STORYTIME

OK little kiddies. Gather around the old fireplace and let’s tell some old but true stories about the Olden Days of Pro Wrestling.  Some stories may be slightly embellished just to keep it interesting but every story is 100% true. Maybe. Enjoy.  

The Macho Man Meets a Real Life K9…

for Real

Everybody knows Randy “the Macho Man” Savage from his days in the WWF. Not a lot of people know the Macho Man in his earlier years. I’ve written this story before but the story never changes. It is about an incident in Nashville, Tennessee where Randy took on the Nashville Police Department including their prize police dog. Authors disclaimer…this is a true story. I don’t think even Steven King could make this up.

It was late on a Wednesday night in the late 70s when Randy “Macho Man” Savage walked into a Waffle House on the Harding Place exit right off I-24 East in Nashville. Savage and I had just worked the Nashville house show earlier that night in front of a sold-out crowd. Randy was hungry and needed to eat so a Waffle house restaurant suited him just fine. It was right down the street from where he lived, easy in, easy out.

If you’ve never seen or been in a Waffle House, they’re all over the South. On some interstates down south, you might be surprised to learn that you can find not one but two Waffle Houses on the same exit but on different sides. I guess that gives new meaning to the term, ‘ they get you coming and going.’ Waffle Houses are 24 hour never close diner type restaurants which features fast food at a cheap price. When you mention cheap, that’s exactly in The Macho Man’s price range wheel house . But the food damn sure isn’t gourmet.  It’s just cheap.

The time was around 12:30 AM when Randy walked into the Waffle House. Usually, people who go to a Waffle House come in, sit down, order their food, get up and leave. Unless they’re drunk and then they pass out. The Waffle House has also been noted as a sobering up place after a long night of drinking. But, for the most part, it’s a pretty laid back environment especially on a weeknight such as Wednesday.

Since the matches had just ended, Savage had come directly from the Arena. The Arena in Nashville was a building that would only seat probably a thousand people but it had been packed that night. Savage was accompanied by Rip Rogers who at the time was going by the name of the Disco Kid. Hey, this was way back in the Donna Summers Boogie Nights era.

Savage and Rip entered the Waffle House and sat down in a booth. When they entered, the place was empty. Unbeknownst to them, at the time, was that it would get real busy in about 15 minutes.

Savage, according to Rip, was not feeling any pain when he walked through the door. What that means is any body’s guess and I’ll allow the reader to define what that means. Let’s just say Randy was feeling good.

Savage and Rip had only been sitting there for a few moments when their waitress came to take their order. While they were giving the waitress their order, in through the door came a skinny little cowboy guy who obviously had an announcement to make. In a nanosecond, he announced in a LOUD voice for everyone to hear that he had just GOTTEN MARRIED!!!  He didn’t intend this for Randy personally but only to the Waffle House staff behind the counter. I heard later that the cowboy was a frequent customer and knew all the Waffle House employees.

The waitress was ecstatic as women get more excited about marriage than men and she physically walked away from the table where she had been taking Randy and Rip’s order and gave the cowboy a high five.  All of the waitresses and cooks stopped what they were doing and congratulated him and wished him good luck. On the surface, it was a happy feel-good moment for all of them. All of them except…one person, Randy. Randy wasn’t very happy especially when the cowboy’s announcement had interrupted his meal order.  Randy took this as a sign of disrespect.

Randy had heard what the cowboy had said when he entered and took note of it.  As the conversation about the marriage was starting to die down, the cowboy said that he was really in love with this girl.  And Randy, being Randy, just couldn’t leave it alone and out of nowhere, just had to add in his two cents.  Savage in that unmistakable gravely voice now made his announcement to no one in particular by saying out loud,  “who gives a f**k!!!”

Wow. Talk about a buzz kill.  That little ad-lib comment stunned the whole Waffle House staff and especially the cowboy dude.  Everybody stopped what they were doing and looked at Savage. Waffle Houses aren’t that big, to begin with, and when Savage said it, the cowboy and Savage were only about 15 feet apart.

Well, the skinny little cowboy apparently didn’t like what Savage had said. He looked at Savage and asked, “What did you say?”

Savage looked back at the cowboy and repeated what he had first said but more slowly this time just to put more emphasis on it.

“Are you fucking deaf” Randy asked in his undisputable smart ass tone?   Just for emphasis, Randy repeated his comment...”I…SAID…  I…WHO…GIVES…A…F**K,“  Savage slowly replied.

Well, you didn’t need a roadmap to see where this was going.  Stevie Wonder could’ve seen this one coming. Why Savage even said anything to the cowboy in the first place is beyond me. But Savage didn’t need a reason. He was Randy Savage and the Macho Man “just didn’t give a f***.”  The reason I know that is that he had just pronounced his feelings.

Savage, I learned later, liked confrontation.  Savage had put the cowboy on the defensive. Savage not only had disrespected and embarrassed him in front of his friends but Savage had also disrespected his impending marriage and the woman he loved.  Down South, that behavior isn’t rewarded. The cowboy now was forced to confront Savage for his lack of Southern etiquette or be forever looked on as a wimpy little bastard too wimpy to confront another man when her honor was at stake.  Whether he wanted to or not, now the cowboy dude had to make a stand.

The cowboy walked just a few steps toward where Savage was sitting, looked down at him and asked: “You got a problem?”

Savage then arose from his seat and stood up facing the cowboy who weighed in at a buck fifty maybe. Savage countered with that deep voice of his, “I don’t know. Do we?” in that oh yeah voice of his.

OK, let us slow down for a bit and analyze this. Savage goes to eat after he had just wrestled a 45-minute match with me that night at the Fairgrounds Arena. He’s hungry and tired and wants something to chow down on before he goes to bed. That’s innocent enough I think. So he walks into a Waffle House diner, sits down and within 5 minutes of sitting down, makes a comment to a guy he doesn’t even know nor has he ever seen before in his life about a phantom woman who he’s never seen.  And now,  both of the men are confronting each other over a silly remark that Randy made just a moment ago. That escalated much too quickly for me.  But that was the way it went down and it was about to go down a lot more.

This story I got from Rip himself as he was an eyewitness to the whole thing.

Both men now stood facing each other. They looked like two cats ready to fight. Both of them were staring at each other for a moment and the fight just broke out.

