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| Mr Kennedy |
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FSM: Thanks for hanging out with us tonight – it’s getting a little late and you probably just want to chill out and soak in some sights while you’re here, rather than working into the night.
Ken Kennedy: Nah, no problem – this isn’t really work. Lemme see that! [Grabs the copy of last month's FSM from the table and begins flipping through.] Can I keep this?
FSM: Hey, we’re not going to argue with you! So how long are you over here – anything in particular you plan on doing before heading back to the States?
KK: I’m here for a couple more days. We’re gonna go ride the Eye tomorrow and I’m going to check out the Star Wars Exhibition, too. I’m really not the world's biggest Star Wars fan, but enough to see it while I’m here.
FSM: Good plan! We spoke to Austin Aries a while back – you guys broke into the business together, right? You were wrestling in the Minneapolis area along with Shawn Daivari.
KK: [Completely distracted, reading the magazine, before stopping and looking up.] Oh, he told you about us breaking in? Yeah, wow. I worked a lot in Chicago, Wisconsin, various other places. So… [Flicks pages, dramatically] whereabouts is the Mr Kennedy article?
FSM: Well, we’re working on it – that’s why we’re here now! [Kennedy flips to the article, ‘Steroid Society’.] Ah. You’re probably not going to like that one.
KK: What – what the f**k is this? [Begins examining the article.] You’ve got a picture of Bobby Lashley with a bottle of f**king steroids next to him. [Laughs, wryly.] He’s never tested positive for steroids.
FSM: Well, there was the liver thing last year. [Lashley was among three WWE wrestlers discovered, through the Wellness Policy, to have elevated liver enzymes – often a telltale sign of oral steroid use.] This is a really tough time for the business and we’ve worked really hard to try to be objective, to try to make sure that the public understands what’s going on. Because ultimately, there’s a reason that people are looking into this – there’s a reason that Congress has got involved with wrestling again. We appreciate that you’re in a difficult position, but do you think that any good is going to come out of this? On the one level, of course wrestling doesn’t want anyone interfering in its business, but in terms of helping the guys do you think this might have a positive effect?
KK: Really, the only thing that I would like to see come out of this, the only thing that I would really like to see that would be different, is that we get a little more time off. That’s it.
FSM: This is something that we’ve done our best to convey; this isn’t an excuse to bash WWE or bash wrestling or whatever. The public really has to look at it from the perspective of the guys, because you’re not machines – you’re people doing a job. You need time to go home, to relax, to recharge, to be with your fiancé and everything else. There’s a difference between sensationalising the issues that exist and helping to actually achieve some sort of outcome that’s going to benefit the guys that are affected.
KK: Right, yeah. You know, I think the biggest thing for me, the biggest frustration in this whole deal, is that I’m from the new era of wrestling. And a lot of these guys that are going on these talk shows and these news programmes – infotainment shows – came from an era where wrestling was like a rock star-type atmosphere. You know, it was just a party-party-party all the time, it would be wild women and booze. Back then I would be drinking, well, [points at his glass of juice] that wouldn’t be orange juice, let’s put it that way.
FSM: There might be some orange juice in there.
KK: Probably not very much. But those guys came from an era where, you know, that was just the culture. And these guys are now getting all over TV and telling everybody that this is the way it still is in WWE – and it’s not! It’s just not like that at all. It’s totally different now and all these things that they’re saying, that’s what wrestling used to be. And I remember somebody said to me, "Well, how do you know, because you weren’t there five or ten years ago?" Well, I know because there are enough guys in the company that have been around long enough – like Ric Flair, like The Undertaker, like Stone Cold Steve Austin, Shawn Michaels, Triple H, and all these guys that have been in the business for a long time and have the stories about how things were.
FSM: You talk about a guy that exemplified the rock and roll lifestyle – that's Shawn Michaels.
