SLAGLE:  Now, Joey, I wanted to ask you...we're here to talk about "Superstar" Billy Graham today, among other things.

STYLES:  Absolutely...

SLAGLE: I wanted to ask you, do you remember your first memories of Superstar Graham?  Was it, like, seeing him in magazines, or the WWF?

STYLES:  Seeing him in magazines.  I saw my first wrestling match when I was 13, and I believe it was The Samoans defeating The Strongbows for the WWF tag titles.  I started reading wrestling magazines...and I was in on it, even though back then -- you know, now we freely admit that it's sports entertainment -- so I was 13 and I looked at it, and I immediately knew that this was...a show.  And there's nothing wrong with that.

I guess some of the oldtimers -- and I don't mean Billy Graham -- but other people say, 'You know, we should've never let them in on the joke...' and they used to get very offended by guys who broke what we call kayefabe.  Quite frankly, my thought was, well,do you really want to cater to people who can't look at this and say, 'This isn't on the level'?

I mean, you know...how much expendable income do those people have?!?

SLAGLE:  I guess they never saw Mark Lewin, with the Alka-seltzer foam coming out of his mouth...

STYLES:  Yeah.  And it doesn't make it bad...

SLAGLE:  Not at all....

STYLES:  So, when you take into account that it is staged, and it is scripted, it becomes even more impressive, at least in my eyes.

SLAGLE:  Absolutely...

STYLES: But, I saw "Superstar" Billy Graham in the magazines, and absolutely marveled at his physique.  People don't realize it, because I wear a suit...and I'm not telling you that I have a body like "Superstar" Billy Graham -- but I'm a work-out fanatic.  I work out six days a week, and I diet very hard, you know.  I don't look like one of the wrestlers, but then, I don't do a lot of the things the wrestlers do.  We'll just leave it at that...

SLAGLE:   Sure...

STYLES:  I look as good as I'm going to look, doing things the old-fashioned way.  So, I marveled at the physique of Superstar Graham. They'd always show clips of Billy Graham, from his heyday in the WWF, they still talked about the past.

And then, he made his comeback around 1987, and I remember seeing that very graphic footage of his hip surgery, one of his many hip surgeries, on the syndicated WWF Superstars show.  And after that, I remember seeing him leg-press eleven hundred pounds -- after having the hip replacement!  To this day, I think the most I've leg-pressed is six hundred, and I still have both of my original hips!  So, the fact that right after having a major operation, he put eleven hundred pounds up on a leg sled, really makes me just, you know, it's unbelievable!

SLAGLE:  Totally!

STYLES: And, you know, I always enjoyed his character.  Because, when you're watching Hulk Hogan or Jesse Ventura, and then you see Billy Graham, who was there first, it's very obvious to see that a lot of Jesse Ventura's in-ring persona, and a lot of Hulk Hogan's in-ring persona, it came from "Superstar" Billy Graham.

The twenty-four inch pythons, the tie-dye, being so extravagent, being so flamboyant...he really was a trendsetter in the wrestling industry.  I think it's a shame that there isn't more history on current wrestling programs.  There's five million people watching the WWF every Monday and Thursday, and it's a shame that a lot of those younger people don't know about "Superstar" Billy Graham...because they should.

SLAGLE:  Yeah, absolutely, I agree with you.  I don't know, it seems to me that...ok, you're the WWF, right?  You got, literally, archives full of the most spectacular classic wrestling footage you could ever want, and yet none of it's available on video, for whatever reason.  I mean, he's (Vince McMahon, Jr.) got heat with Bruno, and Superstar, you know, maybe a little bit there, and other people that...I just think that maybe they under-sell the fact that current wrestling fans, and there's so many of them now that are new, they would really appreciate something like that, and would like to see it.  It's kind of like a great rock band, where, you know, just because they happened twenty or thirty years ago, doesn't mean that fans don't want to know about them, learn about them or see their work, you know?  It just seems like they could put out some really great videos on guys like Billy and Bruno...

STYLES:  Yeah, I don't know what the relationship is between the WWF and Bruno Sammartino, who, by the way, I've always been a huge fan of...

SLAGLE:  Sure, yeah...

STYLES:  I'm an Italian-American, Styles is not my real name, and we'll leave it at that.  So, of course, even though Bruno was before my time, I've seen the tapes, and of course, attended wrestling at Madison Square Garden.  He was the original strongman, he was unbelievable.  But, um, I don't know what the relationship is, but, you know, Vince McMahon is not going to release that footage if he has to pay those guys, and I can understand that.  But, maybe one day, you never know...

SLAGLE:  Yeah....

STYLES:  You know, one of the things that always impressed me about "Superstar" Billy Graham, and I didn't realize it until he reached out to me via email, but, I recently did an interview with W.O.W. Magazine, and the crux of the interview, I told them, "Look, I don't want to do an interview as Joey Styles, I want to do it as the person I really am."  My real name was in there, which I don't want to give out on the internet, because more people will hear it than in the magazine, but my statement was, the crux of the article was that wrestling is important to me because it's my career, it's how I make a living.  But, it's not my whole life, like so many people in the industry say it is.

