During a conversation with Inside The Ropes, DiBiase<\/a> reflected on Virgil becoming his bodyguard during the Million Dollar Man era in WWE. While discussing their partnership, DiBiase explained that he personally had no issue with WWE pairing them together, but he also threw in a brutal joke about Virgil\u2019s intelligence.<\/p>\nAfter calling Virgil a likable person, DiBiase took the conversation in another direction while describing what it was like working with him behind the scenes.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd the thing about Virgil, his real name was Mike Jones. And uh he\u2019s a real likable guy. He just I don\u2019t know how else to put it. He just wasn\u2019t very bright. You know, you know, like uh sometimes you knock on the door and nobody\u2019s there.\u201d<\/p>\n
DiBiase also talked about Virgil\u2019s role as part of the Million Dollar Man presentation, where he essentially acted as DiBiase\u2019s chauffeur and assistant during WWE\u2019s late-1980s boom period.<\/p>\n
The WWE Hall of Famer admitted that the gimmick probably would not fly in today\u2019s wrestling climate because of how the character dynamics were presented on television at the time.<\/p>\n
The conversation then shifted toward one of wrestling\u2019s longest-running backstage rumors \u2014 where the name \u201cVirgil\u201d actually came from. According to DiBiase, the name was intentionally chosen as an inside joke aimed at legendary wrestler Dusty Rhodes. DiBiase confirmed that Dusty Rhodes\u2019 real first name was Virgil, which led to WWE using it for his bodyguard character.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat\u2019s funny is like why did we name him Virgil? Well, it was kind of a rib. You know, there\u2019s another very famous wrestler who is very good and whose son is currently one of the top stars in the WWE and that would be Dusty Rhodes. Dusty\u2019s real first name is Virgil. So that was just like an inside joke.\u201d<\/p>\n
DiBiase also pointed out that when Virgil later jumped ship to WCW, the company fired back with another inside joke by renaming him Vincent as a shot at Vince McMahon.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then later on when Virgil went to WCW, he became Vincent as a kind of rib back to Vince.\u201d<\/p>\n
Virgil remained one of the most recognizable parts of DiBiase\u2019s Million Dollar Man act for years, eventually turning babyface and breaking away from DiBiase in one of WWE\u2019s more memorable storyline splits of that era.<\/p>\n
What do you think about Ted DiBiase\u2019s comments about Virgil and the backstage story behind his WWE name? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.<\/p>\n
Please credit Ringside News<\/a> if you use the above transcript in your publication.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ted DiBiase is opening up about his longtime association with Virgil \u2014 and he didn\u2019t exactly hold back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658961,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[49,48,75],"class_list":["post-658960","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}