Back To The Territories #04 Kevin Sullivan Florida Part 1

Samuel Fly

When Eddie Graham took control of pro wrestling in the state of Florida from Cowboy Luttrel, one of the most significant developments in wrestling history was being put in place. Graham would go on to make Florida a premiere breeding ground for talent and future bookers alike. His mastery and genius are universally recognized.  Join Jim Cornette and Kevin Sullivan, a product of Eddie Graham’s genius and a booker that learned at his feet. Kevin worked in Florida as a top heel and then as a booker. But more importantly to this discussion, Kevin was close to Eddie the man. Eddie confided in Kevin, sometimes before even his own son Mike, placing a strain on Kevin and Mike’s friendship.  We will take you back into the glory days of Florida, from the birth of The “American Dream,” to the Jack Brisco/Dory Funk Jr feud. This is your ticket inside Eddie Graham’s legendary territory during its fiery NWA reign. Hop in with Corny and Kevin and head Back to the Territories!  00:00 The Legacy of Championship Wrestling from Florida 01:42 Introduction by Jim Cornette 02:21 Kevin Sullivan on Eddie Graham's Influence 03:25 Eddie Graham's Attention to Detail 06:35 Eddie Graham's Booking Philosophy 13:03 Eddie Graham's Civic Engagement 16:08 Eddie Graham's Relationship with His Son Mike 30:12 Eddie Graham's Early Career and Influence 50:59 Promoter Strategies and Risks 52:19 The Blade Job Incident 54:04 Television Production in Wrestling 55:54 Gordon Soley's Influence 58:34 The Florida Wrestling Scene 01:07:12 The Briscoe and Funk Rivalry 01:16:07 Dusty Rhodes' Rise to Stardom 01:22:26 Eddie Graham's Booking Genius 01:24:35 Wrestling's Big Money Era 01:33:10 Unification Matches and Cross-Promotions 01:40:24 The Blood Stopped: A Wrestling Anecdote 01:40:40 Jimmy's Early Wrestling Days 01:41:20 Taking the Book: A New Role 01:41:44 The 80s Wrestling Scene 01:43:25 The Power of TBS and Tommy Rich 01:45:06 The Great American Bash 86 01:45:57 Eddie Graham's Controversial Death 01:52:35 The Devil Angle and MTV Influence 02:02:53 Wrestling in the Bahamas: A Dangerous Game 02:13:25 The Legacy of Eddie Graham 02:18:34 Reflections on Wrestling Legends 02:24:17 The Future of Florida Wrestling

Transcript

00:00:00You

00:00:30Of all the classic wrestling territories, there was one that numbered among the smallest

00:00:39geographically but exerted an oversized influence on the world of pro wrestling and the people

00:00:44in it, Championship Wrestling from Florida.

00:00:47That outsized influence was due to one man, Eddie Graham.

00:00:51Called a genius, even a visionary by wrestlers and promoters around the world, he named champions,

00:00:57settled disputes, often decided the winners of promotional wars and produced more successful

00:01:02booking proteges than any other promoter.

00:01:06Graham did all that from his home base in Tampa, Florida, the wrestling capital of a

00:01:10state where the sport had a clean public image and its stars were household names.

00:01:15For 25 years, pro wrestling was a nightly event before big crowds, before it ended in

00:01:20tragedy in questions with no real answers.

00:01:24This is the story of Eddie Graham's empire in the Sunshine State, Championship Wrestling

00:01:29from Florida.

00:01:42Hello again everybody.

00:01:43Welcome to another edition of Back to the Territories here from kayfabe commentaries.

00:01:46I'm Jim Cornette and once again, the DeLorean alternator trouble, but fortunately, Professor

00:01:51Whoopie had the way back machine that he was able to let us have and we can now go

00:01:55back to the golden years of Championship Wrestling from Florida and our guest to discuss one

00:02:02of the great promotions, one of the great territories is uniquely qualified because

00:02:06he worked there not only as talent in two different decades, also as a booker, possibly

00:02:11even a surrogate son to Eddie Graham.

00:02:14What has God brought?

00:02:15Ladies and gentlemen, the devil himself, Kevin Sullivan.

00:02:18Thank you for being here.

00:02:19Great to be here.

00:02:21Great to be here.

00:02:22When, I mean, anybody in, in, in, in the business, Florida was known as going to work for Eddie

00:02:26Graham.

00:02:27Right.

00:02:28And anytime somebody talks about Championship Wrestling from Florida, it is Eddie Graham's

00:02:32story, maybe even more so than the other territories because his impact was not only felt in his

00:02:38own territory, but it reached around the country and around the world and his protégés and

00:02:42the people that he mentored and the disputes he settled and the champions that he decided.

00:02:48Talk about Eddie Graham, the person.

00:02:50You knew him well.

00:02:51Okay.

00:02:52Uh, here's something that to me was amazing.

00:02:55Eddie Graham probably dropped out of school in the fifth grade.

00:03:01Eddie became a pilot, a captain of the industry, right?

00:03:07Yeah.

00:03:08He was a captain of a boat, you know, he could take a 20 ton boat around the world if he

00:03:14wanted to.

00:03:16He was a fanatic, you know, you got OCD and you understand this details, details, details.

00:03:25I mean, sometimes I wonder now I look back on it, you know, was sometimes put pressure

00:03:32on some of the guys because I've told you this story, Jimmy, that, uh, when I first

00:03:38started, he gave me a finish when I first got in the territory.

00:03:42I think they tested everybody this way, but he gave me a finish and it was like, and it

00:03:47was with Bobby Shane.

00:03:48So I was working with an incredible work.

00:03:50The boy wonder.

00:03:51Yeah.

00:03:52And the thing was, Bobby was a big fan of mine and he really wanted me to do well in

00:04:00the business.

00:04:01So the finish was like, we have a double crash, but I go outside the ring, right?

00:04:06And Bobby gets up, he hits the ropes, goes, give me the tackle.

00:04:09I come over the top, sunset, flip him.

00:04:12He kicks out.

00:04:14I end up going on the apron.

00:04:15He goes to run my head into the post.

00:04:18I put my foot up on the post, take his head, hit it off the turnbuckle.

00:04:24Bobby staggers, gives me a chance to climb.

00:04:26I dive to give him the flying body press.

00:04:29Bobby gets it, rolls me through one, two, kick out, backslide.

00:04:33And I mean, this went on for about six minutes, but during the finish was I was going to hit

00:04:39Bobby with three dropkicks and Bobby was putting me over because he was a huge guy and, you

00:04:44know, they didn't expect it.

00:04:46So before the finish was, I was supposed to hit him with three dropkicks.

00:04:51And now the length of this finish, I was not talking to anybody after I went in.

00:04:56And he had his own little room.

00:04:58You go in and he'd sit you down and, well, this is, we're going to take the gold.

00:05:09Put it in the pan.

00:05:10We're going to sift it out.

00:05:12Anything we don't need, we're going to get rid of it because we're going to have at the end of this

00:05:17night, we're going to have nothing but gold nuggets.

00:05:20This is going to be a gold nugget match.

00:05:22So right away, you're saying, boy, he's got, you know.

00:05:25Yeah, he's building you up, right?

00:05:27You're about to walk through hell with gasoline breaches on.

00:05:29Yeah.

00:05:30And then he starts this finish.

00:05:32Okay.

00:05:33And you got to remember, I had just come in from Nick, right?

00:05:36What are you going to do for finish?

00:05:38Sunset Flip.

00:05:38Yeah, Sunset Flip, Swamp Hacket.

00:05:40I'm going, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

00:05:43So I'm walking around and I'm like, oh, don't please talk to me, you know.

00:05:49So like I said, the finish probably was three and a half minutes long.

00:05:55And I thought I was great.

00:05:58And now he had given finishes for eight matches that night.

00:06:02So a couple of tags, you know.

00:06:05So it was not an easy night for him either.

00:06:08So I come back up.

00:06:10What do you think, Ed?

00:06:11And he says to me, where was the third drop kick?

00:06:15He turned around and left out.

00:06:16I went, whoa.

00:06:18I'm never going to get anything by him if he's just, you know, and he's

00:06:21watching matches before me and after me, you know what I mean?

00:06:24I didn't run up to see him right away.

00:06:27It was like a couple of matches later and he could remember it.

00:06:30So his attention to detail, I think, you know,

00:06:34we've talked about this, Jimmy.

00:06:36I think the guys from his era, Eddie, Mark Lewin,

00:06:42the guys that became good bookers, they were all around Buddy Rogers.

00:06:47And they all wanted to emulate Buddy.

00:06:50And like we've talked about, Buddy put in different move,

00:06:54sequencing, if you will.

00:06:56He put in different moves.

00:06:57So I think these guys took that.

00:07:01Also, Eddie learned a lot from Funk Sr. in Doc Sipolis out there.

00:07:08And he's actually out in Amarillo as Rip Rogers, you know, Buddy's cousin.

00:07:13Which is where our good friend, Hustler Rip Rogers,

00:07:15got his name in the modern day.

00:07:17But yeah, he was supposed to be Buddy Rogers' cousin Rip in Amarillo.

00:07:20Yeah, so I think that you could look back and say, you know,

00:07:29the seed for this was planted by Buddy.

00:07:33And the guys that wanted to keep up understood that Buddy was,

00:07:39you've told me, he'd go into territory with the guys

00:07:41that he wanted to work with, A, that weren't going to hurt him.

00:07:45And they were going to make him look good.

00:07:46That were beholden to him and would stand up

00:07:48with him instead of the promoter in case

00:07:50they made a power play for the better payoffs,

00:07:52which is why he was installing his crew to begin with.

00:07:54Which is the way he almost took over Vince Sr.'s territory

00:07:57until Bruno's fan club president stooged it off

00:08:00because she heard it while she was visiting Buddy's wife.

00:08:02But that's another story.

00:08:05Eddie Graham, like you said, fifth grade education or whatever,

00:08:08but he was a licensed pilot.

00:08:10And he was a captain of the industry, had a TV empire,

00:08:15and all these live events and everything.

00:08:18In the business, he was viewed as a visionary,

00:08:21as a creative genius.

00:08:22His finishes were the best.

00:08:24They were tried and true over years

00:08:27of working in front of big crowds

00:08:29and knowing what gets people's emotions, right?

00:08:32And being able to see the talent and see

00:08:35who he wanted them to be and how he wanted

00:08:37them to be portrayed for the people to grab onto him.

00:08:40But he also, he was a guy that settled disputes.

00:08:44Who was, was there anybody more powerful in the NWA?

00:08:46Him, Barnett, and?

00:08:48No, he, Eddie was the most powerful guy.

00:08:53There might have been guys close to him.

00:08:54And Sam Mushnick as the president

00:08:56and over a period of time, but.

00:08:58But if there was a debate, Eddie settled the debate,

00:09:01they went his way.

