More Than Just Hardcore (21 page)

One thing I’ll say for him—the Japanese fans were always more appreciative of what they saw in the ring, because both Inoki and Baba were very smart about keeping the evolution in check, advancing things slowly, unlike the States, where everything was always getting wilder.

Inoki and Baba limited what was done in the ring, and therefore people in Japan appreciated wrestling itself more. They had finishes in the middle of the ring. There were no “screwjob” finishes in Japan for as long as I could remember, until the modern era.

Now, that’s not to say they didn’t have disqualifications, or countouts, because they did. But we never did one of those crazy finishes where the referee is knocked out and misses one guy pinning the other, or half the locker room coming out to interfere.

They usually had winners and losers. When you have winners and losers, each match takes on a greater degree of importance, as opposed to the States, where things got to the point that the importance was with the stipulations of the match. If there was some sort of gimmick or bizarre finish, it would typically be in only one match on the card, and even then it only happened a couple of times a year, which made each angle stand out and be something really memorable.

And those two booked that way on purpose.

I spent a lot of my time in the U.S. during the early 1980s bouncing around the regional territories. I would come in, do a few weeks’ worth of matches, and then I was out. It was a good way to make some money and still get to spend extended periods of time at home, between tours of Japan.

In Memphis, having a main-event feud meant wrestling Jerry Lawler.

I agreed to go there in 1981 after they promised not to steal me blind. That was always necessary when dealing with the promoters in Memphis. Jerry Lawler, who had part-ownership there, was a friend, but he wasn’t the man making the payoffs.

I had a good feud with Lawler in Memphis, culminating in the first “empty arena” match. I had the idea for the match, but I couldn’t tell you where the idea came from.

It was so absolutely absurd, so ridiculous, that it became a cult favorite. Hell, people don’t remember that I was gone from Memphis two weeks after that!

The idea of the match was that I had been saying Lawler always played to the fans and drew strength from them, so I wanted a match where there would be no fans. We had the ring set up and all the chairs set up, but the only people in the building were Lawler, Lance Russell, the camera guys and me. The only way the match could end was with one guy giving up, a variation of an “I quit” match.

That thing continues to live to this day, I think because of the sheer foolishness of it. They introduced us, as we walked down the empty aisle, surrounded by empty chairs. They even played up that they started the tape before announcer Lance Russell was ready, and Lance had to put out his cigarette!

And then I came in and started ranting about Lawler, giving a profanity-laced promo, which doesn’t seem like much today, but was a very unusual thing back then.

They bleeped me for TV of course, but I was on a tear, and when Lance asked me not to cuss, since they had to be able to show this on TV, I looked at Lance and said, “I don’t give a shit!”

A few seconds later, here came Lawler. And the main thing I remember about that whole match was Lawler walking through the curtain, with his crown tucked under his arm and his robe on, as if there was a full house there. It was the most absurd thing I ever saw.

As for the match itself, it was very strange to be wrestling when there was no one making any noise. The only sounds came from Jerry Lawler and me. I figured, since no one was making noise, that I’d go ahead and provide the noise.

Every time Lawler would hit me, or start to come back, I would yell, “Oh no! No! Oh God no, Jerry!”

I don’t know how Lance Russell could have announced that thing with a straight face.

It ended when I submitted, with Lawler grinding a wooden stake from a broken chair in my eye.

I called Lawler a few more nasty names and screamed, “My eye! My eye!”

It was an absurdity, but I wish I had the tape to put out—”The Empty Arena Match from 1981—First Official Release!” Hell, I could sell it at video stores and everything! Mick Foley and The Rock did one in 1999, during halftime of the Super Bowl, which might have been even sillier than mine with Lawler.

Lawler and I were also set to do a match in Florida, and I did a promo for it that became rather famous in wrestling circles.

The shot opened with me standing in a shower stall, holding a can of motor oil.

“Jerry Lawler wants to become a Floridian. Not a transplant—the King wants to become a real Floridian. Well, I would like to know exactly how it feels to be a true Florida cracker, so I have Quaker State Super Blend Motor Oil,” I said, pouring the oil over my head, “and I am going to show you people how it feels to be a true Florida cracker. And right here, I have five pounds of dirty, filthy dirt, and that’s exactly what it is!”

