by Bob Backlund
There had been a lot of long title matches at the Garden in the preceding months, and a lot of long series with challengers, so keeping the people off balance and having some shock value was always important, and that’s what this was—something completely opposite of what the people were used to seeing. So Ventura went to put me up in the Bodybreaker again, but I slipped off his shoulder, got behind him, pushed him into the ropes, and caught him in the rolling reverse, which Ventura positioned himself perfectly on, allowing me to bridge out in one fluid motion. Putski went to the mat and delivered the fastest three count in Garden history, the people roared, and the bell rang. The finish looked so good, it was used in the intro to the Championship Wrestling television broadcast for nearly a year after that. Credit to Jesse for making that happen.
After the announcements, the pot boiled over as Ventura attacked Putski, setting up an instant feud which would main-event the high school and community college gyms and fieldhouses around the territory for much of the spring and summer.
After we finished going around the horn, Adonis went on to have a series of Intercontinental title matches with Pedro Morales while I was wrestling Ventura. Ventura then went on to wrestle Putski and then Tony Atlas in strongman matches in a number of towns. Adonis and Ventura later got back together as the “East-West Connection” tag team, and would go on to have entertaining matches around the territory with Tony Garea and Rick Martel, the Carolina Connection, and the Strongbow Brothers that all did well at the box office.
Mulligan was the next heel up. It had been about a year since the WWF crowds had last seen a heel cowboy (Stan Hansen), and Blackjack, at over six feet eight inches tall and about 330 pounds, was very different from Hansen. He was more of a cross between the “rugged cowboy” and the “giant” types. Mulligan should have been the perfect guy at the time to put some heat into, but, as they had with Hogan in 1980, they wanted to keep Mulligan fresh for Andre without having the Garden crowd see me beat him, so they never booked Jack into a main event with me at the Garden. Instead, they tested the Andre-Mulligan matchup in a few small towns in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and finding that Andre and Mulligan worked well together and that the people were responding favorably to their feud, they decided to push Jack into a feud with Andre at the Garden right away.
I only wrestled Mulligan in a couple of towns. We did a double disqualification in our first match at the Baltimore Civic Center on April 10, 1982, then followed that a week later on April 17 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, in a match that almost didn’t happen. During that week, while driving from Maryland to Connecticut, then back out to Long Island, and then out to Pittsburgh, I developed a blood clot in my leg. While I was home, I went to see my doctor in East Haven, Connecticut—who was the same doctor who would check the wrestlers for the Connecticut State Athletic Commission when we would wrestle at the New Haven Coliseum. My doctor told me that if the clot came loose and moved out of my leg, I could die. He called Vince Sr. and told him what was up, but with near-sellout crowds waiting in two of the largest arenas on the circuit, no-showing the main events was simply not an option. I gingerly limped my way through the next two nights’ main events against Adonis in Pittsburgh and then Mulligan in Philadelphia, where I was limping so badly that I was barely cleared to wrestle by the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission. I wrestled one of the shortest title matches of my career that night because I was in legitimate pain and had real concerns for my health and well-being. Being the true professional that he is, Jack took especially good care of me in the ring that night to make sure that my condition wouldn’t worsen further. I was grateful for that. Vince then gave me a week off to get healthy and ready for my first match with Snuka at the Garden.
I was not privy to the communications Vince Sr. had with Jim and David Crockett of the Mid-Atlantic territory bringing Jimmy Snuka into the WWF, or how much the Crocketts had told Vince Sr. about Snuka or how he was drawing down there in the Carolinas, but I don’t think anyone had any inkling of just how over Snuka was going to get with the WWF fans. At the outset, Vince Sr. had set things up so I would end up doing a longer series with “Cowboy” Bob Orton, who, like Don Muraco, was a product of Eddie Graham’s Florida Championship Wrestling, and with whom I could have had some great wrestling matches. Orton had gotten a run with the Florida Heavyweight Championship for Eddie, and I know that Vince Sr. loved Orton, both for his look and for his substantial in-ring skills. But when Snuka just erupted into a mega-heel at the box office, the office rode that horse all the way to the bank, I unexpectedly spent nearly all of the summer of 1982 wrestling him, which seriously truncated the time I had available to spend with Orton.