00:09:03I'll tell you a real quick story.

00:09:05I went to St. Louis.

00:09:07And the night I was there was Flair's first time

00:09:10in St. Louis.

00:09:11So that was, to me, they were thinking about him

00:09:17as the world champion.

00:09:18Whenever you went to St. Louis and got put over,

00:09:20that was a stepping stone to the NWA title.

00:09:22And usually, you know, whoever won the Missouri state title

00:09:24would become the champion.

00:09:26I mean, you could go back to Briscoe, Bobby

00:09:28Backlund, everybody.

00:09:31And I remember Rick coming to me and asking me about a move

00:09:37that he didn't know.

00:09:40And I didn't want him to falter because, you know,

00:09:47this is St. Louis, right?

00:09:49So I went to Pat O'Connor because Pat brought me

00:09:52in for that night.

00:09:54I actually worked with Pat.

00:09:56I said, I think you need to kind of tailor this finish

00:10:00for Rick a little bit different.

00:10:03And he asked me the problem.

00:10:04I told him what I thought.

00:10:07And I said, you don't want the kid to fall on his ass

00:10:09because they've sent him here, right?

00:10:11Obviously, I was smart enough to understand.

00:10:14And he said, well, I'll be right back.

00:10:16I said, where are you going?

00:10:16He said, I'm going to go on the phone to Eddie

00:10:18and get a better finish.

00:10:22I went to myself, they're calling Eddie.

00:10:24He's not here.

00:10:26I don't know if he's seen Flair work yet.

00:10:28Probably has, you know, up in the mid-Atlantic.

00:10:30But they weren't sure of their own finish.

00:10:33They want to make sure that Eddie can run.

00:10:35Call Eddie.

00:10:35Get Tamp on the phone.

00:10:37Yeah, yeah.

00:10:38Do you remember when Jerry Jarrett split off

00:10:41from Nick Goulas in 1977?

00:10:43Nick had been a member of the N-W-A since 1949.

00:10:48And the only support he got was from the Sheik

00:10:50because they were close.

00:10:51And he got a bunch of talent down from Detroit.

00:10:53Talent, I say loosely.

00:10:56But nothing else from the N-W-A.

00:10:58And six weeks, the war was over.

00:11:00Jarrett won.

00:11:00He took Memphis.

00:11:01His first card back in the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis.

00:11:04Who's on the card?

00:11:05Jack Briscoe, Dusty Rhodes, Mike Graham, Kevin Sullivan,

00:11:09and Eddie Graham came in the back, right?

00:11:12To show that I validated Jerry Jarrett's promotion,

00:11:15because everybody knows Nick's a tightwad.

00:11:17And that was the way it was.

00:11:19And that was the night Holly wrestled Dusty.

00:11:23And there was, you know, he had another presence.

00:11:30The first time the old Omni ran, Jimmy?

00:11:33Mike and I were on that show.

00:11:35And the other thing was, he was, God bless Mike,

00:11:42he was one of my dearest friends.

00:11:45And he was under a horrible strain

00:11:47with the father in different situations.

00:11:49We'll get to that.

00:11:50But Eddie knew that Mike wasn't going to be the World Heavyweight

00:11:53Champion.

00:11:55But he also knew that Mike was a good talent.

00:11:59And he wanted Mike to be in the wrestling business.

00:12:03So he actually would, you know, book Mike in these,

00:12:08not just Mike, myself and different guys

00:12:10in his territory that we went out.

00:12:13We became almost a little bit more desirable.

00:12:15It reminds me of, I always tell a story.

00:12:18When Coors, you couldn't get it, you know, west.

00:12:22Past Denver or whatever.

00:12:23Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:12:24It was that mystique.

00:12:25People would drive out and get it.

00:12:28He made Florida a mystique place, you know what I mean?

00:12:31They had more wrestling, which they hadn't seen.

00:12:34They had their champion for years,

00:12:37Briscoe, was a wrestler, right?

00:12:41So he was very much into that.

00:12:43And the other thing, how clever he was,

00:12:48he had not the US Senator give him a flag on a wrestling

00:12:55program, right?

00:12:57The mayor of Tampa gave me an award and Mike

00:12:59an award different times.

00:13:00I mean, he had political clout.

00:13:02Well, let's talk about this for a second,

00:13:04because the one thing that I used

00:13:05to note when I would watch the Florida tape was it

00:13:08seemed like every week somebody was giving

00:13:11Eddie Graham or the promotion a civic award.

00:13:14The Boy Scouts, the Boys and Girls Club, the Boys Ranch,

00:13:18the ball team of some kind, the amateur wrestling team,

00:13:23local sports kit.

00:13:24Just anybody that was deserving.

00:13:27Eddie Graham would have done something

00:13:29or he had the company do something to help out.

00:13:31And as a result, for weeks and weeks and years and years,

00:13:34they saw him getting these civic honors and awards that

00:13:38showed not only was wrestling a good, wholesome sport,

00:13:41but that Eddie Graham was the next best thing

00:13:44to the president.

00:13:46And it had an effect in that, I think,

00:13:50just judging from what I was able to see,

00:13:51the brief period that I would go down there,

00:13:53wrestling had a, it was like in the Carolinas.

00:13:57People liked wrestling in the Carolinas

00:13:58and it had a bit better of an image.

00:14:01Had a better image in Florida than it did in most places

00:14:04because of that kind of work and the people saying,

00:14:07well, you know, even if we may not like wrestling,

00:14:10they sure are doing good for the community.

00:14:12And that was, of course, it was brilliant.

00:14:14It was great PR, it helped everybody.

00:14:16And the other thing, Jimmy, as you know,

00:14:20very little, we'll say in Nashville because of Nick,

00:14:26not many people would write articles on wrestling, right?

00:14:29Right.

00:14:30Eddie had a lot of newspapermen in his pocket.

00:14:33They were on the payroll.

00:14:35So they may do an article about Eddie Graham.

00:14:41If you didn't, if you watched, you know,

00:14:44Channel 44 last week, you saw that Eddie Graham

00:14:47received the award of freedom from the state senator,

00:14:52you know, US Congressman.

00:14:54And after that, bye, bye, bye,

00:14:57he go into the percentage that the Boys Club,

00:15:01the Sheriff's Boys Ranch, and oh, by the way,

00:15:03last week in Fort Lauderdale,

00:15:08a police officer died on duty.

00:15:11Eddie donated the money for the proceeds

00:15:14in Fort Lauderdale to his family.

00:15:16So then as the article kept on going,

00:15:19and then they would say,

00:15:21and Dusty Rhodes is wrestling Holly Race

00:15:24and St. Pete this Sunday.

00:15:27It looks to be a great exhibition.

00:15:30Dusty is coming into his own,

00:15:33and they would just drop that little word,

00:15:35exhibition, rather than, you know,

00:15:37so they could get out of it gracefully

00:15:40and still plug the town.

00:15:42And he had that going for him in Tampa,

00:15:45he had it in Miami, he had it in all the major clubs.

00:15:48So yeah, and the other thing is,

00:15:50it's kind of hard after you see all this good stuff,

00:15:54then Dusty comes on and hangs me

00:15:57and I got juice shooting up four rows up,

00:15:59that people say, well, they do good for the community.

00:16:02They might have done good for the community,

00:16:03but not my head, you know what I mean?

00:16:05But yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:16:06When you first came in, it was to be Mike's partner,

00:16:11Mike had turned pro probably about a year before,

00:16:15and Eddie had, he had been a top star in Florida

00:16:20in the early 60s, that's how he got in that position,

00:16:23which we'll go into when we talk about

00:16:24the history of the territory,

00:16:26but he'd never focused on himself as a single

00:16:30after that initial setup period.

00:16:32He didn't put the singles belt on him.

00:16:33He and Sam Steamboat or a few partners

00:16:35would have tag team titles on occasion.

00:16:37But he had actually announced and publicly

00:16:39had bought into the promotion with Cowboy Luttrell,

00:16:41who'd been the Florida promoter since the 40s.

00:16:44But when Mike started wrestling,

00:16:46he even went so far, Eddie did,

00:16:47as to have the newspapers print

00:16:51that he had given his promoting interest,

00:16:54his matchmaking interest over to Buddy Fuller,

00:16:56and that he was gonna go on the road

00:16:58with his son, Mike, as a father-son tag team.

00:17:00He didn't want the people to think that,

00:17:01okay, now my son's here and I'm the promoter

00:17:03and I'm gonna be wrestling and he's gonna go over.

00:17:05It was that attention to detail that set him apart.

00:17:09But how, when you became Mike's partner right after that,

00:17:12how did you get that spot

00:17:14and how did you first start your relationship with Eddie?

00:17:18This is a funny thing.

00:17:20I actually went to Florida with Robert

00:17:23to be Robert's partner.

00:17:25Robert Fuller?

00:17:25Yeah, and I was, Robert and I were gonna go to Australia

00:17:31together to be partners because we had been partners

00:17:33in Tennessee.

00:17:34Yeah, and that was a period of time, not to digress,

00:17:38but Barnett had brought Lester Welch,

00:17:43one of the Welches, into Australia as a partner

00:17:44and then Jimmy Golden made a trip,

00:17:46so there was a Tennessee-Australia connection there

00:17:48for just a second.

00:17:49Right, so we were gonna go and, I mean,

00:17:51they offered a ridiculous amount of money

00:17:53for those days, I thought, and Robert said,

00:17:57no, and this is how well-planned, Eddie,

00:18:02what you just said, laid it out.

00:18:04Robert comes up to me and says,

00:18:06no, my dad just took over Florida.

00:18:08We're gonna go to Florida instead.

00:18:11So Robert's buying that his dad has this territory, right?

00:18:16Now, Ronald owned West Palm Beach, right?

00:18:19Yeah.

00:18:20So when we get down there, we'll book maybe

00:18:24for the first week around together.

00:18:26The second week, I'm in singles, Robert's in singles,

00:18:30and Eddie saw, and I think Bobby Shane

00:18:36went to Eddie and said, they look alike,

00:18:38they're the same size, I think it would be good

00:18:41to have a young tag team, I'd like to get them over.

00:18:44Bobby was a really, you know,

00:18:46we've talked about Bobby before,

00:18:48it's too bad that people don't know who he was.

00:18:51He could make a guy in a night, right?

00:18:53And especially two young punks, but when I got with him,

00:18:58this is how much attention to detail Eddie was.

00:19:01Eddie said to me, have you ever wrestled before?

00:19:05Amateur, I said, yeah, I have.

00:19:07He said, okay, I want you to come to the Heroes Gym tomorrow

00:19:11and we'll work out, you and Mike will just work out.

00:19:14I thought he meant weights.

00:19:15Well, I get there, and all there are

00:19:17is mats on the floor, right?

00:19:19So Eddie says, okay, why don't you guys go at it?

