More Than Just Hardcore (8 page)

Even after his divorce with Eleanor, he worked for Dory Senior and helped with booking, or paperwork, or whatever needed to be done. Later he went to work for The Sheik in Detroit as a booker. Believe it or not, Detroit was the premiere territory in the country at that time. Detroit was doing $100,000 houses before anyone else had heard of a $100,000 house. They were drawing even more money than New York for a while.

The Billy Thornton I knew was a strange kid. When he was 12 he stole a car! He was driving around town, and when he got caught, they thought the Boys’ Ranch would be a good place for him. They took him out there, and that was where he stayed until he was 18.

After that he went to one of the Amarillo TV stations and became a cameraman. And he was still a goofy bastard! He would switch around the numbers on the weather map so the weatherman would be there saying, “Well, in Amarillo today it was 94 degrees,” when it was actually 49 degrees.

I went years without hearing from him, until I went out to California in the 1980s looking for acting work. There was a big casting agent out there who called me in to read for a part in some TV movie. After I read, she said, “By the way, Billy Bob, the fellow who wrote this, says he’s your nephew.”

I said, “Billy Bob? I don’t know any goddamned Billy Bob!”

She said, “Billy Bob Thornton.”

I thought and thought and finally said, “Yes! Yes, I know who that goofball is! He stole that car! Yes, I remember!”

Well, Billy Bob was apparently directing, too, so that was the last I heard of that project.

Later I played a small role in another movie he was working on, Friday Night Lights, and we were on the set together. He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we both acted like we didn’t know each other.

Amarillo was also where I encountered a really good tag team—Kurt and Karl Von Brauner. Karl was a very smart guy and became a spray pilot after retiring. Kurt was a very dedicated professional. He was working for us when he got word one night that his mother had passed away in Germany. He went ahead and worked right on through it, fulfilling all his shots before going back there. It wasn’t easy on him.

Kurt Von Brauner was the man who taught my brother how to use the forearm. Kurt could throw a forearm check better than anyone back then.

The Von Brauners proved to be more than teachers, though. They were also barbers, at least in one angle we did where they cut my hair off to build up a feud with them against Junior and me.

Back then it took five weeks for the tapes of the shows to make it to all the towns in the territory, in what we called “bicycling the tape” around. This meant I had to cut all my hair off for five weeks, so the people who saw the tape of the haircut show last would get to see a bald Terry the next time I wrestled there. Of course, the people in the first towns where the show aired got to wondering, “Damn, isn’t his hair ever going to grow back?”

I also remember Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson coming in and just doing fantastic. Pat wrestled in Amarillo as “Lord” Patrick Patterson, and I had some great matches with him. Ray Stevens was one of the greatest characters I ever met in wrestling. Ray and I did rodeo together for a while in the early 1980s. One night we were driving back from a rodeo show, and we would always shoot the shit.

This night I guess we ran out of bullshit, and we got quiet in the car. I thought for a minute and then said, “Ray, what would you do if you had a million dollars?”

He said, as honest and truthful as he could be, “I’d play a whole lot harder.” And he meant that.

I don’t know how many times I was in a bar with Ray Stevens, and he’d ask me to borrow $50 or $100. Once I gave it to him, he’d set it on the table and buy drinks for everyone sitting at the table. He didn’t care if it was his best friend or Joe Blow. He’d buy drinks until that $50 or $100 was gone, and he always paid me back.

Ray was an unbelievable worker. He could do anything.

One of our top heel teams was the combination of Black Gordman and Goliath. They came to us for a few periods after making their names on the West Coast. They were probably the ones who spearheaded the movement of Mexican wrestlers coming into the United States and being successful. When they were here, they were introduced as being from Mexico, but when they were in Los Angeles, they made the ring announcer say they were from “not Mexico, but New Mexico,” and all those Hispanic fans would go nuts.

There’s something I think a lot of guys don’t realize about that generation of wrestlers—they could really wrestle. We have better athletes in wrestling than we’ve ever had, but we had more wrestlers back then. Heck, when I first got in the business, having amateur skills was almost a prerequisite. At least 50 percent of the guys then had some kind of background in amateur wrestling.