I don’t know who swung first but. according to Savage, it was the other guy. Savage grabbed the cowboy in a headlock, which I didn’t even know he knew how to do, and they both went down on the floor and were punching and kicking and screaming at each other right in front of a huge Wurlitzer jukebox.

Time out. In case some younger folks are reading this, Wurlitzer jukeboxes were, in short, oversized “record” players and yes, I said record players. Jukeboxes were ‘pay as you play’ music machines in which you could drop a quarter in a slot and in return, you could select three songs that you wanted to hear.  Nowadays, you don’t see jukeboxes much except in old bars or at antique shops. No, we didn’t have Amazon or Spotify Music in those days. We were in the dark ages.

Anyway, back to my story. As Savage and this cowboy guy wallowed around on the floor in front of the jukebox, the Waffle House people panicked and called the cops because their friend was in a fight with Randy Savage, the wrestler. They knew who Randy was. They thought he was crazy because everybody in Nashville thought he was crazy. Savage was that crazy guy who did those crazy interviews on the Saturday afternoon wrestling show.

Rip thought that Savage was crazy too. What did Rip do when all this was going on?  From Rip’s account, he ran out the door to the parking lot.

On the floor, Savage and the cowboy were kicking and punching each other but no real damage was being done. Somehow, the cowboy guy worked his way free from Savage, reached down in his pocket and pulled out a knife. Now, this fight was going a little too far at this point.

Savage saw the knife and panicked because he didn’t have a weapon. Both men looked at each other for a split second then Savage jumped over the counter and grabbed him a knife as well.

Savage jumped back over the counter and both men squared off against each other with both of them doing their best fencing moves at each other. The cops had been called and about this time, one of the waitresses started yelling at the cowboy that the cops were coming. Outside you could hear the sirens screaming that told you the cops weren’t far behind.

The cowboy, when he heard the sirens, had the sense to take off and ran out the door. Savage, however, didn’t feel the same urge. Savage believed that he was the victim of this whole incident and it was the other guy’s fault totally. Savage then looked at his ‘weapon’ that he had picked up behind the counter. It was a butter knife.

The police car screamed into the parking lot and two officers rushed into the Waffle House. By this time, Savage was in full Macho Man mode saying “oh yeahhhhhhhh” and “can you dig it” at no one in particular. I said earlier that Savage was feeling no pain, didn’t I?

Right as the police entered, the entire Waffle House staff all pointed at Savage as the instigator of the whole thing. The cops looked at Randy and knew exactly who he was. Randy had made a serious impact on the TV viewing audience in Nashville in only a short few months. The police now were more wary of Randy than what they usually would be with a regular citizen because he was a wrestler and they even thought he was crazy too.

The cops turned their attention to Randy telling him to turn around, he was under arrest. Savage didn’t see it that way. In Randy’s view…it was he who was the victim, not the aggressor. Randy wanted the other guy arrested because Randy thought the cowboy was at fault. Randy pleaded his case but the cops weren’t buying in. Randy started to get louder and the cops told him again to calm down and turn around.

Randy wasn’t cooperating. In Randy’s mind, the cops were losing valuable time in chasing the cowboy as he was getting away. Again, the cops told Randy to calm down and turn around and again,  Randy ignored their command.  Now, the cops now had no choice but to physically try to overtake Savage and handcuff him but Randy was having none of it and a struggle ensued. With a police car outside with flashing blue lights on and more sirens in the background, a crowd started gathering outside to see what the problem was.

It was easy to see the action from the street as Waffle Houses have floor to ceiling full pane windows. You can see every inch of the place. Most of the onlookers now saw who the cops were fighting with. They were fighting with the Macho Man.

Keep in mind that all of this was within a 10-minute time frame. The entire incident moved with blinding speed. But it wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.

The police were struggling with Randy as they attempted to put the handcuffs on him but Randy kept turning and fighting back. Randy was yelling at the cops that he was the one who was attacked and they were letting the guilty guy getaway.

The cops were having no success handcuffing the Macho Man so they decided to use Mace on him. This was years before the Taser was even a thought in any body’s mind. Well, that tactic met with failure too. As one cop went to Mace Randy in the face, Randy ducked and the Mace got the other cop right in the eyes. Now it was a one on one situation.  One cop and one Macho Man. The remaining cop pulled out his Billie club and tried to subdue Randy with the club. Randy looked down at the cop who had just been maced and grabbed his billy club. The struggle continued as Randy and the cop cought each other with clubs over the club with Randy fighint off the trained cop. The sirens in the background got louder and closer. Randy was holding his own but for how long.

The crowd outside, which was getting bigger and bigger, were getting one helluva show. There was not a bad seat in the parking lot.

So the scorecard at this point read,  an out of control wrestler with a Billie club fighting off one cop with a club and another cop out of action due to a misplaced Mace shot and more  expected to arrive shortly. The people watching hadn’t seen such a spectacle since Muhammad Ali and George Foreman in Rumble in the Jungle.

Finally, more cops screamed into the parking lot and entered the Waffle House. Savage now backed up into the corner and holding them all at bay. The cops are screaming at him to give it up but Savage was not obeying. The Waffle House by this time is deserted with only the cops and Savage inside. The staff took off long ago and Rip vacated the place before they did.

So as the situation turned into a stalemate of sorts, the police Shift Sergeant walked through the door.  Ironically, I found out later that the sergeant had actually worked the wrestling matches earlier that night as Head of Security.   He actually knew Randy and he said in a calm voice, “Randy drop the club and turn around.”

Savage had no intention of dropping the club. The Shift Sergeant repeated his request using Randy’s name for the second time. Needless to say, Savage didn’t comply. More police cars arrived at the scene.

This was a wild scene.

Finally, the Shift Sergeant ordered his men to back up. In through the door at that very moment entered a 85 pound German Shepherd police dog.  The policemen saw this dog, who I learned later was one of the most aggressive dogs the Nashville police department had ever had, and backed out of the way. The handler, who had brought the dog inside the Waffle House, now ordered Savage to surrender or the dog would be set free. Needless to say, Savage did not go peacefully in the good night.  Savage did not comply and you’ve heard the old song, WHO LET THE DOGS OUT? The dog got out.