For those who are unfamiliar with the Snuka series—which, in terms of box office interest, and general buzz, probably represented the high-water mark of my nearly six-year title run—let me set the scene. Snuka came into the territory as a mysterious, wild jungle savage in leopard print trunks, managed by Captain Lou Albano. The man allegedly spoke not a word of English, but had a body that looked like it had been chiseled from stone. He also possessed one of the most spectacular finishing maneuvers in the history of the business to that point—a signature move where he would climb to the top turnbuckle and then swan dive halfway across the ring before crashing down onto the prone body of his opponent. That move had earned him the nickname “The Superfly,” and had also allegedly sent numerous victims to the hospital. The first time that Snuka executed that move on television, everyone watching knew that this guy was something special.
After the first couple of matches at the taping, however, it became clear just how special.
Snuka was in his late thirties when he arrived in the WWF, and had a lot of experience in the ring. In the ring, Jimmy was a terrific performer. He knew what he wanted to do at every minute, and after each move, he would pause just long enough to allow the people to respond before he went on to his next move. Jimmy had excellent timing—he was deliberate and never rushed anything—and that’s part of what made him so successful. He got the most out of every move in terms of the people’s reaction. His level of experience in professional wrestling made Snuka one of the most polished heels I ever had the pleasure to step into the ring with.
The combination of the seemingly savage and uncontrollable Snuka with the wild and unpredictable Albano also really helped to strike fear into the hearts of the fans. The two of them fit together brilliantly and they played well off each other. It was just a great combination. At the beginning, the fear in the hearts and minds of the fans was palpable. Because television from Crocketts’ Mid-Atlantic area did not reach into much of the WWF territory, few WWF fans had ever laid eyes on Snuka before. He got a heck of a response when he came out—one that just sparkled a little bit more than most other heels. And then he started stretchering the TV job guys out, one after the next, with that devastating swan dive—and the fans’ response to him become increasingly intense. I can clearly remember the reaction everybody had at that first television taping—both the people in the crowds in Allentown and Hamburg, and the office guys in the back. Vince Jr. really liked Snuka, and Vince Sr., also liking what he saw, started reshuffling the book to accommodate an unexpected box office hit in the making.
Snuka’s title match with me in the Garden on April 26, 1982, was his first arena shot in the territory. Nobody had gotten to see him in a WWF arena before, so when he emerged from behind the curtain at the Garden with Albano, it was definitely a special moment. Flashbulbs were popping and the crowd was buzzing with anticipation, and Snuka, for his part, was really playing it up—looking around quizzically at the large number of people gathered around the ringside area, and then wide-eyed as he surveyed the thousands and thousands more in the first and second decks as if to communicate the thought that he was thousands of miles from his jungle home and had no idea where he was.
Back in the dressing room area before the match, Vince Sr. had taken me into the bathroom separately, without Snuka, which w
as very unusual. I deduced pretty quickly that something was up.
“Bobby,” Vince Sr. said to me, “this guy is really getting over … and he could really be something. He’s going to go over tonight by disqualification. But after that, I’d like to have Snuka hit that splash, hurt you, and send you out of here on a stretcher. Would that be alright with you?”
We wanted to get Jimmy’s amazing finisher over with the people as strongly as we possibly could, and what better way to do that than for me to get carried out of the Garden on a stretcher for the first time ever? I was very pleased, however, that Vince Sr. thought enough of me as his champion to pull me aside, and ask me for this booking rather than simply telling us to do it. Of course, I had so much respect for Vince Sr. that I would have done just about anything for him, and frankly, I agreed with him that it made a lot of sense to do that finish. The people had seen Snuka stretcher a number of people out on television, and that splash was the kind of maneuver that, in reality, could break ribs or collapse a lung—the kind of damage that, if it were real, really would cause you to be taken from the ring on a stretcher. The idea was to put in the minds of the fans that this guy had the potential not just to beat me for the world title, but to actually injure me so severely that I wouldn’t be able to wrestle again for a long time.
