Interview conducted: August 17, 2005
Host: Michael T
Report by Michael KopStick
Gerweck Hotline reporter Michael T interviewed former WWF, WCW, and ECW star Tammy Sytch, whose husband Chris Candido (former WWF tag team champion Bodydonna Skip) recently passed away. This is her first interview since Candido’s passing a few short months ago and it can be heard by calling (206) 888 - 3962. The call is free but long distance charges may apply. Call with your cell phone after 9:00PM or on the weekend because the interview spans a good 53 minutes.
Tammy says she’s doing alright, well, better at least. The first month of Chris's passing was obviously very rough for her. She didn't want to get out of bed, go anywhere, or talk to anyone at all. But time does heal all wounds and she has begun to feel more active with every passing day. “The busier I am the better I am,” she copes, announcing that she has been receiving plenty of bookings and show appearances to keep her occupied.
Host Michael T first gives her the opportunity to clear the air on several rumors, the first being a recent DWI charge she was reportedly given. She laughs that she got nothing of the sort. The story came about because she was booked for a “double shot,” meaning she had two wrestling bookings on one day, and after working the first show, she hurried to the next one but ended up in a pretty big car accident, preventing her from reaching her second destination. The promotion assumed she just no-showed them in order to take the first gig. That couldn’t have been further from the truth, she tried explaining to the promoters, but they wouldn’t hear of it. She tried to prove it to them by showing them her newly totaled car, but they rebuffed her, rather wanting to believe that she blew them off instead.
The whole situation is quite upsetting to her, she states, because she would work often with this promotion, the NWS. She actually lost money each time she worked for them and only continued to work with them, “because Chris and I have been there for fifteen years.”
Tammy says she actually saw NWS folk this past weekend in Atlantic City and she showed them her totaled car as proof and they were still stubbornly unmoved, she exasperates. But it isn’t much of a big deal, she says. She doesn’t need them as she has plenty of other opportunities ahead.
(Eric Simms, though, to his credit, reports that he does believe her story that she had a car accident; he was just upset that she attended this other booking from this rival promotion CSWF, “that she according to NWS management was not supposed to be at… Hopefully sometime in the future when Ms. Sytch double books herself she will be considerate enough to let both parties know this in advance.” Simms then goes on to bash CSWF for having green ink, or yellow stains or something, I don’t know, I’m not into New Jersey wrestling politics, Philadelphia wrestling politics, wrestling hotline politics, web site politics, or any other politics that doesn’t reach mainstream cable TV. Sorry.)
Rumor number two, Michael T brings up, is the fact that she didn’t even know that the TNA Chris Candido tag-team memorial series was taking place. This is true, she confirms. She didn’t even know until this very interview! Actually, Terry Taylor of TNA had been playing phone tag with her for a while, and she just didn’t get a chance to reach the rooster yet. But all he would say in his messages to her was to call him back without specifying what he wanted to speak about. It would have been nice if he would have informed her, in the messages he left, what was going on, she contends.
But no, to clear up rumor number three, she does not hold TNA accountable for Chris Candido’s death. Chris has been hurt millions of times in the ring, all wrestlers have, it is part of the job, and it is usually not the wrestling company’s fault when wrestlers do get injured. She doesn’t even blame the wrestler for landing on Chris wrong. A freak accident caused Chris to have his leg broken, nothing more. It was the Florida hospital, though, that should have given a better medical prescription or more accurate discharge information.
Chris’s parents, however, do hold TNA responsible but she hasn’t even spoken to them since the funeral so she’s not a part of that whole camp’s argument. She did see a lot of TNA management at the funeral and got a chance to speak to Dixie Carter for a moment and there was absolutely to tension of any kind between them. She would, in fact, be happy to return to TNA to work. She loves working, loves getting bookings, and would be excited to work for them again.
Tammy does not own the name Sunny. Nobody gets to keep their WWE produced names after they leave the company and can only use their infamous character trademarks if Vince gives special permission to do so. She is on very friendly terms with Vince and he did give her special permission to use the name, which is why she appears on many cards with the name Sunny.
