Perry Saturn on his wrestling career being cut short: “I couldn’t get off the drugs”
While speaking to Chris Van Vliet, former WWE star Perry Saturn talked about his struggles in the wrestling business due to drug abuse. Here are the highlights…
Van Vliet: “Do you have any major regrets about your wrestling career?”
Saturn: “Yeah, my career ended maybe a decade too soon because I couldn’t get off the drugs. Somewhere when we went to WWE, I rubbed somebody the wrong way too, because that’s why I did bullsh*t things. I got the reputation of roughing up the enhancement guys. What nobody hears is before every match, Jerry Briscoe would grab the guy and tell him, ‘Hey, Perry’s really old school. You got to go out there and make him work for it. No sell some of his stuff.’ They know I’m going to go berserk. I’d come through the back, and they’d be laughing their asses off. Well, now the boys are, like Paul London. He was when he had to work with me. He was worried because now I’m beating everyone up.”
Van Vliet: “I saw you about a year ago; you weren’t moving as well.”
Saturn: “No, it was bad. And just because we all destroy our bodies, I just put it off. Kept putting it off for whatever reason. Should have done it a long time ago. I’ve had both my shoulders replaced, and they’re really hard to do. Hips were real easy.”
Van Vliet: “Are you in pain now?”
Saturn: “No, but I’m a drug addict, so I was concerned about taking pain medicine. So there’s no way you can have surgery without doing it. Both my shoulders, when I got them done, it was really hard to stop taking the pain medicine. This time I told myself I was only going to take them for a week, and that’s all I did. The doctor kept telling me you can take them longer, and I said no, that’s it. I was uncomfortable, but I got through it.”
Van Vliet: “I feel like you weren’t on the convention scene for a while.”
Saturn: “No, I was a drug addict in crack houses and stuff. The last thing I wanted was anybody I knew to see me on the rare occasion that somebody would recognize me because crackheads aren’t big wrestling fans. I would just deny it because I was embarrassed.”
Van Vliet: “Was there a certain day when you woke up, and you said this is it?”
Saturn: “Yeah, I was going to commit suicide. I was homeless for a couple of years. I was in Iowa, out in the winter, and I was going to commit suicide and take a bunch of drugs and OD. I had my dog with me that I had a long time, she came over and she laid her head on my lap, and I thought I can’t commit. She needs me, and somewhere in there, I figured out if I can hang on for her, maybe I can get my sh*t together for me. 2010 is when I got clean.”