Former WWE star Heidenreich sat down with Chris Van Vliet in New Orleans, Louisiana to discuss how the viral photo of him working at Walmart made this interview happen, playing professional football before signing with WWE, how poetry became part of his character, being managed by Paul Heyman, his infamous Michael Cole segment, feuding with The Undertaker, winning the Tag Team Championships with Road Warrior Animal as part of the Legion Of Doom, why he was released from WWE, being in the same NFL training camp as Goldberg, and much more!

20 years later, how do you feel about this Michael Cole segment?

“It’ll always be disturbing, there’s no doubt about it. I mean, it was brought to me, I don’t remember particulars, but I do remember thinking, man, this is really off the wall. When you’re training to do vignettes and practicing in Louisville, you don’t practice for a vignette like that.”

What was the pitch for this segment?

“Well, I mean, they said I was gonna abduct him, bring him to the back, and then put him in a room. Then I think it was like you’re gonna act like you were like watching him, and you’re going one place with it. It’s like you’re going like it, and then you say, I’m gonna give you a poem. But it sounds like I’m gonna give him something other than a poem. I don’t know if it’s innuendos and stuff when you say it, ‘I’ve been watching you, I know what you want, and I’m gonna give it to you.’ But I look back and all the things that have been said about all these years, it’s kind of made me infamous, more than famous. But it’s disturbing still, and it’s weird.”

I understand there’s some innuendo there, but it looks plain as day what that is supposed to be:

“Yeah, for sure, man. But I mean, when they bring it to you, I’m not gonna say no. Like when they said you’re gonna be with Legion of Doom, I’m like, all right. Whatever they bring to you, that’s where I was. If they told me to do a backstage thing or do this, and not killing somebody or something, where you have to go to jail, I would do it. I’m gonna do it the best I can.”

How did Michael Cole feel about that segment?

“I guess he was kind of like, this is weird, and joking around. But he wasn’t like I didn’t like it, off-put or not wanting to do it. I mean, I could tell he was down for whatever. It’s like we’re working together, right? It’s a scene, and we’re building a story. He was whimpering. I mean, even though it was disturbing and weird and bizarre, I would have never come up with that on my own. I think it helped. That thing made me more memorable. People will never forget that.”

Do you have any regrets about that segment?

“No. I think I did the best performance, I guess. I liked it the way it ended. He was about to leave, I said, ‘You’re going to thank me? It was a poem by Heidenreich.’ I thought it was cool. I ended up calling them disaster pieces after a while, because I figured they’re so bad instead of masterpieces, but yeah, I like the character Heidenreich. Always in my mind, I thought I would go back. I had an idea to come back. I didn’t even think about telling you this. I never went back, but I wanted to. I just probably didn’t know how to approach it to do it. If I would have went back, could I say the idea I always thought about?”

Of course:

“I thought they would show from my perspective, somebody watching Vince, almost stalking him, and whatnot, but never show it’s me. Eventually, I abduct him from the show. I take him and I put him in a trunk, and I bring him to a building, and they still don’t know. He’s missing, and then eventually I have him chained in a building with a light or something, low light. Then I walk up, and you see the red gloves, and then I read him a poem. My thing is, you cut me, you took my life from me, you took my world. That was my world, and I was gonna abduct him and make him pay, and I guess try to make him re-sign me or something, but it was gonna be kind of outside, not just getting back to wrestling, being like he robbed me of everything. Because it was a big thing.”

You previously mentioned Legion of Doom. How do you get lined up with Animal and you become a member of Legion of Doom?

“Well, I remember that they came and told me about it, and then we started that progression of me doing the hair, and then I think the spikes or the face paint, I’m not sure how it went on, but I was progressing with Animal. But my first paint job was the butterfly effect, which Animal came up with, which I don’t think they like too much. But the skull thing was actually given to me by Triple H. He got me and asked me to come into the back room. So I go into this locker room and he sits there, it’s bizarre. He’s putting that skull on my face like real time.”

Triple H was painting you?

“It was his idea. But he puts it on me, and he tells me to look at it, it’s cool, that skull face. But then we had to go ask the Undertaker, because he had those things on his tights at the time, or his pants, that was a skull-type deal, and he approved it. He said it’s okay, I like it. I went with that, which I thought that paint job was way better. I got the spikes. But that was surreal, because in college, we were LOD fans, or marks. I guess it’s okay to say mark, I don’t mean anything bad by it. But I had photos of me and the guy I played college ball with at Mardi Gras, we made up our homemade LOD spikes and painted our faces, and it was Mardi Gras day. We went out dressed up like that, and I had pictures, so I brought one to Animal, this is no bullsh*t, man. We were LOD, we wanted to be LOD. But now I’m in LOD, so that was huge.”

How does poetry become the gimmick for Heidenreich?

“All right, poetry. I’ve been writing since college. An English teacher let me write a story about Jim Morrison’s poetry, and I got a high grade with it, and that opened my door. I didn’t think I was good at writing, but I started writing then. I’ve been writing poems and songs and other stuff. I don’t know what it is, but I have notebooks full of crazy stuff, and I think I’m pretty sure I was on a plane flying with Paul [Heyman], who was sitting behind me. I was writing a poem. I don’t know if I wrote it to him or something. I just wrote it. I’m like, I’m gonna slip this back here, like your note in school or something. He read it. He’s like, ‘You write poetry?’ I said, yeah man, all the time. I think I saw the wheels turning in his head. I owe him a lot. I’m pretty sure he said, hey this guy writes poems, something off the wall and bizarre, and they liked them. When I write them normally, I’d ask Vince, he was involved with me a lot. I’m like, do you want to hear it? He goes, ‘I know it’s gonna be good.’ I’m like, that’s cool, man. It made me feel good.”