by Bob Backlund
I was still very green, and very much a work in progress when I arrived in Florida. I had the “look” that the promoters liked because I was in great shape and had good stamina, but I didn’t really have an established “character” or “persona” yet. In Tri-States, I was primarily a punching bag for the territory’s established heels. In Amarillo, the Funks had refined my raw skills and gave me a chance to try out the underdog hero role and let me ride that all the way to a short run with their territorial belt. But as had been the case when I moved from Tri-States to Amarillo, because Amarillo TV was not shown in Florida, the Florida fans had never seen me before. So I had to start over, toiling at the bottom to middle of the cards, working to draw the interest and passion of the crowds each night, and eventually, hopefully, work my way back into being a fan favorite again.
Most pro wrestling “characters” back then evolved and developed over time. That’s what Eddie was doing with me. He was putting me into the ring with a wide variety of opponents, both heels and faces, letting me develop and get experience, and letting the people decide what I was going to become.
Florida, despite being a single-state territory, was rough to travel. We drove an average of 3,000 miles a week criss-crossing the state from venue to venue. On a typical week, we would start at the Sportatorium in Tampa on Wednesday morning doing TV and recording promo interviews, and we’d stay there until we finished. Then we would pile into the cars and drive 300 miles one way from Tampa to either the Miami Beach Convention Hall or the Jai Alai building. Miami was always on Wednesday nights. Eddie Graham had a private plane he used to make that trip, so sometimes I’d get the chance to fly with him to Miami. He had a pilot, and about six or so guys could fit in the plane. A lot of times, it was Mike and Eddie and Steve Keirn and Dusty and me. If the NWA World Champion or some other big name like Andre or Baba was in Tampa the night before and would be going with us to Miami, that person would get to ride in the plane, and either Steve or I would have to vacate our seats. If it was Andre, both Steve and I would have to vacate our seats!
After the matches in Miami Beach on Wednesday night, we would shower up and then turn the car around and drive north up the coast 400 miles to Jacksonville for the matches on Thursday night. After Jacksonville, we’d have to turn the car back south and make the 300-mile drive back down south to Fort Lauderdale for matches on Friday night, and then cross the state westward for 250 miles to St. Petersburg, Sarasota, or Punta Gorda for the Saturday night cards.
Sunday was a day off in Florida, so we’d all head back to Tampa and spend time with our families.
Then, on Monday, we’d cross the state again from Tampa to either Orlando or West Palm Beach and then turn around and head back to Tampa or Fort Myers for matches on Tuesday night.
I was averaging $50 to $100 per night wrestling in Florida. The payoffs were all based on how big the building was, how many people were there and where you were on the card, but the biggest thing I remember, other than how much talent there was to learn from, was just how much driving there was!
My time in Florida was another chance to gain experience—another stepping stone in terms of developing into the kind of performer I wanted to become. There were a lot of different guys that I faced down there, from many different backgrounds different and the characters were all different so, every night, I’d go to the ring and pick up something new. Each person had different ideas about how to develop a match and tell a story to the crowd. For anyone serious about getting better at their craft, it was impossible not to soak up knowledge like a sponge.
The other thing I learned in the Florida territory is that if you showed up reliably and worked hard every night no matter where on the card or how they were using you, the promoters would respect you, want to get to know you better, and want to use you in increasingly meaningful spots on the cards. It didn’t happen overnight, of course, but I definitely sensed a professional respect that developed over time.
In the NWA, all the promoters knew each other and were all at least loosely tied together by the alliance. Although some were closer to each other than others, the promoters all met at annual meetings and often talked to one another during the year—so word of a young wrestler’s hard work and reliability was passed along from the head of one territory to another—which gave you a chance to travel to the different territories, get work, and continue to learn and develop.
