Rik Ratchet is a former professional wrestler and associate of wrestling promoter Dennis Coralluzzo, working for him throughout the late 1990's to early 2000's, alongside working in other promotions such as JAPW and various NWA affiliated promotions in New Jersey.
Episode 13 - Transcript from Dennis of the Week[]
*Note - All questions asked are from the perspective of TGBL. Questions marked with parenthesis (____) are voiced by Bix.*
When I think back to all the good times I had years ago at Dennis Coralluzzo shows, I think about the crew of friends that I ran around with: people like Marc Coralluzzo and Donnie B, and one of them is with us today here on the program – it is my old friend Pete, better known to fans of Northeast Independent Wrestling as Rik Ratchet. Rik – Pete, whatever I’m calling you – how’s it going today?
Rik: Wooo (very lethargic) What’s up Brian, how ya doin?
(laughing) That was the worst woo! That was the worst woo – I love it!
Rik: That was like a half a woo – listen, I haven’t ‘woo’ed in 15 years so I’m not really that good at it anymore, but you know. It’s somewhat of a woo – I just wanted to say congratulations by the way; you’re the new co-host on the Jim Cornette Experience.
Oh thank you, thank you, I appreciate it.
Rik: That’s a big deal, brother, you know. Yeah – I love Jimmy, and when he came down and started working with us – with Dennis – man, I gotta tell ya something: we had all these guys that Dennis was bringing in that were, like, pretty big names. The guy that made me fucking nervous was Cornette! Like, he walked in the locker room and I got starstruck, like, it was like “holy shit, it’s Jim Cornette in the fucking locker room!” Meanwhile, I just worked Sid the week before, you know, so it wasn’t even- there was just something about Jimmy and he would always kinda coach and he was just, you know, a real special guy. I’m really happy to hear that you guys are working together.
We’ll definitely get on later your match with Sid – your famous match with Sid – but before we get going with that, I guess for people who don’t know you or aren’t aware of you, you wrestled from '95 to around 2000 for Dennis. You were Rik Ratchet, which, is it fair to say a Ric Flair spoof gimmick? It’s not even a knock-off, it was a little bit of a spoof? How would you describe Rik Ratchet?
Rik: When I got into the business, the guys that I looked up to mostly were Heenan and Flair, I mean, those were the two that I watched all the tapes on; Heenan when he was a worker, you know. So Heenan and Flair were the two when I was studying and trying to train and do everything. I really kinda picked up on there’s some kinda entertainment aspect, so when I started wrestling I started working like Flair, you know, kinda even bumping fucked up (laughing). Doing the same – everything he was doing I was doing the same thing! So I wasn’t doing a Nature Boy or anything like that from the beginning until I’d gotten to Dennis, and Dennis said “Hey! Asshole! If you’re gonna do Flair, do fucking Flair! Just don’t do half a Flair – do Flair; like you’re out of your mind, do a complete mark gimmick!” and I said “Alright, alright, I’ll just do the whole fucking thing. I’ll come out to music, the whole deal.” I came out to the music, the 16 time – the whole fucking deal. I ripped it off so bad, I was like- but it was almost like a delusional Flair, which made it very funny to the point where I had Beth come in and interfere in one of my matches, and David came down to ring-side with me and Reid – god rest his soul – but a little Reid came down to ringside with me at one match. All this funny shit that people would see on TV and then see me do it, that this guy must be out of his fucking mind – and that’s how it really really got over; me thinking I was him. I still fuck with the guys to this day and tell em “oh yeah I used to work Harley Race, blah blah blah,” just stupid shit. Dennis was kinda like the guy that pushed me into that direction and Cornette did it as well “Just do it, do a mark gimmick” and I said well it could be really funny because I could do Flair one time and, you know, somebody else could walk in or you could do some kinda- if you had TV of some kind that you could put it over – another big wrestler could come in and say hi to me – say if it was Piper and I come out next week and I kill him. It could be a thing like “The guy’s crazy, he’s a mark doing everyone’s gimmicks.” So I don’t know, it was kinda funny and that’s how the whole thing started, but god, before I knew it, most of the shows Dennis had put me with a lot of the older guys, and I didn’t do any high flying shit, you know. I didn’t do anything to get anybody hurt, so I started getting a name with a lot of guys because I could socialize and people, you know, were always willing to put me over and sell for me and do whatever the fuck it was. Dennis gave me the belt, and I ran a deal with Severn and a bunch of guys really tried to help people on the entertainment aspect. If there was anything I got in the business, it certainly wasn’t athleticism; it was just entertainment. (laughing)
You mentioned that you worked with a lot of the old guys – I remember I did commentary one time for Dennis and the match was Rik Ratchet and Felipe the Pool Boy against The Fabulous Moolah and Mae Young.
