The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling (5 page)

When it was my time to enter the show, Ole made it very clear he wanted me to be vicious as hell: “I want you to go out there and kick the shit out of this guy tonight.”

That sounded good to me.

My first match was with a guy named Randy Barber. Randy was a jobber
⁵
who was short, pale, middle-aged and looked as if he had no business in a ring of any kind. He wasn’t intimidating in the least but was a nice enough guy. I felt bad about what Ole wanted me to do to him. I don’t remember much about that first experience against Randy other than the audience’s reaction to me and how much of a beating I dished out.

Ole and I hadn’t discussed anything about how the match would go. “What’s the point?” he’d said. “You’re going to forget it all the second you get in front of the audience.” He was right.

That night is like a series of quick snapshots in my mind, but I can recall walking up to the interview podium across from the ring. In those days, I wasn’t allowed to say a word. When I went up to the host, Gordon Solie, for my prematch interview, Gordon said, “Any words from the Road Warrior before the match starts?”

I didn’t answer. I stared at him through the sunglasses.

Without missing a beat, the bewildered Solie looked right at the camera and said, “Let’s go to the action in the ring.”

That kind of noninteraction got a hot response from the little studio crowd, which was comprised mostly of young inner-city kids. They booed me incessantly from beginning to finish. I loved it. My big, mean attitude shined right through, which was the plan from the get-go.

When the bell rang, I quickly charged at Randy, grabbed him by the throat, and pushed him into the corner. As I was choking him, I pushed back his head and then forearm smashed him so hard his chest practically caved in. Poor Randy literally didn’t know what hit him. I let him go, and he came groggily walking back. I grabbed him and gave him a giant knee smash to the head for the finish. The match was over almost as soon as it had started, but there it was, my big debut.

As the match ended, all the kids were letting me have it with boos and jeers, so I flipped them all the middle finger. I had so much adrenaline running I didn’t know what I was doing. Oops. Thankfully, Ole said they would edit it out of the tape for the evening broadcast.

I didn’t even get a chance to see Rood’s match. Then, for whatever reason, Ole sent Rood up to Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling (MCW) based out of Charlotte, North Carolina. It was like that in the wrestling business, though. One minute someone would be right next to you, and the next he was gone without a trace. I would see Rood again very soon, though.

Little did I realize that while my big opportunity was unfolding, a power struggle was also developing between Ole and a guy named Jim Barnett over GCW. All I knew was that Barnett was a big player in the business and was another stockholder of the company. It was all a big mess I absolutely had no understanding of. Above that, I didn’t care as long as I had a job and kept working. Lawsuits were exchanged, and I remember the constant threat of Barnett trying to shut GCW events down.

As a result of Ole’s troubles with Barnett, Ole told me I was going to be shipped off. “Hey, kid. There’s a lot of crap going on down here. I need to get rid of you for a couple of months. You’ll go up and work at Mid-Atlantic in Charlotte. When this storm blows over, I’ll send for you.”

I didn’t know what to think.

Ole was pretty adamant that he had to shut down operations for a short period and fight to stay in business. “I can either lie down or die trying,” he said, raising his hands, “and I ain’t lying down.”

When Ole told me I was going up to MCW in the Carolinas, I wasn’t sure. It sounded to me like going from the big time in Atlanta to some little hillbilly setup in the middle of the sticks in North Carolina. Ole said promoter Jim Crockett would take care of me, but I didn’t know.

I called Rood, who’d been up there for a couple of weeks and knew the lay of the land. When I told him my concerns, he said, “No, man, you’ve got it wrong. This territory’s a hotbed, man. Mid-Atlantic is the headquarters for the whole NWA. Crockett has a good thing here.”

Rood sold me.

Jim Crockett Promotions out of Charlotte, North Carolina, owned and operated the MCW territory of the NWA. Jim Crockett Sr. had been promoting wrestling, concerts, and minor league baseball since the ’30s and over time built up a local empire. In 1973, when Jim Crockett Sr. passed away, his son Jim Crocket Jr. took the lead.

As soon as I arrived in Charlotte, I met up with Rood and got a small room at this dive motel near the airport. Catching up with him was fun and made me feel at home.

