Wrestling with the Devil

by Lex Luger

  Coach Spurrier was known as an offensive genius. He wasn’t hard-nosed himself, but his intense offensive line coach, Marty Galbraith, made up for it. It was Bill Meyers all over again, the type of coach I always clashed with.

  One day Coach Galbraith called me into his office and chastised me for not eating with the other offensive linemen in the cafeteria. I was so surprised I didn’t know how to respond. I hadn’t been snubbing my teammates, I was simply sitting with other friends on the team. Besides, it wasn’t a rule that all the offensive linemen had to sit together for every meal.

  “What does that have to do with anything?” I asked him.

  “It’s important,” he snapped back. “It boosts camaraderie and makes the unit more effective.”

  It was obvious that this was a personal issue between the coach and me, and I felt he was just using this incident as a reason to go at me. Of course, I completely disagreed with him. That had been the story of my football career—I always thought I knew better than my coaches. Fortunately for me, I probably had the best training camp of any offensive lineman. My football skills were progressing nicely, and the rest of the coaching staff loved my athletic ability. At the end of camp, Coach Galbraith didn’t pull any punches: he told me that if it had been solely up to him, I would have been released. Yet if he had pushed for my release, I think it would have been apparent that he was putting personal issues before the good of the team.

  “You have immense talent,” he said. “At Wake Forest, I coached the current starting left guard for Green Bay, and you’re better than he is. It makes me wonder why you’re not still there.”

  His comments didn’t change my attitude. I thought Coach Galbraith was being a complete jerk. In my mind, I was Tampa’s starting left guard who was too good to cut and too good not to start.

  But obviously not too good to trade. Four games into the ’84 season, I was part of a seven-player deal that sent me to the Memphis Showboats and Coach Pepper Rodgers. The only consolation was that I was far away from Coach Galbraith.

  Peg had started an administrative job with a Tampa insurance company, so she stayed in Florida while I finished the season in Memphis. I didn’t have a lot of playing time for the Showboats because they had their lineup set before I arrived.

  When I reported back to Memphis in the spring of 1985, I had a great training camp and earned a starting spot at left tackle. Coach Pepper Rodgers was unlike any coach I had ever had. He treated his players well, and his players played well in return. It wasn’t unusual for him to surprise us during practice. After we’d been on the field about forty-five minutes, he’d blow his whistle and bring us all together.

  “Gentlemen, it’s really hot out here,” he would say in his Georgia drawl. “How ’bout we just take the rest of the day off? We got some barbecue and some cold beer over there for you.”

  His enthusiasm on the sidelines and colorful reactions endeared him to players and fans alike. He always seemed to be having a great time, and I enjoyed playing for him.

  Halfway through the season, I tore some cartilage in my rib cage and was sidelined. The Showboats didn’t waste any time in replacing me with a high-priced former NFL All-Pro offensive lineman named Luis Sharpe. I was eventually released and finished the season with the Jacksonville Bulls.

  It was great to be back in Florida. I didn’t know it at the time, but my football career was about to be replaced by something much bigger.

  My grandfather, Stanley Pfohl, loved professional wrestling.

  When I was a kid, running around with my cousins at my grandparents’ house in Buffalo on a Saturday night, we’d dart past Grandpa Pfohl sitting in his favorite chair, his eyes riveted to the weekly matchups on the black-and-white television. Sometimes I’d pause momentarily to see what was so captivating, but it didn’t grab my attention, so I’d dash off to play.

  Now, as I drove to the office of Championship Wrestling from Florida (CWF) in Tampa to see about making some extra money with an off-season job, I wondered if maybe Grandpa’s passion really had subtly influenced me, without me knowing it. If he had been alive, I would have asked him a lot of questions.

  The first few times I stopped by the office unannounced, the doors were locked. On my fourth visit, a man opened the door suddenly, took a look at me in my T-shirt and shorts, and invited me inside.

