmick? He says, I loved it?

Speaker 4 (34:08):
Ha ha.

Speaker 7 (34:09):
Hey, here's the thing about the corporal caguing gimmick. I'm
extremely proud of it. It's probably the better way to
explain that. And what I mean by that is this.
The way all that stuff came about with the n
I A was Vince Russo came in and he just started, man,
you know, changing everything right away. He was really high
on the young guys and wanted to make new stars.

(34:29):
And I think part of that was he had to
feel like he, you know, was proving himself by making
new stars. And he was really big on doing that.
And he brought me and a lot of people don't
don't remember that this was a part of it, but
it was me, Hugh Morris, Chiabo Guerrero, oh man, what
was Big Van Hamer, Van Hammer and Booker T Booker T.

(34:54):
Because Booker T was g I Bro, I don't know
if you got remember that, this.

Speaker 4 (34:59):
Gimmick, right. So he brought all of a sudden there
and he said, look, bro, bro, here's the thing. Yeah,
I don't have room for all you guys on.

Speaker 7 (35:09):
On the show. But he goes, I got two choices.
I can either send you home are we need comic
relief in the show, and we want you guys to
basically be on the movie stripes. That's the way he
sold it. And they kind of gave us the names
Corporal Cage and and and I think van Hammer was
stashed at first, and uh and then you know, general

(35:30):
Hugh erection and.

Speaker 4 (35:33):
Bill hated that he hated that Gipp guy. He hated
he hated the name but what me.

Speaker 7 (35:39):
And Hugh and He'll always build a mott will always
forever be Hugh to me for him because that's just
how I knew him. And uh, but me, Hugh and
Chabo were pretty close at the time, and we were
pretty proud of the fact that I think the fact
that that got over when it was booked just to
be comic relief to the extent that it did. I mean,
I realized that this is a a flashpan point of

(36:02):
WCW there where it went a lot of good to
probably look at, but it got over to a certain extent.
And for the extent that it got over, we took
pride in the fact that it was strictly forced based
on our workability. And once we got in the ring,
you know, especially me and Chabo as a tag team,
once you put us in the ring, man, we felt
like we could go with anybody and we could play
whatever part you needed us to play. So when they
came to me and they said you're going to be

(36:24):
corporal Cajun and you guys have to wear camouflage for instance,
because the I think they asked how much input did
we have in it? Well, I had no input on
the name but when they came to me with the camouflage,
you go, well, now wait a second, as long as
I'm wearing this urban camouflage that they just ran and
got from the surplus store, they said some runner for it.
I said, doesn't matter how I wear it, as long

(36:45):
as I'm wearing it. No, no, no, no, as long as
you guys kind of like, okay, well what I felt
fit my personalaws. I take one color of the urban
camouflage and another pair of pants, took it to the
wardrobe and asked Sandra to split them up the middle,
take two alternate colors, and kind of saw them together
so that would look different.

Speaker 6 (37:03):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Then I took my wrestling boots and I would fold the.

Speaker 7 (37:06):
Tops down to make them look a little bit more
like World War two jump boots instead of just wrestling.
I took a bucket hat, cut a hole in the
top of it, pulled the hair through, and I still
wore my money grub beats, you know, just tried to
make it our own. And Chavo wore the you know,
the dow rag and the bandana and that sort of thing,
and uh and and then we.

Speaker 4 (37:24):
Pretty quickly threw Van Hammer out of the out of
the group, is there.

Speaker 8 (37:32):
Yeah, So actually taking a step back so that the
Last LaRue character, Rob Buck says, was there any inspiration
whether in name or hairstyle taken from the X Men's gambit,
which is his real name is Remy Lebue.

Speaker 7 (37:48):
Honest with you, here's the way all that stuff came about.
And this is one hot and and so I promised
with you guys are transparent, transparent.

Speaker 4 (37:58):
So my real name is Johnny Mark LaRue.

Speaker 7 (38:00):
Anybody can Wikipedia that and see that my real name
since I was eighteen years old is Jonathan Mark Last LaRue.
And the reason why it is the best advice I
got in the wrestling business that really helped me out
so much was again Jody Hamilton and all this wisdom.
He called me Last from day one because he remembered
the old cowboy Last LaRue from way back in the

(38:21):
Western time, right, that guy just spelled his last name differently.
And so as soon as he here last, Hey, he
goes Hey, Last LaRue. And so he called me in
there and he just called me in his office one day
and he goes and this is before ever signed with
WCW or anything. I just really started training and he goes, hey, kid,
so you really think you're gonna use this like last
LaRue name? And I go, well, I don't have anything better.