Well, what fight was left in the Macho Man suddenly went south as the police dog came after Savage. Savage didn’t have a chance against this dog but he told me later that he did get one good kick in. Savage admitted later that was a big mistake. Right after the kick which didn’t do anything to slow the dog down, the dog ripped into Savage. Savage arms were gashed from the dog’s teeth but the deepest gash was in Randy’s right buttock. The old saying “I’m going to tear you a new a**hole” suddenly took on a whole different meaning to Savage after that. The dog did a number on Savage before the handler could pull him off.

Savage was finally subdued, handcuffed and arrested and taken to the Davidson County Jail in downtown Nashville. Savage didn’t work for the next two nights due to having to nurse his wounds at the hands (paws) of the police dog.  Savage was bailed out about a couple of hours later when his father, Angelo, came down to the jail to get him out.

This all happened without me knowing anything about it. I had actually gone back to my house when I watched a little TV and then off to bed.  The next morning I got up and sat down for a lovely breakfast and, totally unaware that anything had happened, I picked up the Nashville Tennessean. On the inside of the front page, the headline read: “WRESTLER ARRESTED AFTER SKIRMISH WITH POLICE DOG”. What??? Wrestler arrested??? Police Dog??? What the hell???

I then quickly read the whole column about what had happened the night before. Of course, the report didn’t fully lay it out like I did above but the gist of the whole incident was there. The opening line of the report was good though. I almost laughed when I read it.

The first line read, “Apparently Randy “Macho Man” Savage didn’t get enough action last night when he took on Dutch Mantell in the Main Event at the Fairgrounds Arena wrestling event. He also ended up fighting a Nashville police dog as well.”

I called Savage around noon that day just to check on his condition. He had to go to the hospital the night before to get checked and stitched up. He was still in Macho Man mode when I talked to him and he told me the details even to the point of kicking the dog. I asked about what happened to the cowboy but he said he got away.

Randy had read the same article in the paper that I had read and he couldn’t just let that go by without a challenge either. Savage actually called the same reporter who had written the report to rebut the story and to get his side out. The reporter was more than happy to have Randy in a rebuttal story.

In the report, Randy said it was a situation that had gotten completely out of hand but he had been the one attacked and that the real culprit had gotten away. Savage played the real babyface here and put over the Nashville police department and especially the dog. I wish I still had the article as it was pretty funny reading it.

Savage didn’t work for a couple of days due to the soreness but I saw him on Saturday night at the Chattanooga show.  He showed me where the dog had bitten him. He pulled down his trunks and it looked nasty. It was a bite mark that had to be at least 9 inches long and I saw a few puncture wounds where the stitches were.

Randy went to court a few weeks later on the charge of disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and battery on a police officer when, in fact, it was battery on a police dog. The law states that a police dog is an officer of the police force so technically, that was a correct charge. Nick Gulas, the promoter, pulled some strings downtown in the police department and donated some money to one of their favorite charities and Randy was charged with a much lesser offense, found guilty and put on probation.

I know Savage and I know how he thinks. He was somewhat a paranoid guy and if someone ever got the upper hand on him, he never forgot it. Never. I always thought that if Randy could, he would find that dog and get even. But now, Randy is gone.  But he is not forgotten.  I was thinking about Randy just a few days ago…and I think Randy is walking around somewhere in the afterlife still looking for that dog.  Rest in peace Macho Man.  You damn sure earned it.

The end

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Eddie 

This story goes a long way back. To the mid-70’s to be exact. I had only been wrestling a couple of years when I booked myself in Florida for Championship Wrestling which was one of the leading NWA offices in the country. Back in those days, there were lots of regional promotions around the country. Not one office or promotion controlled the country like WWE does today. I had always heard that the Florida promotion had a unique wrestling style than some of the other places I’d worked. The style in Florida was a more realistic style than some of the other places I’d worked. But to me, it still looked the same as to what I’d been exposed to before.

The FCW promotion was based out of Tampa and Eddie Graham was the owner. We worked our asses off working 7 days a week and sometimes twice a day.  Trips were long but bearable but I liked working in Florida. I liked the company, I liked the weather and the people that ran it. Plus I got paid pretty good and for a kid still learning what this wrestling business was all about, I thought it was great. We worked every hole in the road town that they could throw a dart at and hit on a Rand/McNally Florida road map. I don’t think there was a town in Florida that I didn’t work or at least go through. We worked every day, Sundays included and the only times I remember being off was on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve and Easter Sunday. All the other holidays were booked and attendance in those days was excellent. In the company at the time was the great Ernie Ladd whom I had met before in Atlanta, Harley Race who was the booker,  Eddie Graham who was considered one of the great minds of wrestling and after being around him for a while, I agreed. Pat Patterson who later became one of Vince McMahon’s right hand men was there, Jack and Jerry Briscoe, Bob Roop, Lars Anderson, Killer Karl Kox who I learned so much from, Steve Keirn, Mike Graham, Oliver Humperdink, Dick Murdoch, Dusty Rhodes. Thinking back on that crew now is almost like reciting a Hall of Fame roster list. I learned so much from all of them and it was a pleasure to have worked alongside those guys night after night.

Keep in mind that in the mid-’70s, wrestling fans in Florida, except for the most hardcore fan, didn’t even know there was wrestling outside of Florida. But when you worked a territory like Florida with the TV and the TV coverage they had at the time, every wrestler mentioned above was as over and as well known as a John Cena or Triple H are today…or an Undertaker or a Stone Cold in their heyday. Everybody knew who the wrestlers were. Fans even knew me and I was only a kid still learning the ropes. It didn’t matter whether you were the Main Event or whether you were the 1st match guy, fans knew who you were and knew your story.

The reason they knew your story was because of a man named Gordon Solie who could make two dogs screwing in a driveway seem important. Gordon Solie, at the time, and even up to this day was considered one of the best play by play announcers ever to grace a commentary mike. Gordon was great at what he did and his contribution to the Florida wrestling product can never be overstated. I think I may have stated this fact before but back in those days, fans truly believed that the wrestling game was more or less totally legit. We protected the image of the wrestling profession a hundred times more than it’s protected today. But with that reasoning, professional wrestlers were targets of fans who thought they were just as tough as the wrestlers they saw on TV. Those were the ones that were dangerous. I should know. I ran into a fan just like that one night in Frostproof, Florida.

