by Bob Backlund
Adonis got the first shot at the Garden on January 18, 1982. Although Adrian and I had not spent any time in the ring together before, something just clicked with the two of us. Adrian was a very skilled worker who could get up and down really well back then. He was flexible and acrobatic, with a good knowledge of chain wrestling, and he was a bump machine. He was also a nice contrast to the parade of monsters I had faced for much of 1981, and consequently, he was a good opponent for me stylistically. Our work flowed well, and we were able to have some nice long matches that kept the fans on the edges of their seats.
Adonis was deceiving and had a great repertoire of moves. He was strong and very quick, and kept a good pace in the ring. Although he had a little extra weight on him, it did not slow him down. The fans had not yet seen a heel challenger to my title employ the sleeperhold as a finisher, so that was another “first” that helped Adonis gain some real traction as a challenger.
Vince Sr. knew right away that he had something in Adonis, and when he brought us together for our pre-match discussion, he had a sold out house waiting for the match. Accordingly, Vince Sr. called for a blood stoppage—and asked me to put over the sleeper as convincingly as possible to sell the possibility that Adonis could take the title in the rematch.
Our first match at the Garden went over thirty minutes, which means the match was paced pretty well, and that the people hadn’t yet reached their energy climax by the twenty- or twenty-five-minute mark, where most of my matches usually ended. It took us thirty minutes to get to the blood stoppage—but we were listening to the people, not watching the clock. The fans were riveted by the back-and-forth nature of that match, so we decided to just let them tell us when it was time to bring it home. Adonis had not appeared in the Garden before, but he was being hyped pretty strongly on television—so we also wanted to take the time to develop his character a little more in the match to make his challenge for the belt look strong and convincing.
Unfortunately, the consequence of that match running longer than expected that night was that Putski and Killer Khan ran out of time in their final bout of the evening. Sometimes, the card would run long, either because guys weren’t staying close enough to the time allotted to their matches, because my match or one of the other main-event caliber matches would run longer than expected, or because guys were taking too long to down to the ring or back to the dressing rooms. When that happened, the guys at the end of the card would get pinched for time. Sometimes, when that happened, the final match would go to the curfew time limit and the “referee’s decision” was used to get the booked finish. That’s what happened with Putski and Khan that night, with Putski getting awarded the victory over the departing Khan. On other nights, when they knew they were running way behind and had no chance of finishing the card the way they intended to, the 11 p.m. curfew was lifted. When that happened, it would end up costing the WWE a lot of money in mandatory overtime for the Garden employees, so lifting the curfew was a rare occurrence, and usually a pretty good indication that something in the card had not gone off as expected.
People often ask why one of the preliminary matches wasn’t dropped instead, or on nights when we had a stacked card, why those preliminary matches were still allowed to run twelve to fifteen minutes, or even to a twenty-minute time limit. The answer goes back to my earlier discussion about building the fans’ interest in a card. To build fans’ interest, you want to start slow, and draw them into the action. That’s why the curtain-jerker is usually a slow, methodical, mat-based match with only one or two high spots. You’re giving the fans a chance to settle in and get oriented. Likewise, a preliminary match is sometimes dropped in somewhere in the middle of the card—usually right after a title match, or a big grudge match—as a chance for the fans to catch their breath, and a chance for the promoter to build them up again toward the next high spot in the card. None of this was accidental. These matches were all organized with a particular purpose in mind—so you couldn’t just “cut” something in the middle of a card without impacting the flow of the rest of the card by doing it.
Between my matches with Adonis at the Garden, I made another trip out to Hawaii to again try to help out Peter Maivia. Peter had bought the promotion in Hawaii in 1980 where he and his wife Lia had retired after he finished wrestling in the WWF, but doing so had cost Peter all the money he had saved up from his years in wrestling. The promotion out there was a member of the NWA, but given its remoteness, it was also one of the smallest territories in the Alliance, and it was faltering economically. Knowing that, many of us, including Vince Sr. and Don Muraco and I, wanted to help Peter out.