Wait, so even though you’re buddy buddy with Vince, you chose to do Shane Douglas’s Hardcore Homecoming reunion show and not Vince’s ECW One Night Stand, T questions. Tammy addresses that Chris and her were actually booked to wrestle on both events, but after Chris passed away, she spoke to Tommy Dreamer and told him that she wouldn’t feel right coming to the show managing someone else. She was afraid that WWE wouldn’t use her correctly. She didn’t have the same concern with Douglas, though, since she trusts that he knows what to do with her. “I think Shane’s show was a better show anyway,” she figures, remarking that it felt more like a true ECW show while WWE’s version was more of a mere WWE card featuring some ECW wrestlers. “We’ll work together down the road,” she says of WWE.
But as for now, when it comes to WWE programming, “You can’t pay me to watch that show,” she freely expresses, and then whispers, “Oh my God, it’s so bad.” And how about them new crop of divas that WWE has got for themselves. Well, Sunny butters up her future coworkers by saying, “If it was legal I would put a bullet in every one of their heads.” (Lovely. Good to know which Sunny we’d be getting back.)
Trish Stratus is the exception, though. “I love Trish,” she says, although the two of them only met twice. Tammy used to say that Trish couldn’t cut a promo but now feels that Stratus did get a lot better after years of experience. Trish is now one of the only females in WWE that Tammy respects.
What about Sable? Is it true that Rena Mero was brought in to push Sunny aside? Not at all, Sytch clear up. You see, when Tammy (Tamara Murphy in the Event Center, I recall) first started with the company she was given a wrestler’s (independent contractor’s) contract. The only payment she received under that was her salary. After that, all expenses were up to her. But when the company started noticing that they had a girl with real charm and charisma, as well as her gorgeous looks, they realized that they had a PR goldmine in their stead. They quickly switched her to a production’s contract, which means that now all her road expenses were paid for. She would no longer be on the road like the rest of the boys for 30 days a month but was reduced to the nine days of TV and some special house shows. She now began mostly representing the company, doing public relation gigs and cohosting shows, like Livewire with Todd Pettengil. “At that time, I was the only one who could represent the company and make them look good,” she recalls. She found herself on Inside Edition, Extra, and on a scurry of other big media appearances in order to make the WWF look more respectable, not just some rasslin’ company. She would also meet with WWE execs who would want to know about this company they have a share of and she would charm the pants off them, too. She wasn’t on TV because her likeness was more essential to other aspects of the company, not because Sable joined Titan.
Speaking of our lovely princess, Sable claims that when she was in WWE she was sexually harassed. Tammy defends that everyone gets harassed in some way in the WWF locker room because when you are a girl with 50 men, everyone acts like they’re back in high school. “I’ve been ribbed like crazy and I’ve ribbed like crazy,” she remembers fondly. However, she points out that, “I’ve never been sexually harassed and never saw anyone sexually harass her.” Guys in the hall would do silly things like pants their good buddy Sunny but she considered that a rib, not sexual harassment. They were all just friends goofing around. They wouldn’t be pantsing Sable, though, because nobody really liked her. Her ribs were more stiff because she was not one of the boys like Sunny was. The only person who would actually talk to her was her husband Marc. “The boys couldn’t stand her,” she remembers vividly. So, any rib Sable got she immediately considered it sexual harassment, which was just not true.
Host Lord Nykon brings up the dreaded LOD 2000 gimmick she played a part in: That was actually fun, Tammy thinks back. Hawk and Animal were both fine with the concept since they were both getting old. The LOD2K helmets were a bit hokey, though, she critiques. She says she got along with Animal more because she was closer with him. Vince asked Joe (Animal) to look out for her on the road, make sure her hotel and meals were safe and that nobody was a threat to her. He was like her bodyguard/babysitter.
As for LOD’s new reincarnation, Sunny doesn’t know much about it, as she doesn’t watch WWE TV. If it isn’t executed well, then it is a bad idea, but if it is done properly and respectfully then it could be a good idea.
Sunny sees herself as the only female manager in wrestling, everyone else was merely a valet. The difference was that she was a mouthpiece that a valet can’t be. When Rena Mero tired to speak, Tammy recalls, she wouldn’t sound good at all.
Well, there was this one promo that Sable put on that was pretty good, but that was backstage. You see, one day Tammy was talking to fellow diva friend Terri Runnels and Rena ran up to Tammy screaming about how she better not mess with her. Rena yelled that she grew up on the streets and can kick her ass and therefore Tammy better not talk bad about her. But Tammy couldn’t help it, that’s how she is, saying what is on her mind, being honest even when people don’t like it. And her honesty toward Rena Mero was, “when you stand still you’re a very pretty girl. As soon as you start talking, though…you kill yourself.”