Rik: Oh man; fuck. Dennis was fucking marking out for that for weeks. My god – you know, Moolah was so great. She gets in the ring and I said “sweetheart just do whatever the fuck you want, we’ll have a great time, don’t worry about nothing.” Those two kicked the living shit out of us. They kicked the shit out of us so bad that I couldn’t contain myself; I was laughing so damn hard. Mae Young’s student – Felipe – was outside the ring, he was running around the bottom, and she did this shoot dropkick through the ropes. Granted, she’s 81 years old at this time, right? She does this shoot dropkick, she hit him so fucking hard he fell back into the railing – I’m tellin' ya, harder than anybody- she nailed him. She didn’t know because her judgement was off a little bit, we’ll give her some leeway – she’s 81. So then we get in the ring and she gets me in the corner and I said “lay some punches on me, chop me, do something” and she goes to lay a punch on me and she lands it right square in the fucking jaw. I start bleeding down the side of my jaw and she goes “Oh my god! I made you bleed! I’m so sorry!” and I’m like where is this vicious woman I knew when I was a kid that I was terrified of? Man. I mean, it was just, you know, completely different, but it was really really good. I enjoyed working with them; I did a lot of stuff with them. I remember running 4-5 matches with them and after that, the WWE saw it – well, WWF at the time – they took it and started using them, and having Bubba put them through tables and shit like that, which, you know. It was okay; could have got them over, didn’t have to do that much to get them over.
(I remember when Brian gave me the tape of that show to convert to DVD – because of the commentary – and Brian was telling me about it. He was watching it with his girlfriend at the time and she says to him “This isn’t as good as that Ric Flair stuff you showed me…”)
Rik: Yeah…it was just fucked up, it was just so fucked up. I worked the gimmick all night, I’d work it in the locker room and think I was Flair. Came in with the comb-
You even worked as the Black Scorpion once!
Rik: Yes, I did do the Black Scorpion – that was funny. That was funny. You know what? That’s a good Cornette story. So Cornette tells me distinctly in the match he says “Ratchet, at the end of the match, make sure you take the can and you put the fucking can up into your mask,” and I said “OK.” “But you gotta put it through the eye hole, Ratchet. If you pick the mask up, it’s gonna fall the fuck out.” “OK, no problem.” Well, I completely forget it. I go into the ring to pull the mask up and go put it in and when I drop the mask, the fucking gimmick falls out – you know, there’s the finish. So now I put it through the eye hole, hit Donnie and knocked him out – I forgot who the fuck I wrestled back then-
I think it was Donnie.
Rik: OK. I put it back in, I fucking knocked him out, whatever, because we were doing this heel angle fucking turn whatever-stupid-shit-we-were-doing, and Cornette’s just waiting for me and I’m like "Fuck, I ought'a just go out the front door right now," and he goes “Oh you stupid fuck, I told you to put it through the eye hole – don’t lift the god damn mask up,” and I was like “Well I forgot and I was thinking how am I gonna get everyone to see who I am? I wanted them to see my face,” and he’s like “Well we could have done it another way, you dumb fuck, now get out of my face.” Alright. I loved it.
You mentioned Donnie and one of the things I remember when I first saw you and two of the things that carried on was that 1) – Donnie B was your manager and he was bigger than you, and 2) – Your name was Rik Ratchet, which would always produce a sea of children yelling “Rat shit! Rat shit!” It was the most easy heat name I’d ever heard. (laughing)
Rik: Yeah, you know what’s so funny about that? Donnie – so smart, just absolutely so fuckin’ smart as a manager. I’d never would have done half the shit that I woulda done or got half the heat I would had if it wasn’t for him. Donnie’d be outside the ring and he would look at someone and turn around and says “Don’t call him rat shit! It’s NOT rat shit.” And that’s how it would start; that would get the whole section going. Shit man, when I had the guy in a rest hold, Donnie’d be sitting there beating on the fucking mat – “Come on Ratchet, get him” boom boom, and then the babyface kicked the leg and then crowd’d come up, boom boom boom and everybody’d just go fucking crazy; it was just psychology, you know? As I would get the shit kicked out of me during the match, Donnie would also fall apart as well – his shirt tail would come out, his tie would come undone. He’d slowly degrade as I was getting my ass kicked so it would appear from a psychological standpoint that “He’s gonna lose,” and then they’d do some kind of fuck finish. I never won clean and I never thought I should; no heel should ever win clean and it shouldn’t back then but today all the lines are blurred. He was a good friend, too, you know, so I don’t know what I would have done without him and I talk to him every day.
