Andrew Lutzke
Presented by Sean Oliver and the Kayfabe Commentaries crew.
The Man: Sean Waltman broke into the business in 1990 after being trained by Boris and Joe Malenko. A native of Minnesota, Waltman would have probably ventured into the AWA had his career began only a few years earlier – but now the AWA was on its death bed and joining there would probably just see him be a jobber on ESPN like his fellow undersized Minnesotan Jerry Lynn was. The independent scene seemed far more promising and Waltman, as The Lightning Kid, found success early as he won the PWA Lightweight and TV titles only months into his career. It was in the PWA that Lynn and Kid would have a semi-famous series of matches over the next two years. Ultimately Lynn and The Kid would both tour Japan and they ended up teaming with one another before Vince McMahon came calling for Waltman.
In May of 1993, Waltman appeared on RAW as the “Lightning Kid” and lost.
The next week he was “The Cannonball Kid” and lost again – both in basic squash match fashion. The following week Razor Ramon was scheduled to face “The Kid” and like his previous opponents, Razor beat down and toyed with The Kid until Waltman suddenly caught Razor with a moonsault and scored a shocking 3 count. The fans mocked Razor with chants of “1-2-3!” and Waltman was now dubbed the 1-2-3 Kid.
Ramon was deeply embarrassed and sought out a re-match, which The Kid refused until Ramon offered him $10,000. The rematch saw Kid run away with the money, but not the victory.
Money Inc. mocked Ramon for his loss to The Kid and that set up Dibiase challenging The Kid himself to show Razor that beating him would be no problem. Ramon showed up at ringside during the match and that led to Dibiase showboating and The Kid snuck in a fluke cradle victory as Dibiase was looking at Razor. This turned Razor into a babyface and he and the 1-2-3 Kid would be aligned. At Summerslam ’93 Ramon beat Dibiase in a one on one match while The Kid lost to Dibiase’s partner IRS – a move that actually made sense as he can’t be the plucky underdog if he doesn’t lose ever – a booking move that would have served Waltman well in the early 2000’s when his lack of jobbing wore on the fans and helped lead to backlash against Waltman.
The Kid would start a program with Johnny Polo and The Quebecers in the Fall – with Marty Jannetty and himself going after Polo in singles matches and ultimately The Quebecers in tag bouts. This would culminate in a Monday Night Raw tag title match in January that saw Marty and The Kid beat the Canadians for the tag belts, only to lose them a week later at a MSG house show.
1-2-3 Kid missed time with an injury and then missed a chance to appear at Wrestlemania 10, when his match was taken off the card due to time constraints. The Kid would go on to have a great performance at the 1994 King of the Ring – beating Jeff Jarrett in the first round, and then narrowly losing to eventual winner Owen Hart in a fantastic semi-final match.
In July the Kid received a WWF Title match with Bret Hart on RAW and lost another thriller of a match. I’m not sure why The Kid wasn’t on Summerslam ’94’s card – perhaps an injury, or perhaps his natural role as Razor’s lil’ buddy was taken by NFL great Walter Payton that night. Razor and The Kid would align again for Survivor Series in a match against their real life best buddies Shawn and Diesel among others in a 10 man tag match. Razor would be the lone survivor in a match that saw Shawn and Diesel split and set up Diesel’s World title run.
With Razor being focused on singles gold and Marty Jannetty being fired again, Kid took up another plucky underdog as his semi-regular tag partner in Sparky Plugg/Bob Holly. The duo teamed up in January of 1995 in a tag team tournament for the WWF tag gold. Holly and The Kid made it all the way to the finals and stunned Bam Bam Bigelow and Tatanka to win the titles. They would hold the titles all of 24 hours until they lost the belts to the Smoking Gunns and a subsequent rematch a week later. The Kid would help Razor in his feud with Jeff Jarrett and The Roadie during this same period. Holly and The Kid lost a tag match to new tag champs Yokozuna and Owen Hart in April and the Kid returned to singles action.
