The Patriot Talks About His Feud With Bret Hart And More

Del Wilkes, f.k.a. The Patriot, was recently a guest on The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast to discuss his new Kickstarter campaign which was made to fund a documentary on his life. You can download the full episode by clicking here and check out the Kickstarter page by clicking here. Below are some highlights.

Kickstarter Campaign For The Documentary Del Wilkes “The Man Behind The Mask”:

“This is the whole story. This isn’t just about The Patriot or Del Wilkes the professional wrestler. This story starts at birth. It starts with my Mom and Dad and goes all the way back to my grandparents. It covers my high school football, college football and my very brief NFL career and transitions right into my wrestling career. Also some of the dark periods that happened after my wrestling career was over it and brings us up to this very day. I think there really is a story here for people. No matter who you are or no matter how successful you’ve been if you make some bad decisions you can put yourself in bad situations and this shows that there can be life after those dark moments. I think it is an inspirational story that people can take from. Especially those who may be struggling in life.”

His Run In WCW:

“It may not have been the best timing for me to be there but I went in initially to work as a singles wrestler. But then the booking committee had the idea of putting me with (Marcus) Bagwell and teaming us up and making us Stars and Stripe, which I was fine with because tag teams were still an important part of the business back then. The Nasty Boys, Paul Orndorf and Paul Roma, Harlem Heat were all there at the time so we had tremendous tag team matches and those tag team belts still meant something. But what I think hurt most was the timing of everything and I happened to be there when they decided to bring in (Hulk) Hogan from the WWF, they brought in (Randy) Savage from the WWF and (Brutus) Beefcake and it focused all of the attention on those guys and it seemed like everybody else didn’t matter as much.”

His Feud With Bret Hart:

“My health issues brought the feud with Bret to an end. I had just major serious injuries. I had totally blown out my right knee, which has since been replaced twice. I literally couldn’t work without the help of a big knee brace that I had to wear and that brace limited what I could do in the ring and my movement. I had torn my triceps, it was literally ripped off the bone and rolled up the back of my arm and these injuries were creating big problems for me. Unfortunately it brought an end to my career and to that angle we had going on. I was just physically unable to continue to perform.”

Backstage Heat In The Locker Room In 1997:

“It was obvious things were heating up. The relationship between some of the guys and specifically Bret and Shawn (Michaels) and people were taking sides. There was Bret, Owen, Davey Boy and those guys and then you had Hunter, Shawn and that faction and Bret was very vocal to me about his displeasure with the way things were going. We spent a good bit of time talking to each other and talking about things we wanted to do in matches down the road that we were going to have and he really didn’t mind sharing with me his displeasure with the way things were in the company and his relationship with Shawn.”