Backlund: From All-American Boy to Professional Wrestling's World Champion

by Bob Backlund

  As a young American wrestler going to Japan back then, it was also very important to do something to get the fans’ and the promoters’ attention. On my first visit, Baba asked me to wrestle Tommy Tsuruta in an amateur match in a little workout room over there. I think they wanted to see how I would fare against Tsuruta, who was Baba’s up-and-coming young Japanese star.

  Tommy was tall, but he didn’t have a lot of strength—and at that time, I was at the peak of my power. I liked Tommy a lot, but I destroyed him on the mat. I felt kind of guilty about that, since Tommy’s good word to Baba is what got me to Japan in the first place, but business was business, and I wasn’t about to let Tommy beat me in a legitimate amateur match. Fortunately, he was good-natured about it.

  I think that entire episode was a way for Baba to determine what kind of position they were going to put me in. The Japanese promoters really respected guys who knew what they were doing in the ring, and word of my victory over Tsuruta in that little amateur match got around the Japanese wrestling community very quickly. After that first tour, I never really had a problem either getting booked in Japan, or being treated well while I was over there.

  On that first tour, however, I jobbed to everyone. I wrestled Tommy Tsuruta a bunch of times and put him over. I wrestled the Destroyer (Dick Beyer), who was legendary in Japan, and I also wrestled Danny Hodge at a carnival/circus kind of thing where we did a demonstration of amateur wrestling. Danny had been a silver medalist in the Melbourne Olympics (1956) and was one of the most competitive people I’ve ever met. We played a lot of cards over in Japan and Danny was ruthless—he wanted to win at everything. I also got to spend some time in the ring with the boss—Shohei “Giant” Baba—the man who ran the All-Japan promotion.

  Baba was a very gentle man, but in the ring he could be hard to work with because of his size and because his repertoire of maneuvers was limited. There were only so many things you could do in the ring with a man who stood six feet ten inches tall and weighed 320 pounds. Baba also didn’t like being taken off his feet too much, which compounded the difficulty in working with him.

  I also got to spend some time on that first tour tag teaming with Mil Mascaras. Working with Mascaras taught me another one of professional wrestling’s important lessons—how to protect your image in the ring and make sure you get enough of the action. Mascaras was already a big star, including a movie star, in his native Mexico—and I think all of that went to his head a little bit. In the ring, Mascaras always wanted to shine, and consequently, he sometimes forgot about the obligatory ebb and flow of action that was necessary to create an emotionally entertaining match.

  Most of the people I worked with over the course of my career had the right intentions—namely to put on a good and entertaining match for the people each night, and not simply to protect their own character and make themselves look invincible. Mascaras, though, was different. He really didn’t like to sell much for his opponents in the ring, and I think that hurt the overall quality of his matches. Mil was a tremendous athlete, and had a fantastic look with his colorful capes and masks and wrestling pants. He also had a dazzling array of high-flying moves like dropkicks and bodyblocks and flying body presses and flying head scissors. The irony was that if the man had sold more in the ring for his opponents, to the point of looking vulnerable to defeat, his inevitable rallies and comebacks with those sensational moves would have been that much more spectacular. But because he sold so little, his matches tended to be shorter, and the dramatic arc of his matches was pretty flat.

  When I was in the ring with Mascaras in a tag-team match, I literally had to fight to make sure I could get a little time in to make a few moves. You just knew that Mascaras was going to try to take the spotlight and not sell very much, so I usually tried to do the short-arm scissor and a couple of other memorable high spots that I knew the fans would remember.

