Mosh, one half of the Attitude Era favourites The Headbangers has revealed that the duo turned down the WWE’s first offer of a full time contract.
Mosh and Thrasher arrived in the WWE, then WWF, in 1996, first as The Headbangers before being repackaged as The Flying Nuns. The change would prove to be short-lived as the team soon reverted back to their original name.
During the Headbanger’s early time with the company they worked under part-time contacts. However, when full-time deals were offered, the contracts weren’t what they had seemed initially. Speaking to The Major Pod Network, Mosh revealed that while the contracts may have looked promising at first, under closer inspection the team would actually be losing money by singing the new deal.
“Bruce Prichard came to us and was like, ‘we’re offering you a full-time, three-year deal.’ We were like, ‘this is awesome.’ Then I read through the contract and was like, ‘this really isn’t that good.’ We went back to TV and were like, ‘Bruce, this really isn’t a good contract for us.’ He was like, ‘what are you talking about? You don’t want to be full-time and sign a long-term deal?’ I said, ‘I’ll sign a lifetime deal right now, but…’ our part-time deal at the time, we got $500 per night for TV. They paid for all of our travel, hotel, and car. (With the full-time deal), we had to pay for our own hotel and car and we were only getting $100 to be at TV. I was gonna lose money to be at TV.”
However, Mosh went on to explain that he was able to renegotiate, with everything working out well in the end.
“Bruce goes, ‘What are you thinking?’ What I was thinking is, take our part-time contract, add the royalties into it, and make it a three-year deal or five-year deal or lifetime deal. He came back the next day with a whole new contract. It worked out well.”
During their initial run with the company the pair would win the tag team titles in 1997, and break-up and reunite before both Mosh and Thrasher were released in the summer of 2001. It was during one of these separations where Mosh would briefly appear as the infamous Beaver Cleavage character.
The Headbangers returned for one more short WWE run in 2016, tangling with the likes of The Usos and Heath Slater and Rhyno.
h/t to Fightful for the transcription.