Sunny never had a problem working with Barry Horrowitz, or Horriblewitz as she called him on TV. She loved the guy, really. The other boys would go up to her and sympathize how bad it must be to get stuck working a program with the jobber, but she saw it differently. This angle gave them two pay per views and a plethora of TV time because it got over so well.
One time, she recalls, Skip, herself, Louis Spicolli, Owen Hart, and Hakushi we all going to a fancy dinner and she asked Barry if he wants to come with them (wow, what a group; to think that only half of them are still around today). Barry finally agreed to tag along and when it was time to order, he said to the waiter, “I need a stiff drink. Give me a Bloody Mary,” which had everyone chuckling about Barry’s choice of “stiff” drinks. When it was time to order food, Cheapowitz said, “I think ill have chicken, but will it be cheaper if I don’t get the sprouts with it?” They all thought that it was so funny how cheap he was that they all decided to pay for the back patter’s meal, but even still he wanted to make sure the restaurant wasn't charging for the sprouts. He was a cheap man, but great hearted.
She also had fun managing the Smoking Gunns. But she turned on the Godwinns to do so and that meant she was in for a lot of sloppings. She was never embarrassed of being slopped, it was practically the highlight of her career. She would be making the house show circuit, getting slopped on a nightly basis for two months. The maneuver even put her on the cover of WWF magazine (“Sunny, once so true, I slopped you…” it read, if I recall correctly). Billy Gunn, however, couldn’t stand the sloppy bucket treat and so Sunny would always chase Billy around throwing slop pieces at him after getting herself slopped. It wasn’t a big deal. The slop just consisted of leftover catering from lunch. Well, that was when it was landing on Sunny. She would make sure to lock up the bucket to make sure no one tampered with it, because for other guys, the Godwinns were known to sprinkle a little tinkle on it, in one of them pro wrestling good natured ribs.
Sunny loved cutting interviews, she was so good at it. One of her favorite scenes was firing the Smoking Gunns, putting on a huge temper tantrum in the process, an idea she stole from Paul Heyman’s temper tantrum in WCW a few years before, when he fired Madusa from the Dangerous Alliance in the same exact manner. Nobody caught the reference at the time.
Farooq, Ron Simmons, was such a nice man, but to introduce him by putting a condom on his head like some weird looking gladiator was a bit crazy, which is why they dropped that character fast and allowed him to Dominate. (Hey, at least he didn’t have to do things the Con-way.)
She had a great time co-hosting WWF Livewire with Todd Pettengil, and yes it was live. It was as interactive as Byte This, taking caller questions. At first, the calls weren’t screened so she would get literally any kind of questions, and she had no problem answering them. After that, though, WWF admin decided to screen the calls and only let through the softballs. It even got to a point where it was guys from the studio pretending to call in asking the questions.
It was the same situation, but more fun, on Shotgun Saturday Night, where she was given the "Under the Covers" segment, meant to be a juicy gossip forum. The first week out she wrote her own material and it was pretty hot, getting all the fans in attendance riled up, 'Ooh'ing and 'Ahh'ing. As soon as WWF officials heard the things she was saying though, like Ken Shamrock has been seen buying flowers for someone other than his wife, someone who's name starts with an S (Sunny? Sable? Sarah Polley?), they gave her a script to recite and she correctly predicted that it would bomb.
How did she find her way down Hardcore Lane? Well, Paul E. asked WWF if he could use her and and Vince had no problem with it, as he had an free working relationship with ECW.
She made her debut around Heatwave 1998. Heyman tried to convince her to declare ECW as her new home, and promised her double pay if she did, so she basically quit WWF in cutting that promo, leading to her official release from the WWF. She didn't mind at all because Paul was promising her the world, something that Heyman does to perfection, she informs. He has this way of being able to promise things, even if they seem like impossible goals for anyone to attain, Heyman just has this hypnotic energy about him that just makes you want to believe and follow. So, at the time of her release from the WWF she couldn't have been more thrilled. In hindsight, though, she now realizes she was better off with Vince.
But she had a great time working in ECW, even if all promises weren't fulfilled in the end. She remembers a green Dawn Marie trying to learn the ropes of this new business. Tammy actually taught her until she perfected her craft. The first few matches they had together were really bad catfights, but there was much improvement towards the end.
