During the latest recording of his own Oh… You Didn’t Know? podcast, WWE Hall Of Famer and current executive Brian "Road Dogg" James discussed the recent criticism of his comments about fellow WWE Hall Of Famer Bret Hart. Check out the highlights below.
On being criticized about the Bret Hart comments:
“There’s a lot of people upset about my comments about Bret Hart. And look, I — I actually did a an interview with a gentleman you know, Bill Apter, who called me last week. I was actually in the office in Stanford, and he called me. And so we spoke a little bit and he said, ‘You know, I just want to do a piece about what you said, and do you think you misspoke. And I said, ‘Yeah look, maybe in retrospect I could have changed some of the language. But the message would still stay the same, you know what I mean?'”
On differences between himself and Hart from a performance stand point:
“That’s what I was talking about when I removed the word ‘sports’ [from being ‘a better sports entertainer’]. This is how I framed the argument. If me and Bret had to go out tomorrow night in whatever building we were in, and we had 10 minutes to do something to entertain them. Bret would have to wrestle for those, you know what I mean? [laughs] If I had it, I could do a couple more things, is all I’m saying.”
On the reason why he "leaned into" the comments:
“Look, I’m still taking the piss a little bit, and just having fun with this. And can I be honest with you about something?… I leaned into the Bret thing, you know what I mean? I leaned into it a little more than normal to get a bite, to get a nibble. Holy crap, I got my boat so full of fish, I had to go to shore. So I was just looking for, you know what I mean, some steam. Just looking for a little gravel, something to sink my teeth into. And man, did that happen.”
On the way things panned out:
“But then I got to a point where I felt really bad inside my my own head and heart. And I had to do this conversation in my head, like, ‘Okay you did that, but you did it for ratings. And is it really how you feel, how far did you go? Where was your real line at.’ You know what I mean? And I kind of still feel the same way. But I leaned into it stronger than I should have by design. And it made me uncomfortable, to be quite honest with you. It made me uncomfortable for two or three weeks. Now I’ve been — I don’t like the heat, I’ll say that. I got it. Believe you me, I got it, and I felt it. And I felt it, I didn’t like it you know what I mean? So that’s — it was an experiment, it was an exaggeration of my true feelings — but not not too much, you know what I mean? I may have leaned on the fact that — and I know you know when I said like, [dismissively] ‘Oh well, he’s a good wrestler,’ I was doing things that were, I feel like they were disingenuous. And that’s why I feel like I’m guilty now. I just went a little over the top with it by design. And I didn’t like the repercussions that I felt. But I deserved them.”
