Scotty 2 Hotty Recalls the Dangerous Finish to His WWE Backlash 2000 Match With Dean Malenko

– During a recent interview with the Wrestling With Johners Podcast, former WWE Superstar Scotty 2 Hotty (aka Scott Garland) discussed his Backlash 2000 match against Dean Malenko, where Malenko won back the WWE Light Heavyweight Championship from Hotty. The match ended with Malenko hitting a DDT on Hotty off the top rope.

According to Scotty 2 Hotty, Linda McMahon herself pulled him aside after the match and told him not to do that move again, for which he responded, “You don’t have to worry about that.” Below are some highlights (via WrestlingInc.com):

Scotty 2 Hotty on the DDT finish to his match with Dean Malenko at Backlash 2000: “It was very dangerous and I could’ve easily broken my neck. It looks like I broke my neck on it.”

On the finish being Malenko’s idea: “It was Dean’s idea. He told me had done it with (Chris) Jericho; I recently just saw it with Jericho taking it a month ago for the first time and I was like ‘oh, that’s what I was supposed to do.’ I was supposed to jump out further so I would land more on my stomach and I didn’t jump out. I just kind of spiked myself right into the mat from the top-rope.”

On how well he worked with Malenko: “I think the reason we worked so well is we were so different. Here’s Dean, who is very serious, a very good technical wrestler and the man of 1,000 holds … On the other hand, you have this goofball, who is just there to have fun and kind of make fun of Dean; his finishing move is The Worm; does the moonwalk; breakdances; that’s what to me makes wrestling so cool is when you have all these different characters and they come together to see what happens.”

You can check out a video of the finish to the Backlash 2000 match WWE.com.