00:19:22And Mike was very good and exceptionally strong, right?

00:19:28But I think I could-

00:19:29He was a pretty world-class level power lifter

00:19:32in his younger days, right?

00:19:33Yeah, he had the record in Florida,

00:19:35I believe, for the longest time.

00:19:36He benched 425 at 198,

00:19:41and Mike had exceptionally strong tendons,

00:19:47and Mike was a tough guy.

00:19:50I mean, he wasn't gonna let his old man down,

00:19:53you know what I mean?

00:19:53He was gonna stand up for the business.

00:19:57Mike stood up for business.

00:19:58You know, back then it was a different game.

00:20:00So they get me wrestling Mike,

00:20:02and I'm not gonna say that I could have beat him,

00:20:05but I'm smart enough to realize I better not,

00:20:08you know what I mean?

00:20:09But I better hold my own.

00:20:11And I did hold my own.

00:20:14You can't be a pushover,

00:20:15but you gotta do the job in the end.

00:20:16Yeah, yeah.

00:20:17So I often thought, why did he do that?

00:20:21And I thought, well, if we put me and Mike together,

00:20:25and I got the shit kicked out of me,

00:20:27they wouldn't say Kevin Sullivan

00:20:29got the shit kicked out of him in a bar.

00:20:30They were gonna say Mike Graham did.

00:20:32Yeah, because he was the one that was famous,

00:20:34and you guys looked so much alike at the time.

00:20:36Yeah, so Eddie wanted to make sure

00:20:38I could cover my ass, I think.

00:20:41And because back in those days,

00:20:42you know, if you got in a fight,

00:20:44and Stan Lane would tell you,

00:20:46I mean, he had to leave the territory, right?

00:20:50Because he beat up a guy so bad.

00:20:52If you lost the fight, you are gone.

00:20:55You know what I mean?

00:20:56If you lost the fight, you got fired,

00:20:58and if you won the fight,

00:20:59you had to leave town because you got sued, yeah.

00:21:02So then, gradually over a period of time,

00:21:05you got closer with Eddie.

00:21:07Yeah.

00:21:09Yeah, I had, you know, because I was around Mike so much,

00:21:14and it got to be a point where Eddie kind of,

00:21:20you know, he, I think, I say this reflecting back,

00:21:25I'm sure he liked me, you know,

00:21:26and he liked that I would do what Mike wanted to do,

00:21:29like go to the gym.

00:21:30I was trying to keep, you know,

00:21:32trying to keep it on the straight and narrow,

00:21:33but we were two wild young kids,

00:21:35but he says to me one day,

00:21:40you want to go fishing?

00:21:42And I said, well, this is strange.

00:21:45I said, what time is Mike going to pick me up?

00:21:47He said, no, you come down the dock.

00:21:50Thinking, well, so I'm on the dock,

00:21:52and we'll get into this a little while.

00:21:55And I go out fishing with Eddie.

00:21:57Now he starts telling me the problems he's having

00:22:00with Mike because he has, Eddie himself

00:22:03is having marital problems or pseudo-marital problems,

00:22:08right, and he unloads on me and tells me something

00:22:13that only Barnett and Terry Funk knew.

00:22:16So I'm now given this secret code that-

00:22:22And you carry the burden.

00:22:23Yeah, and I carry the burden,

00:22:25and I also have Mike up my ass

00:22:27because I'm not understanding what the problem is

00:22:30between his mother and father,

00:22:32but I do understand what the problem is.

00:22:34There's no problem, you know what I mean?

00:22:36He just doesn't understand it.

00:22:38So as this continued on,

00:22:41and we'll get into whenever you want.

00:22:43Well, go ahead.

00:22:44We're this far now.

00:22:45We can just jump right in.

00:22:46What happened was when Eddie was in Amarillo,

00:22:50he got divorced after Mike was born,

00:22:53like maybe when Mike was two or three,

00:22:56but because he loved this boy so much

00:23:02that he stuck with his wife,

00:23:04and they moved to Florida, like you said,

00:23:07the whole thing, they moved into a trailer park,

00:23:09and then for the next thing, he buys the company

00:23:11that he's living in this magnificent home, swimming pools.

00:23:15He bought Mike one right down the street, swimming pools,

00:23:20and they were like,

00:23:25very civil to one another.

00:23:27They went everywhere in Florida together,

00:23:29you know, Mrs. and Mrs. Graham,

00:23:32but nobody knew they weren't married.

00:23:34There was only three people that knew they weren't married.

00:23:37So now, and Mike, before he died,

00:23:42found out about it and confronted me,

00:23:44and it was the hardest thing in the world for me to tell him.

00:23:47He said, why didn't you tell me?

00:23:48I said, how could I have told you, you know?

00:23:51And then he said, now I look back at it,

00:23:54things fall into place.

00:23:56He said, I guess I was too hard on my dad.

00:23:58I said, yeah, and it wasn't my place to tell you, you know?

00:24:03So he stays with Lucy, but they weren't married,

00:24:09and I think they were allowed to do

00:24:11whatever they wanted to do.

00:24:12He had a girlfriend.

00:24:13Mike got mad about that,

00:24:15and Mike's mother was a Southern Belgian teal,

00:24:20genteel, and she could have been a model

00:24:23at 55 to 60 years old, striking red hair.

00:24:26She owned the boutique in Florida.

00:24:30Everybody, I mean, then she had a special place

00:24:34before I ever saw these fake nails, you know what I mean?

00:24:37Oh yeah, yeah.

00:24:37She opened that up, and I mean,

00:24:39everybody was going to Lucy's.

00:24:41You'd walk in, and they were poured

00:24:43from a bottle of Dom Perignon, not the cheap stuff,

00:24:46you know, the ladies are sitting there

00:24:48thinking they're queen for the day.

00:24:51If she was really a wrestling wife,

00:24:52she'd have put the cold duck

00:24:54in the Dom Perignon bottle, yeah.

00:24:55Yeah.

00:24:57Oh, you like that one, huh?

00:24:57There you go.

00:24:58But the thing was, so I kind of became the surrogate son

00:25:03because Eddie's bitching, and then I told you

00:25:06just a little while ago, one time,

00:25:08we're fishing, it was a Thursday,

00:25:10and we'd have to go to Jacksonville,

00:25:11so you'd have to leave early

00:25:12because that was one of the longest trips

00:25:14in the territories, about 220 miles,

00:25:17and it was not all interstate.

00:25:19Yeah, I remember that.

00:25:20You know that?

00:25:21You had to go up the Yee All Junction

00:25:22and all that stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:25:22So I go to Eddie.

00:25:27I need to get back to the dock.

00:25:29He said, nah, the fish are hitting.

00:25:30Come on, let's stay.

00:25:31I said, I'm supposed to meet Mike.

00:25:34He said, Michael, no, you're not there.

00:25:37I told him you're going fishing.

00:25:38I'll fly you.

00:25:40Thinking, boy, I'm flying up to Jacksonville,

00:25:42and Mike is driving.

00:25:43This is going to be nice when I get there, right?

00:25:46And Mike was really cool about it.

00:25:48He said, hey, I understand.

00:25:50I'm just not getting along with my dad.

00:25:51He said, good for you.

00:25:53You didn't have to drive, you know what I mean?

00:25:56So that's how I became close to him,

00:26:00and then because I became close to him that way,

00:26:03he would kind of, I tell you one time

00:26:06that it really shocked him,

00:26:08and it probably cost this guy his job, okay?

00:26:12Louis Tillet, you know the dusty finish?

00:26:16That's Louis Tillet's finish, okay?

00:26:19So at the end of the year, they had the year in review,

00:26:23and most of it was Briscoe against somebody, you know?

00:26:27And there was, if not the greatest baby face,

00:26:31one of the top 10, right, Jack Briscoe?

00:26:34I'm watching the thing,

00:26:35and every finish is a dusty finish.

00:26:39So Eddie comes up beaming,

00:26:41because it's like anything else.

00:26:42If you watch it enough,

00:26:45and he didn't watch it, I found out, see?

00:26:47So he was gonna go through me,

00:26:50and see what my reaction was,

00:26:51then he was gonna look at it,

00:26:53and he said, what did you think?

00:26:54And I said, that sucked.

00:26:57It was the first time I ever said anything like that to him.

00:26:59He said, what do you mean?

00:27:01I said, every finish was exactly alike.

00:27:04Well, he went down, he went to the,

00:27:08got Dave Toge, made him go take the tape back then,

00:27:12and put it in, and watched it.

00:27:15And Louis was relegated to the second towns,

00:27:17and that's how Dusty got his start in Dusty O' Watts.

00:27:20Yeah, so I mean, yeah, so that was,

00:27:24when that happened, then he would let me sit in,

00:27:28and Dusty too, when Dusty came in,

00:27:30but when he found some of the,

00:27:32he kind of thought that was on the same wavelength with him,

00:27:35like the Funks or the Briscos,

00:27:37you know, you kind of, he'd say,

00:27:39hey, sit in here and tell me what you think about this.

00:27:43Well, I'll tell you a funny story about Eddie.

00:27:47I'm happy to be driving to Orlando with him,

00:27:52and Eddie said, well, I got this finish.

00:27:55He said, and this is what they're gonna do

00:27:57in the main event.

00:28:00And he said, but I'm not gonna say anything.

00:28:03He said, just come in with me.

00:28:05And this was a big thing,

00:28:06going into the Peel Dress Room, you know?

00:28:10Even though in Orlando, it'd be like coming in here,

00:28:12no one's gonna see us, but we didn't do that.

00:28:15So I sat down, I watched Eddie work.

00:28:18He said, boys, what are you gonna do tonight?

00:28:21And they're all scratching their heads,

00:28:23and you know, figuring things out.

00:28:25Jimmy, in 15 minutes, they came up

00:28:28with the exact same finish Eddie had told me in the car.

00:28:31He just steered them that way,

00:28:33and they had no idea which way they were going either.

00:28:36They're the only few guys that,

00:28:40this is how smart he was.

00:28:43Terry Funk is gonna work with Jack Briscoe in Miami.

00:28:50Now, when the Funks came in, 98% of the time,

00:28:55Eddie would go to wherever the Funks were wrestling.

00:28:59So they were only coming in,

00:29:00Terry was only coming in from Miami

00:29:02because Jack was going to wrestle Dory

00:29:05at the end of the month.

00:29:06We'll say it was the first month,

00:29:08and at the end of the month,

00:29:08he was gonna wrestle Dory for the title.

00:29:11So,

00:29:15Louis Tellet goes over, and Terry says,

00:29:18what do you want him to do?

00:29:19And he said, you don't mind putting him

00:29:22over in the middle, do you?

00:29:24Terry said, no, of course not.

00:29:27So, the next day, we got TV,

00:29:32and Eddie comes in, and he says,

00:29:34hey, what did you do?

