More Than Just Hardcore (7 page)

I think Eddie saw that, because when Eddie went to Florida, he also set up a boy’s ranch, and it was successful for a while. He was also very active in the Florida Boys’ Ranch and would visit burn patients in the hospital. He did a lot to build good will in that area.

Amarillo had been built on a great deal of wrestling, and Eddie also saw the success of that. He built Florida on great wrestling with guys like Don Curtis, Hiro Matsuda and so many others who were selling the product as real.

Eddie had a great mind for the business and a great feel for the fans. Eddie did not have a great deal of formal education, but he was a very self-educated person. He could fly airplanes, or captain a boat anywhere he wanted to. He was very much a self-made individual.

Eddie had a great mind for the manipulation and continuation of what you would call storylines today. Back then we just called it being a manipulator—not in the sense that he was crooked or anything, but in the sense that he would manipulate what was going to happen from week to week, month to month, year to year. Eddie had a great feel for what the people wanted and were interested in. He was also very progressive. He broke the territory in on wrestling, but he progressed with the times and was very ahead of his time in terms of how he promoted.

He was also fortunate in that he was in a growth area. Florida just grew and grew, and Eddie turned a lot of that growing population into wrestling fans.

He used very complex finishes, as my father did, but don’t get the idea that means that the finish is the match. He also understood how to make the TV the lifeblood of that area, and he really educated Gordon Solie. Many times I heard Eddie lecture Gordon about what to say and how to get an idea across. Gordon, who passed away in 1999, would have been the first one to tell you that, too.

Eddie was also very influential in how I came to view the wrestling business. He was not only progressive in how he presented his angles and finishes, but he was also very heavy on the wrestling aspect of it. Eddie was very serious about maintaining kayfabe, the wrestling code of secrecy. Protecting the business was a big deal.

Announcing with Gordon was John Heath, who was wonderful for describing holds and getting into the wrestlers’ athletic backgrounds. Gordon and John were able to announce with such sincerity because they’d been educated to it by Eddie.

Eddie was also able to get some great wrestlers into that territory just through the draw of the territory itself. It was the greatest place to live. It was a great life, the weather was beautiful, and everyone in the state knew you and treated you well.

The location was so attractive, compared to say, Minnesota, that Eddie didn’t have to pay the boys what Verne Gagne had to pay them in Minnesota, to get them there. Amarillo was similar to Minnesota. Trying to get boys to come out to this little West Texas town, where there was nothing but sand (and not beach sand, like they had in Florida), it was pretty hard to compete with places like Florida. If you’re running a place like Amarillo, you’d better have a lot more money for the boys, or they’re not going to come.

His son Mike became a very good worker after breaking in in the 1970s, but Eddie looked at things a little bit differently than my father in that respect. Eddie would hold Mike back to a degree. He never tried to get Mike over as a superstar.

Eddie was also a great mentor to me. Eddie gave me so much advice about how to work, took me under his wing and taught me what to do. I can’t say enough about how much I learned from Eddie Graham.

As I mentioned, another of my early mentors in the business, aside from my dad, was “Iron” Mike DiBiase, Ted’s father. Mike was a star in multiple sports, including wrestling, at the University of Nebraska. He was a tough, wonderful guy who taught me so much about the wrestling business. He taught me to really understand the boys and the camaraderie there. He led me like I was a child in the ring, working 30 or 40 minutes, and working with him was the best education I could get as far as being solid and being believable. DiBiase was a master at getting heel heat, but he was really a highly moral man and highly intelligent. He was a great heel, which would be kind of surprising if you knew what a nice man he was. It takes a smart man to be a smart heel, because getting the kind of heat that makes people want to come in the ring after you is not easy, and he certainly could do that.

Throughout my own career I felt I made a better heel than a babyface. To be an effective heel, however, you have to have the ability to be a great babyface, because you have to understand the psychology of what the people want out of you. The first time I really got a crack at being a heel, in Florida in 1966, I had already been a babyface in Amarillo for years. I found it was a wonderful way to go. I found that I really loved to make people dislike me. I really enjoyed making people believe I was a thoroughly rotten person, which I must have succeeded at, or else they wouldn’t have tried to kill me every night.

