Paul Orndorff Reveals 5 Wrestlers He Hated The Most

Paul Orondorf was never shy about telling people exactly how he felt about other wrestlers. He called Bret Hart a nobody. He was all right.

You know, do I think he was a superstar? No. He called Ric Flair a joke and once got into a real backstage fight with a much bigger Vader while wearing flip-flops.

And those weren't the only wrestlers he had problems with. Here are the five wrestlers Paul Ordorf couldn't stand. Starting with Ric Flair.

Ric Flair is often called the greatest [music] professional wrestler of all time. the Nature Boy, the 16-time world heavyweight champion, the styling, profiling, limousine ridden, jet-flying son of a gun. But Paul Ordorf didn't think much of him.

To understand this beef, we have to go all the way back to the early 1980s. Ordorf was a rising star in the National Wrestling Alliance. He was working out of the Georgia Championship Wrestling Territory.

He held the National Heavyweight Title, which was one of the most respected regional belts in the country. And in 1982, he set his sights on the biggest prize in the sport, the NWA World Heavyweight Championship. The belt that was worn at the time by Ric Flair.

Ordorf was so serious about the chase that he gave up his national title. He wanted no distractions, he wanted to focus on Flair and nothing else. On camera in a promo with Gordon Soie, Orondorf spoke about the sacrifice with the kind of conviction that only a man chasing his dream could deliver.

But I haven't forgotten Ric Flair because I gave that belt up for one reason and that's to go for the big one. That was the pitch. Ordorf was gunning for Flair.

He wanted the world title. He believed he could take it. And in a different promo from that same era, Flair actually walked into Ornorf's interview and confronted him face to face.

It was the classic old school territory setup. The challenger and the champion nose tonose on live television. But I'm after the most prestigious belt there is, and that's the world heavyweight belt, Brick Flair.

So on the surface this looked like a normal respectful challenger in champion storyline but behind the curtain Ordorf was not impressed. Not then, [music] not now, and not ever. Decades later when he was asked to give a quick take on Ric Flair, his answer was just two words.

He said Flair was a joke just like that. No long explanation, no softening, just a joke. He expanded on this in other shoot interviews.

When Ornorf talked about facing Flair for the NWA title back in 1982, he did not describe it like it was the biggest night of his life. He described it like it was routine. He said facing Flair was like facing just another body.

Some are better than others. That was his review of a match against the man most fans think of as the best worker of that era, just another body. He did admit one thing though.

He said he was probably hard to work with because he insisted on making things look real. That was the Ordorf way. He came up believing that if the match did not look like a real fight, then you had failed at your job.

And in his mind, Flair was doing a routine. Flair was doing his same spots. Ordorf wanted to wrestle.

Flair wanted to perform to Mr Wonderful that made him a joke. The tension between the two spilled over years later in World Championship Wrestling in 1993 on a segment called Flair for the Gold. Ordorf was in the heel role and got into a heated moment with Flair during the interview.

Also in 1995 on an early episode of Nitro, Orondorf still confronted Flair and the rest of the four horsemen after Brian Pilman made some comments. Now, just as Ordorf had strong feelings about one wrestling legend, his relationship with another icon was far from friendly. Brett Hart.

Hart was the excellence of execution. The best there is, the best there was, the best there ever will be. He is one of the most beloved technical wrestlers to ever lace up boots.

He is a five-time WWF champion and a member of the WWE Hall of Fame. And Paul Ordorf had no time for him at all. Ordorf and Hart barely worked together in a meaningful way.

There was no long feud between them. There was no big pay-per-view match that got out of hand. There was no famous backstage argument that people still talk about.

What there was was Ordorf sitting in front of an interviewer years later being asked what he thought of Bret Hart and his answer was cold. In the same 2012 Inside the Ropes interview where he called Flair a joke, Orondorf said this about Bret Hart. He said he doesn't care much for Canadians.

That was the opening statement, not a story, not a memory of a match, just a shot at a whole country. He [music] went on to say that putting the WWF World title on smaller stars like Hart and Randy Savage was a mistake. He said it downgraded the belt.

He said it made the championship worthless compared to what it had been under men like Terry Funk and Harley Race. To Ordorf, a world champion was supposed to be a certain kind of man. Big, imposing, a physical presence that made you believe he could beat anyone in a real fight.

That was the [music] mold. That was the standard. And in his eyes, Bret Hart did not fit that mold.

