Naturally, a wrestler’s place in the corporate pecking order, which dictates where they’re slotted on the cardboard for any give show, is an important think about their financial stature at any given time. But for those not yet near top billing, those that are the difference between an enormous payday and walking away from an event lighter within the pocket than one might need hoped. On “Busted Open Radio,” WWE Hall of Famer Mark Henry and co-host Tommy Dreamer recalled what it was like working on the identical cards as a pair of all-time WWE greats during “The Attitude Era.”
Asked by host Dave LaGreca for his tackle working with The Rock and “Stone Cold” Steve Austin, Henry put the pair as equals in that regard. “Being a man that was on cards with each,” he said, “the cash was near the identical.” The recollection quickly dovetailed into vital lessons that Austin taught Henry, nonetheless, with regard to the business side of wrestling. “Steve Austin was the primary person to ever come to me and go, ‘So, you understand how much the home was today?'” Henry added, noting that in the first place, he’d should tell Austin that he didn’t, in truth, know. “‘Why don’t you understand?'” Henry recalled Austin asking. “I used to be like, ‘S***, I’m gonna receives a commission regardless. I got a guarantee.’ But he was like, ‘You must know what the home is and write it down since the effect of you being on a show might [influence] what your next contract looks like.'”
Explaining that if he knew that the last time WWE was in a selected town without him, hypothetically, they drew $226,000, Henry says that Austin told him the subsequent time they were there, he’d show Vince McMahon the difference after the actual fact. “‘Me, at the highest of this card, we drew [$540,000],” Henry recalled Austin saying. “So, the effect of me being on this card, I need to know, so I can go to Vince and definitively say, every show that we do, ‘Hey, we did 200+, we did 300 grand+ on this show. What’s gonna be my cut of that?”
‘Oh, they don’t seem to be here.’
Chiming in to notice the difference of being on a card with a Rock or an Austin versus otherwise, Dreamer, who was never a main-event player in WWE, made the discrepancy very clear. “Checks-wise, for those who were on, and listen, I’m working first, second, third match,” he explained, “and I’d have a look at my checks and I’d be like, ‘Oh, that is the show that The Rock was on. That is the show that Steve Austin was on’ and then you definately’d get your same checks in the identical venues the subsequent time and be like, ‘Oh, they don’t seem to be here,’ and your check is cut in half.”
Making the excellence that things are quite different, by way of how wrestlers are paid as of late (of which, he would have first-hand knowledge, as Head of Talent Relations for TNA), Dreamer noted that it didn’t even really matter where you were on a card with megastars at the highest to note the drastic range of paydays you would possibly take home. “You would get as little as $1,500 for working the second match on the cardboard,” he said, “or like seven or eight thousand for being the primary match on the show that [featured] a Rock or Steve Austin as your champion.”
More importantly than the income on the time, in accordance with Henry, was what he was in a position to take away from someone like Austin, who took the time to pass down the teachings that helped him financially in the long term. “It was hard for me, as a child,” he said, “getting schooled and never knowing all of this stuff but Steve was considered one of those guys that helped teach you. There’s numerous guys that did not give a s*** whether you knew but Steve was not considered one of those.”
When you use any of the quotes in this text, please credit “Busted Open Radio” and supply a h/t to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.