It was also an era when guys designed their own personas, and most of the time they could pull it off. I think that has its plusses. A guy knows who he wants to be and what he can play better than anybody else.

While I learned a lot about wrestling from the pros I worked with, I was also about to have a whole new learning experience on my hands. In 1967, Vicki gave birth to our daughter, Stacy. I took one look at this little thing and knew my life was never going to be the same again. Four years later, my life changed again, when my daughter Brandee was born.

One thing that didn’t happen too often (except in Amarillo) but was always a thrill for me was when all three wrestling Funks—Senior, Junior and me— would wrestle together. Dad still wrestled periodically, and when he did, it was automatic box office. It was tough working with my father, because you always knew who was in charge. Still, it was a real pleasure, not just because he was my father, but because I got to be in there with someone who had such a great sense of the people in the audience. He had great ring psychology. I can’t remember him ever having the same match twice, and my brother and I both learned from him. As many times as Junior and Jack Brisco wrestled for the world title, I don’t think they ever had the same match twice, and I have never had the same match twice.

I think that’s a creativity that’s lost in the business. I can’t ever recall sitting down and talking to Pak Song, Hiro Matsuda, or one of those guys about even one high spot before a match. You did it in the ring. You would have a finish, and that was it. The rest of it, you did by feel. You’ve got to dance, and today dancing is all but gone.

I was learning from my father and from people like Mike DiBiase to fully believe in what I was doing in a match, or while cutting a promo (an interview of a wrestler, aimed at hyping an upcoming match). When I was a babyface, I truly loved the fans and would go to the extent with fans that you’d see few people go to, because I realized what they did for me. Yet—and this is where the foggy part comes in—when I am a heel I truly hate the people. My brother would continually get mad at me. He’d say, “Hell, you don’t come back down for 10 minutes.”

And I didn’t. As a heel, I didn’t just walk into the arena. I was the heel before I even got there, and don’t even ask me when that transformation took place, because I don’t know, but I think that is the lure for me of the business—that I can immerse myself in what I’m doing.

When I get hit, I am hit. When I show being hurt, I am hurt, and when I am beating somebody up, I am beating him up—and I don’t mean that I am out there throwing potatoes (legitimate, full-force punches or kicks).

Junior and I worked together in a lot of tag-team matches over the years, though. He also learned some, I think, from Mike DiBiase, but he also picked up things from a lot of people, incorporating a lot of styles into his own work. I think he learned a lot about psychology from Johnny Valentine.

I thought that being a second-generation wrestler helped give me a good foundation for what to expect in the business. It didn’t seem to work that way at first for Johnny’s son, who wrestled for us as Johnny Fargo in the early 1970s before becoming Greg “The Hammer” Valentine.

Greg was 18 or 19 years old when he started for us and was never happy with his money. One day they were passing out the checks. His was about $500, and he wasn’t happy with that. Well, this was a surprise to us, because $500 for a week’s pay in the early 1970s was pretty damn good, especially for a young guy! He opened up his check and started cussing up a storm, and I looked over and watched him tearing his check up! He threw the pieces on the floor and stomped off.

I didn’t do anything. Neither did my father, my brother, or Uncle Herman, another old police officer from Indiana like his father. Herman retired from police work and worked in the office at that time. We just sat there. About five minutes later, he walked back into the room, picked up the pieces, put them in his pocket and never said another word about it.

But Greg was a good man deep down and a tough guy just like his dad. He had that way about him where I knew that he was always going to do all right for himself. He wasn’t what you might call a loner, but you weren’t going to get a phone call a day from Greg Valentine, to see how you’re doing.

A lot of the guys were obviously tough, but some of the really tough ones might surprise you. What a lot of people don’t realize is that my brother is a tough man. I think that’s because he is a fairly quiet man. He certainly knew how to hook somebody. He was also a good football player and a much better athlete than I ever was. He could always run faster than me.

We paid the TV station in Amarillo $500 to use their studio and shoot our show. Then we’d bicycle the tape around to the different towns. Our announcer was Steve Stack, who learned everything he knew about wrestling in Amarillo. He had been running a gas station. His co-announcer was Nick Roberts, the old Lubbock promoter. Nick was a former wrestler and the father of Nickla Roberts, who worked as a manager named “Baby Doll” in the 1980s.