  I introduced myself. “I’m Larry Pfohl. I’m a pro football player, but I’m looking for some off-season work. I’ve been seeing and hearing a lot about WrestleMania, but I don’t know much about the pro wrestling industry or how you get into it. Is there someone I could talk to about a possible career option?”

  “No one’s available right now,” the man named Danny said. “If you really want to train with someone, I suggest you get in touch with Hiro Matsuda. Here’s his number.” He handed me a card and shook my hand. I called Matsuda, and we arranged to meet.

  The timing was perfect. I had no inkling that professional wrestling was about to change dramatically, with the sport’s emphasis turning more toward stars with sculpted physiques. My combination of height and impressive muscularity were just what the promoters had in mind to wow the fans. And now I was about to meet one of the top trainers in the business. The first WrestleMania, the pay-per-view event of the World Wrestling Federation (WWF), had premiered in March. It was seen primarily on closed-circuit TV, with PPV limited to a few parts of the country. The main tag-team event featured Hulk Hogan and Mr. T versus Roddy Piper and “Mr. Wonderful,” Paul Orndorff. Hiro Matsuda had trained two of the headliners—Hogan and Orndorff.

  Matsuda owned a garment factory in Tampa, and we met in his office there. When I entered the room, he stood up and extended a hand. His grip was strong. He was smaller than I was, but large for a Japanese man at six feet one, 215 pounds. His perfect tan set off his jet-black hair and bright smile; his teeth were such a brilliant white that I swear a person could read by them. Matsuda gestured for me to take a seat. He asked me about my background and a couple of questions about football. And that was it.

  “So, do you have a wrestling school?” I asked politely, still trying to figure him out. I knew he was a former pro wrestler. I’d later learn he was an expert in the martial arts and that his training was legendary and fierce; it was rumored that he would snap the bones of students if he thought they weren’t taking the training seriously.

  “No. I don’t have a school. But I do train wrestlers.”

  I didn’t hesitate. “I’d like you to consider training me. I’ll certainly compensate you for your time.”

  Matsuda waved me off, dismissing the mention of money. “I’ll let you know.”

  A few days later, he called, telling me to report to the garment factory in my workout gear.

  I had always prided myself on my disciplined approach to workouts. But as I would soon find out, Matsuda’s method for training was in a class all its own. Before I was allowed to even imagine being in a ring, before a single wrestling move was demonstrated, I had to master Matsuda’s legendary regimen and pass the final exam he had created. It was his way of weeding out those who weren’t truly dedicated. To him, it was a matter of honor and respect for the sport. Matsuda was protective of his profession and only wanted the best of the best to represent what he loved. Even in someone as raw as I was, he saw something: star potential. I had no clue what it would take to get there or what Matsuda had in store for me. But it was about to be revealed: the unremarkable garment factory by day became my personal torture chamber by night.

  From the very first day, Matsuda was intense and precise, like a machine. That appealed to my own work ethic. Our one-on-one sessions always began with a five-mile run in the late afternoon or early evening, when the South Florida heat and humidity were so stifling you could hardly breathe. That was all part of the plan. I was twenty-seven and Matsuda had another twenty years on me, but he did everything he asked me to do. When we got back to the factory, drenched in sweat, there was no cooldown. Actually, there w
as no air-conditioning, no wrestling pads, no carpet—nothing but the bare concrete floor where the clothes racks had been pushed aside to form an area approximating the size of a wrestling ring. The lighting was dim, cast from a single lightbulb hanging above us and a faint glow from Matsuda’s office. It was eerily quiet. The real work was about to begin.

  “Ten sets of thirty push-ups.” After I did thirty, Matsuda would nudge me out of the way and do thirty; we’d alternate until we reached three hundred. Matsuda counted, but he only counted the ones done correctly—your chest had to touch the floor. The goal was ten minutes or less, two push-ups per second. I really felt it the first two weeks; I could barely lift my arms. But my body quickly adapted.

  The five-mile run and the push-ups constituted the pre-training warm-up. There were many guys who never made it past the warm-up stage, or it would take them nearly a year to do so.