I also had some fun in Florida. We used to run Miami on Wednesday nights back then, in the same building Jackie Gleason used for his TV shows. They never locked Gleason’s dressing room, so every Wednesday night, I’d go in there and piss on the toilet seat. And every week when I watched his show on TV, I would have a laugh to myself, because I knew that at some point that day, he had been sitting on my piss. Hell, that was my biggest claim to fame at that time!

I was still in Florida in 1966 when my father’s partner, Doc Sarpolis, passed away. Dad called to tell me he had bought the remaining shares in the promotion from Sarpolis’s widow.

“I want you to come back, Terry,” he said.

“Dad,” I told him, “I’m making a lot of money here.”

“Well, figure out how much you’re making a week, and I’ll see if we can’t come up with something better for you.”

I called him back after my wife and I figured it out and said, “OK, Dad, I’m averaging $278 a week here.”

“Aw, I can beat that,” he said. “Come on back.”

So I did, after I gave my notice. I wasn’t leaving a huge hole for them to fill. I was a middle-of-the-road guy. I worked some with Wahoo McDaniel (a former NFL player and tough guy who had become a hell of a star) and those guys, but I was never a main eventer.

Now the Florida territory almost always made a lot of money, but the boys didn’t see a great deal of it. One time, early in my career, my wife and I were on a 15-foot boat, enjoying a day on the water. We were near the base of the Causeway bridge that connected Tampa to Saint Petersburg. We were fishing when all of the sudden hete came this gorgeous, 55-foot boat roaring by, horns blasting. Eddie Graham waved at us as his boat went by us and I thought, “Maybe I’m in the wrong end of this business.”

I got to learn from some of the greatest promoters ever in the wrestling business, from exposure at an early age to not only my father, but also the likes of

Eddie Graham and Verne Gagne. I also got exposed to Jack Pfefer, who brought a new attraction into Amarillo in the 1960s. He had been a promoter in the Midwest using journeyman wrestlers and giving them names that were knock-offs of big attractions. When “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers was the hottest wrestler in the country, he called a guy Bummy Rogers. He would use “Whipper” O’Connor since Pat O’Connor and “Whipper” Billy Watson were two of the biggest names of the 1950s. He had Hobo Brazil, instead of Bobo Brazil. I guess he thought people would come to his shows thinking they were going to see the real stars. I don’t think that worked out too well for him.

By the 1960s he was bringing black women wrestlers from territory to territory He had Babs Wingo and Princess Lamumba, “straight out of Africa.” And Amarillo ended up being one of those territories.

Lamumba was actually this gal from Brooklyn, and he put a tin pot on her head and some chicken bones around her neck, and she became a princess. He’d bring her out on TV and explain that Princess Lamumba had a few words for the people. Our announcer would put the microphone in front of her, and she’d say, “MUMMA DA BABBA DOO DOO MA LOOBA BABBA LA POO POO!”

And it drew! People came to see the African princess!

That right there should show you how much times have changed. Let Vince try to pull some shit like that now! He’d have people picketing him at the arenas!

Pfefer had some strange habits. He believed in only using toilet water to comb down his hair. I don’t know why, but it’s the only thing he would use. He was always digging in his nose, too, and he’d wipe those boogers off into his hait! Why? Who knows? And he never spent a nickel on his clothes. He looked like the damned ragman of wrestling.

Amarillo had some really good wrestlers at that time. Bull Ramos was a hell of a performer. He was Apache Gringo’s partner. When my father came up with that name, Bull wasn’t sold.

Bull said, “What the hell does Apache Gringo’ mean?”

My father said, “That’s exactly what those fans are gonna say, and it’ll create some mystery.”

Well, Apache Gringo never did catch on, so I guess Bull was right about that

one.

My father also gave Gary Hart a new nickname. Gary had been “Playboy” Gary Hart, wrestling around the country, but when he got here, my father decided to rename him “Gay” Gary Hart. I guess my father just thought Gary was a happy individual.

Gary and I were actually the ones in charge of driving Princess Lamumba and Pfefer around. For whatever reason, whistling drove Pfefer nuts. Once Gary found this out, he would spend the whole trip just whistling random notes until Pfefer couldn’t take it.

