Backlund: From All-American Boy to Professional Wrestling's World Champion

by Bob Backlund

  Copyright © 2015 by Bob Backlund and Rob Miller

  Foreword copyright © 2015 by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper

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  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Tom Lau

  Jacket photos courtesy of the author

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61321-695-8

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61321-696-5

  To Corki, for standing by me all these years.

  To Vincent J. McMahon, for giving me the chance of a lifetime.

  Table of Contents

  Foreword by “Rowdy” Roddy Piper

  Introduction

  1. The Die Is Cast

  2. Where It All Began

  3. The NCAAs

  4. Breaking In

  5. From the Sheraton to the Trunk (Tri-States, 1973)

  6. Getting Funked Up (Amarillo, 1974)

  7. When Two Weeks Last Forever (Florida, 1974)

  8. The First Battle of Atlanta (Georgia, 1975)

  9. I’ll Be Home for Christmas (AWA, 1975)

  10. A Star Is Rising: Florida and Georgia (1976)

  11. The Audition (St. Louis, 1976)

  12. The Six Words That Changed My Life (WWWF, 1977)

  13. Carrie Me Away

  14. The Build-Up

  15. My Night at the Garden (February 20, 1978)

  16. Getting Over (1978)

  17. Taking Flight (1979)

  18. A Favor for Antonio (Japan, 1979)

  19. An Olympian, a Drill Sergeant, and a Young Hulkster (1980)

  20. Monsters and Broadways (1981)

  21. The Peak (1982)

  22. It Takes Two to Tango (1983)

  23. The Night the Lights Went Out on Broadway (December 26, 1983)

  24. The Choice (1984)

  25. Killing Mr. Kirkley (1985–1992)

  26. Being Bad by Being Good: The Birth of “Mr. Backlund” (1993–94)

  27. Looking Forward, Not Behind

  Acknowledgments

  FOREWORD BY “ROWDY” RODDY PIPER

  I was barely twenty years old.

  Bob Backlund was the world champion from New York. He had come in to the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, where he always drew a lot of money. On this night, however, he had just arrived from Tokyo, where he had just completed a tour with Antonio Inoki’s New Japan promotion the night before. Promoter Mike LaBell had asked Vince McMahon Sr. if his champion could stop over in Los Angeles on his way back from Japan and defend the World Wide Wrestling Federation’s Heavyweight Championship at the Olympic against his America’s Champion.

  Vince Sr. agreed.

  I was the America’s Champion.

  The hype for this match had been terrific, and the building was completely sold out. In fact, I think because of fire code issues they had to turn people away from the box office that night.

  At the appointed time for the main event, we climbed into the ring, went through the pre-match introductions, and then started tussling back and forth and back and forth. The time limit was sixty minutes, and Bobby took me with him for fifty-nine minutes that night. I know I got some frequent flyer miles from that match.

  Bobby and I had never met before in the ring anywhere, in any promotion, so it was a real testament to his skill in the ring that he could come in there cold, against a guy he had never been in the ring with before, having just gotten off a long and grueling Japanese tour and a long plane flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles, and to then go fifty-nine minutes with me and make me look good. And you know, for Bobby to be going around like that, not just around the WWWF territory at the time with the same few guys, but to Japan and wrestle guys who don’t speak English, and to Toronto, or Florida, or St. Louis, or to the West Coast where we were—and to wrestle guys he had not worked with before—that’s not easy to do. And unlike a lot of champions before and after him, Bobby would not come into a territory and give you a cheap fifteen minutes where he did a few signature moves, took most of the match, and then got the hell out of there. To the contrary—Bobby would give you whatever the fans wanted—and if that meant he was out there for forty-five minutes or an hour, then that’s the way it was. And he’d make you look like a million bucks doing it.

  The night I got to wrestle him, and I remember the night like it was just the other day because it was that memorable a night for me, I learned a lot. To be able to keep the people on the edge of their seats for fifty-nine minutes, now that’s saying something. And you know given Bobby’s style—there weren’t a lot of rest holds or running away and stalling outside the ring and killing time. You were working hard all the time, chain wrestling from high spot to high spot. We were throwing arm drags and dropkicks and leapfrogs and monkey flips and body slams and hip tosses and vertical suplexes. Bobby was so pure in there and so quick and could string moves together so quickly and with such precision—trust me when I tell you—you had to be on your toes to keep up with Bobby Backlund.

  And the people were screaming. They were digging it!

  To be honest, that night in the ring with Bobby was probably one of my better pieces of work from an artistic and technical point of view that I ever had—because later on, as the business started to change, that old-school honest style became dwarfed and eventually totally eclipsed by show business and standard set pieces night after night after night. But that night, wrestling Bob Backlund at the Olympic taught me not just how to get over with the people, but to stay over with the people. And Bobby did that, seemingly with ease.

