This is the second part of the powerful Tom Cole interview published by Wrestling Perspective in 1999. To read part one of this interview, click here.

This interview appeared in Volume X § Number 79 of Wrestling Perspective, published in 1999.

This Interview Is Copyright © 1999 Wrestling Perspective.

In Perspective: Tom Cole Part II

In the second and final part of this interview, former WWF employee Tom Cole explains his second term of employment with the WWF after his sexual harassment suit was settled with the company. In this interview with Paul MacArthur, he also talks about his dismissal from the WWF, the unusual nature of his unemployment hearings and testifying before a grand jury prior to the famed WWF steroid trial.

Wrestling Perspective: The settlement created a rift between you and your brother.

Tom Cole: Yes, he was telling me I made a mistake. I was like, “Well, if I made a mistake, I made a mistake. Let me learn for myself.” I gave him like $20,000 out of my settlement because he’d helped me along with the case and everything else. Like I said, it was never about money with me. I think that’s what bothered the WWF a lot because they could never say it was about money or I was greedy. A lot of people were jumping on the bandwagon looking for money and I wasn’t. I was not in any way looking for money and I think that had a lot to do with the way they looked at me because it was never about money. But everyone else was about getting paid. My brother, I guess he started being a real pain in the ass. He started going on radio shows and talk shows saying that they had me brainwashed and this and that. I don't know, maybe in a sense it was true. Maybe they did in a sense. Maybe they did. Maybe they didn’t. I don’t know. But I thought it was a decision I wanted to make, but he wouldn’t let me. It was terrible. I couldn’t concentrate on anything. It was so hard because I was being pulled from both ways because I was under subpoena by the federal government for the sex scandal for the WWF, the steroid scandal that they had and everything else. The WWF at the same time wanted me to share information with them about what the government was asking and I did. But every time I went before the government, I was to the point where it was driving me nuts. I said to Linda, “I don’t want to share any more information. I can’t handle this anymore. I just want to work. I don’t want to bothered with all this stuff. I don’t want to tell you anything anymore.” She got really pissed and things started deteriorating on that part. It started falling apart relationship-wise with my brother and relationship-wise with Titan Sports. I knew I probably wasn’t going to be there much longer.

Wrestling Perspective: How long did your second term of employment last?

Tom Cole: About a year-and-a-half.

Wrestling Perspective: While you're employed by them, you 're being subpoenaed by the federal government to testify. But if I’m correct, they never brought forward the charges on the sex scandal, just on steroids.

Tom Cole: No, they didn’t. They couldn’t find anything involving Vince McMahon so they looked at it like they wanted Vince McMahon and possibly they could get him on steroids, but they couldn’t find out anything about him sexual-wise or anything else. So they let that go.

Wrestling Perspective: You can’t seize property on a sex conviction, but you can on a steroid conviction.

Tom Cole: I had said to the people in the federal government, “Nobody cares about steroids. Nobody cares. You’re not going to do anything to this guy. It’s a waste of time. Go after what people will care about.” They said, “We’re gonna.” But they never did. I told them that they wouldn’t get Vince McMahon. Maybe in a weird way when Vince got off, I was kinda happy in a sense because I felt it was like, “Yeah, I told you so. But you guys wanted the big fish.” That’s when I realized the government doesn’t care about going after somebody for something that they did wrong. They want a marquee name. It’s like anything else in life. It’s like publicity. It’s all about publicity. It’s all about that big name you can get and who can become an attorney general or a big shot politically if they get a big fish. They let Terry Garvin and Mel Phillips go. They had to have a ton of crap on Mel Phillips. I know personally a couple of kids who went forward although a lot of kids wouldn’t say anything because they’re embarrassed and it’s not an easy thing for a guy to say, “Yeah, some guy played with my feet; kind of molested me.” I guess it wasn’t that easy for people to come forward. They had more. They could have gone in another direction, but they couldn’t include McMahon so they didn’t bother. They just let it go. That was a shame, you know. Terry Garvin’s dead now so he’s not going to hurt anyone anymore. But you got Mel Phillips and who the hell knows what he’s doing. I’m sure he’s still up to his old tricks. No doubt about that.