I was never a good schmoozer. Unlike many of the boys, I never cozied up to promoters or the top talent in a particular territory to propose ideas or to try and “game” my way to the top. I just did what came naturally to me—but I do attribute my consistent success in the territories, and ultimately, in the business as a whole to two main things: first, the things I did outside the ring, like going to hospitals and schools, and helping kids, which, as it turned out, the promoters liked because it brought positive attention to the business; and, second, going out every night I stepped into the ring to try to tell a good story, protect my opponent, make my opponent look good, and give the fans an entertaining match to remember me by, no matter where I was, what the booking was, or how many people were in the crowd.
As I have mentioned before, Eddie Graham relied on Hiro Matsuda, Harley, and me to stretch the newcomers. Matsuda could do hundreds of squats in one set, and although he had not been an amateur wrestler, he had been trained by Karl Gotch—perhaps the greatest legitimate shooter who ever lived. Matsuda, thus, had evolved into one of professional wrestling’s most notorious “policemen.”
Perhaps a bit of explanation would be helpful here.
A highly trained amateur wrestler is knows how to use leverage to take you down and control your body. An amateur wrestler, however, would not necessarily be able to quickly hurt someone or to totally subdue a much larger rogue wrestler in the ring, because in amateur wrestling, you are coached specifically not to apply chokes or holds that work against nerves or joints.
A shooter, however, is someone who is not only trained in the amateur arts, but who also knows how to work against the joints and nerves—and can quickly “hook” you by manipulating a body part against a joint or a nerve and put you in an excruciating submission hold in the blink of an eye. “Hooking,” in other words, is just a part of being a shooter. You can’t be a shooter without being a hooker.
Legitimate professional-wrestling shoot matches ended back in the 1920s. Before that, there were real professional wrestling bouts around the country. Wrestlers would promote themselves, with each man putting up purse money for a match. Those matches typically had one-hour time limits, and were scheduled for the best two out of three falls, where a fall could be won either by a three-second pin, or by a submission. Only choking, eye-gouging, biting, and strikes to the groin were barred. If someone did not win two out of three falls within the one-hour time limit, the bout would be declared a draw.
When the legitimacy went out of the sport at the end of the 1920s, and professional wrestling matches started being staged with predetermined endings, the art of shoot wrestling went underground. In modern professional wrestling, it more or less started and ended with Karl Gotch, who was perhaps the only truly legitimate shoot wrestler of our generation. The rest of us—guys like Danny Hodge, Matsuda, Harley Race, Jack Brisco, the Funks, Les Thornton, and Khosrow Vaziri, had been trained in shoot wrestling, and could call upon those skills when necessary. Those were the guys who the old-school promoters would use to protect the business. They were also often the guys looked upon to carry the world titles.
Both Danny Hodge and Les Thornton taught me hooking skills at the beginning of my career. Once you have these skills, it is scary how easily you can subdue someone if you need to—and these are critical skills to know if you are going to be entrusted with the responsibility of carrying a belt outside your territory.
In the Florida territory, the biggest venue we wrestled in was the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg. The place held somewhere between 10,000 and 12,000 people for wrestling, a
nd unlike the other buildings in the territory, we wrestled there only about once every month or six weeks, so they generally loaded up the card to make sure we would fill the building.
On June 14, 1975, I wrestled there in front of the biggest crowd I had ever experienced up to that point (outside of Japan). The main event featured Jack Brisco defending the NWA World Heavyweight Championship against “Mr. Wrestling” Tim Woods. On that night, in addition to the world title match, Hiro Matsuda defeated Ken “Dutch” Mantell to reclaim the NWA Junior Heavyweight Championship; the “Minnesota Wrecking Crew” Ole and Gene Anderson battled to a no-contest with Rocky Johnson and Tiger Conway Jr. over the NWA World Tag-Team Championship; Killer Karl Krupp bested Pepper Gomez to win the Southern Heavyweight championship; I unsuccessfully challenged Bob Roop for the Florida Heavyweight Championship; and Gentleman Jim Dillon drew with Mike Graham in the Florida television championship match. All of that happened on the same card—which also included a match between Dory Funk Jr. and Harley Race.
