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

by Bob Backlund

  But this little example shows the incredible power and potential of good and creative booking.

  That ten minutes in the ring with Terry taught me one of the most important and enduring lessons that I ever learned in the wrestling business: that the business survives by the constant ebb and flow of the tide—whether in a single match, in a feud or series of matches, in the booking strategy for an entire territory, or in a career. You had to be willing to give in order to get, and when that was done properly, both wrestlers and, in reality, an entire territory would become more successful because of it.

  Of course, Terry’s actions, while incredibly generous toward me, weren’t purely magnanimous. By giving me this comeback against him on television, he was also birthing his territory a credible new babyface. By showing the fans that I could go toe-to-toe with him, he was effectively telling the fans: “Hey, get behind this kid. He’s the real deal, and you should buy a ticket to see him if he wrestles in your town, because he has the skills to beat anyone on any given day.” And that unpredictability, of course—the hope that the underdog might pull the upset and win—is what puts butts in seats—and drives the success of our business.

  After seeing how the fans in the studio reacted to our time-limit draw on television, Terry Funk invited me to stay in Amarillo and work the territory. So I went back to Tri-States, gave my notice, finished my dates for Leroy, and then drove to Amarillo to begin a new phase of my career.

  Having lived frugally enough to save up a little bit of money, and after being assured by Terry that the payoffs in the Amarillo territory would be good enough, not just to get me out of my car trunk, but to actually put a real roof over my head, I took a room at the Holiday Inn in Amarillo for $6 a night. The hotel was right across the street from a country western bar called “The Joker”—a rough place where all the boys went after the matches.

  This change of scene, however, presented me with a new problem. Unless you were looking to get your ass kicked, you couldn’t go into The Joker without a pair of cowboy boots on.

  I didn’t have any cowboy boots. All I had was a well-worn cheap pair of sneakers.

  I was literally living day-to-day, and although I had finally been able to stop sleeping with a bat in the trunk of my car, I didn’t even have enough money to buy a secondhand pair of boots at the local thrift store.

  Dick Murdoch heard about my situation and welcomed me to the territory by presenting me with a brand new pair of cowboy boots. Murdoch was a big deal in Amarillo—at the time, he was working a big angle with a guy named Jim Dillon, who would later go on to become better known, in the ’80s and ’90s, as James J. Dillon—the leader of the “Four Horsemen” in the NWA. I have never forgotten that simple act of kindness that allowed me to feel like one of the boys for the first time.

  Amarillo was a really hot developmental territory in the NWA in the ’70s. The Funks lived there, and Murdoch and Dillon were both based in Amarillo, and as such, all of those guys had homes or apartments there. The young guys, myself included, thought that was the coolest thing—to actually have your own bed and your own furniture in a territory where you were wrestling. That concept would remain foreign to me for several more years—but I was grateful just to be out of the trunk of my car.

  Back at this time in the early ’70s, almost no one in the wrestling business had a written contract, or any kind of guaranteed tenure in a territory. The only thing you could really rely on was that if you got invited to work a territory, you’d be there for at least two weeks. This was because a territory typically needed at least two weeks to wind up any storylines and arrange for comings and goings in the bookings, and in the television interviews, newsletters, or newspaper ads hyping the local house shows. When Terry asked me to work Amarillo, I really had no idea how long I’d be staying.

  As had been in the case in Tri-States, each week at the TV taping, I would just be given a list of dates that I’d be wrestling and the names of the towns and the buildings I’d be wrestling in. As soon as the TV taping was over, the wrestlers would pile into cars and head off to ride the circuit for the week. That’s the way the business was—it ran pretty much week to week, and hand to mouth.

  My first date on the road was a match in Lubbock against a guy named “Mr. Wrestling.” When I arrived in the dressing room and saw the booking sheet, I was shocked to learn that I was going to be “going over” Mr. Wrestling by pinfall! Mr. Wrestling was a big name back then, and I was a very green rookie who had just arrived in the territory, so winning a match like this was a big deal. But Terry liked the way I looked, liked the way the people had responded to me during our TV match, and wanted to keep the momentum behind me. Terry had visions of how he wanted to use me in the territory, and jobbing me out my first day out on the road, even to someone as well-respected as Mr. Wrestling, wouldn’t have allowed the momentum to keep building behind me. Terry never told me anything about what his plan was for me, of course. He just told me that he just wanted me to act like a wrestler in the ring, and to keep doing what I had done in the ring that day in the studio in Amarillo against him.

  The shocked fans in Lubbock responded to my pinfall victory over Mr. Wrestling with even more enthusiasm than they had shown in the television studio. Now, we really had something!

  Although the Amarillo territory was also known for some wild and woolly brawls, feuds, and Texas Death matches, the Funks never forgot that first and foremost, the name on the marquee was wrestling—and while the punching and kicking and brawling definitely had a place in the sport—the best stories were told in the ring through the pacing and psychology of chain wrestling. I think that was one of the primary reasons the Funks were so successful in developing talent in Amarillo, why so many guys wanted to have the chance to work down there, and why the fans supported the territory so solidly for such a long time.