One of the main problems was that the promotion was having a hard time getting a consistent time slot—the lifeblood of a wrestling promotion—on television in Hawaii. The one-hour weekly television program was essentially a one-hour-long advertisement to support the promotion, draw fan interest in the wrestlers and matches, and alert the fans to when and where the live house shows would be occurring. Without that kind of consistent and reliable exposure on television, it was very, very difficult for any promotion to draw well.
Peter’s business had also been beat up by a lack of booking creativity that had forced repetitive angles on the fans, which led to giving the fans increasingly higher high spots to “shock” the fans into renewed interest. That just made it harder for them to come back, because it is the psychology of the storytelling, not the high spots, that keeps the fans coming back. King Curtis Iaukea had returned to Hawaii from Australia, and he was doing things in the ring night after night that were focused less on ring psychology and more on shock and mayhem. That popped the houses for a little while, but mayhem is unsustainable in the long run and eventually just made it tough to get the fans to come back when the mayhem was missing.
In an effort to help Peter, Vince Sr. sent me out there to defend the WWF title in a two-match series against Don Muraco. The first night, we wrestled at the Honolulu International Center arena—which held about 8,000 people. Because Don and I had done so many Broadways together while we were both champions, we wanted to do one more for Peter—so that’s what we did. That was our eighth and final Broadway together in the ring. Unfortunately, given Peter’s problems getting exposure on television, even with the WWF title defense at the top of the bill and Muraco and me in the main event, we didn’t draw a big crowd at all. The Blaisdell Arena, where we wrestled on the first night was maybe half full. It was really shocking to me to only see 4,000 or 5,000 people in that arena given how well Muraco and I had drawn in the large East Coast of the WWF, and how well the cards had drawn in my previous matches in Honolulu when I would stop over there on my way back from Japan. This simply underscores how critical consistent television exposure is to the survival of a wrestling promotion. Vince McMahon Jr. knew that too, which was why buying up the television rights of the small regional promotions around the country was the critical component of the WWF’s national expansion in 1983 and 1984.
The next night Muraco and I wrestled in Hilo. That night, I went over Muraco cleanly to defend the WWF title, but we again drew only a lackluster house. After seeing that two nights in a row, it was clear to us that Peter was not going to make it. Peter was a much beloved guy in the wrestling business and always treated the boys very well on our Hawaiian stopovers on the way back from Japan. Let’s face it, who wouldn’t want to be booked to wrestle in Hawaii? Access to talent wasn’t his problem—the problem was in the promotion. Peter needed money to get reliable and consistent television. Without it, his promotion was dead in the water.
Unfortunately, Peter never got the chance to use his creativity and incredible connections in the profession to turn things around. It was around this time that Peter finally sought medical attention after years of ignoring the pain and discomfort, passing it off as simply the byproduct of taking nightly bumps in the ring. The doctor told Peter that cancer had spread throughout his body and he died shortly thereafter, in June 1982. My trip to Hawaii in F
ebruary was the last time I would ever Peter.
I sure am glad I made that trip.
When I got back from Hawaii, Adonis was waiting for our return encounter at the Garden on February 15, 1982. I would have liked to do three matches with Adrian given how well our first match had gone, but we had a backup of heel challengers forming, so Vince Sr. scheduled this second match to be a Texas Death Match with Ivan Putski as the guest referee. We drew a bigger crowd than in our previous encounter—selling out the Garden. Once again, we played off of Adrian’s Goodnight Irene finisher—the killer sleeperhold. We had been playing around with a great possible finish where he got the hold on me, nearly put me out, and then in a final furious comeback and effort to break the hold, I would run Adrian into the turnbuckles backward and then forward, forcing him to break the hold, and then sneak behind him and roll him up backward and bridge for the pin.
