Welcome to The Quazcast, a weekly podcast that brings listeners in on a frank conversation between myself and a random person from the world of sports.

These interviews are about digging deep and avoiding the cliché questions and answers that too often plague sports conversations. My guest could be anyone. I might speak with a 90-year-old NFL kicker one week, the manager of a Major League Baseball team the next, and a bull fighter the week after that.

This week's guest is Tommy Dreamer, a professional wrestler best known for his work with Extreme Championship Wrestling and World Wrestling Entertainment. As the founder of the House of Hardcore promotion, Tommy now works mainly on the independent circuit. He is a fourteen-time WWE Hardcore Champion and a two-time ECW World Champion - once with the original company and again with the WWE relaunch.

Below is an excerpt of our conversation and a recording of the complete interview. As always, to get future podcasts downloaded straight to your listening device, you can subscribe to The Quazcast on iTunes.

Jeff Pearlman: How does a guy at age whatever decide this is what I want to do. I want to follow a path where I become a professional wrestler and not only do I want to become a professional wrestler, I want to become a really really noteworthy big-time one, like how does that actually happen?



Tommy Dreamer: I was nine-years old, my father and I were big hockey fans and were watching channel 9, WWOR, and this is when you only had channels 2,4,5,7,9,11 and 13 and the Rangers were supposed to be playing. He was a season ticket holder for the Rangers and you know you're a kid, you like whatever sports team your father likes. We're getting ready to watch the Rangers and the game was snowed out from Montreal so instead they showed WWF wrestling from Madison Square Garden and I saw Bob Backlund, who was the champion. It was my first ever time seeing a wrestler coming to the ring and he was wrestling this mad dog type of wrestler named Bulldog Brower, who portrayed a crazy man and I was hooked from day one. I remember like just jumping up and down going crazy and my dreams of playing third base for the New York Yankees just faded right there and then I was just hooked on wrestling and I want to say, maybe three weeks later he bought me my first wrestling magazine which I still have.



JP: Wow!



TD: It has a bloody picture of the American Dream Dusty Rhodes on it and I was reading about all these other wrestlers and I just wanted more and more information and there's no internet, you know, back then it was just through wresting magazines and then for my birthday he took me to my first ever match up in the White Plains County Center. I saw Bob Backlund, he was in the main event there, we had like second row and he ended up becoming my trainer. WWE hall of famer Johnny Rodz, like fell into my father's lap during his match and fans were like yelling at him and kicking at him. I remember when Bob Backlund was coming to the ring, I had made a sign for Bob Backlund, loose leaf paper and back then it wasn't like how you see it on television where kids didn't really invest the time to make signs and I wrote 'Bob Backlund.' My sign was too short for the loose leaf paper so I had to like scotch tape two pieces together and I wrote 'Bob Backlund #1' and he walked to the ring and I remember slapping his hand and turning to my best friend like I had a superpower on that hand, and I watched him wrestle. He won and then he came back from the ring and I was like 'Bob can you sign this for me?' and he said 'I'll get you later kid, hang on, wait for me.'

So, I waited for him. Security is telling us, hey, we got to leave and I'm like nope, Bob Backlund is going to give me my autograph. He's like well the wrestlers leave from there, so you've got to wait there, you've got to go. Arnold Skaaland - he was Bob Backlund's manager - gave me my first-ever wrestler autograph, which I still have that program from the first-ever show I went to and then it was almost like the Mean Joe Greene commercial for the Coke. I see my idol Bob Backlund walking towards me and he had on a satin jacket and he had a towel over his head and also sidebar.

For some reason at nine-years old I didn't want Bob Backlund to see me with my father. I made my father wait in the car while he was watching me outside the county center and my friend who was with me bailed. He was like 'I'm freezing' because it was sleeting out and then here comes Bob Backlund and I know we're going to have this moment. I'm going to be his next protege, you know, he told me to wait here blah blah blah and he hit me with the most influential words I will never forget. I was like, 'Bob can I have your autograph?' and he said 'I'll get you next time kid' and I was like 'No, Bob. It's me' like we had this connection. He goes 'I got to go' and he got in his car and Arnold Skaaland pulled up the car and they drove away.

I was devastated and I remember getting in my car and just holding back the tears because I didn't want my friend to see that I was crying. Then, as soon as we dropped him off I was crying and from that moment on I hated Bob Backlund. It's pretty funny because I have always gone out of my way for fans and I've always been a fan favorite - a good guy in wrestling - but I think it's just because I remember what it's like to still be a fan, also like how dejected I felt after that



JP: So you've been in wrestling for 24-years, have you ever run into Bob Backlund and have you ever told him that story?



TD: First of all, my first ever tryout for the WWE was in 1992 or 1993 at the White Plains County Center, and who is the first person I run into? Bob Backlund, but I didn't want to make any waves, so I just introduced myself to him. Then during the ECW company, Bob Backlund showed up at one of our shows at a television tape. He was running for some candidacy in Connecticut and some government position and he wanted to do something on our show but he showed up really really late and we were doing TV.

