by Hogan, Hulk
Ruckus got booked for a major out-of-town tour. When the guys told me it was locked I said, “Sorry. No. I can’t go.”
The guys looked at me like I was nuts. “What do you mean?” they said. “We’ve been trying to get this booking forever!”
I said, “Nope. I’m gonna be a wrestler.”
Dude, they died laughing. They knew how much I loved wrestling and how obsessed I’d become with it lately—but they also knew I hadn’t stepped foot in a ring.
It didn’t matter. That was it. I just fuckin’ quit. I knew what I wanted to do.
Chapter 4
Fighting My Way In
In 1976, I started going down to the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory for the matches every Tuesday night. I’d hang around the backstage door afterward like some groupie just to see everyone. Then every Wednesday they’d tape matches during the day at the Sportatorium, and I’d show up there. I got to be real friendly with this guy Charlie Lay, who was like seventy, an old ex-wrestler himself who worked at the front desk and always let me in.
I had no idea how obnoxious I was. I have fans now who come up to me all the time and say, “Hey, Hogan! I’ve been working out for three years. I want to get into the ring. Look at me! I could be the next Hulk Hogan!” I just roll my eyes and can’t wait to get away from some of these people, you know? In the business we call these guys “marks.” They’re pretty much looked at as fools you can put a beating on if you’re so inclined. And here I was showing up saying I was gonna be the next Superstar Billy Graham, every single day.
I didn’t feel like a mark, though. Like I said, I was following my gut. I knew I wasn’t necessarily the toughest guy in the building, but I knew that if it had to do with smoke and mirrors, showmanship, calculating and planning, if it had anything to do with strategy, I could be really good at it.
I could see that wrestling was as much show business as anything else. I didn’t even know what the word “entertainment” meant back then, but it turns out I had an innate understanding of what it means to entertain. In many ways, I understood the meaning of that word better than a lot of people who’d been in the wrestling “entertainment” business their entire lives.
Only no one believed me.
After weeks of my not shutting up, telling everyone in town that I was gonna be a wrestler, Mike Graham finally pulled me aside. I knew Mike in high school and never liked the guy. He was older, and didn’t think much of me. He made that clear from day one. His father, Eddie Graham, was a wrestling promoter, and by this time Mike liked to think of himself as a bona fide wrestler. He was all muscled up and thought he was big news on the local wrestling scene.
So we’re outside the Sportatorium on this roasting hot day, and Mike Graham takes me to his van. It must be 120 degrees in that thing. He sits me on the floor, and he’s sittin’ on the hump between the front seats talking down to me.
“So you want to be a wrestler,” he says. “You’ve been telling everyone you want to be a wrestler. Well, I’ll tell you right now, the first thing you oughta know is that you shouldn’t be telling people you want to be a wrestler.”
Mike made it perfectly clear that no one talked about the secrets of wrestling. If somebody said wrestling was fake, he’d get punched out. That’s no exaggeration. You have to remember, it was the 1970s. It was barbaric. There were no lawyers, no PC police; there wasn’t anybody suing anybody. So if you said to a wrestler after a match, “Hey, that was a great show!” the wrestler would just flatten you. Put you in the hospital if he could.
I’m listening to this guy who never thought much of me, and who I still didn’t like, and he’s taking this authoritative tone—he’s lecturing me like he’s my dad or something.
Then something surprising happened. Instead of sending me away, he invited me to come back and get some training.
“I’m gonna set you up with a guy named Hiro Matsuda,” Mike said. “Be here tomorrow.”
Finally! I was beyond thrilled. Oh my God, he’s really doing me a favor, setting me up with Hiro Matsuda!
I’d seen Matsuda wrestle at the armory a bunch of times. He was a mid-card guy, and I never paid much attention to him, but it turned out he was the baddest sonofabitch around. In a real fight, Matsuda could’ve easily kicked any of the top-tier main-event wrestlers’ asses.