Brett was a smaller guy. He worked in a more technical style. He was not the kind of man who looked like he could kill you with his bare hands.

There's a very famous rumor in wrestling that goes back to 1993. The story is that Hulk Hogan was supposed to drop the WWF Championship to Bret Hart and he refused. [music] Hogan wanted to keep the belt on himself.

He did not want to lose it to a smaller star. Brett Hart himself has talked about this many times over the years and he has never hidden his hurt feelings about it. Ordorf was asked directly what he thought about that situation and his answer was pure Mr Wonderful.

He said he didn't blame Hulk Hogan. He said Bret Hart was a nobody from Canada and Hogan was the greatest star in wrestling. He also added that Hulk Hogan did the right thing, a nobody from Canada.

That was how Ordorf described a man who main evented Wrestlemania. That was how he described a five-time world champion. To Paul Ordorf, [music] none of that mattered.

Brett was small. Brett was Canadian. Brett was not built like a champion should be built.

End of discussion. But Ordorf did not stop there. He was asked in a different shoot interview whether he thought young Brett Hart was going to be a big name back in the day.

And his answer [music] was mixed. On one hand, he gave a small compliment. On the other hand, he took it right back.

He had it. Uh, I think Vince didn't have the reason why he made a really good name is that he had no competition up there from WWF cuz all the good guy all of us were gone. So even that little bit of praise came with a shot.

Yeah, Brett had something, but the only reason he got the spotlight in Orondorf's view was that there was nobody else there to take it. All the big names of the previous era had moved on. Vince McMahon had nobody left to push, so Brett got the push by default.

Ordorf finished the thought. There it is. Bret Hart got his run because the older stars had left the building.

If Ordorf and his generation had still been around, in his mind, Brett would never have gotten close to the top spot. And even after all of that, Ordorf still had more to say. When asked directly if Brett was a great worker, he was ready to knock him down another peg.

Terrible interview that I think he's bigger than he thinks he is or he acts bigger than what he is. Terrible on the microphone. Acts bigger than he is.

Full of himself, in other words. And when the interviewer pressed one more time and asked if Brett was a true superstar, Orondorf gave the final verdict. He was all right.

You know, do I think he was a superstar? No. He was all right.

That was the ceiling. Not great, not legendary, not a first ballot hall of famer, even though he actually is one. Just all right.

A guy from Canada who was good enough for his time in an era when the real stars in Paul Ordorf's mind were already gone. Like this rivalry with Brett Ordorf's relationship with this next wrestler also involved plenty of tension behind the scenes. The Ultimate Warrior.

Paul Ordorf was asked about the Ultimate Warrior, James Hellwigan, in a 2012 Inside the Ropes interview, and his answer was one of the shortest and rudest things he ever said about another wrestler. He said he had to go to the bathroom and called next. That was it.

That was the opening. Ordorf did not want to talk about Warrior for even one full sentence. He wanted the interviewer to move on.

He treated the mention of Warrior's name like a bad smell in the room. Just say next and let us all forget about him. But when he was pushed, he did give a longer answer.

And the answer was rooted in everything. Ordorf believed about the wrestling business. He said Warrior never paid his dues.

He said Warrior lacked experience. And he said that pushing bodybuilder types like Warrior over traditional workers was the worst move they could have made. To understand where this comes from, you have to understand the worldorf grew up in.

In the old territory system before Vince McMahon took over and made wrestling national. A new wrestler was expected to spend years learning the craft. You started at the bottom.

You did opening matches. You put over the veterans. You lost and you lost and you lost and you learned.

You traveled thousands of miles. You slept in cheap motel. You worked in Puerto Rico and Memphis and Florida and Texas.

You bled. You broke bones. You paid your dues.

Warrior did none of that in Orondorf's eyes. He trained for a short time, got signed and went straight to the top on the strength of his body and his intensity. He did not have the miles.

He did not have the technique. He did not have the ring general ship. He was in Orondorf's view a manufactured product.

a guy who looked like a superhero but did not have the wrestling knowledge to back it up. And it got worse from there. Ordorf believed that Vince McMahon was pushing Warrior on purpose, not because Warrior was the best guy for the job, but because he made McMahon look smarter.

Ordorf felt that Vince liked to push men who could not carry a match on their own. So that Vince himself would always be seen as the true star maker. The wrestlers were just interchangeable.

