Sabu on working for Paul Heyman, his favorite ECW matches, why ECW in WWE didn’t work

Image credit: MMA Crossfire

Sabu and Super Genie (Melissa Coates) talk to Chris Van Vliet from their home in Las Vegas, NV. Sabu talks about his time in ECW, what he learned from working with Paul Heyman, how he got his infamous scars, his regrets not signing a $400,000 a year deal with Kevin Sullivan in WCW, his biography called “Sabu: Scars, Silence and Superglue”, his children’s book “Sabu vs. The Three Little Pigs” and more! He also discusses the lifesaving surgery that Super Genie had that causes her left leg to be amputated at the knee due to blood clots.

Super Genie on adjusting to her recent leg surgery:

Super Genie: “I’m hanging in there, it’s definitely a large change. The doctors don’t know what happened that caused me to lose my leg. I’ve been to all these specialists and had all these tests, [they’ve taken] 13 vials of blood and it’s been a shocker. I’ve made my entire career off of pro bodybuilding and pro wrestling and then suddenly to have your leg amputated above your knee it’s just quite the unexpected shock. [A GoFundMe has been created to support Melissa. To donate click here.]

“With the prosthetic legs, besides the procedures, is that you’re not just given them. If you want a really good one it’s super expensive, like $100,000. If I wanted to have a leg that brought me to where I was bodybuilding or wrestling wise, I can’t just have a basic leg.”

On how the leg injury started:

Sabu: “It started with pain in her calf, after a couple of weeks we took her to the hospital and they said she might have had a pulled Achilles. 3 weeks later she had pain in her calf again, so we took her back and they said her leg was dying.”

Super Genie: “Long story short it seemed like a pulled muscle, but in my family there is a history of clots, artery issues, vein and heart problems. I started to have pain in my leg 6 weeks before the amputation. I did what I should have done I went to urgent care. Unfortunately the doctor didn’t check my arteries, he only checked the veins. So it wasn’t a full exam. Weeks later I’m back in the hospital and there telling me they’re most likely going to have to amputate my leg, so it was just awful.”

On Sabu’s worst injuries:

Sabu: “The biggest one would be the time [Chris] Benoit threw me on my head, the broken neck that was pretty bad. The second one would be the scar I got on my arm when I wrestled Terry Funk. Right now my lower back is what hurts the most, but my shoulder and my neck are also really bad. But my back is the worst, I’ve got spinal stenosis in my lower back.

Chris then asks about if all of Sabu’s chest/torso scars happened at once and his barbed wire match origins:

“No it’s definitely real barbed wire. I didn’t actually sign up for my first barbed wire match. On my second tour of Japan, it just so happened that I was having a barbed wire match. I didn’t know about it until the last minute. So I didn’t think that much about it. I just took in my stride, try hard like I do any other time and hope that people liked it. I tried so hard that people thought I liked doing it, but I didn’t, I was just doing what was faced in front of me.”

“The first tour I did a barbed wire match it was just the one. But the next tour it was 3, and the third tour was 16. So they kept adding more and more with each tour. Every day of the final tour was a barbed wire match.

On why he used a steel chair in a unique style:

Sabu: “I just wanted to use a steel chair in a different way. So I would jump off it, or throw it or kick it or whatever, so it’s something different to whacking a guy in the head with it.

On the origin of the Sabu name:

Sabu: “My uncle [The Sheik] came up with it. He originally called me Sabu the elephant boy from Bombay India. Because his hero when he was growing up was Sabu Dastagir, who played Mowgli in Jungle Book. He used to run around town with a towel on his head. When he had his first child, he wanted to name him Sabu, but his wife wouldn’t let him, so they named the dog Sabu. That means I’m actually the second Sabu. The fans still thought I was from Bombay in India, so I changed it to Bombay Michigan. But in India, The Elephant Boy is like a cowboy, so I had a lot of respect in India.”

“He set me straight. For the 5 years, I was a regular wrestler. I didn’t leave the ring, did 10 minute matches and was only going to be first match of the show. From day one [Shiek] said you’re not going to be like me, don’t give me that sh*t.” Not that I didn’t want to, I knew that there was already him.”