I mentioned before – the first time I remember you working for Dennis / NWA New Jersey was '95: do you remember – when was the first time you met Dennis and what were your initial thoughts of him?
Rik: You know, when I met Dennis, he was really nice to me. He just took a liking to me and not only did he take a liking to me, but he kinda like, he took me under his wing, you know? Almost as his son. Me and his son Dennis were fairly close in age, and he really took me under his wing and he helped me with a lot of shit that was going on in my life ‘cause I was crazy and I did a lot of fucked up shit; he helped me with some legal stuff that I was getting into. He just helped me in every way – I talked to him every day, I helped him with every show no matter what he did, whatever you need, I’ll do it. I didn’t care, you know. That was until the end, even after all the shit with Gino Moore and all those fucking scumbags. All those guys that screwed him over with the NWA stuff; I was more upset than he was. Obviously, those kinds of things I think were – I think it’s kinda what led to his demise, to be honest with you. There was a downward spiral that happened to him that was triggered by those guys and things weren’t handled the way they should have been, and it just went downhill for him. We were all there, but, I tell him “Dennis, don’t worry about it! Who gives a shit? We’ll get whatever we gotta do, we’ll come back, and everything will be fine; we’ll do our own shit, don’t worry about it.” At the time he was in the hospital, he got pretty sick, and it was all over.
I definitely think – I can’t imagine anyone wouldn’t think – that Dennis was done wrong by his former partners and screwed out of his own company, and when you said Dennis helped you out of a lot of tough times, I actually thought you were talking about when you had the frosted tips in your hair – that mistake. (laughing)
Rik: The frosted tips in my hair – that was just another fucking deal where Dennis… you know all the heel shit we did to each other? That was one of them! He just made me do that and said “You know what, you gotta bleach your hair blonde if you’re gonna do that,” and I said “Bleach my hair blonde? I’m darker than a Mexican guy; you’re gonna make me bleach my hair blonde?” “No no no – it’ll look great!” Shit, I’ll just go along right with it like some fucking mark, and then I go and I do it and bleach my hair and everyone’s just laughin’. Such an asshole.
How did you first get booked by Dennis? What was your road to getting in there?
Rik: Well, you know, I was wrestling at the time for Dino Sanna and I was the champ for the WWWA – which is a little league out in Pennsylvania – and he does some small little spot independent shows. You know: flea markets, all that shit – high schools. He would draw, too. He did pretty good too. You know, they all did good back then, I mean, we would draw 2-3 thousand people a show; we were doing pretty good. He’d bring in one name, I’d work the name, everybody else would have a nice little undercard and that was it and that was all you had to do. Me and Donnie get the fuckin’ name over during the match – it was always a babyface. We always worked heel, and then that was it. I did that for a long time with Dino and then I don’t know, if i'm not mistaken, it might have been Tommy Fierro who came to a couple of shows and saw me working, we became friends, and he knew us through Sharpe’s too. That was kinda like, “You gotta see this guy work, he’s really funny,” you know.
Well you mentioned Sharpe, so before we go back to Dennis, “Iron” Mike Sharpe just recently passed away – something we talked about here on the program – and you were one of those guys in Jersey that was trained by Iron Mike Sharpe; what are your memories of him, of being in that gym with the other students, and tell us a little bit about the man that you knew – Iron Mike Sharpe.