She also enjoyed her time with Triple Threat partner Bam Bam Bigelow. Unfortunately, nobody knows where he is right now. He gets like that, though, seemingly falling off the face of the planet. It might have something to do with domestic issues between him and his wife, who also doesn't kow where he is. It has actually been over a year now. Tammy says that she and Chris tried to go up to see him in Jersey since all his phone lines were disconnected, but he was nowhere to be found. He probably doesn't even know about Candido's passing, she assumes.
Her ECW stint didn’t end with a happy goodbye, either. The internet rumor about this firing was drugs; she says that Paul just wanted to make an example of her and Chris since everyone else was doing worse drugs than they were. The Extreme locker room featured drinking, pills, pot, heroine, coke, you name it. Tammy and Chris drank and did pills, nothing more, but that didn't mater to Paul. “He can be a jerk that way,” Tammy shrugs. But it wasn't that much of a big deal since they were already in talks with ECW-raider WCW.
They were three for three, getting fired next from WCW. This one was reported to be drugs, too, but the story behind this, Tammy clarifies, is that Eric Bischoff called them aside and pulled out pills, saying that the other girls found them in a bathroom stall she was using. This was the worst concoted story ever on the part of the WCW females because these were bodybuilding pills. Tammy doesn't bodybuild! There were other girls on the roster that did like to bulk up, like Asia and Midaja, but not her. She immedietely offered to take a urine test, which WCW officials adminstered the next day, eager to prove the former Boddydonna wrong. She took it and was then told that the results will be known in three weeks. In the meantime, she was given a paid suspension. Three weeks later she was told that WCW lost the results of the test. Tammy was fuming, going so far to tell Eric that he was full of it and was just too embarrassed to admit he was wrong.
But she was wrong in that sense because they eventually did find the results and told her they did so. The test shockingly reported negative. “You're a real jackass for accusing me,” Tammy told Uncle Eric, who decided to fire her for calling him names.
When Scott Steiner heard what was going on, he got even angrier than Tammy was. He learned that Kimberly was behind the whole thing, ran into the female locker room, grabbed the Diamond Doll by her shirt, hoisted her down the hall with her bags, and threw her out the door, threatening that if she ever shows up again in WCW he'd kill her. That was the last WCW saw of Kimberly Falkenberg.
Chris, now out of WCW, then went to work in Japan and Puerto Rico. An internet rumor suggested that Tammy was considering being an airline stewardess. This was indeed a passing thought of hers, but she never saw it through. Entertaining was her first and only love.
Tammy, who was the most downloaded woman on the internet in 1996 and 1997, sees one of her greatest accomplishments as being inducted into the Cauliflour Alley Club Hall of Fame as their youngest inductee ever. This HOF is the "industry's hall of fame," more respectable than WWE’s because it represents the whole industry, not just people who worked for a guy named Vince. She was crying onstage when she accepted her award.
She is sure she'll go back to WWE in time because her name is still good there, as she is on friendly terms with the McMahons. She was invited to Raw's ten year anniversary along with many other former WWE wrestlers. The reason they scrapped the idea to bring back many of the old timers was not because they would have had a poor showing of them, as reported all over the web. Rather, the seating for the event was so poor that they only were able to fit the current roster, and even not all of them. Bobby Heenan was also supposed to be there.
She is asked which locker room had the best comraderie and she quickly answers ECW. "We were all friends.” The best overall company to work for, though, was WWF.
Right now she is focussed on getting back into "Sunny" shape after a year of just letting herself go and enjoying all those foods that were forbidden to her as an entertainer. "I wasn’t obese,” she feels, she was just enjoying life.
She is back on her diet now and says she just has 15 pounds to go to get back to the old her. It is especially harder for her to maintain the slim figure because she isn't meant to be so skinny. She is 90% Russian and 10% Polish. When she is Sunny, she basically has to limit herself to grilled chicken and broccoli.
Although Vince has always said that she should just give him a call when she wants to return, she wants to be ready, mentally and physically. She isn't a wrestler but she would love to manage again, being ringside is her number one love. No girl can work ringside like she can, she guarantees. As for who on the current WWE roster she would like to manage, once again she reiterates that she can't sit through WWE programming, but Randy Orton has caught her eye and she wouldn't mind working with him. (Just watch your gym bags, then.) "I would not want to work with Chrisitan," she says mysteriously. She would have no problem working with Chris Jericho, though. "He's a good firend of mine," she says of Y2J.
