Vampiro Recalls Being Disrespected By Sting and Lex Luger in WCW, Talks Wrestling Cliques

– Vampiro appeared on the Steve Austin Show for a new interview and talked about his time in WCW and more. Highlights are below, per Wrestling Inc:

On cliques in wrestling: “You kind of ride with your friends, and you eat with your friends, and you go to the gym with your friends. That kind of clique is healthy because that’s your road family, but once you have the cliques that are power hungry, and they have their own agenda, and they go out of their way to stop you, that ruins you as a person. That’s what really soured me in WCW.”

On Sting and Luger refusing to shake his hand: “When I first came in the dressing room and I went to say ‘hi’ to Sting and to Lex Luger. It’s in my head like it happened this morning. I went to shake their hands and they went literally turned their back on me. That was something that took me aback.”

On Scott Hall and Kevin Nash making things hard for talent in WCW: “There were two tall guys that came from Vince’s company and they went to WCW. One looked like Magnum PI and the other had long hair and he just had a knee operation. Those guys, when they were in control, I’m cool with them, they were always friendly to me, but, boy, did they make life hard for some people. And seeing that breaks your spirit in the business.”

On his experience with Lex Luger failing to body slam him: “I had a singles match with Lex Luger when he was Lex Luger. Like, ‘oh man, he’s just Lex!’ He couldn’t pick me up to bodyslam me if I paid him $10 million. He dropped me and he yelled at me. I looked at Elizabeth like, ‘what did I do?’ And she goes, ‘I don’t know.’ He was just so mad because he’s all jacked up and he couldn’t pick up a 220 lbs. guy. He couldn’t do it. No! I didn’t know what the hell [sandbagging] meant back then! I was like, ‘dude, just tell me what to do and I’ll jump!’ And he couldn’t do it. He dropped me. Unbelievable.”

On Sting saying negative things about him: “As a person, I was really disappointed after when he spoke bad about me, but I have nothing but good things to say about him. He said he didn’t like the gimmick, the gimmick wasn’t getting over, my workrate was bad, things like that. And we all know why things like that get said, right? But, to be honest with you, he took the time to talk to me, to explain things to me, the American way businesswise, he smartened me up to a lot of things. I thought it was an amazing education. Even though we aren’t the best of friends, I’m so grateful that he took that time to teach me.”