THE BLOND BOMBERS

“I did what I had to do and saw it through without exemption”

Only Ray Stevens and I knew the whole truth of what am I about to tell you. I’m going to let you in on the special moments and secrets we shared, and about our deep friendship.

What do I mean?

No, I did not have sex with Ray Stevens . . . Well, OK, not exactly.

Ray Stevens was in Australia when I first arrived in San Francisco in January 1965, so we weren’t paired up until he returned. Roy Shire had me dye my hair blond to match Ray’s platinum locks and I became his new tag-team partner. Don Manoukian, a former Oakland Raiders football player, had been Ray’s partner. He was a great guy and one hell of a performer himself, but he was retiring — my timing could not have been better.

The match was scheduled for April 17, 1965: Roy Shire brought in Dick Beyer, as The Destroyer, and his tag-team partner, Billy Red Lyons, up from Los Angeles. Ray and I were facing the West Coast World Tag-Team Champions, and I knew things could go either way. Roy had never told me that we would become the champions, and I felt I still needed to prove myself every night and deliver on what I had promised him on my first day. But the fact was, because we were booked in a championship match, I knew there was a chance. The only problem was I was so sick I almost couldn’t get out of bed. Louie wanted me to stay home and even called in a doctor — he was that worried. The doctor said he wanted me to stay in bed for the next three days — no buts, and no wrestling for the championship. If I had listened to him, there is no telling the opportunity I might have missed, or how the path of my career might have been altered. Louie was furious with me, but he said he’d rather drive me to the arena and take care of me, rather than worrying about me getting there by myself. He probably didn’t really expect anything different — he knew that was how the business went. If I missed that night, who knew would happen to Ray and me when I was better? I knew I had to be there, and ultimately he respected that. And I was right. That night, we became the tag-team champions for the first time. Louie knew how I was and that the business came first. The truth is, Louie never really got involved in any decision I made in relation to wrestling. He trusted me and I truly appreciated that. After the win, everything fell into place professionally for Ray and me.

In my book, I would put Roy Shire, Eddie Graham, and Dory Funk Sr. on my short list of wrestling geniuses. There are many other good painters out there, don’t get me wrong, but not everyone can be a Picasso. But Ray Stevens, as far as wrestling performance goes, also has a place on that short list. He got it right, and got it right all the time. And it seemed like everything came to him naturally, that he never had to struggle to learn anything. Shawn Michaels might be the best comparison I can give to help you understand how good Ray Stevens was. Ray was a prodigy. Now, if you said that to his face he would probably tell you that you were full of shit and that he wished he would have worked openers instead of main events, so he could have more time to chase women and drink beer . . . Do you want even more proof of his talent? Before I got to the territory, he won the award for Most Hated Wrestler in the Bay Area. But what’s truly remarkable is that he also won Most Popular Wrestler for the same year. Ray was unique — just like me.

And what a great friend Ray became. Naturally, we spent a lot of time together when we were on the road, and from the start, we had a lot of fun. But he almost got me killed in the ring once. It was a three-man tag elimination match: Stevens and me, with Freddie Blassie as our partner, at the Cow Palace. On TV, the three of us explained in detail what we were going to do to the fans’ favorites. As the match wore on, we lost Fred. But as we had predicted on TV, in the end Ray and I, two-on-one, were running roughshod over crowd-favorite Pepper Gomez — his partners had already been eliminated. We beat the goddamn hell out of him. It was so intense that the fans wanted to jump in to help defend Pepper against our onslaught. Finally, unbelievably, they came out of the crowd — there must have been more than fifty fans in the ring with us. I was sure I was going to die — I was in the middle of a goddamn riot and I could not get out of the ring. Dozens of cops had to be called in just so they could “safely” get us back to the dressing room.

The cops encircled us and said they were going to bring us to the back one at a time. I told Ray to go first. As the police were pushing people out of their way, the angry mob pushed back. Suddenly I saw Ray’s blond head disappear into the crowd. It was terrifying, and I was sure something had happened to him. But then he popped up again and seemed to make it to the back. At that moment, the crowd turned all their attention on me. I was sure I was done.

Even with the police escort, I almost never made it to the dressing room door. Someone hit me over the head with a bottle and I was covered in blood, and I was sure it was my last day on earth. I actually don’t remember the moment I realized I was safely back in the dressing room, and all I could say, over and over again, was “I can’t believe I’m alive.”