A lot of the other guys stayed there, too. Rood introduced me to Joe LeDuc, a true veteran of the business and a great guy. Joe gave us rides all the time to the studio forty-five minutes away where MCW taped their TV programs. If it weren’t for Joe, I don’t know what we would’ve done.

When the time came for my first match, I was surprised and a little relieved to be booked with Rood. At least I knew his style from our days at Eddie’s school. His in-ring ability was the same as mine at that point: horrible.

We were the second match on the card in front of a packed house at the Fayetteville Civic Center. We were told to go for a twenty-minute Broadway. That meant we’d have to wrestle to a time limit draw of twenty minutes. I got nervous. Twenty minutes is a long time for a match, let alone a match between two rookies.

Rood and I had no idea what to do. We thought we could randomly throw on moves we’d seen the other guys do in their matches. Man, were we wrong.

Five minutes into the match, Rood threw on a figure-four leg-lock, and referee Tommy Young went nuts on us. “You can’t do that. That’s Ric Flair’s finishing move.”

When we got up, I grabbed Rood and put him in a massive bear hug.

“No, no, no. That’s Joe LeDuc’s finish.”

Great. Now what? Rood’s and my repertoire consisted of nothing more than running tackles, hip tosses, and body slams, for the most part. We went out there with nothing to work with.

I know the guys were watching us in the back getting blown up, out of breath, and scrambling aimlessly in the ring and laughing their asses off. During the match, you could see all of their heads poking through the curtain in the back so they could catch a glimpse of us. Lord knows none of them ever tried to show us anything. Back in those days, there was very little guidance for new guys. Most of the established guys were too busy worrying about their t in the company to worry about us.

When it was over, Rood and I went to the back and laughed it off as a learning experience.

Soon after, Rood got injured and went back to Minnesota to rest up.

Another important lesson I came to learn during this time was that it didn’t matter how big and strong I was. Here I was feeling and looking like a monster, and yet I was wrestling nine times a week for about $150. What did matter was how over with the crowd you were. The more over you were, the more money you made. It was that simple.

I might’ve been getting a little impatient at my underpaid jobber status, but I knew it was my time to pay dues. Eventually I started getting more comfortable in the ring and occasionally one of the top guys—like Ric Flair, Jerry Brisco, or Ricky Steamboat—would let me get a little offense in, which helped give me some credibility.

I remember when Ric Flair, the NWA World Heavyweight champion, let me body slam him on TV. We locked up early in the match, and Ric whispered, “Kick me in the stomach and slam me.” So I did.
Pow!
Then I scooped him up and slammed him down hard. It was a big thrill, even if short lived.

There’s no question that each time I had a match with those guys I learned a little more, but my biggest lesson came at the hands of an old-time favorite of the Mid-Atlantic region, Johnny Weaver. Weaver had been around since the ’60s and had won single and tag team titles in Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina.

By the time I met up with him in the ring that night, he was pushing fifty years old. I was beating the crap out of him the whole time, and all of a sudden he started shaking his left arm like he was having a seizure. You see, Johnny used to do this thing when he made a comeback during a match. He’d signal to the audience by raising one of his arms straight up, pointing his first two fingers in the air, shaking wildly.

The fans went berserk as Johnny started making his comeback with a flurry of punches to my head. Then he whipped me into the ropes and sank into a sleeper hold. As I was going out, the ref called for the bell, which surprised me.

I mean, I knew from the beginning Johnny was going to win, but I didn’t know it was going to be with a sleeper hold. I felt humiliated. I wondered how the crowd could ever believe that a skinny old man like Johnny Weaver could beat my ass, let alone with a sleeper.

I walked to the back, and there was Sgt. Slaughter and Don Kernodle laughing their heads off at me. Slaughter, or “Sarge” as I called him, was always someone I could approach.

“Man, there ain’t nobody in the world who’d believe Johnny Weaver could put me to sleep,” I said.

Sarge and Kernodle looked at each other and burst into laughter again. “Brother,” Sarge said, “you got your next lesson. This business is a total work. Check your concept of reality at the door. Anything can happen and usually does.”

