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James Fullington (@ecwsandman) is a retired professional wrestler best known for his time in ECW, WCW and WWE as The Sandman. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Las Vegas to discuss his retirement match against The Invisible Man in Las Vegas, how the Singapore cane became his signature weapon, making his entrance to “Enter Sandman” by Metallica, his legendary entrance at ECW One Night Stand, the controversial crucifixion angle with Raven, and more!

So who got a really stiff Singapore cane shot? 

“I don’t know if it was in the ring with Taz. Yeah, he would have got one. You got to understand, back in the day, we were setting a different standard where stuff was a lot more real than things were in the rest of the wrestling world, on the planet. So we were laying stuff in, mostly all the time. Chairs, it didn’t matter what it was, you were getting a chair shot. Punches are different. I mean, if you get stiffed with a punch, then the guy screwed up. Really, you really shouldn’t be stiff with some guy with a punch. But a Balls Mahoney chair shot is a Balls Mahoney chair shot. It’s gonna be stiff, and that’s just the way it is.”

How did this become your weapon?

“So there’s this kid, Michael Fay. He was in Thailand. He’s an American, and he got hooked up with some big kids over there, and they spray-painted some cars. So it was big news that this kid’s going to get these eight lashes with whatever the hell they call it. We’ll call it a Singapore cane. It’s like an oak tree or something like that, and it’s wrapped with vines and thorns and stuff like that. One shot and it’ll bring blood on you. So Todd Gordon calls me and goes, ‘Listen Paul wants you at the studio.’ I just happened to live like 15 minutes from the studio. So I’m like oh darn, Paul’s got something for me. So I show up there, Paul takes me outside. We’re standing in the parking lot and he goes, ‘Listen. You know about the kid? Michael Fay?’ Yeah. He goes, ‘Well, you’re gonna bring a Singapore cane to the ring.’ I’m like, Well, what am I going to use for a Singapore cane? He looks up. We were standing under a tree. He pulled the branch off of the tree, pulled the twigs off of it. He goes, ‘Here, cut a promo with this.’ I had seen Tojo Yamamoto use one of these in the 70s, in an old video somewhere. I’m like wow, I’m not going to the ring with a regular stick. So that’s what I came with, this thing. It took me a little while to find one.”

Is this last match at Joey Janela’s Spring Break your last match? 

“Yeah, my son told me I would have thought it probably was like 2018 or 19, but I just told me it was probably more like 2010 for Bubba Ray in Philadelphia. That was the last time I was actually in a match. Now, there’s tons of times like when people hire me to go all over the world, it’s usually to go out there with some beers, play my music, pour some beer down people’s throats, go in there and whack a couple guys. I don’t do tackle, drop down, hip, toss, arm drag. You know what I mean? I go in there to drink some beers and whack some people. It’s pretty easy pay too.”

How did this come together for you to have a match with The Invisible Man?

“I found out about it, and I loved it. I don’t remember exactly how it came about. I can’t remember.”

So where are you at right now with your relationship with pro wrestling? 

“I’m on the road maybe 25 times a year. I took a couple of my sons along, and then I got a couple of my sons here with me now and then I think we’ll go to Germany this summer. So it’s like, take my boys on little vacations and you get paid to do it.”

So when you look back at the start of your career and now, how do you encapsulate this insane ride you’ve been on?

“Too many drugs, honestly, too many drugs. A lot of smiles. I get a lot of fan mail and stuff at home. Just some of the things that people write to me and they tell me how I got them through a hard time in their life, or when their dad passed away, or something like that. Those are the times when it’s really, really worth it. I mean, it’s great when you’re living your life dream. When I was five years old, all I ever wanted to be was a pro wrestler. That’s it. Not a cop, fireman, doctor. All I ever wanted to be was a pro wrestler, so I got to live my life and make decent money out of it and make people really happy. You know, when you get some people come up to you and they’re like, ‘Oh my God, you’re the greatest thing ever.’ That just gives you goose bumps. That’s cool sh*t.”

With so much respect for you. Are you surprised you’re still alive sitting here today?

“Yes, my doctor just told me the other day. He’s like, ‘You’re about out of your cat lives. You’ve used like three of them in the last couple of years.'”

