Road Dogg Talks About How The Wrestling Business Has Changed

Jonathan Snowden of Bleacher Report recently spoke to“Road Dogg” BG James. Here are some highlights:

Bleacher Report: It’s good to see you back in WWE. After everything that happened when you left, everything that was said, I would have never guessed we’d ever see you again. I guess, in the wrestling business, no door is every truly closed?

Road Dogg: That’s very true for me. I don’t think Hunter and Vince tuned in to the other show on that other channel. So I think I was good to go.

But thank God and heaven above that no door is ever truly closed and I’ve gotten another opportunity here. And I hope I’m giving back to the product as much as it gave to me over the years. Even if I wasn’t appreciative of it at the time, I’m sure appreciative of it now.

B/R: You talked a little about the pitfalls of the wrestler’s life—the pain killers and the parties. It seems to me, from the outside, that all that has kind of faded from the business. Do you think that’s true?

Road Dogg: For sure it has. It used to be a rock and roll party lifestyle. It’s not like that any more. It’s more like a sports organization. And if you want to make it here? You certainly can’t be on drugs. That’s all there is to it.

If you’re a starving artist of a professional wrestler, and you’re on drugs and want to make it, you aren’t going to make it here. They’ve weened that out of the lifestyle. And it was a lifestyle. It was just like a rock band. Every night a different town, different people and different things to do. It was easy to lose your way.

I’m not afraid to share my story with the young guys coming up. Don’t lose your head, because you’ll lose your job. (laughs). And that’s nowhere to be.

B/R: You talk about your impact—you guys were at your height 15 years ago, but that catchphrase is still potent. That’s how I know you made it big. How many times in your life, conservatively, has somebody come up to you and said “Oh, you didn’t know?”

Road Dogg: (Laughs). A hundred thousand? Every time one of the Sports Center guys says it or someone says it during a basketball game, I still get tweets out the ying yang. And it’s just words that were in the rolodex of society anyway, I just put them together and put them in a sing-song way.

So I don’t know if I get all the credit for it, but it’s pretty cool. It does mean that something I did in this world stuck.