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

by Bob Backlund

  There was just something right and comforting and reassuring about that.

  And of course, that was precisely the way Vince McMahon Sr. wanted it: his vision of what the story of the All-American Boy should be. That is exactly the way he drew it up in his “Storyboard”—and that is what he searched the world to find, and what he ultimately found in Bob Backlund—the boy he hand-picked to play the role. And Bob Backlund was, of course, the last great story in Vince McMahon Sr.’s long and wildly successful life of storytelling—the hero he created for us at a time in history at the height of the Cold War when America, and particularly America’s kids, needed one most.

  And so, it was against this backdrop that one day, in the fall of 2009, I found myself up very late one night re-watching the wonderful baseball movie Field of Dreams. Near the end, there are two moments in that film that always bring me to tears. The first is the moment when Moonlight Graham pauses for a moment on the baseline before making the choice to step across it in order to save Ray Kinsella’s daughter from choking, knowing full well that the choice would mean that he could never go back to being a ballplayer. And the second is the moment where the haunting line “if you build it, he will come” finally pays off, and Ray gets to have the catch with his father that he never got to have as a kid.

  Of course, the entire movie is really about bringing a hero back to life by telling his story. Watching Field of Dreams that night got me thinking, once again, about Bob Backlund. I wondered where he was, and if he was getting old, and whether he was living somewhere in obscurity, in a place where no one remembered him. My own father had recently passed on, and as I watched that night, I found myself in the middle of something of a midlife crisis, longing to find my childhood hero, and to relive some of those old times again.

  So I did what everyone does today. I Googled him.

  I learned that Bob Backlund had staged a respectable but unsuccessful run for Congress in 2000 as a Republican in Connecticut, that he was running a heating oil company (Backlund Energy) in Glastonbury, that he was still married to his college sweetheart, and that his daughter had grown up to be a marine biologist. I saw that he looked very much as I remembered him, perhaps with a few more laugh lines and crow’s feet—but still in fantastic physical condition. Most importantly, as I Googled further, I learned that no one had ever written a book about the story of his remarkable life.

  And that was the moment when the strands of a new dream started to come together.

  It started with a simple letter—written from the heart of an old fan who was missing his dad and wanting to recapture a bit of his childhood. In that letter, I explained to Bob what an impact he’d had on my life, what an inspiration he had been to me, and to so many of my friends, and I asked him if he’d be interested in telling his story. I dropped the letter in the mailbox, smiled, shook my head at the goofiness of it all, and never expected to hear anything back. It was cathartic, though, and that, I told myself, would have to be enough.

  About three weeks later, I took a call on my cell phone, appropriately, as I was driving home from the gym.

  “Mr. Miller, this is Bob Backlund calling,” the caller said. I pulled the car over into the breakdown lane to avoid running off the road.

  He’d been waiting twenty-five years for a letter like the one I sent him, he said … but it had never come. Although many different sportswriters had approached him to do a book—none of them seemed to really “get” who he was or what his life had really been about. My letter, he said, had reached into his heart, justified the difficult choices he had made, and confirmed for him that he had done the right thing. We had a great first talk, and agreed to meet up in a few days at the Glastonbury Town Library to discuss the project.

  That meeting was supposed to last an hour. We ended up talking all day.

  When I first met Bob, he gave me a big hug, thanked me for finding him and affirming the life choices he had made, and hoped aloud that the man he actually was and the life he had actually led would live up to the expectations of someone who had once called him his hero.

  It wouldn’t take very long to determine the answer to that question.

  It is true that every child needs a hero. But sometimes, adults need them too.

  At the time I met Bob Backlund again, what I needed most was a return to basics and fundamentals—someone with standing in my life to look me in the eye, and remind me about choices and responsibilities and the importance of making good decisions. The message Bob Backlund delivered to me in 2009 wasn’t much different from the message he delivered to me in 1982, but the second time around, it proved to be far more meaningful. And it is humbling indeed to know that I arrived in Bob’s life at a time when he, too, needed something: one of his oldest fans to emerge from the mists of time to remind him of the reason why he had made the choices he did, and that those choices were, indeed, the right ones.

  Writing this book has been a dream come true for me in many ways. It has allowed me to relive my childhood one more time. It has allowed me to meet and get to know great people like Bruno Sammartino and Harley Race and Terry Funk and Roddy Piper, and to talk to them about their experiences as pro wrestlers and in life. It has been a chance to learn about the history and inner-workings of the always-fascinating pro wrestling industry.

  But best of all, it has been a chance to say thank you to my childhood hero. Thank you for making the choices you did. Thank you for staying true to your principles. Thank you for not selling out when nearly everyone else did. And thank you for being a role model so worthy of the many years of work that have led to this day.

  —Robert H. Miller

  Hopkinton, New Hampshire

  June 2015

  1

  The Die Is Cast

  “Render more and better service than you are paid for, and sooner or later, you will receive compound interest from your investment.”

  —Napoleon Hill, “Go the Extra Mile”

  “Bobby, can I speak with you for a moment?”

