Earlier that year Scotts released his autobiography, with the brilliant title All Balls: They said an Aussie couldn't make it. According to Dave, Colin's book goes into detail about his time in American wrestling, and by detail, Dave makes it sound like the "Hulk Hogan was nearly in Metallica" kind of detail. That's to say there doesn't appear to be a lot of fact in there. Remember this for later. Dave writes that in the book Colin claims to have been a WWF star in 1996, where he had a match with Jerry Lawler in Madison Square Garden which turned into a shoot. He also claimed that in this time he became friends with Hulk Hogan. He then says that he wrestled in Memphis, but hated the South and getting injured, and so called it quits.
I want to be very clear about this, the now sixty year old Colin Scotts, number 69, nice, for the St. Louis Cardinals, clearly had a successful career in Rugby, or Football if you want to be American about it. This video isn't meant to bash him as for all we know he's a decent bloke. I'm only interested in his claims about his pro wrestling career based on what was reported when his book came out. The details of his own career online are sketchy, with his official website claiming he has three years as a pro in the NFL, while the site Celebrity Speakers.AU where he promotes himself as a motivational speaker, claims five. His Wikipedia page claims he played for the St. Louis Cardinals in '87, and the Houston Oilers in '88, which implies two years. I'm very much open to corrections about any of this by the way in the comments as I'm not pretending to know anything about the NFL.
My original plan for this video was to take Dave wrote and look for any evidence to back up his claims. He noted that Colin's book quote "had wrestling fans chuckling," implying that this was a known thing at the time. Being a book that was released in 2002, seemingly out of print, with no e-book version existing, you'd have to be some kind of pedant to go as far as to get a copy of the book shipped from Australia at the lowest price one could find. Yes, I am that pedant. It's a signed copy too, not to me but still...
You've seen how Dave rather negatively reported it, now let's look at what Colin actually says in his book. Colin states that his entry into wrestling started in January 1996, and Dave dismissed the idea that he could have been friends with Hulk Hogan based on Hulk being with WCW at the time. Clearly it didn't occur to Dave that they could have met outside wrestling. Colin actually does say in his book that post the NFL he lived for a while in California, specifically Venice Beach, where Hogan was famously billed from for many years. Around this time Hogan was acting in movies and TV, so he might well have also been in California around the same time Colin was. Quote, "There's no more entertaining place than Venice Beach in the Summer, It's fun to just sit and watch the amazing sideshows put on by the crazy mix of Hippies, freaks, stars, footballers and wrestlers". At the end of his chapter about wrestling Colin also notes that he later lived in Florida, even implying that Hogan was the cause of this. Speaking of Hogan Colin states "He's very big in Florida, and he got me interested in the place". From this point it became clear to me that Dave never actually read a word of the book himself...
When writing about Venice Beach Colin says that he met Wrestlers there, but the only one he names is Sargent Slaugter. Colin says "we became friends and he began to talk me into giving the game a try. At first I dismissed the idea but as time went on (and I found out how much money was in it) I started to think, as I always did, why not?" From here he claims that having sent a tape in, he met with Vince McMahon in Stanford Connecticut. He says "'There's no point wasting everyones time ' he (Vince) said, 'we just have to see if you have what it takes,' he said. 'So I want you to come with me and do a gig at Madison Square Garden.' Just like that." I have a feeling Colin is paraphrasing a bit there...
Dave in his newsletter claimed that Colin said he got into a match that became a shoot in MSG, and that's not quite how Colin put it. In the book Colin says of Lawler that "he took to the ring and gave about fifteen minutes of abuse about Australia, and even though in the back of my mind I knew it was all just a show, I found myself getting more and more angry, so much so that by the time I came on I was really ready to deck him." What Colin describes after this more resembles him working stiff with Lawler than a full on shoot fight. "Poor old Jerry, between the thumpings he was saying 'the business doesn't work like this!'" (254) which sounds like a lot to say between punches. Colin then claims he was quote "declared the winner" which doesn't make clear if this was an actual match or not.
