Ted DiBiase Explains Why He Knew He Wouldn’t Be WWE Champion For Long

On the latest episode of the Everybody’s Got a Pod, WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase talked about not working with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 4 in the WWE Title tournament after Dibiase had bought the title from Andre The Giant. You can check out some highlights below:

On not working with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania 4: “Maybe WrestleMania for. Ended up being Savage, you know? And it was the main event because we ended up being the last two guys, you know what I mean. Yeah, that’s when we had that match and that WrestleMania for Savage wins, becomes the World Champion and I and I went on that run. But The thing is you know Hogan Hogan was involved. I mean a lot of the matches that I had, I mean what it was, it was a lot of Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan against Andre the Giant and Ted. Again, I look at it, you know, it’s a guy like maybe I sound like a $1,000,000 man. Now I look at it from the financial view, right? You know what is going to make me the most money? Would a run with the world title make me a little more money? It might have, but it would have been very short-lived. That’s what I’m saying as a heel now. If I was a babyface, if I was Randy Savage and actually, I’m the guy who turned Randy Savage babyface, right? Because up until that time, you know, he, you know, he was a bad guy. And so then, you know when he beat me and he became champ, then he became a babyface and. That would be different but that’s the hill you know I just study my opponents and that’s what it’s about. You’re the world champion.”

On knowing he wouldn’t be WWE Champion for long: “You know, I guess there’s some extra bucks that come along with being that, but like I said before, I wouldn’t have been that champion very long. Because again, you know, Vince McMahon had made wrestling family entertainment and I started getting it. It’s like you know, and once I started to understand what he was doing, I said. This is a stroke of genius, really. You know, he’s taking wrestling, which was pretty much you were going to see a lot of polo shirts and khaki pants at the wrestling match. It was like that. It wasn’t that type of deal, and what you know, like what we call blue wrestling, was blue-collar crowd form of entertainment up until. You know, Vince McMahon taking it and targeting children with it, you know, and making action figures and all that stuff. And of course, you know if you have good guys, you know you have to have your bad guys too for them to battle. And so I got that and I understood that had I won the world title, I wasn’t going to keep that very long because of the kids. The market, now that the Mensis is, is targeting, they want the champion to be their, you know, their hero.”

If you use any of the quotes in this article, please credit Everybody’s Got a Pod with an h/t to 411mania.com for the transcription.