  Vincent James McMahon Sr., founder and chairman of the World Wide Wrestling Federation, was always impeccably dressed in a suit and tie. His silvering hair was perfectly coiffed, and although he smiled easily, his piercing eyes conveyed the message of serious business.

  He was a master of human psychology and an astute observer of people, frequently lurking unobtrusively in the shadows, riffling a stack of quarters in his hand, his eyes always trained on people’s faces and his ear listening intently to the crowd’s reactions. Although by this time, he flew up from his home in Florida only for the monthly show at Madison Square Garden and for the two days of television tapings that occurred every three weeks, he was constantly on the phone with his deputies. Not much got past Vince McMahon Sr.’s meticulous attention to detail.

  He was the most powerful and successful professional wrestling promoter in the United States, controlling the country’s most populous region, its largest arenas, and its biggest television markets. The World Wide Wrestling Federation was the most lucrative wrestling promotion in the country, and Vince McMahon Sr. was the man whose business savvy and creative genius had made it that way. He was rarely seen on camera, but he commanded significant respect from his business partners, his fellow promoters around the country with whom he collaborated, and of course, from the stable of professional wrestlers who worked for him.

  Vince McMahon Sr. was also a man of purpose and of very few words. When he asked to speak with you, it always meant something.

  “Come with me, Bobby.”

  It was April 1977, and we were standing in the cramped and dirty locker room of the old Philadelphia Arena on the corner of 45th and Market Street in West Philadelphia. That was where the World Wide Wrestling Federation held its television tapings every third Tuesday before they were moved to the Allentown Fairgrounds and the Hamburg Fieldhouse in the name of cheaper rent and better lighting.

  I had been flown up to Philadelphia from Atlanta, where I was working for Jim
Barnett and Georgia Championship Wrestling. A few weeks earlier, Barnett had called me into his office to tell me that Vince McMahon had his eye on me and wanted to give me a “tryout” at the next set of WWWF television tapings. Vince Sr. and Jim Barnett often shared talent, so Barnett had encouraged me to accept Vince’s invitation.

  I wrestled three tag-team matches and a singles match at that first set of TV tapings, and things had gone well. Before I left to go back to Atlanta, Vince Sr. shook my hand and invited me back for the next set of tapings in three weeks.

  At the time, those television tapings were the lifeblood of the World Wide Wrestling Federation, and the way that Vince Sr. got his storylines across to the fans. There were two television shows, called Championship Wrestling and All-Star Wrestling, which were essentially hour-long ads for the live wrestling events they supported. Each show featured five or six “squash” matches where the territory’s newest villains, known as “heels,” would be introduced and hyped to the fans in quick three-or four-minute matches against local guys known as “jobbers” they would “squash” with little or no trouble. Each heel would typically have a terrifying final move, called a “finishing hold,” that he would showcase in these matches, and which the announcers would hype to the moon. The territory’s established heroes, known as “babyfaces,” would also appear in televised matches against these jobbers, and would also be made to look quick, dynamic, and unstoppable.

  The hottest heels and babyfaces would then appear separately, in pre-taped interview segments with Vince McMahon Jr., where they would hype the matches they were going to be having against each other in the upcoming weeks, in the arenas and civic centers and high school gyms around the territory. Wrestlers and their managers would arrive at the television tapings around nine in the morning and spend all day cutting these promos for the upcoming three-week itinerary of matches up and down the East Coast from Bangor, Maine, to Washington, D.C. The federation’s entire roster would be there, reading, eating and drinking, or playing cards, waiting for their turn to cut promos.

  Tapes of these one-hour television shows would then be “bicycled” to the various television stations up and down the East Coast, with each local television station getting the geographically specific voice-over announcements and interview segments for the upcoming matches in their local area, which had all been pre-booked and listed in Vince McMahon’s master calendar and storyboard. A quick glance ahead in that calendar would tell you who you were wrestling, where, and on what day—while a quick reference back would tell you what had happened in that town in the prior month, so you could make reference to it in your interview and personalize it for the fans who would be watching the interview. That would make it feel like the match was just happening exclusively in their town. The WWWF had perfected this system of hyping their house show matches better than any other promotion—and that definitely contributed to the federation’s considerable success.

  On my return trip to the second set of tapings, I wrestled a series of matches to be aired sequentially on the WWWF’s weekend television programs during the subsequent three weeks. This was done to give the viewers the illusion that I was actually wrestling in the territory and building up credentials and a winning streak even though I was still wrestling full-time for Jim Barnett down in Georgia Championship Wrestling and hadn’t actually set foot in a single WWWF building outside Philadelphia. In the days before the Internet, social media, and the nearly instant way that news travels now—it was easy to perpetuate an illusion like this.

  I had just finished wrestling “Pretty Boy” Larry Sharpe—one of Vince Sr.’s most skilled in-ring guys, and a guy who Vince frequently used to “test” the talents of new, would-be stars. Larry, who went on to run a successful wrestling school near his hometown of Paulsboro, New Jersey, was a great worker and could anticipate and respond well to whatever moves and maneuvers you tried to put on him, and “sell” those moves convincingly. That would allow Vince Sr. to examine how well you could put an offensive series of moves together, and how good your timing was. Larry also had a wide repertoire of offensive moves at his disposal, which he could string together with ease, and which would make you demonstrate how convincingly you could sell an opponent’s offense. This, likewise, would allow Vince Sr. to evaluate how realistic your in-ring work appeared to the fans.