How often do you think you were high when you wrestled?

“I didn’t start drinking until, let’s say, 200 matches in.”

You were in the mid-90s at this point?

“By ’96. I’m rocking and rolling. I’m snorting in the 80s, drinking a 30-pack of beer before the show. Not the whole 30, but you’re drinking 15, because you’re there early too. And a lot of times, if you’re working the main and it’s an ECW show, freaking, you’re there at five o’clock in the afternoon, you might not go on until 11:30, so you got a lot of time to drink and party.”

So how do you go from the surfer gimmick that you debut with to this guy who’s sitting in front of me?

All right, let me tell you the reason I got my Sandman name was because Joel Goodheart, the guy that I gave the $3,000 to, is driving down 95 and he sees a billboard, ‘Mr. Sandman box, bring a mattress.’ Me and my wife, she’s holding Tyler in her arms while I’m at the wrestling school. He comes in, he goes, ‘You’re going to be Mr. Sandman, and you’re going to be Miss Peaches.’ So that’s how I got the name that night off of a billboard. Now he gets me a job down in Memphis. Memphis wrestling is dying. It was dead within like a year and a half of this point right now. So this is maybe September. So I started my first match in June. So by September, early October, I’m in Memphis, working with Jerry Lawler in main events. So Lawler wanted somebody with more of a gimmick. I had the name, and what do you go with a name? A surfboard. So I went to the Pit Bull. I said that Lawler wants me to have more of a gimmick, a surfboard. He goes, ‘You guys come down to my house.’ I pick him up. We go to this club called Rock Lobster on Delaware Avenue. He walks in because the Pit Bulls, the bouncers and all the clubs, the Pit Bulls were like the bosses of all those days, so that anything they want, any drug you wanted, freaking anything in the world you wanted, Gary could get it for you, like that. He walked right in and told a bouncer, ‘Get that surfboard off the wall.’ That bouncer got the surfboard off the wall. He gives it to me. I put it in my van. I drove to Memphis with a surfboard.”

So then how do you go from that guy with the surfboard to your famous gimmick? 

“Okay, so I get back. The very first time that I meet Paul in the locker room. We’re at Valley Forge Military Academy. I go into the locker room. As he looks at the surfboard, he goes, ‘We’re breaking that over your head tonight.’ I’m like, yes! So I had an exacto knife out of my van. I gimmicked the surfboard. I cut it with the exacto, and I had Rockin’ Rebel break it over my head that night. It was a pain in the ass to carry around anyway, and I didn’t like it anyway, and I wanted to get rid of the wetsuit also, because the wetsuit was a pain in the as to put on and off, it stunk. So that was good, just so Paul E gave me the okay to boom. Then a couple of months later, we’re wrestling in Montgomery County at this big marketplace, and I forget my wrestling boots and Paul comes in the locker room. I’m like, Paul E. ‘I’m so sorry I forgot my wrestling boots.’ He goes, ‘I don’t give a f*ck if you wear wrestling boots or not.’ I’m like, dang, wrestling boots gone. I’m gonna as I come to the show, is how I’m gonna go to the ring. So I don’t even have to change.”

How did you get Metallica’s Enter Sandman?

“So I had a job working for the Philadelphia Inquirer. I had had a thing we called the Sandman van. It was a custom van. There’s like four captains chairs, a bed in the back, TV and everything. I would pile 10-12 kids in there and drop them off in a neighborhood. They would knock on doors, and they would get people to sign up for The Philadelphia Inquirer. So one of those kids that work for me, he keeps telling me about the song, but I didn’t know what he was talking about. Then he got a tape. It was like an eight-track. I hear it, and I’m like, boom. I think I was coming out, the Big Shot to Billy Joel, and then I switched over to that. Look how great that was.”

So you get the song, but then how do you get what comes along with it?

“Just get drunker and drunker before shows. I’m like, All right, that’s it. So, all right, here we go. So this is how I stopped coming out of the freaking locker room and I started coming in from the front door, side door, whatever. Me and Missy Hyatt were at Queens, I think it was the strip club the Elks Lodge. So we’re in the Elks Lodge, and they’re playing my music, so they had to loop it again. Somebody comes running out. He goes to find me. I ended up going through the front door, and I’m like, All right, this is pretty cool. I think I’m gonna start doing that. Another happenstance thing.”