00:29:35What kind of out did you give Funk last night?

00:29:40And Louis said, oh, he said he'd lose

00:29:42in the middle of the ring.

00:29:45And Eddie said, I guess we won't see Terry for a while.

00:29:48So, Louis calls Terry up, you know,

00:29:51make sure everything's okay.

00:29:52He said, when Dory comes in,

00:29:54we'd like you to work with Morocco.

00:29:56He said, I can't, my horse is sick.

00:29:58Horse is sick.

00:29:59You know, he did the horse is sick.

00:30:01And Eddie said, Louis, that isn't a way

00:30:04to get these guys to do what you want.

00:30:06He said, and with beating Terry, he said.

00:30:08They'll do what you want once.

00:30:10To get out of there, and then they won't come back.

00:30:11Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:30:13Hey, let's get Eddie Graham in Florida, first of all,

00:30:16because some of these young whippersnappers

00:30:18may not realize the career he had before then,

00:30:21why he was in a position to buy the territory,

00:30:23why he was in a position to be in the main events.

00:30:26Started out, Eddie Gossett, his real name,

00:30:28in the Tennessee Territory,

00:30:29because he's from around Chattanooga,

00:30:31and wrestled Tennessee early years.

00:30:33He was in Texas as Rip Rogers, like you said,

00:30:36but he also had a run in Florida in like 1954

00:30:40as Eddie Gossett.

00:30:41Really?

00:30:41And I don't even think he had blonde hair

00:30:43at that point in time.

00:30:45Apparently, nobody remembered him,

00:30:46but what they did remember him for

00:30:48was the run in the Northeast, in Madison Square Garden,

00:30:53when he became a Graham brother.

00:30:54Dr. Jerry Graham, one of the most famous,

00:30:56most eccentric heels in the history of the business.

00:31:00Vince McMahon Jr.'s favorite wrestler.

00:31:02Right.

00:31:03Red suits, Cadillac, no top, down to Broadway

00:31:07in lightened cigars with $100 bills and a whole nine yards.

00:31:12He became Jerry Graham's brother,

00:31:14and they weren't the first of the Bleach Blonde tag teams,

00:31:17but they were one of the best known.

00:31:19They sold out the garden.

00:31:21They were big all over the Northeast.

00:31:22The Capitol Wrestling Tape, at that point,

00:31:25was syndicated to a variety of stations,

00:31:27so the Graham brothers and their manager, Bobby Davis,

00:31:29who Bobby Heenan was named after, were big time heels.

00:31:33And when he left, Eddie Graham left the Northeast,

00:31:38he went to Florida.

00:31:40He won the Florida title in 1962.

00:31:43That's when Cowboy Luttrell still owned the company.

00:31:45I think he bought in shortly thereafter,

00:31:47probably with the money that he'd made in New York,

00:31:50but that started a lifelong connection

00:31:52between Eddie and Vince Sr.,

00:31:54because there was always cooperation

00:31:56between the WWWF and the Florida Territory,

00:32:00even if it didn't go through the NWA or whatever,

00:32:03even to the point where Vince had a winter home in Florida,

00:32:06or a summer home, or whichever season he spent in Florida,

00:32:09and the Florida tape was shown in New York

00:32:12on the Spanish station.

00:32:13Everybody thought, well, that's an accident.

00:32:15No.

00:32:17Was Eddie probably the only guy

00:32:20that could pick up the phone

00:32:21and talk to Vern Gagne, Sam Mushnick,

00:32:23and Vince McMahon Sr. anytime he wanted to?

00:32:26I think he was the only guy that could pick up the phone

00:32:30and be on their level.

00:32:32Yeah.

00:32:32You know what I mean?

00:32:33Because they all respect him about his brain.

00:32:37And I'll give you a quick story, real quick.

00:32:41Take your time.

00:32:44Jack Briscoe was our world champion, right, NWA.

00:32:48And Vince got a little scared of the ethnic champions,

00:32:52Bruno and Pedro, after Mulligan had been stabbed.

00:32:56They were having so many riots.

00:32:57Either the Puerto Ricans upset if Pedro ever lost,

00:33:00or et cetera, et cetera, and they were having troubles.

00:33:02And Mulligan almost got flayed, you know,

00:33:04when he got stabbed so many times.

00:33:06And then the guy had put urine on the knife,

00:33:09so he got an infection inside.

00:33:12I was up in the office when this happened.

00:33:15Vince, it was in the wintertime,

00:33:17Vince was down in Florida.

00:33:20He lived by Lauderdale-by-the-Sea.

00:33:22He lived in a beautiful cul-de-sac.

00:33:25Right here was his home.

00:33:27Grand Wizard's home's right over here,

00:33:28so I've been both.

00:33:31So,

00:33:33he decided that he wanted to do

00:33:36what Eddie did with Jack Briscoe.

00:33:39An all-American boy.

00:33:40An all-American boy.

00:33:42And Vince had watched the Florida wrestling,

00:33:47and he said, hey, I like that guy Macklin.

00:33:50He's an all-American boy, amateur wrestler, all this.

00:33:53And Eddie said to him,

00:33:56yeah, he's great, but you want to take Kern

00:33:59because of his father's background.

00:34:02If you're looking for the all-American boy,

00:34:04and the kid can talk better than Bobby,

00:34:06and I think you can make a lot more money quicker

00:34:11with Steve, you know, in the angle with the father.

00:34:15Who was a war hero in a prisoner of war in Vietnam.

00:34:18Twice.

00:34:19Vietnam and World War II.

00:34:20That's right.

00:34:21So he said,

00:34:24no, I'm gonna go with Macklin,

00:34:26and they got into this little kind of jousting,

00:34:29where they're laughing.

00:34:30And Eddie said, I bet you $100

00:34:33that you can't make Macklin like you can Kern.

00:34:38And he said, oh, I'll make him okay.

00:34:40And that's what he did, right?

00:34:42He built, it was over.

00:34:44Did he get the 100 bucks?

00:34:45Yes, yes he did.

00:34:48So yeah, like you said, could Eddie pick up the phone?

00:34:51Yeah, and you know, when Eddie called you,

00:34:55I mean, I had heard Vince call Eddie before Big Taping,

00:35:00or when he was gonna switch the title.

00:35:01What do you think I should do for the next show?

00:35:06Who do you see that's ready?

00:35:08And Eddie would give him a finish, you know what I mean?

00:35:10But you know, the funny thing was,

00:35:11when he sent that finish up there,

00:35:14it wasn't a Florida finish.

00:35:15It was a version of a Florida finish.

00:35:18That would fit their style and their pattern.

00:35:21They tailored it too.

00:35:23You know, that's something,

00:35:24now that I'm sitting here looking at it on paper,

00:35:26when Graham made his move after the run in the Northeast

00:35:30and went to Florida, that was the last move he made.

00:35:33And you very seldom find that.

00:35:35Verne did it in Minneapolis.

00:35:37Lawler did it, basically came back from, you know,

00:35:40Florida and Georgia in 75 and never really left again.

00:35:45But he stayed, he bought into the territory.

00:35:48And at the time, Florida traditionally

00:35:50was a good, solid business state,

00:35:53but it had never done anything spectacular.

00:35:56There weren't the outdoor shows or the stadium shows

00:35:58or whatever.

00:35:59It was good, solid business.

00:36:00And talk about the towns.

00:36:02And 25 years of history of the territory,

00:36:06I know the nights changed and the schedule changed

00:36:08and whatever, but typically in the glory years,

00:36:11what was your week?

00:36:12What were the towns?

00:36:13I'm gonna tell you again how Eddie was a forward thinker.

00:36:20When Eddie went down there and bought in,

00:36:23that territory only ran in the winter.

00:36:26It wasn't even a year round.

00:36:27Wasn't a year round.

00:36:28And Eddie said to Cowboy, he said,

00:36:32you're just catering to tourists.

00:36:34We need to cater to the good old boys that live down here.

00:36:38You know, you gotta realize at that time,

00:36:41Florida was really rural.

00:36:43It was the second largest cattle producing state.

00:36:46Of course, it was the first in citrus, right?

00:36:49A lot of vegetables growing up there.

00:36:51A lot of migrant workers.

00:36:53If you look back at the beginning of Eddie's run,

00:36:56you see Cyclonegro, you see Jose Lothario.

00:37:00Hispanics.

00:37:01Hispanics.

00:37:02Eddie used blacks early, you know?

00:37:05So, I mean, he had a grasp of things

00:37:08that most of us wouldn't have got the grasp

00:37:13of, especially back then, those old-time promoters.

00:37:15You know what I mean?

00:37:15They weren't civic-minded or didn't even know

00:37:18what was going on, really.

00:37:20We do it this way because this is the way we always did it.

00:37:22Right, right.

00:37:23So, when he opened it up, what they would do is,

00:37:27Sunday was Orlando.

00:37:29Monday was West Palm.

00:37:32Tuesday was Tampa and Fort Pierce.

00:37:35If he wanted to cool you down, I mean, Fort Myers.

00:37:38If he wanted to cool you down for a while,

00:37:41he'd send you to Fort Myers.

00:37:43When I had had my run with Mike

00:37:46and they broke us apart for a while,

00:37:48he sent me to Fort Myers with Dickey Slater

00:37:52and said, you two book the town.

00:37:54I don't care what you do, just give me a list of the town

00:37:57and I'll tell you if you can have them.

00:37:58But you gotta have this booked, you know.

00:38:02You gotta have it three weeks out

00:38:04so I know what you're gonna do.

00:38:05And then if I have to take somebody, I will.

00:38:07So, Dickey and I got a chance

00:38:09to really get our feet wet, right?

00:38:10But Wednesday was Miami.

00:38:14Thursday was Jacksonville.

00:38:16Friday was either Fort Lauderdale or Tallahassee.

00:38:19And Saturday was once a month Lakeland,

00:38:24which was right outside of Tampa.

00:38:27St. Pete, right outside of Tampa.

00:38:30Sarasota, right outside of Tampa.

00:38:32And Daytona, right outside of Orlando.

00:38:35So, he would come.

00:38:35And also, West Palm, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami

00:38:38are like 60 miles apart for the three of them

00:38:40over on the other side.

00:38:41Right, right.

00:38:43Different cards everywhere.

00:38:45Yeah, not like, you know, we'll say with Nick

00:38:49where he ran the same card in every town.

00:38:51You know what I mean?

00:38:52And Eddie would also kinda back off of West Palm a little

00:38:59because he wanted to, he would take West Palm on a Monday

00:39:05to be the showcase for leave them hanging

00:39:09till Wednesday, that match is coming.

00:39:11You know what I mean?

00:39:12It'd be like the Midnight Express are wrestling fantastic.

00:39:16So, gotta love him too.

00:39:18But the rock and roll hit the ring and saved them, you know?