The Office was the real draw. And Warrior, in Ordorf's mind, was the perfect example of that system. a guy with all the tools of a superstar on paper and none of the substance behind it.

There's no big documented personal feud between Orondorf and Warrior. They did not have a program together. They did not fight backstage.

There was no famous incident where the two of them came to blows. This was not about hate born from a real event. This was about hate born from principle.

Ordorf hated everything Warrior represented. He hated that the business he loved was moving away from the workers and toward the look. He hated that a man could skip the process and still get the crown.

He hated that fans cheered for it. and when the microphone got put in front of him, he did not pretend otherwise. It is worth noting how much this went against the grain of what most fans felt.

The Ultimate Warrior was and still is one of the most beloved characters in wrestling history. When he died in 2014, the entire industry stopped and mourned. He was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame the same week.

Fans still chant his name at shows. His run at the top may have been short, but his impact was enormous. None of that mattered to Ordorf.

To him, the Warrior story was proof that the business had lost its way. It was proof that people who did not know wrestling were making the decisions. It was proof that everything he had suffered to learn, all the years in the small territories, all the injuries, all the miles could be thrown out the window for a guy with big arms and face paint.

And once Warrior became the world champion, once he stood in the ring with the belt that Terry Funk and Harley Race had carried, the belt that Orondorf himself had wanted so badly, the disrespect was complete. That is why the answer was so short. That is why he said he had to go to the bathroom.

That is why he said next. Because to Paul Ornorf, the Ultimate Warrior was not worth the breath it took to talk about him. Just as Warrior had his share of backstage conflicts, another major star also found himself on Ordorf's bad side.

Lex Luger. Luger had everything promoters wanted in a wrestling star. He had the size, the look, and the physique that [music] earned him the name The Total Package.

But Paul Orondorf couldn't understand why he was pushed so hard in his eyes. Luger simply wasn't good enough in the ring. When Orondorf arrived in WCW in the mid 1990s, his body was already breaking down.

He was dealing with nerve damage. His arm was starting to shrink. His neck was in constant pain.

He was near the end of his run as an active wrestler and moving toward a road agent and producer role. And he found himself in a locker room full of new stars that he had not come up with. Sting, the Steiners, Sid Vicious, and Lex Luger.

Ordorf was asked in a shoot interview what he thought of the new generation of WCW guys. He had good things to say about some of them. Sting.

I mean, Sid [music] and Steiner, those guys I I liked a lot. He liked Sid. He liked the Steiners.

He thought Sting was okay. Big respectful nods to the men he felt earned their spots. But then the name Luger came up and the whole tone of the interview changed in an instant.

I really didn't have a lot of respect for Luger and those I thought he was a terrible no respect. [music] Terrible. Two words that sum up decades of feeling in one breath.

But Ordorf was not done. He kept going. And this is where the criticism turned from professional to personal.

[music] It was a poor excuse. Poor excuse to have a body like [music] that acts like such a system. Now think about what Orondorf is saying here.

This is not a critique of Luger's ring work. This is not about missed spots or bad matches or poor booking decisions. This is a shot at the man himself.

Ordorf is saying that Luger had all the physical gifts you could ask for. One of the most impressive bodies in the history of the industry and he wasted it. He looked like a Greek statue.

and in Orondorf's opinion carried himself like the opposite of what that body should represent. It was disrespect on a whole different level. Ordorf repeated the point again in the same interview to make sure everyone got it.

He's puking puking. That was the picture Ordorf painted. A man built like a warrior acting like something else entirely.

And when the interviewer asked if Luger had potential, if he could have been a bigger name, Ordorf shut it down completely. I never heard. There was no way to soften it.

There was no diplomatic version. Ordorf did not respect Luger, did not think he was a good wrestler, and did not think much of him as a man. He called him a poor excuse.

He said the body was wasted, and he made it clear that if he had ever had to work with the guy in his prime, it would not have gone well. The interesting thing is that Orondorf and Luger actually had some of the same training influences. They both had connections to Florida wrestling and the school of hero Matsuda.

They both had physiques that made them stand out in a crowd. On paper, they should have gotten along. They came from a similar place, but something about Luger's personality rubbed Ornorf the wrong way from the beginning, and time never changed his mind.

There is no famous fight between Orondorf and Luger. There is no story about them getting physical. This was pure verbal contempt.