Wrestling Perspective: What was it like being subpoenaed by the federal government and testifying in front of a grand jury? What specifically were they trying to get out of you and what were they trying to learn?

Tom Cole: They asked about the steroids. If I’d seen anyone with steroids and ba-ba-ba. I was like, “I’d seen one instance of it,” but I don’t want to mention anyone’s name because I’m not looking to hurt anybody with that so I won’t even get into that. Then they asked me all about Mel Phillips, Terry Garvin, Pat Patterson. I was there for about two hours. They were all shaking their heads. I was pretty upset telling them the whole story. Afterwards, the prosecutor for the eastern district of New York, he’s the one who asks questions when you’re sitting there in front of grand jury members, he had said afterwards, “That was fantastic. You answered every question great. This looks really good.” That was pretty much that. Then they called me up and asked me stuff. They had me go down once again and ask me questions. I went down there four or five times. Every time I was to go down they would ask me questions, the WWF wanted to know everything that they asked me. In the beginning, I told them everything. But then again it got to the point that I didn’t want to tell them anymore. Then it got to the point where I started getting followed. One time in particular, I went to Connecticut when I still worked for them and I went to the bank and this car, I remember when I was getting off the parkway, it didn’t have any front grill on it. I remembered. I looked in my rearview mirror and I happened to see it in back of me. I didn’t think it was following me or nothing, but you just remember certain things. So I’m driving and I got to the bank, get out of the bank, go somewhere else. About an hour later, I get on the parkway, on the Connecticut Thruway maybe five or 10 miles from where I had originally gotten off and I look and this car’s in back of me. I’m like, “That’s really weird that that car is in back of me again. I wonder if they’re following me.” I remembered the federal government had told me if someone is following me, they told me things to do. Like if you go out of your house, go around the block five times and then you can get an idea if someone is following you. If you’re on a parkway, slow down, go with traffic and see if this guy goes ahead of you. Slow down as much as possible. So I did that and the car would not stop. It followed me for about 15 miles. I got off an exit in Port Chester, New York. I get off the exit and I go to make a sharp turn to get back on and then I go and make a sharp turn to get off trying to lose this guy and he’s definitely following me. He started speeding up. So I was nervous. I didn’t know what to do. I started driving. I started going around blocks like five times and this car is still following me. Finally, I pulled into a police station and I filed a report. The federal government was faxed that information and they kept it on record. I tried to get the plate number, but I couldn’t. I wasn’t thinking. If I would have gotten the plate number, it would have helped me tremendously. My mom, they used to go to my mother’s house and sit outside her house. Stuff like that. My mother would go down and harass them and they would just leave and come back a couple of hours later. I would be tailed all the time.

Wrestling Perspective: You believe these people were private investigators working for...

Tom Cole: I think they were Fairfax people for the WWF.

Wrestling Perspective: You worked for a year-and-a-half for the WWF. What were your responsibilities for them?

Tom Cole: I worked on the ring crew. I was supposed to start before I got fired as ring announcer. That never came to pass. They promised me the ring announcing thing. That was one of the stipulations that was in my contract saying I would have a fair shake at getting ring announcing duties. I did ring announcing in Philadelphia at The Spectrum, a dark match. They said they liked the way it sounded. Tony Chimel, who I knew for years, he was a part-time ring announcer for them, he said, “Man, you’re really good. I wish I had your voice. You sound really good.” After they fired me, I asked, “Whatever happened with my ring announcing job?" Then they tried to come out in the paper saying I wasn‘t good enough, in Mike Mooneyham’s paper, in an article saying I wasn’t good enough to be a ring announcer. But that was a bunch of shit. I know I was much better than Tony Chimel and he became ring announcer and look at him now. He’s on their Monday night show. He wasn’t trying to butter me up. He legitimately said it. Even people who worked in the building said, “Wow, that sounded really good.”