  The night that I got to go wrestle Bobby Backlund was, for me, a showcase for promoters all around the country. It advanced me in my career, because LaBell raved about it, and the promoters understood, okay, this kid Piper can go. You know, a lot of wonderful things happened for me after that. For Bobby to be that generous with me, stopping over on his way back from Japan and giving me as much of the match as he did, that left me on top of the world. I was more over with the fans after that match—even though he pinned me—than I had been before he came. And it takes a lot of psychology, a great wrestler, and a great storyteller to do that. It was such an honor for me, especially then as such a young kid, to have had that opportunity to learn from him and to have had that kind of experience with him in a one-off match that he totally could have mailed in.

  Sometime after that match, he sent me a wheel—you know, the Bob Backlund workout wheel that you’ve seen him use on television. I tease my son, Colt Toombs, who is an MMA fighter, because to this day, he still uses that wheel that Bobby gave me thirty years ago. I used to tell Colt stories about Bobby and our joke was always that the wheel Bobby gave me could have been used as the front wheel of an airplane. It was built so soli
dly that it was impossible to wear out. And you know what? That is kind of a metaphor for Bob Backlund.

  When I was asked to do something for this book, Bob approached me in such a polite and humble way, that I had to remind him that the honor was mine. The honor in being able to give something back to this man is mine.

  Back in the day when Bob Backlund was the world champion, there were many talented guys that had been brought up in the old territory system. Back then, you would stand on the shoulders of the guys that had come before you, and who taught you how to wrestle, and how to understand ring psychology and crowd psychology and pacing. The competition in those days was heavy, man. And Bob Backlund managed to cut through all of that, and to work his way up, the honest way, to become the world champion, and then to stay there for almost six years. Six years was like a lifetime in our sport.

  And even in our “sport,” where the outcomes may have been predetermined, the competition for who got to occupy that spot was as fierce as it was in any sport or any profession. You know, with pro wrestling, people tend to think that it is a “team” sport—that you rely on everyone, but indeed it’s not. To become truly successful, you have to be able to cut the line. Everyone wants to kind of try and do business and get along, but everybody also wants to be on top. So the question is: how do you get to the top?

  That’s not so easy to do.

  But Bob Backlund did it.

  And the bigger question is, once you’re there, how do you find a way to stay there for all of those years, stay healthy, and still get along and be able to work with people?

  That’s even harder to do.

  But Bob Backlund did that too.

  For almost six years, he was the world champion of the most lucrative territory in the wrestling business, filling the biggest buildings night after night after night. To get to that kind of a place, you need all the legs of the table: the technical part, the psychology part, the showbiz part, and the ability to talk people into the seats by making them want to suspend disbelief and buy what you are selling them. They have to believe in you. And believe me when I tell you, the fans believed in Bobby Backlund.

  But how do you get to the top of the business, manage to stay there, and then also manage to have a legacy where practically everyone in the industry, to a man, thinks highly of you? Well that’s the hardest thing of all, and Bobby Backlund did that too.

  For a world champion to take some twenty-year-old regional champion fifty-nine minutes and make him look like a million bucks and leave him a stronger force in the territory than before the match … well that is the epitome of what a world champion is supposed to do. Bob Backlund came to Los Angeles that night and did his job masterfully. He personified everything that the world’s heavyweight champion should be—in the way he lived, in his diet and work ethic, in the way he carried himself as a man, in the way he interacted with the people and the promoters, and in the way he acted in the dressing room. And that’s why everybody in the business has so much respect for him.

  Backlund was a shy guy, but he was also the first person to break the ice and come up to people he didn’t know and shake hands and say hello. If you wanted suggestions on training or health, he was there to help you. Yet at the same time, despite being such a nice person, he could hold his own anywhere. No one was going to take anything from Bobby Backlund inside the ring or outside the ring that he didn’t want taken. He had all the elements that a real-deal champion should have. If I had to compare Bobby with somebody, I’d compare him to Lou Thesz. Lou Thesz was as real as they come—and so too was Bob Backlund.

  A lot of people don’t know that Bob Backlund was the guy who set my career on its path, but in that one hour in Los Angeles all those many years ago, he did just that. And I have never forgotten it.

  Bob Backlund was a true gentleman and a champion in every sense of the word. He was the epitome of what a champion should be. He was, and is, a credit to our business. More of all, though, you know, Bobby Backlund has a heart of gold.

  Just a heart of gold.

  —“Rowdy” Roddy Piper

  INTRODUCTION

  Every child needs a hero.

  Growing up in a middle-class neighborhood in suburban Manchester, New Hampshire, in the late 1970s, my friends all idolized someone whose poster could be found taped up over their beds. For my athletic friends, these heroes were the Boston sports legends of the time: Orr and Bird; Grogan and Yastrzemski. For others, who tempered the awkwardness of those years by taking up an instrument and starring in a neighborhood garage band, it was Daltrey and Townshend, or Jim Morrison, or Mick Jagger, or Geddy, Alex, and Neil.

  My hero, though, was someone totally different.

