READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention”
Want to know something funny? When I decided we were going to move to San Francisco and Big Time Wrestling in 1965, I had no idea the city had a large and vibrant gay community. Louie and I were quick learners, however, and we enjoyed life in California for a long time. San Francisco is a fantastic city, one of my favorites in the whole world, and being gay was never an issue there . . . Now if I could just change the promoter’s mind . . .
My first match in the new territory was for a television taping in Fresno. Roy Shire, the promoter, was a former wrestler and he told me he’d pick me up and take me there himself. The very first thing he said to me was “I heard you’re different.”
“How so, Mr. Shire?”
“I heard you’re a queer.”
That’s it for me, I thought, I’m not going to be here long. “I will be honest with you, sir, I will work hard and I will never embarrass you. As for the rest, I prefer gay.”
“OK. But you look like shit. You should start working out.”
When I got home, I told Louie that Shire didn’t like gay people and that I wasn’t sure what the future held for us in the Bay area. And then I decided to start going to the gym — because I was definitely not going to embarrass him.
It’s funny how things work out. Louie and I ended up getting our first home in San Francisco. And I wound up making truly good money for the first time. We stayed there on and off for almost fourteen years. And I helped a homophobic promoter turn a healthy profit.
Despite his early prejudice, I learned the business side of wrestling from Roy Shire. He was one of the few true geniuses of the sport. Even if we had our differences at the end, I appreciated the opportunity to learn the psychology of wrestling from him.
My first match at the Cow Palace, the biggest arena in the territory, was against Red Bastien. He was a fantastic performer, who wrestled elsewhere full-time but lived in San Francisco. Every once in a while, he would come in to be with his family. We tore the house down; people were going banana when I won the match. When we got back to the dressing room, Bastien looked at Shire and said, “Holy shit, where the hell did you get this guy?”
That he said it in front of everybody in the dressing room was important. You can’t overestimate what it meant to have a respected veteran like Bastien say something like that. It wasn’t long before I was tag-teaming with Ray Stevens as part of the Blond Bombers. I got my hair dyed blond for the first time in San Francisco to fit better with Ray. We had an almost instant chemistry and we were recognized as one of the best tag teams in the business for a long time. Backstage the other wrestlers also loved us, because we were there to have fun. There was no politics and no bullshit with us. Ultimately, Ray was just like me, except he was crazy about women.
(I have a full chapter of Ray Stevens stories in Chapter Eight. Skip ahead if you wish. I will still be here when you return.)
(Hope you enjoyed my Ray Stevens stories; I just loved the man.)
Many Quebecers have had good wrestling careers in America, but most were also limited because of their inability to do a good interview in English. One Friday night when I first arrived in Portland, Don Owen told me to go to the balcony: I had five minutes to talk.
I think I said, “Me don’t speak English?”
He told me it didn’t matter, that I should just say whatever I could. I was terrible. I would say I was the best and I would fake jumping over the balcony. I would do anything to try to get a reaction. I would yell, half in French and half in English, until I finally got it. I hated cutting promos at first, because I sounded like an idiot most of the time. Each time I got a little better and by the time I made it to San Francisco, I’d started to get it. But I needed to be thrown out there to learn. Not a lot of what I did in San Francisco survives on video, but a fan used to record the audio from television, so I have a few of those recordings to help me remember the good old days.
The first time I ever watched wrestling on television in Montréal, the voice of the show was Michel Normandin. The program was promoted by Eddie Quinn. I saw a retiring Yvon Robert teach his heir apparent Johnny Rougeau the Japanese hammerlock. It’s funny which memories stick with you. There were a few more Quebecers on the tube: Ovila Asselin, Larry Moquin, Bob Langevin, and Omer Marchessault. Never in a million years did I imagine being on TV like them. It was always fun to have people from Québec come into the territory. I guess Maurice Vachon rubbed off on me the right way.
