Backlund

“Recognize that the blessings you have are a gift to be used for the common good …”

The next day, December 27, 1983, Vince Jr. held a television taping at the Chase Hotel in St. Louis where the St. Louis–based NWA program Wrestling at the Chase had always been filmed. I wasn’t invited. In fact, despite the fact that I had been the Missouri State Champion and would have been known to the people watching in the building that day, I don’t think my name was even mentioned as being part of the promotion.

One person who was there, though, was Hulk Hogan. That was beginning to send a message.

I was in Buffalo, wrestling the Masked Superstar without the belt. Sheik was at a spot show somewhere in Pennsylvania with the belt. It felt very lonely to be out there in the main events at these places without the championship. People were stunned to learn that I had lost the belt—and I continued to sell the neck and shoulder injury to make sure that the story held together when we finally broke it on the next set of television tapings in January 1984 in Allentown and Hamburg.

Those tapings saw the debuts of a bunch of new talent, including Hogan, Roddy Piper, Paul Orndorff, and “Dr. D” David Schultz, as well as announcer Gene Okerlund, who Vince Jr. had apparently lured away from the AWA at the same time he lured Hogan. I knew Piper from the match I had with him at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, and I knew Orndorff from Florida. I was pretty close with Roddy, and I visited with him and Orndorff at the Allentown taping just on a social level.

During the first hour of the Allentown taping, I was in a match with one of the Samoans, and the booking plan was to have the other Samoans and Albano at ringside during the match—so I could go back to the dressing room and bring somebody back to second me in my corner. That person, of course, was Hulk Hogan. The point of all of this was for me to introduce Hogan to the fans to put the rub on him and quickly get him over as a babyface. This was important, since only a couple of years earlier, Hogan had been in the territory managed by Freddie Blassie, and had been a vicious heel that had feuded with Andre the Giant. Of course, between those two points, Hogan had starred as “Thunderlips” with Sylvester Stallone in Rocky III, and had become something of a sensation in the AWA and in Japan. Vince Jr. saw the potential of Hogan’s marketability and jumped all over it.

I had known Hogan from his prior stint in the territory. He was young in the business, and very green back then, but Hogan and I had some pretty good matches in 1980. I didn’t really like what Hogan was doing and what he was about behind the scenes, but the McMahons had been very good to me, and I owed them some loyalty in return. The point of the whole thing was to pair us up and have it be more or less a passing of the torch from me to him, and for me to let my fans know it was okay to cheer for Hogan and to trust him and to believe in him.

During the next hour of the television taping, I teamed with Hogan against Mr. Fuji and Tiger Chung Lee, and Hogan got the pin. Again, this was simply about re-orienting the fans and using me to ensure that Hogan was understood to be a babyface. It was an easy transition and the fans readily accepted Hogan—and we reinforced that Hogan had “changed his ways” during a ringside interview.

After that had been laid down to tape about two weeks before the Garden card, Vince Jr. approached me and informed me that notwithstanding the fact that the January 23, 1984, card at Madison Square Garden had been announced as a Sheik-Backlund rematch for the WWF title, that they had decided to put Hogan into the main event as my replacement. At that point, I knew for certain that Hogan was going to be their next guy.

Other than the television tapings, Hogan did not make any house-show appearances in the WWF before taking the title from the Sheik at the Garden. Sheik and I, however, continued to travel the circuit. Khosrow and I faced each other in a rematch at the Boston Garden, where the fans were behind me even more than usual to try and get the title back, but of course, it was not to be. The Sheik was disqualified in that bout. We also wrestled at a few spot shows on a tour of Pennsylvania, with similar finishes. Elsewhere, I faced Muraco for the Intercontinental Championship a few times in the strange position as the challenger to his title, finished up rematch commitments with Masked Superstar and Sergeant Slaughter in a few of the bigger buildings in the territory, and wrestled a couple of matches against Paul Orndorff. I wished that Piper and Orndorff had come into the territory six months earlier so I could have had a series with each of them before I dropped the championship. I think the fans would have enjoyed what Roddy and Paul and I could have put together.

The “official” announcement was that I was “too injured” to wrestle at the January 23, 1984, Garden show, and in the promo interviews for the card, Hogan was named as my replacement. Before I learned that I had been taken out of that match, I had promised tickets to some friends who had helped me organize the Bob Backlund kids’ wrestling tournaments out on Long Island, so I went to the Garden to make sure that they got their tickets and could get into the matches. Because I was “injured,” I was not scheduled to wrestle on the card, so once I knew that my friends and the kids had gotten into the building, I didn’t hang around for very long—but I did hear that there was some drama between the Sheik and Hogan and some possible involvement by Hogan’s former promoter, AWA boss Verne Gagne.

