In an exclusive for WrestlingNews.co, Steve Fall interviewed former WWE Intercontinental Champion/Olympic Strongman Ken Patera. We have a few transcribed highlights below. Scroll down for the entire interview.
Ken Patera on claiming to be the first real Intercontinental Champion:
“It was handed to him (Pat Patterson), so that makes me the first IC champion because I beat his ass right there in Madison Square Garden in 1981. How about rewriting history? I don't have to make an attempt to rewrite it, but that's the truth.”
Ken Patera on being friends with Vince McMahon in the 70s WWWF:
"We're good friends. We were buddies back in '76 when I first went there. People don't understand, but I used to come and go. I'd come in for a year and a half then I would go to where I felt that I could do better and it always worked out good. But anyway, we used to go up and down the East Coast together. He had a big blue Lincoln. I think it was a Lincoln. The cars back then were huge. So anyway, Vince would call me and he said, 'Hey, I'm trying to open up Bangor, Main in a couple months, but I have to go up there to set up the TV studio and stuff. I always ask him, I said, 'Did your dad give you the okay' 'Oh, yeah.' So I'd meet him at a designated location, usually in New Haven, Connecticut, and then we'd speed off to the great white north up there to Bangor Maine.”
Ken Patera on Vince McMahon paying him while in prison for beating up 16 cops
"Vince was sending my wife money every month. I went from making 35 - 40,000 a month to nothing. So now she's cut off. I talked to him from prison and he said, 'Don't worry, Ken. I'll take care of her and the kids', so he had his accountant send her a check every month. I don't even remember how much it was. It added up though. When I got out of prison a year and a half later, he called me and said, 'Ken, we don't have a place for what I want to do with you. We don't have a place right now.' I got out in December. 'Can you wait until April', I believe it was, and I said, 'Yeah. No problem. You know when the time's right.' So we got everything and he flew me back there to Connecticut to his new mansion. We had a nice talk in the kitchen. Linda was there and the kids were upstairs. They were little then. I don't know how old Shane was. God I don't remember. Stephanie was even younger, maybe six, seven years old. So Vince takes me on the house tour. It was a fu**ing huge house, indoor swimming pool and he had a big gym. It was a beautiful place, and that was before he was a billionaire. I had a nice chat with Vince and I started back in April, May, something like that, whenever it happened.”
Click below for the entire interview.
This interview is exclusive to WrestlingNews.co. If you use these quotes, please include a link back to this page.
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