One of my favorite visitors from la belle province was midget star Sky Low Low. Crazy things happened when he was drunk, and we’d often play pranks on him when he went to the restroom. Stupid shit mostly: I would sit on his hat “by mistake” and then he would make a big scene. As always, it was all about having a big laugh. One time on the road, I went to his room late at night. When he opened the door, I pulled him out into the hall and locked him out of his room, buck-naked. As I fled the scene of the crime, I had to stop in the stairs because I was laughing so hard. When I got to the lobby, the clerk wanted to know what was going on. I told him to just wait — while I hid in the corner. Who exited the elevator? A naked Sky Low Low, acting like nothing was out of the ordinary.
Another time, Sky was drinking in the bar across the street and had passed out. Two cops came in who knew all the wrestlers. I asked them to play a prank on him. “Just tell him you are sending him to jail as you wake him up. Don’t worry, he will get angry, but that will be it, and it will be funny.” The joke turned bad, however, and Sky went berserk. I found it funnier that way, but the cops didn’t feel the same way.
Another time we were playing pool when I took some water from a fountain in the room. The next time I passed by Sky I faked a sneeze and threw that water on him. He chased me all around the bar with his pool cue.
This was our everyday life on the road: playing jokes and having fun. When I would ride in the car with Sky, I would always get him mad. He would yell and scream all the time. Man, what I put that poor guy through. There were no limits to what we would do to each other for a laugh on the road. I used to buy small padlocks and hook them behind a new guy’s license plate, so they would hear them clicking for hours before figuring out what was going on. It would drive them nut. I never pulled a joke to be mean, or to get someone in trouble. It was always done for everyone to have a good laugh.
When you drive all the time like that, or fly from city to city, you don’t really think about it. You just want to get to the next town. When you start looking back, all that travel doesn’t make much sense. I think that’s why I loved California, we were home almost every night. We could have a life and enjoy it. Some of the wrestlers liked getting booked in places like Hawaii for two or three months to get a vacation from the road. They didn’t make a lot of money but they were on the beach every day with their wives. That wasn’t for me. I did go there with Ray Stevens as part of the Blond Bombers, but we never stayed for more than two weeks at a time. Ray always made those trips memorable, one way or another.
The Cow Palace was a dangerous arena, and it was a long walk to the damn ring. The aisles were very narrow, with fans always almost touching us. Security guards wore riot gear and often swatted at fans with billy clubs. Back in the day, there were no barricades, and when you came down the aisle, people — even the women — would kick at you and spit on you. One night in San Francisco, a lady took her hatpin and stabbed me with it. It stayed stuck in my shoulder until I reached the dressing room. I was in pain and I was mad. It wasn’t a big injury, but I was so pissed. We had little patience with fans who would do something like that. We were always in danger; fans scratched my car on a regular basis and I had to get good at finding hidden or secret parking spots. Sometimes, driving on the highway, they would even throw beer bottles. They were trying to kill me.
In San Francisco, some fans discovered where I lived and threw rocks at my windows. It was serious in my day: bad guys today don’t know what real heat is. Heat is a business term, and it means how much people hate you. In my day, there was actually such a thing as too much heat.
In San Jose one night, I wasn’t taking any chances and I got to the show real early and parked my car three blocks away from the arena. No one saw me come in. But after the show, I still needed help to get out. I had heat like you would not believe — it was actually dangerous. People were waiting for us villains, and to get at me in particular.
That night I strategized my escape with one of the referees: “Here is my key; go out the front door and walk three blocks west and you will see my car. Then come by the building and pick me up. I will be in the lobby and I will look for you and jump in as soon as you are there. Then get us out fast.”
As soon as he showed up, I ran for the car like I was at the Olympics. But when I got there, the door was locked. I was pleading for him to open the damn door, but he couldn’t find the button. By the time he did, it was too late. I was already running down the street and the fans were already throwing rocks at me. I took refuge in a nearby hotel lobby of the Sainte Claire. They literally were throwing shit at me that day. Someone from the hotel had to call the police so I could leave. When WrestleMania 31 was on the West Coast in 2015, I went back to visit the same hotel, now the Westin San Jose, because it was near where we were staying and such an architectural treasure for the city.
