Manny Fernandez spoke with the Two Man Power Trip Of Wrestling Podcast recently. You can see submitted highlights below, courtesy of Chad and John, and the full podcast at this link.
Wrestling the great World Champions of the past:
"I was very fortunate in my career. I got to wrestle all the real good World Champions. I wrestled Flair, he sucked. Bottom line is he sucked. Every champion that I wrestled whether it be Terry, Dory (Funk), Jack (Brisco) and Harley (Race) they let me beat on them. They let me do anything. Harley was fantastic. The matches that we had, we had hour broadways, we had ninety minute broadways that I could have sworn we only went nine minuets. The first time we did it I knocked myself completely out for two days. Harley was such a good worker and the day that he asked me what my finish was and I said "flying-burrito" he said I'll duck and I swear I got so high in the air I cleared the ring and landed head first on the concrete and knocked myself out for two days."
"Harley was unreal, Dory was unreal and Terry was night and day. When I wrestled Terry Funk it was like wrestling the Tazmanian Devil. Terry was off the wall and we did some crazy things...fighting over the roof of cars, backdropping in a U-Haul trailer. That is why I laugh at people, these people that think they are hardcore. They ain't got a clue man. If we hit them as hard as we hit back in the day there would be a person crying that you hit me too hard. "
Originality being lost in today's wrestling:
"Everybody tries to use wrestling and they think that they are all going to make money and they want to be Vince. Well there is only one Vince and there ain't gonna be another one. There was only one Dusty Rhodes. You can take a lot of things from Dusty, Terry Funk, Brock Lesnar, The Rock but there is only one of them and you've got to be yourself. So many of these guys copy everything. Right down to their tights and that is ridiculous. You've got to be yourself and if you cannot be yourself than you are lost in this business. Nothing is original."
His relationship with Bruiser Brody:
"Brody and me were very close. Bruiser Brody and Stan Hansen, the first time I went to Japan and the first time they heard Manny Fernandez was from West Texas and breaking into the business those guys took me under their wing, took care of me and I'll never forget that. Me and Brody in San Antonio together, in Kansas City together but when Brody came in he took care of me.
"They were always there for me if anything happened they were always there for me, especially Brody and when you do something like that to a guy that I cared a lot about, I'll kill you or I will try to hurt you bad..that's just me. We have that West Texas blood and everybody in West Texas is close except for me and Tully."
His in ring incident with Invader #3
"I dropped three knees right on his sternum. You know where the sternum is? It is in your chest cavity, so I caused him to bleed in his chest cavity and he had to spit it out because that is the only way it is going to come out. It can't come out of the other end. It might have but I don't know. But that was payback."