Something else I had to grow accustomed to was the traveling, the grueling hours spent driving from town to town in cramped rental cars and staying in roadside motels. This was actually the way most of my time was spent, and there were some memorable experiences to say the least.

Once we were staying at some dump motel in Richmond, Virginia, and a bunch of us were having a few beers and unwinding. Roddy Piper thought he’d break me in a little bit and give me some words of advice.

“C’mere, kid,” Roddy said. Then he told the waitress, “Gimme two glasses and a bottle of Jack Daniel’s for my friend and me.”

I didn’t know Roddy from a hole in the wall, but he was a top guy in the company. If he wanted to be generous with drinks, I’d let him. He was sucking that Jack down with beer chasers like it was the last beverage on earth, and he pushed a shot of whiskey my way.

Personally, I always thought whiskey tasted like piss, but out of respect for Roddy, I pounded it down and decided to pick his brain a little. “How do you do it out there?”

Piper was always great in the ring and seemed so relaxed. He looked at me and said, “It’s just experience, kid. Experience.”

Then I asked him a funny one. “Do you think I could ever make it to your level?”

He leaned back and smiled. “I hope you do well, kid, but it’s doubtful you’ll ever make it in this business.”

Talk about a deflation! I was so pissed that I went back to my room, lay down on the bed, and cursed Roddy Piper’s name.
Old bastard
, I thought.
We’ll see who makes it
.

When I woke up in the morning, a bunch of wrestlers were running around saying something had happened to Mike Rotunda (WWF superstar Irwin R. Scheister, I.R.S.). I had no idea what the hell they were talking about until Sarge bumped into me and told me the story.

Apparently, Mike had been completely hammered the night before and decided to go skinny-dipping. In order to make it to the pool, you had to scale a chain-link fence. Mike made the initial climb over just fine and had his drunken swim. However, when he was making his return climb over, he caught his dick on a piece of the fence and peeled back all of the skin from top to bottom. Mike was so drunk he didn’t even realize it, staggered to his room, and passed out.

It wasn’t until the next morning, when Rotunda woke up and saw blood everywhere, that he discovered what had happened. As the story goes, Mike performed a little self-surgery and pulled the skin back into place and held it until he made it to the hospital. What a nightmare!

Eventually, the months of traveling up, down, and around Virginia, West Virginia, and North Carolina were wearing me down. With the pittance I was making, I could only afford a half bag of pretzel sticks and a gallon of milk during any given week. Fortunately there were those like Sarge who would treat me to Burger King once in a while so I could have a hamburger and fries. He also occasionally took me to shows in his big camouflaged limo, which was cool, but I was having real doubts about MCW. Contrary to Ole’s words, Crockett was not taking care of me at all.

My morale wasn’t the only thing shrinking. During those three months on the road, my weight dropped from about 275 pounds to 225 pounds. At night I stared at the ceiling and questioned every second of what I was doing. I also wondered how little Joey was doing at home.

While I was gone, Joey stayed mostly with Nancy, but my mom and dad brought him to their house for visits, too. I knew everyone in my family felt my attempt at wrestling was crazy, but I had to try it. I knew I could be a big earner for Joey if things worked out.

Right now, it wasn’t working for us. My frustration finally culminated into a meeting with Crockett. I went right into his office and explained my situation.

Crockett didn’t even blink when he told me there was nothing he could do. “This is the way the business works.” He said he was just doing Ole a favor until things cleared up in Georgia.

Well, I wasn’t waiting any longer. I’d had it. I decided to quit wrestling and go home for Christmas. I arrived back in Minnesota burnt out and with a bitter taste in my mouth. Reluctantly, I moved back in with my parents until I could get back on my feet. I imagined my father putting up job postings on the fridge again, and I shuddered. Feeling the pressure, I started doing any temporary work I could find to bring in some cash.

For a while I was loading boxes onto UPS tractor trailers from 11 p.m. to 6 a.m. Believe it or not, I even went back to my dead-end job and worked in what I called “the cave,” a dismal room where I had to assemble various high-tech machine parts. I wasn’t happy, but it was great to be back home and around Joey. Every time I looked into his eyes, though, I knew I had to get things seriously back into motion.