Another time I was driving to a show in Eureka, California, in my brand-new Cadillac. I employed the same strategy and parked three blocks away. Only this time, I gave the ref the night off and had the police escort me back to my car after the show. When I got there, I had two flat tires and my Cadillac was all scratched up. I got pissed when things like that happened. The promoter would get us security sometimes, but would never pay the bill.
I would tell Roy that some of the stuff we did was creating too much heat for me. He would say, “Patterson, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” That was a big help. Thanks, Roy.
It’s unbelievable the lengths people would go to back in the late sixties. And when you think about it, everything we used to do for wrestling was stupid. We would defend the business to the point of getting in trouble with the law or, worse, putting our lives at risk. We’re lucky there was never a real tragedy — even though some wrestlers were stabbed with knives instead of hatpins. Actually, I was lucky it never escalated. We all had short tempers, though I kept mine in check most of the time.
One night in Sacramento, however, it wasn’t a fan I had trouble with. We were working with an athletic commission referee. Those guys never liked it when we tried to create heat with them. On this occasion, I was using the official, a former wrestler and boxer, to make the match more intense. It got out of hand. When the match was over, he was really furious. I was more than a little worried: he could be a tough son of a bitch and I was definitely not. I decided to stand my ground against him in the dressing room and prepared to fight. Because the truth was if he hit me first, I was done. Just as I thought, he came at me. I welcomed him with a chair shot to the head and split him wide open. At that point, the other wrestlers came in to pull us apart. When we cooled down, we both apologized. That’s the kind of stuff that sometimes happened. It was my only dressing room fight, and I’m glad it was. I’m not a fighter, but we all had to be able to defend ourselves in certain situations.
I was lucky and I was careful; I didn’t do stupid things like that too often. Still, San Francisco was the one place where I became so hated that it became dangerous for me outside of wrestling. When I finally became a good guy — a babyface — it all went away. (I will get to that later; don’t worry.)
In 1969, while I was still working in San Francisco, I was sent to Amarillo for a few months. I had a good time there, too. Roy was good friends with the Funk family, who owned the territory. He wanted me to go there for four months to learn something new. I had a blast in Texas: the Funk brothers, Terry and Dory, are great guys. (The whole family is crazy, just like me.)
Though I was in Texas again, it definitely was not the same territory I’d worked during my first visit. This Texas experience felt more like a vacation. The drawback was still the long ride between towns, almost 300 miles between each venue. Louie traveled with me on these road trips, but it wasn’t much better for him than during our first stay in Texas. Still, while we were in Amarillo, Louie went to barber school. Later on, when we were back in San Francisco, Louie had no problem taking the course to get his California barber’s license.
It was also in Amarillo where, one night, I was the last one out of the building and I found a dog. It was a dark and cold evening, as a night in Texas can be at the wrong time of year. So there I was face-to-face with this nice little puppy, and it was shaking, and there was nobody for miles around. I felt bad for the poor thing and I put it in my car to bring it home. Right away, Louie said, “You’re not keeping the dog.”
“No, no, you’re right. I’ll get rid of it. Don’t worry.”
Louie had to leave early for barber school the next day. I was still sleeping and I could hear the dog crying. I rolled over onto my other side and it was all wet. The little bastard had shit my bed, and I was rolling in it. This was the end for this particular puppy and me. I gave it to somebody the same day. Much later, Louie and I finally had dogs in San Francisco. But at that time there was enough shit in the wrestling business — I didn’t need to willingly roll into more in my own bed.
