Jim Duggan: WWE, Nicknames & Madison Square Garden!

With the 2022 Royal Rumble done and dusted, and Brock Lesnar and Ronda Rousey both rest upon their laurels, we stumbled upon this interview with Hacksaw Jim Duggan – the winner of the inaugural Royal Rumble back in 1988. 

Betway sat down with Hacksaw to chat through his legendary wrestling career, and where his fabled nickname comes from!

“I actually started my career in Dallas, Texas with Fritz Von Erich, and he brought me in. Back then, it was a closed business.

“If you weren’t somebody’s son or nephew, you didn’t get in, but Fritz gave me the huge gift of professional wrestling.

“I started off as Big Jim Duggan, with red and black trunks and short hair. When I was back home visiting my family in New York, the WWF was running a show in my hometown and they thought they’d use me and liked what they saw.

“They called me into the office with Vince McMahon Sr. Everybody was smoking cigars, it was a real mafioso-type atmosphere.

“I’m a young kid, short hair, clean shaven and I wore a long gold bathrobe to the ring to try and dress it up a bit.

“So I go into the office with Vince Sr. sitting there and he’s like, ‘Kid, you might have a future in the business, but come up with something better than Big Jim and get rid of that bathrobe!’

“I went to Hawaii, Georgia and Pensacola and changed my gimmick each time until a break in San Antonio, working with Bruiser Brody.

“I used to cut through the wedge in my football days and Brody suggested, ‘How about Hacksaw?’

“Yeah, let’s try it, and that’s where I developed the character.”

Despite the notoriety the WWE has today, the unassailable rise of the WWE was not expected!

“Nobody realised the WWE would become this huge worldwide powerhouse that it is today, let alone the Royal Rumble.

“The appeal of professional wrestling is amazing. In the States, I do a lot of charity work with NFL and MLB guys.

“They say they’re world champions and I always ask, ‘Where in the world do you fellas go?’ They say that they went to London once, and I’m like, ‘That’s like going to the west coast.’

In my 40 years of wrestling, I’ve wrestled in every state, every province in Canada, right up by the Arctic Circle and in 31 different countries.”