Jesse Ventura: ‘Hulk Hogan Ratted Me Out During Union Talks!’, More

Jesse Ventura recently appeared on The Steve Austin Show, here are the highlights…

On the fallacy of pro wrestlers being independent contractors: “Vince is lucky I didn’t go for the Senate. Had I got into the Senate I would have started a Senatorial investigation into why professional wrestlers are called ‘independent contractors’ when they’re not. You work for one company, they order you around, they control your whole life. How are you possibly an independent contractor, except they don’t have to pay your social security.” … “Look at the thousands of dollars it’s cost all of us wrestlers to have to pay fifteen-percent, or whatever it is, as independent contractor on our taxes. That’s a bee that’s been under my saddle since I began wrestling. We are not independent contractors. I can’t work for another promoter on Wednesday, and then work for you on Friday, it don’t work that way.”

On Hulk Hogan ratting him out when he tried to start a wrestlers union: “In the trial we go the records of Wrestlemania III. The big one. [Hulk Hogan] and Andre [the Giant]. Hogan got more than all of us combined, including Andre. If you took the payoffs of Andre and the whole rest of the card, Hogan made more than we did. So naturally he didn’t want a union, that could even out the money a little more. He sold us out because he was getting taken care of, and he didn’t want nobody else horning in on the good deal he had.”

On his biggest payday being as a referee at SummerSlam 1999: “The biggest pay day I ever received in wrestling when I refereed the match in Minneapolis. As a wrestler, how can I say my biggest payoff was being a referee? I’m a wrestler! Those are the old washed up guys or the guys who couldn’t wrestle in the first place that want to be in the business. No offense to the referees, but here I’m getting the biggest payoff I’ve ever gotten in my life, and it’s because I was a ref? That part of it was hard to take. The money was great!”

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