Wrestling Perspective: What led to your dismissal?

Tom Cole: I started going to school and I wasn’t working with them anymore on the road. They pulled me off the road pretty much. I started going to school and they paid for it. But I didn’t do good in college because it was very hard concentrating. Going through all that stuff, I could not concentrate on anything and I failed. I failed out and they said, “We’ll give you one more opportunity to do good in school,” and I didn’t. I went to Linda McMahon before I went back the next semester and I was like, “I can’t handle the college aspect right now. I’ve got too many things on my mind that I just cannot handle doing that. I feel like I want to come back and do something. I don’t want to just be getting paid. You’re paying me now and I’m not doing anything. I don’t like that feeling. I’ll come back. I’ll do anything. I’ll come to the office and I’ll sweep and mop the floors because I want to do something. I don’t want to get paid for no reason." She was like, “That’s not necessary. Just concentrate on school.” So she totally ignored me saying I can’t handle it. I failed and they gave me my notice. She wrote me a letter saying, “You had the opportunity of a lifetime and you let it slip through your fingers. It’s a shame” and ba-ba-ba, ba-ba-ba. That was pretty much my pink slip. But that was used as an excuse because I collected unemployment and they fought my unemployment like five to six separate times and I won my appeal every single time. They tried to say insubordination like I had a cellular phone and the bill was $200. They never told me what the bill was and I had asked them. They told me not to worry about it. But when I went after they fired me, they brought that up saying, “He ran up a telephone bill and that’s insubordination and he didn’t pay it.” I was like, “Listen, I asked about that bill. I was going to pay it and they never let me know.” They couldn’t prove anything. They had no proof that they let me know. They didn’t forward any information, but they tried to use that as an excuse. It didn’t work. They found against them and gave me my full benefits. But time and time again after that they kept taking me back. The employer gets the right to appeal a ton of times. They kept appealing my case, appealing my case and the last time, Linda McMahon went to my unemployment hearing. I brought up the subject of what I had gone through with the molestation when I was a kid from the sexual harassment to everything else. Linda hated the fact that I brought that up and said, “That has nothing to do with this. That’s not pertinent to what’s going on now.” I said, “But it is. This is why my job turned out the way it did. It is pertinent to what’s going on.” The court agreed with me. They agreed I could bring those things up. They had an inter-office memo, this is when I knew it was a sham from the beginning, their lawyer at the time, she brought an inter-office memo from the guy who used to be the photographer for the WWF, Steve Taylor. He took Terry Garvin’s old job actually. He was like my boss for the ring crew because he took over Terry Garvin’s job. He had an inter-office memo sent to Vince McMahon with a reply back from Vince McMahon stating, “Tom Cole showed up at the Manhattan Center in January. Typical Tom, he did everything that was expected of him, but nothing more. He didn’t go out of his way to do extra.” They brought that and they tried to use that against me. I said, “This is ridiculous. Sir, how on Earth could you bring to an unemployment hearing, where you’ re trying to prove disciplinary problems and trying to prove I didn’t do my job. You bring a letter saying I did my job, but I didn’t go out of my way to do more. I did everything that was expected of me. What am I supposed to do? Put on a red nose and clown boots?” The guy totally agreed with me. That’s when I came out and said, “Let me just mention one more thing. How many employees are in the WWF, Titan Sports, Mrs. McMahon?” She’ s like, “350.” I was like, “How many unemployment hearings do you attend yearly?" She goes, “I never attend.” “Well, I’m a measly ring crew guy. Why on Earth are you attending my unemployment hearing?" “Well, it’s the situation, ba-ba-ba.” They found in my favor. Then they took me one more time and they found in my favor and that was it.