Rik: He – Mike was a sweetheart. I mean, Mike had such a great heart, and if anything, that was kinda like his crutch where I’d always maybe see people take advantage of him, you know? When he was running the school or whatever that was just one thing, because he was just that nice of a guy. Mike was really smart from a coaching standpoint because he was the one – he’d always yell and say “Look at the people, make sure you look at the people, look at the people, pay attention to the people, who gives a shit about that fucking move? You pay attention to the people!” That was his thing, you know. When you watched Mike work - Mike was a great worker, he really was. If they put a belt on him and put him over, I think Mike could have been one of your top 10 guys in the business. I think he would have been that over, and I’m not saying it to be biased, I just think that he was just that good because he was so loud, you know? “Rrrrrraaahhhh!” The whole place would light up – they could hear him. So, you know, I think his influence on the entertainment aspect really really had an influence on everybody that went to that school: so whether it was Donnie or Nova or Devon or Ken Porter or Danny Gimondo, or Inferno Kid, or Stevie Richards, or Terraced, Maholdo, or Dorsey, all of those guys – they were really good at entertaining, you know? That’s what it was about. This is like pre-kayfabe, you know? So after kayfabe was broken, everything changed – when sports entertainment had kinda fucked everything up, but before that, I mean you could get away with these storylines with clear heels, clear babyfaces. If you knew what the fuck you were doing, you could get over really easy, you know? Everybody in the crowd – I mean, I weighed 200 pounds when I wrestled – probably half the people in the crowd could kick the shit out of me and they knew they could, and I wanted them to think that, that’s why I always cheated. I’d get over – do the chickenshit stuff. It’s like, you could do that all day long playing up the psychology and that’s one of the things that Mike would push a lot at the school, and the students always trained me, and they helped me as much as they could – because I couldn’t even throw a fucking dropkick - but beside the point, I could work a doughnut hole better than anybody. It was just one of those things, but I think that if anything, it brought a lot of really good guys together at different points in our lives we all kinda moved up or went down one way or another: Mike went to ECW, Porter went to ECW, Gimondo was working for WWE for a while, Richards, of course, he was there – Christ, I think Steve Richards was in the WWE longer than anybody (laughs). I mean, we just had a lot of really good guys and we all kinda helped each other. Sharpe was a whole big part of that – but as a person, god, it was so weird. Two weeks before he passed, I was talking to Donnie and I’m like “Donnie, we gotta fucking find him. Maybe there’s something wrong and we can’t help him.” I said “If anything, I just wanna make sure he’s okay and if he needs anything I’ll fucking give it to him – I don’t care.” He’s like “Well let me see what I can do” – well you know, he’s a cop, and he can only get so far in the system; he can’t get into Canada. So that was the line that we couldn’t – we didn’t know he was in Hamilton. If we were in Hamilton, I’d have flew there and found him somehow. But yeah, who the hell knew – 63 or 64 or whatever he was – I think, I’m not for sure, Brian, but I actually think at one point in time, I think that Mike might have been in some type of accident and that’s why he was in a wheelchair. There’s no way that Mike wouldn’t have been in a wheelchair had their not been an accident – he had to have fucked himself up somehow, like a car accident or something. I don’t know – but because they said when they found him, he was in a wheelchair. Mike was in shape, you know, he’d be at the school and it was so funny because we’d drive by 3 in the morning, 2 in the morning or whatever and Mike’d be in there doing cables and pushups. He’d be doing all kinds – he was really into physical fitness; he’d blow anybody up in the ring. He could work fucking 4 hour broadway and not blow up; the guy was just phenomenal in the ring. Probably because he was so relaxed when he was in there. The funny thing with Mike – the funny part about him – was you know the OCD stuff which we’ve all heard the OCD stories with the germs and stuff, you know. He got locked in Convention Hall one night in Asbury Park; just some funny shit. Oh my god. He’d be like that at the school too – there was a shower there and he’d take long showers there and he’d make sure he always had the soap; I didn’t even think twice about it. I know he worked a show somewhere and he had taken a shower so long – he was the main event – and by the time he’d got out he’d taken a shower so long they’d close the lights and locked him in the fucking building. (laughing)
I think it happened more than once because I think it happened in Boston too, I wanna say.
Rik: It might have, yeah, I think it happened more than once, yeah yeah. I could never figure out – you know, the one thing I never knew about the personal stuff with Mike was where the fuck did he live when we had the school in Brick? I think he was living on the road then, I don’t know what he was doing. I know he was saving his money – he was a big saver – but I don’t know what he was doing with his time but he’d go from show to show to show to show and living out of hotels, I think. We had a good school – I think we probably had 40 or 50 kids down there at one point.
You mentioned earlier your famous match with Sid Vicious – tell us the story behind that.
Rik: Well, Dennis started using Sid on the shows-
Right, in like ’98.