(38:44):
I think, yeah, probably, So when he goes, he goes,
I would I think it's a good college, got built
in name recognition already. He goes, it's great. He goes,
give you a little bit of advice. Give me all
the advice that you can, Jody, please, he goes. If
I were you, I wouldn't worry about trademarks. I wouldn't
worry about copyrights. I wouldn't think about any of that
stuff because all that stuff expires, or you have to

(39:05):
continue to renew it, or you.

Speaker 4 (39:07):
Got to pay more money.

Speaker 7 (39:08):
You have to really stay on top of He goes,
Since your real last name is LaRue, I would go
to your local probate office back home, and I would
petition the court to just legally add that to your name.

Speaker 4 (39:20):
Don't change your name what anyway, the example he gave me,
he goes, he goes, like a woman.

Speaker 7 (39:28):
That goes against married and changes her last name, just
go and fill out that same form.

Speaker 4 (39:33):
And I went and talked to my lawyer. I go,
can I do? He goes, Yeah, we do, that like
for twenty five bucks, I added last.

Speaker 8 (39:38):
Money before everyone, Oh my god.

Speaker 4 (39:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (39:42):
And here's the best part of that story. For instance,
w CW was never an issue. W CW never thought
about it. And by the way, as a side note,
as a parenthetical, I knew I couldn't be Mark LaRue
because the first time I ever went to a wrestling show,
I met Terry Taylor, and you guys know Terry, I'm sure.
I walked up to him and I said, hey, mister Ta,
I just want to introduce myself. My name's Mark, and
he goes, I'm sure you are, kid, and guy, I

(40:07):
work in the wrestling business. So I went and changed that.
W CW was never an issue WWE. When I signed
with them, they had in their contract that they owned
Last LaRue, the rights to it.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
The name, the whole deal. And so I called them up.

Speaker 7 (40:21):
And I said, the only issue I've got with the contracts,
not the money, nothing else is I don't know how
you own the name Last LaRue when that's my name,
And they go, well, we bought WCW, and we we
assumed that they came up with the character and that
intellectual property and we owned that and go No, they
didn't come up with that's my real name. They go, well,
just send us copy of your driver's license. So I
sent a copy of my driver's license. They changed the

(40:42):
contract and it was never an issue. Here's my idea,
my legal name for six or eight years or so.

Speaker 5 (40:48):
Wow, I never even thought of something like that. Maybe
you can help me with my geography, raige occasion. You're
from Alabama, so is that right? Can you be a casion?
Is it that region or is the only New Orleans thing?

Speaker 4 (41:01):
Like?

Speaker 6 (41:01):
Help me out with this.

Speaker 4 (41:02):
So here's the deal on that. So legit true story.

Speaker 7 (41:05):
My dad was from Lofila, Louisiana, but I never knew them.
I never knew my dad. I never knew that family.
My mom raised us in Alabama. I just got this
legit shoot cage in last name LaRue.

Speaker 6 (41:15):
Right.

Speaker 4 (41:16):
So when I.

Speaker 7 (41:16):
Started at WCW and I come over there and I'm
trying to figure out what I'm going to do with myself.
Like they asked about the hair when I showed up. Man,
my hair was short. I always kept it short for
ball in high school and the coaches made us do that.
They said, kid, you need to grow out your hair,
and you need some facial hair because you look too
much like high school you look actually they said, look

(41:37):
the kid Rudy.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
From the movie Rooty. So back when I was young,
I guess I did. And so when I grew my
hair out, all it would do is just curl up.

Speaker 7 (41:45):
That's all it would do, is just naturally curly and froy,
and so I just kind of leaned into that. Let
it be crazy. Then when I didn't want to go
to everybody had to go to in the nineties, so
I started going out these big port chop sideburns because
I'm a huge Elvis mark. And now I looked in
the mirror one day and the artist and he said, hey,
I could shave those into my initials and make that different.

