8

The First Battle of Atlanta (Georgia, 1975)

“Live in a style that suits your physical and spiritual requirements, and don’t waste time keeping up with the Joneses.”

—Napoleon Hill, “Build a Positive Mental Attitude”

When we first arrived in Atlanta, Corki and I were prepared to go apartment hunting again, but Jim Barnett told us that he had already found us a clean and safe place to live in College Park. None of the other territorial promoters had ever done that for us before—so we thought that was really nice, and I took it as a good sign that he intended to treat me well.

That was a good read.

My first match in the Georgia territory was against a young Jerry Lawler at the City Auditorium in Atlanta. That old place was one of my favorite arenas in the entire country to wrestle because the emotion in that building was off the charts. The building, which was built as a theater, had balconies that hung right out over the ring, which put the people right on top of you. The acoustics were terrific—so when the crowd there got lathered up, the building would shake. When I got to the Audi that night and found out I was wrestling Jerry Lawler on my first night in the territory, I just assumed I would be putting him over—but it turned out that Barnett had decided to open me with a pop by putting me over in my Atlanta debut.

It was a pretty awesome win to start me off, and the people responded.

The Atlanta territory was much different from Florida because the longest drive was about 150 miles. Most days, that meant that we were able to be home all day, work out at our leisure, have lunch with our families, and then take off and head for the town where we were wrestling sometime in the afternoon. The circuit ran from Augusta to Macon to Atlanta to Columbus to Griffin, with occasional spot shows in Savannah and other small towns. I made somewhere between $150 and $300 dollars a night wrestling in the Georgia territory, and sometimes, especially in Atlanta, we’d make more than that. Georgia was an especially profitable territory to wrestle in because we didn’t burn a lot of gas, and everyone went home every night and didn’t have the expense of paying for motel rooms out on the road. Given how close the towns were to one another, the guys who jerked the curtain were often home in bed by the time the main event hit the ring!

The Georgia territory was really popping at the time—and we were drawing great crowds in virtually every town we visited. There was a lot of great talent in the territory when I got there, but I was very fortunate to have had the advantage of working in front of Jim Barnett quite a bit down in Florida, so by the time I got to Georgia, he knew me well. Jim had designs on making me into a top of the card singles wrestler in Georgia, and before I knew it, I was main-eventing with some of the people you could only dream about getting a match with.

On August 29, 1975, for example, I had my first-ever world title match, against then-champion Jack Brisco for the National Wrestling Alliance World Heavyweight championship. To set up that match, Barnett had booked me into a ten-minute time-limit draw with Brisco on television, during which Jack had given me a number of near-falls and really made me look like I could beat him. It was my first really close look at what a world champion was supposed to do with his challengers.

I had a lot of respect for Jack Brisco—he had wrestled at Oklahoma and was also an NCAA national champion. He was very fit, looked like a wrestling champion, and was also a shooter. I was excited to get in the ring with him in the main event on such a big stage. The Omni was completely sold out—I think there were around 13,000 people in the building. Up to that point in my career, that was certainly the biggest match I had been in, and other than in Japan, it was the largest crowd I had ever wrestled in front of. I remember being very nervous climbing into the ring that night, and Jack could sense that. Being the consummate pro that he was, though, he called some simple moves to get me through my early match jitters when I know I was a little stiff and tight. Although Jack won the match with a quick inside cradle, he really let me hang in there, get a lot of offense in, and catch a number of near-falls on him, and by doing that, he definitely put the “shine” on me and left me stronger, in the eyes of the fans, than I had been before the bout.

I did my favorite move on Jack that night—where he caught me in a short-arm scissors, and I just deadlifted his entire weight off the mat, up into the air, up onto my shoulder, and then placed him on the top turnbuckle. The crowd popped tremendously for that move because they recognized the kind of strength it took to pull it off. Unlike most other moves in professional wrestling, there is no way that your opponent can help you with that one. You just have to concentrate the energy and cheers of the crowd into an adrenaline rush, and then use brute force—and there were not a lot of guys in the business who had the core strength to execute that move in the ring. I know it impressed Jack that night. Even though I lost the match, I had definitely gained stature in the eyes of the people. That is what having a great match with a great champion can do for you.

The level of respect that I had for Jack Brisco after that match could not have gotten any higher—because of the way he conducted himself in the ring, how generous he had been in our match, and, of course, for what he had done in amateur wrestling in Oklahoma and his success in the NCAA tournament.

Three hours later, however, my view of Jack Brisco would be forever changed.

After the Omni card, Dusty Rhodes and Jack and Gerry Brisco asked me if I wanted to go for a ride with them in Jack’s Thunderbird. I gratefully accepted the offer. In Atlanta, there is a bypass that goes around the city, and we were flying on that bypass with Jack behind the wheel. I was sitting in the back seat with Gerry Brisco having a beer when all of a sudden, I smelled a strange smell. Although I had never smoked marijuana before, the smell was unmistakable. I used the electric switch to put my window down but someone put the window back up. I tried to put the window back down but the window was locked.

“Jack, I can’t get my window open, would you please unlock the window?” I asked.

