Glacier on Mortal Kombat Fallout, Dusty Rhodes and the End of WCW

Fred: What’s up, everybody? This is Fred Richani of TheSportsCourier.com, joined by a very special guest, Mr. Ray Lloyd, better known as former WCW Superstar Glacier. Ray, how you doing, man? A mutual friend told me you’ve been doing some really cool stuff since WCW, so I’ll ask you that first: How’s everything going in life after WCW?

Glacier: You know what, Fred, it’s been pretty good. I’m sitting here in South Florida staring at the beach right now. I was with the company almost until the end. I got cut loose a couple of months before it finally went under. It was a great ride the whole way, and I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I was so fortunate to be part of what I consider one of, if not the greatest periods of professional wrestling ever, the Monday Night Wars. If you were a fan, there was no better time, and being involved in it was great, too.

Since then I’ve done a good bit with my acting career, but I’m always going to have my hand in wrestling. I love it, and I think I can still contribute to the industry in a couple of unique ways. Before I wrestled full-time, I was a schoolteacher. I got my master’s degree in education, and I went back to teaching for a while after wrestling. You go from being on television to walking into a classroom, and the kids are thinking, “Wait a minute, did I just see you on TV?” I still make appearances as much as possible, but I’ve slowed down as far as getting in the ring. Some old injuries are catching up with me.

Fred: My notes say you’ve got a website coming out soon, an online consulting service.

Glacier: I want to keep the name under wraps, because the site’s not completely up and running yet, but I guarantee you’ll be one of the first people I contact. Essentially, I partnered with a good friend of mine in Los Angeles, Ric Drasin. Ric is an old-school wrestler, and he’s also a world-famous bodybuilder who was Arnold Schwarzenegger’s training partner back at the original Gold’s Gym. He’s the guy who drew the original Gold’s Gym logo. He’s very passionate about health and wellness and especially wrestling, and he has a YouTube channel called Ric’s Corner with more than 7 million views.

Unfortunately, there are a lot of wrestling schools out there that don’t need to be calling themselves wrestling schools. Do your homework and you’ll find out which ones. But even at the good ones, the one thing they don’t teach, and a lot of times they just don’t have the time while they’re teaching in-ring skills, is how to manage your career once you step out the door, whether you want to be a wrestler, a manager, a referee or even a promoter.

I got the idea from Bonnie Gillespie, a career coach I work with in my pursuit of acting. She has a course called Self-Management for Actors, and once I took it, I thought, actors are a lot like wrestlers. They get into it because they love the craft, but no one teaches them how to market themselves, promote themselves or negotiate, all the things you need to know to survive while chasing that big break. And to be realistic enough to ask, “What are my expectations, and how realistic are they?” Sometimes people sell you a pipe dream and make it sound like you’re a few steps away from the main event on TV. We all know it’s not that easy.

So our service is going to be online and very interactive. For a minimal monthly membership fee, you’ll get weekly videos and an online forum where you can discuss the topic of the week and promote yourself throughout the country and the world, if you’re looking to go into a different territory. Right now, trying to get booked outside your own little area is throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. We’ll also do live weekly calls to answer questions and give feedback. I want there to be one definitive place for anybody in the wrestling industry, or any fan who’s serious about a career in it. There’s nothing like that out there right now. The two guys who influenced my career the most were Lou Thesz and Dusty Rhodes, so you can imagine I learned a few things from them. I feel it’s my obligation to pass that along to the next generation.

Fred: You’re definitely one of the good guys. I’ve talked to a lot of people, and that sentiment seems to be across the board. A lot of people know you for your WCW run as Glacier, based on the Mortal Kombat character Sub-Zero, but you were wrestling long before that, right?

Glacier: Yeah. I just celebrated my 26-year anniversary in wrestling. I broke in in April of ’87, the spring of my senior year of college. I had just finished playing football at Valdosta State University in Georgia, and there was a small wrestling show that taped there. A bunch of us college students would go watch the tapings on Saturday mornings, and I became friends with one of the wrestlers, a big guy who looked every bit the part. He kept encouraging me to come work out. He had a ring in his backyard and was starting to train guys. I didn’t go at first, because I didn’t know if I was cut out for it. In the late ’80s, before the internet, wrestling schools weren’t on every corner like they seem to be now. You had to know somebody who knew somebody just to get an invitation into a ring.

