Arn Anderson On The Secret To The Four Horsemen’s Success, Why It Hasn’t Been Replicated Today
Photo Credit: Lee South / AEW
Arn Anderson recently spoke with Inside The Ropes and talked about the Four Horsemen’s legacy and influence on today’s wrestling. Anderson touched on current groups still trying to replicate the winning formula the Horsemen had, noting that his job was to piss people off and get beat up, something that can be lost in today’s wrestling.
“Well, the one thing I think that is lost on a lot of people, and you go back and you watch it, we had a formula. We would go on television and 100 percent of the time, just about, let’s say 99… It was a favorable outing for us. We would go thump somebody, we roll to the interview desk, we pick up a mic and we would become Ric Flair, Tully Blanchard, Ole Anderson, Arn Anderson, JJ. Those characters came to life.
“I think a lot of these factions these days, they don’t realise that our sole purpose was to go on that TV, piss a lot of people off, go to the live events at night and just get our ass handed to us. That’s what the people paid to see in those days, because we had a lot of heat with people, they wanted us to be shut up. ‘Somebody shut these guys up.’ A lot of the other factions are there, and I understand this, to get themselves over, push themselves and once they get to the live events at night, they’re not that gung ho about giving the fans what they want, which is Four Horsemen getting their ass kicked for 30 minutes.
And that’s always going to be the difference, how unselfish that group of guys were. Didn’t matter whether it was Dusty, the Road Warriors, the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express… One week, we could be getting our ass handed to us by the Rock ‘n’ Roll Express, the next week it was the Road Warriors, the next week it was Dusty and somebody, and it was always the same – let the audience have what they want. And that’s the key to our faction. That’s the reason it has lasted the test of time. I love to have a person your age come up to me and say, “Man, my grandmother hated your guts.” That’s the greatest compliment of all! So I think that’s the secret to our success – unselfishness, knowing our job description and going out and giving the paying customer what they want.”