I started dumping the dirt on my now oily head, as I continued, “and I have got this dirt entirely over my body, and now, I know what it feels like to be a dirty, stinky, greasy Florida cracker, and it’s something I never want to feel again!”

And all that oil was an incredible pain in the ass to get out. I got that shit in my eyes, too, and I nearly got blinded. I washed and washed my hair. I went home and went to bed, and the next morning, my damned pillowcase had oily splotches all over it, and Vicki had to throw away the whole pillow!

I thought it was an original idea at the time, but it didn’t make the match a particularly big draw, so it became another one of my deals that didn’t work.

Now that might seem like a contradiction to what I was talking about earlier, about not wanting just to insult the fanbase, but the difference is, I was never one of those who went out every week and just ranted about how lousy the people were, because I had more focus on my opponent and how to cut a promo that best fit that situation.

I was always throwing ideas out there. I guess I figured eventually something would work. I was like a weatherman—if I kept talking, eventually I’d say something that was right! And the beautiful thing about people is that they tend to remember when I’m right and forget how many times I’ve been wrong.

Later, in 1983,1 came back to Memphis as a babyface, teaming with Lawler! We had a TV match my first day there, against a team managed by a young manager named Jim Cornette. I chased Cornette around the ring and ended up tearing his clothes off. He had no idea. There was nothing preplanned about it—I just disrobed Jim Cornette for the hell of it! Cornette went on to become one of the all-time great managers and mouthpieces in our business, but I’m proud to say I was the first one to tear the pants off of him on television. And if I see him today, I’ll do the same thing. Next time I see him at the Cauliflower Alley Club reunion, his pants are coming off!

Memphis had Lance Russell as an announcer. Lance was right up there with Gordon Solie. They were probably the two best announcers in the country. He had believability with the people. They took different approaches, but they had a lot in common, in that they were like good whiskey—they had the age and maturity behind them.

Junior and I also did an angle in Florida in 1982 involving our uncle, Herman Funk. Uncle Herman came out to back us up and ended up getting beaten up by Mike Graham, as part of the story. He was on vacation in Florida and was with us in the dressing room, and somehow he got talked into coming out with us.

Around that time, one of the young up-and-comers was a kid named Barry Windham. Of course, I had known his dad, Blackjack Mulligan, and Barry himself was another West Texas State boy! Dick Murdoch got hold of him and ruined him, too! Barry was a great athlete and was doing all right for himself on the football field. He was big as a house and probably could have gone pro, but Murdoch got hold of him, and down the road he went!

Seriously, I always loved working with Barry, because he was from the old school. And he was a big, tough kid who didn’t take shit off of anybody.

In San Antonio in the 1980s, I became a beloved babyface after years as a heel. It was the only time I ever babyfaced there. Blanchard really had the place popping at the time.

Southwest had a very talented crew, including Gino Hernandez, who was a great performer. I’d met him when he was 16—by then he had two years in the business! This teenager already talked and acted like a seasoned wrestler, because he was one.

Gino could get heat like no one else. He was just a natural-born heel. Joe put him in a tag team with Joe’s son, Tully, and they were a damn good team. I loved Gino Hernandez, and I liked his work. I never saw a kid who achieved success in the business and adapted that quick. I mean, here was a kid who was 17, 18 years old in the late 1970s, and he already carried himself like an experienced wrestler. Hell, he was an experienced wrestler! He could do great promos and everything, as if he’d been around for 10 years. The way he could do things, and do them well, was just unheard of for a kid that young. And with all his talent, he didn’t have the big head! He got along with all the boys in the locker room. Gino’s success was always something that was hard for me to understand, because I’d always believed in maturity. I always believed it took three or four years to really understand what you were doing in wrestling, but Gino jumped right in and took off.