Lying on the floor and trying to stop the bleeding, my only thought was how lucky I was. Ray was mad but, just like me, glad to be alive. For two guys who really just wanted to have fun, it was no laughing matter.

That Cow Palace was one of the most dangerous buildings in the country back then. (And even today you need to be careful when you wrestle in San Francisco. Chris Jericho was hit on the head by a D battery thrown from the crowd just a few years ago.) When the fans rioted, we had to wait two hours before we could even leave the building. The lynch mob was still waiting for us. Everybody was scared, even Ray. And scaring Ray was no easy feat.

There were a few times when issues like that turned into a good laugh. One night in Eureka, California, just before the show began the chief of police came to the dressing room and asked to speak to the person in charge. I pointed to Roy, and he started to explain there was a bomb threat. He told us there were two options: evacuate everybody and cancel the show, or sign a waiver saying Roy was responsible if something happened.

Roy picked number two, in case you were wondering. Everyone was nervous, and the main event pitted Ray and me against Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito. When we made our entrance, the only thing in our mind was that a main event was about to blow us all to kingdom come. Before the opening bell, as the referee gave us instructions, we heard a pow! We all bolted from the ring, fearing for our lives.

Do you know what had happened?

A kid at ringside had stomped on a paper cup. The tension broke and I think all of us were trying to hide our laughter for the rest of the match.

Not everything was as tense as that, of course. Once a month, we would go to Reno and Lake Tahoe to visit the casinos and see some shows. For three years, we also worked Las Vegas and enjoyed Sin City on a monthly basis. It was fun: we were both well known and the pit boss would get us into all the shows for free, so they could claim to have celebrities in attendance. We had front-row seats and complimentary champagne whenever we wanted. Ray enjoyed that even more than I did. We saw all the greats: Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr., Tom Jones, Liberace . . .

I’m a smoker, and before you start admonishing me, I know it’s a fucking bad habit. Vince keeps telling me that all the time. But it’s all Ray Stevens’s fault: he’s the one who got me to try this shit. I was drunk one night and he pressured me, laughing because I was coughing and having a hard time. After a while, I stopped coughing but I never stopped smoking. There’s no doubt I picked up this vice hanging with Ray Stevens.

But not everything we did was bad for me. In a Reno club one night, two gorgeous ladies came over to talk to us. We were sure they recognized us. They told us we were handsome and that they needed two volunteers to get their hair colored on stage. Of course we said yes — I always loved to be on stage. People in the audience recognized us and we got a big reaction. And we got our hair dyed for free! Wrestlers and their freebies . . .

Even if I was stuck with him twenty-four hours a day, Ray was a blast to be around. In his mind, he was always nineteen. And he was always either a kid at a party, on a motorcycle, fishing, horseracing, hunting, in a wrestling ring . . . or in bed with a woman. He was always ready to try something new, and he could never get enough of the ladies.

Years later, when I was a good guy and facing Ray, someone in the crowd yelled, “Stevens, you queer.”

Under his breath, Ray said to me, “If they only knew.”

It took everything we had not to laugh because everyone in the match but Ray —the referee, the ring announcer, and me — was gay.

On another occasion, in a small town just outside of San Francisco, somebody shouted something similar and Ray just couldn’t keep it together. He actually fell to his knees laughing. Those were the days: people called us queer just because of our dyed blond hair.

As you can see, Ray knew everything about me. And the fact that I was gay did not prevent him from asking me to help him in getting women into his bed. We went to a party once at the home of Ray’s new neighbors. He insisted I come because he wanted to get the woman into bed and he needed someone to distract the husband. Let’s just say Ray almost always got what he wanted. In a strange turn of events, the husband showed up one day . . . to see me. I always wondered if Ray knew, or if it was just his luck rubbing off on me.

I remember going to Ray’s place to pick him up. It was 2 p.m., the time we’d agreed upon, but he was nowhere to be found. I asked his wife, and of course she said he was still in bed. Damn it, we had to leave right away. I had to go into his room and start yelling at my partner, who was unconscious with the mother of all hangovers.

“Come on, Ray, we have to get going.”

He began mumbling, and that’s the only way I knew he was alive. But I could not understand anything he was saying, and he was definitely not moving. I went to his kitchen to make coffee, hoping he would start getting dressed as I had asked. When I returned, he was still in bed, snoring.