According to what I heard in the dressing room, Gagne was very unhappy about Vince Jr. luring Hogan away from the AWA, and had offered a legitimate bounty to the Sheik to severely injure Hogan so he would not be able to wrestle again. Rumors of this bounty were rippling around the dressing room, and were apparently causing some real heartburn in the office, because Khrosrow was a shooter and would have had no problem breaking Hogan’s leg before anyone knew what was happening. And no one really knew what Khosrow was going to do.

Vince Jr. had a real issue on his hands. If the threat was legitimate and Vince Jr. sent Hogan out to the ring, his new superstar might be permanently injured before Hulkamania could even begin. Should they pull Hogan from the main event until the rumor could be sorted out? Doing so would, of course, disrupt the main event and likely cause the Garden crowd to riot. Or should they just proceed with the main event as scheduled and assume that it would all work out?

Was the threat a real one, or just a spurned promoter venting to one of his trainees?

I had already been cast aside as “too injured” to wrestle, so it was no longer an option to use me in a rematch with the Sheik while the office sorted this out. So the only thing everyone could do was wait and watch what happened.

Break His Leg

True story. We were in Pittsburgh at a motel out at the airport and I had just started doing some pushup blocks when there was a knock at the door, and it was The Iron Sheik, and he said, “Sergeant, I need to talk to you,” and I asked him why, and he said, “Coach called me and wants me to break Hogan’s leg and bring the title back to the AWA, and he will pay me a lot of money,” and he started telling me all about it and explained to me that he didn’t know what to do. So I told him, there is only one thing to do, and that is to uphold your obligation to Mr. McMahon, your boss, he is the one that is paying you, and I don’t think it would be a very smart idea to do that because you’d have a bad reputation and people wouldn’t ever trust you again.

When we went to the Garden, I was hoping that he would take my advice, but people in the back were certainly on the edge of their seats wondering what was going to happen that night. But he did the right thing, and did the favor for Hogan, and did it quite well, and thank God he did.

Bob Backlund was Vince McMahon Sr.’s guy. He just loved Bob. Bob was always very well respected because Bob was a shooter. If someone wanted to take him on, he was a guy who could defend himself. He just had a lot of respect from the boys and the promoters. He was always very reliable, stayed in great shape, and you never had to worry about him. He was just a wonderful guy to go in the ring with for me because we had fun. He was always open to suggestions and wanted things to be the best that they could for the people.

—Sergeant Slaughter

… Or Not

I saw Hulk Hogan for the first time at the Allentown, Pennsylvania, television taping when he came in and talked to Mr. McMahon when I was the champion. I didn’t know that I was dropping the championship to Hogan until the night we got to the Garden when Mr. McMahon Sr. came to me and told me that he wanted me to drop the championship to Hogan.

Verne Gagne had called me and he said Khosrow, I need a favor. Mr. McMahon took Hogan from me. Now, don’t drop the belt to him. Break his back, break his leg, come to Minnesota, and I will take care of you … we’ll all take care of you. I told him, let me think about it for twenty-four hours. I talked to Sgt. Slaughter and my wife, and after that, I decided to just go into the ring and have a good match, because the hand that feeds me, I cannot bite that hand. So I didn’t do that—I didn’t double-cross the WWF for Mr. Gagne.

—The Iron Sheik

I didn’t stay at the Garden enough to find out what happened. My friends told me later that Hogan had squashed the Sheik in five minutes and that the crowd was into it big time.

Immediately after winning the title, Hogan left with the belt on a two-week tour for New Japan, and I finished up my remaining, which roughly coincided with the time that Hogan was in Japan. Once Hogan returned from Japan with the belt, however, Vince Jr. put me in mothballs. I was not invited to the next set of television tapings, and was given no bookings for the next three-week period. I was supposed to have wrestled a Texas Death Match against the Khosrow in Boston, but they replaced me with Hogan and made that a title match where Hogan again squashed Khosrow. If you aren’t booked on a card, you can’t just show up at the building, so I was adrift. I wasn’t getting any new bookings, so I figured that they had probably gotten what they wanted from me, and that I was done.

I had no idea what was going on, and I assumed they had decided to move on and hope the fans would forget all about Bob Backlund.

As it turned out, I think they just wanted to give Hogan a month out on the road to establish himself with the people as the champion, and as the territory’s new number-one babyface. That is a lot easier to do when the former champion isn’t in the same buildings competing for the same role.

