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

by Bob Backlund

  Graham was a heel and someone the fans loved to hate because he was so over the top, but he was also a showman who entertained the fans and created incredible interest in his matches. Billy had been doing remarkably well as a heel in a company that had always had a babyface champion. He was selling out buildings across the territory—but he was running out of babyfaces to wrestle. I would be supplanting him as the world champion, not when the people were tiring of him, but at the absolute height of his drawing power. I would now be counted on to main-event every building that I wrestled in, and thus, to carry the top of the cards all across the territory. And this was no ordinary territory. This was the territory—the WWWF—with the largest buildings and the most lucrative schedule in the business.

  Vince Sr. was obviously very committed to his bet that an underdog “All-American Boy” world champion would sell in the Northeast. And Vince had dropped me—a shy, fresh-faced, twenty-eight-year-old farm boy from rural Minnesota into his urban world of larger-than-life characters.

  I was a reluctant interview, at best. I didn’t have the muscles of a Superstar Graham, the easy charisma of Dusty Rhodes, the incredible survival story of Bruno Sammartino, the tough-guy appearance of Harley Race, or a reliable ethnic fan base like both Sammartino and Pedro Morales had. I also wasn’t a brawler, which had been the model for the WWWF’s babyface champions since the very beginning. Sammartino and Morales were both known for their no-nonsense roughhouse style. They gave the crowds what they wanted to see—namely, their hard-nosed heroes throwing haymakers, kicking and stomping and beating the life out of the villains who were trying to take the championship away from them. There wasn’t much subtlety to it, but the crowds had been eating it up for nearly two decades.

  In contrast, I would be booked as a vulnerable, athletic young kid in a place full of monsters, winning the fans over with my courage, hard work, and superior technical skills. There was nothing about me or that model that fit the WWWF’s prior image of professional wrestling’s world heavyweight champion that it had been selling to its fans since 1963.

  But in just a few hours, that is precisely what I was to become.

  As I sat there imagining the people who would be sitting in the Garden that night, I thought back to when I had been told that Vince McMahon Sr. had called his fellow promoters Jim Barnett in Atlanta, Eddie Graham in Florida, the Funks in Amarillo, and Sam Muchnick in St. Louis and had asked them to recommend someone to become his “All-American Boy.” Someone who was reliable, could protect the belt, and could be counted on to fill the top of the cards.

  Every one of them had recommended me.

  My confidence somewhat restored, I came out of my daydream and started to put the car into gear. But then my mind suddenly shifted to the other decision-makers in the WWWF’s front office—guys who had been with the WWWF for nearly their entire careers, like Arnold Skaaland, Gorilla Monsoon, Freddie Blassie, Lou Albano, Phil Zacko, Ernie “The Grand Wizard of Wrestling” Roth, and Angelo Savoldi. Many of these guys were minority owners in the business, or were at least part of the WWWF’s creative brain trust. I knew they got together and had card games at Madison Square Garden every month before the matches to discuss angles, talent, and new booking ideas with Vince Sr. I wondered how many meetings they must have had about who was going to take the title from Billy Graham. And after Graham became such a box office hit, I wondered how many of them lobbied for Graham to be given a “face turn” so he could continue to run with the title and bring in the big houses for all of them.

  Thinking about the meeting where Vince McMahon Sr. first threw out my name, I wondered what kind of response the suggestion must have received from that card table. Most of those people wouldn’t have been afraid to tell Vince what they thought. It was a very tight-knit group, and I was a complete outsider who had no relationship with any of them. Vince Sr. told those boys that Sammartino had given his notice that he wanted to come off the road, so he had decided to put the belt on Graham while he searched the world for a new babyface to take over the federation. And when he did that, I’m pretty sure that none of those people was thinking of Bob Backlund. I’m sure they were thinking of in-house guys like Jay Strongbow, Tony Garea, Ivan Putski, or Bruno’s protégé, Larry Zbyszko. So I started to wonder whether I might be walking into a hornet’s nest of internal politics where everybody, both in the front office and in the dressing room, would be rooting for me to fail.

  In the NWA territories like Amarillo, Georgia, Florida, and St. Louis, where I was trained, the NWA World Champion would come into the territory for a few days a month to face the main guy in the territory. The visiting champion, of course, had to win—but the main guy in the territory had to be left with the shine, or he would lose some of his power to draw houses in the territory. Were it any other way, instead of drawing a huge house for the title defense and helping the territory shore up its fan base, the world champion would end up weakening the territory’s main talent, which would have precisely the opposite effect.

  Coming up in the NWA territories in the Midwest, the South, and in Texas, training under guys like Harley Race, Jack Brisco, and the Funks, I had been taught how to have longer, more balanced matches. We were trained to start off slow, draw the people in, trade offense with your opponent with the action see-sawing back and forth until you had determined what the particular crowd was into that night, and then try to deliver a healthy dose of whatever it was that the crowd wanted. We’d work up to a particular high spot and then back off, work up to another, and back off—and then maybe work in a near fall or a false finish until the energy in the crowd was as high as we could possibly get it—and then “go home” with the booked finish.

