Jesse Ventura on Verne Gagne Creating "The Body"

WWE Hall of Fame Jesse “The Body” Ventura was recently interviewed by The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling podcast.

Ventura talked about Verne Gagne, how “The Body” nickname came to be and what it was like working for Verne in the AWA. Gagne passed away on April 27 at the age of 89.

Here are some of the highlights:

Gagne Creating “The Body”

“You have to remember both Hulk (Hogan) and I wrestled in other places before we came to the AWA. I had been wrestling five years, I wrestled in Portland, Oregon for three years, Hawaii and so let’s put it this way. It was during my tenure with Verne that I became Jesse “the Body” Ventura. In fact, Verne named me that. He had lost Superstar Billy Graham a couple of years earlier and he asked me; “Can you do Superstar Graham?” I told him I could do Superstar Graham better than Graham, because Billy was my hero. There would not have been a Hulk Hogan or a Jesse Ventura if there was no Superstar Billy Graham. Verne said to me that’s what we want and it was Verne that actually thought of it, he said I want to call you Jesse “The Body” and I want you to pose and do all that stuff that Graham does and that’s where the birth of Jesse “The Body” came from.”

Working in AWA

“Verne had a great territory. The thing that made Verne’s territory so good was that you only wrestled about 12 or 14 times a month at the most. It gave you ample time with your family and ample time to work out and recover from injuries. I remember in Oregon I wrestled 63 consecutive nights in a row without a day off and there are guys who wrestled way more than that and beat that record like it was nothing. When you wrestled for Verne you would wrestle a day or two and then get three or four days off so it really made the Minneapolis territory at that time a wonderful place to be, if you wanted to make good money and not be on the road every day of your life.”

Gagne Being a Perfectionist

“We would be doing interviews and Greg (Gagne) would be running the interviews and we would bang through every market and have it down to like two or three markets and then Verne would come in and you would be there for six hours doing the final two markets. I would get so angry about that. At the time I lived along the Mississippi River and I would be so ticked off that I would park my car on the river bank before I would go into see my wife and kids. I look back on it now at age 63 and laugh about it but at the time it was happening Verne could literally (laughs) drive you crazy.”

You can listen to the podcast in its entirety by clicking here. (transcribed by WrestlingInc.com)

Follow @WalderSports