X-Pac still marvels over that one time the nWo ran the Steiner Brothers off the road.
Kevin Nash was at the wheel. Scott Hall was riding shotgun. X-Pac, whose real name is Sean Waltman and wrestling name at the time, in early 1997, was Syxx, was in the backseat recording the road-rage incident on a camcorder. Nash kept ramming Scott and Rick Steiner’s car in the segment until it flipped over in a horrifying wreck.
“This was one of my favorite things I ever did with the nWo,” Waltman told The Post with pride.
Waltman was speaking on behalf of A&E’s documentary about the nWo in their “Biography: WWE Legends” series, which debuts on Sunday, Feb. 19 at 8 p.m.
As Waltman recalls the road-rage wasn’t something with a lot of advanced planning from his perspective on “WCW Monday Nitro”
“I just showed up to work that day and they said we were running the Steiner Brothers off the road,” he said.
True believers of pro wrestling would be shocked to learn that the Steiners didn’t do their own stunt for this scene. This responsibility fell to Ellis Edwards, a longtime stuntman for WCW and later WWE. Edwards has done work in all sorts of other TV and films, including “Baywatch” and “Furious 7.”
“All the talking in the car was ad-libbed,” Waltman said.
He doesn’t recall having trepidation that the part of the stunt they did actually do, bumping up the Steiners’ car prior to the part of the scene where it flipped, could go awry.
“It could have, but just at the time there wasn’t a lot we felt could hurt us — it’s just not something we were scared of,” he said. “I should probably only speak for myself, but I wasn’t scared. I’ve been in several car accidents, gotten f–ked up a little bit, and just what we did for a living in general, it was nothing I was too concerned about.”
The nWo essentially ran roughshod over WCW from the moment Hall and Nash left WWE (WWF at the time) and showed up in 1996, to the infamous Hulk Hogan heel turn at “Bash at the Beach.” The storyline allowed WCW to defeat WWE in the head-to-head rating and and put Vince McMahon’s company on the ropes during the famed “Monday Night Wars.” Of everything they did, ranging from spray-painting the backs of their numerous victims to throwing Rey Mysterio Jr. up against a trailer like a lawn dart, the Steiner Brothers stunt might have had the most profound feeling of true violence. It was years before the scene ever re-aired.
“It was crazy,” said Waltman, now a two-time WWE Hall of Famer with the nWo and D-Generation X. “It was attempted vehicular homicide!”
Waltman has publicly battled addiction to drugs such as cocaine, methamphetamine and prescription painkillers. He attempted suicide in Mexico in 2008. In the interview, he opened up about his recovery journey and what made him realize he had to turn his life around.
“Whenever I thought I finally hit bottom, or other people thought that, I would always prove myself and others wrong. I’d hit another bottom,” he said. “It’s just one of those things where for me where for the longest time I wanted to want to be better. I just felt like, ‘What’s wrong with me for not actually being able to do this?’
“It just gradully happened for me. I can’t answer what rock bottom was. Because you would think hanging myself from the roof of my apartment in Mexico, or other really bad things, would be the thing that would do it — and they weren’t. I made progress but I would fall again.
“Finally I just got around the right people, and the right resources, and I’m just really fortunate to have a lot of great people that didn’t give up on me. Or even that came into my life in recent years that felt like taking a chance on me.”