On losing a potential $400,000 WCW contract:

Sabu: “It [the contract value] was a little more than that but close enough. It was 1 year guaranteed, 2 years maybe. They [WCW] offered me some money, I went down to have a meeting with JJ Dillon and Kevin Sullivan. They offered me this huge contract, and I was sh*tting my pants. So I said “let me take this back to my hotel and read it.” Kevin said “don’t read it just sign it.” I said “I have to read it,” when really I just wanted to tell my mother before I signed it just for the hell of it. But when I called my mother, she had a heart attack on the phone before I could tell her. So I hung up the phone and flew right home, and I was in intensive care with my mother.
I called Kevin Sullivan from the ICU and said I’ve got that contract I’m going to fax it over to you now. Kevin goes “too late,” and I lost the contract in 6 hours. They dropped it so quick because Paul [Heyman] called up WCW offices and threatened to sue.”

On trying out for WWF and experiences with WWECW:

Sabu: “That was only a 1 year deal, and it wasn’t much money and they said they were going to keep Sabu the way he was in ECW. But when I got there, they took Paul off of the booking meetings, so I had no one there who had my back. I said to Dusty Rhodes “why am I getting the sh*t kicked out of me in the ring?” And he goes “you don’t have any friends in the booking meeting.” I looked at him like he was one of my friends, but he repeated I had no friends and walked away. So you’ve got kiss somebody’s ass for them to bring your name up in the booking meetings, if you dont’, they just throw you by the wayside.”

“The WWF was just a try-out for a couple of days and I didn’t want to take it. Later on, when they called me to do the WWE ECW, that’s when they said that they were going to keep Sabu the same and all this stuff.
After I got there it slowly changed, and when Paul was out, it all changed. They wanted to soften be down for WWE ECW. I had already toned myself down, but they wanted to town it down even more. If I jumped off a chair and did a kick, they said you can’t do that, because that’s Jeff Hardy’s spot. I go break a table leg, they say no Elijah Burke is going to break a table leg. But I go it’s my gimmick. They respond not here it isn’t. Anything I said I invented, you didn’t invent it here. We would do WWE ECW hardcore matches on the road, and they wouldn’t be extreme matches. We wouldn’t even break a table or use a chair.”

On working with John Cena:

Sabu: “I liked working with John. I got a lot of bad information given to me about him, but it was all lies and jealousy. John could work, a nice guy, he wasn’t selfish and called my spots when I forgot them. Whenever I got lost he called it for me. We planned out half of the match in the dressing room, and called the rest of it in the ring. He was always on the right page. A lot of guys are jealous of him because of his big push, but he deserves it.”

On whether he should be in the WWE Hall of Fame:

Sabu: “I said I wouldn’t be because I think it’s the fakest hall of fame there is, but I would do it for the pay off. I would make sure that everybody knows that I’m a hall of famer because they say it. I’m supposed to be getting inducted into the Iowa hall of fame this year. That to me is a real hall of fame, because they put amateur wrestlers, pro wrestlers and even boxers in. But it’s all about wrestling, not which celebrity is on the show. But when I was there [in WWE] I didn’t have any hall of fame year or hall of fame matches in WWE. I think RVD will definitely be going in. One time, me and Rob [Van Dam] said to Vince [McMahon] “We are losing our fans.” Vince said “F*ck those fans, we’ll make new ones.” But the new ones are too soft. The original ECW fans were bloodthirsty fans that bought every show no matter how bad it was.”

On if he can wrestle now and retirement:

Sabu: “I wrestled in October, but I was in so much pain that I had to cancel my matches in January and March [2021]. I don’t know when I will be able to wrestle again until I get surgery on my back. After surgery I plan to wrestle again. For my final match, I want to wrestle Brock Lesnar. I told Paul I wanted to but he was on a different contract at the time.”

Super Genie: “If you did wrestle Brock then I think it would be your last match! (laughs)!

Sabu can be found on Twitter here.

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