(42:06):
And so I put the double l's on that. And
then they stuck a microphone in front of my face
at eighteen years old and wanted me to come my
first promo. And when I graduated high school, I talked
probably about like from Alamma. So while I was from Alabama,
they putting my phone on I my name blast a
real mama. They go, oh, you can't talk like that
on television because Southern's considered ignorant. You got to drop

(42:27):
the Southern accent. I go, I can't drop this. I'm
gonna drop my Southern accent. And I tried, and I tried,
man for about six eight weeks. Man, I'm working every
day on annunciation and everything else, and I'm going, I
this guy can't drop it. And then one day it
hit me. I go, now, wait a second. And by
this point I met Macho, I met Dusty Rhodes, and

(42:49):
those guys they kind of talked like that, but they
had really like Dusty Dusty kind of thought like this.

Speaker 6 (42:54):
You know.

Speaker 4 (42:54):
But when he's kind of promo because.

Speaker 5 (42:56):
He's got anyway, he's.

Speaker 7 (42:58):
Gonna really put pronounce it, lean into it. And then
you know, Macho got that gimmick voice and that sort
of thing. Man, And I go, you know what, I
can't hide my Southern accent, but I can go. But
I'm with a Cajun accent because I grew up watching
this thing in Alabama and that came on Alabama Public
Television and it was this guy justin Wilson, and he
was a cage on shelf man and he come out

(43:19):
and he go, We're about to cook a little bit
of cage on food it's gonna be the best thing.
I'll put you about, my Gary, A little.

Speaker 4 (43:27):
Wine for the ticket, a little wine for me, and
so I the whole Cajun culture thing.

Speaker 7 (43:32):
Man, wow, and the first choice. And then they said
to me, they go, okay, well where's home? And again
the branding and the artist in me and everything else
and the dad's roots, and I go Cajun country, Lofay
at Louisiana. Double L's a little subliminal thing there, so
I can play off that.

Speaker 6 (43:50):
So of course, my love.

Speaker 7 (43:52):
The first place w cw ever sends me to an
augrass signing is lofaiat Louisiana. So now I'm thinking, all right,
I'm either gonna blow this, this this gimmick right now,
or this is the best test for it. And the
people would coming in wanting an autographs, and I go, hey,
how y'all doing? Where y'all at? Who can I make
this out to? And I and these people are trying

(44:13):
to convince me they know my family. They go, I
knew your daddy or daddy. I want to have a
name and a number or something. I've never met it.
And then it instantly goes.

Speaker 4 (44:24):
In my mind. I go, look this may be cheesy,
it may be over the top, but if the people
here believe it and treat me like a hometown hero,
I won't have any trouble in Brooklyn, or say, I
see and then I'll find out really quick too. If
you spend any time in Louisiana, they all have different
accents anyway, every parish you go to, every one of

(44:45):
those cages sound different.

Speaker 7 (44:47):
And then you go downtown New Orleans and those guys
sound like they're from Brooklyn.

Speaker 5 (44:52):
No figure, that's that's where Red's is at, right, Broski legit? Yeah,
Red's gym in best gym in the country, man, where
the boys are hitting that?

Speaker 6 (45:01):
Yeah?

Speaker 7 (45:02):
Well, and so with the with the whole gimmick itself. Man,
I kind of came up with all that, and uh,
I just started adding to it.

Speaker 4 (45:10):
You know. I went up to Terry Taylor at.

Speaker 7 (45:12):
A WCW Worldwide TV taping in Orlando two matches into
my career and said, Hey, Terry, you monif I wrestler
as a last LaRue.

Speaker 4 (45:20):
He goes, I don't care what your wrestle erst and.

Speaker 6 (45:23):
He did in that time.

Speaker 7 (45:24):
I go okay, So I went and knocked on the
production truck, you know, twenty years old. And they answered
the door and I go, hey, Terry Taylor said, I
could wrestle as last LaRue, So if you don't mind
changing the cry on at the bottom there, so instead
of it saying Mark Lewis says last lear they go, sure,
no problem, and they did that, and then now the
announcers are kind of forced by that point to start
calling you that. And then when you come out and

(45:46):
you just went and had your gear made and you
put raging on one side and caging on the other,
they get the hint they need something to talk about
the in your match, and I'll call you the rage
and caging and I added the Martigras beads.