  Japanese fans were very interested in watching matches that were skillful, with people trying to get in and out of holds and you could almost see them squirming in their seats and moving while you moved. If they liked what you did in the ring, they would clap for you at the end—but they wouldn’t show you much emotion during the match. That slowly evolved as people over there adopted the American style. In Japan, in those early years, they used to wrestle with the lights on in the arena, so everyone sat quietly. In America, by contrast, wrestling happened in a darkened arena with lights on over the ring—which made it easier for people to express their emotions without being self-conscious about it. Later, the Japanese adopted the American style of putting lights over the ring and darkening the arena so people started expressing their emotions more freely. Over time, wrestling in Japan became more like it is in America—but it took quite a while to get there.

  Even though it was exciting for me to be over there, time in Japan seemed to pass quite slowly. Corki didn’t go with me that time and I really missed her. We stayed at a big hotel in Tokyo, and took a bus to the buildings in the other cities where the matches occurred on the tour. I was a creature of habit by then, and I wasn’t used to the food, which became a bit of an issue for me.

  When I was on the road in Amarillo, I would eat two or three large meals a day. I was training hard with heavy weights, so I had to consume a lot of food. If Corki made a chicken, she would take her portion, and I would eat the rest of the chicken. Out on the road, I’d wake up in the morning and immediately look for a place to work out, and after the gym, I’d be looking to stock up on protein. I had cans of tuna fish with me at all times, and the most important tool I had in the car with me was a can opener. I also drank a lot of milk—maybe a half a gallon at a time—for the protein and the calcium. I also carried hard-boiled eggs on the road with me for the same reason. In the afternoon, we’d drive to the town where we’d be wrestling that night and immediately head for the place where we could get a big slab of prime rib.

  In Japan, however, no one ate like that. The Japanese people were eating sushi and soba noodles and things like that, and that threw my diet for a loop, because I really wasn’t used to it. I ate every kind of fish they had over there. I didn’t mind fish, but I think that is part of the reason that people started bringing protein powder with them on tours of Japan. Milk wasn’t really very big over there either because there wasn’t a lot of space to graze cows—so those were two staples missing from my diet.

  I also missed being out there on the road by myself in my own car, being able to make my own choices about when I would come and go, when I would eat, and when I would work out and arrive at the arena. In Japan, we were always on a bus, and that forced you into the community on the bus, which I didn’t necessarily want to be a part of. For some people in the wrestling business, the camaraderie in the dressing room or on the bus was the entire reason they were in the business.

  Not for me.

  I stayed in the Amarillo territory into the fall of 1974. It was a time of incredible personal growth for me—and I picked up a lot of very important knowledge and lessons down there that would help me throughout my days in the wrestling business. The Funks were big on letting a young wrestler evolve into a character with time rather than pulling an idea off the rack and just telling you what character they wanted you to portray. They also focused on getting you to excel at a few particular maneuvers unique to you, and then, once you had that foundation, building on that repertoire of maneuvers, a couple at a time, so that you would always had something in reserve. We developed a repertoire of “go to” moves, and then pushed ourselves to work outward from there, learning and perfecting more moves to add to our repertoire. We learned how to work a shoot-style chain wrestling match, as well as a back-alley brawl, so that we would always have something reliable to draw on to entertain the fans. Terry and Junior hammered into us the importance of having a backup plan in case what you were doing in the ring on a particular night wasn’t selling with the fans in the building.

  Another thing the Funks taught me was how important it wa
s, as a young wrestler, to find a place out of sight of the fans where you could watch the matches that the veteran guys at the top of the card were having. The point, of course, was to learn how the veterans put a match together, engaged with the fans—particularly on nights when their initial approach to the match wasn’t grabbing the crowd—and how they adapted their approach to give the fans what they wanted. The fact is, there are only so many scenarios that can happen in the interaction between the wrestlers in the ring, and the crowd watching the match. By mastering those different scenarios and becoming facile at moving between them when the fans demanded it, you could be confident in your ability to adapt to what they wanted and to avoid delivering a stinker that caused them to boo you or chant “boring!”