00:39:21But isn't it a coincidence the rock and roll of-

00:39:24And Midnight are wrestling on Wednesday,

00:39:26just right down the road.

00:39:27Come on.

00:39:28And that's the thing is you talk about it being weekly.

00:39:31And for a lot of those years,

00:39:32Miami Beach did three, four, 5,000 people a week.

00:39:35Every week.

00:39:36And that's not the hot periods, that's just regularly,

00:39:38every Wednesday night at the convention hall.

00:39:40Dusty used to talk about, for all of you folks old enough,

00:39:43Jackie Gleason used to tape his television show there.

00:39:45From Miami Beach, the greatest audience in the world.

00:39:48Dusty loved to sneak in to the dressing room

00:39:51that Jackie Gleason would use

00:39:52and shit on Jackie Gleason's toilet.

00:39:54Just, you know, to say their asses

00:39:57had been in the same place.

00:39:58Um, that's another thing when you talk about

00:40:03cooling somebody down.

00:40:05The really artistic bookers used to be able to do that

00:40:08because after a guy's been in a hot program.

00:40:10Right.

00:40:10And all of a sudden, you know, you can't just,

00:40:13you know, be the main event every week from now

00:40:15till the end of time.

00:40:16But you don't want to diminish the guy's status.

00:40:18So how can I miss you if you won't go away?

00:40:21The fans in Tampa wouldn't see him

00:40:22because he'd be over in the other town

00:40:24and do a little program there

00:40:25because that was the secondary town.

00:40:27They didn't get to see the top talent all the time.

00:40:29So they're glad to have this main event guy

00:40:31that's worn out his welcome over here.

00:40:33Right.

00:40:34And he was able in the same state

00:40:35while using everybody on television

00:40:38to still put the pieces together

00:40:39where you created the demand for a guy

00:40:41that's still in your territory and never went anywhere.

00:40:43Right.

00:40:44That's amazing.

00:40:45And also that you had the Bahamas every so often, right?

00:40:47Well, oh, I forgot about that.

00:40:49The Bahamas ran once a month.

00:40:51Little vacation.

00:40:52Once a month.

00:40:53And that was Nassau.

00:40:55And then every other month, Nassau and Freeport would run.

00:40:59But when Eddie first took over Florida, Cuba ran.

00:41:03And when I first went to Florida, Eddie had Puerto Rico.

00:41:07So we'd go to Puerto Rico.

00:41:10And can you imagine wrestling in Cuba?

00:41:12They probably, and now that may be

00:41:14the last untapped wrestling market, Cuba,

00:41:16because they haven't seen wrestling in 50 years, right?

00:41:18Yeah.

00:41:19They'll still believe it.

00:41:20Yeah.

00:41:21It's amazing.

00:41:22Yeah.

00:41:23What were the houses like and the crowds like

00:41:25in the other towns on average?

00:41:27I mean, I know there's peaks and valleys,

00:41:28but to get a grip of in one state,

00:41:32how many people were buying tickets

00:41:33to see live wrestling matches per week?

00:41:37It's insane.

00:41:38Jimmy, in all the houses that we're talking about,

00:41:43if it wasn't half full or three quarters full,

00:41:46something was wrong.

00:41:47Something was gonna be altered quickly.

00:41:49And you're talking about buildings

00:41:50that seat three, four, five, 6,000 people.

00:41:52Yeah.

00:41:53Some of them seat more, you know?

00:41:55The beauty of this was on Sunday, you went to Orlando,

00:42:00you knew if Saturday TV got over

00:42:02because Orlando was the barometer.

00:42:04You know what I mean?

00:42:05It was, even though Orlando is Orlando now,

00:42:09back then it was a urban center

00:42:12where the town met the farm.

00:42:19You know what I mean?

00:42:20So you're drawn from two sections of people.

00:42:22So if it got over in Orlando, you knew,

00:42:27okay, we'll build on this TV.

00:42:28But if it didn't get over in Orlando,

00:42:30that program would be done and dusted.

00:42:32Done and do something else.

00:42:33Yeah, yeah.

00:42:34So he just had a-

00:42:36We're gonna go all over the place,

00:42:37and folks, bear with us.

00:42:38You're gonna get knowledge here.

00:42:40It's just gonna be, I see one guy's nodding off already,

00:42:42but was it Orlando where you,

00:42:45was it you and Black Jack that did the thing

00:42:46where you fought out the back door?

00:42:47Yeah, yeah.

00:42:48Okay, tell us.

00:42:49That's one of my favorite things of all time.

00:42:51I was lucky enough, Jimmy,

00:42:53that I had monsters to work with.

00:42:58So they, I always say this.

00:43:01You know the movie, The Alien?

00:43:04Remember when the guy's sitting there?

00:43:06Yeah, I know.

00:43:07And this little thing this big gets out.

00:43:09What if they took a fly swatter and went poof?

00:43:11So at the end of the movie,

00:43:13you remember how big the monster was?

00:43:15Yeah.

00:43:15Well, is that in our head,

00:43:16or is that monster have grown that big, right?

00:43:19So that's what they did to me.

00:43:20They may be a monster from this big, right?

00:43:23So, and I was lucky to work with all these big baby faces.

00:43:27So Mulligan and I go get the thing.

00:43:29Dusty comes up with the idea.

00:43:31He says, I want you to fight guys,

00:43:33fight outside and go out in the back.

00:43:35And this was in a huge,

00:43:38Orlando Sportatorium was like in a huge field, right?

00:43:41Yeah.

00:43:42So we go out fighting and we're fighting down the road,

00:43:45you know, and people are trying to get out,

00:43:47but they couldn't get out the back door.

00:43:48So they're going out the front.

00:43:49We're fighting in the field.

00:43:52And Blackjack slamming me in the dirt and all this.

00:43:55It's pitch black, dark outside.

00:43:55Pitch black, dark out.

00:43:57He's whacking me in the head and he's stiff as board,

00:43:59but he can't see.

00:44:01So that's the end, you know,

00:44:03finally they said, kind of,

00:44:05we get away and we go for each other and the cops come.

00:44:09And the next week as the matches start,

00:44:14me and Blackjack come through the front door,

00:44:17like we've been fighting all week.

00:44:19Wearing the same shit, right?

00:44:20Wearing the same shit and dirty

00:44:21and come right through,

00:44:23right through the ring and stop.

00:44:25The guys in the ring stop working, look at us.

00:44:28And we go right out of the ring and down the aisle.

00:44:31Now, see, that sounds like something

00:44:33that I wouldn't be into.

00:44:35But no, the level of creativity and just for the visual.

00:44:38And it didn't, you know, it just, all right.

00:44:41There were great local promoters down there too,

00:44:43because Eddie had a small office

00:44:45because all the territories did.

00:44:47We talked to Baron Von Raschke,

00:44:48Bruiser's office was in his garage.

00:44:51But they had great local promoters.

00:44:53Don Curtis was in Jacksonville, right?

00:44:55Don Curtis and Mark Lewin were a great tag team,

00:44:57years gone by.

00:44:58John Heath in Sarasota, right?

00:45:00Coach John Heath, who also did the TV show

00:45:04with Gordon Soley, we'll talk about in a minute.

00:45:06Chris Dundee in Miami was Angelo Dundee's brother, right?

00:45:10So that's why the boxing,

00:45:11they had so many famous boxing matches in Miami Beach.

00:45:14One of Cassius Clay's early fights was in Miami Beach.

00:45:17He was on the list.

00:45:18And the other guy that used to come to the matches

00:45:20quite a bit, and he was afraid to death of wrestlers,

00:45:23was Jimmy Ellis.

00:45:25He was-

00:45:26He was from Louisville too?

00:45:27Yeah, yeah, he was Ali's training partner.

00:45:30And I think he ended up winning some form of the belt

00:45:34when Ali went to exile.

00:45:36But he would come to the matches

00:45:37and Chris was smart enough that he would bring fighters in.

00:45:43And I guess he either smartened them up not to be jerks,

00:45:48but they'd be going.

00:45:49You know what I mean?

00:45:50I watched them and I was saying,

00:45:51they were overselling us maybe a little,

00:45:52you know what I mean?

00:45:53But invariably, they'd be in a fight

00:45:57at the end of the month themselves in the same building.

00:45:59So it was publicity for-

00:46:01You know, and I mean, I'm sure they were, you know,

00:46:03probably preconditioned they don't say anything.

00:46:05But at the same time, even a heavyweight boxer,

00:46:07when he's standing in front of Joe LeDuc,

00:46:09what are you going to say?

00:46:10You're going to knock the guy's profession?

00:46:11Oh, pleased to meet you, sir.

00:46:12You know, any other local promoters?

00:46:16Yeah, I was just going to say this guy, O'Hare.

00:46:20I'm trying to think of his first name, Pat O'Hare.

00:46:24He had worked in New England and around the country

00:46:29as an Irish strongman.

00:46:31You know what I mean?

00:46:32I can remember a picture of me seeing him in Boston,

00:46:35which didn't run many pitches of wrestling,

00:46:37of him bending a shoe.

00:46:39He was one of those Joe LeDuc buddies, you know what I mean?

00:46:42Oh my God, yeah.

00:46:43And he was a super guy.

00:46:45I mean, you know, Jimmy,

00:46:49coming from where we had come from, Tennessee,

00:46:52I mean, promoters were brutal to us, right?

00:46:54I mean, most of them, you know, most of them were brutal.

00:46:57I never got to meet Nick Goulish.

00:46:59You had to work for Nick, too.

00:47:00So that was even worse.

00:47:04But this Pat O'Hare, he would come in

00:47:07and his wife would have made sandwiches

00:47:11for the guys or cookies.

00:47:12And he'd buy a couple of cases of, you know,

00:47:16ship beer, but it was beer in the thing,

00:47:19and couldn't drink it until after the matches

00:47:22and take what you want.

00:47:24Eddie just had a way of picking the right guy

00:47:28for the right town.

00:47:30And they took pride in going out,

00:47:34like Pat ran small towns like Palatka or Espacho

00:47:38if we needed it, you know what I mean?

00:47:40And they would go out and really hustle.

00:47:42They joined, again, again, I just thought of this.

00:47:46They would get with the sheriffs, right, and sell tickets.

00:47:50Well, maybe there's a $8,000 house,

00:47:53but there's only $4,000 worth of people in there,

00:47:55you know what I mean?

00:47:56The sheriffs would push the people to sell tickets.

00:48:00And they also wanted the local promoters,

00:48:04like Pat and the Astromedi, you know,

00:48:05he was that big of a personality, you know?

00:48:06Well, and also, when you had weekly towns,

00:48:10this is something that's been lost

00:48:11in the wrestling business these days.

00:48:12You can't run a house show without somebody in that town.

00:48:15Did the TV play properly?

00:48:17Did the promos play?

00:48:18Was the newspaper ad put in place right?