Speaker 4 (45:57):
Then I added the side burns and it just kind
of took off from there.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
I love it.

Speaker 8 (46:06):
So this one's kind of topical with the with the
return of TNA this weekend. Ted Conley Baker says, how
did you get involved with TNA? I remember seeing on
a few shows on the TNA explosion back.

Speaker 6 (46:18):
In the ya as you're in the inaugural episode, right, Yeah, yeah,
sure was.

Speaker 4 (46:22):
And again it was the only time in my wrestling
career that I really cracked was stuck up in Cincinnati,
and you know, I'm sure we'll get into more of
that at some point. But TNA came round on the
heels of that, and I was out of shape.

Speaker 7 (46:37):
Man, looking back, I really squandered probably a good opportunity there,
and and I still had just enough of w CW
gravatas that I was trying to carry around on my
back that I thought that I just kind of deserved
the spot.

Speaker 4 (46:49):
Anyway.

Speaker 7 (46:50):
Probably I didn't act like that because I've always tried
to not be arrogant or anything like.

Speaker 4 (46:54):
That in my wrestling career. I tried to be humble.

Speaker 7 (46:56):
But I think in the back of my mind I
probably squandered a lot because I expect more instead of
working for more and with TNA. But I was on
that very first episode. It was because Ed Forera came
in early to help out, you know, doing production and
stuff with him. And Ed gave me a call and
they said, hey, you're a Bama guy and this for
who's going to.

Speaker 4 (47:14):
Be in Huntsible. We want to fly you in or anything.
Are you interested in doing it? I said, yeah, absolutely,
I'll do it.

Speaker 6 (47:19):
Love to do it.

Speaker 4 (47:20):
Let's be a part of it.

Speaker 7 (47:21):
So I had that short little stint on that show,
did a couple other matches with Saboo, and then I
kind of got the hint and I go, you know what,
I need to work for this a little bit. And
there was a time there pretty early on, when they
were doing the fair Grounds in Nashville. I would drive
back and forth. It's four hours in Nashville, four hours back,
just to be backstage on Wednesday night, hoping that they'd
give me a little shot. But again that goes back

(47:44):
and at that point, Man, so much stuff had happened
to me in the wrestling business. You would think I'm
a forty year old veteran, but I was probably twenty
four to twenty five man, and I didn't have a clue.
It goes back to what I was saying before Matt.
I knew how to wrestle. I didn't know the wrestling business.
I knew how to have great matches, you know. And
I'm not trying to pat myself on the back. I'm
just saying I think I could go out there and

(48:05):
work with anybody, and they could put me out there
with Saboo and do the job to Saboo.

Speaker 4 (48:09):
I didn't know how to protect my gimmick. I didn't
know how to get myself over.

Speaker 7 (48:12):
I didn't know how to talk to the people in
the back politics so much is just put forward some
ideas and have some uh, you know, have enough belief
in yourself, enough confidence in yourself that you can you
can be a little aggressive and assertive about going, hey,
use me, you know, do something with me. I got
a lot to bring to the table, and instead I

(48:33):
just kind of hope that they would go, Hey, they
know I work hard and I'm a good hand.

Speaker 4 (48:37):
Why wouldn't they hire me, you know?

Speaker 7 (48:39):
And I think I squandered some chances because of that,
And then that feeds into the bitterness even more because
then you wonderline the world wand to give me a shot?

Speaker 4 (48:47):
What did I do to kiss anybody off?

Speaker 2 (48:49):
But I think the most important thing is that now
you know you're talking about you may have been better,
but you're not. Now you know you put the you
hold yourself accountable and responsible, and you're not one of
these old timers sitting here say this guy help me down,
or this person backstad me.

Speaker 3 (49:03):
So I respect I respect that a lot.

Speaker 4 (49:05):
You know, well, thank you, brother.

Speaker 7 (49:07):
I've thought a lot about this throughout the years, man,
And and to be honest with your perspective is a powerful.

Speaker 4 (49:12):
Thing in life. Right, you're as good as you think
you are, good as you're not. And I don't mean
necessarily talent skill wise, just where you are right now
in this world. Right, and then whether whether or not
things are going well for you has so much to
do with the perspective. And you let that stuff get
in your head and you think it to yourself the
over they're burying me and they're out to get me. Dude.

