David Heath (@gangreldavidheath) is a professional wrestler best known for his time in WWE as Gangrel. He sits down with Chris Van Vliet in Nashville, TN to discuss being a trainer at Rusev’s KECH Pro Wrestling Academy, still wrestling today and how much longer he wants to keep going for, why he hasn’t worn a white shirt in over 20 years, why the Attitude Era was so incredible, the rumor about why he was fired from WWE, not being a part of WrestleMania 39, his AEW appearance, spiking CVV with an Impaler DDT, and more!
So we’re at KECH Wrestling Academy in Nashville. This is Rusev’s school, but you’re like the main trainer here?
“I talk to him sometimes; he’ll tell you we’re partners. I’m not so sure what we are, but he’s definitely the guy to put all the money into it. He’s definitely the founder of it, but he said he wouldn’t start it unless I came in and ran it with him or would be the head trainer. So, here I am trying to make all that happen. It’s doing good. We’ve been open a month, he’s on tour. He’s been on tour in Europe, I think that’s towards wrapping up. It’s been a pretty long WWE European trip. He should be back here at the beginning of July, he plans on doing a lot of time in and out, so we plan on rotating in and out. So if I’m here two weeks, I’ll be here, and then when he rotates in, he’ll be here for two weeks that I’m not here, so it’s scheduled down through the summer to be two and two with each other. He’s still in LA, he’s still happily married, and his wife’s out there doing a lot of stuff, different content things, acting, stuff like that.”
The most important thing about a wrestling school is learning from somebody who’s been there. So, between you and Rusev, you’ve got a guy who’s been everywhere in you, and you’ve got a guy who’s still there in Rusev, that’s the best way to do it.
“He comes in and I go, ‘You could teach them just as much as I could teach.’ He goes, ‘No, I need you here.’ I go, ‘No, you could teach them, you’re in the current product. You know what they want, you’re living it, you’re in it 24/7 you’re all in, you know what they’re looking for.’ But what I give them is the foundation. I’m a foundation and a footwork guy, so I’m a slow is smooth, smooth is fast. I’ll spend hours and hours on right foot drops and feeds and footwork and stuff like that. I know that a few of my students have had tryouts, and they’ll go, ‘Who trained you?’ They’ll go Gangrel. They’ll go, ‘Oh, I figured, because we could tell by the footwork.’ So I’m not boasting, but I’m just saying, I’m a foundation and a footwork guy. All the extra stuff, all the flips and the flops, and any attitude, that’s gonna come, that’s who they are, it’s gonna be an extension to who they are, and they’re gonna find that. But I’m there to instill a foundation, so when they come in here, and I’ll say, give me six extra months. I don’t believe in the three-month program, you’re out, or eight weeks, or twelve weeks. I’m the same way as I talk about slow is smooth, smooth as fast. I want you to be slow in the beginning, give you a foundation, and then I believe the back side. So I tell them, if you give me six extra months, I’ll save you six years of time. So they get their footwork right in the beginning, just a slow, slow build, get that foundation in, and then when they get past the ropes and stuff, when they get to that stuff like that, it’s gonna just fall into place, because the footwork’s there.”
You’re 57 years old, and you’re still doing this like you are on the indie grind every single weekend. Do you still love it?
“Absolutely, 100%. I don’t know about the traveling as much, but I still love wrestling, so I tell people it’s a lot like a musician. You’ll hear them say, ‘I get paid to travel, not play music.’ I get paid to travel, not wrestle. I would wrestle for free anyway. I love wrestling. When I asked you, what’s your fee, I go, what are we talking about? I look at it, and my fee is addressed to where that travel is. I’ve wrestled in every state, been to a lot of countries and stuff like that, so I know exactly what’s involved in that travel, and that the travel is what adjusts my fee. It’s not necessarily the wrestling part of it. I still love wrestling; it’s the travel of it.”
Are you at the point now when you’re taking bookings and you’re like, I only want to take a certain amount of bumps, or you want to just go out there and have a great match?
“No, no, no. The hardest part about wrestling is getting your boots on. Once the boots are on, I’m fine. I can rewind this back. I do take only certain bumps now, I’ve eliminated certain top rope things that are just not necessary for a 57-year-old man with a new knee and a new hip and stuff like that. I don’t want to push the envelope too much. Once I get in my gear and I’m rolling, I want to go. You’re either all in or you’re all out, 24/7. Can’t stop, won’t stop, hanging and banging. The hardest part about it’s getting dressed. Once you’re dressed, you traveled, you went through that, you got there, then just getting dressed. You’re like, ah, then the boots are on, then it’s all gold. Then after that, you know it’s all good.”
