As noted, Scott Garland recently spoke with Fightful for an in-depth interview covering all things pro wrestling and WWE.
During the discussion, the WWE Superstar formerly known as Scotty 2 Hotty reflected on his WWE Backlash 2000 match against Dean Malenko, Linda McMahon reading him the riot act for taking a top-rope DDT from "The Man of 1,000 Holds" as the finish of the bout and having good chemistry with the fellow pro wrestling veteran.
Featured below are some additional highlights from the interview where he touches on these topics with his thoughts.
On recalls his match with Dean Malenko at WWE Backlash 2000: “I remember being there. It was in Washington, D.C. and I’m getting together with Dean that day and we didn’t really have a whole lot. We’d wrestled so many times at that point, it felt like we kinda missed the boat on the whole match. We were on Velocity or whatever that Saturday Night Shotgun slot was at that time. Metal or Velocity or Jakked. There’s been so many times it’s been rebranded over the years. We must have wrestled every week. We’d get to TV, we’d be wrestling. So by the time we got to Backlash, it really didn’t even feel special. But like you said, twenty years later, that’s the match that everybody talks about and the finish everybody talks about was that DDT off the top. I dodged a bullet that day, man. I was lucky.”
On Linda McMahon telling him to never attempt a top-rope DDT again after Malenko used the spot to beat him at the show: “Actually, when I came back through the curtain, Linda McMahon was standing there. She pulled me aside and said, ‘Don’t ever do that again.’ Linda McMahon said that. That was sick. I feel like I dodged a bullet because if you look at that, there’s no way I didn’t break my neck. I did have neck surgery the next year, so that may have played into it.”
On how good the chemistry was between himself and Malenko: “Dean and I was just a perfect combination. I think it sums up pro wrestling. If you had Dean Malenko versus Dean Malenko, it’s eh, okay. If you had Scotty 2 Hotty versus Scotty 2 Hotty, eh. But when you take black against white, and two different things, that’s where the interest comes from to me. That’s part of the art. I think as we grew up we saw all these larger-than-life characters, you go, ‘Oh, I want to see this guy wrestle that guy,’ that’s what makes it fun. I think back to the territory days, you have all these territories coming to the WWF. So you have all these different styles and characters meshing, which made it fun. The negative of the Performance Center is everybody is being trained under the same roof by eight to ten of the same people. So it’s basically all the same style and I think you lose something in that.”
Check out the complete interview at Fightful.com.
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