Speaker 7 (49:33):
Look, I came into WCWWWE at a time when they
just bought the company, you know, and I got bitter
because they signed me to a three year deal and
I took one hundred thousand dollars pay cup when I
could have set on my WCW money, just to prove
that I want to be part of the team.

Speaker 4 (49:50):
And I signed a three year guaranteed deal and they
treated me like I was a trainee when it was
a wrestling talent contract. And then they send me to
Cincinnati and tell me I'm gonna be there for four
weeks and that turns into in months and you start thinking, Okay,
why are they messing with me and why they're burying
me and all this stuff. And then you get older
and you look back, you're there. How many people were
on the roster? Look, get any guys that were on
the rosters that had been world champions and are not

(50:13):
getting TV time.

Speaker 7 (50:14):
Nobody was out to get lash LaRue. It's about the time, man,
and so you could put all your heart and soul
into something in the perspective everybody else's Oh he was
in the business for a cup of coffee. You know,
it's tough, it hurts, but it's live, man, and then
you pick yourself up, you go next.

Speaker 3 (50:35):
Yeah. Absolutely, I love that. I love that perspective. I
love that attitude for sure. Uh.

Speaker 8 (50:41):
I guess we got time for a couple more. Brian Harrison,
I don't know what he's talking about here, but this
is interesting. What was it like riding in the Marti
Gars parade? I still have beads from the parade he
rode in.

Speaker 4 (50:54):
Yeah, yeah, okay, So here's the genius of WCW at
the time. No, I'm kidding.

Speaker 6 (50:58):
This is part of part of of.

Speaker 7 (51:00):
Me not really having enough foresight and enough awareness of
where I was in the wrestling business to probably make
more out of it than what I did. And now
looking back, man, I would never miss these opportunities. But
because I was the raging Cajun lash LaRue man, they
treated me. They embraced me like I was the hometown
boy in Louisiana, man, And they were great to me.

(51:22):
And I still feel like a big part of my heart.
I'm not trying to be cheesy about it.

Speaker 3 (51:26):
Man.

Speaker 7 (51:27):
It feels like a wholetown to me when I get
to go to Louisiana, and I love that the people
were proud to think of me as one of those
guys man. And hey, Cajun is caguing. It's more of
a mindset than it is anything else. And so they
had me Grand Marshall and Marti Gras about three years
in a row. In one of those years they actually
had the last year that they did that, they sent
a pretty good group of WCW guys there because it

(51:49):
was getting over so well. As part of Marti Gras
Crew of Caesar Parade they put us on. And that
one that our friend there is probably talking about is
one of the last ones where I was there.

Speaker 4 (52:00):
I think Canyon was there, Disco Inferno was there, some
other guys maybe Ravens Stereo, and we were riding on
the float Man and w CW.

Speaker 7 (52:09):
I actually still have one and I love it to
this day. They had Marty Grass beats made that had
the big gold belt on it as count of the battallion.

Speaker 4 (52:17):
Yeah, and then they had these do balloons they had
the w CW logo on it, the coins that they
throw out, and we just rolling the parade threw these
things out and it wasn't I did that three years
in a row, and the last year that I did
at w CW sent a camera crew to film it
and use that as b roll for my entrance, and
that never got made because WWE bought the company.

Speaker 1 (52:38):
Wow.

Speaker 7 (52:39):
Yeah, obviously hindsight being twenty twenty, the first year I
got to do that, I would have gone to whoever
I needed to go to and go, hey, why don't
we think about going and filling.

Speaker 4 (52:48):
This and using this part of my b roll?

Speaker 6 (52:50):
Right?

Speaker 4 (52:50):
Yeah? Right. Then, when you're young man, you're too naive
and you're too passive, and you're too intimidated by your
circumst as is to really speak up because you're so
worried about heat.

Speaker 8 (53:04):
Yeah, Fowers, that's great, great, advice for any wrestler that's
watching this right now, Uh, mark House that asks about
the about the video games that you were in specifically
money wise, or or what was that like for you
being in video games and all that.

Speaker 7 (53:23):
The video games from a money perspective was the best
checks I ever got, you know obviously as far as
one check. Yeah, And I can createit EA Sports, and
I can create the video game with really getting me
my first job.

Speaker 4 (53:37):
And the reason why is because I've been training at
the power Plant.