Frostproof, Florida. What a name for a town I always thought. Where is it?  Well, its in the middle of the state about 90- miles east of Tampa and about the same distance south of Orlando. It was a nothing happening town but when we went to wrestle there, the high school gym was packed out with 2,000 screaming fans. I don’t know where they came from because Frost Proof, Florida was a teen tiny town on Hwy. 17 S that was stuck out in the middle of nowhere surrounded by a bunch of orange trees and strawberry fields.

Since business, at the time, was red hot, the Frost Proof high school gym was completely sold out. I remember how crazy the crowds were in those days and the Frost Proof crowd was no exception. It’s really fun to wrestle in front of a big enthusiastic crowd. Great show, no problems…another successful day at the office. So after the matches were over…we all hopped back into the car for the two-hour ride back to Tampa where we all lived. Or so I thought.

As per wrestling custom in those days, we stopped at the first  7-11 convenience store that had big beer neon signs in their windows advertising Budweiser or Miller HiLife beer.  We didn’t care what the brand was…it could have been beer that was made out of camel peepee..,.I didn’t care.  We came up to a 7-11  right on the outskirts of Frost Proof and pulled in.  It was late July and the heat that day in Florida had been unbearably hot. You can imagine how hot it had been in that gym we had worked in that night. But as they say in Florida, it’s not the heat, its the “humidity’ to which I never agreed. If it was hot, it was hot GAWD DAMMIT!!

Since it was so hot, I was looking forward to grabbing a few beers. I don’t drink anymore but back in my younger days, I drank like a fish. So as we pulled into the parking lot of the convenience store, I could see it wasn’t crowded with only one beat-up pickup truck with a gun rack in the window parked in front of the store. That meant we could be in, out and down the highway in 5 minutes.

As we parked in front of the store, I saw that there was only a couple of good old country looking redneck types inside the store. One of them was wearing what they call denim overalls and wearing a baseball cap that said ‘John Deere’ on it. How, you ask, can you remember that?  Hang on, I’m getting to that.

Since I was in a hurry, I got out of the car first to go into the store which if I had waited 15 seconds, 20 seconds, I may have avoided what transpired a few moments later.

As I approached the door to enter the store, the biggest one of the redneck guys was approaching the door to exit. We met at the exact same time face to face in the doorway.   That big ole Deliverance looking redneck guy was blocking my entrance.  After a brief awkward pause, I moved to the right to enter…but he moved to the right too. Thinking that was just a mistake on his part, I then moved to the left to enter but he moved to the left too. I looked at him again…and said excuse me and tried to go around him one more time and he blocked me again.

I now got the feeling that I was going to have a little bit of trouble. I could see trouble ahead.  I could just feel it.  I looked in his eyes and could see that this guy was kinda drunk. I’ve learned a long time ago that being drunk leads to problems. I’ve always been able to sense when things aren’t kosher or exactly right in the world and I could always feel tension when it was in the air. I felt it at this point.

Just so you’ll know a little more about what I was feeling, this guy wasn’t a little guy either. He was about 6’1 and had to weigh in at 280 at least. I was 6′ but I only tipped the scales at the time at a mere 205, maybe.  Not only was this guy drunker than Cooter Brown, he looked like he hadn’t taken a bath since the Vietnam War ended and bore a striking resemblance to one of the mountain guys in the movie, Deliverance? Long hair, scruffy beard and overalls.

So as we stood there eyeball to eyeball, he spoke and said, “Yur one of dem rasslers, ain’t ye? I seent ye over at de high skool. Ye don’t look so tuff ta mee. Whur doo ye think ye’re going?”
Well, you know it’s going to be a problem when somebody asks you if “yur one of dem dam rasslers, ain’t ye?” Now I was convinced that this guy had actually BEEN in the movie, Deliverance, for REAL!!!  Patterns of speech and accents like this guy had can’t be taught, it had to be natural inbreeding. It wouldn’t have surprised me if somebody hadn’t started plucking out a tune on a banjo.  But, not to keep the asshole waiting, I replied, “Excuse me, I’m going inside”.

He shot back at me with, “Nah, ye ain’t.”

I said, “Yeah, I am.” He said again, “Nah, ye ain’t.” Now God Dammit…we were getting a little bit redundant here I thought. We had somewhat of a little Mexican standoff going on,  minus the Mexican, and I wanted to end this thing before it went any further.

Since it had turned into a personal challenge, I then told him point-blank, “I’m going into the store, excuse me.”

I then tried to go around him one more time and he blocked me again and this time it was the third time which pretty much made his intentions known. He wasn’t going to let me into the store which I took as a personal challenge. At this point, in retrospect, I should have said, screw it and backed away. But, in my way of thinking back in those days, that wasn’t my mindset.

So when he blocked me for the last time, I tried to push my way past this 280 pound fatass and when he pushed back, the fight broke out. Just like that. It took maybe 90 seconds from the time I got out of the car until this Deliverance looking bastard and me were throwing down in front of the good old 7-11 in beautiful Frost Proof, Florida. Now, that’s a great way to spend your evening hours. Fighting rednecks down at the local 7-11 convenience store parking lot.  Damn, sounds like f’n fun to me. Maybe we can get a FACEBOOK fan page dedicated to that cause.

As the incident broke down like a 12 gauge shotgun, out rushed Deliverance #2 but to his credit, he didn’t get involved. The two guys I were with didn’t do shit either. I was punching this bastard as hard as I could but all he was doing was shaking his head and moving forward. I landed some hellacious shots on this big bastard but it wasn’t having the desired effects that I wanted it to have.  Actually, I hit him so hard one time that I think it hurt me more than it did him. This whole thing had gone south fast and since my punches weren’t doing any damage except to my hand, I decided to shift strategy in the middle of the fight. I then tried to take him off his feet and maybe I could put some boots to him while he was down.

That brilliant shift in strategy ended up a mistake..as I soon learned.   As I tried to leverage under him, we both ended up crashing and burning head over heels over an old Tampa Tribune newspaper stand or rack. They don’t have racks like that anymore. Some people may still remember them but you had to put in a quarter and then the door would open and you would remove the morning newspaper.

As we both went over the top of the newspaper rack, I was trying to get this big asshole off me but 280 pounds of drunk ass redneck is hard to move. I finally got to my feet and the fight was continuing but by this time, the big guy was starting to breathe heavily and my punches had a little more sting to them. Funny, but his guy never hit me with one punch because while he was big, he was slow. But if he had ever connected with any of those haymakers he was throwing, he would have knocked me into the next county.