I was invited to return at the March 6 Allentown television taping—and I did so. Although I didn’t wrestle, I held an amateur wrestling demonstration with a couple of winners from the Bob Backlund Youth Wrestling Tournament up in Connecticut. I also did a ringside interview with Gene Okerlund, where I announced that I was healthy again, and ready to get back into wrestling full time. It was at that television taping that Vince McMahon Jr. pulled me aside and asked me if I would be willing to participate in an angle where I became jealous of the fact that the fans had adopted Hogan as their new hero and “forgotten” about me, turn heel, and work against Hogan.

I told Vince in no uncertain terms that I didn’t want to do it. I pointed to the fact that my daughter was six years old and wouldn’t understand why suddenly everyone hated her father. I was also working with kids and sponsoring youth wrestling tournaments all over the territory, and I was worried about how I could continue to do those things that were so important to me, personally, while playing the heel role. I didn’t think that the people, and especially those kids, would understand how their hero could just throw over everything that he stood for just to make a few bucks. Vince Jr. told me to think about it—and shortly thereafter, gave me a very lucrative contract for a lot of money to become a heel and chase Hogan.

Fortunately, I followed my heart and opted not to make that heel turn. If I had, chances are that I would never have had this opportunity to tell my life story, because my co-author, then a twelve-year-old fan of mine, agrees that he would have “felt totally betrayed” by the man he considered his childhood hero.

I went back out on the road on March 25, 1984, where I headlined the Garden against Greg “The Hammer” Valentine and the match sold out both the Garden and the Felt Forum—prompting Vince Jr. to ask for a rematch the following month. This was the first Garden card in recent memory to not feature a defense of the WWF World Heavyweight Championship. It was very evident that they were trying to keep Hogan and me apart. I don’t think there were more than a handful of times in the six months that I continued to wrestle in the WWF where Hogan and I appeared in the same building.

March 31, 1984, however, was one of those times. That night, despite my clear and plain refusal to consider it, they teased my heel turn in a match I had with the Sheik in the main event at the Spectrum in Philadelphia. In that match, Sheik loaded up his boot and tried to kick me with it, prompting Hogan to run into the ring swinging a cowboy boot to “make the save,” which ended up getting me disqualified for outside interference. Hogan then started posing in the middle of the ring and “grandstanding,” prompting me to walk out on him and leave him there. It wouldn’t have taken much more to execute a complete heel turn off of that scenario—but the fact is, I just didn’t want to do it.

They also booked me, against my will, into matches with Salvatore Bellomo, Brian Blair, and eventually, even against the newly crowned Intercontinental Champion Tito Santana to see if the crowd would push me into the heel role—but my fans never abandoned me, and these matches all came off as straight babyface matches.

Vince McMahon Sr. died of pancreatic cancer in North Miami, Florida, on May 24, 1984, at the age of sixty-nine. I went to the funeral in Fort Lauderdale. Eddie Graham was there, Arnold Skaaland was there, Vince Jr. was there, and I was there. It was an incredibly sad day for me.

Once Vince Sr. was gone, I just lost my heart for the business entirely. My friend, who had been like a father to me, was gone … and gone with him was the honest, straightforward way that he did business with everyone. I wrestled only sporadically after that, taking whatever bookings Vince Jr. gave me, but it was clear that we were at an impasse. I was continuing to refuse to sell out and become a heel, and Vince Jr. did not want me around as a babyface with Hogan on top.

By this point in my career—I had really started to live my character because in my mind, I meant too much to too many people. It hurt me in the business, but it didn’t hurt me in life. That’s probably why I didn’t go anywhere in the business after I lost the title. I give speeches to kids about working hard, and playing fair, and following the rules. How could I do that during the day, then turn my back on all of that and become a heel, and cheat and lie and break the rules at night? Just to prolong my career in the business? Just for a few more big paydays? It just wasn’t something I was willing to do. To a lot of people in the business, the business was a joke—but to me, the business had given me another life—one that was just as important to me as the business was. People often talk about Hulk Hogan being the biggest “hero” the wrestling business ever saw—but what kind of hero was Hulk Hogan? That was all just for show. What I was doing with kids in my life away from the ring was real—and I wasn’t about to trade that away for anything.

My match against Salvatore Bellomo at the Philadelphia Spectrum on August 4, 1984, would be my last match in the WWF for nearly eight years. After I pinned him, I grabbed the microphone and reminded the fans that I was ready to be their champion again anytime, and ironically, because Philly had never been my best town, the fans cheered for me one last time.

Some people over the years have asked me whether I would have rather been wrestling after 1984 because of all the money and the exposure and pay per view and all of that. My consistent answer is “no,” because I got to work for one of the most honorable men I had ever met—and someone who was like a father to me. I wouldn’t have traded that time for all the money in the world.