  Getting the “boring!” chant was the kiss of death for a wrestler and the surest sign of laziness or a lack of adaptability. Even in a curtain-jerker, there were always ways to give a raucous crowd what they wanted without stealing the thunder of the guys further up the card. All of this focus on the fundamentals of crowd psychology was the reason why, from the bottom up, so many of the guys who trained in Amarillo went on to have very successful careers in the wrestling business.

  Going into the ring for close to an hour with guys like Terry and Junior and Dick Murdoch—who were very talented guys in terms of telling a story in the ring and making it interesting for the people—was like going to school and getting an education in the wrestling business and making a little bit of money at the same time. Some nights, we made only $30 or $40—but other nights we made $100 or more, and wrestling six nights a week, we were able to make a respectable living. My days in the Amarillo territory were a wonderful experience that gave me many of the tools that were critical to my success as I moved on in my career—and, of course, I will be forever indebted to Terry Funk for seeing something in me, rescuing me from the obscurity of the Tri-States territory, and giving me my first break in the business.

  One night at the TV tapings in Amarillo, Eddie Graham, the majority owner of Florida Championship Wrestling, was back in town. Graham and his minority owner, Jim Barnett, who owned Georgia Championship Wrestling, and the Funks had a longstanding tradition of swapping talent. That night, Terry came to me and told me that I would be going to Florida “for a couple of weeks” to work for Graham and Barnett.

  It was a strange feeling to be leaving Amarillo, even for just a short break. Corki and I had fallen into a nice routine, and even though we were still living in the Holiday Inn, the place had started to feel like home to us. Corki took a leave of absence from her job working as a gymnastics instructor at Nards Gymnastics Club, and came to Florida with me. Fully anticipating that we’d be back, but not wanting to keep paying nightly rent at the Holiday Inn when we weren’t there, we left many of our personal things that we had brought down with us from Minnesota in the custody of one of my biggest fans in Amarillo.

  We would never return.

  Fitting the Mold

  Bobby Backlund came in here and immediately, from the very start, you could tell he was different. Sure, he was in phenomenal physical condition and he knew how to wrestle, but he also wanted to do things the right way. We never smartened up anyone in the Amarillo area unless we felt like they would be an asset to the business. We didn’t push people that we didn’t think were good people. We were always looking for good guys who could take care of themselves, and take care of an area, and take care of a belt if someone came up and tried to double-cross them. And Bobby fit that mold. We just loved him. We thought the world of him and we did whatever we could do to further him along in the business. There were definitely certain things that we taught to Bobby and did for Bobby that we didn’t do for everyone. Hell, we would have loved to have kept Bobby in the Amarillo area for a lot longer—but it wasn’t in his best interest to stay. He had learned what he was going to learn from us about the business, and it was time for him to spread his wings. I remember him leaving Amarillo with Corki and headed for Florida, and I knew that Bobby was going to go places.

  —Terry Funk

  7

  When Two Weeks Last Forever (Florida, 1974)

  “There are many travelers on the road to happiness.

  You will need their cooperation, and they will need yours.”

  —Napoleon Hill, “Inspire Teamwork”

  Before heading to Florida, Corki and I drove back home to Minnesota for a few days of vacation and to visit our parents. At Terry Funk’s suggestion, while I was at home in Minnesota, I called Verne Gagne and told him I would be around for a few days, so he kindly arranged for me to work a couple of dates just to stay sharp and keep a few dollars in my pocket. During that brief trip, I got to have a match in Fargo where I went to college, and a match in St. Paul. I also stopped in to see Eddie Sharkey, work out with some of his new recruits, and share some of what I had learned during my first year out on the road.

  After that brief respite, Corki and I drove to Tampa, Florida. The plan was for us to spend “a couple of weeks” there working with some of the Florida guys. At Eddie Graham’s suggestion, we rented a little apartment on Armenia Street very close to the Sportatorium. It was a one-room efficiency with a little pool in the middle of the complex surrounded by the apartment buildings. The apartment was basically like a hotel room except that the rent was by the week rather than by the night. Because we had left our table back in Amarillo, we grabbed an old electrical spool off the side of the road to use as our kitchen table!