It was a high-risk finish that required a lot of agility on both of our parts, and a lot of things had to go exactly right for it to work. Adrian was very flexible and a great worker, so after running it successfully a couple of times in smaller towns, we decided to use it at the Garden. This time crowd was into our battle from the outset, and it didn’t take very long to work the crowd into a frenzy—so at just after the fifteen-minute mark, Adrian captured me in Goodnight Irene. I slowly slumped to the canvas and Putski held my arm out, and I let it fall limply to the canvas.
One.
I could see the fans gasping and the ringsiders jumping up and down trying to urge me on. Putski held my arm out again, and I again let it fall limply to the canvas.
Two.
The energy in the building went up another level. Putski again reached for my arm, but this time, with the building rocking, I started to shake and quiver and tense my arms and rally to my feet. The roar of the crowd was deafening as I backed Adrian up and slammed him into the turnbuckle.
He held on.
The crowd continued to scream as I ran him back into the turnbuckle a second time, faster and harder. Adrian sold the move with a yell and an obvious grimace of pain, but still he held on.
I moved my arms to bring the fans one level higher, and then this time, ran Adrian forward, slamming his face into the buckle. He released the hold, and before anyone could see what had happened, I had slipped around him and caught him in the rolling reverse. I could feel his body relax to permit me to complete the roll and then bridge out onto my arms and my head. We had it positioned perfectly, and Putski was ready.
One … two … three!
The crowd exploded—the bell rang, and frankly, in my opinion, we had one of the best finishes in a title match that I had ever done with a challenger. It took the fans from a frenzy of despair and concern, to the edge of their seats, and then to jubilation all in about a span of twenty seconds. That’s the kind of energy and emotion that the best professional wrestling can produce—and we did it without chairs, or tables, or fire, or foreign objects. This finish was simply about wrestling—about holds and counterholds, and knowing when to seize the moment when the crowd was at its peak to take them home.
We liked this finish so much that we repeated it in nearly every arena around the territory that got a Backlund-Adonis title match—and it had the same effect just about everywhere we tried it. Kudos to Adrian for a tremendous series. For those who only saw him in the cartoon years, you really missed something.
At the March TVs in Allentown and Hamburg, the new crop of summer heels, “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka, “Cowboy” Bob Orton, and “Blackjack” Mulligan arrived for their first television matches, which would be broadcast over the next several weeks. This was also the taping where the great new babyface tag team known as the Carolina Connection of Rick McGraw and Steve Travis was born. Rick and Steve were a good combination, and were a big hit with the ladies. They would go on to feud with the tag-team champions, Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito around the territory in the summer of 1982, and the crowds really responded to those matches. I think they would have been great for a babyface run with the tag-team belts.
I knew Orton from Florida, where Steve Keirn and I had worked with him and his father. Orton was very good in the ring, and I was excited about his run, and about getting to work some interesting technical matches with him as a nice change of pace. Mulligan was the perfect combination of giant and cowboy heel—and, like most of the best characters, it wasn’t really a gimmick for him. What you saw on television was the real person. Jack was a legitimate tough guy who knew and loved the wrestling business, and was interested in making the best of every match.
Jack was also a really big guy, I think he was six-foot-five or so and about 350 pounds, had a great sneer, an ominous handlebar mustache, a big black hat, and a mysterious black rubber glove on his hand that he would use to administer his “brain claw” finisher—another hold that the New York fans had not yet seen during my tenure as champion. He talked well, and I think he would have presented a really good, powerful, and interesting challenge to the belt. But as I would find out later, as he had with Hogan, Vince Sr. was focused on preparing Jack for a headlining run with Andre, and that was a great thing too—because whenever Andre had someone more his size, he could work with him more, and any clash between Andre and another credible giant was gold at the box office.
I didn’t know Snuka at all, and had no real expectations about that series. I fully expected that the highlight of that group was going to be Orton. That’s why Vince Sr. did the booking and I did the wrestling!