00:48:22The building, the contracts,

00:48:24are they gonna have toilet paper in the bathrooms?

00:48:26Just all the things, the advertising poster,

00:48:28and this and that.

00:48:29And that's why the successful territory guys

00:48:32would have a guy in each town,

00:48:35or one that spent some time in that town,

00:48:37especially the weekly towns,

00:48:38so that they knew what was going on,

00:48:40and you didn't show up and there's nobody there,

00:48:42and everybody's going, well, what happened?

00:48:44Right.

00:48:45Because one guy was responsible for everything.

00:48:46Right.

00:48:47And I think it was, you know, like we said about Nick,

00:48:51he would get these promoters, like John Kazana,

00:48:56and he had no relationship with John,

00:48:58even though John owned that territory by himself.

00:49:00Or, you know, the Welsh's,

00:49:04they had Dyersburg and Tupelo, whatever they had.

00:49:08But there was no relationship.

00:49:11You know, these promoters knew,

00:49:14if they got into a problem,

00:49:16they could call Eddie and say,

00:49:18hey, Eddie, I've tried my best to get this ad

00:49:21at X amount of dollars, and my budget's right here.

00:49:26Yeah.

00:49:26Do you think you could loosen up the purse strings

00:49:29and give me an extra,

00:49:30because I feel that this is gonna do well,

00:49:32and the house will do well again the next time?

00:49:35And Eddie would either say,

00:49:37variably he would either say yes, or I'll call you back.

00:49:42And Eddie would make a call, and he'd get a favor done,

00:49:46and he wouldn't have to pay for the ad.

00:49:47Yeah.

00:49:48Do you know what I mean?

00:49:49And he'd go, Pat, go down there,

00:49:50and they're gonna give you the ad.

00:49:53Just go down there and sign off on it, you know?

00:49:55So, like you said,

00:49:58everybody,

00:50:02it all came back to Eddie.

00:50:03The buck stopped here,

00:50:05and everybody was accountable for themselves,

00:50:07the promoters, the wrestlers, you know what I mean?

00:50:10Because, you know, he didn't,

00:50:12I'll tell you a story that,

00:50:15this is before I was in the business,

00:50:18Valentine, who was one of the great draws of all times,

00:50:22and Red Bastine blew the territory open.

00:50:26So, Eddie was,

00:50:29his neighbor came up to him and said,

00:50:30hey, I saw those guys on TV.

00:50:33He said, oh, good.

00:50:34He said, oh, no, no,

00:50:35I saw them down on the beach barbecuing together.

00:50:40Now, they booked all week on top,

00:50:42and they'd been doing big business, right?

00:50:44Yeah.

00:50:45Eddie went and called them and said,

00:50:47boys, pack your bags, I don't need your work anymore.

00:50:50Now,

00:50:52would that have happened in today's day and age?

00:50:55No.

00:50:56Okay, would it have happened?

00:50:57Now they'd laugh at him.

00:50:58Oh, yeah, go ahead.

00:51:00Would it happen back in those days

00:51:02where most promoters, they would say,

00:51:04well, we'll figure out a six-weeks deal.

00:51:06Yeah, as soon as they quit selling out, they're done.

00:51:09Yeah, yeah.

00:51:10But, Eddie, I mean, that's taking a chance,

00:51:12you know what I mean?

00:51:13Because now you got rid of the program,

00:51:15and not only you get rid of the program,

00:51:17I don't have to tell you,

00:51:18but a lot of people don't understand this.

00:51:21To get the guy to draw that way,

00:51:22he slotted some bodies on the way up, right?

00:51:25So, now you gotta, you know, hop to Doughty.

00:51:27Now you gotta rebuild the wounded soldiers after the,

00:51:30you know, but at the same time,

00:51:31he was thinking five years from now.

00:51:34Because it's not about one guy seeing the big program

00:51:38barbecuing together down on the beach,

00:51:40it's about how many times will that happen,

00:51:42and how many times will that guy tell,

00:51:44or people, and how many people that guy tell,

00:51:46and over a period of time,

00:51:47it grows, so just like when you look at talent,

00:51:51you don't look at, if you're trying to build a territory,

00:51:53and you're looking at young guys,

00:51:54you don't look at how they are now,

00:51:57you look at what they will grow into in three to five years.

00:52:00He was looking at, if I let this go on,

00:52:03the more times I let it go on,

00:52:05the wider spread it gets,

00:52:07the more damage it's gonna do to my business in the long run,

00:52:09in five years, it's gonna bite me in the ass,

00:52:10because then everybody's smart,

00:52:11so I'm gonna nip it to bud now.

00:52:13I'm gonna tell you how it was just drilled into your head.

00:52:19Mike and I were partners,

00:52:21and Mike had never done a blade job,

00:52:24and you'll love this.

00:52:25You know what I had in my bag?

00:52:28One of the chisels from Tennessee.

00:52:29You got it, you got it.

00:52:30All, all, all.

00:52:32The Ron Wright chisel.

00:52:33Yeah, all bloodied up for me,

00:52:36and Ron, and Don, and Whitey Caldwell,

00:52:38I had it in my bag.

00:52:40So, we had started to work a program

00:52:43with Black Jack Slade, do you remember him?

00:52:45I remember that name, I remember that name.

00:52:47And Dickie Slater, who was a great performer, right?

00:52:51So, Mike said to me, what's that?

00:52:54I said, well, you put it on your hand,

00:52:56and they bust you open.

00:52:57He said, whoa.

00:52:58He said, I'd like to do that.

00:53:03I said, what?

00:53:03He said, yeah, because I've never bled.

00:53:06If I bleed, I think it will help the territory.

00:53:09Well, this became the cave fave.

00:53:11In two weeks, we're gonna do it on TV.

00:53:13This is how conditioned the guys were.

00:53:16Black Jack Slade had a girlfriend.

00:53:20He had Slater over with his girlfriend,

00:53:23or soon-to-be wife, and they were having

00:53:26a couple cocktails and eating,

00:53:29and Black Jack Slade's girlfriend said,

00:53:32oh, I hear you're gonna hit Mike with some kind of chisel.

00:53:36Dickie went right to Eddie, Slade was gone,

00:53:39and Mike never did it.

00:53:40God damn it, I wanted to see Dickie.

00:53:41Because my head was numb for six months.

00:53:47That's how everybody fell in line,

00:53:49and it wasn't stooging.

00:53:52Sometimes people say, well, that guy wasn't stooging.

00:53:54No, he was protecting his vested interest of the business,

00:53:59and protecting it for Eddie, too,

00:54:00because the respect that he had.

00:54:05Well, now, we talked about television

00:54:07with Eddie Graham getting a Civic Award every week,

00:54:10but the television went through some changes

00:54:12over three decades, but Gordon Soley had come in

00:54:15in the late 50s, he did stock car racing,

00:54:17and he had, obviously, the incredible vocabulary,

00:54:21the voice, the delivery, called it his professional sport.

00:54:24And he learned wrestling pretty much

00:54:26from Cowboy Luttrell and Eddie Graham all that time, too,

00:54:29so he was instructed to call it that way,

00:54:31and it fit his style perfectly.

00:54:33But for the 70s and 80s,

00:54:36when and where did you tape television?

00:54:37And then it showed in every market in Florida

00:54:40with a television station, so those stations overlap.

00:54:44So the television was all across the state.

00:54:46Everybody was an instant TV star,

00:54:48because in the days where there was three stations

00:54:51in a market, but when and where did you do the TV,

00:54:53and what was the process like?

00:54:55The TV was done Wednesday morning,

00:54:58after Tampa or Fort Myers.

00:55:01If you had a drive-back, it sucked.

00:55:04You're probably in better shape on Wednesday morning

00:55:06than going out in Tampa in your night.

00:55:08So it was shot at the office in front of a crowd

00:55:12that was maybe 100 people, had bleachers on two sides,

00:55:17actually three sides, and chairs.

00:55:19And the same people came Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock.

00:55:25Try to get 100 people now to go to a wrestling show

00:55:27Wednesday morning at 10 o'clock.

00:55:28No, no, no.

00:55:31And they had to pay, they had to pay.

00:55:34It was a couple of bucks, but they had to pay.

00:55:36And then you had to finish that TV,

00:55:40and you either jumped immediately in the car,

00:55:44or you'd go shower and go to the airport

00:55:47and take a plane and stay over and fly back,

00:55:50because that's when they had Florida Air,

00:55:53Florida, it was like $40 round trip to Miami.

00:55:57But you know, you said about Gordon,

00:56:02and you go back, and I mean, JR's fabulous, okay?

00:56:08But Gordon, JR was kind of raised in the business,

00:56:13you know what I'm saying, right?

00:56:14With watts, he put up rings, he learned different things.

00:56:18Gordon was found at the stock car races,

00:56:22and Mike was the one that found him.

00:56:23He said, Dad, I like his voice,

00:56:25I think he'd be a good announcer.

00:56:27And then he went to him and said,

00:56:28do you know anything about it?

00:56:30And he said, no, and Gordon had told me the story,

00:56:32and he said to him, well, I want you to do it.

00:56:35Come to the office, like on a Monday,

00:56:38and he said, we're gonna go over some things.

00:56:40And he said to him, this is a legitimate sport,

00:56:44and I want you to produce it that way.

00:56:47I don't want any tongue-in-cheek stuff,

00:56:50because if you look back at the old stuff

00:56:52from Marigold Gardens, you'd know who the announcer was.

00:56:55Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, and the Jack Reynolds is,

00:56:57I think it was his name, but-

00:56:59Jack Brickhouse.

00:56:59Jack Brickhouse, Jack Reynolds was in Cleveland.

00:57:02But, yeah, oh, look there, Bruiser Affless,

00:57:06well, he's got him in a hole there, doesn't he, folks?

00:57:09And it was tongue-in-cheek,

00:57:11and it was kind of making mockery,

00:57:12but this was straight as an arrow, straight as you could get.

00:57:15And he had such a big influence down there

00:57:19that most people thought he was a pot owner,

00:57:22you know what I mean?

00:57:24And he was-

00:57:26And he was already in probably his, what, his 30s,

00:57:29I would say, at least, when he started wrestling.

00:57:31Yeah, mid-30s, mid-30s, you know what I mean?

00:57:33And for all-

00:57:36Maybe that was better,

00:57:37maybe because he hadn't grown up in the business,

00:57:39and he was told as a grown adult,

00:57:41here, call this legitimately,

00:57:44we're trying to give the illusion

00:57:45that this is completely straight,

00:57:47and because he had the vocabulary

00:57:48and the broadcasting ability,

00:57:50he was able to then study it and do it the right way

00:57:53instead of coming in with a preconceived notion.

00:57:55You know, I never thought of it that way, Jimmy,

00:57:57but that does make a lot of sense.

00:57:59Because now, it's the same thing

00:58:00as trying to teach the wrestlers these days.