It also turned out that he was one of the partners in the promotion end of the local wrestling business with Eddie Graham. He owned part of the company, he was partially a promoter, and he did big business booking wrestlers in Japan—a whole other side of the wrestling world that I knew nothing about at that point.
So I went down to the Sportatorium thinking I was gonna get a workout from Matsuda, maybe learn a few things.
From the moment I walked in the door that day, they exercised me till I was about to pass out. Matsuda’s guys were ragging on me for my long hair, calling me a hippie, pressing me so hard that I was ready to puke. The whole stadium started to go white. I got lightheaded and couldn’t even see—that’s how close I was to fainting. But I walked in there willing to do whatever it took. So I didn’t stop.
Just when I was about ready to keel over, these guys said, “All right, now get in the ring and wrestle!”
I was so out of it by then they practically rolled me into the ring. Suddenly Matsuda comes out of nowhere and jumps on top of me. I hit the canvas. He drops down, puts an elbow down in the middle of my left leg, grabs my foot, and wrenches it as hard as he can—in the opposite direction than your leg is built to go. Crack! He broke my leg in half, right in the middle of my shin.
It hurt like a bitch. I’d never broken a bone before, let alone a huge bone against the grain like that.
I was done. I couldn’t move. Matsuda didn’t even say anything to me. He just left me rolling around in agony on the canvas.
I’m sure they all thought that was the last they’d see of Terry Bollea. What fool would come back for more of that?
The most embarrassing part was I was driving this big Econoline van at the time—a standard, with a clutch on the floor. There was no way I could drive it home. So I had to call my mom, who had to call my dad at work to come pick me up. Man, he was pissed. It wasn’t that long ago that I’d told him I was quitting college to play music full-time, and just a few weeks earlier, I had told him I was quitting music to go wrestle. And this is the first thing that happens?
I got reamed out all the way to the hospital and all the way home. For about the next ten weeks, I nursed my leg back at my parents’ house, which I hadn’t slept in really since senior year. I never heard the end of it, either. Every single day my dad laid into me for being a quitter and thinking I could do something as stupid as wrestle to make a living.
I don’t want to make it seem like he was a bad guy. Not at all. Years later, my dad was about as proud of me as any dad could be. He was so thrilled by what I’d accomplished in the wrestling business, and he constantly let me know it. And I’ll never forget that.
Honestly, at that moment, he had every right to be pissed.
He just had no idea how resolved I was to make this wrestling thing work.
At the end of those ten weeks, when the leg was feeling good, I headed back over to the Sportatorium and walked up to my friend Charlie Lay.
“Mr. Lay, I’m here to see Mr. Matsuda.”
The guy about fainted. “Damn, kid, they told me they were getting rid of you and you would never be back here!” He goes, “Are you sure you want to see Matsuda again?”
“Yeah, I want to see Matsuda again.”
The thing was, over those ten weeks my whole mindset had moved away from that crazy, naive “I want to be a blond-haired Superstar Billy Graham!” thing. Now my whole mindset was “Never give up.”
I knew I wanted to be a wrestler, and there was no way they were ever gonna take advantage of me again.
Before I showed up, I cut my long hair completely off. No more hippie taunts. They’d have to work harder to find a way to break
me down. As far as I was concerned, they couldn’t get rid of me.
I wound up in the ring with Matsuda again that day. Only this time, when he tried to take my leg, I blocked him. I didn’t know anything about wrestling other than what I’d watched on TV and seen in the ring, but I was physical enough and had been working out long enough to have a real good grip. It served me well.
When he got my arm, instead of letting him break it, I knew enough to get it away from him. Whenever he tried to hurt my neck, I knew enough to get my head away. I wouldn’t let him take anything.
Matsuda was more pissed than ever. It was his mission to try to break me, but he couldn’t. I walked out of there alive and unbroken, and vowed to come back the next day.