Jack and Dusty just laughed in the front seat and wouldn’t unlock my window. These were the top guys in the territory, and it certainly wouldn’t have been a bad thing to fit in with them, because they could certainly have helped me to get ahead. But I knew that what they were doing was wrong, and I knew that I didn’t want to be there.

A couple more minutes went by, and the car was filling up with pot smoke.

“Jack—please stop the car and let me out,” I asked.

But Jack didn’t stop the car.

I looked to Gerry Brisco who was sitting with me in the back seat. But Gerry just shrugged.

We pulled into a club and Jack and Dusty got out. I didn’t know where I was, but I got out of the car, looked around to get my bearings, and just started walking. I didn’t care so much that those guys were smoking marijuana—that was their own choice and their decision—but I certainly didn’t want to be riding in a car with someone who was smoking dope while driving.

Making your way in this world is all about the decisions you make for your own life, and I didn’t want those guys taking that right away from me. I didn’t want to be a captive in that environment, I didn’t want my body getting polluted with that stuff, and I certainly didn’t want to run the risk of being in a speeding car with an impaired driver. So I made the choice that I thought was best for me, and walked home. It took me nearly all night, but I didn’t care. I knew I was making the right choice for me.

What happened that night certainly diminished my respect for Jack. He was the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and was supposed to be a role model both for the fans and for young wrestlers like me. In that way, he certainly let me down. But it was a good learning experience for me to encounter that kind of behavior at the very highest levels of our sport, and among the people I most respected. I guess that’s why I ultimately became kind of a lone ranger in the wrestling business. I wanted to control my own environment and to be responsible for my own decisions.

I never rode with those guys again, and I was never asked.

After that title match with Jack, I faced Gerry Brisco around the circuit in a series of babyface matches, most of which went to the time limit. We put on a chain wrestling clinic that the fans really seemed to enjoy. It was always dicey to do those babyface matches, because there was always the potential that the crowd would side with one of us over the other and push one of us to become the heel. If the crowd had taken one of us in that direction, we would have gone with it—but fortunately, it never actually happened. The crowds kept us both babyfaces and just cheered us both pretty much everywhere we went—so ultimately, Jim Barnett decided to go with what the people wanted and turned us into a babyface tag team!

Once that happened, Gerry and I traveled around the territory working together, and soon received a title shot at the Georgia Tag-Team Championship which, at that time, was held by Dick Slater and Bob Orton Jr. (later Cowboy Bob “Ace” Orton in the WWF), managed by Gary Hart. Both Slater and Orton could really work, and we had a number of very entertaining tag-team title matches with them around the territory. Gerry and I eventually beat them and enjoyed a brief run with the belts in the fall of 1975.

In Georgia, the heels and babyfaces were kept separate all the time, so I only got to mingle publicly with about half of the roster—which was really too bad, because there was such an abundance of good young talent in the Georgia territory at that time. Night after night, I found myself in the ring with incredibly talented guys, and wrestling in the upper half of the cards, so it was all about making it look good and listening to the crowds, figuring out what they wanted, and learning as much as I could from guys I would never have imagined being in the ring with.

I have always been grateful to Jim Barnett for giving me those opportunities.

During my first stay in Georgia, I continued to develop a pretty close friendship with Les Thornton. Les and I would go to the gym and play a game with a deck of cards where we would take turns turning over a card and do however many squats the card required. Aces or Jokers were thirty, face cards were ten, and everything else was face value. We had a lot of fun with that—and it was a way of keeping our workouts interesting.

During that time in my career, I was lifting heavy weights, benching, and doing a lot of deadlifts to help me execute the short-arm scissors. I never did a lot of running because of all the pounding on my hips and knees. Squats were good for wrestling, though, because you are up and down so much. Les also continued to teach me more and more shooting skills.

At the end of the fall of 1975, Jim Barnett called me into his office and told me that Sam Muchnick had called and asked to get some bookings with me in St. Louis. I knew from the chatter I had heard in the other territories that being invited to wrestle for Sam Muchnick in St. Louis was a very high honor, so I was excited to get the opportunity. Barnett explained to me how different the St. Louis territory was from the other wrestling territories in the NWA, in that it was essentially a one-city, one-day territory where you only wrestled twice a month. You’d fly in, tape the Wrestling at the Chase TV program, which they used to set up all of the angles, wrestle at the Kiel Auditorium, and then fly back and continue to work in whatever territory you had come from.

I wanted to go back home again to Minnesota to visit my parents, so I asked Jim if there was a way to work all of that out. Jim set up a tryout for me in St. Louis in December 1975, explaining to me that if it went well, Mr. Muchnick would probably ask to use me more often. Jim gave me about a month off to spend some time at home, explaining that he wanted me back in Georgia the first week in February 1976 for an additional three-month babyface run. After that, he explained that I would head back to Florida Championship Wrestling to do another run with Eddie Graham. So as Corki and I drove out of Georgia for our long-awaited trip home, I had a scheduled tryout with the NWA’s premiere booking office, and about six months of additional work in Georgia and Florida lined up ahead of me. Things were really starting to build a head of steam.

It made for a happy drive, and a pretty good holiday season!