Ted DiBiase On Why He Was Never NWA World Heavyweight Champion, Returning to Mid-South

On the latest episode of Everybody’s Got a Pod, WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase talked about why he never became the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, whether he was hesitant to leave Mid-South Wrestling and more. You can check out some highlights below:

On why he was never the NWA World Heavyweight Champion: “One of the reasons that I was never the NWA World Champion is, I went back to work for Bill [Watts]. You know, and Bill was not affiliated with the NWA. At the time when I first went to Georgia because Terry Funk told me, ‘Go to Georgia, get on that TV and get over.’”

On whether he was hesitant to leave Mid-South Wrestling: “It was a family move. Again, I mean Melanie and I got married [on] New Year’s Eve ’81. And I was in Mid-South all that time. So this is ’83 and now I’m going to go back to Georgia. And I really went back to Georgia more, I think for my marriage. I wanted her to be around some of her old friends and things like that, and just to not — you know, with me all the time. I mean, you think about that. We got married, she doesn’t know wrestling and you can explain it to them but you know. Hey, I was home every night in Georgia, and it was just, I think I needed that again for a while. Because just Mid-South was just wow. You were you weren’t gone every night, but there were a lot of nights you were gone. And so now we’re back in Georgia. And what I am doing — again, which takes me away — is trips to Japan. I would be like, you want to go to Japan? You’re there, you’re going three total weeks or sometimes five total weeks before you get home. The money’s really good, but you’re still gone. So and I because I had hoped and we had — I believed that if she went back to Atlanta, she still had a lot of friends here. Well, she still had a lot of friends there, but all of her friends were still single. And it’s kind of like when you when you’re married now and you have a child to take care of, everything changes. Yep. So ultimately, we went back to Mid-South.”

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.