“Come on, Ray, get out of bed.”

Finally, he slowly started to come out of his coma and move towards the edge of the bed. I went back to the kitchen, hoping this time he would start to get dressed. When I didn’t hear any other sounds from the bedroom, I started to worry. When I went back to check on him, he was standing naked in the closet, keeping himself steady by holding onto the closet rod with both hands. There was a woman’s shoe right in front of him. I was puzzled and didn’t say a word. What in the hell was he trying to do?

He was attempting to position the shoe with his feet, trying to get it perfectly in front of him, and he was obviously struggling in his still half-drunk condition. Finally, he got it. And then he started to piss. In the shoe. In his own closet.

I went straight back down to the kitchen to make sure his wife was not coming up. If she had, we would have never left — she would have killed him. Ultimately, I was able to get a half-dressed Ray Stevens into the car, so we could leave for the show. By the time it was bell time, he performed as brilliantly as usual, as if nothing had happened. Ray Stevens was never worried about anything in the ring.

I had that ability as well. No matter what we did the night before, I could always go in a match. Ray had been a star in San Francisco long before me, but he was much more a playboy than a businessman. He was never interested in the inner workings of our industry, or in discussing what we should do in a main event with Roy or, later on in Minnesota, with Verne Gagne. He didn’t stress and he was always confident he could play everything by ear.

“Tell me what you want and I’ll just do it,” he would say.

He had an opinion, sure, but as long as things made sense, he was fine. He figured things out in the ring.

I went hunting with Ray Stevens once — once and only once. We were hunting for mountain lions in California, if you can believe it. We were out all goddamn night and we didn’t see a thing. That didn’t faze him at all — while I am still pissed about it. Ray never did anything without investing himself 100% — when he got into rodeos, for example, what did you think he did? He bought a horse, with the big truck and trailer and everything you need to take a horse everywhere. He didn’t get out with the animal much, mind you, but he had everything. He got injured doing that kind of stuff, too. When he got into motorcycles, he got into a wreck and had to miss a lot of action for quite a while after his accident. If something like that happened to anyone else, Roy Shire would have fired him, no questions asked. Roy’s business, and all the wrestlers’ welfare, depended on us drawing crowds to the main event. And Ray let everyone down. Ultimately, Roy was right, you can’t afford to let the talent take unnecessary risks. Today, someone like John Cena is too busy — he doesn’t have time to get into that kind of nonsense; hell, he barely has time to go to the restroom.

That doesn’t mean Roy didn’t ask us to do crazy things when it benefited him. Roy had a ranch, and when the bulls reached a certain age, most needed to be castrated to make sure the females bred only with the best stock. Roy, Ray, and I would get on horses to round up the cattle. Roy would always want us to go easy because if we scared them, it would be impossible to round them up for at least a week. One time, we screwed up and they all but disappeared for days. Roy was so mad. It was funny, and Ray was the one laughing the loudest.

Anyway, we had to restrain the bulls before leading them through a cattle chute. It was gross: you have to cut a bull’s scrotum, pull on its balls, and cut them out. As someone would do that, I would stand on top of the bull, holding its tail up, making sure it couldn’t move any part of its body. Once we were done, up came the next bull. I eventually wound up doing the actual cutting. Roy would invite us for dinner afterward. At first, Louie thought we were barbarians, but he ended up helping too and he liked it. The fact that Ray had him drink a few vodkas first probably helped change his mind. Of course, Roy had experts there helping us, and they made sure we never injured ourselves despite the danger. I wonder if he would have fired us if we did . . . And who would have believed that the little Clermont kid with girls’ skates would end up neutering bulls as cowboy Pat Patterson?

Whether it was skiing, rodeo, or motorcycle accidents, or whether you were injured in the ring, it didn’t matter — back then you were on your own with no money coming in. But that was fine with Ray Stevens: never looking ahead, always living in the moment. I had more fun in and out of the ring with him than with anyone else. It was a goddamned unbelievable time. Some guys don’t get along this well with their tag-team partner — one guy wants his wife around all the time, another doesn’t want to go to the bar, another gets up too early on road trips. But with Ray, it was all a picnic.

“Whatever you want to do, Pat,” he would say.

