Scotty 2 Hotty talks about being bad at promos, figuring out his character in WWE, teaching in NXT, falling in love with wrestling again, wrestling his trainees, being a small guy in WWE, wanting to wrestle his NXT trainees and much more.
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00:00 Simon here at WrestleCon with the one and only Scotty 2 Hotty. How are you doing my friend?
00:04 Well, I'm just Luke warm these days, but you can call me Scotty 2 Hotty. I prefer Luke warm.
00:08 Okay, Luke. How do I do it? Scotty 2 Luke warm?
00:11 No, just Luke warm.
00:13 Okay, start again. Hi, Simon Walkout here with Luke warm. How are you doing Mr. Warm?
00:19 No, it's Scotty 2 Hotty.
00:20 Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Should I just leave? I just leave you with the microphone?
00:23 No, you don't want to do that. See, I had a partner who did all of the talking, which made me really bad at talking.
00:29 So, my promos are horrible.
00:33 Was that really a thing that happened? I assume you're talking about Brian Christopher, right?
00:36 Did he just steal the microwave constantly?
00:38 He didn't steal it, but he had spent so much time coming up in Memphis.
00:41 And his dad was, of course, who his dad was, and he was so good that Brian spent a lot more time cutting promos than I had.
00:47 We got together, we were in our early 20s. So, I already wasn't very good at my promos, then he was so good,
00:54 which made it intimidating. So, most of the time, he would just take over.
00:58 But honestly, now, I enjoy doing it, and I speak more from the heart, and don't worry so much about a character.
01:05 That's something I struggled with, honestly, and I say that all the time with the Scotty 2 Hotty character,
01:09 was trying to be a good guy and be likable. How would that character talk?
01:16 Because at the time, that character would have been like, "Yo, yo, yo, yo."
01:21 And I was like, "That's the guy I want to punch straight into Adam Sapple."
01:24 So, it was hard to be likable. So, I never really figured it out.
01:27 So, look at this lady right here, but I haven't seen her forever.
01:30 But this thing is very overwhelming at times, you know, because I've been in that WWE bubble for the last 7 years.
01:36 So, to see some of these people, it's been like, you know, 7, 10 years since I've seen some of them.
01:41 So, it's really fun doing this stuff.
01:43 You must be loving it, though, obviously, because we don't need to go into it.
01:46 You've told your story about NXT and coming out the other side.
01:49 Did you ever, in your wildest dreams, I mean, I guess my question is,
01:52 did you think you were going to be in NXT for life when your wrestling stuff was done?
01:55 No, I don't think anybody who ever goes to any company, not just WWE,
01:59 but any company in 2022 can go, "I'm going to be there for life."
02:03 You know, whether it's AT&T or Tesco.
02:06 He knows, he's just in the UK, he knows.
02:09 Or Target, if you're in the US.
02:11 But no, I never took that for granted.
02:14 And, you know, it's a business, it's a machine.
02:17 And, you know, when one cog breaks, they take that cog out and they replace it.
02:21 So I never, no, and I'm very thankful for my time there.
02:26 If it wasn't for my time there, I wouldn't be here, I wouldn't be,
02:29 we talked about, you know, before we started, being at TNT in the UK
02:33 and being able to do 12 days in a row just in the UK.
02:36 So I'm thankful for my time there, but it was time to go.
02:41 And, dude, I'm having a blast being out here.
02:44 So much fun. I keep saying, you know, it's not the most profitable time of my career,
02:48 it's not the busiest time of my career, but it's the most special time of my career.
02:53 Because in the six years since I left the independent scene,
02:58 people have gotten older.
03:00 So I'm meeting 35-year-old men with kids of their own,
03:05 who, when Too Cool and Rikishi was a thing in 2000, were little boys.
03:09 So it's a very, very cool, very cool dynamic.
03:12 And it's very emotional at times, to be honest with you.
03:15 I was going to say, it must be quite life-affirming.
03:17 Because if you can do anything in '99, 2000, 2001, fast-forward 20 years,
03:22 and you have this, you know, wrestling comeback tour, whatever you want to call it,
03:26 and you can go to the UK and people respond to you.