Life on the road was such that you’d look for little distractions just to keep yourself entertained. In Odessa, Texas, in the middle of nowhere, the wrestlers always stayed at the same hotel. We spent the day by the pool, wrestled at night, and then we’d move on to the next town the following day. Why that particular place? There was a local couple who used to invite wrestlers to participate in some special “after dark activities.” The husband liked to watch while she did her thing with the wrestlers. They invited me to be a part of the action on a regular basis, but I would politely turn them down. Still, they liked me. They would bring food and beer, so we socialized quite a bit. There is nothing like offering something free if you want to interact with a wrestler. At the time, there was this wrestler from Mexico with us; he was a real nice guy and he had the hots for the woman. One day, he asked me to go with him so that he might have a chance to be intimate with her. Always there for my fellow wrestler, I told him that I would go, but that I would only watch with the husband.
When the time came, my friend was really putting in the effort; her head was off the bed and there was a good risk they might actually fall off. I decided to get up and “help” a little, making sure she would not fall off. So I am face-to-face with him and we are both doing our thing with her, and I see he is about to finish as he is moaning and screaming. I brushed his hair back and said, “Give me a kiss.”
He stopped everything right there. He was so mad; he wanted to kill me for ruining the mood. Me, I was laughing. If I was going to help, I deserved at least a good laugh for my effort. I was not sexually attracted to women, but life is so short you might as well try everything when you have the chance. (There’s more on that in Chapter Eight, and if you have not read that Ray Stevens chapter yet, you once again have my permission to go do so. The rest of this chapter will still be here when you’re done.)
(Back already? Good, let’s continue.)
In Amarillo, I wrestled against the promoter Dory Funk Sr. It was such an important match: heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis was booked as the special guest referee. Let me tell you, I would never want to take a punch from that man, because if I had, my head would have fallen off my shoulders. He had the biggest wrists and hands I had ever seen. I learned a lot during my time in Texas, but after four months, I was ready to go back to California.
San Francisco is still one of my top places in the world, and if I have a favorite anything, there is a good chance you will find it in that city. I learned so much and truly enjoyed my life with Louie in the Bay area. I discovered many great restaurants and so much more of the finer things in life there. I was enjoying life to the fullest, and I was also becoming a star and reaching unbelievable success in my chosen profession.
Louie had opened up a barbershop. One day, there was a party at Roy Shire’s house and he told me to ask Louie to bring his scissors so he could get a haircut. I told Roy to talk with Louie directly. So Roy called and asked him, but Louie didn’t want to work at a party, so he told him to come by the barbershop instead. Roy was mad, saying that my damn friend Louie was a no-good son of a bitch. And do you know what the old man did? It took a month, but he finally wound up going to the barbershop. Louie told him his hair looked awful and he gave him a great haircut. Roy went back every month after that. He even gave him a good tip — and let me tell you, Roy was very tight with his money. Even Louie would tease him, saying that it must have really hurt Roy to give such a good tip. Louie was like that: he would never bullshit you; you’d get an honest opinion every time. That’s why everyone loved him.
One thing you need to know about the way Roy Shire ran Big Time Wrestling: Louie had to buy a ticket if he wanted to see the show at the Cow Palace. Even Ray Stevens’s wife had to buy a ticket. Shire would always say, “Does the mailman bring his wife to work? I’m running a business.” By making Roy come to his barbershop, Louie was just following the same business principle.
A funny story: Roy used to try to impress everyone he met by making everything he did or was involved in sound so much better than it really was. Louie went off on him the very first time they met. “Who the hell are you?” he said. It was an explosive beginning, but they had a great relationship after that. Even if neither one of them ever gave away anything for free.
Another time Roy was hosting a party, he wanted Louie to act as the bartender.
“Why don’t you ask Louie yourself?” I said.
When Roy finally reached out to him, Louie bluntly asked, “Are you inviting me to be at your party or do you want me there to just work as the bartender?”
“I need a bartender,” Roy said.
“Well, Roy, you’re gonna have to pay me then,” said Louie.
Roy was shocked whenever Louie talked to him like that. Promoters weren’t used to being told no. But at the end of the day, Roy paid him. While the party was going on, he asked Louie not to put so much alcohol in the drinks. Louie said, “I am the bartender. You need to be someplace else.”
