Straight from the Hart (4 page)

In the 1950s, when television was in its infancy, pro wrestling proved to be a good fit with its good guy vs. bad guy format and its colorful cast of zany characters. Back then, there was only one television network in Canada — the government-run Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) headquartered in Toronto, Ontario.

The CBC used to broadcast Frank Tunney’s Maple Leaf Wrestling show, also from Toronto, which featured guys like “Whipper” Billy Watson, Yukon Eric, Irish Pat Flanagan, Tiger Tasker, Gene Kiniski and American Indian star Chief Don Eagle, among others. At the same time, my dad had some pretty decent talent himself, including the likes of Fritz Von Erich, Kinji Shibuya, the Fabulous Kangaroos, “Mad Dog” Vachon, Luther Lindsey, Johnny Valentine and Jim “Riot Call” Wright.

Because they weren’t on television, our fans tended to see them as inferior to the Toronto stars though. As a result, my dad had no choice but to import the Toronto boys to work on our shows. That posed a few problems however, as not only did the Toronto stars command hefty guarantees — considerably more than what our boys were making, which didn’t sit well with our guys — but the
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Toronto boys couldn’t do jobs (lose) to our guys, because it wouldn’t be good for the image of their promotion.

During the latter part of the decade, independent television stations began springing up across Western Canada, including ones in Calgary, Edmonton and Saskatchewan. My dad was able to start his own wrestling show, a studio program called
Mat Time
. While pretty simple and bareboned, it served its purpose as a marketing vehicle and our gates did improve as a result. In the fall of 1959, one of our heels, Iron Mike DiBiase (father of Ted “Million Dollar Man” DiBiase), who played the prototypical arrogant, swaggering American, looking down his nose at Canadians, made some insulting remark about Canadians being in-bred morons. If something like that was uttered today, it wouldn’t even raise an eyebrow, but in those days it was akin to treason. As a result, the TV

station gave my dad a stiff reprimand and the wrestlers were forbidden from making any controversial or politically incorrect remarks.

As anyone who’s ever watched wrestling can tell you, making offensive or politically inappropriate remarks is what it’s all about. The toned down, sanitized approach didn’t resonate well with the fans and our gates took a significant hit. In those days, my dad used to shut down the promotion for the summer after his big Stampede Week shows in July and he’d reopen a couple of months later, in September. During our summer break, my dad was approached by the programming director of the new CTV affiliate which was opening up in the fall, who was keen on having a prime-time wrestling show and offered my dad enough incentives to make him switch stations.

Not long after he’d committed to the new station, my dad received a call from Sam Menacker, who at the time was considered the best commentator in the business — kind of like that era’s Jim Ross. Menacker, with whom my dad had crossed paths back in Toots Mondt’s territory, divulged that he’d just parted ways with the Indianapolis promotion and had heard, through the wrestling grapevine, that my dad might be looking for a new commentator.

Given Menacker’s rep, my dad was pleased to bring him onboard, committing himself to a hefty guarantee. Business went well during the first year or so of Menacker’s tenure, with gates jumping and the new, primetime television
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format also being enthusiastically embraced by the viewing audience at home. Menacker, of course, was given most of the credit for the revival of the promotion, but it should be noted that my dad had provided him a stellar crew to work with, including the likes of Killer Kowalski, Nick Bockwinkel, Big Bill Miller, Bearcat Wright, Luis Hernandez, Ronnie Etchison, Czaya Nandor and Bronko Lubich who were some of the best workers at the time. My dad also hired George Scott — who was one of the best idea men in the business and later the booker for the WWF during the glory days of Hulkamania — to help Menacker with the matchmaking.

With business really beginning to take off, my dad, at Menacker’s behest, purchased a twelve-seat airplane to fly the wrestlers around the territory —

which was really traveling in style for those days.

As well, my dad took some of the money he’d been making on the wrestling boom and invested in a number of other business ventures, including a Tim Hortons style coffee/donut chain called the Sweet Shoppes, and a furniture company called the Invalid Seat Company, which manufactured chairs and orthopedic devices for the handicapped. My dad also purchased a resort property west of Calgary called Clearwater Beach, which would become our family’s own version of Fawlty Towers. In retrospect, my dad had uncanny business instincts but, all too often, chose to hire the wrong people for the job — a recurring pattern that would manifest itself time and again over the years.

While gates and TV ratings remained good, my dad was coming to realize why someone as highly regarded as Menacker had been available in the first place. His petulance and “my way or the highway” approach had begun to wear thin with everyone — even my mom. When he was lurking she used to sardonically claim that “there, but for the grace of God, goes God himself.” In 1963, things came to a head with Sam. During a TV taping, one of the heels — Iron Mike Sharpe — got pissed off with some snide, half shooting putdown Menacker made about him during a promo and roughed him up, breaking his glasses and bloodying his nose. Menacker was incensed and demanded my dad fire Sharpe, but my dad calmed things down — or so he thought — by having Sharpe apologize. The next day though, Menacker flew the coup, literally — taking off in my dad’s airplane, back to the United States.