Does your rate change based on what you’re wearing to the ring? Are you always going to wear a white shirt? You’re always going to split blood.
“I haven’t worn a white shirt in 20 years.”
You haven’t worn the pirate shirt?
“I love Seinfeld, but I don’t want to be a pirate. No, I haven’t worn a puffy shirt. If somebody wants a puffy shirt, if they request it, I say, ‘Sure, you buy it. Make sure you get one. I’ll sign it and leave it with you, but I won’t go hunt them down.’ They don’t make them the same. They’re cheesier, and to custom make them cost way more than what you could buy, it gets out of control. So if they want it, I’m not against wearing it, but it’s just working, you just go through them, you get one show out of them, they’re either torn or that you can’t get the stains out, not the blood stains, the blood comes out, but I spray the blood every night. I still get out my wallet for the blood. You got to have the blood and the Impaler DDT.”
There’s something about the way that you spray. You must project it out 10 feet, it’s a strong spray.
“I think I just had a natural spray. I don’t know, I have no idea. I just did it, and it was the same the whole time.”
Was there ever a point in WWE where they said, ‘Oh, we already got a guy that’s spraying something, Triple H, you can’t be spraying a liquid.’
“I think I was spraying before he was.”
But then it became such a huge part of his entrance.
“Wow, maybe that’s why I’m not there then [laughs].”
But that was never a conversation?
“No, no, never a conversation.”
The last time I was in a wrestling ring with you, I made a mistake. This is all on me. I’ve said it 1,000 times before.
“You say it 1,000 times, but I have everybody coming to me. ‘Oh, you tried to kill Chris Van Vliet!'”
I know how to take the move. I jumped up a little too much, I got a little too excited, and I spiked myself on the top of my head. It’s had nothing to do with you. You are a consummate professional. You are the very best.
“I thought you died!”
I think about that moment more than I’d like to admit.
“I imagine your whole life flashed before your eyes in front of you, but what little life you had at that point. You were still young.”
You’ve been in the business for 40 years. What’s the biggest difference between wrestling now versus in the 80s when you started out?
“Meaningful moves make memories, memories make money. So, there’s no meaningful moves anymore. I believe that, and I live by that: meaningful moves make memories, memories make money. They’re doing wrestling, they’re just coming out and doing a lot of wrestling moves, high flying, a lot of cool stuff, but they’re not working into those moves now. Giving me a story, and why you’re building up to why this move is so deadly and so important, because everybody’s kicking out of everybody’s finishes now. You wouldn’t have got that 40 years ago, or 20 years ago, or maybe even 15 years ago, the finishes were a lot more protected. Even the Attitude Era, it was the wild west, and they were gunslingers, and they kicked out on everything, but it’s still kind of protected finishes and stuff like that. So, I just think it’s more acrobatic, smaller guys, I have nothing against that, because now I’m a big guy. I was never a big guy when I started. In 1987 they told me you’ll be lucky to be a junior heavyweight at that. Because everybody was like 305, six foot seven. Here I’m coming in at 230, thinking I’m gonna make a difference at six two. But now I feel like a giant, but I feel like with wrestling, everything cycles too, so I feel like they’re cycling around to bigger guys and some body stuff in healthy ways. I think it’s this crazy world of peptides. I mean, look at Billy Gunn.”
Do you want to wrestle into your 60s?
“I didn’t say I want to wrestle in my 60s, I want to look like Billy Gunn in my 60s [laughs]. I don’t know when I want to wrestle to. It’s a toss-up. I tell everybody, Turkey’s a big thing now with the hair, so it’s a toss-up. Before I thought my body would give out on me, but the body seems to keep motoring, and I keep getting healthier, and I think that has a lot to do with my wife and a happy marriage, and a better lifestyle. But I can’t stop the hair from coming out. When you get these high definition lights, when you’re sweating and they shine down on you, they are unforgiving, and I’m very vain.”
Are you going to go until the wheels fall off?
“Probably. I didn’t think I would.”
How’d you get the name Gangrel?