It’s the truth, I swear; Louie was amazing. Why do you think I spent forty years of my life with him?
Moving to San Francisco made a huge difference to our lifestyle. I went from wrestling in front of 2,000 or 3,000 fans to performing in front of three, four, and often even five times as many people at the Cow Palace. We had a beautiful Spanish house. I paid $38,000 for it; it’s probably worth over half a million dollars today, if not more. We made good money for the time, but still it was nothing like what the top guys make now. Guys today have it much better than we did. In WWE, there’s guaranteed money, and you get paid even if you’re hurt. The company will take care of your medical bills. Now some guys still spend their money too recklessly — that hasn’t changed from my day. I learned quickly to take care of mine.
Our mountainside house in San Francisco was beautiful. I had a big pool and I had never experienced anything like it. We would throw parties and invite people to stay the night. Then I realized that if I made a sandwich for myself, I needed to make one for everyone. And I would buy vodka and beer and share that with everyone. It soon became expensive. We continued to throw parties but after a while we asked everyone to bring their own food and beverages. My friend’s father had a big butcher shop, and he would bring these wonderful juicy steaks and pork chops. It was insane the food we would cook. Sometimes the party would be in full swing when I left to work and would still be going when I returned.
I began golfing in San Francisco. Louie was one hell of a player and he introduced me to the game. At first, I wasn’t very good at it but I kept at it and started to love playing, I found it relaxing and a good way to escape life on the road. I still play on a regular basis. Back in the day, Bobby Heenan never wanted to play with us. He finally came out and used my old clubs. They were in bad shape; the grips were loose and Bobby kept complaining about them. Then out of nowhere, he sank a hole in one. He said that’s it, I can’t get any better, and stopped playing for the rest of the day. Bobby is the best.
Louie and I brought both of our families out to spend time with us in San Francisco and share in our success. We had so much fun with them. Louie’s dad would cook. My dad had never met a chef like him before. He made big bowls of pasta with homemade sauce and everything. This is probably one of my proudest and fondest memories, to be able to share those moments with both our families like that. One day, Louie and I sent our dads out to use the tramway. We told them to go down the line and enjoy the city. Well, next thing I know, Louie’s father was telling me that my dad’s a dirty old man. Apparently, they’d used their time in the city to watch a porno movie. We had a good laugh about that — they were having such a good time, as if they were both teenagers. We dressed our dads up in my wrestling gear, with the championship and everything, and took pictures. And though we were spending a lot of quality time together, my dad and I never really managed to get any closer. Even though we were having fun, and even traveled to some towns together, we could not fix the past. When I would visit Montréal after that, however, Dad wanted me to visit all our relatives and bring pictures to show them I was a champion. It was just a case of “too little, too late.” My mother seemed like she was in tears all the time — she was proud of my success, but even prouder of me.
I took my parents to see me wrestle in San Francisco, Reno, and Las Vegas. We flew from San Francisco to Vegas. It was a forty-five-minute journey on Western Airlines which, at the time, was known as the “Champagne Airline.” As soon as the plane took off, everyone over twenty-one was given a glass of champagne. My mom and dad never drank. My mom said, “What’s that?”
“It’s champagne.”
“Champagne?”
“Yeah, champagne; it’s free.”
“No, champagne is not free.”
“Ma, it’s free.”
“You’re spending too much money.”
“Ma, it’s free. I’m not spending any money.”
She didn’t believe me. Anyway, they finally began sipping their drinks and, before you know it, she was talking loudly and crying a little. Soon she was turning red and I knew she had a buzz on. I said, “Ma, please don’t worry about anything.”
She just couldn’t accept it. When the stewardess walked by, she asked me, “Is the lady OK?”
“Yes,” I said, “she’s fine. She doesn’t believe it’s free champagne because she thinks it’s too expensive.”
“Oh, she’ll be all right, don’t worry.” And then the stewardess went to the back of the plane. When she returned, she put a whole bottle of champagne on the table.
