If Lex Luger is telling the truth here and I have no reason yet to think he isn’t, my mind is blown.
According to a story he told on a recent edition of his podcast, the WWF didn’t pay him anything for all the time he spent riding around on that damn bus before SummerSlam 1993.
Luger also claimed that he did not get paid at all throughout the summer because he wasn’t wrestling in the ring due to the tour on the bus.
“I didn’t get paid all summer. I got zero,” he said. “I wasn’t working. You know how it was back then. I didn’t have a guaranteed contract like WCW. My contract wasn’t guaranteed. No play, no pay. At least they paid for my hotel.”
I’ve heard plenty of stories about the company being ridiculously stingy with payoffs for TV tapings even for big stars (numbers as low as $50-$75 a night because the real money was made on the house shows and the pay-per-views), but this is insane! You send a guy all over the country on a meet and greet tour with fans designed to sell tickets and PPV buys, not to mention air video packages from that tour on every one of your television shows, yet somehow the guy isn’t working so you’re not going to pay him? Jesus! At least he got 50 grand for looking like a geek in the eventual championship match. That’s something, I guess.
Yes, Vince McMahon is a dickhead. We all well and truly know this by now. But somehow I’m still able to be occasionally surprised by it.