Wrestling Perspective: This was (Laura) Brevetti who was the lawyer.

Tom Cole: Yes.

Wrestling Perspective: So they actually brought Brevetti in who was actually the one from the steroid scandal as opposed to using McDevitt or one of the other lawyers.

Tom Cole: Yes, she was a very, very mean woman. Not that a lawyer’s not supposed to be.

Wrestling Perspective: Did you find it suspicious? Brevetti is a big gun.

Tom Cole: Oh, absolutely. I didn’t know who she was at the time because I’d never met her. I thought I’d met all their lawyers. But evidently I didn’t. I was very surprised they brought her in; very surprised.

Wrestling Perspective: At the time of your dismissal, did that not run concurrent with some article the WWF or some press release the WWF had done mentioning your name?

Tom Cole: Yeah, that was the Mooneyham article in the Post-Courier in the Carolinas. I actually had that information. I don’t have it anymore. Linda McMahon had written article saying, “We kind of doubt Tom’s story in a sense. In my opinion, I kind of doubt Tom’s story, certain things.” But she put it in a way where legally she wasn’t saying I was a liar. But it did upset me to the point that I got some people together from my family and we picketed outside their building. There was about 10 of us and we had signs and everything else. They were very upset about that. Linda McMahon came out and tried to talk to my sister. They said, “Why don’t you guys come inside and we can talk about this.” Then I came down and Linda kind of walked away in a sense. I just lit into her. I was like, “Look at you people.” I heard one guy say, “I’m an attorney for Titan Sports.” I was like, “That’s funny. The last time I met you in Linda McMahon’s office, you weren’t an attorney. You were a public relations person, but now it turns out you’re an attorney. You people are something else.”

Wrestling Perspective: When was that meeting with the public relations person?

Tom Cole: That was the last meeting I had with them. They were suing Phil Mushnick of the New York Post. I think that was the straw that broke the camel’s back, that meeting. I said to Linda, “Phil Mushnick, regardless of what he’s trying to do to your company, he’s a nice guy. He’s not a bad person. He’s trying to do the right thing and you’re trying to destroy a guy who told the truth. I’m not going to let you guys do that. I’m sorry.” That’s the straw that broke the camel’s back. That was when they used that school thing as an excuse to get rid of me. Steve Taylor, when he wrote that inter-office memo, he wrote that he was under the assumption that I was to be back with the WWF for like a year and what was going on? Like what’s going to happen?

Wrestling Perspective: In other words, why are you there more than a year?

Tom Cole: Exactly, that letter is when I realized they never had in their minds I was going to stay long. It was in plain English. That was the letter that that woman lawyer brought in. I snatched that off the table at the hearing and she got real pissed off. She put it out there and I took it. That’s when I realized. I said to her, “Look at this. They’re saying they’re under the assumption that I’d be working for a year. What is that mean? That shows you they were going to can me after they got what they wanted.” That’s exactly what they did.

Wrestling Perspective: The year of the dismissal was '93, ‘94?

Tom Cole: June 25, 1993.

Wrestling Perspective: Then you had subsequent hearings over the course of a year.

Tom Cole: The course of over a couple of years. The course of probably two years. The last one being in 1995, early 1995.

Wrestling Perspective: Each case they ruled in your favor to collect unemployment from them.

Tom Cole: Absolutely.

Wrestling Perspective: Your last contact with anyone from the WWF was when?

Tom Cole: I called Linda McMahon when she said in her opinion that I wasn’t totally telling the truth or something to that effect. I let her have it. She said she was recording the conversation. I said, “I just want to let you know,” and I went on their local news in Connecticut too by the way and I challenged Vince McMahon to a debate. I challenged Vince McMahon to prove me wrong. To prove anything I said was a lie; anything I said wasn’t true. Prove it. He never came forward. I said that to her. I was like, “If you ever call me a liar again, I’ll picket your building every single day. If I have to, I’ll do it every day.” She never said anything about me again and my name has never come up in an article about anything to do with them on their part.