I know I just said as much, didn’t I? It doesn’t matter, I’ll say it again because it was true. We were such a good match; there was no ego, no bullshit from either of us. We did our job and we loved it. We were fucking good, that’s it.

One time, in Milwaukee, the promoter paid Ray with a $6,000 check. He didn’t want to waste time going to the bank, so he asked the guy if he could exchange it for cash from the night’s box office.

The promoter came back with a bag stuffed with $6,000. He insisted that Ray count it, because he didn’t want to have any disagreement in the future.

Ray sat there for hours, trying to count the whole thing. Each time he got going, someone would come in to talk to him and he could never remember where he was. So he started all over again. I even tried to help him so we could get out of there, but he said no. Don’t worry, he told me, I’ll do it. After a while, he grew frustrated and grabbed up all the money from the table, stuffed it back into the bag, and said, “The hell with it, six thousand.”

That was it for him; it was time to spend that money.

When we finally began the program that pitted me against Ray, people were ready for it. We went weeks with a simple story that teased the idea of “Who was going to be the first to break the rules?” On television, the host would ask the fans, the wrestlers, the referees, and even the ring announcer what they thought. Everyone was invested in our rivalry — it just needed time to brew. Even if it was simple, it was perfect. We had years of matches teaming together to build on. Roy was so good at that — he could build a good story on little details. Some people don’t realize that you need to make a team before breaking them up. And that takes time. As in any good movie or story, there needs to be an emotional investment.

The only bad thing about it was that when we started our rivalry, we had to stop hanging out. Roy Shire would fire you if you crossed that line, and we tried to never break that rule. We loved the business too much.

For one of our matches, he came to the ring wearing boxing headgear. Ray had built it up real good during his interviews, saying that he had a surprise for me. When he unveiled it in the ring, people went crazy. I was mad, saying how unfair this was because I couldn’t use my loaded mask to head-butt him, which was my gimmick as the bad guy. During that match, nothing I could do would hurt him, so I ripped off his headgear in frustration. It was a simple concept but it worked. Roy had input in these matches, too, and we drew a lot of money. More importantly, we had fun.

Today, when I think about teaming with Ray, I get choked up. He was such a great guy and he was already a name by the time we partnered. He didn’t have to accept me as an equal, or even like me, but he helped me so much and we became the best of friends. He could have said that he didn’t want to be paired up with “that queer” and that would have been it for me in San Francisco. (Though I’m sure he thought teaming with a gay man meant all the more women for him.) I was very fortunate that we made one hell of a team. And that we also clicked fighting each other. People just loved seeing us in the ring together, no matter what we were doing. That doesn’t mean Ray, that crazy bastard, treated me differently from anybody else.

We were wrestling in Hawaii once when a wrestler by the name of Handsome Johnny Barend got married in the ring. I was in the shower just when the bride was passing by our dressing room and I wanted to catch a peek. I was covered in soap and naked as she came by the door and that’s when Bill Watts and Ray Stevens pushed me out of the dressing room. I slipped right on my ass, buck naked, in front of Handsome Johnny’s bride.

She was so impressed she almost canceled the wedding.

And those two assholes were killing themselves laughing at me. That’s the kind of joke I could pull, but when I was the victim, I guess I got a little mad. But in the end, I could laugh about it.

The United States Championship we fought over in San Francisco is the only memento, the only thing from my career I would really like to own — that’s how much that time and that territory meant to me. And though I need that championship like I need another hole in my head, and I don’t know if I would even display it, I still want it. That championship is special to me: it’s not about the wrestling, it brings me back to my life in San Francisco, teaming with Ray and living happily ever after with Louie . . .

Ray Stevens was more than my partner — we would have gone through hell for each other, and we did.

Photo courtesy of Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: I didn’t tell you about me and Ray sleeping together. Kind of.

A couple of times, he asked me to join him and a girl, because the girl wanted to be with the both of us. I wanted to be a good pal, so I never said no. I even tried to get into it at first. But I would wind up letting them finish their thing and then get out of there. Louie never knew, even though we were free to do what we wanted. I figured you only live once . . . And while Ray Stevens was around . . .

I remember this mother and daughter duo who used to come see us wrestle. (Yes, she was way older than eighteen.) They would wait for us, take pictures, and ask for autographs. They came around for months and Ray was infatuated with the daughter. Each time we saw them, he would not stop talking about how hot she was. So one night after the matches, Ray said, “Pat, come back with me. We’ll take my truck and we’ll stop by some friends of mine. They have food and beers for us.”