Then off in the distance, I heard sirens approaching and  getting louder and getting closer.  Now, this guy I was fighting looked kinda stupid but he wasn’t that stupid so we both broke off the fight right as the police car screeched into the parking lot. Apparently, the store employee had called the police and sure enough, up pulled the pride of Frost Proof, Florida, the city policeman with his blue and red lights flashing. The guy looked like Barney Fife as he approached us and I don’t blame him. He was alone and he didn’t know what he was stepping into. As a matter of fact, you could add two more people to that list. Me and the guy I was fighting.

We all were in the dark as to what was happening. All I knew is that a fight had broken out, for whatever reason, I don’t know. Looking at the policeman, he looked scared as this may have been his first call to handle a REAL INCIDENT.

As the policeman rushed up to us, he asked what the hell was going on?  I don’t know why I said this but I didn’t roll over on old Bubba and blame him, I just said “Nothing. We were just messing around”.  I lied like a bastard and had no idea of why I said that but I knew that if I was arrested, it was going to cost me at least $200 and maybe a nights stay in jail. I also knew that since I didn’t beat the crap out of this guy…I was in jeopardy of getting fired by ol Eddie Graham.

In those days, bookers and owners didn’t give a crap if you fought somebody on the street, all they cared about was if you won the fight. Since the guy I was fighting was still standing,  it could be construed as not winning.

The officer then looked at old buttface Bubba and asked him what was going on…and he must have taken the cue from me because he said “nuttin. Wes just playing round.”

I then realized that I may have been fighting a complete and utter idiot. because this son-of-a-bitch can’t even speak basic English!!! After -hearing him butcher the language, I had serious doubts that he had ever taken an English class or for that matter, any class. Bastard.

So there we were …11PM in the parking lot of a 7-11 convenience store in Frost Proof, Florida…a town I had never even passed through  in my life…fighting a guy I had only met 3 minutes earlier and a confused, jumpy police officer, with a gun on his hip,  standing in front of us with red lights blinking all over the place. How in the f**k did all this happen so quickly, I asked myself?

We stood there like little boys having gotten caught with their hands in the cookie jar…when the police officer, who was as confused as the rest of said, “OK break it up…and get the hell outta here before I arrest the both of you.”

Old Bubba walked over to the that beat up piece of crap truck he was riding in and drove off. I got back into the car I had just gotten out of a few minutes earlier. I never made it into the store, never got the beer I had stopped for and had almost gotten arrested for being stupid. Now I started to understand how quickly things can reach a tipping point and people could get really hurt. Why any of it happened, even today, is beyond me as stupid as that sounds.

As we pulled off from the store, I felt a little pulsing pain from my right ear and I reached up to feel it with my right hand, I felt a warm liquid on my fingers. As I pulled my hand down, I saw blood all over my fingers. I then looked down at my shirt and saw blood drops on my front. One of the guys with me took a look at it and said that my right ear lobe was cut and ripped and probably could take a few stitches. I don’t know how that happened as ole Bubba never really got a punch in on me. Apparently, when we went over the Tampa Tribune newspaper stand, my ear had either caught on the edge of the rack or the protruding brick window sill on the bottom of the plate glass window. We were still about 90 miles from Tampa so I had to wait until I got back to Tampa to dress my wound.

I got home about 1:30AM and by that time, I was half-drunk and with blood all over my shirt. Getting into a fight didn’t prevent me from stopping at the next convenience store for beer.   I got back to my apartment in Tampa and off to the ER I went.  Two hours and 8 stitches later and 200 dollars less rich, thanks to that asshole in Frost Proof, Florida, I emerged from the University of South Florida ER. I’ve said this a lot of times but being in the wrestling business back when I started, you got challenged and when you were challenged, you had to stand your ground. Not every challenge, of course, ended up in a physical fight but those things happened.  I know. One of those had just happened.

The night ended up costing me a couple hundred dollars but I knew that word would get back to Eddie Graham, the owner of the promotion, about the incident. I wasn’t so concerned about the money but I knew it was a matter of time before Eddie got around to asking me about it.  Sure enough, that Sunday in the Sports Arena in Orlando, Eddie walked up to me and asked me what happened. I told him the story just like I’ve written it here.

Eddie had a very piercing stare about him and when you were talking to him, he looked you directly in the eye which made it difficult for anyone to judge a reaction. When I finished telling him the story, I halfway expected him to say, well I got to finish you up. But he didn’t. Eddie was one of the sharpest minds in all of pro wrestling at the time and I wanted to stay on his good side but I learned something from Eddie that day. He was fair too. All he said to me was, “Good job kid. Work on your punches.” That’s all he said and never said another word about it. 

The END. 

• 

Want to be a Tough Guy

or

Want to be a Smart Guy? 

Starting out in the wrestling business is different than starting out in any other business.  Not only is it a physical business but its a political one as well and sometimes you just had to feel your way along.  Wrestling isn’t as physical as football or amateur wrestling but in the middle.  A stiff move or being too snug during a match could easily be identified as being too rough.  Veterans didn’t like that and many of them, when I started,  didn’t like rookies to begin with.  To tell the truth,  I didn’t either when I became a veteran.  Rookies can make mistakes that can and will hurt you and when that happened,  you didn’t make any money.  When I broke in, if you didn’t work,  you didn’t get paid.  And in wrestling,  there was no insurance, no pension plan, no benefits, no unions,  no paid vacations, no Human Resources departments and you could get fired on a whim.  Where was Bernie Sanders when we really needed him?  

The business when I started was so much different than it is today.   Problems were real but answers to them were at a premium and early in my career,  I ran across a problem that I didn’t know how to handle very early on   But thanks to a wise old veteran,  I solved it by listening to his very sage advice.  This was where I first learned the art of diplomacy and when to apply it.  

The territory was the old Atlanta, Georgia franchise of the old NWA network way back in the 70’s. It was owned and operated by a man named Jim Barnette. Mr. Barnette always had a fondness for pro wrestling and was born into a family with money so when he started promoting wrestling events,  he started with a sizable bank account.

In today’s “woke” generation, he could have been called privileged. He was a white male with money or a lot more money than the rest of us had. His only detraction from being totally privileged was that he wasn’t totally heterosexual which might have contributed to his fondness for the game. Just an observation just to be clear.

