LOOKING FOR MYSELF IN FLORIDA AND MINNEAPOLIS
“I’ve had my fill, my share of losing”
The Shire territory had been good for me financially, and I always took care of my money. I was at home in my own bed almost every night and I was working on top most of the time. Everybody wanted to work the territory, but it was time to move on. When the time came to leave San Francisco in 1977, we had this great place, close to downtown. Louie had his barbershop business and we were making money. You can’t ask for anything more than that, right? Without hesitation, when I told Louie I was going to work in Florida, he said, “Let’s go.” I was a lucky man. Jim Barnett hired me to be in charge of the Florida territory, along with Johnny Valentine. Florida was a small territory with big names — and all of those big names lived there full-time. Valentine was really old school. Our philosophies were so different that it was no fun, and I decided I didn’t want to be in charge. I told the promoter, Eddie Graham, that I was just going to be a wrestler. Valentine wanted to turn everything upside down, to get rid of the Brisco brothers and Dusty Rhodes. Jack and Gerald Brisco were suddenly booked in opening matches and the blame was put on me. Go see Valentine, I told them.
Still, there were great things about that time. I became good friends with Dusty, the Briscos, and everyone there.
When I was in San Francisco, I was always billed as being from Montréal. But when I got to Florida, they started to say I was from San Francisco. I would do interviews where I would explain how California was the best state in the Union. I would go on and on to explain that Californian fruits were so much better, juicer and tastier than the fruits in Florida. I would have the wrestlers rolling on the floor laughing in the dressing room, while I was cutting those promos. I had a fruit basket on my jacket with the lettering “California fruits.” I was always able to poke fun at myself — that’s why I never had any issues while with WWE when my friend Gorilla Monsoon or others would poke fun at me while doing commentary. I was in on the laugh from the beginning.
I met the young Terry Bollea for the first time while he was playing in a band in a Florida bar where wrestlers hung out. He was tall and skinny. On the very first day he came in for wrestling training, I happened to be at the gym. The whole office was playing jokes on the man who would become Hulk Hogan, and Hogan himself says that I was the only one who actually taught him anything that day. I wish I could say I saw right away that he was going to become the biggest star in the world. But that would be lying — and I’m not the kind of person who’d blow smoke up your ass.
Stop laughing, it’s true.
I was honestly just trying to be nice to the kid. In Florida, if you wanted to be a wrestler, they would make you pay for it by stretching and hurting you. They knew him from the bar scene, so they were ribbing him more than hurting him, but I didn’t see the point in not helping him. I didn’t know he was going to be a star, I just wanted to be helpful. Hell, I wish I knew. Gerald Brisco helped him a lot later on, too. I rode with him to his first match. We ribbed him.
“You haven’t seen anything yet, kid. If you want to get initiated in the business, you need to give a blow job to one of the wrestlers.”
We drove him crazy, the poor bastard. He didn’t come back with us. But we were just kidding. This was dressing room humor, and even the straight guys were in on it. We laughed about that all night wondering how he got home. I think he even laughs about it in his second book. (I know, everyone wrote a book before I got around to it.)
The drive from West Palm Beach to Tampa is almost three and a half hours. At night, you can’t see anything anywhere. I’m riding with goddamn Terry Funk once when he said, “Stop the car, Pat. There’s a cornfield. We are going to steal some corn. Open the trunk; come and help.”
It was so dark that without even realizing it, I walked straight into the goddamn mud. I was almost up to my knees and cursing the name of Terry Funk, but we filled the trunk with corn. I was filthy. Funk laughed about it for the rest of the ride; he’d got me good.
Another time on the same road, a cop pulled me over. The cop was nice. “You’re Pat Patterson. I watch you guys on television. You guys are good. Where did you work tonight?”
“West Palm Beach, sir,” I said politely.
“Are any other wrestlers coming this way?”
“Yeah, the Brisco brothers must be just a few minutes behind me. Why don’t you pull them over, too? Scare them a little?”
What I didn’t know was that the Briscos were drinking beer on the way home.
When they heard the sirens, they went crazy trying to get rid of the evidence. Finally, the cop came to talk with them: “Patterson told me to stop you.”
Jesus Christ, I’m still laughing.
I really don’t like flying in small planes, but sometimes you need to, just to save time. I flew to Tallahassee with Eddie Graham in his personal plane once, and even though he only had one good eye, he was the pilot. His son Mike Graham was sitting up front, and Eddie kept asking him to read the instruments. I could not wait for them to land that thing. I never ever flew in his plane again.
Getting to Miami was a long, godforsaken trip. One time, a few wrestlers decided to rent a small plane and split the cost to get home early. Sometimes, we had good ideas like that . . . I was in the back, having fun, when the pilot said, “I think we have a problem, guys. The wheels aren’t coming down.”
“What?”
He kept repeating the same thing. “The wheels aren’t coming down.”
He called the tower and they confirmed visually that only two out of three wheels were deployed.
“What are we going to do?” I said.
“We sure as hell can’t stay up here all night,” he said.
He landed that plane, nose tilted up, on only two wheels.
After that, no more small planes in Florida for me.
I was in Florida for less than a year. When working with Valentine didn’t pan out, there wasn’t much left for me to accomplish. What was I going to do next? I had done everything at least once in the wrestling business. I was probably a little burned out, too, and I was seriously thinking about retiring. I was only thirty-six years old.
And then Verne Gagne called me to bring me to Minneapolis for the AWA. The conversation went a little like this:
“Do you have blond hair?”
“Yes, why?”
“I don’t want blonds; I got too many.”