She also wouldn't want to work with Triple-H, she says (therebye geting fired even before coming in). Ric Flair, definitely, but not Triple-H, she underscores.
But five seconds later she says that she has no heat with any man. "I get along with men better than women." The new divas that have no idea about wrestling at all she would probably want to rip left and right. They wouldn't be able to take her ribs. She was taught Ribbing 101 by the best, the late Davey Boy Smith and Owen Hart, so she knows it all. She is sure that she will be able to handle herself.
Speaking of ribs, she has a number of them written down in her book that she started writing. This book isn't going to be a tell all, rip all. She's not out to ruin families. She just has so many tales from the road that she wants to document. This is a book by Tammy, not Missy Hyatt, which was very damaging because everything she wrote was all true, the former Vixxxen atests. Speaking of which, "I never should have done that, it was so horrible... brings back bad memories." Essentially she was promised a lot of money to bare all but as soon as the site wasn't as successfull as initally planned, the money never fully surfaced. She's not ashamed of what she did, she just regrets it.
Sunny was actually the first WWE diva to be offered a Playboy shoot, which she turned down. She was 23 at the time and the WWF fans were writing to Heff insessantly, wanting to see some fun in the Sun. So Playboy quickly came calling but all Sunny could think of was her father who passed away three years before and how he would be rolling in his grave. It was just too soon, she felt. She didn’t have trouble doing bikini shoots, although lingerie pictorials did leave her uncomfortable. But if offered again, Tammy says that she would probably do a pictorial spread as she is older now, knows her body more, and is more sure of herself, as well.
And speaking of Sunny days, she was the center of one of Shawn Michaels's famous taunts towards Bret Hart, where he hinted that Bret has been seeing "Sunny days" lately, a reference that Bret was possibly having an affair with Tammy Sytch. The reason this came about, Tammy explains, was because she and HBK were very close friends, “I was called the click chick.” At one time she was more a part of the group than Triple-H was. Needless to say, she got a lot of heat for hanging out with them. She didn't want this to be and soon began hanging out with the rest of the guys in the locker room, too. Shawn then became very jealous that Sunny wasn't exclusively a click chick and one of the wrestlers she became friendly with was the Hitman. Bret was always nice, and he was as private as she was, never wanting to change with the other guys in the boys' communal locker room, so Sunny allowed him the use of her private locker room when she wasn't using it. She would leave and he would enter and change by himself. Shawn said his "Sunny days" poke merely due to jealousy that she wasn't such good friends with him anymore. But Shawn was an ass to everyone, she states; he and Candido even hated each other.
“I did not sleep with Bret Hart,” she assures, though she does admit to babysitting his kids when they came to visit Hart in the WWF locker room.
And, boy, was that Montreal incident "a mess," but she feels that Bret has always been a businessman who knows how to look out for himself, his bank account, and his children. If a return is good for business, she sees him taking the plunge back into WWE world.
For the record, Chris Candido quit the WWF becuase he didn't like what they were doing with him. They wanted him to be a part of their new light heaviweight division but he wasn't interested, feeling he had more to offer to a wrestling company than highflying stunts.
Shane Douglas is a great man, Tammy compliemtnets her friend. And yes, there is a Hardcore Homecoming tour planned in the future and Tammy looks to be a part of it. She, Chris, Shane, and Francine were at one time incredibly close. They all got tattoos on the same night, they would party together, go to strip clubs together, and knew how to have fun.
She has various tattoos all over her body, many of them in memorial of close relatives who have passed away, like Chris, her father, and her niece. She kids that she doesn't want anyone else to die, she doesn't want anymore tattoos.
That concludes the interview, her first in a long time. She seemed as content as one can be in her situation, and to be looking forward to what lies ahead of her. Hopefully, after this interview, despite her ready to put bullets in the heads of WWE divas, despite her choosing HH over One Night Stand, despite her choosing Ric Flair over HHH, and not being able to stand watching WWE TV, hopefully there will still be something lying ahead of her. Don't blame her for her words, though. She's just being honest. Would we want anything less from her? Don't answer, Laurenitis.