00:58:02When you broke in the business 30 years ago or 40 years ago,

00:58:06you knew absolutely nothing about the way anything worked.

00:58:08Right.

00:58:09So when they would teach you,

00:58:10you were learning it from scratch.

00:58:12Now, you can't train a wrestler anymore,

00:58:15you can't smarten them up

00:58:15because as soon as they get on the internet,

00:58:17they're smart to everything,

00:58:18and they think they know exactly what's going on,

00:58:21and it's harder to unlearn something

00:58:24and learn it the right way

00:58:25than it is to learn it from scratch.

00:58:27Yeah, you're absolutely right.

00:58:28And you know, you look back at Gordon

00:58:31and all those characters that were there,

00:58:34I mean, Curtis, Lewin, myself, Abby, Brody, Hanson,

00:58:41I mean, we could go down the list, The Sheik.

00:58:44He was in an invisible shield,

00:58:47surrounded by an invisible shield.

00:58:49You couldn't touch him.

00:58:52You were gonna lose your job if you went.

00:58:54Yeah, let me tell you something.

00:58:56Yeah, I mean, Eddie had it that,

00:59:00I asked Eddie about that one time.

00:59:02He said, you ever see a football player come up

00:59:05and grab Shankle, what was his name?

00:59:09Oh, Chris Shankle.

00:59:10Chris Shankle.

00:59:11Yeah, he said, do you ever see that happen?

00:59:13I said, no.

00:59:13He said, well, we're not gonna see it happen here either.

00:59:15Because let's face it, you know, it's like anything else.

00:59:20Coming up with an idea is very hard every week, you know,

00:59:24and then you start to take the path of least resistance,

00:59:28right, let's grab the announcer.

00:59:30That worked the first seven times we did it,

00:59:33and oh, nobody's ever done this before.

00:59:35Well, there's probably a reason

00:59:36why nobody's ever done that before.

00:59:38It won't be good for you in the long run.

00:59:40I love the TV that they did at the office

00:59:43because it was kind of like an early OVW,

00:59:45and you could see when some of the guys

00:59:46got up on the top rope,

00:59:48there was that beam running across, right?

00:59:50Okay, we gotta watch out for that.

00:59:52But because there was no big budget

00:59:54wrestling programs at the time, it worked.

00:59:57And the matches were so good,

00:59:59and the people were screaming and yelling.

01:00:03And the talent, once again, just from the 60s and 70s,

01:00:07but it was a who's who of Florida

01:00:08because even if it wasn't the highest paying territory

01:00:12in the business, it was Florida.

01:00:14It was short trips, and you got a chance

01:00:15to work for a genius and be figured in,

01:00:18and if Eddie Graham wanted you to get over,

01:00:20as we'll talk about, you could go anywhere.

01:00:22But in the 60s alone, the titles,

01:00:25the singles title, Boris Malenko, Hiro Matsuda,

01:00:29Bob Wharton Sr., Cowboy Bob Ellis, Tarzan Tyler,

01:00:33Jack Briscoe, Wahoo McDaniel, and Johnny Valentine.

01:00:36Those guys built the Florida territory.

01:00:39On the tag team side, the Von Brauners.

01:00:42Don Curtis and Mark Lewin, Skull Murphy and Brute Bernard,

01:00:44Eddie Graham and Sam Steamboat, and the Infernos,

01:00:48who were hot all over the South.

01:00:51That's an incredible array of talent

01:00:53if you really wanna concentrate on in-ring work.

01:00:57And if you really wanna concentrate on guys

01:01:00that knew how to work programs,

01:01:02knew how to cut promos and draw money,

01:01:04that's a great way to establish a territory.

01:01:07But almost everybody, at one time or another,

01:01:10came through Florida, right?

01:01:11You had to.

01:01:12You had to.

01:01:13I've got a program at home, the second match on the card

01:01:15is Boris Malenko versus Carl Gotch.

01:01:19And I wonder, hopefully everybody

01:01:22was in a good mood that day.

01:01:24Then we go to the 70s, and you can talk

01:01:26about some of these guys,

01:01:27because you were in the ring with every single one of them,

01:01:28but look at this talent in one state territory.

01:01:32Terry Funk, Dick Murdoch, Bobby Shane,

01:01:34Tim Mr. Wrestling Woods, Dusty Rhodes,

01:01:36Joe LaDuke, Cowboy Bill Watts,

01:01:38Harley Race, the Mongolian Stomper,

01:01:40superstar Billy Graham, Ivan Kolov, Dick Slater,

01:01:43team of Rhodes and Murdoch,

01:01:45the Briscoes and the Funks as a team,

01:01:46Mike Graham and Kevin Sullivan,

01:01:48Mike Graham and Steve Kern,

01:01:50the incredible talent.

01:01:53Yeah, and the thing was,

01:01:58you know, I was talking to somebody the other day,

01:02:02and they talked about back in the heyday of the 90s,

01:02:08the guys didn't get it,

01:02:10there was a symbiotic relationship,

01:02:12like the guys that were working underneath

01:02:14thinking they should be working on top,

01:02:16when these guys on top are making three million bucks

01:02:18a year, and if you were in Turner,

01:02:21if you sat them down, the North Tower's gonna call you

01:02:24and say, what do you got this guy in the second match for?

01:02:26They don't care if he can't work, right?

01:02:29So in Florida, there was a symbiotic relationship

01:02:32with the people, with the guys.

01:02:35Everybody knew, because Eddie had laid it out,

01:02:39okay, if Jack was going to wrestle Tim Woods,

01:02:46that night was a wrestling night.

01:02:49We put away any over-the-top violence, okay?

01:02:56But if Terry Funk and Jack wrestled,

01:02:59they were gonna have a violent match at the end,

01:03:02you know, Terry's gonna hit him with a branding iron

01:03:04or a dead chicken or something, right?

01:03:06Or a toilet seat.

01:03:08But you couldn't do anything on the floor that night,

01:03:11you know what I mean?

01:03:12Everybody was accountable for every time

01:03:15they got in the ring.

01:03:16You couldn't do anything on the floor,

01:03:17because first thing that a Funk was gonna do

01:03:18was throw you out of the ring.

01:03:19As Jerry Lawler told me one time,

01:03:21I worked with Dory Funk and Terry Funk,

01:03:22and I've never had anybody throw me out of the ring.

01:03:23They just, one side, and you'd get in

01:03:25and they'd throw him out the other side.

01:03:26So that you knew, so you would build your card

01:03:29to have none of what they were gonna get

01:03:31in the main events, so they'd wait for it

01:03:32and they'd see it.

01:03:33And Jimmy, again, I'm using the word accountable.

01:03:36He put it down that if you can't figure this out

01:03:40after I've told you, you're not here,

01:03:42you know what I mean?

01:03:43He just had a way.

01:03:45And after a while, you kinda knew

01:03:52that most of these guys here that you've mentioned, right,

01:03:56are going on, they're gonna use Florida,

01:03:59they're gonna produce unbelievable matches,

01:04:01but the Funks are going back to Amarillo,

01:04:04Jack is gonna be the world champion,

01:04:09Tim's gonna end up going back to Atlanta for Barnett,

01:04:13so you better get your ass ready

01:04:15because you're coming off the bench, you know what I mean?

01:04:18And if you're young and energetic

01:04:21and you follow this thing, you knew it was gonna be your turn

01:04:26so you didn't get frustrated where you're saying,

01:04:30these guys are never gonna let me get a shot at it,

01:04:33you know what I mean?

01:04:35He popularized, at least in Florida, the package show,

01:04:38as Watts would call it, which now would be a pay-per-view

01:04:41because it was the big show,

01:04:45Florida towns were smaller in terms of population

01:04:47and they were there every week,

01:04:49so instead of just relying on one main event,

01:04:51there'd be one clear main event,

01:04:52here's what's supposed to draw the money,

01:04:54whether it's Dusty and Pac Song

01:04:55or Brisco and Funk or whatever,

01:04:57but up and down the show,

01:04:59there would be different types of matches

01:05:01with different stipulations for different titles

01:05:05or different rewards for the winner

01:05:07and everybody had a little issue

01:05:08because that way, that was the package show

01:05:12and the big ones started becoming the super cards

01:05:15where they'd open up the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg

01:05:17and they had 12,000 seats to fill in a weekly town

01:05:20so they had to really jack it up a little bit,

01:05:24but Watts took that philosophy and went to the Superdome

01:05:27and Dusty took it and made Starcade

01:05:29and now it'd be called a pay-per-view

01:05:31but that didn't exist back in those days,

01:05:33but when you talk about famous angles,

01:05:36in Florida, the first one that everybody talks about

01:05:39that got the whole thing off the ground

01:05:41was Eddie Graham, Boris Malenko and the False Teeth.

01:05:44What did you hear about that?

01:05:45Because that was the mid-60s,

01:05:46you obviously weren't around then.

01:05:48Was that like one of those things,

01:05:49like in Louisville, everybody talks about

01:05:50the scaffold match with Jerry Jarrett and Don Green

01:05:52even though they were five years old when it happened?

01:05:55If everybody was there in Louisville

01:05:56that claims to have been there,

01:05:58it would have sold out Freedom Hall, 20,000 seats,

01:06:00but it's legendary.

01:06:01Everybody remembers Eddie Graham on television

01:06:05stomping Boris Malenko's False Teeth

01:06:07and they sold out, I guess,

01:06:08for weeks and weeks and weeks afterwards,

01:06:10but were they still talking about it then?

01:06:12Yeah, I mean, I wasn't even in the business

01:06:15when they did that and then I came in

01:06:17and I met Boris for the first time

01:06:20and then I heard about it and like you said,

01:06:22everywhere I went, now Boris was a baby face,

01:06:26everybody would say to me,

01:06:27oh, I used to hate that Malenko.

01:06:29I really liked it when Eddie brushed his teeth

01:06:32and like you said, here's an eight-year-old kid

01:06:34telling me this, you know?

01:06:35He couldn't have possibly seen it, so.

01:06:38Yeah, it sounds so hokey, really,

01:06:40okay, the baby face stomped the heel's false teeth,

01:06:43but the way that they did it,

01:06:45and then Malenko crusaded trying to get Graham

01:06:48to pay for the teeth and you know,

01:06:51trying to get him suspended or whatever,

01:06:53but they made it seem legitimate

01:06:56and think about, if somebody really did

01:06:59knock your false teeth out of your mouth

01:07:01and stomp on him, you'd probably be mad,

01:07:02that'd be a reason to fight,

01:07:04but the next thing that everybody remembers

01:07:08or thinks of Florida about,

01:07:09it was probably a little more serious,

01:07:11that was, they took it all over the country,

01:07:14but Jack Briscoe and Dory Funk Jr.,

01:07:16it was for 1969 to 73,

01:07:20it was the flare and steamboat of that time,

01:07:22it was the gold standard in the ring,

01:07:24the two best in the world at what they did,

01:07:27was Eddie Graham,

01:07:29because it's no secret that the Briscoe family

01:07:32and the Funk family had some enmity,

01:07:35was the word, there was a little tension there,

01:07:38is there heat?