  The push-ups were followed by one of Matsuda’s favorites: hindu squats. Hindu squats work all the muscles in your legs—quads, hamstrings, and calves—as well as your hips, lower back, and lungs. When you maintain correct form and combine the movements with deep breathing, this exercise builds overall body strength and gives you incredibly strong legs with explosive power. The great Indian wrestler Gama used hindu squats to develop tree trunk–size thighs that gave him overwhelming dominance over his opponents. Matsuda liked hindu squats so much that he required a thousand of them on the final exam, with another five hundred hindu jump squats to raise the cardio level and help with coordination. I was thankful that I had been incorporating squats into my own power-lifting routines for years and had strong legs. Still, I was relieved that Matsuda started off with only a hundred or so of each, gradually adding more each time.

  It was a grueling two hours. At the end of each session, Matsuda would run and grab a mop to clean up the puddles of sweat on the floor that had poured off of us.

  Day after day, Matsuda pushed me. His drive fed mine. I can do this. I want this. I was enough of a student of physiology and my own body that I knew that the amount of training I was doing would be a little easier if I dropped ten to fifteen pounds. So I held off doing my now usual off-season twelve-week cycle of testosterone and Deca. I was always being evaluated as to whether I had what it took to make it into the ring. That was never a given for anyone Matsuda mentored; for most students, it was a struggle to achieve the goals he set—and that was before actually learning the fundamentals of wrestling. Within two months, I had passed Matsuda’s notorious final exam and officially decided to give up football.

  Wrestling 101 took place in an old, beat-up television studio in Tampa where CWF’s governing body, the National Wrestling Alliance, taped the CWF matches for local broadcasts. The on-site arena, called the Sportatorium, held about a hundred people, fans who sweated out the action with the wrestlers during a match. It wasn’t a big improvement over the garment factory. The studio had no air-conditioning, and with its corrugated tin roof, it got crazy hot in the steamy Florida summers. It was like an Easy-Bake Oven; I’m sure there were times when the temperature hit 130 degrees inside.

  Once again, Matsuda’s training was methodical and meticulous, executed step-by-step and practiced for hours. He wanted every person he trained to have sound fundamentals, and he was a stickler for doing them correctly. Because fans were paying good money to be there, Matsuda wanted his wrestlers to give the crowd their money’s worth and make the action as believable as possible. Nothing could look sloppy; it had to be rock solid.

  Step 1: Getting in and out of the ring. Yes, this is a learned skill, and some wrestlers never got the hang of it, looking less than graceful.

  Step 2: Hitting the ropes. The sides of my body took a beating from this seemingly simple move. I was black-and-blue from my lats to my thighs from hundreds of hits and bounces.

  Step 3: Hitting the ropes, jumping up, and landing on your back. This is an exercise to simulate a body slam. You had to jump high, or Matsuda would make you repeat it. There was a little give when you hit the mat, but you definitely felt it.

  Step 4: Attacking the turnbuckle. This metal device attaches the ropes to the ring posts and keeps the ropes at their proper tension. The goal is to make the whole ring shake by hitting the turnbuckle with your back and using the momentum to propel yourself forward. Matsuda’s goal in all of our training was to make everything look convincing and believable to the fans.

  Step 5: Body slamming. Matsuda’s philosophy was that you had to learn to take bumps before you could dole any out—the bumps were repeated again and again until you were absolutely fearless. Because he taught the correct way to land on your back—in such a way that every part of your body hit the mat simultaneously—the move looked clean and crisp, while providing maximum protection from injury.

  Not to say that a week’s worth of body slamming wasn’t brutal. It was. As a football player, I was used to being rammed into and roughed up. But to be honest, this constant battering made me extremely sore. As I’d slip into bed next to Peggy each night, my body was completely exhausted, and every muscle was still throbbing. I wasn’t about to ice down or do anything to ease the pain. In my mind, that would have been tantamount to admitting weakness. Instead, I simply got up a little earlier the next morning and headed to the gym to work the soreness out. That usually worked pretty effectively.