Rik: Yeah, yeah. You know – when he booked him on the show, the first thing that came to my mind was “this was the fucking guy that stabbed Arn Anderson!” That story was just so famous, right? I went in the locker room and he was all alone; nobody was even going near him. It was probably 10-15 minutes went by and I went up to him and said “Hey listen man, we don’t really allow any stabbings on these shows, so you know, just kinda chill the fuck out with that shit.” And he looked at me and said “Motherfucker, you crazy son of a bitch,” and he shook my hand and I sat down and talked with him for probably 2 hours, and we got along so good. When everyone else is really scared of him, there’s a side to Sid that a lot of people didn’t know that I really loved, you know. The guy was really – probably did more for me than most people in the business ever did. He was working for WWE at the time and then Dennis was using him on all these shows, and then he’d come up to me on one of the shows and said “Ratchet, come here,” and now we’d been hanging out. Every time he came in, we’d hang out for a couple of days – matter of fact, I took him to my manufacturing plant when he came down for a show that we had in Middletown. Before he came to the show, I took him to my plant and I showed him everything we do because I was at a low carbohydrate food company at the time and showed him all our manufacturing stuff and everything. We were close on a personal level too and we did a few shows here and there but then as time grew on and our relationship got better, he said “Ratchet, I’m gonna do you a big favor tonight,” and I said “What?” He said “Don’t tell anybody - I’m switching the matches for the main event,” and I said “Well what the fuck, it’s already booked?” and he says “No no no.” He was supposed to work Mabel and I was supposed to work Kevin Knight and he said “Let’s switch it – put Mabel with Kevin and put you with me,” and I said “alright, we’ll have some fun, we’ll cheat the whole fucking time.” So Donnie leaves – this is the worst thing that Donnie ever did in his life: he leaves. I said “Well I need a fucking manager” but he doesn’t know that I‘m wrestling Sid yet, and he doesn’t know this happened because this happened maybe 10-15 minutes before the two matches where Sid went up to him and said “Hey I wanna swtich both matches; I wanna work him” and he went “Oh yeah, definitely! You work Ratchet, that’ll be hilarious!” So the Master was there – Rocco Mazza, and I said “Brother I need you - I can’t do this fucking match by myself; he’ll kill me.” We’ll have to do something to look good. Well I get in the ring, he tells me “listen, I’m gonna put you over. By tomorrow, your name’s gonna be in all the fucking sheets” and I said “don’t do that – you’re just gonna piss everybody off in the WWF.” “I don’t give a fuck about them – fuck them as a matter of fact; I’m gonna play softball.” Alright, whatever, sounds good to me. (laughing) We get in there and I cut a promo in the beginning or whatever, go back and forth, and then he just starts selling the whole fucking time, and I keep telling him to get up. I’m like “get up, get a comeback or do something!” and he’s just laying down the whole fucking match! He’s barely getting any heat on me – he just wanted to do a comeback and go home and that was it. So you know, Rocco Mazza’s cheating and Sid is selling the whole fucking match, you know, and I’m like “Fuck this looks so unreal right now…” and I’m just trying everything I can do to just cheat and make it look like I’m just fucking him over and there’s no possible way that if I didn’t cheat, this guy’d fucking kill me. Anyway, the end of the match comes around and I used to carry brass knuckles to the ring with me – that was my gimmick. I would always have Donnie throw me Brass Knuckles; he’d throw them high, I’d catch them and they’d be real, and I’d fucking hit the guy right in the head with them but at the last second I’d turn my hand so that my wrist would hit them, so when I hit him in the head, their head would go back and look like I really fucking did it. He – the Master – throws me the knuckles and says “Go get the Brass knuckles Ratchet”! and he gets up and I fucking knock him out and he’s out. Nobody knows in the entire locker room that I was supposed to go over in that match – we screwjobbed everybody, right. 1-2-3; the only guy that knew was the ref, that was it. Everybody’s like “What the fuck just happened?” and the announcer’s not even ready to say that I won, he hesitated like “…Uh, new champion, Rik Ratchet” and it’s dead silence. If there was a cricket walking through that fucking place, you would have heard him. That’s how dead silent it was; everybody was just so shocked. Sure as shit man, the next day, it was all over the internet, all over the sheets, it was all over everything, you know. I call him up the next day and I’m like “Brother, you ain’t shitting, see I told you, watch how much heat you get now” and that kinda changed everything from that point on. No one could figure out why he wanted to put me over, some people say I gave him head or whatever the fuck it was, but the fact was that we did have a really close personal friendship, and it was just – I’d always hook him up with supplements, take care of him with shit; protein powders, this and that. We had a big fitness background as well so we were both into fitness a whole lot and I was helping him with stuff, so you know, it was one of those things. A lot of the old guys – I was friends with a lot of the older guys in the business that were trying their best to do stuff; I tried to help everybody. That’s how it happened – that was the whole story. Sure as shit, I was doing dark matches for WWF not even 6 months later. Yeah.