03:28 We've seen, before we interview, people responding to you.
03:31 I mean, how do you even process that?
03:32 It's overwhelming. Like, I've literally, I keep saying this,
03:35 like, I don't know if it's my age, or I'm just getting older, or whatever.
03:39 I've literally broke down and cried multiple times,
03:42 like, even on that UK tour, like, telling stories about my NXT talent,
03:46 or talking, you know, just seeing passion.
03:48 You know, being in Dublin with Session Mothmartina,
03:52 and seeing, you know, just standing in the corner and watching her do her thing,
03:55 and there's so much passion behind it, you know.
03:57 And that's what I was missing at the end of my time with NXT,
04:01 was just feeling what I fell in love with.
04:03 You know, so to be able to do that again, be back out here, see that, be a part of that,
04:09 and then meet these grown men who were little boys when I was at the peak of my career,
04:13 is just so overwhelmingly awesome.
04:15 So I say, this is definitely the most special part of my career.
04:19 - Do you think you've, I can't think of a better term,
04:21 but do you think you've almost become a, when you go to these promotions,
04:23 you become like a father figure, or a coach, because they know the experience you have,
04:27 but you've also proven at the very top, you can impart wisdom, and skills, and everything like that.
04:32 - Yeah, well, that's what I tell them.
04:33 I start my seminars by asking, "Who's the youngest person here?"
04:36 Usually it's 16, 17, 18 years old.
04:39 I go, "Okay, I was 15. I grew up in a state, I grew up in Maine.
04:44 There wasn't a wrestling school for within 200 miles, basically.
04:49 There wasn't another wrestler in the state.
04:52 Like I said, I was 15, I was 150 pounds.
04:55 I had everybody telling me, "You're too small, you're too young, you're too whatever."
04:59 And I did it. I went all the way to as high as you can go.
05:03 You know, the WWE, WrestleMania, whatever you want to call that peak, the Royal Rumble,
05:07 having Madison Square Garden on your feet, like, had all of these very cool moments,
05:11 that I think when you get in this, that's what you strive for.
05:15 So if I can do it, that kid from Maine, 15-year-old, 150-pound kid from Maine,
05:19 who was never properly trained, anybody can do this.
05:23 You know, so it's just been so awesome, man. So awesome.
05:26 And I'm so thankful, and no regrets on my decision to leave and come back out here,
05:30 and just having a blast, and look down there, like, I see Matt Cardona now, like,
05:34 he was a huge inspiration for me to leave.
05:37 Like, I saw him, what he was doing out on the independent scene,
05:40 having fun with it. You know, I saw the guys over at AEW having fun outside.
05:45 Like, I was like, "Okay, there's still fun here, and there's still passion here."
05:48 So I want to go back. I want to be a part of that, you know?
05:50 - And you mentioned it there. I mean, the stereotypical line is "Land of the Giants,"
05:55 but you were able to find your way through.
05:57 So when you look at wrestling now, and the landscape, does it kind of blow your brain?
06:00 Because, dude, I've met wrestlers who are on television, and they're smaller than you, man.
06:03 You're a big guy compared to them.
06:04 - Yeah, it's funny. It changed over time.
06:06 I remember walking into the WWF locker room for the first time in 1991,
06:11 and when I was a kid, I thought, "Oh, I'm about the same size as Marty Jannetty and Shawn Michaels."
06:15 And the very first person I saw when I walked in the door was Marty Jannetty.
06:19 And then I saw Shawn later, and I was like, you know, this was like, you know,
06:23 Shawn's smaller now, but at the time, he was probably 225, and, you know, what, 6'1", 6'2".
06:30 They weren't small guys, but, you know, next to the Warlord, Barbarian, you know, Crush,
06:35 those guys, they were small guys.
06:37 And, but, you know, thankfully, it changed.
06:39 And I credit Shawn Michaels a lot, and Bret Hart, too.
06:43 You know, they weren't small guys, but they were smaller guys compared to the Hogan era.
06:47 And then, you know, you had 123 Kid come along, who I don't feel like gets enough credit for opening that door for smaller guys like us, you know.
06:56 So, yeah, it's definitely, I was a smaller guy, then I come back out on the independents,
07:02 and I'm like a giant sometimes.