This latest crop of heels also gives you some insight into how the business worked at the time. At that taping, I had just finished with Adonis at the Garden, but was really just getting started wrestling him around the rest of the territory. Meanwhile, I had not yet wrestled Jesse Ventura at the Garden, although I already had some matches with him in other cities around the territory. Although it was unusual for other cities (other than a one-off small town somewhere if a heel and I were unfamiliar with each other and needed to get our timing down) to get a main event before the Garden, in this case there was a real logjam of challengers forming.
Ventura was to be my next opponent. Jesse, who legitimately was a bodyguard for the Rolling Stones, was trained, like I was, at the 7th Street gym in Minneapolis by Eddie Sharkey, and was trying to emulate and expand upon the character first used by “Superstar” Billy Graham. Ventura had a very muscular body, a deep tan, and was a good talker. Ventura wasn’t as up and down on and off the mat as some of the other guys were, and he wasn’t a bump machine like Adonis was, but I hadn’t wrestled a strong man–type challenger since Ken Patera and Hulk Hogan in 1980, and it takes all types to make the story work, so this was a logical fit.
Jesse and I only did one match at the Garden because his repertoire of maneuvers in the ring wasn’t as broad as some of my other challengers, and at that point in his career in the WWF, he hadn’t gotten as “over” as some of the other heels that the people just lined up to hate. Adonis, for example, was cockier on the microphone, and as I have mentioned, his Goodnight Irene sleeperhold finisher had propelled him into the ranks of heels people really wanted to see. Ventura, at that time, was a cool, beatnik type from the West Coast that the people honestly didn’t hate that much. I’m just not sure that the people quite knew what to make of Ventura, whose persona was really part wrestler, and part rock star. I also think that the people didn’t really see him as possessing the same kind of “heel credentials” as guys like Stan Hansen or Sergeant Slaughter or Don Muraco—who I think the people really believed could win the world title from me on any given night.
I felt badly that Jesse didn’t get more of a run at the Garden because I liked him a lot as a person. He was a pleasure to be in the ring with in that he always protected us both very well. Jesse got the matinee card at the Garden on March 14, 1982. I remember the match well—he came into the ring with Freddie Blassie wearing a really colorful robe and earrings and jewelry around his arms. His entrance, frankly, was among the best of
any of my heel challengers at getting the people riled up—and the entrances and Howard Finkel’s in-ring introductions were a very important part of getting the people’s energy up for the title match. I think everyone knew that Jesse would pull that part off as well as anyone because he loved to play to the crowd and he was as good at that as anyone.
After that, though, Vince Sr. knew that Ventura and I wouldn’t match up that well in terms of our in-ring repertoire because Jesse’s palette of moves was limited. Given that, Vince Sr. had set up Ivan Putski as the guest referee for the bout, which was unusual given that it was our first match, and there really wasn’t a grudge befitting a special guest referee. In reality, Vince Sr. was really looking to find something to do with Jesse. Ventura and Putski started jawing at each other right from the pre-match introductions, and given the finish that Vince Sr. called for, that was all part of the setup.
When you are the champ, and you are facing someone like Ventura in the ring, you have to consider what you can credibly do within the confines of each wrestler’s abilities, and given that, how to get the people to the right place to get to the finish. The match was mostly a street fight, with Ventura punching and kicking and choking and trying to soften up my back for his finisher, the Bodybreaker, mixed with Ventura and Putski getting into it over Putski’s manhandling him to force clean breaks, and administering a couple of very slow counts when Ventura had me in pinning combinations. The drama in this match was as much about the obvious bias and growing heat between Ventura and Putski as it was about Ventura’s quest to unseat me as the WWF champion.
I basically let Jesse beat on me for about eight minutes, during which he got a series of very slow counts from Putski, after which point he got me up in the Bodybreaker for a false finish. I managed to get to the ropes, kick off, and backdrop him into a pinning combination that we held for a two count before he kicked out. The people were buzzing pretty well at that point, and I thought that was the time to go. I didn’t want to lose that peak, because you can’t hold it for long, and if you lose it, the match can go downhill from there. Given what I knew we were able to do, and how much of it we had already done, I wasn’t sure we’d be able to get the people back to that level again.
