Perry Saturn says one of the strangest gimmicks of his WWE career wasn’t some random creative idea — it was punishment. More than 25 years after the infamous Mike Bell incident, Saturn says WWE putting him in a storyline where he fell in love with a mop named Moppy happened directly because of what went down in that match.
While speaking on Insight with Chris Van Vliet on September 17, Saturn went deep on the Mike Bell match, the backstage fallout with Vince McMahon and how he wound up with Moppy almost immediately afterward. Saturn, who has also opened up about the circumstances that pushed him out of WCW and into WWE, made it clear that he takes responsibility for losing control against Bell.
Saturn said Bell’s botched hip toss caused him to land on his head. He remembers seeing a flash of light before realizing he was legitimately attacking Bell in the corner.
“The Mike Bell thing was my fault. That hip toss put me on my head. I saw a flash of light, and the next thing I knew he was in the corner, and I was kneeing him. I was blanked out through all that, but it doesn’t matter. I was wrong. You can’t do that.”
Saturn said things were heated when he returned backstage. Tom Prichard was the agent for the match, and Saturn said his own neck was messed up afterward, but he refused to use that as an excuse for what he did to Bell.
“They were hot. Tom Prichard was the agent, and he babyfaced me with the heat. ‘Perry, are you okay? We need to make sure he’s okay. I didn’t know he landed on his head like that.’ The next day, my neck was fcked up. I had to go to the doctor to get my neck looked at, but I wasn’t hurt, and that doesn’t give me the right to do what I did.”*
Then came the conversation with Vince McMahon. According to Saturn, Vince wanted an absolute guarantee that nothing like the Bell incident would ever happen again. Saturn wouldn’t give him one because he said he never intended for it to happen in the first place.
“And Vince told me, ‘Okay, Perry, you have to tell me right now that you’re never going to do that again.’ I go, ‘Vince, I didn’t do it on purpose this time, so I can’t tell you that because I didn’t mean to do it.’ He was getting hot at me, and I’m just not going to tell him something that I don’t believe. If I tell him something, he’s going to know it’s what I believe. Otherwise, I’m not going to say it, because that’s important to me.”
Saturn also admitted that his drug addiction played a role in the way he reacted after getting his bell rung. That admission fits with other brutal stories Saturn has shared about how extreme his drug use became alongside Raven during his wrestling career.
Saturn said the timing of what happened next wasn’t lost on him. After using the fact that he had landed on his head to explain why he couldn’t promise Vince it would never happen again, WWE suddenly had a very different character waiting for him.
“My excuse to Vince was why I couldn’t tell him I wouldn’t do it anymore is because I landed on my fcking head and I had no idea what I was doing. A week later, I’m doing Moppy.”*
Saturn said WWE didn’t even approach him directly with the gimmick. Instead, Paul Heyman — or “Paul E” as Saturn called him — was sent to deliver the news because Saturn trusted him. Saturn believes WWE expected him to hate the idea enough to walk away.
“They didn’t pitch it to me. They had Paul E pitch it to me because I was close with Paul E, and I’m pretty sure they assumed I was going to quit, and I was going to. Paul E explaining it like I’m the village idiot. I go, ‘Paul E, I’m not going to do that. I’m going to look like a fcking idiot.’ He goes, ‘Perry, you have no choice. You have to do it.’ I go, ‘I can’t do it. I’ll be fcked.’ He goes, ‘You’ll be fcked if you don’t do it.’ I go, ‘So I’m fcked either way then? So I’ll just go home.’ He goes, ‘You won’t be fcked if you get it over.’”*
That line from Heyman stuck with Saturn. Instead of quitting, he decided to make the ridiculous material work, even though he says WWE gave him almost nothing beyond the mop and a handful of bizarre lines.
“I trusted Paul E, and they never gave me any direction or anything. They just go here’s the mop and do whatever. They called them Saturnisms. I was very serious, especially back then. Every day I wanted to quit, and every day I thought about it. But I kept hearing Paul E say, ‘Not if you get it over.’ No direction at all. I come up with all that sht on my own. The island, Castaway, I make Moppy into the ball, Wilson.”*
Saturn later gave an even more direct explanation for why he believes Moppy was punishment. He revealed that Pat Patterson originally wanted him to marry a plunger before that idea somehow evolved into the mop.
“Pat Patterson thought I should marry a plunger, so that’s what he pitched, and somehow the plunger got turned into the mop. The whole idea was I did that because I got hit in the head, which is what happened with Mike Bell. This was my punishment, and I can prove it was a punishment because they never gave me any direction.”
There was just one problem with the punishment: fans started loving Moppy. Saturn remembered Patterson pulling him aside at the Meadowlands after hearing fans chanting what Saturn initially thought was “Rocky.” Patterson had to tell him that the crowd was actually chanting for the mop.
“One day in Meadowlands, the people are coming in the building and stuff, and Pat Patterson grabbed me. He used to call me Gimmick for whatever reason. He goes, ‘Gimmick, come here. You hear the people every time they come in, they chant Rocky, Rocky, Rocky?’ I go, ‘Yeah, they’re chanting Rocky. So what?’ He goes, ‘No, listen, you idiot. They’re chanting Moppy.’ It was getting over.”
Saturn believes WWE’s reaction once Moppy caught on was another sign that the company never intended the storyline to become a success. He pointed to the lack of merchandise before Moppy was eventually destroyed in a wood chipper.
“Then they went to the wood chipper. They made one Moppy T-shirt for me to wear. If they wanted it over, they would have made [more]. They were showing up with homemade costumes as mops and sht, not millions of them, but it was happening. Believe me, I didn’t want it to get over, but it was getting over.”*
For a gimmick Saturn says was designed to embarrass him after one of the darkest moments of his WWE career, Moppy ended up doing the exact opposite of what he believes the company intended. Saturn hated it, considered quitting over it and says WWE barely gave him anything to work with — and somehow fans still turned a mop into one of the most memorable pieces of his entire WWE run.
Do you believe WWE created the Moppy storyline specifically to punish Perry Saturn for what happened with Mike Bell, or did the bizarre gimmick ultimately help his career because fans actually embraced it? Let us know what you think in the comments.
This transcript was produced exclusively for Ringside News from the original recording. Republishing the transcription in full is prohibited. When using excerpts, provide prominent credit and a link to this article.