Joe Blanchard had been working with Fritz Von Erich in Dallas. Fritz had been doing the booking, and Joe felt like he could do a better job at it, so they just had constant problems. It wasn’t even that they both had wrestling sons they wanted to push, although there was some heat between Tully and the Von Erich boys. Joe just got tired of paying Fritz a percentage of his houses as a booking fee. They also couldn’t agree on which town belonged to whom.

Joe was also working with Houston promoter Paul Boesch, until 1982, when Boesch started working with Bill Watts’s Mid-South Wrestling to bring talent in.

My sympathies were with the Southwest guys, but as Boesch started easing Blanchard’s guys out and Watts’s guys in, I just kind of backed away from the whole deal. I could see where things were headed, and I knew if I wanted to keep working in Houston, I’d have to go work for Watts’s territory. There was no reason for me to want to work there. Bill would have had me running from town to town seven nights a week.

Even though I’d sided with Blanchard, I certainly wasn’t trying to screw Paul Boesch around.

A few months later, Joe decided to promote a show, with a world title tournament, in Houston, against Boesch, who ran a show the night after ours. In the tournament, I beat Bob Orton Jr. in the first round, but then we did a deal where Abdullah the Butcher injured me in the second round, knocking me out of the tournament.

I don’t know what plans Joe might have had for running Houston, but the tournament was just kind of a one-time deal for us in Houston after the split with Boesch, and the aspect of competing against him never even crossed my mind.

Orton was a very, very talented wrestler. I had seen his father wrestle, and now, I watch his son, Randy, on the WWE shows. They remind me of each other, and I promise, Randy has never, or hardly ever, seen his grandfather wrestle, but all three of them wrestle alike. They all have that same, great psychology.

I still get a call from Bob Sr. every Saturday morning. He calls to talk to me about how Randy’s doing, and to warn me about the latest activities of the communists, or the terrorists, in his gravelly growl.

“Hey, kid, you gotta watch those airplanes. Goddamn, I don’t want to get on those airplanes anymore. You don’t know who you got sitting next to you. They might have something in their shoe, or wrapped around their leg, or some other damn thing. You can’t take any chances, kid. You got them broads walking up and down the aisles, taking drink orders. Hell, could be the pilot’s drunk— you don’t know! Anything can happen up there, kid!”

And every few seconds, I say, “Uh huh.”

And that’s my weekly conversation with Bob Orton Sr. I love him, but he’s always been nuts! This isn’t like some creeping senility, some new thing brought on by old age. We used to ride together, 30 years ago or more, and he’d bundle himself up in blankets and tell everyone, “Now, don’t breathe on me, kid, there’s goddamn germs everywhere! And turn that air-conditioning off! You don’t know what the hell’s coming out of there!”

Bob Jr. never wanted to be like his dad, but damned if he didn’t turn out exactly like him! In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Bob and Dick Slater were one of the truly great teams in wrestling. There was a real crop of incredible wrestling talent that came out of Florida, educated by Eddie Graham into the business, and many of them became dominant performers. Steve Keirn, Bob Roop, Bob Orton Jr., Dick Slater, Paul Orndorff—a great many wrestlers came out of Florida who could really work their asses off during that time period, and I’m just scratching the surface. Eddie impressed the importance of that background and education in pro wrestling on them as children viewing the product, and it greatly influenced their desires, and even the types of performers they became.

Bob Jr. and I worked a tour of Germany for promoter Otto Wanz, which turned out to be a nightmare for poor Otto.

I was always something of a nightmare for Otto, but I had nothing on Bob Orton—he was just a maniac over there. Bob was laying into Germans on the street, executing wrestling takedowns on them; it was like he thought the second world war was still going on!

I liked Otto. I went 40 minutes with Otto once. We did a big match right before he retired. Over there, they did matches in three-or five-minute rounds, and I don’t remember how many rounds we went, but we tore the house down because of Otto’s ability to get over to his fans. As an in-ring performer, he was just amazing. I’m not saying whether he was amazingly good, or amazingly bad—just amazing. But I’ll tell you this—big Otto was over like a son of a gun over there, because he understood what he could do, and he understood what the people wanted. He gave it to them.