One day I went with one of my best buddies, a teammate who was as big a fan as I was. To this day, that was one of the ugliest and hardest rings I’ve ever been in, but you don’t know what you don’t know. I thought all rings were like that. After my first workout, I’ll never forget stepping outside the ring and thinking, “This is what I’m supposed to be doing. I’ve found it.” Up to that time, I really thought football was that for me. But my passion literally switched from football to wrestling in one afternoon.

I went through five or six months of pretty brutal training that spring and summer. It was not a natural thing for me to learn. For probably the first three years, I felt like I was going out there trying not to embarrass myself, and it took that long to gain the confidence where I felt I’d earned the right to call myself a professional wrestler. I was very lucky to have great mentors along the way, guys like Tommy Rich, Mr. Wrestling No. 2 and Ted Oates. A few years earlier I’d been watching those guys on TV, and now I was sharing a locker room with them. In the early ’90s I went over to Japan and wrestled for UWFi, and before that I was one of the faceless opponents on WCW Saturday Night. I was about nine years in the business before I got my break as Glacier.

Fred: You definitely paid your dues. You were a standout football player and a martial artist. How did your family react when you said, “Hey, Mom, I’m going to be a pro wrestler”?

Glacier: I was truly fortunate to come from a great family. My parents totally supported me and my twin brother in just about everything we decided to do, even when we had some crazy notions. I’d trained for a few weeks before I let them in on it, and they were cautiously optimistic, I think. I was getting ready to graduate, and for anybody out there chasing that dream, teaching, as challenging as it is, is a great career schedule-wise. You usually have your weekends off and a summer break of about two and a half months. Or become a substitute teacher. It doesn’t pay great, but it pays enough that you can work when you need to, and if you get a booking during the week, you can take it. It worked out great for me.

Fred: A lot of guys, especially during the Monday Night Wars, put all their eggs in the pro wrestling basket, and for a lot of them it backfired. Looking back, you’re probably relieved you had that backup plan.

Glacier: Whether it’s acting, music, wrestling, anything, you’ve got to chase it realistically. One of many things Lou taught me, when we were going back and forth to Japan, was, “You’re going to get your break one of these days. I think you have what it takes. But even if you get to that top level, it may not last long, so be prepared.” During my nearly five-year run, which was a roller coaster ride in itself, I remember thinking almost every day that it could end any day.

When things came to an end, I had started a professional training center. Our main business was prepping athletes coming out of college for the NFL combine. But that’s only one part of the year, and I figured the money I was making from wrestling would help sustain it the rest of the year. Then boom, one day we’re all out of a job. I kept the business going for about a year, but I was putting more into it than I was getting out. Luckily, a good friend of mine was a department head at a really great high school in Marietta, Georgia, and he offered me a teaching position. I was so fortunate I had that degree to fall back on. And ironically, there was a young kid walking around the hallways of that school, a very colorful person back then, named Cody Rhodes, who of course went on to be a WWE Superstar.

Fred: Cody’s definitely come a long way. Around the time you were cast as Glacier, the UFC was just beginning. With your martial arts background, did it ever cross your mind to go into the UFC instead?

Glacier: It never caught my eye enough to venture into it. Especially at the end of WCW, I was a little tired. My whole life up to that point had been go, go, go and train, train, train, and it was nice to exhale. Then one of the highlights of my career, and really my life, happened. Growing up, my two heroes were Evel Knievel and Dusty Rhodes. When your childhood hero calls you one day and says, “Raymond, I’m opening my own company, and I’d like you to come work for me,” you can imagine how long it took me to answer. For about three and a half years, I was proudly what Dusty called his lieutenant, his right-hand guy. Those were some of the best years of my career, because I got to know Dusty on a level most people never do.

Fred: Were all those UWFi matches works, or were there a couple like what was rumored in Pride, where one guy thought it was a shoot and the other knew it was a work?

Glacier: Let’s just say stuff happened. It was a little combination. You’d sit down and go over some stuff, but you could win by having the other guy lose all his points, by submission, which could be a shoot or a work, or by knockout. So no matter what you discussed, if you got your butt knocked out, that was it. You never really knew what you were stepping into over there. On one level it excited me, and on another level it terrified me. I remember my first fight, those big iron doors opening up to the walkway to the ring. About 80 percent of the time it was the American wrestlers against the Japanese, and when the spotlight hit me, I thought, “Man, I feel like a lamb to the slaughter.” I think how I responded in that first match got me into Lou’s good graces.