He’d yell at Gary, in his heavy Polish accent, “Goddammit, Geddy, you qvit thet goddamned vistling! It hurts my ears, Geddy!”

Gary would stop for a while, but sooner or later, he’d “forget” and start whistling again. He drove poor Pfefer nuts!

My father was a great teacher to me, but I was also fortunate to be around some of the guys we had in Amarillo. One I learned a lot from was Ricky Romero. I made a lot of trips with him, and he was as good a Mexican wrestler as there was in the United States in the 1960s.

Cyclone Negro was another very talented individual and one of the nicest guys you’d ever want to meet. He always kept his body in great shape and had one of the greatest, most expressive faces I’ve ever seen. I mean, he had the greatest face in the business. It made him a perfect heel. He wasn’t hideously ugly; he just looked like one mean son of a bitch!

And we brought Stan Hansen back in after he came back from a season with the Detroit Wheels, a Continental Football League team. He ended up hurting his knee and decided wrestling full time would be a safer way to go, so he came back down. We told him we were putting together a great highlight film to plug his return. We set it up on a monitor as if this was what was going out on TV, but it was only for his benefit as a rib.

It was a package of every moment where Stan had gotten the shit kicked out of him. He got punched. He got slammed. We had some goofy music set to it, and every few seconds this big, booming voice would come over the music and say …

“Stan Hansen … former Detroit Wheel!”

Then, it would have him just getting the hell pounded out of him some more.

“Stan Hansen … former Detroit Wheel!”

Boy, was he pissed off.

“You’re not going to show that, are you?”

He took a while to calm down, even after we assured him it was a rib.

Stan actually came pretty damn close to having his wrestling career ended not long after that. We were in El Paso, just goofing around at the hotel pool, and he was trying to throw me in. I got lucky and threw him in, which got him really pissed off.

He got out and came running after me with his clothes soaking wet. I was on the other side of the hotel door, and he was so ticked he kicked through the glass door. When he pulled out his foot, it caught the glass and cut his Achilles tendon right in half.

Stan was a tough guy, and he thought he could come right back in five weeks, after having it sewn back up. Well, all that did was tear it up again, and he ended up out for about three months.

He never did blame it on me, though, and I was always mighty glad about

that.

One of the toughest guys was Amarillo’s Mr. Wrestling. Tim Woods, an accomplished amateur wrestler, was Mr. Wrestling in much of the country, but in Amarillo the mask was worn by Gordon Nelson. Gordon was a hell of an amateur wrestler. He taught a lot of guys the sugar hold, a type of chokehold that could incapacitate a man. I knew the sugar hold before I knew Gordon, but I didn’t want him putting it on me, that’s for sure.

As Mr. Wrestling, Gordon would take on all comers with the deal being a cash prize for anyone who could last 10 minutes with him. I always admired anybody who did those open challenges, because you don’t just get marks out of the crowd—you get some tough guys. You never know who you’re in there with.

Another guy who did that was someone I got to know much better in San Antonio years later, named Keith Franke. Keith gained more fame using a name I gave him, Adrian Adonis. Adrian was not a classically trained amateur wrestler, but he was incredibly tough in his own way. His deal was a $10,000 challenge, and he handled it well. Adrian would con the challengers. He’d push them into the ropes and then let them push him into the ropes. He’d smile at them, and as soon as their guard went down a little, he’d deck them, and down they’d go.

Les Thornton was the guy who brought the European style to Amarillo, and he was a hell of a guy.

I know it might sound like I’m saying “hell of a guy” too much, but it’s really the truth. These were good people. They were all friends. Hell, they were part of the family.

My dad also had an actual part of the family helping out behind the scenes. Jack Thornton (the uncle who had slipped into that football game for the Boys’ Ranch, had originally come to Amarillo to help my dad out there. Soon after, he started refereeing and integrated himself into the wrestling business.

He and my Aunt Eleanor ended up splitting up, and Jack married a woman named Barbara, who had been married to a man named Braum. When they married, Jack adopted her son, Billy. Billy Braum changed his name to Billy Thornton.