I was all for it.
That first match definitely had its desired effect, as Jimmy and I brawled all over the Garden for about twelve or fourteen minutes. The purpose of that first match was to deliver the impression that I was not in a wrestling match with this guy—but was actually in a fight for my life against a savage who was seemingly impervious to pain. That was why my choking Snuka out and not heeding the referee’s warning until he disqualified me made sense as a finish. If you were in a fight for your life, you would use whatever means were at your disposal to try and protect yourself, wouldn’t you? That was exactly the feeling that I was going for in that first match.
Everything in that first match worked according to plan. After the bell rang and the referee broke the choke, Snuka rallied, and suplexed me down onto the mat and then climbed to the top rope with the flash bulbs sparkling all over the arena and crashed down right over me. It was an eerie feeling laying down there on the mat waiting for a 250-pound man to dive on you, and knowing that even the smallest, adrenaline-fueled miscalculation could lead to a legitimate and catastrophic injury to one or both of us. As it was, Snuka barely touched me, but he made it look great. The fans were shocked as I lay motionless inside the ring getting checked out by Arnold and the doctors, and then eventually got loaded onto the stretcher and carried out of the Garden.
A Beautiful Thing
You know, for Bobby to do that for me—to put me over like—was a really beautiful thing, brother. You know, he didn’t have to do that.
But Bobby was a wonderful person and a great athlete and a great champion, and he knew that we could really do something together, you know?
—“Superfly” Jimmy Snuka
What Jimmy did to me in the Garden that night triggered fan interest in our feud the likes of which had not been seen in the federation since Stan Hansen broke Bruno’s neck in 1976. The magazines covered it, and the stretcher job in the Garden even got some coverage in the mainstream New York City media. Everywhere I went after that, people expressed concerns for my safety and well-being, and were genuinely worried about how, and whether I was going to be able to find a way not to beat Snuka, but perhaps just to survive Snuka.
Meanwhile, this firestorm of interest in the Snuka series relegated both Orton and Mulligan to the back burner. On May 1, 1982, I pinned Orton in our first match at the Capital Center, and I did the same in Boston a few nights later. It was very disappointing for Orton to not get the opportunity to really prove himself after working his way up the ladder for so many years down in Florida with Eddie Graham, and the fact is, Orton and I could have done a lot more with that series than we did.
In fact, the gimmick we used with Orton, who was managed by the Grand Wizard, was that I had ducked wrestling Orton in the amateurs, that he had been chasing me ever since, and, he claimed, he was the one wrestler in the world that I knew I couldn’t beat.
It was a pretty interesting booking premise that hadn’t been used before, but with all the buzz that summer being about Snuka, only Phil Zacko, who promoted the Philadelphia Spectrum, saw the merit of giving Orton two main-event title matches with me. Everybody else was lining up for multiple months of Backlund-Snuka.
Meanwhile, it must have been especially disappointing for Mulligan, who was, at that time, a fifteen-year veteran of the business, to come into the territory, be here for two weeks, and end up wrestling a mid-card guy in the Garden while Snuka got the main event and stretchered the champion out. Because all three of those guys had come into the territory at roughly the same time, and with the same expected four-month stay, both Orton and Mulligan had to know where all the buzz about Snuka was going to leave them. They knew where the focus was going to go. And, in fact, only a couple of nights after the first Garden card with Snuka, Mulligan was one-and-done, doing the honors for me in Hartford and Boston.