You know how it goes, it sounded good on paper: free food and booze. Still, I didn’t want us to stay too long. We had a long road trip ahead of us.

When we get there, Ray’s friends were the mother and daughter. And yes, I cursed his good name a little. He pleaded with me to play along. I knew what he had in mind and I also knew my only option was to follow his lead. I had to be a good friend.

By 2 a.m., we were having fun, eating sandwiches and drinking beer. We were a little drunk when Ray and the daughter snuck off to her room. That’s when the mother kidnapped me, dragged me to her room, and had her way with me.

You could never say no to Ray Stevens; he would convince you that jumping into a fiery pit was the best idea in the world. How many of you have good friends like that? I admit I did this kind of thing a few times for Ray, and on the road Stevens would even pick up a girl here and there and get her to give me a blow job. When he would ask me how it was, I would tell him, “I certainly could have given her lessons.”

Ray was probably happier about conning me into sleeping with these girls than sleeping with them himself. He would brag to the other wrestlers about it and we would all laugh. “Me and Pat, we made love to the most incredible woman together last night. She was the hottest . . .” When Ray asked, I would take one for the team. And yet one time I almost had my revenge.

It was years later, in Milwaukee, when we were wrestling for the American Wrestling Association. We were on last, and the snowstorm of the century was raging outside. Because of the weather, everyone left as soon as they were done with their match. Ray said, “Let’s take our time. The hell with it. We can’t get out of here anyway.”

We had two cases of beer with us, so we started to talk and drink. A few hours later, it was still snowing. We had our bags to carry, no more beer, and we were drunk. No one was left in the building. But Ray always had brilliant ideas. There was a bar a block away. We could see its lights on. It seemed like the only place that was open in the entire city. We decided to walk there through what must have been three feet of snow, with our bags on our shoulders. Brilliant ideas, as I said. We finally made it to the bar, and it was empty except for four girls. We sat, ordered a round of drinks, and tried to call a cab. While we waited, and after a few more drinks, Ray asked, “Pat, how come the broads are so large in this place?”

I kept avoiding an answer, but as we drank, he kept asking. Finally, I said to him with my most serious face, “Ray, they’re all drag queens. You want to take one for the team for me tonight?”

We laughed hysterically once again.

By the time Ray got to work for WWE, I’d already had my main-event run, so it wasn’t the same. New York was never really a territory based around tag teams. I think we had our last matches as a team in 1982 in the Carolinas, and then got together for a quick tour back in the AWA later that year. I had started to work behind the scenes in New York by then, and I was also a babyface.

We didn’t see nearly enough of each other after he left WWE. On April 5, 1995, years after he stopped wrest­ling, the cities of both San Francisco and Oakland jointly declared it Ray Stevens Day in the Bay Area. Incredible, isn’t it?

Believe me, Ray rarely looked that calm when we were together. We had a lot of fun.

Photo courtesy of Linda Boucher.

Ray died in 1996 from a heart attack. He was only sixty years old. I could not believe he had passed away, even though Ray was always careless about his health. Eventually it caught up to him: I heard he drank and smoked until his very last day.

Ray was Ray.

I didn’t go to his funeral. If I had to do it all over again, I would have. I’ve told you how it is — and in ’96, I was working a full-time schedule for WWE. And the funeral was held in San Francisco, at the other end of the country, thousands of miles from my home in Connecticut. In wrestling, you feel obligated to your job and you put the work before friendship. It’s one of the real regrets I have in my life, not attending Ray’s funeral. Other than my mother and Louie, knowing that he was not out there anymore was probably one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to accept.

Everyone loved Ray Stevens. And I will always remember what he used to say when I would call bullshit on one of his stories: “If a story is worth telling, it’s worth coloring, Pat.” Let me tell you, I didn’t need a lot of coloring when I worked and traveled with Ray. If you don’t believe me, just ask Ric Flair, who showed him how to have fun after work.

Late at night, when we worked together, anyone around us could hear him laughing through the walls of the hotel. You knew he was having a good time. Today, when I hear laughter on the road, I like to pretend Ray is right there, too, having fun. He was the type of guy who could leave to get a loaf of bread for his wife and come back two days later.

Maybe he’s still out there, just getting bread.