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Road Dogg Acknowledges He Was ‘Leaning Into’ Controversy With Bret Hart Comments, Didn’t Like the Heat He Got

December 8, 2022 | Posted by Jeremy Thomas
Road Dogg Image Credit: WWE

Road Dogg stirred up a hornet’s nest online when he said he was a better wrestler than Bret Hart, and he has acknowledged he “leaned into” the situation to “get a bite.” As you may recall, the WWE Hall of Famer got a fair amount of criticism when he said on his Oh… You Didn’t Know? podcast that “I don’t think Bret Hart is a great wrestler. I think I was a better sports entertainer than Bret was. That’s where the money is.” He would later clarify those comments by saying that “I just think as an entertainer, if you asked me to go out there and entertain a crowd, I would have different ways to do that than grappling and wrestling.”

On the latest episode of the podcast, Road Dogg asserted that he does feel that way, but acknowledged that he “leaned into” the whole thing and that he didn’t like the “heat” he got online for the comments but he “deserved them.” You can see the highlights below:

On people criticizing him over the 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 the difference between him and Hart as performers: “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 playing the whole thing up: “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 not being comfortable with how it played 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.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Oh… You Didn’t Know? with a h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.

article topics :

Bret Hart, Road Dogg, WWE, Jeremy Thomas