The most important things in my life are my relationships with Jesus Christ and my wife Janet.  That's what Billy Graham admired most, and that's why he emailed me, because he has this incredible faith.  There have been a lot of people in wrestling, like Jake Roberts quite franky -- I don't care if he comes after me -- who used religion to make money, who used it as a gimmick and didn't really believe.  There have been a lot of people who say they've turned to religion, and I really believe, after talking to more and more people, that Billy Graham, The Superstar, he's sincere about it.  And, I certainly am.  I don't go around preaching.  I'll talk about it here, because I think that's what The Superstar would like, it's his website and that's why he reached out to me.  But, I don't preach to other wrestlers, I certainly don't preach to anyone else, I don't force my religion on any body.  But, it's the way I want to live.

You know, all you hear are the bad stories.  You hear about the wrestlers having problems with drugs, you hear about the drug-related deaths.  You hear stories about the wrestling business wrecking marriages, and about alcoholism and the wild parties.  I want fans to know that there are people like me, and it's not just me.  They are the minority, but there's people like me who don't party.  When I'm done at the building, I'll have dinner...my wife travels with me, out of my own pocket.  ECW covers my airfare, but not my wife's airfare, and I take her with me everywhere I go.  And, that comes out of my pocket, because, quite frankly, I can't sleep without her.  I would do that if I worked for any other wrestling company, too.  The airfare would come out of my pocket because my wife has to be with me.  We don't have children right now, and there's no reason for me not to be sleeping with my wife, every night.  Because, that was my intent when I got married.  And, the fact that I have to pay for it is fine, that's the price for keeping my marriage together.  After the show, my wife enjoys -- she wasn't a fan before she met me, but she enjoys the product now, and she finds it very entertaining and will come to the show and point things out to me.  And, after the show, we'll go out to dinner and then go to bed.  There is no party, and there are no drugs, and there is no alcohol, and there are no groupies.  My married life, my home life, my faith, they all go with me on the road.  And, there are other people like that in the wrestling business, but not enough of them, unfortunately.  And, I think that's true in entertainment and professional athletics.

But, I think it's a very strong message, and I feel very strongly about doing that kind of interview in W.O.W. and doing this kind of interview now.  I'm not going to make it a regular thing, because I don't want to seem preachy, and I don't want people judging me, because I'm not perfect, and I'm not Jesus.  I do sin.  We're not perfect, we're mortal.  But, I think that's what The Superstar reached out to me for, and that's what I want to give the fans, that side of me.

SLAGLE:  That kind of leads me to another question.  Have you run into many Christians in the wrestling business?

STYLES: I don't know, because we don't talk about it.  It's something...I don't discuss religion or politics.  You know who I will do it with, not religion so much, but politics, is Cyrus, Don Callis.  He's my color man on the ECW PPV's, he plays the lead heel in ECW, and he's amazingly intelligent.  He's from Canada, and we have outrageous debates on politics.  But, he's the only one I will discuss religion or politics, because they're hot-buttons, things you don't discuss.  Basically, I go to the shows, I go to the studio to do my job.  I do the job I am contracted to do, I'd like to think I go above and beyond what I'm contracted to do.  I paid very well, I think, for what I do.  You know, we don't party, we bring home as much of the money as we can and save for our future.  So, are there other good people in the business that I've known, who don't party, who just do their job and then go home to their wife and kids?

You know, Lance Storm comes to mind immediately.  And I mention him because, recently, he and I connected, and he just left.  There have been others as well, but Lance Storm comes to mind immediately.  He and I got along very well, because we'd go to work, and afterwards we'd go out to eat, and that was it.  He'd bring his wife or his kids to the show, and it was wonderful.  And, while I don't know his religious beliefs, I do know that he's a family man who had no use for the partying.  And he knew that, while he loves wrestling, it's just a way to make money, and do the right thing by his family.  So, yes, I do see...not enough of that in wrestling, but I do see people who share my beliefs.

SLAGLE:  You know, I was listening to an interview with Ivan Koloff on Mark Nulty's Wrestling Classics website, and he was talking about Superstar Graham, and how Superstar was such a good influence on him because after the matches, you know, everybody would be going out to the bar.  And he said that Superstar was like, "Hey man, we gotta train in the morning...let's get some sleep."  So, he avoided that in a lot of cases.

STYLES: And, there's nothing wrong with being social afterwards.  I mean, I'm not going to tell you that I don't have a glass of wine with my meal, because I try to have one every night.  I'm a good Italian, and I try to have a glass of red wine everyday, and the doctor tells me it's good for me.  So, you can be social, you just have to pick people that just want to go get a meal, and then go to bed.  You can be social without being up until 5:00 in the morning, and throwing up all over the hotel lobby...thus getting the promotion banned from the hotel, but that's another story.

(Muttering sacrastically)  My God!