Though he hasn't regularly wrestled in a WWE ring since all the way back in 1993, Ted DiBiase has remained a fixture of The Fed since, appearing on television every year or so, having a fun run with Cameron Grimes and LA Knight in NXT, and even winning the RAW 15th Anniversary Battle Royal over such notable performers like Al Snow, Doink the Clown, Gangrel, Jim Neidhart, Sgt. Slaughter, and The Goon.
Unfortunately for “The Million Dollar Man,” despite being more or less retired for the past 20 years, the 20 years preceding have taken a notable toll on his life, as the 69-year-old is currently dealing with severe brain trauma, as he noted on his Everybody's Got A Pod podcast.
“I'm dealing with this, this is legit. I don't have Alzheimer's and I don't have dementia but they said, ‘Ted, you have something, we just simply call it severe brain trauma.' I said, ‘Really?' I only wrestled for maybe almost 20 years, so I'm not surprised that I might have a little brain trauma,” DiBiase said via F4W.
“What it affects is my memory, and they say it'll be easier for you to remember something you did 40 or 50 years ago but the short-term memory, some of the stuff right now, it's bits and pieces.”
After being one of the more charismatic talkers in professional wrestling history, with his schtick making wrestling largely irrelevant to his multiple returns to WWE plus his run in WCW, it's tough to hear that DiBiase's having trouble with his short-term memory. For the sake of professional wrestling, hopefully, he's able to get the treatment he needs in order to remain a fixture of the WWE and beyond for years to come.
Ted DiBiase reflects on the just-misses of his WWE career.
Turning his attention to his own career glories and just-misses on Everybody's Got A Pod, Ted DiBiase explained why he didn't work a match with Hulk Hogan at WrestleMania IV despite him feeling like that would be the program. In the end, DiBiase ended up working against Randy Savage for the vacant WWF World Championship, and on Everybody's Got A Pod, he explained why.
“Maybe WrestleMania for. Ended up being Savage, you know? And it was the main event because we ended up being the last two guys, you know what I mean. Yeah, that’s when we had that match and that WrestleMania for Savage wins, becomes the World Champion and I and I went on that run,” DiBiase said via Ewrestling News. “But The thing is you know Hogan Hogan was involved. I mean a lot of the matches that I had, I mean what it was, it was a lot of Randy Savage and Hulk Hogan against Andre the Giant and Ted. Again, I look at it, you know, it’s a guy like maybe I sound like a $1,000,000 man. Now I look at it from the financial view, right? You know what is going to make me the most money? Would a run with the world title make me a little more money? It might have, but it would have been very short-lived. That’s what I’m saying as a heel now. If I was a babyface, if I was Randy Savage and actually, I’m the guy who turned Randy Savage babyface, right? Because up until that time, you know, he, you know, he was a bad guy. And so then, you know when he beat me and he became champ, then he became a babyface and. That would be different but that’s the hill you know I just study my opponents and that’s what it’s about. You’re the world champion.”
Turning his attention to the WWF Championship, DiBiase noted that had he won the belt at WrestleMania IV, he didn't think he would have held the strap for long, as Vince McMahon had other ideas.
“You know, I guess there’s some extra bucks that come along with being that, but like I said before, I wouldn’t have been that champion very long. Because again, you know, Vince McMahon had made wrestling family entertainment and I started getting it. It’s like you know, and once I started to understand what he was doing, I said. This is a stroke of genius, really. You know, he’s taking wrestling, which was pretty much you were going to see a lot of polo shirts and khaki pants at the wrestling match. It was like that. It wasn’t that type of deal, and what you know, like what we call blue wrestling, was blue-collar crowd form of entertainment up until. You know, Vince McMahon taking it and targeting children with it, you know, and making action figures and all that stuff. And of course, you know if you have good guys, you know you have to have your bad guys too for them to battle. And so I got that and I understood that had I won the world title, I wasn’t going to keep that very long because of the kids. The market, now that the Mensias is, is targeting, they want the champion to be their, you know, their hero.”
Should “The Million Dollar Man” have won the WWF Championship? Yes, it's weird to look at his record and not see the top belt on his resume considering how over he was during the golden age of WWE. Still, you can't change the past, and it's nice to know that DiBiase can look at the situation with an objective eye all of these years later.
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