Fred: The tide shifted in the business with the formation of the nWo in 1996, which I believe was based on the UWFi vs. New Japan angle.

Glacier: Yeah, that makes sense. I was gone from UWFi by that point. I wish that style would have caught on over here the way it did over there. Then in January of ’96, I first sat down with Eric, and that meeting got things going.

Fred: What made Eric Bischoff look at you? It was an era of impressive physiques and a deep roster. What did he see in you that made him cast you as Glacier?

Glacier: I’ll try to make this as brief as possible. All the WCW boys trained at the same gym, and I became good friends with Diamond Dallas Page. To this day I call him my crazy big brother. Around Christmas of ’95, Page and I were shopping at the big mall in Atlanta and sitting there eating lunch. I had put a different character on tape that Page pitched to Eric, but Eric was lukewarm. So I told Page, “I’ve never really incorporated martial arts into my matches in the States. I’m thinking about doing that.” He tilted his head like a dog, because I’d never let on. I said, “I’ve been studying since I was 15 years old.” He said, “Let me take this back to Eric.”

What I found out later is Eric had already seen how popular the Mortal Kombat movie was and had that concept on his mind for the wrestling ring. So I sat down to dinner with Eric near where Page lived at the time. It was about an hour of conversation, very cordial, and inside I was screaming. After it was over, I’ll never forget, he said, “Are you still wrestling on the independent circuit?” I said yes. He said, “Well, I want to sign you to a contract, and I want to pay you to essentially disappear from the independents. Don’t tell anybody. Just disappear for the next few months.” All of a sudden I was on the payroll while still working my regular job as fitness director of the Atlanta Athletic Club, one of the top country clubs in the country. I had a pretty good gig, but this was my dream.

Then came the behind-closed-doors meetings. A tremendously talented special effects guy came on to design what would become Glacier and the other three characters as well. They were always trying to find a spot for Chris Kanyon, because he was so tremendously talented, so they quickly decided Kanyon would be No. 2. Then Bryan Clark came on. Bryan and I had known each other for years. It wasn’t until a while later that Ernest Miller came on board. That’s the nutshell of how it went from nothing to getting going.

Fred: You got a big push initially, with an awesome entrance. I remember being 7 or 8 years old watching that and thinking, “This guy’s pretty badass.” They put a ton of money into the gimmick and the presentation, and it’s one of the more memorable gimmicks in WCW history, but it never really got past the midcard. Why do you feel it didn’t take off to the next level?

Glacier: There was a lot of great talent and a lot of smart people behind the scenes, but I started to figure out the lay of the land with WCW. It was almost week by week: “OK, we got through this week. What do we do next week?” instead of, “What’s the big picture?” Years later, people who were in those positions told me, “We were handed this thing, but we were never told what to do with it.” Back then the booking committee changed on such a regular basis. One day you could be in somebody’s long-term plans, and then boom, there’s a change, and you’re sitting at home, not involved in any angle.

Part of it was the nWo. It changed the whole dynamic of wrestling. All of a sudden it became cool to be who you really were, supposedly, and anything with a gimmicky side to it seemed to be just that, gimmicky. I’m not knocking that at all, but everything else became an afterthought. Glacier started off as a great idea, but I think at some point Eric handed it off to other people who weren’t sure where the vision was. That’s why the hype leading up to my debut went so long. Honestly, I was getting tired of watching it. There comes a time when you either deliver what you’ve been promising or the fans start to turn on it, and that’s what I had to battle. But at the end of the day, I didn’t just get a break. I got the break of a lifetime.

It’s humorous to me when I see somebody’s list of the worst gimmicks of all time and I’m on it. Then literally a week later, WWE puts out its top 10 Superstar entrances of all time, and I’m on that list. Hey, it’s subjective.

Fred: Let’s get to some fan questions. Dave Prazak, formerly a color commentator for Ring of Honor, wants to know if your entire world is like the frozen section at the grocery store.

Glacier: I have a lot of fun still living the gimmick sometimes. It’s definitely my favorite part of the grocery store. I embrace it, because whether people liked it or not, they’re still talking about it. I still get fan mail, people asking me to sign stuff. After all the things that maybe weren’t positive experiences, which everybody’s going to have in this business, those are the moments when I go to my mailbox and think, “I impacted somebody.” That feels really good.