Speaker 7 (53:40):
I had a few matches on Saturday night and uh,
and you know the way things were geared back then.
They would even tell you at the power Plan when
they do the TV taping in Orlando where they would
do three months worth of Saturday night tapings in like
a week, you could go down there with your gear
and back then. Man, you can knock on the door,
get into the locker room, tell me you're from the
power Plant, you got your gear, and if they just

(54:01):
need an enhancement talent, man, please let me work it.

Speaker 4 (54:04):
So my first match ever.

Speaker 7 (54:05):
In wrestling was about a four minute squash match with
Perry Sattern, but I wasn't under contract at that point,
and so the one point in my life or in
my career where I can say I really was asserted
in the right place at the right time. I would
be at the power plant every single day, and if
there was an opportunity at the power plant, I was
not shy about jumping in the ring.

Speaker 4 (54:25):
One thing was for me.

Speaker 7 (54:28):
I may have not been so self assured about my
skills backstage and politic and on behalf of myself or
speaking up for myself, but in the ring, I was
always confident, sure of what I was capable of. And
the EA Sports came to Atlanta all the way from
Vancouver with their crew because they were going to make
the very first video game they had ever made where

(54:50):
they used the motion capture suit, which was new technology
back then, and they're trying to figure out how they're
going to go about doing this. They knew they could
put a suit on somebody. If they put a suit
on somebody with the sensors, they could film that guy
and use that to as the skeleton for any other
wrestler and just kind of change it and distort it
however they needed to from a size perspective, and so

(55:12):
they came down just to film some moves and decide
what they wanted to do. Well, I'm in between, Matt
from meeting me, you you can probably vouch for this.
I'm one of those in between guys. I'm not a
really really big guy. I'm not a really really tiny guy,
and I've got some amateur wrestling background. And i got
the eyes in WCW because right when they first started
that cruiserweight push and brought in all the luchadors, I

(55:34):
was one of the few American guys that could do
that luchador style. Maybe me and Billy Kidman could fly
around with Hoovey and Ray and those guys.

Speaker 4 (55:41):
And so when we're.

Speaker 7 (55:42):
Standing all around the ring, you know, one of those
types of circumstances. You guys have all kind of been
there where whatever's going on in the ring is going.

Speaker 4 (55:51):
On in the ring, and all the other boys, yeah, yeah,
we're standing around the ring and they're talking about all
this stuff, and they go, Okay, who can do some
chain wrestling?

Speaker 7 (56:00):
And then their mind they're thinking a lah Dean Malenko,
and I'm going, well, I was amateur. I was amateur
wrestler in high school, so I could always do the
chain wrestling.

Speaker 4 (56:07):
Man, I could do it. Without even talking about it.
I could get in there with someone kaz Hayashi who
had limited skills when it came to talking English, but
we could get in the ring and just fill off
of each other and just go, go, go and trade
trade holes. So I got in there and did that
and did a lot of amateur stuff. And then they go, well,
who can do the power moves? Well, I raise my
hand and jump in there. For anybody else strong enough

(56:29):
throw the steinersplexes.

Speaker 7 (56:31):
I can press people over my head, whatever I need
to do. I'm pretty strong for my size and stout
for my size. And then who can do or can
run off the top rope? Raise my hand going there?
Do the herd come run off the top rope? The
whole deal, and so they go.

Speaker 4 (56:44):
They go to uh W CW after filming all this
for about two days, and they go to the office
and they say, we want Lash to come up and
do the video game for us and be the be
the guy that does all the moves.

Speaker 7 (56:57):
And they go, ah, well, you know he's not on
the contract. Can get one of the guys that are
on contract, so we don't have to pay them anything additional.
And EA Sports to their credit they go, now, this
cat has impressed us so much. He can do everything.
We don't have to get three cats. One that does
chane wrestling, one that does power and one that does
of high flying. We won't last because he can do

(57:17):
all that. And that was enough of a mark that
I can mimic the other guy's gimmick.

Speaker 6 (57:21):
You know, I can do that's the fun part.

Speaker 7 (57:24):
I could do the holding whatever, and so struck like
Flair and so Ea Sports. To their credit, they fly
me up to Vancouver and they pay me. And at
first it started out really really sweet because the first
trip up there, man, was sixteen days straight and they
gave me like eight hundred dollars a day.

