I also found it hard to work in front of a crowd that barely reacted and just quietly enjoyed the spectacle. I was always more of a storyteller, and my matches were never about how flashy I could be, so it was hard for me to get a reaction.
Yet I still managed to have fun with my friends. André knew exactly where every bar in the country was located. Me, I would rather just drink at the hotel bar and not bother going out. But one night he told me, “Boss, we’re going out tonight.” You didn’t say no when André said something like that.
He took me to every godforsaken bar in Tokyo. They were all very small places and everywhere we went, everyone knew him. We got a good table right away — they knew what he needed to be comfortable. We had fun, but when it was about 4 a.m., I pleaded with André to head back to the hotel. I needed to sleep.
“No. I have to bring you to one more place, boss.”
“OK, André, you’re the boss.”
André was always the boss, even though he called everyone else boss.
We took a taxi. André was all contorted to fit in the small vehicle. Seeing him trying to keep his big frame inside was hilarious, and that alone made the trip priceless. It took us quite some time to get there, and I was becoming very impatient.
“Don’t worry, boss, we’ll be there soon. It will be worth it.”
We stopped in front of an office building, a big skyscraper with big glass doors and everything. I said, “What the hell? Where are we going, a doctor’s office? Doesn’t look like they have a bar in there.”
“Don’t worry, boss, don’t worry.”
We went to the fifth floor, then walked down what seemed like the longest corridor ever. Finally André knocked on the last door. The door swung open and there it was: a small bar with a drag queen show hiding inside that impressive, conservative building. André loved the place because no one would ever bother him, and he could drink in peace. He was sure I would love it too and he was right. They took care of him like royalty, giving him more attention than had been shown to us in all the other bars.
Traveling with André in Japan was always interesting.
My friend Ricky Hunter was booked in Japan because I put in a good word for him. On that tour, we were staying in a Japanese-style hotel. During dinner, he dropped his keys and I picked them up without him noticing. As he continued to drink, I went to his room and I made it look like someone had robbed him. I went back to the bar and sometime later we both went upstairs to bed. I had the room beside his and as we were saying good night, he realized that he couldn’t find his key. He went downstairs to get another and I pretended to go to bed. Obviously, I was in my room and waiting, because I knew I was about to have a front-row seat for the upcoming spectacle. As expected, he banged on my door, yelling that his room had been robbed. I played it cool and didn’t laugh, even suggesting guys who he had a little bit of heat with on the tour as possible culprits. (I liked to stir a little shit in my day.)
Later, we laughed a lot; at least I did.
While in Australia and Japan, I got to know and team with my idol, Killer Kowalski. We didn’t have much in common: he didn’t drink and he was a vegetarian. Still, I had found ways to have fun with him even though he was a serious man. In Australia, all the wrestlers went to a very nice family restaurant and he went too. The staff knew exactly what he wanted because he had spent quite some time explaining that they needed to take the meat out of all their recipes for him. You know me well enough by now, right? You guessed it: if he got up to go to the bathroom, I would make sure the waiter added chicken to his meal. Killer would then get hot, because they had messed up his order. One time, he got so hot, he even went to the kitchen to complain to the chef.
San Francisco and Montréal are my favorite cities in North America, and Sydney, Australia, is my favorite city in the rest of the world. Australia was an easy place to live compared to Japan, and on top of it, the fans really enjoyed our show.
I went three times — in 1966, 1967, and 1968 — while the territory was still very popular. Jim Barnett was in charge and he had a strong relationship with Roy Shire in San Francisco. Australia was quite the experience. I was with Kowalski and Gorilla Monsoon. If I went to a bar and spent twenty dollars, I could buy a round for the whole place. It’s easy to have fun and make friends like that. Those long tours were not easy on my relationship with Louie, but he knew it was part of the deal. I would always come back to him, he knew, but I’m sure it was hard to be alone while I was on the other side of the world.
Each time I went overseas, it was for a six-week tour. I met people and had fun in every city, every night. Australia was very open-minded for the time. I always found a gay bar, though some cities had more than others. Australia is a big country and we almost never drove and had to fly everywhere. It was the first time I worked for Jim Barnett, but our paths crossed again in Florida and New York. I loved my time there and it gave me the chance to do some of my first trips just for fun. When I was in school, we had been collecting funds for the poor people of Tahiti. For some reason, that remained stuck in my head for a long time. The last time I went to Australia, I met two lesbian strippers who happened to be from Tahiti. I know it seems unbelievable, but that’s the kind of thing that happened to me. Usually, when you’re done working a tour, you just want to go straight home. But they offered to have me visit Tahiti before I went back to the States and to let me stay with them at their place. To my own surprise, I said yes. My two-day stay turned into a full week. I just loved it. Everyone spoke French; we went to the nudist beach every day; and everyone was friendly. I didn’t get to do a lot of personal traveling like that during my career, but I appreciated the opportunity when it came up.