Meanwhile, there were already some telltale signs developing around Snuka after the fans around the territory got to see him a couple of times. Snuka was the hottest heel the territory had seen during my reign as the champion. The fans were frightened by him, intrigued by him, and just wanted to get close enough to get a good look at him. On May 22, 1982, at the Philadelphia Spectrum, on the card where I had my first main event with Orton (where he beat me by countout), Snuka was in the ring with Morales for the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and drew a fair number of cheers from the fans, while Morales, normally a favorite in Philly, was booed. Philadelphia had always been something of a heel town, so it wasn’t that surprising to hear Snuka get cheered there, but it was an interesting development that did not pass unnoticed, either in the dressing room, or among the front office guys.
Snuka and I came back to the Garden on June 5, 1982, which had sold out well in advance. People showing up to buy tickets were being told that the only way they could see the match was to buy a ticket for the closed-circuit broadcast in the Felt Forum, and eventually, that too approached capacity. When Vince Sr. brought us together for the pre-match instructions that night, Jimmy and I both knew that we were going three. There was no way that they couldn’t have booked it that way given the way that the feud was selling around the territory. Everywhere Jimmy and I wrestled, the people were turning out in droves. Even up in Portland, Maine, our title match drew the largest wrestling crowd in the history of the Cumberland County Civic Center. All the promoters wanted a piece of this match.
“Bobby, Jimmy is going over by count-out tonight,” Vince Sr. explained to us. You’re both going to get color, and Bobby, you’re going to be frustrated that you can’t seem to find a way to beat Jimmy, and you’re going to chase him out of the ring. And Jimmy, you’re going to catch Bobby out there and work him over, and then jump back into the ring for the win. We’re coming back next month in the cage, so that’s what you’re setting up.”
The point of the second match, of course, was to continue to give Snuka the air of invincibility—for me to become more and more frustrated that I couldn’t beat him—and for the fans to begin to wonder even more whether it was possible to pin Jimmy Snuka for the three count. In the ring, it felt like the match came off really well, and we had the fans at their peak at about the twenty-minute mark of the match. Meanwhile, on the undercard, Andre faced the unblemished Mulligan and the two battled all over the building to an indecisive finish. As Vince Sr. expected, in the eyes of the fans, Mulligan presented a legitimate threat to Andre’s career undefeated streak.
In a really hot three-match series, the third match was always some kind of gimmick match—be it a lumberjack match, a chain match, a Texas Death Match, a Bunkhouse match, or, of course, the steel cage match. Which gimmick was chosen for the blowoff was usually
a factor of what the fans in that city had seen or not seen recently coupled with what the wrestlers were capable of. The Texas Death Match was a Funk invention—it was basically a free-for-all match with no countouts or disqualifications, no holds barred, and no stoppages by the doctor for excess blood loss. It usually spilled out into the ringside area and involved the use of foreign objects or whatever might have been around and available at ringside. It also usually involved one or both participants getting color. The Texas Death Match (or its ethnic alternatives, like the Greek Death Match, the Caribbean Death Match) was just an alternative to make sure that the promoter did not have to overdose on cage matches every time a blowoff match was needed. In the WWF, typically, we’d choose a Texas Death Match with a guy like Patera, Muraco, Valentine, or Slaughter, who had enough of a repertoire to not need a cage to sell the blowoff. With a roughhouser or a guy with a limited repertoire, you could use the cage to add a new level of story to the match, because in a cage match, the cage, and the attempt to escape it, becomes the story.
On a card that features a steel cage match, the cage is generally what the people have come to see, and as such, the people expect certain things from you. They’re going to be looking for color—so you have to give them that. They are going expect both wrestlers to use the cage as part of their offense and defense—so you can’t go into a cage match and start throwing hiptosses, because that doesn’t fit the storyline. If the storyline was developed properly, the fans would have already seen those things in one or both of the first two matches. The steel cage was the modern-day equivalent of the Roman Coliseum—so there needed to be a furious pace, some real damage inflicted on someone, and a clear winner and a clear loser. In Vince McMahon Sr.’s WWF, the man with the white hat had to win the war decisively to send the people home happy. There were only a couple of examples in all the years I wrestled where that didn’t happen.
