Ken Shamrock: “I couldn’t pay my bills before the WWE signed me”

(Photo by Ross Dettman/Getty Images for IFL)

Ken Shamrock spoke with Makthavare.se on how he couldn’t pay his bills before Vince McMahon brought him to the WWE. He also talks about how the Vince McMahon documentary was agenda driven. Ken also stayes how ut was a sacrifice to leave MMA for WWE and more!


Ken Shamrock: I couldn’t pay my bills before the WWE signed me, The Vince McMahon documentary was agenda driven, It was a sacrifice to leave MMA

I couldn’t pay my bills before Vince McMahon brought me to the WWE

“I’m not sure there was an influence that Vince had on my career, but I do believe that he did give me an opportunity to be able to make more money than I was making, twice the amount of money I was making fighting at the time.

“Money didn’t drive me, but I was fighting (in MMA) for $1,500 when I started, it was for a love of it. It continued to be for a love of it until I got to a point in which I couldn’t support my family, I couldn’t pay the bills.

“I had built this whole universe with the Lion’s Den and bringing fighters in. We had a group home for kids and all of a sudden it was all in jeopardy so I had to make a decision.

“A decision to collapse everything or to keep following my journey and step into something else to allow the brand to move forward.

“I created this brand and I was pretty confident I could find something else I could do to make the money I needed to to keep supporting what I had built, and so Vince gave me that opportunity.

“He did. He gave me an opportunity to be able to continue moving forward and supporting these kids, these at risk kids and these fighters that were at the Lion’s Den fighter house.

“I got to keep supporting these fighters and allowing them to continue doing what they loved and I loved that too. Wrestling was very interesting to me, I was interested to do it and see what happened.

“It was exciting, but over time it didn’t feel like enough and I had to get back to what I was used to.”

The Vince McMahon documentary was agenda driven

“I’ve been a part of supporting documentaries, and I’ve been a part of ones that were agenda [driven] and you were collateral. It’s hard to say which it is, because it’s not real. It’s produced, it’s cut up. They put in certain things to make it more exciting or friendly or abusive or destructive.

“There’s any way that they want to spin this they can, and we don’t know which one it is. And only Vince knows, and his family knows whether that was true or not. We don’t. That’s why it is frustrating for me when people see something and all of a sudden they say: ‘well that guy is an absolute jackass’ and you don’t know if that is even true. Since when do you believe everything that someone tells you? Especially when it’s agenda driven.

“No. I didn’t watch it, I don’t usually get into that because I don’t want to be persuaded by what I’m watching, because I know for a fact that it could be wrong. Or it could be, it could be true. There’s no reason why I want to watch it, unless it’s going to be something positive for me.”

It was a sacrifice to leave MMA and join WWE

“I vaguely remember when Vince first called me, we were going to visit them after some conversations but his first call came as a shock because I expected someone else to call on his behalf.

“Vince made it very clear that he was interested in seeing if we could work something out and I was definitely in a position to where I needed something to work out, because I couldn’t keep my fighters and everybody accustomed to what we were doing unless I stepped away from MMA because I wasn’t making the money to keep it running.

“So I realized it was a sacrifice but something I was going to love to do, it’s not like I wasn’t interested, but he made it really clear that they were very interested and wanted to fly me out and get something done.”

Other people have different ideas of Vince – he was awesome to me

“I spoke a little bit earlier on my experience with the McMahons. I think I had a lot more, even though it wasn’t a lot at all either with Stephanie, when she was around, when she was coming around a lot, and I’ve had more with Shane as well. I’ve spoken with him a lot longer. In fact, when I was even in the ring, when I was working out, he was around. He’d come up to me, so I spoke more with them than I did with Vince.

“In the beginning, obviously, Vince kind of took me through the character, and how everything was gonna go. Linda, I didn’t really have much of a conversation with her. But I will say this: that I’ve seen, and whenever I was around, Vince was nothing but professional to me, and everything that I saw him around.

“Other people have different ideas of who Vince is. Maybe I haven’t been around enough to know that. But everything that I know and what I have seen, he’s been awesome.”

‘Everything is possible’ when it comes to WWE return

“It’s never a no [when it comes to returning to the WWE] . Everything is possible in my mind, everything, and that’s the way I live my life, and that’s the way I continue to live it. So I don’t rule out anything. But right now, I’m so focused on the projects that we have and excited about some of the new things that we’re coming up with.

“We’ve got this True Bare Knuckle that we’ve been working on for a few years. We’ve actually restructured the business. Brought on some new people that we think will help support. To get this thing where it needs to go.

“I think bareknuckle is very much a warrior sport. It’s fast and I think that it’s in a stage where UFC used to be back in the day when it first came out. It’s in the very beginning stages of people trying to understand it.”


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