Talk about a supercard!
On that card, there were a lot of matches vying for the fans’ attention. You would (and could) assume that Jack and Tim would blow the roof off the building in the main event, so the trick was to find something in your match that would be different and interesting and could capture the hearts of the fans. Bob Roop and I ended up having a great, largely amateur match that night, which, based on where our match fell on the card, provided a nice change from some of the brawling that went on before and after us. It was very exciting for me just to be able to get into the ring in that kind of electrically charged atmosphere with so much talent on the card, and that many people jammed into a building to watch. As it turned out, it would be the first of many such nights in my career—but that was the first one on American soil—so it really sticks out in my mind.
By that point, I had developed a good relationship with Eddie Graham, and it gave me an opportunity to get to know Jim Barnett. Eddie Graham, his son Mike Graham, and Jim Barnett were my “bosses”—the three guys who ran the Florida promotion. Jim Barnett was the principal owner of Georgia Championship Wrestling, but he also held a minority interest in Florida Championship Wrestling and was a pretty common presence down in the Florida office when I was there.
One day at the Sportatorium office, Barnett pulled me aside and explained that he and Eddie had talked, and that the two of them thought that it was time for me to head up the road to Georgia to wrestle for him in Georgia Championship Wrestling.
And with that, my first tenure in Florida came to an end.
8
The First Battle of Atlanta (Georgia, 1975)
“Live in a style that suits your physical and spiritual requirements, and don’t waste time keeping up with the Joneses.”
—Napoleon Hill, “Build a Positive Mental Attitude”
When we first arrived in Atlanta, Corki and I were prepared to go apartment hunting again, but Jim Barnett told us that he had already found us a clean and safe place to live in College Park. None of the other territorial promoters had ever done that for us before—so we thought that was really nice, and I took it as a good sign that he intended to treat me well.
That was a good read.
My first match in the Georgia territory was against a young Jerry Lawler at the City Auditorium in Atlanta. That old place was one of my favorite arenas in the entire country to wrestle because the emotion in that building was off the charts. The building, which was built as a theater, had balconies that hung right out over the ring, which put the people right on top of you. The acoustics were terrific—so when the crowd there got lathered up, the building would shake. When I got to the Audi that night and found out I was wrestling Jerry Lawler on my first night in the territory, I just assumed I would be putting him over—but it turned out that Barnett had decided to open me with a pop by putting me over in my Atlanta debut.
It was a pretty awesome win to start me off, and the people responded.
The Atlanta territory was much different from Florida because the longest drive was about 150 miles. Most days, that meant that we were able to be home all day, work out at our leisure, have lunch with our families, and then take off and head for the town where we were wrestling sometime in the afternoon. The circuit ran from Augusta to Macon to Atlanta to Columbus to Griffin, with occasional spot shows in Savannah and other small towns. I made somewhere between $150 and $300 dollars a night wrestling in the Georgia territory, and sometimes, especially in Atlanta, we’d make more than that. Georgia was an especially profitable territory to wrestle in because we didn’t burn a lot of gas, and everyone went home every night and didn’t have the expense of paying for motel rooms out on the road. Given how close the towns were to one another, the guys who jerked the curtain were often home in bed by the time the main event hit the ring!
The Georgia territory was really popping at the time—and we were drawing great crowds in virtually every town we visited. There was a lot of great talent in the territory when I got there, but I was very fortunate to have had the advantage of working in front of Jim Barnett quite a bit down in Florida, so by the time I got to Georgia, he knew me well. Jim had designs on making me into a top of the card singles wrestler in Georgia, and before I knew it, I was main-eventing with some of the people you could only dream about getting a match with.