Gorilla Monsoon was a great guy — that can’t be said often enough. We became good friends. He found those Australian tours very hard. He was a big man and over there it’s hot all the time — and he was not into going out as he was totally faithful to his wife. At the time, he had a big boil under his butt cheek and he was really suffering. Because of his size, he had trouble putting ointment on it and bandaging it. When he told me about the pain he was in, and how difficult it was for him to get this thing to heal, I said, “I will do that for you.”
“I can’t ask you that,” he said.
“You are a friend; it’s nothing; don’t worry about it.”
He truly missed his family on those long trips. They were wonderful, and Louie and I went to their place for dinners often. We were very close with all of them, and I still miss him very much.
In Australia, wrestling was a respected business, and there was a lot of very public travel. Because of that, Barnett had established a very strict dress code for his workers. I was never against the dress code Barnett demanded of us. In fact, I loved getting nice suits made while I was working over there. Wrestling was big business, and we needed to look like professionals. In a typical week, we would fly from Sydney to Melbourne for a big show, then fly to Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, and back to Sydney. We would often do six shows, and two different sets of television, in between all that traveling. I respected Barnett: he thought the world of me, and I wanted to look the part of the star. The wrestling business is all about image, and I think it’s only prudent to think about that when you are a promoter.
* * *
Roy Shire’s television shows aired in the Samoan Islands, and Peter Maivia was such a star there that we ended up setting up a tour in his home country. We landed at 2 a.m. at a very small airport and there were 2,000 people waiting for us, sitting on the roof. Everywhere Peter went, people were screaming. On a tour the following day, thousands of people followed us around hoping to catch a glimpse of him. It was amazing.
I spent the week with Maivia and we were treated like kings. We had one match together, and I was his partner, thank God. I would not have wanted to be his opponent during the tour for all the money in the world. Our opponents were
in danger the whole time we were on the island. We had to hide them to make sure nothing bad happened; the bad guys would actually have rocks thrown at them during the show if the fans got mad enough. This was very scary for everyone; even us good guys could get hit. And remember, some Samoans kill wild pigs by throwing rocks at them and they learn that skill at a very young age . . . The danger was very real.
I stayed at the home of one of Peter’s close friends and my every need was attended to, like I were some kind of god or something. I remember my host asking if I ever had vodka and coconut juice. I said no, but told him that I loved vodka. (In fact, it’s still my favorite drink.) Now he had to make me one. So one of his kids climbed thirty feet up a tree just to get us a fresh coconut, right there in front of me. They chopped the top off, filled it up with ice and added some vodka and let it soak a little. Let me tell, you can’t stop at just one — it was as good as I was told.
Many of the houses on Samoa back then didn’t have walls, just straw roofs. When you were born and raised in Montréal in the forties and fifties, it was quite something to visit a place like that.
We played many jokes on the plane back to Australia to pass the time. A fellow Quebecer, Brute Bernard, who was completely bald, made the mistake of falling asleep. I drew a bunch of veins on his head and then covered his head with his hat. When we got to Australia, he asked me to look out for his luggage while he went to the restroom. A few moments later, the whole airport heard the big scream from the bathroom. Everyone laughed.
In 1981, WWE sent wrestlers to the Universal Wrestling Association in Mexico. I was still a versatile wrestler and a former Intercontinental Champion, so I ended up working in Mexico a few times. I really didn’t like it. The style there was so different — lots of flashy moves — and that’s not what I was good at. I wrestled El Canek, one of the biggest stars in the country, for the UWA Championship at Palacio de los Deportes. We had a good match and drew 18,000 fans. I also teamed with Bob Backlund against Canek and Perro Aguayo in Arena Mexico, the Mexican equivalent of working the main event at Madison Square Garden against the likes of Randy Savage and the Ultimate Warrior. I was able to enjoy my stay, since we had a nice hotel and the weather was great, but it really wasn’t for me.
Being based in New York also gave me an opportunity to work in Montréal after I had not been home in a long time, especially not to wrestle. Frank Valois and Gino Brito had taken over the territory, and André the Giant was in business with them. Vince Sr. asked me if I wanted to go to Montréal, suggesting that I could make sure André’s best interests were being taken care of while having some fun. “Just go there, wrestle, and have a good time,” he said.
I knew I wanted a break from being a commentator, and since my in-ring career was pretty much done in New York, it was the perfect opportunity. Everything was great — just seeing a typical Québec snack bar and its steamed hot dogs made me feel fantastic. And to eat them again . . . They were just as good as I remembered from my childhood, heading back to my family in the cold after watching wrestling at the Forum. I was home.
For the first time in my life, I truly discovered the province of Québec, going to Granby, Sherbrooke, Rimouski, Trois-Rivières, Québec City, and many other towns. After teaming with Raymond Rougeau for a while, we became opponents.
I became le Rêve du Québec or the Dream of Québec if you will. I had fun with that. People still talk to me about it today when I’m home, or when I meet another Quebecer on the road, or in Florida where I spend half of the year. It was more than thirty years ago and people still remember how passionately they hated me back then. I must have been doing something right . . . Of course, I came up with the idea because of Dusty Rhodes, the American Dream. But Pat Patterson being Rêve du Québec was the opposite of Dusty’s gimmick, since I had an English name while speaking French. It was the perfect bad-guy image for me. Since I was in Montréal for the entire summer, Louie came up and helped me rediscover my roots.