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Making matters worse, my dad subsequently found that the plane had somehow been erroneously registered in Sam’s name — apparently because he was the pilot, which meant my dad couldn’t even recoup his investment.

Even so, no one was shedding any tears over Sam’s departure — kind of like the old “ding, dong, the witch is dead” refrain from the
Wizard of Oz
.

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With Sam the Sham out of the picture, my dad handed the TV commentator’s job to Ernie Roth, who’d recently arrived in the territory as a heel manager but had done some commentating back in his native Ohio. Roth proved to be a more than capable replacement and within a matter of weeks, our gates, which had been sluggish during the latter part of Sam’s tenure, began to rebound.

Heading into the peak winter season (January to April) of 1964, we were on a sustained roll, with gates the best they’d been in years.

Unfortunately, Sam Menacker would rear his ugly head one more time. When he found out that business was booming, he called the TV station manager back in Calgary and informed him that Roth was a homosexual. That probably wouldn’t be of any great consequence today — in fact, it might even enhance one’s ability to get hired in television, or the WWE, but in that post-McCarthy era of paranoia, it was a serious taboo.

As a result, the TV station manager — a sanctimonious Mormon — gave my dad an ultimatum: dump Roth or he’d dump the show. My dad didn’t have much choice but to let Ernie go — which was pretty disheartening, as he’d been doing a hell of a job. As Roth’s replacement, my dad hired a local sportscaster named Henry Viney, who specialized in curling and golf. By all accounts, Viney was a
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nice guy and tried hard, but didn’t seem to realize that the wrestling show was a propaganda vehicle to induce viewers to come down to the matches. Instead he treated it like golf or bowling, babbling at length about all these mundane elements and going to great lengths to downplay anything controversial.

One time, there was a hot story line that called for our top heel — a dastardly German, by way of Ontario, named Waldo Von Erich — to ambush one of the faces, Tex McKenzie, and supposedly injure him so badly that he had to be ambulanced to the hospital. There was a huge outcry afterward, with concerned fans flooding the TV station switchboard, seeking to know if McKenzie was okay and protesting Von Erich’s despicable tactics — all of which, of course, was the desired effect. Later on that afternoon with the whole city still buzzing about the incident, Viney, on his evening sports broadcast, assured everyone that McKenzie was resting comfortably at home, that Von Erich hadn’t intended to hurt him and that everyone lived happily ever after — which, of course, killed all the heat.

With Viney’s vapid commentating, our gates went into the toilet and by the time the promotion closed down for the summer in July of 1964, business was in the worst shape it had been since my dad had opened up, back in 1948.

Compounding matters, his other businesses — the donut shops and the furniture company — were also struggling. In part, this was because of a downturn in the economy, but it was also because my dad had been so preoccupied with the wrestling, he’d allowed others to run them into the ground.

As for my dad’s other revenue stream, Clearwater Beach, it remained in business, but invariably seemed to lose more than it took in. That summer was a disaster, as it seemed to rain almost every weekend and holiday — which were generally the only days we made any money. That, of course, only put more pressure on the wrestling to rebound in the fall of 1964.

Unfortunately though, the business didn’t rebound, as word had spread that our promotion was on its ass. That made it tough to attract any decent talent, so we opened with an uninspiring crew of stiffs and castoffs and business continued to struggle mightily. Around that time, my dad received a call from Sandor Kovacs, the co-promoter (along with Rod Fenton) for the All-Star Wrestling promotion in Vancouver. Kovacs said he’d heard that our promotion
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was struggling and proposed that his promotion and my dad’s work together, with my dad replacing his TV show with the Vancouver show, flying in the Vancouver boys every few weeks, paying their salaries and splitting the gates with Kovacs and Fenton. My dad was reluctant to lose his show, but since the Vancouver office had some pretty good talent, including guys like Dean Higuchi, Dutch Savage, Karl Gotch, Jimmy Hady, Roy McClarity, Don Leo Jonathan and the Fabulous Kangaroos and our own talent was pretty lousy at the time, he agreed to work with Kovacs and company.

Unfortunately, the cure proved worse than the disease. The Vancouver style, which was a lot slower and more conservative than our ass-kicking wrestling, never seemed to take off and gates declined even further. Making matters worse, the added expense of airfares, hotels and whatnot resulted in even more red ink for my dad and by the end of April 1965, he had no choice but to shut down the promotion.