We had the wrestler Scott Hall debut in ECW which for us was a huge deal and at that same time Bob Backlund had decided to come to the ring, he just did it on his own and you know Bob Backlund could have gone to the Olympics as a wrestler, he was a real deal tough guy. So, our security mauled him, they didn't beat him up and he didn't offer any resistance though I think he could have probably taken two of them.

30-years after it happened, my friend - who is a police officer in Massachusetts - had to handle Bob's affairs. He was like 'Hey we're driving to an appearance, an autograph appearance in Jersey, it's going to be me and Bob.' We stopped at a pizzeria, me and Bob, and I told Bob the story and his face turned beet red and I was like, 'Bob, listen I get it, but I actually want to thank you because it made me the man who I am in wrestling.' He was like 'Well, I was always really really good with that.' I was like, 'Bob listen, I've been there, you can't sign for everybody, I know you had another show to go to and the weather was bad.'

That was on a Saturday and then on Wednesday a package came to my house and I opened it up and it was Bob Backlund holding up the WWF title and it said to my number one fan, Tommy Dreamer, yours truly Bob Backlund.

JP: I was thinking it must, over the years, it must drive you crazy when people say yeah wrestling, it's fake, like the word fake seems to be the most misused adjective to apply to wrestling. I imagine it must boil the blood of professional wrestlers when people describe what you are doing, the physicality of it as fake.

TD: Right, well I mean now, it's funny, the wrestling fan has gotten more intelligent with social media. They understand that yes it is a show and they understand that yes the outcome is predetermined but they now know, wow these guys really do get banged up. Only the most ignorant person would say it was fake, they'll be like, 'Oh it was an accident.' I'll be like, 'No, a grown man is jumping on you.' A lot of wrestlers will always say you only have - every time we fall down we say oh we're taking a bump - and they'll be like, 'You only have a certain amount of bumps in your body before it gives out on you and you feel everything.'

I've had some of my best friends bend steel chairs over my head, especially in Extreme Championship Wrestling and we made our niche with the violence of wrestling and again it was the 1990s. We didn't know about concussions like what we know now. We would almost look at it like if you put your hand up to block these chair shots, you were yelled at when you walked in the back, like how dare you put your hand up to block a chair shot.

JP: What does it feel like specifically to take a chair to the head, most of us will never go through that I'm happy to report. What does it feel like?

TD: It's quick and it's a loud thump. I mean I think I have a really hard head because most of them I didn't feel it. A lot of it is once there's the contact you want to fall because it takes away from the blow, but I've had my hands handcuffed to the ropes and guys bend steel chairs over my head. It doesn't feel pretty but the worst is when the back of the chair catches the back of your head. We call it 'I lipped ya,' because the lip of the chair. I have nine stitches on one side and 14 on the other from getting lipped with the back of the chair and it hurts even more because once they lip ya they've got to pull it back and that's what rips open the skin. Again, I've been thrown in fire. I've dove in barbed wire. I've been dropped from heights of buildings where people would not believe that I got thrown and I did it on a nightly basis. You know, I was considered a crazier wrestler. It's funny, even though I've broken so many bones and stuff I've never had a surgery.

JP: What was, in your career, your biggest in-ring screw up, the biggest mistake you've ever made in the ring?

TD: I had a wrestler slam me onto the floor. His name was Mark Henry He was an Olympic athlete. He has the worlds strongest slam. He`s 400-pounds, and after he did it, I was laying there and there was an atrocious smell and I was like 'Whoa what is that smell?'

He had a manger, Mr. Tony Atlas, former Mr. USA, and I was like, "Wow I think Mark Henry might have, you know, [defecated] himself or did Tony Atlas have too much protein?' It was the most rancid smell ever and so I'm just laying there and they leave and I get up. I'm slapping al the fans hands, I leave, I go up, I go out, I go to the back and I go take off my clothes, go jump in the shower.

I come out of the shower and I forgot that I had left my clean underwear back in my hotel room and I was like, 'I'll just put on the underwear I just wrestled in." I go and I see that there's a large tootsie roll sitting in my underwear. I just took off my gear and dropped it right there on the floor and then I picked it up and I smelled it. It was disgusting and it was crap and I said, "Who [defecated] in my pants?' Then I looked, like I thought someone was ribbing me, pulling a joke on me and then I was like, 'Did I [defecate] in my pants?"

It was a cube of poop and I took it to the doctor. I was concerned. I was like 'Doc, I have pooped my pants before, but I know when I pooped my pants before, this time it's not like I felt it.' I was like, 'What is this?' And he was like, 'You ever hear the expression he knocked the [feces] out of you?' And I said, 'Yeah." He goes, 'That's compacted old meat.' You know, you get a - not a colonoscopy - but when they cleanse you, he said that is upper bowel and I got hit with such force it shot right out of me.

To hear the entire interview – which does not include any more poop stories - you can download the podcast here or listen below.

Jeff Pearlman is a former senior writer for Sports Illustrated. He is the author of six books including Sweetness: The Enigmatic Life of Walter Payton, The Bad Guys Won (a biography of the 1986 New York Mets) and Boys Will Be Boys (an account of the Dallas Cowboys dynasty from the 1990s). His newest book – Showtime (due to be released on February 11, 2014) - explores another famous sports dynasty: the Los Angeles Lakers of the 1980s.