By Mike Mooneyham
November 8, 2001
MM: When did you first meet Arn?
RF: I actually first met him just to say hi in Atlanta, but the first time I really had the chance to sit down and talk to him was in Pensacola around 1983. He was a great guy.
MM: Which set of Horsemen is your favorite?
RF: Either the one with Luger or the one with Windham. Those were the most compatible. Ole was a great guy to have in it, but Ole was just doing something different in life at that time.
MM: Whose idea was it to give Arn the Anderson name?
RF: I think it was Ole.
MM: How did it affect you personally when Arn was struggling with the injury and the fact that he probably would never be able to come back again?
RF: I honestly thought that they would be able to fix it when he had the surgery. I thought that he had just prolonged it for so long, that he’d come out of it and would be back wrestling. It never dawned on me that he would never be able to come back. And the reality of it was that people saw I reacted when they saw me on TV. That was at real as it could be. And then they made a joke out of it.
Arn Anderson, Barry Windham and Ric Flair
MM: What was your favorite series of matches with Arn?
RF: Arn and I didn’t have many tag-team matches together. We worked some with The Rock and Roll, but it was mostly Tully back then. Actually the best matches Arn and I ever had were matches with Sting and Luger, but that was later on. We had some good matches with them and some good matches with The Road Warriors. Usually Arn and I were in eight-mans together. I don’t know if there was one tag-team match that really stood out, but we never had a bad one.
MM: How did you react to the spoof The NWO did on Arn after his retirement speech?
RF: The only thing that I thought was wrong with it was that they didn’t take into consideration that he had a son at home. We become very thick-skinned about everything. I don’t think Arn gave a shit except for that fact. The thing that pissed me off about it was instead of taking something that was so real and making it better, the next week they made a joke out of it. That was something big to play off of. And it killed Hennig. The heat went off Hennig. The funny thing is that it was Terry Taylor’s idea – one of Arn’s best friends.
MM: One thing is for certain. They have underutilized Arn over the past few years.
RF: Huge. He’s been the most underrated guy and the most underutilized guy in the history of the business.
MM: Who in WCW doesn’t get it? That when he comes out he makes everything so real? He gives it a believability that few in the business can do?
RF: That’s why he’s not on TV. The other guys don’t want to compete against him.
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