  Many wrestlers failed to make the cut in these “tryouts” because they either hadn’t mastered how to build a match with a series of offensive moves, or because they couldn’t effectively and convincingly “sell” their opponent’s offensive moves. When that happened, these “tryout” matches would go “dark”—and never actually appear on the television broadcast.

  As I toweled off after my last match, Vince. Sr. touched my elbow and led me quietly into the men’s room. The men’s room in any arena’s locker room always served as Vince Sr.’s mobile office. It was the location he chose for every important conversation I ever had with him because it was the one place in an arena where you could reliably get a bit of privacy. Even at Madison Square Garden, as I would later learn, this is where Vince preferred to conduct his private business—away from the ears of the boys in the locker room, the probing eyes and ears of the newspapermen, photographers, and magazine writers who would prowl the back halls of the larger arenas looking to “expose” the business, and out of earshot of anyone else who might be listening.

  I followed him into the men’s room, as requested. He turned and locked the door, and then turning back to me, looked me square in the eye and then dropped the bombshell.

  “Bobby, I’ve decided to put the belt on you.”

  His words hung in the air. I wasn’t even sure I had heard them correctly.

  Given that I had only wrestled six matches in front of him and had not yet set foot inside a WWWF arena, I was astonished, and struggled to find words. I opened my mouth to try and respond, but no words came.

  “Next February at the Garden,” he said.

  My mind was racing. Bruno Sammartino still had the WWWF championship, and the look on my face must have communicated my uncertainty of how this was all going to take place.

  “Billy Graham is going to beat Sammartino in Baltimore next month and run with the belt for a while. You’ll get it from him at the Garden next February.”

  I had just been entrusted with one of the most closely guarded secrets in wrestling—knowledge of not one, but two pending world title changes. Vince’s hottest heel, “Superstar” Billy Graham, was poised to stun the wrestling world by defeating Vince’s aging Italian superhero, “The Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino, for the championship on April 30, 1977, at the Baltimore Civic Center. Sammartino had, for many years, been box office gold. But Bruno, then forty-one years old, had held the title for two reigns totaling eleven years, and had informed Vince Sr. that he wanted some relief from the grind of traveling the territory and around the world month after month defending the title.

  Graham was going to be allowed to run with the title for several months—enough time to give some of the territory’s top babyfaces the rub of some world title matches and a chance at some main-event money going around the territory. Vince had already told Graham that he would only be serving as an interim champion and would only hold the belt for as long as it took Vince to find and establish his next babyface champion.

  Apparently, that had just happened.

  “I’ve been looking all over for an All-American Boy,” Vince explained. “Someone who can play the role of the underdog, but take care of himself in the ring, and protect the title. Everyone you’ve been working with says you’re the guy, and I think they’re right.”

  “Thank you so much,” I managed. “I don’t even know what to say.”

  “Don’t worry about anything,” Vince said. “You just keep wrestling for Barnett and come up to do television for me every three weeks. We’ll be building you up over the next several months, and exposing you to the fans slowly. We’ll let you know when the timing is r
ight to come up and start working the house shows.1 Okay?”

  With that, he shook my hand, looked me in the eye, and smiled.

  “Congratulations. This is going to be great.”

  With that, he whirled on his heel, turned the lock on the bathroom door, and was gone. This entire life-altering conversation lasted less than two minutes. There were no contracts. Money was never discussed. Just a look in the eye, a firm handshake, and a smile, and the deal was done.

  Vince McMahon Sr.’s word was his bond—and that was just fine with me.

  I would later learn that there was much more to this story.

  1 The “house shows” were the regularly monthly schedule of matches in the big-city arenas, smaller city civic centers, and small-town gymnasiums around the WWWF territory from Maine to D.C. that was the federation’s bread and butter.

  2

  Where It All Began

  “Who remembers the people whose weak wills kept them mired in mediocrity?”

  —Napoleon Hill, “Self-Discipline”

  To really understand me, to understand why Vince McMahon Sr. chose me to be the “All-American Boy” he was searching the world for, and to understand why I made many of the decisions I did in professional wrestling and in life, you really have to start way back at the beginning. For me, that beginning lies back in the heartland of this great country, in a place where life was, and for the most part still is, pretty simple and straightforward.

  Although a lot of wrestlers’ hometowns were kayfabed2 to fit the characters they played in the ring, my in-ring character and my real persona were pretty much one and the same. I really was born in a little town called Princeton, Minnesota—a small farming community of about 2,500 people located about 45 miles north of Minneapolis. I grew up on a small farm, in a rustic little clapboard farmhouse. My mom cooked meals at the school, worked around the farm, and otherwise spent her time raising us. She had flaming red hair and a positive attitude no matter what was happening around her. I definitely got my outlook on life from my mom. She was the glue that kept our family together.