Word got around that I was back, and now all of a sudden the other wrestlers started coming down during the day just to watch me get tortured. Matsuda and the other guys would just beat on me and beat on me, and I wouldn’t give in—until one day, it finally turned a corner.
Matsuda started smiling when I fought back. It got to the point where he started liking me because I wouldn’t give up. I mean, he’d choke me or put me in a submission hold like you see in the UFC—the Ultimate Fighting Championship, where they do mixed martial arts—and I would not tap.
He made me pass out. I still wouldn’t quit. I was crazy.
Finally Matsuda invited me to come down to his gym on a daily basis. “Okay, now we’re really gonna get serious,” he said. What more could he do? I was thinking, Oh my God.
What he did was set out to make me as fit as I possibly could be.
Every day he’d set me into a routine of jumping, squats, jumping, squats, jumping, squats—for an entire hour! He had a Japanese kid there named Lance that used to watch and count so I couldn’t cheat. After that, he’d make me run.
I’d go out the front door, and he’d get in his station wagon and follow about ten feet behind me. He made me just run forever, all the way down and around Tampa Stadium, and once I’d circled the stadium I’d get to run back.
Remember back in middle school and high school, how I was the guy who could barely run between two goalposts? Nothing had changed! For all the weightlifting I did, I never ran a day in my life. But he’d get in that car, and I swear to God I thought he would run me right over if I stopped. He had me so psyched out that I’d just keep going and going.
All told it was about two and a half, three miles a day.
This went on for nearly a year. The whole time, I noticed other wrestlers coming in and joining the ranks. Paul “Mr. Wonderful” Orndorff, who had played football for the University of Tampa and been drafted by the New Orleans Saints, decided he wanted to be a wrestler, came in, got some training, and was out getting matches in something like eight weeks. I thought, Is something wrong with me? What has he got that I don’t?
Brian Blair came in, worked out for a while, and the same thing happened. I thought, Damn, why am I still here?
What I didn’t realize was that Matsuda liked having me as his boy. Whenever a new mark would show up wanting to get into the wrestling business, I was the one who’d go down and work them and exercise them until they went away. I was in such good shape that I could usually work them until they puked or fainted and left. If I couldn’t run them off, Matsuda would come in and take care of them the same way he tried to take care of me that first day. I never hurt anybody or anything like that. But he was really happy to have me there, and he didn’t want to let me go.
Finally, over a year into this, Jack and Jerry Brisco came in to see me. They always liked me from back when they’d come to see Ruckus at the clubs, and for some reason, they finally decided to break ranks with the guys who still thought of me as a mark. They decided to bring me into the fold.
“I have a present for you,” Jack said as he handed me a brand-new pair of wrestling boots. “Terry, you’re having your first match next week.”
I’d been so focused on getting strong and just hoping and praying that this day would come, I almost couldn’t believe it was finally here.
And all of a sudden I was scared to death.
The thing was, for all the hard work I’d put in—the training, the exercise, getting in this unbelievable shape I was in—no one had given me any of the inside scoop on wrestling yet.
I heard terms like a “work,” which meant when you were faking it, and you’d make it look like you were twisting somebody’s arm when you really weren’t hurting them at all. Then there was a “shoot,” which means you’re really doing the deed and hurting them, like a real fight. That’s a “shoot.” But I didn’t know when to work or when to shoot. I still didn’t even know for sure that the outcome of the matches was predetermined. No one taught me any of that.
I just thought I’d get in there and something in between a work and a shoot would happen and we’d improvise in the ring from start to finish. I still thought the outcome of the match was something real, you know? I knew it didn’t involve trying to kill each other, but I thought that somehow the better wrestler would win. I would have to figure it out on my own—and it would all have to get clear real fast.
The thing I didn’t realize was that some of the other wrestlers were still planning on having a few laughs at my expense.
Hazy Days
When I first got into the business, I had no idea that there were gay wrestlers in wrestling. I just never thought about it. It’s not unlike the whole gays in the military issue, I suppose. It was sort of “don’t ask, don’t tell” back then for the most part. It’s just the way it was.
