Former WWE and WCW tag champion Tully Blanchard, a member of the Four Horsemen, recently appeared on the Steve and the Scum Show on WGD Weekly and discussed the failed drug test that changed the course of his entire career.
At the time of the failed test, as Blanchard recounted during his interview, he and Arn Anderson were preparing to leave the WWF and return to WCW, reviving the Four Horsemen stable.
Then Blanchard failed a drug test, testing positive for cocaine. Vince McMahon suspended Blanchard on Nov. 2, 1989, and Bobby Heenan ended up replacing Blanchard at Survivor Series later that month.
"We were supposed to start that Saturday after with WCW and they reneged on the deal with me and hired Arn back at a substantially less amount than they promised," Blanchard recalled during the interview. "That lets you know probably one of the reasons why they are out of business, because they aren't stand up people. Anyway, in that process, when [Ric] Flair called me on November 13, at one o'clock in the morning and told me they weren't going to give me the contract, I was all of a sudden in 11 days, I was a world champion and promised three quarters of a million dollars to unemployed. At 35 years old, I didn't quite know how to handle that."
Blanchard became a born-again Christian not long after the drug test disrupted his professional plans. He currently has a prison ministry.
After his in-ring career concluded, Blanchard had an interview to return to WWE in a behind-the-scenes role until an incident with JBL changed those plans as well≥
"They were getting ready to do the taping in St. Louis. I never really had actually remembered meeting JBL, and he started telling me from across the room that I was a fake preacher and I was this and I was that and I didn't belong there and that I treated him bad when I was a star and he was just starting," Blanchard recalled. "It caught me very off guard, because I didn't treat people bad. If I didn't like you, I just said hello, and I didn't mess with you, that's just the way I was. I didn't remember it, so I told him, well, it's very possible that I did treat you poorly, and I hope you can forgive me. That's all that was said on my part and we departed."
Blanchard's daughter, Tessa, now is a professional wrestler herself and has made a few appearances for WWE NXT.