Speaker 6 (57:46):
For them.

Speaker 7 (57:47):
Yeah, and so that that felt really really good until
the second trip up there. They came up to me
and in their defense, they don't know any better. I
was even smart enough back then to know this had
to come from somebody in the office. But they walk
up to me with a new contract and you go, up,
We're gonna have to cut your pay from eight hundred
a day to four hundred a day because you're.

Speaker 6 (58:06):
Just a jobber, right.

Speaker 3 (58:08):
That was a.

Speaker 4 (58:10):
No. Yeah, God, hey, my Alabama place still went to, Hey,
I'm still I'm twenty years old and I'm making you know,
I'm nineteen twenty years old. I'm making four hundred dollars
a day. I'll take it.

Speaker 6 (58:24):
Yeah, it's pretty sweet, but damn yeah.

Speaker 4 (58:26):
Yeah, but that's the way it got worded. But anyway,
so I did about three different stints up there, and
it allowed me to make some really really good money
off of them. It guaranteed that I was in the
video game even though I wasn't really an established star yet,
and it also really got the eyes of w CW.

Speaker 7 (58:43):
So when I came back from being up there at
EA Sports, that's when I was just at the Power
Plan on a random Friday not long after that, and
they just call me up and they go, hey, last
can you be at at Nitro in Minneapolis on Monday night?
I go absolutely, And they just wanted me to have
a good match with Billy Kidnon and that was the

(59:06):
debut man, and they had put the strap on him,
made him the Cruiserweight Champion, and they were just looking
for guys to feed him that he could have a
good competitive match with weekend week out and just be
a fighting champion. And I said absolutely, I'll be there.
So when I flew up there, I knew Billy well
enough by then and had done a few matches on
Saturday Night and stuff where he trusted me and knew

(59:27):
what I was capable of. And to his credit, he
wasn't just looking to eat me up. He wanted to
have a good back and forth match. And then you
add to that the fact that by then I had
kind of put my stick together in my mind. I
had worked that gimmick out man had and you know,
again in all seriousness, that there are people that wanted
to be in the wrestling business and they're listening to

(59:47):
this man. You can't over state how important it is
to think through what your character looks like to.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
You, What do you believe in? Why do you believe it?

Speaker 7 (59:58):
Because if I'm trying to convince the that they need
to believe something about me, I better believe it first,
and I better know it inside out and know who
I am and be true to that, be genuine and authentic.
And I had worked all that out enough and played
that over in my mind so many times, and by
the time I had that match with Billy Kidman, I
wasn't just taking bumps and doing moves.

Speaker 4 (01:00:18):
I was taking bumps, doing moves and looking at the
crowd and going.

Speaker 6 (01:00:21):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:00:24):
And you know, and the bookers in the back. The
guys didn't expect that. And when they saw a little
bit of charisma along with the working ability in the ring,
they didn't say anything to me. There was no sit
down with lash LaRue moment and talk to him about
putting them on the road. They just started booking me.
I just went from being at the power plant and
now suddenly I'm getting a booking sheet and I'm expected

(01:00:46):
to be places and they're paying me a nightly.

Speaker 4 (01:00:51):
And not long after that, I have one more run
up to Vancouver.

Speaker 7 (01:00:55):
I was frustrated up there and had to sit down
with tend to Be and Ted dB Issi and I
share a common faith, and so I sat down with
Ted and I asked him if I.

Speaker 4 (01:01:06):
Could talk to him that night after we got through
with the day and everything else. And went to his
room and said, you know, Tam, I'm just frustrated man,
and I'd like a little advice and encouragement. I said,
I don't know what else I got to do to
get their attention, the company's attention. I said, you know, I'm.

Speaker 7 (01:01:21):
Yeah, I've been there almost a year now, I'm in
the best shape of my life. I don't feel like
I could be more prepared physically. There's not a move
in the ring I can't do. And I know how
to put together matches. I could call a match even
on my own, even being in the business for so young,
you know, for such a short amount of time, I
feel like I could be more prepared mentally.

Speaker 4 (01:01:40):
And he said, look, you need to get yourself ready spiritually.