There was this one wrestler named Pat Patterson who was wrestling in Florida who was openly gay, though, which was kind of shocking to me then. Just because I had never really encountered that before. I love the guy to death, and he’s a great guy, but he’s one of these guys who’ll rib you about stuff. He’s always joking, and I didn’t know this at the time.
His pal Buddy Colt was the Florida heavyweight champion, and I don’t know if he’s gay or not. As it turned out, the way things went down before that first match of mine, it really didn’t make any difference.
It was August of 1977. I’m gearing up for my very first match, with no idea how the whole thing’s gonna go down. I truly didn’t know if I was gonna get killed in that ring or what. For all I knew, someone else would break my leg the way Matsuda did in the beginning. I had no idea what would happen, and nobody told me a thing.
The day before the big match, Pat Patterson stops by Matsuda’s gym. “Hey, Terry,” he says, “why don’t you come down to the Sportatorium tomorrow and we’ll ride down to Fort Myers together.”
I didn’t care one way or the other about the fact that he was gay. I was just psyched that a big wrestler like that would reach out to me.
So I get into a car with Pat and Buddy the next day, and Pat says, “Hey, you know, this is a big night for you.”
“Yes, sir, it is, Mr. Patterson.”
“Well, this is your initiation night.”
“Oh man, this is gonna be great, I can’t wait!” I acted all pumped, but like I said, I was really scared. I was so worried about getting beat up, or what I’d have to do to win, or if I’d wind up losing my first time out.
“Well, you know what?” Pat says. “We got you in the car ’cause we’ve been chosen to initiate you tonight.”
I said, “What do you mean?”
“Well,” Pat says, “we’ve got about a hundred and fifty miles to go, and before you get to the arena you have to give one of us a blow job.”
“What?” I said. “What do you mean?”
“You have to give one of us a blow job before you get to the building, ’cause that’s your initiation before you wrestle,” he says.
I was completely taken aback. “Well, I can’t do that, you know, I’m—I’ve never done nothing like that. I’m not gay. I can’t do that!”
They both got real serious. “Well, you have to do it.”
“I’m not gonna do it!”
I was horrified. I was so upset. All this time I’ve done nothing but prepare for this night and they’re telling me I have to do this thing that I can’t possibly do or they won’t let me wrestle my first match? It was seriously fucked up. I didn’t have the slightest clue that they were ribbing, you know?
“I can’t do this. This is fucked up,” I said. I just wanted to wrestle, and they took advantage of how serious and focused I was. They tortured me.
It was the longest car ride of my life. On top of worrying about the match, how I’d do, if I’d look like a fool in front of a stadium full of people, they put this fear into me that they wouldn’t let me wrestle at all if I didn’t do this horrible thing. As we got closer and closer to the stadium, I just refused, over and over. Finally we were pulling into the parking lot, and they still wouldn’t let up.
“Okay,” they said. “Since you didn’t give one of us a blow job before your match, we’re gonna have to tell all the other guys that you failed your initiation. So after your match, in the shower in the locker room, everybody’s gonna grab you and fuck you in the ass.”
Again there wasn’t even a hint that they were kidding. This whole wrestling experience had been so barbaric, you know? With the leg breaking and the pushing me till I fainted and the watching other marks get beat to shit and run out of the business. I was so fucking scared. And now I have to get in the ring and wrestle thinking I’m gonna be fighting for my life in the locker room after the match. Really fighting. The thing I feared most.
So I get in the locker room. It’s total silence. No one says a word to me. I get suited up and tie up my new boots, and I go out to wrestle Brian Blair. Now, I knew Brian. He was a friend of mine. He was an amateur wrestler in high school, so he knew a lot more real wrestling moves than I did. What I didn’t know was that Brian was under orders to do a twenty-minute “Broadway”—to keep the match going for twenty minutes as basically a time filler that would end in a draw.