“Now you’re overdoing it!” my mom said. But she kept that bottle of champagne.
I took my parents to a famous drag queen show, a big tourist attraction in San Francisco. I knew everybody there, so we were sitting in the first row, center stage. My father could not wrap his mind around the fact that they were men dressed as women.
“I am telling you, Dad, they’re men.”
They had never seen anything close to that in Montréal. Before we went, Louie treated my mother to a complete makeover — and I mean complete, including dyeing her hair and applying fake eyelashes. My mom was funny and said, “Everyone is going to think that I am the one disguised as a woman.”
My mother had never been treated to anything like that, and she was gorgeous. She deserved it and I’m glad I was able to provide her with a little magic on nights like that. My parents had no idea I was doing so well until they saw it for themselves. I had to explain that performing at the Cow Palace was like wrestling in the main event at the Forum, that I was just like Yvon Robert. They were amazed: Robert was a big star in my hometown, a symbol for all French Canadians because of his popularity and success.
When they first came to our house, we had a king-size bed for them to sleep in. They had never seen a king-size bed in their life, let alone slept in one. The first morning, they slept in. I heard my mother asking my dad what time it was; he told her to keep sleeping, that it didn’t matter. I was not going to let that opportunity pass me by. I changed each and every clock in the house by two hours. They woke up around 10 a.m., but when my dad checked the time, the clock indicated it was noon.
“Ben voyons, Gérard, ça pas de bon sens dormir tard de même!” My God, Gérard, we can’t do that — sleep in that late!
I was laughing my ass off. They hurried downstairs to the living room, trying to figure out how it could have happened. We explained the joke, but Louie and I had a good laugh about that for a long time. They stayed for three weeks, and I brought them everywhere with me. Later on, Louie’s parents moved closer to us, just outside of San Francisco. We saw each other quite often until his dad died. Soon after, and just before Louie and I left for Florida, his mom passed away, too.
We often vacationed in Boston and stayed with Louie’s sister. When we were in town, we made sure to see the nephews and the nieces play hockey and baseball — all the things a family would do. We were simply called Uncle Pat and Uncle Louie. I love them a lot, and they’ve brought me great joy over the years. I am very proud of them.
If things had been different, I would have loved to have children with Louie. I love children very much, and Louie did as well. Louie had such a good heart, and he’d talk for hours and hours with a child. I don’t know, if we’d had the option back then, maybe we would have considered adopting. A little girl, maybe. But it was a different time and my career always came first, and it would probably not have been a good idea. Louie knew that, too, and he accepted it. I always said, “What comes first is not you or us. It’s the business. And it’s always going to be that way. If I am successful in the business, we are going to live well. Business comes first. When I need to go on the road, or spend months in Japan, don’t bitch. I will always come back to you.” I was lucky — he accepted that and at home we never talked about wrestling. We were perfect for each other.
Still, we had so much love we could have given to a child. I always liked the Big Brothers and Big Sisters organizations. You can treat a child to an amazing day by taking him or her to the circus or simply out to eat some ice cream. But I never even applied. I would have had to say I was gay, and back then people associated gay men with pedophiles. So I didn’t see the point in subjecting myself to that. Still, I am sure the kids would have had a great time. This might be one of the few regrets of my life, not to have been able to give a child all the good things I never had as a kid. Louie and I could have done so many good things for kids who needed it, if we had been allowed. But that’s life. I don’t like having regrets — and even if I have a few, I don’t dwell on the past.
Pat Patterson is certainly not a unique name in America. In Oakland, there was a car dealer with the same name. I’ve been asked if I am him quite often, but strangely I have never met him or any other Pat Patterson in all of my travels. I’ve heard stories about quite a few people calling his dealerships to ask if he was a wrestler. And hey, even if there’s more than one Pat Patterson out there, I’m still unique.
