Following a brief stint in the National Football League and the World League of American Football, Chad Fortune spent a fleeting few years in the World Wrestling Federation as one half of Tekno Team 2000 before an equally brief couple of years in World Championship Wrestling. Though his wrestling career was somewhat short-lived, it did give him an opportunity to parlay his athletic talents into a new field, first as the spokesperson for the NWO truck in 1999, then as the driver of the WCW Nitro Machine in 2000. But it wasn’t until 2005 that Fortune found his calling as the very Clark Kent-looking driver got behind the wheel of the Superman truck, where he remained until 2011. Having switched to the Captain America truck last year, Fortune is off to a successful 2013 thus far. He talks to Wrestling with Pop Culture about continuing that success in the most heroic manner possible.
You’ve been a monster truck driver for 13 years now, which is much longer than your pro wrestling career was. What was the transition from the ring to the monster truck world like?
You know, it’s amazing where life takes you. I grew up playing football and basketball, went to college and played football, then went on to play a couple of years pro and in Europe. Then I went off into pro wrestling and here I am driving monster trucks. Monster trucks are the best of both worlds of what I was into. With the physical challenge and the one-on-one competition of the racing part of monster trucks, you’re out there trying to prove that you’re the best. Then there’s the freestyle, which is entertainment. You might think you’re just out there driving the truck and going over jumps and stuff, but everybody’s gotten so good at what we do that we have to do it better and more exciting than anybody else, which is what pro wrestling is about. It’s the entertainment side and putting that combination together, you have the highs and lows and wow factors that when you’re about to crash and you make the save, it’s like kicking out of a three count. Then you come back and get bigger air in the end and, for me, you finish your finale on the biggest pile of junk. Then I get out as Captain America with the shield and I pose. It really is the biggest expression of entertainment you can have.
When you first got into driving monster trucks, you had a truck that was made especially for your larger frame. Appropriately enough, it was the WCW Nitro Machine.
Yeah. I’m 6’6″ and about 250 pounds. A lot of the guys seem to be smaller and more compact and fit into the average truck chassis. They’re built small for safety reasons and the roll cages are tight. Being so tall, I don’t fit in any random truck. So they built me a truck specifically with the gauges tucked down underneath the roll cage to give me the maximum space, and the roll cage is spread out a little farther. It’s still very small in there for me, but nevertheless, it’s made for me. It was a WCW truck in the beginning, then it was the Karl Malone truck, the Power Forward. That was the same chassis I had up until last year, when we built a brand new truck. So that truck was about 12 years old when I retired it and it was way out of date.
Last year was your first year driving Captain America. Last year also ended up not being your best year. Do you attribute that to switching trucks at all?
I had a great start last year, but I got rocked pretty good at a show in Houston where I had a pretty bad rollover. That wrenched my neck a little bit and I had some shock issues we were trying to work out. So I started out doing well and around the middle of the season it tapered off to being average. Because it was a new truck, it was landing a bit rough and we had to work out some issues. But we’re good this year. Everything’s been going really well.
Being that you look so much like Superman, especially in that Superman jumpsuit, you seemed like a perfect fit to drive that truck. Why did you decide to switch to the Captain America truck?
I had been with Superman for about eight years and I started getting comfortable with the character and relying just on the entertainment. When it was announced that Marvel was coming out with a new truck, I thought it might be something fresh. It was a brand new truck, so I would get a new chassis, a new motor and everything. I had some input into the designs of the truck, so it’s a little bit different truck body. It’s more of a futuristic concept body with LED lights and it’s a really good-looking truck. I saw it as a challenge. Having been Superman for so long, the young fans knew me as Superman. But I’ve retained some fans as Captain America and now I come out with a shield and I wear a star on my chest rather than the S. It’s actually been working out really well. People were a little disappointed at first because I had done Superman for so long, but after they saw the new truck and the stuff I was doing with it, a lot of my fans are excited about what’s going on.
Either way, the superhero theme seems quite fitting considering your background as a wrestler, which is probably the closest thing to a real-life superhero as you’re going to get.
I take it that way. I really want to live up to everything. My training as a wrestler and a football player hasn’t changed. I take it very seriously. The way it feels being in this truck with 1,500 horsepower, it is as close as you can get to being a superhero. You have super strength, you’re crushing cars, you’re flying and you can get these things moving pretty quick. It’s like being a real superhero and it’s a lot of fun.
What have been some of your biggest accomplishments so far this season and what are you looking forward to over the next few weeks?
Our first show was in Tacoma, Washington, where I was a race champion and scored pretty well in freestyle. I’ve been in the top three or four in freestyle at every show since then. There’s a new Ukraine tire out this year with real deep grooves. I’m still running on the older style tire, which is smoother, and it just doesn’t seem like it’s getting the same traction as these other ones and I’m getting beaten in that way. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’ll just have to focus a little harder on the turns and make sure I have the grip. I’m getting ready to go to California for the second show in Anaheim at Angel Stadium. They do things a little bit differently on the West Coast where there’s a figure-eight track. The dirt seems to be a little bit more loose out there, so with the tires I have I do a little bit more skating. I think I’m figuring it out, which is going to be good for this weekend. The following weekend I’m in St. Louis, then the weekend after that I’m in Atlanta. St. Louis is the same style track as Atlanta and it will be a great opportunity to get back in the groove and prepare for Atlanta.