01:07:40I can feel it, it's not scalding,

01:07:42but it's there, Austin Idol.

01:07:45Eddie Graham, Jack Briscoe was his protege,

01:07:48at the same time, Dory Funk Jr. and Terry Funk

01:07:51were like extended members of the family

01:07:53because he had worked for their father

01:07:55and their father had taught him,

01:07:56so he was the one that could get in there

01:07:58and get the best out of both of them,

01:08:00and still to this day,

01:08:02I guess that the one hour show,

01:08:03which still exists on tape,

01:08:05I've got a copy of Jack and Dory

01:08:08sitting down with Eddie Graham and Gordon Soley

01:08:11and discussing their one hour draw in St. Petersburg,

01:08:14you watch that and you think,

01:08:17this was a legitimate sporting contest

01:08:19between two wrestlers that just happened

01:08:21to be professionals instead of amateurs

01:08:23and they were serious about it.

01:08:24And they drew money in every NWA territory

01:08:27in the country, just by coming in cold sometimes,

01:08:30whether it be St. Louis or whatever,

01:08:31places they didn't even work,

01:08:33main event, boom, for the title, Briscoe Funk,

01:08:35and they drew money, that was Eddie Graham's,

01:08:39even though he didn't wrestle like that as a wrestler,

01:08:41and I'm droning on here now,

01:08:43he was a brawler, he was a fighter,

01:08:44threw the great right punch,

01:08:45but he loved that kind of wrestling

01:08:47and that's what he presented really the best, wasn't it?

01:08:50Yeah, absolutely, and when you say,

01:08:54when you just said that to me,

01:08:56Briscoe and Funk, it's Ali and Frazier.

01:08:59Yeah.

01:09:00They both needed each other, you know what I mean?

01:09:02And the interesting thing about that thing you saw,

01:09:05the hour of Broadway,

01:09:07they came back two months later and went 90 minutes.

01:09:11And in Florida, you didn't have to stay

01:09:16and watch the matches,

01:09:18but when Briscoe and Funk came in,

01:09:20everybody stayed, you know what I mean?

01:09:22And it was the most legitimate feel

01:09:27I ever saw in my life to any wrestling match.

01:09:32And I'm not diminishing Steamboat and Flair at all,

01:09:38but it was a different thing.

01:09:40You know, you still had Rick being Rick,

01:09:44this was an athletic contest between Florida

01:09:49and Texas.

01:09:50And also, to be fair to both Ricks,

01:09:54Flair and Steamboat,

01:09:55neither one of them were an NCAA wrestling champion,

01:09:57so Briscoe had a little leg up

01:09:59in working a worked legitimate contest

01:10:03and Dory, because of his training and his father and et cetera,

01:10:08you know, he was one of the guys that could hang.

01:10:10Well, I'm sure you know this, Jimmy,

01:10:11they used to, this was way ahead of its time, okay?

01:10:17And I used to think,

01:10:20where are they gonna take this, you know?

01:10:22And they kind of didn't go anywhere,

01:10:24but they would have the Funks against the Briscoes

01:10:28in Florida in a tag match, right?

01:10:31And they would send that tape back

01:10:34and they would re-audio the tape.

01:10:37So the Funks were baby faces in Amarillo.

01:10:40In Amarillo, yeah.

01:10:41And they would send it back the other way.

01:10:44Then they would do it in Amarillo

01:10:45and send it back with the, you know, Funks were heels.

01:10:49And they did a thing one time that was,

01:10:53you know, we talked about subtle things.

01:10:56Do you remember the angle

01:10:57where the father mistakenly hit the bell?

01:11:01Yes, yes, but what were the details?

01:11:03What were the details?

01:11:04The thing was, it was for Dory's belt.

01:11:07Yeah.

01:11:08And Jack went in for the figure four,

01:11:11but it was about 58 minutes.

01:11:14And, you know, supposedly seniors getting excited

01:11:17and excited and excited.

01:11:18And he goes over, by mistake, he hits the big gong, right?

01:11:22Like the gong says, gong.

01:11:24Referee calls it off, right?

01:11:26And then they had the guy make him leave,

01:11:29Stanley Blackburn, right?

01:11:31Yeah.

01:11:32He's saying, no, no, no.

01:11:33There's two minutes left.

01:11:34There's two minutes left.

01:11:35Junior rolls out of the ring, limping around.

01:11:37And Dory Cena was like, oh, I didn't mean to hit that.

01:11:39And I mean, that little thing, you know,

01:11:42then Eddie came, made a promo.

01:11:45And they had a thing from a telegram,

01:11:47you know, back in those days, telegrams were big.

01:11:49Sam Mushnick, we're looking into this.

01:11:52We're gonna ban Funk Sr. from ever being at ringside

01:11:56in any arena in the United States.

01:11:59And in fact, next week, we've banned Terry Funk

01:12:04for Russ being on a card with Briscoe and Funk, right?

01:12:08I mean, Dory and Jack.

01:12:11So right away, you're thinking,

01:12:12oh, the belt's gonna change now.

01:12:14They're not in here, right?

01:12:15And that's how they got into the 60 minutes.

01:12:18Well, and then, to be honest, nobody knows yet.

01:12:21And Eddie Graham was in the middle of that

01:12:23when Dory was supposed to drop the belt to Jack.

01:12:27And then word came from Texas that Dory had a truck wreck

01:12:32on the ranch, herding some cattle, turned over in a gully,

01:12:35and they sent pictures of him in the hospital,

01:12:38in the sling, et cetera.

01:12:40That's kind of what started the issue with the Briscoe family

01:12:42because he don't want to put me over.

01:12:45And then, just to make sure,

01:12:46when they got Dory back in the ring,

01:12:48that's why it went from Dory to Harley

01:12:49and then Harley to Jack.

01:12:52Eddie had to be in the middle of that,

01:12:54and there's Jack as his hometown boy,

01:12:56his homemade protege.

01:12:59He was bullshit.

01:13:00He was absolutely bullshit.

01:13:03And I can remember him saying,

01:13:06again, this is when I was really close to him,

01:13:10I heard him yelling, and very seldom did Eddie yell.

01:13:14I heard him yelling at the phone to Muslin,

01:13:17this is bullshit.

01:13:19This is bullshit.

01:13:21And he said to him,

01:13:22everybody thinks it was because

01:13:27old man Funk didn't want Dory to lose to a baby face.

01:13:31You know that, right?

01:13:32That's what everybody thinks.

01:13:33It had to be a heel, right?

01:13:36That was the story.

01:13:37It had to be a heel.

01:13:38He didn't want to lose to,

01:13:39that he wasn't the best wrestler, okay?

01:13:43But there's a little bit more to this story.

01:13:46And you'll be the guy to find out.

01:13:49You know, at that time,

01:13:50they started booking opposition in Japan, the Funks.

01:13:55Remember?

01:13:57That's when they went to New Japan.

01:14:00That's right, because-

01:14:01So here's what they wanted to do.

01:14:03They wanted to send Dory over there to defend the belt

01:14:08because they wanted to have a tournament for the belt.

01:14:11You remember that?

01:14:12They were going to have a tournament?

01:14:13Yes.

01:14:14They were going to have a tournament,

01:14:15and Holly was going to win,

01:14:16or Jack was going to win, it didn't matter.

01:14:18Or for old man Funk,

01:14:19whoever won the tournament was champion.

01:14:21But Junior was going to go over there

01:14:24as the undefeated NWA champion

01:14:27and give them credibility,

01:14:29even though at that time,

01:14:32Inoki wasn't in.

01:14:34And that's where he ended up going,

01:14:36because didn't they had an hour draw,

01:14:38Dory and Inoki at some point, 73 or whatever,

01:14:41and that's on one of those compilation tapes.

01:14:43Yeah, so there was more to it than just that.

01:14:46And this was like-

01:14:47And you know that Eddie Graham

01:14:50would have not let anything happen

01:14:52to the NWA relationship with Giant Baba.

01:14:54Right.

01:14:55So, okay.

01:14:56And that's where I think that sometimes

01:15:02there's always more to the story,

01:15:04like Paul Harvey, the rest of the story.

01:15:06It wasn't just losing in the tournament.

01:15:09Because if you look at it, really,

01:15:11if you look at it on paper,

01:15:13what a house you draw, right?

01:15:18One night tournament with Briscoe, Terry, Harley,

01:15:23you know, you could throw anybody in there

01:15:26at that time too.

01:15:27Well, you know, Kuniski, Tez could come out every time.

01:15:30You could throw, you're going to sell out.

01:15:33It wasn't so much that, I don't think that Eddie saw.

01:15:37He saw them taking the belt that Jack's going to have,

01:15:42even though it isn't around his waist.

01:15:44And disrupting the lineage.

01:15:44Yeah, and it wasn't around his waist,

01:15:47but he's the undefeated NWA champion.

01:15:50Now, you're giving legitimacy to Inoki.

01:15:53Now Bob is going to be pissed, right?

01:15:55They're trying to, you know, so.

01:15:58It was the following year.

01:16:00I get that was 73 title changes.

01:16:02So 74, if you got to talk about one Florida angle.

01:16:05Right.

01:16:06It's the American dream.

01:16:07It's Dusty, Gary Hart, Pac Song,

01:16:09which started in an angle with Jack Briscoe.

01:16:13And I'm going to start it and let you take it from there.

01:16:14Cause you were there, but wasn't it the situation

01:16:17where Eddie, they always say, let the people call it.

01:16:22Let the people want to be a guy to turn baby face

01:16:25or want something to happen before you do it and then do it.

01:16:28Well, Eddie was so smart that he was able to see Dusty

01:16:31and see the charisma he had and put him in a position

01:16:35where the people on their own would start calling for it.

01:16:37And then he gave them what he,

01:16:38like the finish earlier, right?

01:16:40He gave them his finish and it was their own idea.

01:16:42It was the people's idea for Dusty Rhodes to be a baby face

01:16:46because he led them down that path.

01:16:47And part of it was Dusty able to last with Jack Briscoe.

01:16:51Right.

01:16:52And then Gary Hart's got upset about it.

01:16:55And how did they go into the thing from there?

01:16:56And what do you remember about it?

01:16:58Okay.

01:16:59Now, the only time I've ever, it was not like Dusty's,

01:17:04but you remember when Steiner turned baby face,

01:17:07the people wanted him to be baby face.

01:17:09Okay.

01:17:10It got to be that everything that Eddie orchestrated was,

01:17:14like you said, the people demanding him to be baby face.

01:17:17I'd never seen anything like it in my life.

01:17:19But.

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