Show: The Interactive Interview
Guest: Sam Houston
Date: 2/19/09
Your Hosts: Patrick Kelley, James Walsh, & Nick Noel
Sam Houston has been around the wrestling business for the better part of 25 years himself. But, in reality, wrestling was in his
blood from birth. Brother of Jake "The Snake" Roberts and Rockin' Robin and son of Grizzly Smith, Sam Houston has some
deep roots in wrestling. And, it is our honor and pleasure to bring to you an interview that I compare to our Marty Jannetty
interview. It is light, fun, but also very deep and serious. It is truthfully one of the best we've done in some time and we hope
you'll tune in and find out why we feel this way!
SAM HOUSTON
- Sam joins the show introducing himself as working at a pool hall and calls himself "8 Ball". We're underway!
- James welcomes the one and only Sam Houston to which Sam says there's been a few before. James says there has but he's the only one who wears tights. Sam agrees but says that is only because it is the required uniform.
- Sam has been well. He had left the ring for a while but is now getting back into it. He says he left and then was asked to give a speech at a wrestling show. He hit the ropes,looked out in the crowd, and realized that this is where he belongs. He said he and Kofi Kingston are the only people you ever see smile while wrestling.
- James asks after his sister, Rockin' Robin. Sam laughs and says she's doing great and is still rockin' in the tree tops all night long. He says she's cut her hair short but is still Rockin' Robin, his baby sister. James also asks after Jake who Sam says he gets along fine with despite what some seem to think.
- Things weren't always a breeze for Sam Houston, though. Sam tells the story of how he when he was young, he was pronounced dead for 2 minutes in a hospital due to difficulties with a tonsilectomy. When he recovered, he turned on Mid South Wrestling (where his dad Grizzly Smith worked). On the show, they announced that Grizzly's son was not expected to live and that's why he wasn't at the show. It freaked Sam out at first, but his dad reassured him that the show was taped days earlier before his health improved.
- He couldn't get into wrestling right away because of his health, but once he started getting better, he began to train heavily. Grizzly tried to discourage him, but Dusty Rhodes gave him his break mainly because it was Grizzly who gave Dusty his big break.
- His interaction with The Four Horsemen was "intense" He felt like he was in the ring with the best. He also references working with Abdullah The Butcher at an early age, and he says that working with those stars brought the best out of him. But he says that if you go back and watch the tapes "you can tell I'm shaking in my boots"
- He won the Bump of the Year after a match with Krusher Krutchev and says that the bump scared alot of people it was so brutal. He took pride in trying to make everything he did as real as possible. He then jokes that "My nickname is Frankenstein. I can walk away from anything"
- Sam never liked grabing the ropes when taking an over the top rope bump because he felt it would make the bump look fake. He got advice from Hector Guerrero to "never be second best" And he used that advice both in the ring & when dealing with ribbers.
- He was known as a great practical joker & ribber. He never hurt anybody or cost them money, but he always got them good.
- Houston ended up leaving the Crockets for Bill Watt's promotion after getting poor paychecks & getting stiffed on a big show in which he was in the main event. James & Sam then talk about how poor promotion can hurt a wrestling event.
- The next step was the WWF, which Sam ended up at once Watts sold to The Crockets. When the change in ownership took place, Sam was told that he was the only one losing his job when the change of ownership took place. But Vince picked him up soon after.
- He got along with his half brother Jake Roberts. There was never a plan to ever mention that they were half brothers because they were so different. He said that Jake DDT'd him once during his blindness feud with Martel, but that was meant more for the smart fans than to ever make a story out of it.
- Sam left the WWF after Vince offered him 3 months off with no pay, so he decided to go to WCW instead. He didn't go into too much detail about what happened in WCW, but there were issues that arose with the booking for a match he had with Terry Taylor and he soon left.
- After leaving the WWF, Sam went to Global, a promotion that James was a big fan of.
James recalls instances where Sam did really creative spots, and Sam says it was his goal to try and come up with new things: "I want everybody to go either Wow or How"
- As for working at Global, he says he was there to have fun and work hard at the same time because he enjoyed what he did. Sam has no idea with what happened to the product losing TV slots and slowly fading away. Things ended up going south in GWF when they didn't pay him for his traffic expenses, and then he decided to pawn his title belt to get the money back.
- A long time ago, he was a "hardcore" partier & admits that he's an alcoholic, but he's been getting help, & admits that he's been able to give up on any drug he's ever done, but alcohol was the hardest to give up.
- The interview takes a sudden stop when Sam Houston gets hit in the head with a ceiling fan!!!