It Was All About Hogan

I wasn’t around at the time of the transition in 1983, but I know a lot about it. At the time, a lot of us were very loyal to Mr. McMahon and to the business, maybe to a fault. Because after the switch from Bobby to the Sheik and then to Hogan, a lot of our loyalties, including Bobby’s, were swept under the table. Once Hogan had the belt, it was Hogan’s show and screw everybody else. Junior had a vision for where he wanted the thing to go, and it was all about Hogan. So our old-school wrestling business blossomed into a totally different business—what I call the “cartoon era.” But to be honest, the way the business was, with kayfabe and untelevised finishes and all of that, would not have been able to continue the way it was in the world of social media and the Internet. The finishes and the prerecorded television saved for three weeks wouldn’t have worked, they would have been instantly all over the place. The old-school way of doing business would have eventually become impossible, so the change probably saved the business from Vince McMahon Jr.’s point of view.

I never expected Junior to call and invite me back after that. In hindsight, doing the cartoon character that I ended up doing was very good for my retirement, but not real good for the lasting image of my character or for wrestling, but after Bobby’s run, once Hogan took over, wrestling became a cartoon business selling lunch boxes. Unfortunately, I think doing that tainted everything that I had done before with Bruno and Pedro and Bobby that had been so real and good and strong. But it fit in great with Hulk.

Bobby was a real gentleman and I’m really glad that he had the run that he had, because he was very deserving and he was a great champion. We had a lot of fun together over the years, particularly over in Japan, and it was a pleasure to work with him.

–George “The Animal” Steele

It Became About Show Business

Late 1983 and 1984 was a time of transition. It was a time where the promoters wanted more show business—and they didn’t realize that the marquee said wrestling. So it became a time that the great pure wrestlers were starting to get pushed aside for people who were more flamboyant. Because all of a sudden there was Hollywood, and there was MTV, and they were going all over the world. With professional wrestling, one reason that it was so popular all over the world is that you didn’t need to know anything about it—you didn’t need to speak the language—you just needed to turn the TV on and if the psychology was being handled right, you could tell what was going on. It was universal.

When Hogan came along—he was a completely different piece of work than Bobby Backlund. Vinnie was pushing entertainment—from more of a high-paced, show business, entertainment, Liberace and the Rockettes kind of place. And he was surrounding the wrestling talent with that kind of entertainment to help it appeal to a larger audience outside of wrestling. Vinnie was trying to take wrestling into the entertainment mainstream. So the great technical wrestlers kind of got poo-poo’ed. They wanted Hogan, who was a movie star having just completed Rocky III with Stallone, to take his vitamins and say his prayers. They would rather set things up for Hogan to hulk up and flex his muscles—and in the blink of an eye, relatively speaking, the business changed, and the great technicians, the guys who knew how to use psychology to get the people and who were formerly the cornerstones of the business became dinosaurs.

The shame of that is that the business now is suffering because no one realized how great the art that those men had mastered was, and what they brought to the table in terms of the art of telling a story in the ring through psychology. Now, the psychology is not known. As I was coming in, Bobby was on his way out, because the promotion had decided to go with entertainment instead of wrestling.

There was a lot of talk about trying to turn Bobby heel after they took the belt off him. I was around for those discussions. They didn’t want anybody around on the babyface side that could go in there and show up Hogan. They wanted to cotton ball Hogan. Hell, I’d do an interview with Hogan where he’d say something about my kilt and I’d say something about his bald head, and they’d yell, “Cut, cut! You can’t say that about Hulk—he’s on the Wheaties box!” This was pro wrestling we’re talking about—but even there, the definition was changing. They had started to redefine everything. It had just become a gigantic marketing machine with a little wrestling on the side, and they wouldn’t let anyone get close to dinging up Hogan in any way.

So Vinnie put a great technical wrestler like Bobby in mothballs in favor of what he thought was a more entertaining kind of match, animated by characters that they created and could market. But now, we look back on it and see that the wrestlers of this new generation don’t have the training in the psychology of how to tell a story in the ring like Bobby Backlund did—so they have to do all kinds of song and dance to try to keep the thing going instead of just having one man who knew the art, like Bobby Backlund did, come into an arena cold and draw tons of money simply because of his ability to tell a story in the ring, and leave with everybody looking great. That’s what a real champion does—and that’s a guy who can stay over with the people all by himself, just by his own storytelling in the ring with one other man—as opposed to putting someone in a fucking clown outfit and hoping he can sell you a few T-shirts and ice cream bars.

—“Rowdy” Roddy Piper