Ordorf never had a program with Luger. He never worked a big match against him. He just had to watch this guy walk into WCW as a top star, get pushed as a main event player, and headline pay-per-views.

And every time it happened, he shook his head. Part of this was the WCW locker room itself. Ordorf had come from the WWF where things were run tight and everybody knew their place.

WCW was different. It was looser. It was messier.

There were guys with big contracts and big attitudes and not enough big matches to back it up. Orf described the WCW locker room as second rate compared to WWF. And in his eyes, Luger was one of the reasons why.

A guy who should have been a top hand wasting the gifts that God had given him. A poor excuse, a And that was the final word. Like Luger, the final name on this list was another powerful figure who had a complicated relationship with Ordorf.

Vader, Big Van Vader, three-time WCW World Heavyweight Champion, 300-lb giant with legitimate athletic credentials, former professional football player who had a body full of muscle and a mean streak that made him one of the most feared men in wrestling. And [music] Paul Ordorf, in his own words, called him a jerk, then he beat him up. To understand this story, you have to picture the scene.

It was 1995 at a WCW TV [music] taping. The location was center stage in Atlanta. Ordorf was no longer a full-time wrestler.

At this point, he was working in the office as a road agent, helping to produce shows and coordinate the wrestlers behind the scenes. His body was falling apart. His right arm was atrophying due to nerve [music] damage.

He was in constant pain, but he still had the responsibility of making sure things got done on time. That day, there was an important promo that needed to [music] be filmed. The camera crew was on the clock.

The union was about to take a break. Time was tight and Vader was needed for the interview. [music] Somebody was sent to get him.

He said no. Somebody else was sent. He said no again.

Finally, Kevin Sullivan asked Orondorf if he would go handle it. We started about 7 something. So, we only had about 15 minutes and it was a very important interview.

So, the pressure was on. There was no time to argue. Orf needed a yes, and he needed it fast.

He walked over to Vader and asked him calmly, like one grown man talking to another. and I just like I'm talking here to you and said, "Leon, do you mind uh doing this interview? " He was polite about it.

He used Vader's real name, Leon. He treated him like a man, not like a piece of meat. He asked, not demanded.

And the response was not just [music] no. The response was disrespect. And you know, he said some nasty [music] words.

And you know, it was kind of like this. What do you What's your deal? Nasty words in front of everybody, [music] in front of the boys, in front of the office.

Ordorf was standing there. a man who worked for the company being publicly disrespected by a wrestler who did not want to do his job. And when someone tries that in front of a room full of men who make their living being tough, you cannot just walk away.

Not in that [music] world. The heat rose, voices got louder, and then according to Ordorf, Vader made the first move. He threw [music] the first punch.

And here is why that detail matters so much. If if I would have ever [music] thrown the first punch, I'd have been fired. Right?

That is the key line. Ordorf could not throw the first punch. He was on the office side.

If he had started the fight, he would have lost his job that [music] day. So, he stood there, took the sucker punch from a man who outweighed him by around 80 lb. [music] And then he went to work.

He was up in an instant. Nerve damage in his arm and all. Body breaking down and all.

67 fights of mileage on his frame and all. He was up. And then came the classic Ordorf line.

The one every wrestler who was ever in the locker room with him has heard him say. The much smaller Ordorf in shower shoes got the better of the much larger Vader, knocked him down, and stood over him. Jim Cornet famously described the sound of the fight as sounding like someone beating two fish together.

That was the noise, not a fight. Fish slapping on a cutting board. The fallout was serious.

Vader's aura took a real hit. It is one thing to be a monster on television. It is another thing to get knocked out in front of the whole locker room by a road agent in flip-flops.

Vader [music] was sent home. He was suspended, and within a short time, his run in WCW was effectively over. He soon left for the WWF.

Ordorf stayed on as an agent and he later said the fight actually helped him keep his spot in [music] the company for another 5 years. In the years that followed, Ornorf and Vader both softened a little. They both admitted that things had gotten out of hand.

But Ordorf never took back the words. He called Vader a jerk. He said Vader was a jerk to everybody, not just to him.

And he made it clear that in his old school territory raised, blood- earned world, disrespect had a price. Even a man twice your size had to pay it if he crossed the line. Paul Orondorf clearly had strong opinions about his fellow wrestlers.

But which of these five rivalries do you think had the most serious [music] bad blood? Let me know in the comment section. For more videos like this, click on this next card on your screen.