  When I was booked to win a match decisively by pinning my opponent, simply winning the match that way and getting my hand raised by the referee in the middle of the ring was enough for the people to get their high from my match. So in matches where I was booked to “go over” my opponent by pinning him, I saw my job as making sure to leave something for my opponent so he could “keep his heat.” I might be the champion and the guy on top of the card who was being relied on the most to draw the house, but there was no reason for me to want to do that alone. If I could beat a heel, but leave him with his heat intact, he would be better positioned to help draw the next house by appearing to be a bigger threat to whatever babyface he was booked to wrestle next. If I beat him too decisively, he would lose his heat, and the fans’ interest in his next match would be diminished, making him less of a draw for the fans to want to come and see.

  As I sat there in the parking lot thinking about the business—I realized that just because something had always been done a certain way in the WWWF didn’t mean it had to continue to be done that way. I realized I was bringing to the table a whole new approach to the business of professional wrestling—and an approach that, once understood, ought to be popular both with the front office and with the boys in the locker room. By implementing more of the NWA’s model of leaving most heels with their heat so they could maintain their drawing power and longevity in the territory, we would have more options in booking feuds or interesting semi-final matches for the undercards, and, as a consequence, do better business because of it.

  With more people working to draw the houses, the houses should consistently be better, which would allow all of us to be more successful. During the time I spent as a regional champion in Amarillo, Florida, and Missouri, I had seen this approach work—and I realized that it could work in the WWWF as well—even though it was not the model currently in vogue.

  Vince McMahon Sr. must have recognized this too. The fact that the “All-American Boy” archetype was set up to be an underdog played perfectly into this business model. It would allow me to take that approach with nearly every match I had. It was at that moment that I realized that Vince McMahon Sr. had thought this all out—that his choice of having an underdog “All-American Boy” as his champion would not only allow for a different “look,”
but also a more robust business model to take the federation forward, and that my look, my background, and my training were all perfectly suited to it.

  I pulled my car out onto Route 95 south, and headed on to the destiny that lay ahead for me in New York City. I recognized that it might take a while for people—in the front office, in the dressing room, and in the crowds—to adjust to our new way of doing things. But now that I understood how it all fit together, I was very confident that we were going to make it work. I knew that at the outset, there might not be a heck of lot of people behind me, but I was also confident that given the time to do so, I could win them over.

  I arrived safely in New York City around six o’clock, and parked in a public parking lot on 48th Street. I grabbed my gym bag out of the trunk, breathed deeply, and began the fourteen-block walk through midtown Manhattan down to Madison Square Garden. It was a pretty nice evening for February in New York City, and I took my time walking through the streets, passing the crowds of people leaving work for the day, inhaling the ever-present smell of roasting nuts and pretzels being sold by the street vendors, and began to get butterflies in my stomach. I had arrived New York City—the heartbeat of the world—and was about to become its newest hero.

  As I got closer to the Garden, I was recognized by a few fans on their way to the matches.

  “Good luck tonight, Bob!” a group of them yelled and waved to me from the opposite corner of the street.

  “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby!” a group of them chanted, pumping their fists in the air.

  “Graham’s gonna kick your ass, Backlund!” someone else yelled.

  Suddenly, a couple of breathless fans caught up to me on the sidewalk.

  “Do you think you can take Billy Graham?” one of them asked.

  “Don’t let him get you in that bearhug,” another of them offered.

  “And don’t let him cheat you out of it,” another said. “Remember what he tried to do to Mascaras.”

  “I’ll do my best!” I said to them, smiling to myself and giving out high fives and handshakes before peeling off onto 35th Street. I stood there for a moment and looked up at the giant marquee lit up in front of the Garden across from the Pennsylvania Hotel.

  TONIGHT:

  WRESTLING

  Graham vs. Backlund

  SOLD OUT

  There it was—my name in lights in midtown Manhattan, on the marquee of the most important arena in the world. I had come a long way from the farm fields of Princeton, Minnesota, from my life as a young derelict and a near high school dropout. From sleeping in the trunk of my car with a baseball bat eating tuna out of a can.

  This was my moment, and I resolved to make it count.

  I jogged to the side entrance to the Garden, slid in the door, took the elevator to the main floor, and walked into the dressing room assigned to the babyfaces. There, I shook hands with the Chief (who was neither a Chief, nor even an Indian, but actually an Italian guy named Joe Scarpa), Tony Garea, Peter Maivia, and a few other people, and then tossed my bag onto the bench in one corner and began to change into my wrestling gear. Although news of the title change had spread among the boys, no one said anything to me, which reinforced my suspicion that it wasn’t a popular choice in the dressing room. There were guys in that dressing room like Strongbow and Garea who had been in the WWWF for a long time, and must have felt badly about being passed over for a run with the title. But as I stood there changing, I reminded myself that Vince Sr. had faith in me, and that of all the people he might have chosen for this role, he had chosen me, and he had done so for sound reasons. He had a long track record of success, and it was not for me to second-guess him. I promised myself as I stood there changing into my black trunks and black wrestling boots that I would work hard to win the hearts and minds of the fans, the boys, and the front office. I would be a champion they would all be happy to have at the top of the card.