“That was a dicey one, there. So it was 87 or 88, I started at WWE, doing jobs. I worked Big Boss Man. So I’ve always been around WWE since I was a kid, doing enhancement matches, and then I had a tryout in 91 as the Vampire King, because I came from Puerto Rico, and they just laughed at it. But then Jerry Lawler came up to me, and he goes, ‘I think that’s cool. Do you want to come work in Memphis?’ Then I went down and started working in Memphis with Lawler. So did the whole Memphis loop, and when they were still a territory at the end, so that came around. So was always doing the vampire thing, but I was always pushing it to them, ‘You guys don’t get it? You could be a vampire and get your butt kicked every day of the week. As long as you’re cool doing it, people are still gonna like you.’ They’re like, ‘No, we don’t get it.’ I was constantly sending them stuff, material on culture and stuff, RPGs, Dungeons and Dragons, but with the vampires called Masquerade. So I’d send them stuff like that, and then eventually they were like, ok. I was on an All Japan tour, they hired me, I lost all this weight, I was like 228, and they signed me. They said they had some stuff for me, and when I signed, they told me I was gonna sit home for a year. But then it was Vince Russo, I guess he called me up on a Friday and said, hey, can you still do the vampire thing. Of course, but I had permanent fangs, I got rid of the fangs. I had a skullet, I’m glad I got rid of that, because I looked a lot like Brian Knobbs. So I got rid of that, I grew my hair in, but I didn’t tell him I didn’t have [fangs]. I don’t know if he realized that they weren’t permanent or whatever. So he called me up on a Friday, and then he goes the flight is for Saturday. So this is Friday evening at five. So I run out to Hot Topic. So I go in Hot Topic, and I’m like they want some kind of shirt. So that’s where the white puffy shirt came from, the suede pants and all that. I got little gimmick fangs out of Hot Topic, they sold fangs right at the counter back then. So because I didn’t have fangs anymore, I said I’m just going to make these work, figure it out, fake it till you make it, figure it out. So then I come out, and I go, what do I gotta do for boots? You know what’s next to Hot Topic? Journeys. So I roll into Journeys. There’s a pair of new rocks. I go these are cool, these boots and all that. Then I go to a Renaissance fair. So I found the shin guards to put over the boots and stuff like that, so I come up with all that, but while this was all going on, this is a Friday night, right? So they filmed on a Sunday, was a Sunday Night Heat, I think they actually filmed it on Sunday, and find out that well, they had to come up with a name, and I gave them all this material and research, but I heard Vince McMahon say I like the name Gangrel.”
What was your name to that point?
“Vampire Warrior. He goes, I like the name Gangrel. Well, this was a weekend. Nobody ran it through legal. Nobody ran the name through legal. So that Sunday Night Heat, Monday came, they had a lawsuit for like $5 million. So I don’t know if you noticed that in all the WWE magazines it would say Masquerade White Wolf by White Wolf Gangrel, and they had to do that for five years, and so I feel like when that deal ran up, so did mine. I feel like I had a black mark on my name from that Gangrel name, so they had to pay for that certain amount. They never contested it in court or anything, because I guess they realized, yeah, we screwed up. I heard they let that whole legal department go that was involved in that, they all got heat, but I don’t know the real story. You could hear the whispers, but I feel like I got a lot of heat from it, but I weathered it out, and it came and gone, so then eventually, when that all ran out, they let me go. Nobody paid attention to the name Gangrel, so then just kept watching it, watching it, and then, and then I had a lawyer. I just filed on the trademark, nobody fought it. So I ended up with the Gangrel name since 2018 I’ve had it that long now.”
When Edge had his Brood entrance at WrestleMania 39 the match against Finn Balor, there were so many rumors that you might be there. Not only were you not there, he didn’t even use the Brood entrance theme, like it was so interesting that they used another song.
“I’m not sure, but I think maybe it might have been Hunter. Some people said Vince, but I think it might have been Hunter. Somebody kiboshed it. So when that didn’t go down, he left the next year to AEW. Then he wanted to make sure that he’s a guy that wants to have his way. Don’t tell him no on something, he’s gonna figure it out. So in AEW, he had me come back and come up to the ring and stuff like that.”
Were you close to being part of WrestleMania 39?
“In Edge’s mind? Yes. He was trying hard, but in their minds, no, I don’t think so.”
Edge told me that he was told that fans wouldn’t remember you. It’s like, come on, that’s ridiculous.