One of the coolest things I never anticipated is that kids who never saw me on TV come up and embrace it. I still try to stay in decent shape, and thank God I still have most of my hair, so I kind of still look like I did on TV. I have all the original armor, and because it was designed to look old, it still works. It has that ancient warrior superhero look kids gravitate to in video games. So I feel a huge obligation to be true to the gimmick. Maybe a young fan doesn’t know me coming in, but when they leave that night, I want them to be a fan. I take that very much to heart.

Fred: A viewer says his friends used to get so mad because he’d beat them with Glacier in WCW/nWo Revenge on the Nintendo 64.

Glacier: Thank you for that. My niece called me once, and I thought she was going to say something nice like, “Have a good match tomorrow night.” She said, “I just kicked your butt on the video game again.” But seeing your likeness in a video game is probably one of the coolest things anybody could ever expect.

Fred: Speaking of video games, since the Mortal Kombat series was airing on TNT at the time, did the Mortal Kombat people ever approach you about their games or the show?

Glacier: Ironically, kind of the opposite. When I debuted and had my first few matches, the costume looked so much like Sub-Zero. I got a call from Eric to come down to the offices, which were still at the CNN Center in downtown Atlanta. It was like the principal calling you into his office. He doesn’t tell me over the phone what it’s about. I walk in, and he says, “We’ve got to pull you off TV.” I’m thinking, “What did I screw up?” He says Midway, whoever owned the rights to the Mortal Kombat video game, shut it down because it was too similar to the character. In a way it was flattering, but also frustrating, because I was just getting my legs. I was thinking, “Well, this is my career.”

People may remember my original costume was deep blue, and when I came back, it was more blue and silver. I was off TV for about three months, I think, and it killed the momentum. I’ll never forget Eric saying, “You know me, I’m always up for a good fight, but we will lose this one.” I also have to thank Terry Taylor so much. Every time I went to him with a question, he gave me an honest answer, whether I was going to like it or not, and I needed that. Terry really helped me come up with ideas to pitch to the new booking committees to give the character some extra legs.

Fred: Terry Taylor’s definitely a good dude, and now he’s part of WWE developmental with the NXT program, so those kids are lucky. Were you under contract with WCW to the very end?

Glacier: I was there right up to about the end of 2000. Then my contract ran out, and they kind of kept me on the shelf, match for match. Terry Taylor was seriously considering bringing me on board as a trainer at the Power Plant, which is what I really wanted to do at that point in my career. That’s the other reason this mentoring and consulting thing is coming into play. So I was still involved until almost the end, but I wasn’t under contract those last few months.

Fred: When WCW closed down, was it a shock, or could you see the writing on the wall?

Glacier: A little bit of a shock, but not surprising, because the rumor mill had been floating for so long. But there was always, “Ted’s not going to let it go.” Then when Time Warner came in, that changed the whole attitude of things. Unless you were one of the top dogs, probably 90 percent of the guys had contracts that weren’t in our favor. We had what was called a 90-day clause. It might sound like a three-year deal, but every 90 days you were evaluated and could be cut loose at any time.

This is going to sound odd, but when I first heard the news, I remember feeling a kind of relief. I realized that for the last five years, I’d been walking on eggshells, not wanting to tick off the wrong person who might know the booker and get me fired. I thought, “Wow, my life’s back to normal.” I didn’t expect that. But it was sad. Dusty had started his company already, and he got a deal for three rings, so I went up there to help load them up. I remember thinking, “Wow, it’s over.” The finality of it was a hard pill to swallow.

Fred: Ray, thank you so much for the time. Young fans, if you didn’t get to witness WCW, maybe I’m biased because I grew up on that era, but it was an awesome time to be a wrestling fan. Where can fans find you online?

Glacier: You can find me on Facebook at my Ray Lloyd Glacier fan page. Please like that. I’m going to kick it into high gear in the next couple of weeks, and I’ll be getting back with you, Fred, to announce the prelaunch of our site. I really hope it’s going to impact the wrestling industry in a way that hasn’t been done before. I feel like I owe that to the business. I also have a podcast called Breaking the Ice with Glacier on James Guttman’s World Wrestling Insanity site. And if you don’t mind me saying, as sincerely as I can: Thank you to every single wrestling fan. Without them I don’t have a career. Because the fans were so good to me, I’ve been able to spend the last 26 years doing something I absolutely love.

Fred: Wrestling fans are the greatest fans in the world, and you’re a great guy, Ray. We’d love to have you back when the consulting service launches.

Glacier: Excellent, sir. Thank you so much for your time.