Ted Dibiase Sr. interview Part 2 - Leaving WWE, retiring, hating his time in WCW

Ted Diabiase Sr.

I recently spoke with WWE Hall of Famer “The Million Dollar Man” Ted Dibiase. In the second part of the interview below, Dibiase discussed working with Andre The Giant, why he left WWF, returning as a manager, why he signed with WCW and much more.

If you missed the first part, read it here. The interview continues in Part 3.

Make sure to check back tomorrow for the third part of our interview, where Dibiase talks working on the WWE creative team, his ministry, not wanting his children to enter the business, how WWE was using Ted Jr. and much more.

WrestlingINC: I’ve heard a lot of stories about Andre the Giant and how when he works with someone he likes, he’s great to work with, but if he doesn’t like you, then it’s not so good.

Ted Dibiase: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I mean, Andre was a wonderful guy, and I’m going to tell you, Andre was, in my opinion, a very good judge of character.

If you were a schmuck, he was going to let you know you were a schmuck. It’s true. He either liked you or he didn’t like you. There wasn’t too many people that disagreed with his opinion.

Way in back in like 1979, when I was there working for Vince Sr., I had a tag team match one night. It was me and Andre and Ivan Putski against the Valiant brothers. Andre did not like Putski, at all. Andre told me, ‘you tag me, no one else.’ ‘You bet, boss. Whatever you say.’ He made sure I did that.

It’s like, I would start going to the corner. I was the young guy on the totem pole. I was the one that got beat on. So I’d be reaching to tag, and he would just reach way out over past Putski, he made Putski basically stand on the apron the entire match. Putski was not really one of those guys that a lot of people liked.

The night that Randy [Savage] and I had the cage match in Madison Square Garden, just prior to our match Andre worked with Bam Bam Bigelow. That’s the night Bigelow walked in the dressing room and threw all his stuff together, grabbed his bag and walked out the back door and quit.

He came back later, because I actually managed him for a while, and he told me, he said you know what? That’s the best thing that ever happened to me. He said, because Andre was right. He said I had a horrible attitude. Andre suggested a new attitude.

WrestlingINC: That’s what I’ve heard. It sounded like he was one of the real early locker room enforcers, once Vince [McMahon] took over WWF. After your feud with Randy, you dropped down the card a little bit, but you still remained near the top of the card for a long time. You were very protected. You were rarely lost at pay per views or anything like that.

When you did form the tag team with Mike Rotundo [as Money Inc.], was that something the company came up with? Or were you looking to do something different?

Dibiase: It was a company decision. I liked it. I didn’t know Mike real well at the time, but I’d seen him work, and I admired his work. We did real well as a tag team. I’ve had a few tag team partners. I tagged with Steve Williams, and I tagged with [Jim] Duggan at different times. Those guys were great, but me and Mike had real good chemistry.

WrestlingINC: What made the company finally decide to split you guys up? It seemed like you guys got a lot of success pretty quickly, but the tag team was only together for a little over a year.

Dibiase: Wrestlemania 8 was in Indianapolis, we defended the titles against the great big guys, I can’t remember… Yeah! The Natural Disasters. It’s like we had them, we lost them. We got them back, we lost them, we got them back again and lost them. Part of that might be due to the fact that I had decided to leave.

My decision to leave after SummerSlam 93, it wasn’t because I was dissatisfied with the business or anything else. Number one, I was tired. I was tired of the grind. My personal life. I had, back in March of 92, Wrestlemania 8, just after that is when I had a major confrontation at home and very nearly lost my family and I wrote a book about it.

It was kind of a life changing experience for me and when I left in 93, it really wasn’t for any other reason except for I guess you might say, if you’re going to overcome your demons, it’s kind of like if drinking’s your demon, then you have to get out of the bar.

What I recognized was that although I had a heart change, and I had stopped in so many ways being selfish and self centered, as far as my family was concerned, the demons on the road would still be there. It’s kind of like one of those deals where I realized I had to separate myself from this environment, at least for a while.

I guess I was just scared. I was afraid I was going to get sucked back into it. That’s really why I left in ’93. I don’t know much longer we could have gone on or whatever. We weren’t tag team champions at the time, but there was a good chance that we could have been again.