Dolph Ziggler Says He’d Like To Be Iron Man, Talks Love of Horror Movies

Dolph Ziggler is preparing for the biggest match he has had in over a year this weekend as he is scheduled to face WWE Champion Drew McIntyre on Sunday evening at WWE’s The Horror Show at Extreme Rules. With Ziggler and McIntyre having formerly been Raw Tag Team Champions together, there is a little bit of added intrigue in the rivalry given the history between the two men. ComicBook.com spoke with Ziggler on Thursday, and we discussed his former tag team championship reign alongside McIntyre, as well as this Sunday match that is scheduled to have a secret stipulation.

Our discussion also included some discussion outside of what’s going on in WWE. For example, Ziggler has done a bit of acting in the past. If he could play any superhero in a film project, who would he choose?

“So I’ve only seen one superhero movie, ever. And a friend of mine said, this is years and years ago, he goes, ‘You’ll like this guy. He drinks whiskey and he’s a smart ass.’ And I go, ‘Oh, okay.’ And it was Iron Man. So I saw the first ever Iron Man movie five, 10 years after everybody else. And I go, this guy’s all right. So I would have, I mean Robert Downey Jr. is pretty great, so it’s hard to top him, but if I had the choice, I wouldn’t even be doing any acting. I would just be being Iron Man,” Ziggler said.

Speaking of movies, Ziggler is a noted horror movie fanatic. We asked him which horror franchise from the past he’d like to see get a reboot in a similar fashion to how the Halloween franchise has been brought back in recent years.

“Whoa, that’s a great question,” Ziggler replied. “Holy cow. Horror style, man, I just recently watched this one, Trick or Treat from 1986, and it’s got Gene Simmons in it and Ozzy Osbourne, And it’s pretty funny and a little cheesy. But this kid plays his record backwards and this guy, this rock star guy comes back to life as a demon. I wouldn’t mind seeing that redone. I’m a big Troma movie guy though, too. So Class of Nuke ‘Em High, The Toxic Avenger is one of my all time favorite movies ever, but recently I’ve been watching everything on the Shutter app or anything that Joe Bob Briggs does on his drive-in, I’ll check all those things out. But trying to think on Shutter I just watched something, what did I watch, Beach House, and some pretty gross other things. I don’t know what you get to reboot, something from horror, but they’ve done Texas Chainsaw Massacre to death.

“But they’ve also done some stuff, I think also on Shutter was Summer of ’84 and it’s made in like 2018 or 2019 or something, but also it’s in 1984. So you kind of get the old slasher film vibe to it, but it’s also now, and high tech and looks great, but I appreciate that old drive-iny, grimy footage that you get, old tracking difficulties, and it makes it dirty and gross. And I prefer stuff like that. Satanic Panic on Shutter is pretty great, all those different things. I like the old drive-in poorly graphicked movies. So when you watch those original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and things like that, I like them for what they are. Hell Raiser was always fun.”

Ziggler has done stand-up comedy in the past, in addition to his aforementioned foreays into the film industry. Does he have any other goals outside of the wrestling business in the immediate future?

“I did a movie, Countdown, that was on Netflix for a while,” Ziggler said. “It still might be, I have no idea, but it was WWE. And I’ve done some things with comedy central also, which were pretty cool shorts and different things like that. So I like comedy. I like movies, I like TV. I like entertaining people no matter what the situation is. And I just got a place in LA. So other than improv comedy, comedy, TV, movies, I’ll be looking to do more and more things just because I’ve kind of nailed this wrestling thing. So I kind of want to work on some other things that I’m interested in.”

You can catch Dolph Ziggler in action this weekend when he takes on WWE Champion Drew McIntyre at WWE’s The Horror Show at Extreme Rules this Sunday night at 7:00 p.m. Eastern on the WWE Network.