- He says that right now his relationship with Baby Doll is great, and James says that when he spoke to her, she had nothing but nice things to say about Sam.
- Sam also says that Rockin Robin, his younger sister, is doing fine. In Jake Roberts' DVD, Jake mentions having altercations with his sister, and Sam confirms that it was not Rockin Robin, but rather a sister of Jake's that was kidnapped.
- The interview then goes into Word Associations where Sam gives some very interesting answers:
Arn Anderson: "I did things with Arn that I couldn't do with anyone else...He brought out the best in me"
Barry Horrowitz: "Always wonderful" (both in and out of the ring)
Danny Davis: "You had to be strategically involved with him. It was always like a chess game with him...he always had to have somebody coaching him"
Mike Davis: "He was crazy" and he then tells a story about how Mike ribbed him and Sam hit him and got him to cross his eyes. Sam then did this to him every match they had with each other & when they got to Global, Mike decided he'd rather be his tag partner.
Black Bark: "Our matches were so brutal, so involved, and so real, but I hadnothing but the highest respect for Black Bart" He also mentions that several states tried to prevent them from facing each other.
Bull Payne: "He was good, but I wish he had been around longer"
Missy Hyatt: "I showed up at her wedding dressed up as Skandor Ackbar" and he also recalls the first time he met Missy, and how a picture of Missy once got him in trouble with a girlfriend.
Jim Powers: "The only mistake with him was when they hooked him up with Paul Roma...he couldn't get any guidance with Roma...But Powers, if I was a girl I'd have slept with him!"
- Sam Houston's Favorite Ribs were two that he pulled on Nikolai Volkoff. In telling these stories, Sam admits that Nikolai was a scary guy and still is. He asks if Nikolai is still alive and then has to be coaxed to tell the story after finding out that he is.
1) The 1st story is about "Mr. Perfect" Curt Hennig. They arrived at a hotel and Hennig had things to party with and Sam had a case of beer in his trunk. Curt told Sam to join him in his room to hang out and party. So, Sam threw his stuff in his room and went down to Curt's room and they partied with the alcohol and ... cigarettes, lets just say. So, after partying for a while, they got the munchies, I mean hungry, and decided to call out for some pizza. Curt went into the bathroom to wash out his ring gear and left Sam to make the call. Sam called and pretended to be Curt Hennig and cut a promo on the poor guy answering the phone at the pizza parlor, "Do you know who I am? I'm Mr. Perfect! I make more money in one night than you do in one year, you nothing happening pizza boy!" Apparently Sam blasted the guy on the phone for a good 10 minutes and left it with, "And you'd better get that pizza here within a half hour or I'm going to kick your butt when you get here!" Well, 15 minutes later the pizza arrives and Curt Hennig chows down on it and eats basically an entire pie while Sam sits there holding his first slice and starts thinking, "Should I really eat this after what I said to that guy?" Well, apparently Curt ate a pie and a half and Sam never even took a bite because he knows darn well the guy on the phone spat in the pizza at the very least and still watched as Curt ate it not suspecting a thing.
2) The other, the one Sam was afraid to tell, involves WWE Hall of Famer Nikolai Volkoff. Sam was sitting backstage in the WWF and watched as Nikolai strung up his Russian flag. For some reason, Sam had a bad idea. He went into the bathroom with a bandade and stuck it to a long roll of toilet paper. He walked up to Nikolai and slapped him on the lower back and wished him good luck out there. This, of course, stuck the toilet paper to Nikolai's back and made it look like he had toilet paper hanging from the inside of his tights. The referee, Howard Finkel, Jim Powers, and the entire crowd laughed when he went out there. Nikolai did the whole thing he normally did, the Russian National Anthem and the works and everyone just laughed at him. Powers actually slumped over in the corner laughing so hard. It wasn't until the second or third time he hit the ropes that the toilet paper fell off. Backstage, "Hacksaw" Jim Duggan and Jake "The Snake" Roberts confronted Sam saying they knew he did it.
The only way he escaped with his life from Nikolai not finding out is he had to pay for the beer of Duggan and Roberts for a month!
- Then Sam goes into a discussion about the people that accuse wrestling of being fake. Sam says that he always did everything in his power to make his matches believable and that there is always a great chance of getting hurt. He says what they do is not easy and while the mat has some give, it isn't a great deal of give.
- When asked about Chris Benoit and the media's reaction to the murder/suicide, Sam says it was a black eye on wrestling. And, the media always is looking for a sensational story. But, he just isn't sure he believes Chris Benoit did it. He says he knows a few things that were told to him by friends that makes him not as ready to believe he did it even mentioning the position Benoit himself was found in.