  The dressing rooms at the Garden were nothing fancy—they didn’t let us use the Rangers’ or the Knicks’ dressing rooms—so we were in the auxiliary rooms on either side of the great hallway that led to the ramp into the middle of the Garden. They were just large rooms with a few lockers, some folding chairs, and some benches, and an attached room with showers, toilets, and sinks. The faces and the heels had separate dressing rooms on opposite sides of the hallway to keep up appearances.

  Belltime was scheduled for 8:30. This would also be the first time that kids from eight to fourteen years old would be allowed to be at the Garden for a wrestling show. Before then, no one under fourteen was admitted for wrestling. But that night, the era of the “All-American Boy” would begin—and with it, the era of cheering kids began as well.

  Vince Sr. truly did think of everything.

  After I finished changing, I left the dressing room and went down the hallway and out into the big open area at one end of the arena where they housed the animals during the circus. It was a very large room and there was nobody there, so I stretched and limbered up and did some exercises. Billy and I were scheduled to go off late in the card that night—I think it was scheduled to be the sixth or seventh match—so I had plenty of time to wait and burn off more nervous energy.

  As the time for our match drew near, I definitely felt the butterflies. Eventually, word came that Vince Sr. wanted to see me, and that’s when I got the goose pimples all over my body. I returned to the dressing room area, and Vince motioned me into the men’s room where Billy was waiting. Vince Sr. brought us together, riffling the ever-present stack of quarters in his hands. He pulled his glasses down to the end of his nose and looked us both in the eye.

  “Well, this is it, Billy. Bobby is going over tonight. I want you guys to work around the bear hug and wait until the time is right. When it is, Bobby, you get behind Billy, pick him up and really hold him up there, carry him around, and then give him the atomic kneedrop—but make sure to drop him close to the ropes. Billy, you’re going to put your foot up on the rope, but the referee isn’t going to see it, and he’s going to make the three-count—and that will be it.” (In professional wrestling rules, ordinarily, getting a foot on the ropes would be cause for the referee to stop the count and break up the pin.)

  The finish was intentionally designed to be a mirror image of the way Graham had been booked to win the title over Sammartino in Baltimore. That night, the referee hadn’t “seen” Billy’s feet on the ropes in the corner of the ring when he used them to get extra leverage to pin Sammartino for the title. Tonight, the referee wouldn’t “see” Billy’s foot on the ropes to save him from the three count that caused him to lose the belt.

  Wrestling promoters did love irony … Billy nodded somberly and said nothing. He had the championship belt draped over his massive shoulder, and I could tell he was disappointed at being asked to surrender it. Even though he had known for almost a year that this day was coming, I think Billy had held out some hope, until the very end, that his great performances and his surprising drawing power would change Vince’s mind.

  There was little doubt that Billy had wrestled some fantastic matches and had given some great interviews—and over the past few months I had been a witness to the way the fans had reacted to him. Some people loved him, and a lot more hated him, but there was no one who was agnostic about “Superstar” Billy Graham. When you get that kind of rise out of the fans, you know that your character has gotten over. It had been a great recipe for business that had lasted nearly ten months—tenfold longer than any heel had ever carried Vince’s world title in the history of the promotion to that point.

  That was the extent of the conversation. Vince gave me a little wink and a nod, and before I knew it, he was gone. Billy retreated to the heels’ dressing room without saying anything further either to Vince Sr. or to me, and I headed back to my spot out in the holding area.

  Vince had booked the finish to the match that way because he didn’t want to destroy Graham’s “heat” with the fans. By allowing Billy to get pinned with his foot on
the ropes, Billy could claim, in his post-match interviews, that he had been “robbed.” We didn’t want the title win to look like a fluke—because that would have weakened my title win, which needed to be strong to put me over with the people—so it was important that I dominated a lot of the match before the pin. But we also wanted the finish to look like an upset that might not happen again in a rematch, which the foot-on-the-ropes finish provided.

  Two months of rematches, ending in a steel cage “blowoff” in April, were already booked for the Garden on Vince’s calendar and storyboard, and he had high hopes to draw huge sellout crowds to pay off that storyline. So it was critical that we delivered just the right touch with the booked finish, so I would come out of the match with a decisive victory, but Billy would come out still looking like a strong champion who had just been upset.

  That would be the key to drawing well for the rematches.

  Back out in the hallway, I did some final pre-match stretching and got mentally set to go out into the ring. At the appointed time, we were summoned, and my “manager” Arnold Skaaland came to my side and walked me down the hallway. I had wrestled several times in the Garden by this point, but I was grateful to have Arnold at my side that night because the nerves were definitely getting the best of me. We turned left down the runway, past Vince Sr. who winked at me again as went by, and then through the curtain and out into the arena.

  As soon as we came into view, the people just started cheering wildly. I had goose pimples all over my body and shivers racing down my spine. There were 22,000 people out there that night in the Garden. There wasn’t an empty seat in the place—which was a tribute to Billy’s ability to draw as the champion, but also a tribute to the booking that had been done to get people interested in seeing my match with him. I remember thinking that you could have fit the entire population of Princeton into the Garden ten times over.