Wrestling Perspective: You picketing the building took place after your dismissal.

Tom Cole: After I saw the article that she said I may not be telling the whole truth or something to that effect.

Wrestling Perspective: You personally, after this whole thing went down and after your final unemployment hearing happened, how basically did you pick up your life? Where did you move on from there?

Tom Cole: I went by myself. I moved to Long Island. I really didn’t do anything. I was shocked. I worked here and there. But since in the last two, three years, I’ve gotten married this past month. I have my own business. I’m doing really good. It’s kind of tough. I always wanted to be in the business. It’s something that’s gone, but I’m definitely over that. But I can’t help but watch the TV and look at it now and see what they’re doing

Wrestling Perspective: Were you able to repair the relationship with your brother or is it still strained?

Tom Cole: It’s always been strained since then because I felt he should have left it alone. I felt he should have left me alone and let me make my decision. I think that had a bearing on me. Maybe I could have done more when I was back with the WWF to keep my job. I look at it now, maybe I should have told them everything they wanted to know about what the government said and this and that. Because in the end the government didn’t do shit. What could they do for you after they’re done with you? Nothing. They don’t call you to see how you are. Not that that’s so important, but in a sense, it is. They’re users. That whole situation being involved with that government stuff was the worst part.

Wrestling Perspective: You mentioned you being in on board meetings. Why would they have someone who really was just a member of the ring crew involved in a board meeting?

Tom Cole: Well, they were just trying, I guess, to get as much stuff as they can out of me. I think that had a lot to do with I was young, impressionable, and they were trying to make me feel good. They were going out of their way to do whatever they could do for me. Put me on angles on TV and stuff like that, which they did. Try to make me feel good.

Wrestling Perspective: What angles were you on TV?

Tom Cole: The Papa Shango angle where his hand got lit on fire. I lit the opponent’s hand on fire. I ran in the ring and put out when a guy’s feet were on tire, I put them out. Sid Justice, he did an angle, I played one of the doctors and he picked me up and body slammed me. They put that on TV. Things like that. I’d go up to Titan Tower and I brought my friends up there and showed them around. All the, executives were like, “Hey, Tom,” coming up to me and high-fiving me and trying to make me feel good. When you really realize it, these people wouldn’t give me the time of day. Let’s be realistic.

One person I was very disappointed with was Linda McMahon because she had said to me once that she had a son my age and she wanted to do the right thing by me. She gave me a hug one time. She had told me everything would be all right. My most important thing was I wanted them to believe what I was saying. I used to say that to them. I was like, “You believe what I’m saying. That’s the most important thing. I want you to know that.” She’d go, “Oh, yeah, I absolutely believe you. That’s why I want to see you do good. I want to see you go to college. I’ll be there when you go to college. I’ll be there when you get married. Someday when you get married, I want to be there. You’re my son’s age. I consider you in a sense like a son. I want to look at it that way. I want you to come to me with your problems and stuff and things like that." They really gave it to me. I didn't know which way was up. I’m hearing one thing from the government. I’m hearing one thing from my brother. I’m hearing one thing from them. It was terrible. It was absolutely terrible. Then to try to go to school with all that. Maybe it’s seems like a cop-out in a sense, but it really wasn’t. It was tough. It was really tough.

