Dolph Ziggler Says Starrcade Had a WrestleMania Feel Backstage, Talks Taking Inspiration From Shawn Michaels

– Dolph Ziggler spoke with E&C’s Pod Of Awesomeness for a new interview discussing his experience at Starrcade and more. Some highlights are below, per Wrestling Inc:

On Zack Ryder: “[Ryder] is just as weird now, just so you guys know. But he wears a suit at TVs now, so I don’t know if he’s getting groomed to be like an agent or something. There’s a lot of [purple]. He has a lot of suits now! I think there’s a suit guy that goes around here, but purple is often times almost a… I’m trying to think… almost like an H&M slim fit version of a Michael Hayes costume that you’d get.”

On his experience in Starrcade: “I walk into Starrcade and Flair is there, of course, and social media Nikki goes, ‘hey, you two guys should cut a promo! Are you ready? Okay, you do it and then he comes in.’ And I’m like, ‘what? Okay!’ So I kind of cut a Ric Flair promo in the arena in Greensboro [North Carolina], next to Flair, threw it to Flair, and then, he finished it off, and it was so cool. And then, meanwhile, I got to go out with Bobby Roode. Bobby Roode and I had plenty of time to tear it down and ‘The Enforcer’ was out there and he just did a couple subtle things that turned the crowd around.”

On Starrcade having a similar feel to WrestleMania: “Backstage, even before the specials guests start filling in, and [Ricky] Steamboat shows up and Rock n Roll [Express] shows up. There was already a special [feel]. In the weirdest, weirdest way, had a feel to it like a couple of hours before WrestleMania.”

On going into selling and bumps to stand out from the rest of the roster: “When I was trying to get back to TV after they canceled The Spirit Squad, I go, ‘What are things that no one’s doing? Okay.’ At the time, it was really cool to be Randy Orton. And by that I mean short buzzcut, black trunks (almost Austiny), and everybody was, like, working, but everybody wanted to be tough. Everybody wanted to be straightforward. Nobody wanted to give anything. And I went, ‘How can I stand out?’ I went pink trunks, I dyed my hair blonde and grew it out. I said, ‘Okay, nobody wants to do that? I’ll go above and beyond. And I started watching genuine boxing knockouts. And I would try to take where your knees buckle and apply that only to finishers, or, like, the strongest false finish of a match. At the beginning, I was kind of trying to be Mr. Perfect and do everything big. But then I go, ‘Okay, hang on. Now we’ve got to make things count.'”

On taking inspiration from Shawn Michaels: “If everybody’s punching each other back and forth and nobody’s going down, take one punch and crawl around. And that’s a huge part of the Shawn stuff that I do because I didn’t study him too much move-wise, I mean, I do his superkick, but that’s an homage to Lance Storm, clearly. Clearly, but [Michaels] would take something and then crawl around so much that you genuinely believe he’s hurt. And it’s not crazy bumps or flipping around. It was just crawling around and begging for help.”