KK: All these guys. Shawn Michaels – lived it! The Undertaker – lived it! Austin – to some degree, lived it. So, like, everybody used to live that lifestyle and that’s what the business was. But you can’t get away with it nowadays, because we do have a drug testing policy, as much as everybody wants to say that it’s not legitimate. Well, it is legitimate, because they stand there and they watch you pee. It’s like, how much more do you want? And there are certain circumstances where guys have an elevated testosterone level, above 4:1. But if you do, you’d better have a damn good reason why, and a doctor’s excuse, and a legitimate doctor’s excuse, or you’re gonna be suspended and fined and potentially fired. And that’s just the way it goes – zero tolerance. And I hate it, it really irritates me when I see these people get on TV shows and say, “Well, their Wellness Policy is a joke” and “They’re allowed to have ten times the legal amount of steroids in their bodies”. The fact is that we’re not allowed to have any steroids in our bodies. Period.
FSM: A lot of people debate how much of the party lifestyle still exists in the business today, but there has certainly been a change in the way that many of the modern wrestlers treat their bodies. A lot of guys don't think of themselves as wrestlers so much as legitimate athletes – they recognise that you can’t live the party lifestyle and that you have to look after your body and be careful about what you put in it, from food to booze to everything else.
KK: Right. I can’t go out and party every night –
I just can’t do it. I just physically can’t. Like tonight – we’ve been here for a while and I’ve had a couple of beers, but that’s it, I’m done. Because tomorrow I don’t want to have to wake up and have a headache and feel shitty for all the other interviews that I have to do again tomorrow. And for me this is considered a day off, pretty much, because I don’t actually have to go and get in the ring. So I don’t look at this as work and I don’t look at what I have to do tomorrow as work necessarily, you know, cause I’m just talking about something that I love. And even then, I still don’t wanna wake up with a headache or a hangover or whatever.
FSM: No more than a bank manager or anyone else would want to wake up with one.
KK: Absolutely. But then, if I do have to go in the ring and have a match tomorrow, I’d want that even less, you know? So I want to feel as refreshed and recovered as possible, and we try to take good care of our bodies. And I’ll tell you what, for the most part we travel from one city to the next, we get to the building, we wrestle a match, we travel to the next city, we find a hotel, we go to sleep, we get up in the morning, we eat, we train, we maybe go catch a movie, and then we go to the next building, we wrestle, and we do it all over again. That’s pretty much our lifestyle. But in years past it was go till the show’s over, find out what bar is open, how long it’s gonna stay open until, who’s gonna have an after-bar party, you know – it was always, “Where’s the next fix gonna come from?” And it’s just frustrating to me that those guys are trying to represent our business when they have no business representing our business any more. But at the same time, I can stand up and say that, but that’s not what the media wants to hear. They’ll say, “Oh, well he’s just saying that because he’s on top with WWE right now” or “He’s just saying that because WWE is signing his paycheque every week”. Well, no – I’m the type of guy that, if I didn’t truly feel that way, I just wouldn’t say anything at all.
FSM: So nobody from WWE management asked you or told you to speak out publicly, as you did on your website and your appearance on Greta Von Susteren's show on Fox News?
KK: No – nobody ever told me to do that. Vince never came to me and said, “Hey Ken, I want you to go and talk to this news person and this news person and this news person, and I want you to write a blog on your website regarding the shitty journalism” or anything like that. It was something where I contacted Stephanie McMahon on my own and said, “Stephanie, I really feel strongly about this and can I please write a blog on my website?” And her first reaction, actually, was no. She said, “We’d just like to stay away from all the journalism right now because it’s a no-win situation.” So I just said okay, and I backed down. And then we went the next day to TV and Vince came up and said, “You know what, we’ve thought about it, and we decided that we have nothing to hide, and if you would like to go and talk to whoever, if you want to write a blog, if you want to put something on your website, feel free. Just please tell the truth and, if you don’t know about something, just don’t talk about it. Or become educated about it, and then you can talk about it. But if you’re not educated on the subject then don’t say anything at all.” And so that’s the thing, whenever somebody says that I’m just saying things because somebody told me to say them, nobody’s told me to say anything – I’ve told myself to say it. And this is what I truly believe and what I know to be true…
For the rest of this feature, check out issue 19 of FSM – available at WH Smith and all good retailers. (For US readers we are now carried at Borders, so check for local availability or click here to subscribe.)
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