You put any 20-, 21-year-old in that situation and you tell me what would happen to him. I think if you put anyone in that situation then tell me. I said to Linda, “When I was a kid and I used to come to the matches, I had this feeling in my stomach. My stomach was on fire. I was so excited. It was the best feeling in the world. After all this has happened, after this stuff with Terry Garvin, I’m back here working. But I don’t have that burning desire inside me anymore.” They took that away. Terry Garvin in a sense took that away. That day that he did that, that guy took that all away that day. If he in the beginning had just given me my job and what he promised, then none of that would have happened. But he didn’t. He tried to destroy a life. Thank God my life wasn’t destroyed and I’m fine now. But at the same time, I can’t help but think about all those people who were destroyed. I know people who worked in the company. A guy came up to me when I went back to work for them. I’m not going to say his name, but he was part of the ring crew. He’s no longer with them. He was a tough dude from New England. He comes up to me at Madison Square Garden, he goes, “It’s so good to know someone came forward with this stuff and the stuff that Terry Garvin did to me. I know now that I’m not the only one.” I was like, “What do you mean did to you?" That’s when he said to me he had sex with Terry for his job. I was like, “Dude, I didn’t have fucking sex with Terry. Don’t even put me in that same ballpark, man.” Then, a grown man, he was a couple of years older than me, actually he was like 25, five years older than me, he’s crying. This dude, man, I knew him from the time I was a kid and he was a pretty tough kid. He broke down and he said, “I have a wife and kids. You don’t know what it’s like. You, just don’t understand what it’s like. I had to do it. Because if I didn’t, I’d lose everything.” I felt for the guy, but I didn’t see him after that. He like disappeared from the company. I never saw him again. I remember that day at Terry Garvin’s house, the phone rang and it was that guy’s wife. He was talking to her. He goes, “Everybody loves me. That’s so-and-so’s wife.” When this guy’s telling me that, I’m remembering that. That’s fucked up. I wonder if that guy’s wife knew. That really bothers me. Who knows what happened to him? I know he had a drug problem and the WWF put him in rehab. That kind of breaks your heart. How is that guy doing now? How is all the other people we never hear about, how are they doing? How are they handling it? It’s a really sad, sad thing. People just don’t realize it. Look at it now, they’ve got all this stuff on TV and they laugh at everything. But people don’t realize there are so many people’s lives that they destroyed or they had a fundamental part in destroying.

Wrestling Perspective: I seem to recall when the Phil Donahue show hit, one of the questions from the audience was, “ Well, who cares? Isn’t this all fake anyway?"

Tom Cole: Exactly, who cares. They don’t get it. They don’t get it. If that happened on a soap opera, but behind the scenes would people look at it that way? Or it happened on a TV show? Are people going to look at it the same way and laugh about it? That’s why I feel for the presidential stuff that’s going down now with the impeachment with the president getting away with what he got away with saying Paula Jones was lying. People look at it like it's only sex. But they don’t realize this guy tried to destroy this woman and say, “She ain’t telling the truth.” And then he’s like, “Maybe she was telling the truth.” Then it’s too late because he already called her a liar. He put a dark mark on her for, life. It’s the same thing. The WWF, they’ve got money. They can try to destroy people and they did. They shut a lot of people up. A lot of people that came forward, a couple of wrestlers that were on that show had a vendetta obviously. They came forward, but I didn’t want to be associated with them. I only associated with people who I felt were telling the truth. There was a wrestler, but I’m not going to say his name. He came forward to us and said one thing and then his story changed a couple of days later. I was like, “The dude’s full of shit, man. He’s saying one thing and then he’s saying another. I don’t want to be associated with that. I want to be associated with people who are telling the truth.” Giving this article, I’ll probably hear something from them. They’ll probably take this article and analyze it. Inaccuracies, they’ll look for. But you know what, I welcome that for the simple fact that I have told the truth from the beginning. I always believe this and I said that to Jerry McDevitt, “I have one thing on my side and that’s the truth.” When they sued the New York Post, they subpoenaed me, the New York Post and I went for a whole week and they deposed me and the WWF deposed me for two hours. The WWF lawyer, Jerry McDevitt, said, “You’ll be here for about another four or five days.” I started going off at the mouth with all the stuff that happened to me. Two hours later, they canceled it and I never heard from them again. That’s got a lot to do with the truth. When you’ve got the truth and you’re telling the truth, there’s really no way around it.

Wrestling Perspective: You mentioned there’s a national magazine article coming out at some point. When should that be hitting?