Speaker 7 (01:01:44):
And uh, because you're gonna you're gonna face more demons
and more opportunities to really let your life go off
the rails and things like that in this business and
you are anything else that's gonna be a rock and
roll lifestyle and you need to be ready for that.
Oh man, I didn't think about that. So I really
kind of tried to get myself ready spiritually and mentally
for that. And man, it was like two or three

(01:02:07):
days later I had called up JJ Dylan, Yeah, you know, randomly.
He was in the office. He was doing talently Ason
and I went in there and I just had a
handful of pages of websites that were tribute websites to
lash Room that I just far copies of because you know,
it was still it was the Internet was such a
small thing at that point, man, and I went in

(01:02:28):
there and showed that. I said, well, I'm getting some
attention obviously, I've gotten, you know, some fan base going,
and I just need to know, like nineteen years old,
and I can't believe I'm saying this to them even
then something to be said for the balls of youth,
right and you go, Man, I need to know whether
or not I've got a future here in w CW
or if I need to pursue other options.

Speaker 4 (01:02:49):
Yeah. My other option was to come back to Alabama
and dig ditches. Probably.

Speaker 6 (01:02:54):
Yeah, it's track wow.

Speaker 4 (01:02:59):
One randomly in the and I found out while I
was on the road. My wife called me and said, hey,
w CW just fedexed you a contract.

Speaker 2 (01:03:07):
This has been an hour, but it seems like ten minutes.
I feel like we get we've known each other for
years ago. We keep talking. We definitely need a part
two with with last I think our fans are really gonna,
Like you mentioned earlier, you're so transparent, and I think
the fans are really gonna enjoy that. That's you know,
we try to do just one of our mottos here, Yeah,
be authentic and transparent. And I think, you know, the

(01:03:29):
fans can see through the bullshit and when they listen
to this, they're gonna know that you're the real deal.

Speaker 3 (01:03:32):
So I really appreciate you coming on here tonight.

Speaker 4 (01:03:34):
Yeah, Man, thank you guys for having me man, And
I think that speaks a lot to just the type
of people that we all are and the meeting you
guys and getting to be around you and you Matt
and talking even the short amount of time we did.
You know, you find out really quick in this wrestling business, man,
that there are certain people that you gravitate towards because
we're like minded and we have the same type of
philosophy or the same type of perspective on life and

(01:03:57):
on the business. And those are the people that you
really feel like you can kind of grow with, you
can depend on, you can trust in the business and
outside the business. And you know, the reason why there's
clicks in the wrestling business is because of that sort
of thing. It's just it's a natural magnetism for one another.
You know, right at the gate, I felt like we'd
known each other forever. So this has been fun for me. Man.

Speaker 6 (01:04:19):
Yeah, it's awesome to meet you and get to talk
to you like this, man, really truly, and.

Speaker 3 (01:04:23):
Lash, if you lace up those boots one more time, Yeah, that's.

Speaker 6 (01:04:25):
What I'm I'm hoping to see you around. Man.

Speaker 3 (01:04:27):
I'm always ready for for a good match.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
Baby. I saw Matt, I saw your your your tweet
a while back about some click in the indies. Right, So,
I'm wondering where I signed up to be part of
the car there it is.

Speaker 3 (01:04:42):
I'd rather be on the opposite side of the ring
the Lash.

Speaker 5 (01:04:48):
I know you're good, but you're good enough to carry
Matt Cardona. They're a good one. I don't know, Lash,
Where can you? Where can all our fans find it?
You have social media that plug the podcast, plug all
your stuff here.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
All right? You can find me on x I'm an
at Lash can draw literally and and and uh literally.

Speaker 7 (01:05:10):
And physically and then also you can also follow the
show adfree shows dot com. You can find my sixty
minute Tom Leman draw with the last three And that's
pretty much the extent of what I Man. I was
a ghost on social media for about ten years, so
it's all new to me.

Speaker 6 (01:05:26):
All right.

Speaker 3 (01:05:27):
Well, I love it. You get a new fan base
on your old fans, and we love you.

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
We'd love to keep you part of this major pod
family and do a part two of this interview because
I think our fans are really gonna love this.

Speaker 3 (01:05:36):
So thanks a lot, Lash, Yeah, hey, thank you doing
man gotta do is reach out.

Speaker 6 (01:05:40):
Anything you won't eat, appreciate it. Thank this