One night in Rimouski, I came up with the idea of doing a boxing match with Raymond Rougeau and we decided to make it a ten-round decision.
After three rounds, I couldn’t take it anymore. I didn’t know Raymond had a real boxing training. I could not touch him and he would sting me right in the face every now and then with a smirk. Anyway, I said fuck that and just stayed down for the count. All the other wrestlers were watching from the back and everyone was having a good laugh at my expense.
I respected Raymond a lot after that. When Vince Jr. asked about talent from Québec, he was at the top of my list. If WWE wanted to draw in Montréal, we needed local stars, so that’s why we got the Rougeau brothers, Dino Bravo, and Rick Martel. It was never about getting my friends to New York, as some said or thought. We had a business to run and WWE was successful running the Montréal Forum monthly for years because we did what needed to be done.
Another benefit of working in Montréal that summer was that my good friend Lord Alfred Hayes was also there. We roomed together in Rimouski one night. I don’t remember much about what happened, but when I woke up the next morning, the television was on and Alfred was not in his bed. Neither was his mattress or the sheets and pillows for that matter. I wondered if he was OK, or if he’d been kidnapped or something.
I went into the bathroom, and there he was, sleeping on his mattress on the floor. Apparently, I had been snoring so loudly that after trying to wake me and turning the television on to mask the sound coming out of me, he just gave up and barricaded himself in the restroom. Apparently I can play pranks in my sleep.
Alfred had a fantastic brand-new van for our travels around la belle province. In the back, we played cards and drank beer. There was a hidden compartment under the ashtray. I started stuffing all kinds of garbage in there, especially empty beer bottles. After a few days, Alfred looked at me and said, “Patrick, I don’t understand; there’s a weird noise and this van is brand-new. It’s like glass clicking together.” I began laughing so hard he knew — I had to tell him what the noise was.
Lord Alfred never swore, which made him a funny companion for me. Not that I ever treated him differently from my other friends . . . I gave him plenty of opportunity to curse me, but he never did.
Today I like to go on cruises every chance I get. Recently I stopped in Spain and wanted to take a day trip to Fatima in Portugal to see the shrine there. I called a taxi and only one driver spoke English. “It’s a two- or three-hour drive,” he said. “It’s the anniversary. There will be thousands and thousands of people. I can take you where St. Jacques [James the Apostle] is buried in the mountains, if you like, instead?” I said yes.
People would usually walk 1,000 miles up to that church in Santiago. We found a little restaurant there. This is where coquilles St-Jacques, or scallops in English, became famous. So the driver and I ate, drank wine, and had fun. When we got back, we were singing together like two old friends, I gave him a $100 tip. It was worth every penny.
Traveling the world blindly and boldly, making new friends and having fun without any worries, is how I try to live my life. I still travel a lot for work, and I particularly enjoy the European tours. In 2014, I was in Belgium and doing the ring announcing in English for the Intercontinental Championship. Then I hit my forehead and said I was sorry in French, “Je m’excuse.” I got the biggest reaction. People were so happy to hear someone from WWE speaking French. It was a special and unique moment for them and for me. I went on and made a small speech in French.
But we only did that once — I’m getting too old for that shit . . .
WHAT DOES A VICE PRESIDENT DO, ANYWAY?
“And more, much more than this, I did it my way”
I had great experiences almost everywhere I worked because I felt wanted. But being in New York with Vince McMahon Sr. was very special. If you can make it there you can make it anywhere, as the song says, and to this day, it does mean something in our business to become s
omebody in New York.
People around me kind of knew I was gay, but I never told anyone in confidence I was. Until appearing on Legends’ House on the WWE Network, I had never said those words out loud for everyone to hear — but that’s a story for later. When I started to work behind the scenes for Vince Sr., I decided to tell him everything, and he simply said, “I already know. Now get back to work.” He never asked any questions, and he clearly couldn’t care less that I was gay. We had fun and worked well together. I was loyal and I did my job.
We used to tape our television programs on back-to-back days in Allentown and Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. In between those days, we stayed at a hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania. We used to go to a restaurant that stayed open just for us after the first show. Vince Sr. would invite a small circle of people, maybe eight or ten guys each time. The point was just to have a good time telling stories, drinking, and eating gargantuan meals. The gathering kept the place open until at least until 2 a.m. I was finally invited, but, as far as I knew, Louie was not. Arnold Skaaland was in charge of these little get-togethers, and as he was leaving the taping, he told me he would see me at the restaurant. I politely said I would not be coming, since I could not just drop Louie at the hotel and go by myself.
“Hell no, you’re coming. Louie is coming with me right now to set things up.”
From that point on, Skaaland and Louie became close friends.
Television taping day was a long haul, and the word started to get around that Louie was a barber. Like everywhere else we went, Louie was friendly with everybody. One day, as I was walking by the dressing room I discovered Louie cutting hair. There was a lineup of wrestlers, waiting their turn.
“What’s going on here?” I asked.
“They’ve been bugging me for so long, I decided I should just do it,” Louie said.
Accepted Page 14