Tom Cole: In the next couple of months.

Wrestling Perspective: What magazine is that?

Tom Cole: I’m not going to say.

Wrestling Perspective: My question is what do you hope coming forward now will accomplish?

Tom Cole: I just want people to see what they’re doing now is a lot of these people are being themselves. The stuff that happened to me, in a sense, they soiled me and they soiled a lot of other people. Now through TV, they’re soiling kids and everything else. They’re leaving a stain on a culture, on a generation of kids. It’s not just wrestling, it’s everything. A lot of things going on in the world now, especially in this country. This really bothers me because I see the stuff they get away with and it’s right in your face. It used to be they’d have certain innuendoes and they’d make certain comments on TV.

Wrestling Perspective: The Terry Garvin School of Self Defense.

Tom Cole: The Terry Garvin School of Hard Knocks. The Pat Patterson Go Behind.
Things like that they’d say years ago. But no one knew what it meant. But now it’s so straight forward and they can pretty much say whatever they want and do whatever they want that who’s to stop them? I’ve had enough of it. I really have. I think people should get a petition and do something. I’m not saying put wrestling out of business. That’s not what I’m saying, but keep it down a little bit. How far are they going to take it? Are they going to take it to the point where advertisers start saying, “Hey, we can’t have any part of this anymore.”

Wrestling Perspective: As long as they’re delivering ratings until the advertisers start to back off they ’re going to continue to push as far as they can go.

Tom Cole: It’s like with Vince Russo and him calling up the guy from lWrestling.com and letting into him because he wrote an article that Vince Russo didn’t appreciate He came off as so cocky. It’s the responsibility of parents, but they didn’t do anything wrong. It’s everyone else and it’s always been that way. He fits in good there, Vince Russo, talking like that. They all have that attitude, man. Like nothing can bother them, but when their business was bad a couple of years ago, they were trying to be different. They were trying to be good. Now it’s like their business is right through the roof so fuck off everybody. Now everybody wants them. They’re hot again. And Vince is right, and I’ll leave you with this, Vince McMahon said to me and I quote, “I’ll lose it all, but I’ll get it back again.” And he’s gotten back tenfold and he was right. He kept his word on that. He didn’t keep his word on anything else that he promised, but he kept his word on that.

Wrestling Perspective: Ultimately, how would you characterize the McMahons, each one of them?

Tom Cole: Each McMahon? Let me see. Vince McMahon I would sum up as manipulative and conniving, ruthless. Not a very nice guy. Linda McMahon, I wish I could say she was a nice person. Sometimes she gave me that feeling and sometimes she didn’t. I don’t even think there’s a word how I feel. I don’t know what I feel about Linda McMahon. Disappointed. Disappointed in everything that she had promised they would do. When it came down to it, they didn’t. Also, I just remembered, they put an injunction against the Geraldo piece. When I went back, they knew a story was coming out with Geraldo Rivera and they put an injunction on that and stopped the interview dead. However, Geraldo Rivera got on TV a couple of days later on his show, Now It Can Be Told, and said, “The WWF has been bombarding me with threatening letters all week stating they will sue me if I show the Tom Cole interview. I may not be able to show the Tom Cole interview, but me being a lawyer, I know this kid made a mistake going back to work for them. There’s not a court in the land that can stop me from saying that.” That goes to show you how powerful Vince McMahon is. Geraldo Rivera, who is not that nice of a guy, pretty sleazy, and Vince McMahon stopped him dead in his tracks. For anyone who doesn’t think Vince McMahon has power, they’ve got another thing coming.

Wrestling Perspective: This will be fascinating. To many of us, you were this guy who came forward and then all of a sudden disappeared and then went back to the WWF. We read about you getting fired and we never heard of you again. You were kind of a mystery figure.

Tom Cole: I think the WWF was happy that I disappeared and didn’t say anything to anybody.

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