07:05 You're just a guy now, man. You lost your gimmick.
07:07 Now, I assume you've wrestled everyone, but one last generic question,
07:10 because I'm massively intrigued for someone that has your, well, history, I suppose.
07:14 You can pick one person out there right now, who do you go after?
07:17 I don't know if there's one person.
07:19 I mean, the one person I never really did anything with that I wish I had was Hogan.
07:25 Anything with Hogan. I mean, I was in the locker room with him, but I never worked with him.
07:28 Flair, I never worked with, but I remember we did, like, we traded punches on a bit brawl.
07:32 I was like, "Okay, that's good enough for me." I worked with Flair. I did that with Flair.
07:37 Now, though, the cool thing for me is to wrestle the guys that went through NXT that I coached,
07:44 because I never in a million years thought I would be wrestling these guys in Dallas, Texas.
07:49 I wrestled Rich Swann yesterday morning. We had a blast. It was so fun. We danced. We wrestled.
07:54 The crowd was having a fun time, and then I saw Killian Dain the night before, and Wesley Blake,
08:00 and I've seen Steve Cutler, and all these guys that I trained with.
08:05 No intention to ever wrestle them. I have that opportunity to do that now.
08:08 And, I mean, if you want to take it to another level, if I was able to do anything with a Cole or a Riley Fish,
08:13 you know, Tommaso or Gargano, all these guys that are out there that I could, like, literally do something with now,
08:20 like, it'd be so cool.
08:22 Do you ever, like, when you're in the middle of a match, do you start coaching them?
08:24 "No, you did that wrong. You can't start doing this."
08:27 No, so the thing is, dude, like, I look at this as art.
08:31 I say the only right way to do this is the way, is when you can make somebody pay money to walk through that door
08:40 and see you do whatever you do. Other than that, dude, this is pro wrestling.
08:45 And I always say this, I go, like, I love this. I've done it since I was a kid.
08:50 I respect it. I respect those that came before me.
08:52 But this is probably pretty silly stuff. We put baby oil on, we put spandex on, some of us put makeup on.
08:59 You know, we do these moves, we shoot them 20 feet across the ring, and, you know, we do the worm,
09:03 we do suplexes where the bodies just go into rigor mortis and they stay up there.
09:07 Like, it's pretty silly stuff, so, like, I don't like to over-critique, you know.
09:12 If anything, I say, slow down, save your bodies, you know, slow down, listen to the audience.
09:18 What does the audience want? That's what we're here for.
09:20 Not for us to entertain ourselves, we want to entertain the fans.
09:24 So stop and listen to them. That's a big part of the art of this, you know.
09:28 And save your bodies. I'm a guy with, you know, three screws and a steel plate in my neck,
09:33 and I didn't do a whole lot, you know. Now I see guys diving off balconies and stuff, like,
09:38 and I understand, I went down the same road. You're trying to get noticed.
09:41 Trying to get noticed, trying to create a following.
09:44 And sometimes you do what you got to do to make that happen, but I just, I want it,
09:48 there's life after this, you know. And as I get older, I realize there is life after this.
09:53 What am I going to do? And, like, how am I going to be physically?
09:56 Like, because sometimes you see the old-timers and they can barely walk, and, you know.
10:01 I remember, like, Kowalski and those guys used to come around, and, like,
10:04 they didn't barely leave their feet, and they can't walk now.
10:06 Like, so I am screwed, you know.
10:08 - You're doing fine, man. - Yeah, yeah.
10:11 - All right, it's my man, Scotty Tuhati. Sorry, Luke Warm, whatever we're calling you.
10:15 I'm just Luke Warm. I don't turn to Scotty Tuhati, like, after 5 p.m. at night.
10:19 So I'm just Luke Warm for the rest of the day.
10:21 - I'm amazed in the however many years of wrestling, there's never been,
10:24 there's got to have been a Luke Warm, surely.
10:26 - I'm going to go trademark it right now. Hold on.
10:28 - I'll buy your t-shirt, 100%. Scotty Tuhati/Luke Warm.
10:31 Very nice guy. Like, share, subscribe. Goodbye.