(Is there a tape of the Sid match?)
Rik: Yeah there is. You know who’s got it? Mike Bucci’s got it. Yeah, he’s got it. We’ll have to extract it from him somehow – it’s probably on some ancient form of video; probably a VHS, I’m sure.
Going back to Dennis, you mentioned before we started that you may have had some Dennis stories that weren’t necessarily funny, or if you have any funny ones, we’d like to hear those ones as well – tell us some stories about Dennis, about the guy you knew.
Rik: Yeah, as far as personally for me, Dennis did whatever I asked and he helped me with. If it was money, then he’d help. I tore my ACL; Dennis did the gimmick – I tore my ACL not wrestling, I did it training – and we went to a show and he says “OK, just we’ll take care of it at the show and use the insurance at the show.” I didn’t have the money to take care of my leg back then. He got me the surgery.
Wow. I didn’t know that – I actually didn’t know that story.
Rik: Yup, yup. That’s all personal stuff.
It’s just his character was the kind of guy he was.
Rik: I’ll tell you another story he did for me. So I didn’t have money back then to get car insurance – this is just so funny. I’m grateful every day for what I have now, I’m doing very well, but back then I didn’t have anything. I didn’t even have car insurance. So Dennis – I got pulled over by the cops. Cops said “Where’s your insurance card?” “Oh I don’t have one. I left it at home I guess,” so I get a ticket for not having documentation, right? I told Dennis what happened and he says “Ahhh don’t worry about it, Ratchet. Let me tell ya something,” I said “Dude, it’s the third time it’s happened – I’m gonna go to jail” and he goes “No no no, don’t worry about it, I’ll take care of it.” “What the fuck are you gonna do?” and he goes “I’ll get insurance and back date it!” (laughing) I guess you could do it back then – he got the insurance backdated. I went to court, I showed the judge, I said “Here’s the insurance” and the judge said “OK, let him go” – that’s it. Didn’t even pay a dollar! Saved my ass again, you know?
You could do so many things before everything was done on a computer.
Rik: Fast forward now and boy, you really appreciate it as you get older. I appreciated it then, but I really appreciated it now.
You brought up Dennis’ funeral, and the one thing I remember – it was a very emotional day for me, just because it was so sudden and he was someone who was so much a part of my life. I remember sitting in the funeral – at the funeral – during the service and the priest is giving a speech about Dennis, and you know, I knew Dennis very very well, I certainly didn’t know Dennis as a church going guy. I’m not saying he was or he wasn’t; it’s just I didn’t know him as that. Apparently there was a time where he somewhat regularly went to church, because in the middle of the priest’s speech (laughing) the fact that he knew the name of the publication just cracked me up. He goes “and I remember sometimes I’d be surprised – I’d see Dennis sitting out there holding his bible, and thoroughly reading it, and sometimes he was so into reading it that he didn’t notice that I was walking behind him, and inside the bible was something called 'The Wrestling Observer Newsletter.”” Yeah – so apparently Dennis when he was in church, he’d stick the Observer inside the bible so while he was holding the bible, he’d be reading the observer, and the priest busted him! (laughing)
Rik: Oh shit, you know, fuck. Dennis is about as religious as Jim Cornette is, so I don’t know exactly – I don’t know if he actually believed in all that shit. I’m probably on the same pace as all that.
I guess to wrap up the interview portion of our talk here, what are your closing thoughts? How do you want to see Dennis remembered?
Rik: Well, I’d love to see him remembered as the guy that really was the good-hearted guy, and there were a bunch of us who saw that; felt that. The problem is in this world, what we live in, everyone just remembers you for the bad shit, you know? It’s just the way it is, and I think there’s always going to have some stigma that’s kinda associated with it, but I just think there’s enough people in the business that really knew Dennis, and you know what, Dennis don’t give a fuck what you think about him anyways, or how he’s remembered. I know he doesn’t give a fuck – I know the ones that he cared about are the ones whose opinions matter, you know? I think for you, me, Donnie, you know, his family – that’s what he cares about. That’s the legacy. The people that he left behind that he made into better people. I’m so grateful that I had him in my life, you know. I’m grateful for a lot of things, but that’s one of the things that I’m really really grateful for, and I was so glad that I was able to have him for the time that I had him. I wish we just could have had him longer – one of those things.