On August 29, 1975, for example, I had my first-ever world title match, against then-champion Jack Brisco for the National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight championship. To set up that match, Barnett had booked me into a ten-minute time-limit draw with Brisco on television, during which Jack had given me a number of near-falls and really made me look like I could beat him. It was my first really close look at what a world champion was supposed to do with his challengers.
I had a lot of respect for Jack Brisco—he had wrestled at Oklahoma and was also an NCAA national champion. He was very fit, looked like a wrestling champion, and was also a shooter. I was excited to get in the ring with him in the main event on such a big stage. The Omni was completely sold out—I think there were around 13,000 people in the building. Up to that point in my career, that was certainly the biggest match I had been in, and other than in Japan, it was the largest crowd I had ever wrestled in front of. I remember being very nervous climbing into the ring that night, and Jack could sense that. Being the consummate pro that he was, though, he called some simple moves to get me through my early match jitters when I know I was a little stiff and tight. Although Jack won the match with a quick inside cradle, he really let me hang in there, get a lot of offense in, and catch a number of near-falls on him, and by doing that, he definitely put the “shine” on me and left me stronger, in the eyes of the fans, than I had been before the bout.
I did my favorite move on Jack that night—where he caught me in a short-arm scissors, and I just deadlifted his entire weight off the mat, up into the air, up onto my shoulder, and then placed him on the top turnbuckle. The crowd popped tremendously for that move because they recognized the kind of strength it took to pull it off. Unlike most other moves in professional wrestling, there is no way that your opponent can help you with that one. You just have to concentrate the energy and cheers of the crowd into an adrenaline rush, and then use brute force—and there were not a lot of guys in the business who had the core strength to execute that move in the ring. I know it impressed Jack that night. Even though I lost the match, I had definitely gained stature in the eyes of the people. That is what having a great match with a great champion can do for you.
The level of respect that I had for Jack Brisco after that match could not have gotten any higher—because of the way he conducted himself in the ring, how generous he had been in our match, and, of course, for what he had done in amateur wrestling in Oklahoma and his success in the NCAA tournament.
Three hours later, however, my view of Jack Brisco would be forever changed.
After the Omni card, Dusty Rhodes and Jack and Gerry Brisco asked me if I
wanted to go for a ride with them in Jack’s Thunderbird. I gratefully accepted the offer. In Atlanta, there is a bypass that goes around the city, and we were flying on that bypass with Jack behind the wheel. I was sitting in the back seat with Gerry Brisco having a beer when all of a sudden, I smelled a strange smell. Although I had never smoked marijuana before, the smell was unmistakable. I used the electric switch to put my window down but someone put the window back up. I tried to put the window back down but the window was locked.
“Jack, I can’t get my window open, would you please unlock the window?” I asked.
Jack and Dusty just laughed in the front seat and wouldn’t unlock my window. These were the top guys in the territory, and it certainly wouldn’t have been a bad thing to fit in with them, because they could certainly have helped me to get ahead. But I knew that what they were doing was wrong, and I knew that I didn’t want to be there.
A couple more minutes went by, and the car was filling up with pot smoke.
“Jack—please stop the car and let me out,” I asked.
But Jack didn’t stop the car.
I looked to Gerry Brisco who was sitting with me in the back seat. But Gerry just shrugged.
We pulled into a club and Jack and Dusty got out. I didn’t know where I was, but I got out of the car, looked around to get my bearings, and just started walking. I didn’t care so much that those guys were smoking marijuana—that was their own choice and their decision—but I certainly didn’t want to be riding in a car with someone who was smoking dope while driving.
Making your way in this world is all about the decisions you make for your own life, and I didn’t want those guys taking that right away from me. I didn’t want to be a captive in that environment, I didn’t want my body getting polluted with that stuff, and I certainly didn’t want to run the risk of being in a speeding car with an impaired driver. So I made the choice that I thought was best for me, and walked home. It took me nearly all night, but I didn’t care. I knew I was making the right choice for me.
