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WWE's Sgt. Slaughter recalls years as a bad guy

Posted: Feb 4th 2017 By: The Orlando Sentinel

Sitting in a Miami all-night diner in 1991, Sgt. Slaughter knew his life had changed.

Slaughter had been wrestling all over the world for more than 15 years by then – sometimes hated, sometimes beloved. But he was never treated with as much vitriol as he was during that era after his usually All-American character turned his back on the United States, took on a manager with
a remarkable resemblance to Saddam Hussein, and became an Iraqi sympathizer.

Today, Slaughter [an American through and through] is a WWEHall of Famer and an ambassador for the company. He’ll be in Orlando for WrestleMania on April 2 and plans to appear at
the Axxess fan festival and the WWE Hall of Fame ceremony that weekend.

That night in Miami, Slaughter captured the WWE (then WWF) championship from the Ultimate Warrior. Fans hurled objects and insults at him as he left the ring.

“After I won the title, that’s when everything started to shake,” said Slaughter, now 68, during a visit to the Orlando Sentinel offices. “That night we did a bunch of interviews and got out of the building at about 1 or 2:00 in the morning. I went to a restaurant where there was hardly anybody in there. I had an agent with me. We sat there for quite a while. Finally, the agent asked the cook, ‘Could we
get some service?’ The cook rolled up the sleeve of his T- shirt, he had a Marine Corps emblem tattooed on his arm. He said to the agent, ‘You can eat, but he’s not,’ pointing to me. He wasn’t too happy. My agent said, ‘I think we should probably go somewhere else.’ From that point on, I kind of
realized it was a tough situation and I had to be careful what I did.”

When WWE boss Vince McMahon first came to Slaughter with the idea of turning against his country, Slaughter was all for it – anything to get a rise out of the fans. But Slaughter’s
wife and kids weren’t so sure.

“My wife looked at me and said, ‘You’re out of your mind. You can’t do that.’ I said, ‘Why not? Let’s try it.’ So it was a rough time,” Slaughter said. “I should have given it more thought because Sgt. Slaughter, I entertain the best I can, I don’t hold anything back. Vince told me, ‘If you go
over the line, I’ll reel you back in.’ So I just went for it.”

By the next day in Philadelphia, Slaughter said death threats had been called in on McMahon, Slaughter, their homes and their families. McMahon assigned security to stay at Slaughter’s home in Connecticut and asked his family to move temporarily to a friend’s house.

Slaughter said, “I called her when I got to Philadelphia, and she said, ‘What did you do?’ She started laughing. ‘I told you this wasn’t a good idea.’ When I got to my house later in the week, there was a Winnebago with 4 guys who pulled open their jackets and showed me they were packing.
They said they’d walk the perimeter of my house, take my children to school and stay with them and take my wife to the grocery store and the mall. I said, ‘You can be here, but I’m not too sure about the other stuff.’ As soon as I walk in she was waiting for me (arms crossed) and said, ‘These kids aren’t going to school with armed security.’ And they didn’t. But they provided a sense of security for me when I wasn’t home.”

Slaughter’s turn built to a climax against Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania VII in Los Angeles. As with most WrestleManias (including the upcoming one) stars from the sports and entertainment world often make appearances.

“When I got to L.A., Willie Nelson, Regis Philbin, Alex Trebek and Donald Trump were all there, and I knew them all,” Slaughter said. “They wouldn’t say anything to me for the longest time. Finally Willie walks up to me and said, ‘Sarge, I can’t believe you’re an Iraqi sympathizer.’ He was really caught up in it. That was a real feather in our
campaign cover [cap].”

When the prospect of war with Iraq became more real, WWE dropped the storyline. Slaughter delivered an impassioned interview saying he was wrong and he wanted his country back. He got a little choked up singing “God Bless America.” By the time he got back to the locker room, most fans were on his side again.

“In my heart I always enjoyed playing the villain,” Slaughter said. “But it was gratifying that so many people accepted me back.”

The WWE and the wrestling business have grown exponentially in the 25 years since Slaughter’s Iraqi phase. Today the company is about more than one brand – there’s the NXT developmental territory based at the state-of-the-art Performance Center training facility in Orlando, plus
tournaments and weekly shows for smaller wrestlers and those from the U.K. Female wrestlers have also enjoyed a recent renaissance with stars such as Charlotte Flair and Becky Lynch.

“There really is something for everybody,” Slaughter said. “In the cruiserweight division, those matches are incredible to watch. The ladies, Charlotte and Becky Lynch, are wonderful. It’s incredible how Charlotte has grabbed the brass ring.

“We didn’t have the Performance Center when I started. We just came from the regional territories, promoters would see who was there, call the regional promoter up, see if he needed a hero or a villain, and they’d show up. We would get to the locker room and know some of the talent that was
there, but some we’d never seen before. We’d have to work things out ourselves, with no time to go into a recording booth and work on our promos or anything like that.”

Slaughter knows he’ll have plenty more stories to tell when he comes to Orlando for the Hall of Fame on Thursday, March 30, and Axxess from March 30-April 2. Hall of Fame tickets are already available, and Axxess goes on sale Friday (Feb. 4) at 10 a.m. from Ticketmaster.

“The whole week, we get to see the superstars that we were in the ring with, we traveled with or sat in the locker rooms with. It’s still a family. Sometimes we haven’t seen each other in a year or 10 years, but it’s still familiar. It’s like homecoming.”