Kid lost to the Roadie in a rather big upset at In Your House 2 and Hakushi bested him at Summerslam – at which point, a frustrated Kid started to get testy with his role as Razor’s perceived lacky and the two men split one on one matches in the Fall in “friendly” bouts and then teamed up in an unsuccessful bid for The Smoking Gunns World tag titles at IYH 4. The temperamental relationship exploded when The Kid turned on Razor during a match with Sid and joined Ted Dibiase’s “Million Dollar Corporation”. The Kid and his partners beat a team of light heavyweight jobbers at Survivor Series.
After that diversion, The Kid spent the rest of his WWF run feuding with Razor. Ramon faced The Kid as part of a 4 team “RAW BOWL” in January, then cost Razor the Intercontinental belt at the Royal Rumble. Razor finished the feud by beating the Kid at February’s IYH in a “Crybaby” match that saw Waltman be put in a diaper and fed a baby bottle.
Razor then announced that he planned on signing with WCW and the WWF suspended him –costing him weeks of house show pay offs against the Kid and ultimately a Wrestlemania payday against Goldust. The Kid instead faced WWF President Roddy Piper in a series of matches and then did jobs on TV to Shawn Michaels, Marc Mero and Savio Vega before leaving the WWF for WCW. More on that next time…
The Shoot:
We start with sexual innuendo about how friendly Waltman and the host have become.
Waltman doesn’t feel he has a bad reputation – even with his history with drugs.
X-Pac was arrested for narcotics in 2011 after attempting to buy pain pills off the street.
He says the police trumped up the charges, but he didn’t have to spend time in jail because he was famous.
1-2-3 Kid is sketchy on the details as “it was over a year ago”.
Waltman says he bumps his ass off in the ring yet, so pain pills are a necessity.
X-Pac says he owes it to the fans to give them all the signature big spots.
He smoked weed as a teenager.
Started pain pills in 1993 when he started in the WWF.
WWF rings were very hard in the mid-90’s. Coughing up blood wasn’t a rare side effect for a bunch of different wrestlers in that era.
Chyna feels porn saved her life. She and Waltman aren’t talking.
Waltman was accused of raping Chyna – she said so in a shoot and on Howard Stern’s show.
Chyna had sex with a basketball team while fucked up and when she came to, she cried rape then too.
Waltman doesn’t believe Hall thinks he’s too far gone. X-Pac and Nash feel helpless.
1-2-3 Kid likes hanging with Hall, but doesn’t want to bring up bad things (Hall’s addictions) because he feels it will ruin the good vibes they share.
The Wellness Policy the WWE has is a good idea, but they ignore some guys failing if it hurts business.
Saturn kept failing drug tests in WCW, Bischoff scolded him and Perry said “If you want me to stop failing, quit testing me”. So they did.
Waltman feels his suicide attempt may extend from the repeated concussions he suffered.
X-Pac says he smacked his girlfriend in Mexico and then felt so guilty he tried ending his life.
Waltman has a 20 year old son and a 17 year old daughter and he recognizes he was a lousy dad.
His kids have given up on him, Sean feels.
His mother and him have a strained relationship. Waltman grew up not knowing his real dad.
Sean had his first kid at age 19. Waltman was a indy geek and his wife did nails in the ghetto.
Waltman claims that this will be his final shoot interview.
Curt Hennig got Waltman hooked on old school country music. “Every old country song is about the business”.
X-Pac would love to have dinner with Bruce Lee.
Wrestlers think every sport is a work, it seems.
The Montreal Screwjob went deeper than we will ever know. Oliver feels everyone got out in a better place than they started in, The camera man got a perfect shot of Bret’s face right as the bell rung, a documentary was being filmed about Bret…
Waltman’s says Shawn made it sound like everybody was in on it, HHH got pissed when X-Pac brought it up.
Final Thoughts: This was a very intriguing interview, and the stated friendship between the host and Waltman really made him open up it seems. The downer was that this was the shortest Kayfabe Commentary DVD I’ve come across, at a mere hour. With the pace they were going and the frankness of Waltman’s answers, this was on its way to being a great DVD – but brevity aside this is one shoot well worth seeking out.