Try as I have, I couldn't find a single bit of evidence beyond what Colin says about the Jerry Lawler altercation. While Jerry was an active WWE wrestler around this time, the only match I could find in Madison Square Garden was at Survivor Series 1996, where he would be on the losing end of an eight man elimination match that also included the WWE debut of Rocky Miavia. I did find a MSG show in January 1996 that might have aligned with Colins claims, but there's no mention of he or Lawler. I also looked at every other January that Lawler was active in WWE too, and still found nothing.
Next Colin writes about being sent by Vince to wrestle in Tennessee, where he notes that he would regularly lose his matches. This is as we know how most wrestlers start out. To be fair to Colin, he implies that he didn't like losing or even selling, and even calls it an "ego adjustment", but implies that he went along with it. Colin also mentions that he used the moniker "Thunder from Down Under" and walked out to the ring to the tune of AC/DC's Thunderstruck. In a different section he notes that "my nationality was pretty much chosen for me as my gimmick", something many a foreign wrestler can attest to. Looking at you former WWE superstar Shane Thorne, who appeared once as what was described at the time as a Crocodile Dundee inspired gimmick. Not even his worst WWE gimmick by the way as he was Slapjack too.
Colin ends his wrestling chapter by noting that he suffered several injuries including "a broken arm and some fingers", and also a broken back "cracking a vertebrae after a big flip went wrong, I'd had enough... ...My back had given out and the pressure to learn more moves was getting to me. My hat goes off to the guys who stay in the game year after year."
Honestly based on what Dave wrote I was ready to be entirely dismissive of Colin, but I'm glad I went to the trouble of reading his own words, as he throws enough in to show that he knows what he's talking about. There are a few holes that I can't quite piece together though. One thing Colin claims that I did find evidence for was that he wrestled in Tennessee, and given this fact he likely would have at least met Jerry Lawler. Dave Meltzer claimed that Colin was in Memphis for a week, which is a slight understatement and that comment made me actually want to buy the guys book to verify what Colin actually claimed. The dates don't match up though, as Colin says his wrestling days started in January 1996 in his book, but I found evidence of four matches between August and September of 1993 for USWA.
Interestingly, Dave noted in his writing that Scotts made an appearance at a WWE TV taping in '93, recording an interview that never made it to air. This was apparently enough for Scotts to keep in his biography to this day that he was a WWF wrestler, but not enough for him to keep up with wrestling for the past twenty two years since the company changed it's name. One thing I can confirm though, is that every bio I've seen of him, even the one on the back of his book and his current website, notes he was a "WWF wrestler", with no details attached. I've yet to find evidence of a single match Colin had in WWE, and I'm even starting to think he's just like that person every one of us as wrestling fans knows, who just calls all of it WWE, the way not every vacuum cleaner is a hoover.
In the late stages of writing this video I found a June 2019 episode of the "talking with TK" podcast, where I could hear Colin Scotts speak for himself. A lot of what he says about wrestling is rather consistent with his book, until he rambles about an instance where he took ten people out with a boomerang... *play clip* He then makes a rather interesting claim about a Stephanie McMahon, who based on Colin's own timeline would have been twenty years old when Colin was around. *play clip*.
To summarise this video that has taken enough of your time, while I ready to treat him with complete skepticism based on what Dave Meltzer wrote, Colin Scotts actually comes across as knowing what he's talking about, but is still quite brief in the details. I wouldn't go as far as to mock him as Dave did, and with some further reading that paragraph in the Observer doesn't make Dave look that good at all. It was however a fun journey looking into this though, and I hope you enjoyed it too. Also Elimination Chamb-
Sources:
http://colinscotts.com.au/about/
http://colinscotts.com.au/book/
http://www.profightdb.com/wrestlers/colin-scotts-6917.html
https://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/august-5-2002-observer-newsletter-major-media-outlets-working-industry
Jan 96 MSG Show http://www.profightdb.com/cards/wwf/msg-show-jan-3996-5151.html
https://www.talkingwithtk.com/single-post/colin-scotts
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