  Finally, Matsuda thought I was ready; I had completed his training faster than any other person had before me. Now it was time for wrestling fans to get their first peek at me, just a teaser to start a buzz.

  Since wrestling doesn’t have an off-season, my body was going to be on display year-round. So after consulting with various athletes, bodybuilders, and experts whose opinions I valued, I decided that I would now do a twelve-week cycle of testosterone and Deca. Twelve weeks on, twelve weeks off, twelve weeks on, twelve weeks off—like clockwork.

  Right before the doors opened for the Wednesday morning CWF taping, Matsuda ushered me into the booking office where the conversation among the powers that be had already started.

  “Is he going to be a babyface or a heel?”

  The “he” was me.

  “Heel.” Matsuda hadn’t explained wrestling terminology to me at all, but “heel” certainly didn’t sound like a good guy. (It turns out that my instincts were correct.)

  “Should we give him a name or not?”

  Most wrestlers’ handles are determined by the guys in charge, but because I had fast-tracked through Matsuda’s program, no one had even thought about names yet. Except me. I don’t want to get stuck with a stupid name. I knew it wasn’t my place to offer suggestions, but I had done my research and thought if the opportunity came up, I’d throw my pick into the ring.

  Everyone was talking around me as if I wasn’t in the room. Matsuda, Wahoo McDaniel, and Blackjack Mulligan, among others, were tossing out a few names. None of them seemed to click with the bookers. Still, I was following Matsuda’s advice to sit quietly, watch, listen, and learn. But time was getting short; it was only minutes before the scheduled taping.

  I raised my hand and broke my silence. “I have a suggestion for a name.” They looked at me as if an alien had just landed in their midst.

  “All right, kid, let’s hear it.”

  “Lex Luger.”

  One of my favorite television shows at the time was Magnum, P.I. with Tom Selleck. I had looked up magnum in the encyclopedia, which led me to research guns. TV’s Magnum carried a semiautomatic pistol; I thought, in honor of my German heritage, a Luger would be apropos. It’s easy to guess where Lex came from—an homage to my favorite superhero, Superman, who battled his villainous archenemy, Lex Luthor.

  I had practiced saying it dozens of times: Lex Luger. The bookers looked at each other and shrugged their shoulders. “Well, that’s not bad.” They decided to go with it.

  “So, kid, where are you from?”

  “Buffalo.”

  Once again, I suddenly became invisible to them as the conversati
on grew more animated in the room.

  “We can’t use Buffalo.”

  “Yeah, too small of a market. And who down here even knows where Buffalo is?”

  “Let’s say he’s from Detroit or Chicago.”

  “Chicago it is.”

  Sorry, Buffalo. I didn’t really disown you. It was just part of my story line. But for the rest of my career I always got booed in my old hometown.

  The fans were filing in. It was time for announcer Gordon Solie to interview “Ravishing” Rick Rude and his manager, Percival Pringle, on camera. I was ushered in behind Rude, standing shirtless in the background. I don’t remember if anyone mentioned me at all or if the words Lex Luger appeared on-screen. They told me not to open my mouth.

  To further fuel the fans’ anticipation of my wrestling debut, Matsuda had created a video of me working out in the ring at the Sportatorium—doing sit-ups, hindu squats, and, for dramatic effect, push-ups with a guy on my back. The end of the video was quite refreshing—we went out the side door of the studio, and Matsuda doused me with a bucket of cold water.

  I had the fundamentals, I had a name, I had a debut date, so now I just had to do some last-minute shopping for my costume. My colors were black and white, my favorite color combination to this day: black tights, white boots, and a white tank top. I was on a budget, so I stopped at an outlet mall and purchased the cheapest tank tops I could find, grabbing dozens of them. I’m sure the clerk was more than a little curious.

  It was close to Halloween 1985, and I was slated for an undercard match with veteran Cocoa Samoa at Daytona Beach’s brand-new Ocean Center. The arena seated over 7,000 people; ironically, it would be the very first time I’d ever been to a professional wrestling match in my life. I had never been a spectator, and now I was going to be under the lights.