Barnette’s idea succeeded beyond his wildest imaginings.  Barnette’s TV network was owned and operated by the Murdoch Family…of which Rupert was the head of. Rupert Murdoch is a name that most cable network fans know as the founder of FOX news here in the US. The meeting with Rupert and Barnette would play out in spectacular fashion years later as I’ll explain below. Fans in Australia were highly supportive of American style pro wrestling and sellouts were common in the big cities like Perth, Brisbane and Sydney.  Barnette’s time in  Australia was about the time I was breaking in so I never got to see first hand or work Australia.  If there was ever one regret that I had, it would be that Barnette left Austrailia before I ever had an opportunity to go there.   

After a strong run during the early 70’s,  Barnette grew homesick for the States and wanted to return home.  He sold his company to an Australian investor and returned back to the states with more money than he left with.  He more or less remained on the sidelines for a year or so studying the American wrestling climate and decided to buy into the Georgia Championship Wrestling promotion based in Atlanta.  Barnette didn’t just buy things on a whim and had studied the American wrestling landscape for over a year when he finally made his move and he had reasons why he wanted GCW.   One was that it was a promotion that was going through a wrestling war and knew the owners wanted out…and the other one,  he felt like he was the only one who could make the promotion successful.   He was right on both counts.   The second reason and the MAIN REASON was that GCW was on a station that he knew was going national on cable.

Cable TV at the time was cutting edge. Barnette knew that a TV Cable Wrestling promotion would put him way ahead of any other competitor in the market. Also, the channel he was going to be on was Channel 17 owned by, in Barnettes’ estimation a visionary in seeing the future, Ted Turner. Turner was the one who envisioned the power of cable TV long before anybody else in the country realized its potential.   It didn’t hurt Barnette’s chances that Ted Turner reminded him of Rupert Murdoch who was his support system in Australia.   

The fascination with the Georgia promotion and what made it stand out so much from all the rest of the companies in the US was the TV coverage.  All of the other promotions in the country were all local promotions with only regional coverage but GWC aired on a SuperStation with coverage all over the country.   There were only a few SuperStations, in the entire country at the time…which included, WGN out of Chicago and one maybe in NYC.  But there were no SuperStations carrying pro wrestling and wrestling proved very profitable for Turner and his station.  

Turner later on stated that pro wrestling was the one staple product that kept his station in the black and without it, his station could have filed bankruptcy. Turner’s fascination with pro wrestling could also explain why TBS ended up buying the old Mid-Atlantic territory in the 90’s.  

So back to my story about being a smart guy or a tough guy. Wrestlers back in those days unbeknownst to most of them were traded back and forth most of the time almost like cattle without them even knowing about it. One day at the matches the booker (whoever he was) would sidle up to a guy and just tell him that they were finishing him up but most of the time, he had been traded to another company a couple hundred miles away. That was to keep the talent working and to keep fresh talent moving through. That was how I ended up in Georgia.   When I was informed that I was going to Georgia, I was elated. The company was on fire, Barnette had a rep as a good payoff guy and I thought that I had just got lucky.

At the time, a position in the Georgia territory was a highly sought position.  Barnette had hired Bill Watts as his booker and  Watts was a no nonsense type guy who liked hard nosed wrestling and not a lot of theatrical displays.   Business was good and the ratings on the show…which started at 6:05EST/5:05 CST was gaining popularity all across the country.  Even though Georgia was national,  they had to pay their bills so like every other company in those days, they ran weekly towns within the state of Georgia.   Later on, Georgia Championship Wrestling started running mini-tours up in Ohio and Pennsylvania due to the coverage of the SuperStation.  

We always did the weekly Georgia Championship Wrestling tapings early on Saturday mornings.  The show was taped and aired later on Saturday afternoon.   Many fans, in those days,  thought the show was LIVE but we taped it around 10AM on Saturday morning and it played back at 6:05PM EST.   The 05 start time turned out to be a wise marketing tool because the ending of a show would always spill over into the next hour thus preventing viewers from channel surfing at the top of the hour.  I don’t know why more TV programs don’t employ that start/stop time strategy.   

The talent in Atlanta during that period was very good with guys like Abdullah the Butcher and Mark Lewin, who Barnette had booked in Australia along with Wrestling 2, Dick Slater,  Bob OrtonJr.,  Tommy “Wildfire’ Rich, Roddy Piper, the Assassin and The Great Mephisto among others.   My job in the company was strictly as a mid-card wrestler because I was still learning the business.   But with that position came a little bit of follow the leader and you had to take a little bullshit from the top guys.   Most everybody in the top tier were cool…but as with everything,  there is ALWAYS one jackass amongst them. 

Don’t leave now…this is where the story gets good.

As I mentioned a JACKASS above, the photo of him is right beside us right now. I ran smack dab into a situational story and it’s a story that started and ended in one 8 hour period. But I learned more in that 8 hours than I had learned about wrestling up to that point.

 Every Saturday morning,  our call time for the TV taping at the WTBS Studios on Peachtree Street in downtown Atlanta was around 8:30 AM.  I know, that’s really early to perform especially since we probably didn’t get in from the LIVE event the night before until 2 or 3 AM. But that’s the nature of the business we were in. 

I showed up early one Saturday morning and walked into the studio locker room…which wasn’t a locker room at all.  What it is really was,   was the lobby of the station.  We all dressed in a medium size lobby with a desk for a receptionist and a hallway leading down to the other offices.   It wasn’t very big and you can imagine 14 to 20 wrestlers all stuck in a small space and all trying to get dressed and go over the show at the same time.   It amazed me that the show came off at all.   The studio was right around the corner and if you’ve ever watched the old tapes on YouTube from Channel 17…you might be able to fit 100 people into the small, cramped area that Channel 17 called a studio.  But it was functional and it worked.   

I found out that day that I was scheduled to wrestle Mr. Wrestling #2.   I had never worked him before and I had heard rumors that he could be a little bit of a hard ass at times, especially with younger guys.   Wrestling 2, whose real name,  was Johnny Walker had been a top star in Georgia for a couple of years before I got there.  In fact,  Mr. Wrestling was such a big star,  that he was named as the favorite wrestler of then-President Jimmy Carter’s mother, Lillian.  When Jimmy Carter won the Presidency in 1972,   Mr. Wrestling had actually been invited to attend the Presidential Inaugural Festivities in Washington, DC but declined for professional reasons.  The reasons were that he would be required to appear without his mask on in which he didn’t agree with.  Yep folks you know that little term, KAYFABE??? The wrestling profession used to honor the CODE.