  Corki and I got married by a justice of the peace in Tampa on October 31, 1974. It just felt like the right time to take the plunge!

  Most days, I rode a bike from our apartment complex to the Tampa armory or to Harry Smith’s gym to work out. Eddie Graham, his son Mike, and Jim Barnett all had their offices upstairs at the Sportatorium in Tampa which, despite its grandiose name, was really just a small building that held a ring and enough room for about one hundred people in the audience for the TV tapings. Despite its small size, though, the Sportatorium looked good on TV.

  As had been the case in both Baton Rouge and in Amarillo, every so often, someone would come down to the Sportatorium looking to break into the wrestling business. Unless the person had been referred by a trusted professional wrestling trainer, however, Eddie always treated these individuals with suspicion.

  He would always start them out with a workout with me.

  Typically, I’d take them outside into the Florida heat and humidity and work out with them for an hour doing four or five hundred squats, pushups, sit ups, burpees, and jumping jacks. I would just work them out until they vomited, collapsed, or quit. Most people wouldn’t survive that first workout with me, or if they did, they would never come back. While this may all sound like a form of inhuman hazing, it was a necessary part of the business—and I was kinder and gentler than most of the hookers and shooters who ran the proving grounds in the various territories. All I did was work people out until they dropped. Some of the other guardians of the business actually made it their business to seriously hurt these people.

  You have to remember that this was back in the mid-1970s, when the mystique and uncertainty about the predetermined nature of professional wrestling was still a closely guarded secret. Because of that, people were always trying to “expose the business” by trying to infiltrate our ranks, learn the secrets, and then sell the truth of what we were doing and how we were doing it to the outside world. The only way to keep that from happening was to impose this “proving ground” between the outside world and those of us on the inside.

  There was one guy in particular who I remember coming to the office wanting to try out. He asked me whether I would work out with him, but I was backed up with other obligations and I couldn’t start with him for a week. He insisted, though, so Harley Race came down from the office and talked to him. Harley also tried to get this guy to wait a week until I could work out with him, because after taking a look at him, Harley knew that I would be able to turn him away from
the business by just doing a workout with him that he couldn’t possibly survive. But the guy wasn’t willing to wait even a week—which made both Harley and me smell a rat.

  Harley told the guy to change into his gear, made him sign a release, took him into the ring, and promptly hit him with a forearm smash in the mouth so hard that he broke most of the guy’s front teeth. The guy’s mouth was a bloody mess, and we later learned that he ended up having major reconstructive surgery on his face. We never saw the guy again.

  That was how we protected the business.

  After my first couple of weeks in Florida, I assumed Terry or Junior would call and say it was time to come back to Texas, but I never heard from either one of them. Of course, this was in the era before cell phones and car phones. With most of us living in weekly housing arrangements in motels, we didn’t have home phones either, so it wasn’t the easiest thing to get in touch with someone. Most of the time, messages were left for us at the wrestling office of the promotion where we were working, or we used payphones to communicate with friends and family.

  I just went where the promoters told me to go—and things got rolling for me in Florida, so we just stayed. Like Amarillo, the Florida territory under Eddie Graham was a hotbed of great training and lots of young wrestling talent looking to take advantage of that opportunity.

  Tony Charles, an English wrestler, was staying in the same complex we were staying in. Tony was a good technical wrestler and worked out very hard—and he helped me further my progress with the technical side of professional wrestling by working on some new maneuvers with me, and teaching me English-style mat and chain wrestling. Les Thornton, another English wrestler who Eddie Graham liked a lot, was also there at the time. Les was a hooker who knew how to hurt people. He and I used to work out together, and Les taught me a lot of things about joint locks, nerve holds, and ways to take control in the ring if your opponent suddenly decided not to cooperate—skills that a world champion would need.