When I turned and became a good guy, I was finally able to start giving a little back to my community. One time, I was invited to visit sick children in a San Francisco hospital. As wrestlers, we were famous, but many of the kids still had no idea who we were. The show we did was not really geared toward children. When they brought me to visit a section of the hospital where older people were staying, things were different. Now those people had seen me on television. I took pictures with everyone and then approached a blind woman sitting in the corner all by herself. She said, “I can’t believe I’m talking to Pat Patterson. I can’t believe I’m touching your hand. When they put the TV on, I can hear you talk.”
I don’t know why but she really touched me. Maybe I saw a little of my mother in her. I asked the nurse and the other medical personnel how long she had been at the hospital. They told me she had been there for years and that she had no family. I asked if I could take her out one day, and they said sure. I brought her to the beach in my convertible. She felt the fresh air and heard the sounds of the waves; the warmth of the sun on her skin made her realize where she was. We had an amazing day.
I don’t have a lot of regrets, but I sometimes wonder, what if Louie and I had had a child together?
I had fought the idea of becoming a good guy for a long time. The old-timers would always say to me that I was a good-looking kid and that I should be a good guy, but I resisted. And I guess that’s why I became an ass-kicking good guy: I like being the villain too much. I was in San Francisco for so long, it was bound to happen at some point. And I took advantage of it when it did.
There were some benefits to being a fan favorite. I was free to hang around other wrestlers who were also popular. I became good friends with Rocky Johnson and Peter Maivia. Before when I would fight Maivia at the Cow Palace, all the Samoans wanted to kill me because of the beating I would give him. I was calling his wife, Leah, and asking if she could get the Samoans seats anywhere but ringside for those shows. Seriously, I was legitimately scared for my life. I was sure they were going to kill me some day. Even when she managed to get them seated at the top of the arena, as soon as Peter got into trouble they would come down ringside. No one could stop them — they’re truly a force of nature. Remember, I’m not a tough guy; I just played one on TV. If they only knew how frightened I was.
I wrestled Rocky Johnson a lot and we had great matches together. He was really popular and a very fine performer. The only thing was that he could be a little lazy sometimes . . . So one time I grabbed him by the hair and told him to stop being a lazy bastard. I ended up pulling out some of his hair.
“Get mad, you son of a bitch,” I said, knowing I had to get him hot for him to give me his best. But when I did, man, was it good.
When we see each other now, he always says we tore it down. And my response to that is always the same: “Yeah, because I chewed your ass.”
While I was teaming with Peter Maivia, I was finally invited to party at his place. Because before, obviously, I had been a hated rival. At the first party I attended, I looked around and there were at least fifty Samoans who all looked like Afa and Sika staring at me intensely. In fact, most of them were the same people who used to scare me to death when Peter and I were mortal enemies — back when I actually used to leave the Cow Palace hidden in a box to escape them. Concerned, I asked Leah if I was OK. She told me not to worry, that they were not going to touch me.
“Are you sure? Because they look like they want to kill me and burn my body.”
But it turned out she was right. I was fine. Thank God.
Back when I was in Oregon, main-event matches were two out of three falls. In between falls, you had to go back to the dressing room. Imagine what that was like for us villains: we had just beat up the fan’s favorite and people are screaming for revenge and we could barely walk to the back because there were no barricades to keep people away from us. After a short break of five or six minutes, we had to do it all over again to get back into the ring so that the match could proceed. Often I barely reached the dressing room before it was time to go back. I’m telling you, guys have it easy today. And San Francisco was even worse than Portland. People would jump us in the ring — there must have been nearly fifty people trying to get to us one night. I was scared many times, but that specific night I was sure I was going to die. If you want to read more about that night, well, you’re going to have to finish this chapter first. I’ll tell you all about it in Chapter Eight . . .
Even if it was occasionally scary, it was still a wonderful time in my life. As a top wrestler, life is great — you just need to be careful.
Rocky Johnson was dating Ata, Peter and Leah’s daughter. Eventually she became pregnant, and it seemed like all the Samoans wanted to kill him. I had to play peacemaker and get everyone to accept the situation. When that baby was born, they called him Dwayne. (I always felt they should have called him Pat, but that’s just me.)