Walker had come up the hard way in the wrestling business and his style was very aggressive in nature and very physical.   But I didn’t mind that.  I, more or less,  wanted it the same way.  But I found out that he was also very moody and he took that attitude into the ring at times according to who he was working with.  

When we were called together to go over the match,  we were told that the match would go about 5 minutes or a typical TV match in those days with the result being that Mr. Wrestling would end up beating me with his patented driving knee lift.  Both of us understood what was needed for the match.  I asked Johnny was there anything he wanted to do and he just looked at me, with his mask on I might add. Wrestling 2 was such a stickler for KAYFABE, he even kept it on in the dressing room  and said we’d work it out in the ring.   Wow I thought. So much for preparation.

The taping started and we were on something like 2nd or 3rd that day.  As I entered the ring, during a commercial break,   I saw Mr. Wrestling come in from the other side of the ring.   The ring announcer was the legendary Freddie Miller who coined the phrase….BE THERE!!!…on most of the wrestling commercials that aired on the show.   The play by play announcer was also the legendary Gordon Solie who I thought was one of the best announcers of all time and he gave any match an aura of credibility when he called it.   

 I remembered Wrestling 2 telling me in the back that we’d work it out in the ring but when the match started, I saw immediately that Johnny had one thing on his mind and his idea of working it out was simple.  He would give me nothing.   And nothing is what he gave me.   I understood my purpose in the ring and within the pecking order of the company and that was to make Mr. Wrestling look good and look tough.  But I was always taught that even though you were getting pinned,  that didn’t mean you were to get squashed.   When the finish was given to me,  especially with 5 minutes in duration, that would have mandated that I would be on top…at least for awhile.   Apparently,  Johnny didn’t share the same philosophy as I did.

  He took me over in a headlock…beat me up…and when I tried to take over on him,  he blocked any and all my attempts and kept his offense moving.  Then he beat me up some more. And he wasn’t easy either. Some of those punches were very stiff. I got ZERO offense in on him.  If the match had been over in a minute or so,  that would have been preferable to what he did and would have been accepted more from a fan’s viewpoint.   However,  he kept his attack going on for 5 FULL MINUTES which, to a viewer, is not only overkill but boring as hell. 

The crowd inside the studio was just dead.  I mean, what did they have to get excited about?  Here was their hero (not me BTW) beating up a helpless not to mention inept opponent (that would be me) and for a minute there,  I thought the crowd started feeling a bit sorry for me.  Hell, I knew I was. The studio was so quiet at one point,  I could even hear Gordon calling what little action there was to call.   At one point, I even heard a horn beeping outside on the street.   

Finally,  the match ended and the crowd sort of cheered…a little bit. I think they cheered more for the fact that it was over rather than the victory that had been achieved.   I knew that Johnny had taken advantage of me but what was I to do?   I was low man on the totem pole and I was in no position to call Wrestling 2’s hand on anything.   He was the STAR and my job was to keep him a STAR but what he had done is really a no-no in the business unless directly ordered by the booker. He completely destroyed me but more than that,  he didn’t really advance himself in the process. 

Since I didn’t put up much of an offense…or any offense,  he beat a nobody and it took him 5 minutes to do it.   If he had beat me within 2 minutes, it would have been much better but he took 5 minutes to do something that he should have been able to do in a relatively short amount of time.  Looking back on it,  the case could have been made that I was tougher than he was because it took him 5 minutes to put me away.   

When I walked back into the dressing room…or I should say,  slowly “crept” back into the dressing room…I was embarrassed.   Embarrassed by my performance but I was also embarrassed that I had allowed it to happen.   But there was no way I could have prevented it short of actually fighting it out with Johnny in the ring.   If that had happened,  my future in that company would have ended that day because I would have been fired.  So I was not only embarrassed,  I was impotent to even do anything about it.   

Wrestling protocol has always dictated that the winner should always seek out the loser and thank him for the match.  I waited while I sat in a chair next to my bag for Johnny to come and thank me for the match but he never came.  Finally,  I stood up and found him sitting next to his bag around the corner in the hallway. When I approached him,  I extended my hand and said,  “thanks for the match.”  Johnny didn’t even look up at me but extended his hand almost condescendingly as he said gruffly,  “Thanks kid.”  But he said it without sincerity, not that I expected much, but it made me feel like I was just a piece of garbage.  Have I mentioned that Wrestling 2’s social skills were limited to say the least and he was considered a “jackass”?

At the time,  there were what we called ‘job boys’ who didn’t work full time in the wrestling business.   Their job in wrestling and their only job in wrestling was to get beat on TV.   Since I didn’t consider myself a straight up ‘job guy’,  that lack of respect didn’t sit well with me.   Since I had a full time job with the company,   my belief was that I should have been afforded a bit more courtesy than what Johnny had shown me that morning.   I never had a problem with Wrestling 2 until that day but it solidified the rumors that I had heard about him.  That he was a shot taker but only took shots at those who were beneath him and those who had no political clout of which I qualified for both.   I didn’t know how I should have handled the situation but I was glad that it was behind me.  Chalk it up to a learning experience.   

After the early morning taping…I wasn’t done.  Back in those days,  we worked sometimes two or three times a day.   On this particular Saturday,   after the Atlanta tapings,  we had to get into our car and drive 110 miles to Columbus, Georgia in order to make another TV show but this time it would be LIVE at 4PM.   We just had enough time to hop in the car,  grab a bite to eat and drive down HighWay 41 to Columbus.   These Saturday taping days were sometimes 20 hour days.

 I was riding that day with an old timer, Frankie Caine, who worked under the name of the Great Mephisto.   As I drove south out of Atlanta toward Columbus,  Frankie and I were talking.   He had been in the wrestling business for years and what had happened that day hadn’t escaped his notice.  I was hoping that nobody had noticed it but that was just merely wishful thinking.   He looked over at me about 30 minutes into the trip and asked me what had happened that morning with Wrestling 2.  

I replied that nothing had happened.  

• 

Frankie said,  ‘well something happened because he gave you nothing’ which was absolutely true.   Frankie took a deep breath and started giving me a mini- lecture on how wrestling protocol and politics worked  inside the wrestling business.   Frankie began by telling me that I needed to confront Wrestling 2 and flat out tell him that I did not appreciate him crushing me on TV.  