The entrance you did at ECW One Night Stand is legendary. Do you remember before your music hit that night?

“You know what I always regret? I should have surfed that crowd. I could have surfed that goddamn crowd all over the place. I wish I would have done that. I never even thought. I just saw it because it been years since I saw it. I guess I saw it in the last couple of years. I’m like, damn it, should have surfed the ground. That would have been nasty. To me, that would have been epic.”

I had Stone Cold on the show earlier this year, and he credits you for drinking beer and being part of his gimmick. Did you realize that you were kind of innovating with that?

“Yeah. It was very important to me that I was the one that did all these things. I didn’t care, like some people, if you’re getting to the point where, ‘Oh, you made it Austin because of a beer?’ No, it’s two different things. I’m doing mine on the entrance. I’m bashing it against my head and I’m bleeding. He’s doing his on the way out. And thank you, Steve, anyway, thank you very much.”

So you’re in your prime, ECW, is in its prime in 1998 and you leave for WCW, what ends up happening with that? Why does that happen? 

“Oh, dude, I almost got to sit home for the whole contract. So they signed me and they gave me a $10,000 signing bonus on September 9 or something like that. They didn’t use me until the beginning of March, but that company was going down, was going to be closed soon, less than two years. So I thought maybe I was going to sit home for the whole contract. They had me do some stupid stuff with Raven, but that wasn’t going anywhere. I did some vignettes with him as his brother. But then Nash gets the book. Nash gets the book Saturday afternoon, later on Saturday afternoon. J.J. Dillon calls me and says, ‘Nash just got the book. He wants you in Minnesota Monday night.’ I’m like, Okay. I was like, damn. Half of me is like, okay. The other half is like, wow, I really could have sat on this whole contract.”

You didn’t want to wrestle?

“Well, no. Dude, it’s nice sitting home making $5,000 a week doing nothing. There was a lot of guys doing that. I’m like yeah, I could be that guy, save your body.”

When ECW goes under. Was there talk of you going right to WWE at that time? 

“No.”

Why not?

“I don’t think I was interested in them right then, and I don’t think they were interested in me. I had a reputation at that point, though, too. They were trying to do everything away. At that point, they’re testing guys. I don’t know where their health freaking policies were at that point. They’re like, No, we ain’t touching that.”

Do you remember Raven telling you about this idea of him wanting to crucify you?

“No, I can’t remember, but I made it. I made it out of wood. If you guys go back and you watch Tommy Dreamer against Brian Lee in the scaffold match, I built that scaffold. It’s hanging down by chains from the ceiling, made out of the same four-by-fours that this thing’s made out of. So I made that thing too. So this thing was easy. I thought this was great.” 

Did you think that doing that crucifixion angle crossed the line?

“Well, yes, that’s why I did it, but I didn’t care. I don’t know. I’ve never been a God-fearing person. I think there’s something, but I don’t believe in that. I don’t believe in like, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost kind of part of it. So to me, it wasn’t really blasphemous, for one, and for two, it’s professional wrestling, you know what I mean, and for three, f*ck anybody that didn’t like it.”

Do you think Raven shouldn’t have gone out and apologized? 

“Oh, no, I told him not to. I told everybody. It’s Paul, Todd Gordon, Shane, Kurt Angle me and Raven. I told all of them, You’re all f*cking assholes. This is bullsh*t. He should not be going out there, and walked away.” 

Wasn’t this a big reason Kurt Angle was like, I cannot be seen on this:

“I can’t blame Kurt. First of all, I can’t blame anybody for the father and son the Holy Spirit sh*t. It’s his first delve into professional wrestling, and I could see how he’s a little bit aghast at it. He’s trying to dip his foot into the waters. ‘I’m not sure I want to be involved with this.’ So I can understand his perspective. I can’t understand Paul’s perspective of even considering letting Raven go and doing that. That’s f*cking bullsh*t.”

What is Sandman grateful for?

“My kids and my family.”

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