Some of the most outrageous characters we had in the Amarillo territory weren’t wrestlers at all; they were the promoters of the towns.

Chief Little Eagle ran Hobbs, New Mexico, on an old air force base. God, what a rat-trap that place was! The closest thing to a shower in the building was a hose connected to a horse tank. Unfortunately, he never changed out the water in the tank, so the “shower” water got filthier every time it was used, because it just kept recycling through there.

Little Eagle walked around with a .45 pistol sticking out of his waistband, and he’d wave it at anyone he got mad at.

Our Albuquerque promoter was Mike London, and he had TV there Sunday mornings at 11 a.m. We’d have to leave Amarillo at 6 a.m. to get there. He had a one-day promotion. We’d go on TV that morning and beat the NFL and everyone else for viewers. Seriously, wrestling was the top-rated show there for years. Then, at 5 p.m. on Sunday he’d open up the box office and by God, they’d better be out of there by 9 p.m. or 9:30 p.m.

Mike did his own ring announcing, introducing all the wrestlers, but he had some problems on the microphone. Sometimes Mike would forget who was in the ring, or who they were supposed to be. One time we had Nick Roberts out there under a mask as Mr. X, to fill in for a no-show, and London introduced him, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, in this corner, from parts unknown … uh … NICK ROBERTS!”

About every two years, Mike would have a robbery at the box office. He’d come into the locker room with his shirt torn up and a story about how he’d been beaten up and the money stolen. He always seemed to have some extra money after those weeks, and then he got an insurance payment to cover the “robbery!” It was like Albuquerque had a big holiday once every two years— Mike London Day!

Actor Ernest Borgnine came to one of the shows in the late 1960s. Junior and I were talking to him backstage. Borgnine was amazed at the size of the crowd and couldn’t believe we ran the town every week.

“This is really great,” he said. He started to say something else, but Mike walked up to him and asked him, “Do you have a ticket?”

Borgnine didn’t.

Mike asked, “Well, who are you?” “I’m Ernest Borgnine. I’m an actor.” “But you don’t have a ticket?” “No, I don’t have a ticket.” “Then get your ass out of here.”

The other Texas promotions were undergoing some upheaval during my first years in wrestling. In 1967, Houston promoter Morris Sigel died, and his assistant, Paul Boesch, took over the city.

In Dallas, a mid-1960s promotional problem broke out between longtime promoter Ed McLemore and Fritz Von Erich, who was trying to take over.

Even though McLemore was the established promoter, my father backed Fritz because he and Fritz had always done good business together. Fritz talked to Dory Senior about taking Dallas over before he even tried it. My father was really a great deal of help to him. He had a great deal of respect for Fritz, and he liked him. They were friends.

Professionally, Fritz Von Erich was an immediate box office draw wherever he went. It was heartbreaking to see what happened to his kids later on. Fritz outlived five of his six sons, and four of them had some kind of chemical problem. A lot of people tried to talk to Fritz about them, but I don’t think he was capable of listening because of who he was. He was their father, and he believed in those kids no matter what.

I know Jack Brisco wrote a book stating that when he first came to Amarillo, Dory and I both beat him in a bunch of one-sided, two-minute squash matches after playing up his amateur credentials on TV. I can’t remember ever having a match with Jack that only went two minutes. I also don’t think pumping up his credentials so heavily is something we would have done in Amarillo—our audience was made up of people with names like Gomez, Martinez and Hernandez, and those folks didn’t give a shit about Oklahoma athletics.

Jack Brisco was a great wrestler, though. His brother Gerald was also a hell of a wrestler and was a good babyface, even though he had that big potato nose (just kidding—Jerry actually has a lovely nose, really).

We actually had the Briscos in as a heel tag team for a while, and they were great heels! It was a unique feud in the 1970s—they would come to Amarillo and we would go to Florida as heels to face them. The funny thing was, we could use the tapes from one place in the other place. So the Amarillo fans got to see us as heels in Florida, and the Florida fans got to see the Briscos as heels in Amarillo. It was kind of groundbreaking in a way, because it became more of an atmosphere like the Texas-Miami game in college football. Everyone had their local favorites.