I didn’t know what to do as I was torn but I decided to let sleeping dogs lie and not say anything just to keep the peace.  I’ve always heard that sometimes you had to go along to get along.  So I wasn’t going to say anything but I damn sure wanted to.  I just had to bite my tongue.   As soon as I walked into the little building that served as a wrestling arena in Columbus,  I looked at the lineup sheet posted on the wall and saw that I would be working with Wrestling 2 for the SECOND TIME that day and I feared a repeat of what had just happened on Atlanta TV earlier that morning.  

Atlanta TV and Columbus TV weren’t booked by the same people.  Columbus had an independent promoter who used Atlanta wrestlers for his TV show and all he did was book the wrestlers and give a booking fee to the Atlanta office.   Whoever booked the Columbus TV had no idea what had happened in Atlanta that morning so they were clueless.  

I didn’t know what to do but old Frankie was watching what was going on and he pulled me aside and gave me some great advice. He knew by experience what Wrestling 2’s plan was. Ol Frankie knew that 2 was going to do a repeat of the morning session.  Later on I learned that Frankie, who was becoming one of my best friends at the time, had had a few run-ins with Wrestling 2 in their dealings in the past. Needless to say, no love lost.  

As we were called together,  for our little pre-match meeting, Wrestling 2 wouldn’t even look at me and I knew that he planned a repeat of our match earlier that morning.   When the instructions were over,  I asked Wrestling 2 was there anything he wanted to change from earlier that day and he said, for the second time, that we’d work it out in the ring.   Well, he more or less told me what to expect which was more than he had done in Atlanta.   

Frankie, after the meeting called me over. I didn’t week his advice but he voluntarily gave it to me who he could see was struggling on how to handle the situation. This situation was not only a physical one, it was a political one too.

Frankie looked me right in the yese and said I could be a tough guy…or a smart guy. One option was that if Wrestling 2 tried the same thing with me as he had in Atlanta,  I could physically make a stand and fight him….FOR REAL and on LIVE TV.  He also said that if that happened…I could get the hell beat out of me or I could beat the hell out of him but in the end,  he would still win…because whatever happened,  I would end up getting fired and probably blackballed from ever working in wrestling again.  

Then he gave me option 2.   

The match was scheduled for 6 minutes and on LIVE TV…6 minutes is an eternity.   All Frankie said to do was to let Wrestling 2 take a headlock, take me over in a headlock l…and GO TO SLEEP.

The fans were absolutely dead. Funeral homes had more energy. I just laid there. Johnny even as dense and as selfish as he was beginning to realize that he was the one looking like crap, not me.

WTF I thought? GO TO SLEEP? I’D NEVER HEARD THAT TERM IN WRESTLING BEFORE. I asked, quite sheepishly, “what’s that”? He said just call a headlock, let him take you over and then do absolutely nothing until he wants to work. The match started and as expected,  everything was exactly as it had been in Atlanta. I called a headlock and 2 took me over and I just laid down. And for the next 30 to 45 seconds..nothing happened.  Remember, this was eons before WWE’s slick TV presentation with only the one camera …no editing,  no special effects, no nothing and LIVE TV.   You got what you got.   Finally, 2 made a move to bring me up..and I just laid there. 

The fans were dead. Coma patients had more energy. Finally, it dawned on Wrestling 2 that this match was dying the death of a broke tail dog. Finally I said to Johnny while I was still in the headlock these exact words.  

I said very quietly “Johnny…I can get up and we can have a match.   Or I can lay here and have you pin me right here.  So what do you want to do?  You want to work…or you want to pin me right here”?    The crowd was so dead, I think a couple of the fans at ringside heard me tell him that.

After a long and agonizing not to mention boring match up to this point,   even 2 realized that he was looking like crap not doing anything.  So he said begrudgingly, OK kid,  lets work.  When he said that…I came up firing. And lo and behold, the old bastard started selling. And when he came alive, guess what? The crowd came alive.   2 started selling for me like he would have sold for Brisco or Funk.  I thought to myself…now really…how hard was just a little selling?  

We went on to have a half decent match    Or at least a match that made Wrestling 2 struggle just a bit to achieve the win. Believe me, before I took over, you could hear the announcer in the studio and nothing else. Finally, back in the dressing room…2 thanked me for the match…and I thanked him.   And I learned something that day.  

Use your head and seek advice when you can. Wrestling 2 thought that I was just some underneath job guy…which frankly I was at the time…but I knew enough to know that if he made me to be a tough guy..then he beat a tough guy. If he beat somebody who didn’t put up a fight..then he beat a nobody.  But if he beat somebody that gave him a run for his money…if only for a minute then he overcame a hurdle.  

I think that Wrestling 2 knew that I had been traveling with Frankie Cain that day and I believe Wrestling 2 thought Frankie had put me up to that little maneuver that I pulled. And he didn’t appreciate it I learned later. I also learned that there had always been heat between the 2 and Frankie going back 15 or so years. But little did I know the heat would play out between them about a month later in Macon, Georgia about a month later.

Frankie was managing a wrestler that Wrestling 2 was working with and something wasn’t right with the finish. I didn’t see what happened but when they returned to the dressing room…Johnny was upset with Frankie about the match and was confronting him in the dressing room. I witnessed this while I was getting dress dressed after my earlier match. Johnny was starting to get loud. Frankie, being the politician he was, suggested they both go off and discuss this amongst themselves without everybody being a witness to it.  They both went into a small restroom area close to where I was sitting.    After a minute or so inside the little restroom…I heard Johnny raise his voice which was loud enough to hear down a short hallway and then I heard a couple of thumping sounds as though somebody was hitting the walls inside the rest room.  

Then it got quiet.  Really quiet.  I heard nothing.  About 20 seconds later…Mephisto emerged,  by himself,  from the rest room and walked by me without saying a word.   I wondered why he came out by himself.   2 was still in the rest room.   He didn’t come out for another 2 minutes but when he did,  his white mask was torn and there was blood coming from his eye and his nose through the mask.   He went straight to his bag,  grabbed his keys and left the dressing room area without taking a shower or getting dressed.

It didn’t take a detective to figure out what happened but sometimes Karma bites you in the ass. Karma never forgets an address.