Sgt. Slaughter was recently interviewed by FOX News. In the interview he talks about transitioning from a Marine to a pro wrestler, being immortalized in G.I. Joe, headlining WrestleMania, receiving death threats for his portrayal of an Iraqi sympathizer, WWE’s Hall of Fame ceremony and his induction, WrestleMania Axxess, and the WWE Network.
Receiving death threats for portraying an Iraqi sympathizer:
When I first started in the WWE, I was the villain because I was a drill instructor and everybody that’s ever been in a military boot camp hates their drill instructor, so I didn’t have to work too hard on getting people to dislike me [or] boo me. But when I worked as an Iraqi sympathizer, [it] was a whole different battle, because we talked about the United States of America, and they were in a confrontation with Saddam Hussein and that’s all real life. So we have to kind of tiptoe around a few things, but overall Vince McMahon gave me full range of what I wanted to do, and so I did a lot of things that I don’t regret — but were tongue-in-cheek, singing ‘Happy Birthday’ with a birthday cake in the ring to Saddam Hussein and [having] people stand up and give 30 seconds of silence to all the brave Iraqi soldiers who have lost their lives in the overtake of Kuwait — that didn’t go over so well.
After I won the title from the Ultimate Warrior in Miami at the Royal Rumble, everything really broke loose pretty hard and heavy and hot. By the time I got to Philadelphia, Vince McMahon had called and said that somebody called him and threatened to kill me and my family and kill his family and him and blow up our houses and blow up the wrestling office, and the studios and our cars. So he took it pretty [seriously]. And so he sent a four-man security crew over to my home, walk the perimeter of my property 24/7, with weapons, and wherever I went from that point on I had to watch where I was going. I never traveled with other talent, other superstars. I would never walk through a terminal and [would] always be driven to an airplane, and I go up the stairs into the airplane and I would leave down the stairs escorted to a hotel or to the arena. And we started getting a lot more bomb threats and death threats, and the FBI asked me to wear a bulletproof vest at one time, which I did, in the ring. It was a pretty serious situation. And we handled it as best we could, and when lives were being lost from the war we backed out of it and we went to ask for my country back. And people accepted me back and here we are today.
FULL ARTICLE – Sgt. Slaughter on death threats and going from the Marines to the WWE ring