  I first discovered him while flipping channels after swim practice on one nondescript, drizzly Saturday morning late in the autumn of 1980. There, at age nine, somewhere on the dial between the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner Hour and Candlepins for Cash, I got my first introduction to the “sport” in which he had the starring role.

  Initially confused by what this spectacle was all about, I watched as this guy used a dazzling array of athletic moves to deftly pin the shoulders of a much bigger and scarier-looking opponent to the mat for a count of three, delighting the people who had jammed into the dingy fairgrounds arena to cheer him on. A guy who had the lean, strong body and chiseled but kind young face that plainly came not from a bottle or a syringe as they often do now, but from years of dedication and hard work in the gym and on the mat.

  With the battle behind him, I watched as this man approached the microphone held by a very young Vince McMahon Jr., and calmly described his plan for beating someone named Sergeant Slaughter. This Slaughter, he said, was a Marine Drill Instructor who would do anything to win the championship belt. Furthermore, Slaughter was the master of an unbreakable submission hold, known as the “Cobra Clutch,” which, when applied, would render its victim unconscious … But with hard work and dedication, and with all of us behind him, said the man being interviewed, he would do everything in his power to avoid the Cobra Clutch, and find a way to win and keep the championship belt for all the fans that deserved a proper role model … a champion they could be proud of. He hoped we’d all show up to watch the battle at the Boston Garden that night and cheer him on to victory.

  I was totally hooked.

  At the time, I was a serious young athlete—a swimmer competing on the same team with people who would go on to win gold medals at the Olympics and the Goodwill Games. I believed in training hard, playing fair, and “saying my prayers and eating my vitamins,” long before Hulk Hogan would go on to popularize that phrase. My new hero spoke to me because he was all about those things, albeit on a much bigger stage.

  He was known as the “All-American Boy” because of his clean-cut, youthful good looks, humility, and plainspoken manner. As I would soon learn, he was also drawing overflow crowds into the East Coast’s largest hockey arenas and civic centers. From Bangor to Baltimore, Madison Square Garden to the Tokyo Dome, crowds of men, women, and children, young and old, were coming out in droves to cheer him on to victory.

  Somehow, this straight-shooting guy was finding a way to hang in there for twenty or thirty minutes nearly every night with challenger after challenger, one more imposing, nefarious, and downright scary than the next. There were Russian strongmen and Samurai warriors; Wild Samoans and tough-talking cowboys; street fighters, masked men, and giants. Through it all, each night, this All-American Boy would dazzle the crowds with elaborate displays of wrestling holds, bursts of quickness, and jaw-dropping feats of strength. He would also withstand unspeakable beatings until he found the moment when he could capitalize on his opponent’s one passing mistake. Then, with a single dazzling move, he’d pin his opponent’s shoulders to the mat for the fatal three-count that would allow him, once again, to retain his title.

  In these matches against these formidable foes, he was forever the underdog—and I identified with him, because I suppose I saw myself that way
too.

  In 1980, I was a nine-year-old boy growing up in the anonymity of middle-class suburbia, and my hero was Bob Backlund—the Heavyweight Champion of the World Wrestling Federation.

  For the next several years, I didn’t miss a week of wrestling on television, as I closely followed the career and exploits of my new hero. Wherever I went in competition, Bob Backlund came with me. As I sat quietly in the locker rooms of aquatic centers around New England, mentally preparing for my big races, I would think about Bob doing the same in the bowels of a nearby arena before a title defense. Whenever an older kid tried to bully me on the playground or in the neighborhood, I would think about Bob standing up to any one of the scary, bigger guys (“heels” in wrestling parlance) he was forced to wrestle in defense of his world championship. With that in mind, no playground bully ever seemed to be quite as tough.

  When I first tuned in to all of this as a happy-go-lucky nine-year-old, I didn’t know that the outcomes of these professional wrestling matches were prearranged, and the fact is, it wouldn’t have mattered much if I had known. Nor does that fact matter much in the telling of Bob Backlund’s story, because the meaning of Backlund’s life isn’t as much about the outcomes of his wrestling matches as it is about the man and his journey and the defining choices he made along the way. Choices that left an indelible mark on him, on all of those he touched with his remarkable acts of generosity and kindness, and on the entire wrestling industry.

  Of course, the stories Bob Backlund was “telling” in the ring mattered mightily to the fiscal bottom line of the World Wrestling Federation, to the livelihoods of his opponents in the ring with whom he split a percentage of the gates each night, and as such, to his own viability as the champion. For in professional wrestling, the world championship match was always the main event of the evening, and because of that, the champion was heavily relied upon to draw the house. Knowing this, Vince McMahon Sr., the majority owner and Chairman of the Capitol Wrestling Corporation or what was then known as the World Wide Wrestling Federation, had searched the world for an iconic “All-American Boy” to replace the wildly successful but aging Italian superman and “Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino as his champion—and McMahon had gambled big on the relatively unknown Backlund to be that man.