“That’s what they said, that’s what he said. But I think it was a little bit more to it. I don’t know what it is, but I think it was a little bit more. It’s weird too, because I was just speaking of the name, you know, the nostalgia deals they have. So I went through that. I’m not going to mention the person the officer’s going through, but it was all lined up. It was right down to the final things, and then, when the last version should be signed, they come through. It came to me and said, ‘Do you have a letter from White Wolf saying that you can use the name, that they relinquish the name to you?’ I go, you have lawyers after lawyers, they clearly could see that I have the trademark registered and all that stuff. ‘You don’t have a letter?’ I go, no, and then I never heard back from them again. So it’s something weird, it’s a little bit more to it. Maybe if you could figure it out in your investigative journals, you could tell me, but at this point I’ve motored on and done my own thing for so long. It would be great to go back in some kind of form or fashion and do something, of course, that would be awesome. I’m sure the money’s great, and it gives you longevity to be on that powerful TV, but at the same time I’ve been busier than I’ve ever been busy. I wrestled more than I wrestled. Then with the two schools, and then committing to a lot to this school here too, more so out of the two. I’m here trying to get this going. It’s been insane.”
There’s a rumor you got fired from WWE because you didn’t tuck your shirt in.
“Never tucked my shirt.”
Would you like to clear this up?
“I don’t know if that was the rumor. I think the rumor was they said Vince saw my stomach and said, ‘Ah, he’s got to go.’ I think that was the rumor. No, I don’t know. They hired me back, I got burnt. I sat home all that time, and then they let me go. Then they hired me back, told me I was going to be on the Syfy Channel. They said, ‘You’re going to be a big star on ECW. You’re going to come in, you’re going to have a group, Kevin Thorn, Shelly Martinez.’ I said, great. I went home, never heard from them. I was signed back, never heard from him, never did an appearance on TV or anything. So, there’s no shirts, or there’s no nothing. Then I see Kevin Thorn comes on, and then Shelley comes on with him, and I got let go. Then I get a call from Johnny Ace, going, ‘It never really took off, it didn’t work out.’ I said save it, I’m gonna go back to England next week. So it was nothing. They brought me back for Sci-Fi, I never did any TVs, I never did anything.”
WrestleMania 15: You’re part of this moment where Undertaker hangs Big Boss Man. You’re the one who’s actually giving Undertaker the noose. What do you remember about the setup of this?
“What I remember is we weren’t on schedule for anything in WrestleMania, and then we all get like a memo saying you have a rehearsal. We’re like, rehearsal for what? So we show up, they go, ‘Oh, you’re gonna come out of the ceiling.’ We’re like, “What? We’re looking at each other like, “Who’s coming out of the ceiling? ‘No, you three are gonna come out of the ceiling and come down on top of the cage.’ So, we rehearsed it one time there, and I know none of us were happy about it. We’re all freaking out. So it was terrifying. We did a rehearsal, everything went fine, and we got back up. Then came WrestleMania. Again, it’s not like the entrances. You do a dry rehearsal, it’s one thing, but then there’s live crowd, and in the moment, so we all go off and we go down. I almost missed the cage, like one foot’s over here, but I get back on it. That was scary. Then we go over, and then we’re on that, and all I’m thinking is, don’t fall through the cage, because you think about Mankind. The cage is kind of rigged too, for you to be able to rip it open. So we’re up there, we got the noose, we’re ripping it, please don’t fall through this cage, because I don’t like heights at all. So we get that, we go back up, and then the circuit breakers blew. So we’re all stuck, that’s why you got a picture of Edge hanging right there in his coat. He was hanging the lowest. I was between the sound board and the lighting, and Christian, I think, was just where his hands were on the beam to get back on top. It legit went out. We were stuck, and it felt like forever, but it was probably only a couple minutes, you know. I kept thinking they’re going to come on this sound board and just blow my eardrums out, because I was in between the lighting board and the speakers, and Edge was down low, and he was getting all the pictures, because he was stuck in his coat. That’s why you see that a lot. Yeah, there was just one rehearsal, and then we did it, and there’s a bit of a heavy thing, you know, hanging is a bit strong, I suppose. You don’t really see them, I don’t think they push that much anymore, and stuff like that. I think if you go look for it, it’s hard to find that, because it was so graphic and kind of strong.”
What is Gangrel grateful for?
“The fans, social media, and being able to give back.”
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