Jesse Ventura
speaker
493 appearances
3 recordings
3 series
first heard Dec 2024
last heard 25 Mar
Jesse Ventura’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 2 in all, peaking in Mar 2026 with 1.
Appearances
Yeah.
Yeah.
Straight up.
Yeah.
Well, thanks, Bill. It's great to be here. And the ironic thing is that we're holding this event in the very building that we held the very first one. Way back in the 80s.
I don't know. Nassau Coliseum, wherever. The one out in Long Island. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's where we held it back then. And so they're going to hold this very first one of the new NBC Saturday Night's main event. And what's exciting about it, and I got the word on this, the whole show is going to be a throwback. What does that mean? Well, that means it's going to look like it did before. Really?
Yeah. The graphics, everything? Yes. The wrestlers are not coming down that ramp. They're not coming with all the lights and spectacular. They're coming in through the crowd. Wow. Like the old days. That's why they brought me back.
Wow, you should be back anyway. We're going back in a time capsule, only it's going to be four times a year.
I'll get to them, but I need to make more of an introduction here.
Hell has frozen over. Why? because I never dreamed I would be back in the WWE, now WWF, until hell froze over. I had a friend, Glenn Frey, of the Eagles. And I remember when the Eagles broke up, they thought, oh, it's over. We'll never hear another Eagles song. The differences are too much. They'll never be able to mend fences. And lo and behold, Glenn got together with Don Henley.
And away they go. They came back and they cut that phenomenal album when hell freezes over. And I kind of feel that way that hell has frozen over for me because I never believed in my wildest dreams I would be back doing wrestling again.
Well, because for me, it's a full circle of my career. I can't go back in the United States Navy where I spent my first six years after I graduated from high school. I was in the Navy, United States Navy for six years. I can't do that because there's age limits. My friend Rudy Bosch stayed as long as you could. He had 44 years in when they threw Rudy out.
But anyway, that aside, but this this is ironic because it means my career has gone full circle. Right. Because and here's the part that I don't understand. They couldn't control me before. Why do they believe they can now? Oh, I like this.
I was thrown out. I was uncontrollable. Jesse, the body Ventura. Number one, I tried to unionize. Right. Number two, I wouldn't allow them to market me without negotiating it. That's what ultimately got me thrown out of the WWF, WWE. Then I went to WCW. Here's the behind the scenes story. I went to WCW. They went into turmoil. The guy who hired me got fired. They brought in Bill Watts.
who was an old school relic, who didn't understand the business had changed. It had gone to television now, not to putting seats in the stands. The money was now gonna be in TV. He didn't get that. So he comes in and then he gets fired and I busted my butt behind the scenes to get Eric Bischoff into the position. And here's where it got interesting. Eric Bischoff then got the head job at WCW.
And then behind my back, he went out and got Hogan because Hogan was leaving the WWF or getting booted or whatever was happening with his career. They gave Hogan total artistic control. He came in, got me immediately fired because he took over my look. He put the shades on, he put the do-rag on, and he became a villain. He couldn't have Jesse Ventura be there and become Jesse Ventura.
So he got me fired. And in essence, my wrestling career was over. I had worked for the two major. I wasn't going into one of these little outlaw ones in your own hometown. That wasn't about to happen. I looked to other things. What did I do? I went to the dirtiest business on the planet, got myself elected mayor.
mayor and went on and got myself defeated the Democrats and Republicans at the same time and got myself elected governor of Minnesota and did this. I only raised $300,000 to do it. You want to know who could have been president if he wanted to be? You're talking to him.
Oh, I beat Hubert Humphrey's son. I beat Senator Norm Coleman. Well, on the Democratic side at that time, we called it my three sons. You had the sons of Hubert Humphrey, Orville Freeman, and Mondale. So it was my three sons on the Democratic side.
Okay, here's the story. Yeah. I knew this was the perfect time. And then, of course, we had to get with the Charlotte guys and have them walk out also. If we could have got us and Charlotte, it was perfect timing. All the publicity was out there. He couldn't change nothing. There wasn't time for it.
Showing 341–360 of 493 · page 18 of 25
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