I would fight Dwayne’s dad and grandfather, and then his mom would bring him backstage and I would bounce the baby Rock on my knees. It was an experience in the powerful cycle of life . . . Just as it was later when I would work with that same baby boy, now a man, as he headlined WrestleMania.
Looking back, I was blessed to gain the trust of my colleagues everywhere I went, and lucky to be matched against some of the best wrestlers from the get-go. I learned so much from them. When I became more seasoned myself, other guys would come to me to help them with their matches. I think it was because they didn’t want to have to talk to Roy Shire, who was yelling most of the time.
I never minded people criticizing or teaching me — as long as they weren’t yelling at me.
There is no goddamn reason to yell. If you explain what I did wrong, I can learn. I will never forget this: when I first started wrestling main events in San Francisco, no one ever told me there was anything wrong with my shit. And then finally, after watching my match, a dear friend of mine, Pedro Morales, and I had this conversation.
“Amigo, we need to talk. You are the best goddamn villain I have ever seen wrestle, but that goddamn thing you do in the corner . . . Your kicks? Your kicks look like shit.”
“What?”
“Your kicks in the corner look like shit.”
Thank you, Pedro.
Nobody ever wants to tell the top guy what he’s doing wrong. I’ve never forgotten that moment. He was my friend, and because he was my friend, he was ready to tell me the truth. Now, don’t get me wrong: that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t try to play a joke on my friend . . .
During a battle royal, everyone is in the ring. Well, one night, Pedro was booked in one and I wasn’t. Alone in the locker room, I took a big padlock and put it on Pedro’s bag. Probably not my smartest move, because, let me tell you, you don’t mess with Pedro Morales. No one else would dare play a joke on him. Each time someone was eliminated from that match, they came through the curtain and saw me: I gave them feedback on what they’d done in the ring, as usual, so no one would suspect me. When Pedro came to the back and saw his bag, he went crazy. He threw his bag and chairs everywhere.
“Nobody touches my shit,” he said, furious.
Everyone was looking at Mr. Fuji at that point, because he was usually the guilty party in that type of situation. Fuji looked at me, asking with his eyes if it was me. I made sure he understood it wasn’t by asking him the same question the same way. I never found out what Pedro did with his bag that day, but we did laugh about it. Today the truth can finally be told.
Roy Shire, however, was never a laughing matter. Roy was different. No matter how good you were in the ring, he didn’t care about your moves. All that mattered to him was the psychology. He didn’t care if you did something spectacular, he cared if it meant something.
I’m grateful that I learned that from him, because that’s my role today. I get to talk with the top guys and tell them what they did wrong or what they can improve upon, the stuff no one else will have the balls to tell them. And I love my job. Because a lot of the guys want to learn and they want to know how to get better and do things right.
With Shire in San Francisco, I started to work for the office, helping to run shows in some towns for the first time. Strangely enough, I never had a problem with the wrestlers not wanting to do what I needed them to do. I realized that this was something I enjoyed very much, because of the creativity involved, almost right away. I was lucky that I’d learned and understood the right way to do this kind of thing because of experience. Some people spend their life in the business and will never get it, because they only see things from a personal perspective, because it’s always about them. With the broader view of my understanding of what’s best for business, I could transition to working backstage once my in-ring career was over.
Wrestlers need feedback, and if you want to be a good teacher, you need to build trust with them by telling them both what’s right about their performance and, more importantly, what’s wrong. Today, I’m no longer in charge of specific talent or matches, but, often enough, one of the guys will come to me and ask what they should do or, even better, what I think about an idea of their own. I don’t pull punches; I tell them it’s shit when it’s shit, but I tell them why. And I also always try to explain how I think they might best reach the goal of their match. Sometimes, when I’m not at a TV taping, out of the blue, I’ll text some of the guys when they do something really great, because it’s hard to do what they do and to get it right. That positive feedback is important to their confidence and the trust we build with them.