Ted DiBiase Discusses Mentoring A Young Arn Anderson

On the latest episode of his “Everybody’s Got a Pod” show while covering his Mid-South days for booker Bill Watts, WWE Hall of Famer Ted DiBiase Sr. talked about seeing something special in Arn Anderson, working with “Hacksaw” Jim Duggan, and more.

You can check out some highlights from the podcast below:

On his impression of a young Arn Anderson: “Well I guess the biggest thing that I saw in Arn was he — I always say this. It’s almost, it’s hard to explain what I call ‘It’ factor. You either have it, or you don’t have it. And if you have that, if you have that charisma, if you have that ability to engage the fans and connect with them so to speak, that goes a long way. And then here’s a young guy starting out, but I could tell he’s got it. And that’s why I took the time to like to mentor him a little bit. Because I knew that, to myself I said, ‘This kid’s gonna go a long way. He’s gonna. He’s gonna be somebody in our business.’ And it’s because he had that.

“I mean you can take a lot of — I don’t know if it works like with other actors or whatever. But I’ve actually seen a couple of guys get in the ring, and if you were to just grade them by what they did, okay. They had an okay match. But if they don’t have that spark, you can’t teach it. And that’s what’s so hard to get guys to understand. You either have it, or you don’t. And it’s kinda like, to me, probably in my opinion one of the greatest entertainers of all time, and he had it, was Elvis Presley. Oh my gosh. I mean, from day one, it’s kinda like back when you look him and when he was first on stage before he got ultra famous. Just the way he danced and the way he presented himself. I mean, you can’t teach anybody that. It’s like, you just know. And I’m sure that’s what Colonel Parker saw. And when he saw what that kid had, he said, ‘I wanna be your guy. And that’s just ‘It.’ So Arn had it, you know? And and the other thing was, he was just a good person.”

On his experience working alongside Jim Duggan: “I think Jim was a little more — I mean, you see what you saw there [during a video they watched]. What Jim ended up being was very good on the microphone. Oh my gosh. You know, he could cut a promo. And yeah, working with a guy like that — and again, this is back, I had some years on Jim. Jim hadn’t been wrestling professionally that long.”

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