Like he didn’t know I’d had blond hair for the past fifteen years.
“Well, if you don’t want blond hair, then you don’t want Pat Patterson. I’m not coming.”
“Do you do interviews?”
“What the hell do you think I have been doing for the past fifteen years?”
“I will think about it.”
“Think fast because I will be booked someplace else.”
He gave me a start date before we ended the conversation.
I had some good times in Minneapolis. There was lots of travel there, too, and lots of small plane trips in bad weather. We called the AWA plane Suicide 1, and for good reason. That tin can scared the shit out of me every time I stepped inside. We were in Chicago one time when I told the pilot I was going to sit up front with him. The plane could only accommodate eight passengers and somehow I felt better beside the pilot. I remember a big 747 right in front of us before we took off. At 5,000 feet, I saw oil leaking from our wing.
The pilot said, “Shit, they didn’t tighten it enough. We’ll have to go back and make an emergency landing.”
I was scared out of my mind. I had already had one emergency landing, in Florida, and statistically you are not supposed to get more than one of those in your life. That pilot was just dangerous: the plane would have inches of ice on its wings before he’d finally decide we needed to land. Guys would take tranquilizers just to sleep through trips with him in that death trap. Let me tell you, Chicago to Winnipeg is a long goddamn flight.
I wrestled everyone in the AWA: Gagne, Dick the Bruiser, The Crusher, and even Mad Dog. It was fun to be with Maurice once again. This time, I could help him by taking care of him when we fought each other.
I also hooked up with Ray Stevens as a tag team once again. We had another main-event run and a great time as usual. But it was damned cold all the time, and after living in California and Florida for so long, winter seemed even worse than it had been growing up in Montréal.
Lord Alfred Hayes was another good friend, and we were able to reconnect in the AWA. I actually tried to teach him how to ski. It was not going well: he took his first fall as we were coming off the chairlift. I was a patient, persistent teacher, however, and he managed a couple of decent runs before he lost control and disappeared into the woods. I had to take my skis off to go looking for him. When I found him, he was covered in snow just a few yards away from a cliff. I asked him what happened and he said, with his distinctive British accent, “Well, Patrick, I was totally out of control.”
I had a lot of fun playing golf with Hayes as well, both in Minnesota and later in New York. The first time we played, he didn’t know how to golf, though he made me believe he did.
“What are you going to use?” I asked on the first hole.
“I’m going with my trusty 7-iron.” And then he hit the ball straight into the woods.
Lord Alfred was always in character. When I would miss the cup by an inch, he would say, “What a noble effort.”
We laughed a lot together.
I helped Alfred get into New York. I talked to Vince about him, and he loved Lord Alfred’s promos right away. He became a fixture on Tuesday Night Titans, co-hosting with Vince. The show is available on WWE Network now, if you are curious.
By the time we got to Minneapolis, Louie had sold the barbershop in San Francisco and decided to stay home and stop working. We were well-off and it was a lot of work to take care of our home life. We enjoyed ourselves, and had a good social life as well. Louie would hang out with the wrestlers’ wives while we were on the road. Nick Bockwinkel, Mad Dog, and Ray Stevens made sure that we came into the territory with a great reputation. Louie was such a bright man and everyone in the AWA loved him. We would hang out with all the straight couples, guys like Bockwinkel, Jim Brunzell, and Greg Gagne — even if his dad, Verne, was just like Roy Shire to begin with. Louie and I would eat at their places and hang out with their children just like any other couple. Verne Gagne couldn’t stand gay people when I first got there, but as time went by he became curious and wanted to meet Louie. He was hearing all these incredible stories about him and the great meals Louie would cook. So he finally mustered the courage to ask, “When am I going to taste Louie’s cuisine for myself?”
I told him he was more than welcome to come over.
“No, I want you guys to come to my place — let’s cook a big meal for all the wrestlers.”
Louie said yes and when he began cooking, he actually kicked Verne out of his own kitchen, because he tried to stick his nose in Louie’s meal. “It’s my kitchen now, get out.” That’s how Louie was.
Sometimes we’d get back from a show late and Greg Gagne would come home with me to shoot the shit with Louie and hang out. Louie made him laugh. He told him once, “I don’t know if listening to your philosophy is doing me any good or if you’re confusing me.” We all laughed.
I was in Minneapolis for the better part of the next two years and continued to do occasional shots for Verne for a few years after that.
I left Minneapolis because Ray and I were almost done our run as a tag team. I wanted to know what Verne had planned for us . . . Ray wouldn’t bother himself with that shit, but I needed to know. I went to Verne’s office by myself to talk about the next six to twelve months: I was happy; I was making good money. But I wanted to know what was next. Verne’s answer was “I don’t reveal my secrets.”
“OK,” I said. “Then I won’t tell you mine.”
That upset him, and he told me that I wasn’t being fair. I countered that he was the one being unfair. If he wouldn’t reveal his plans for me, I wouldn’t reveal what I had planned for myself.
It was difficult; I had built a special relationship with Roy over the years, and I would have loved to do the same with Verne. But that just wasn’t his style. I had arrived at a crossroads: I could no longer be satisfied just being a wrestler.
I always appreciated learning new things, but there was nothing left for me to learn after nearly two years in Minnesota. Whatever feelings I had about retiring were gone, too. I wanted more, and I wanted something new. I think that’s why being a wrestler and traveling all over the world was the perfect career for me. There is always something new waiting for you, and this time it was waiting for me in the Big Apple.
My secret was that I had an offer on the table to go to New York to work for Vince McMahon Sr.