  Remembering those days, I am very grateful to the Funks for helping to set me on my way. Dory Funk Senior had passed away a couple of months before I got there, so Terry and Junior had become the bosses, and Murdoch, who was the territory’s other major draw, was highly respected among the boys and frequently solicited for booking ideas. I was just a young, naïve kid. As I did in Tri-States, I trained hard with the weights every day, did a lot of running, worked really hard to keep myself in great shape, and made every move in every match against every opponent look as good as I could possibly make it.

  I also listened closely to every bit of advice I got from Terry and Dory and Dick. All three of them were masters at knowing the personality of each town on the circuit, and reading each town’s crowd from week to week. They would frequently know what the fans wanted in a given week just from the vibe or the buzz in the building before bell time. Other times, they would gauge the crowd’s reaction to the early matches, listening to the people, understanding what they wanted, and delivering it to them in the main events.

  I knew the people were taking to my fast-paced amateur moves, so I just went out there night after night, trying to execute those moves crisply and with lightning speed, all the while listening to their reactions and trying to learn what else they wanted to see from me. The proper mindset, as explained to me by Terry and Junior, was to listen to the crowd each night after your flurries and high spots, and figure out how to best entertain them. And every night, and every town, and every crowd was a little different—depending on who was there, what was in the news, how the weather was, and, of course, on who your opponent was. Some nights, the crowds liked the straight amateur chain wrestling. Some nights, they wanted the high-flying stuff. And some nights, they just wanted the emotional release that only a full-out brawl could provide.

  One of the other things that Terry and Junior and Dick began to teach me during my time in Amarillo was about the pacing, not just of your own match, but of the entire card. The idea was for each match to sequentially build the energy in the building until the crowd was at a fever pitch for the main event—and then, of course, to leave something
unresolved for next time so that the fans would buy tickets to the next week’s show be primed to.

  If you were working the opening match, your job was to warm up the crowd—give them a pretty basic wrestling match, with a few nice moves mixed in—but being careful not to rob the later matches on the card of any of their energy. By way of example, you never wanted to use the finishing move of someone higher up on the card in the middle of your match because doing so would rob that move of its mystique. Although I frequently used the piledriver in my matches, I would never use that move if I was wrestling in one of the early matches on a card because that is too much of a high spot for an early match placement. Early matches were for headlocks, hiptosses, and chain wrestling. The highest you would want to get in an early match was, perhaps, to throw a dropkick or to do a criss-cross into the ropes. The idea was for everyone on the card, each match, one to the next, to work together to build the energy, and for each successive match to draw a hotter crowd response than the one before it.

  In some towns and territories, where there were intermissions, the promoters would put a hot match—sometimes even the hottest match of the night—right before intermission. Properly executed by its participants, that match would blow the roof off the place, and then send the people into intermission in a frenzy, where they would immediately flood the box office windows to buy tickets for the next week’s show, and then work off some of that energy at the concession stands buying beer, food, photographs, and whatever other paraphernalia the promoters were selling. Then, when the card resumed, the first match after intermission would start again to build the energy toward a final blowoff match at the end of the card—which would often (but not always) see the babyface win in order to send the fans home happy. Or, of course, the match would end with a cliffhanger in order to being the fans back to see a rematch, or the match in some other form.

  Knowing the “business side of the business,” as opposed to simply being a good technical wrestler, was, of course, critical to becoming a seasoned professional who could understand his role night to night and execute that role appropriately to ensure the success of the entire card. You can’t really teach the business side of the business in training camp. That was something you had to pick up from the masters, night by night, in the Elks Halls and high school gyms, and ice rinks along the way. Coming out of Tri-States, I didn’t really have any feel for that—but it is definitely something that was emphasized in Amarillo—and something that Terry, Junior, and Dick took the time to make sure I understood.

  Amarillo was also the place where I learned to speak “Carny.” I was driving from Amarillo to Albuquerque one day with Ken Farber, one of the Amarillo territory’s referees, when he turned to me and asked if I knew how to speak “Kizzarney.” Needless to say, I had no idea what he was talking about—so he explained to me what Carny was and how and when to use it.

  Carny was a secret mode of encoded speech that professional wrestlers (and originally the workers at the old traveling carnivals from which the term originates) used to communicate in the ring, with the referee, and in public when we didn’t want anyone else to understand what we were saying. It’s really pretty easy, but unless you know what you’re looking for and what the “code” actually is, you can be looking right at someone speaking in Carny and not have the first clue what he is saying.

  The way it works is that you introduce a nonsense syllable or syllables—usually “izz” or “e-azz” but it can be any syllable agreed upon by the carnies—between the first letter and the rest of the word, or between the first syllable and the rest of the word. So, for example, if we were in the ring, and I wanted to communicate to you that “it’s time to go home,” I would say, “Teazzime to geazzo heazzome.” Carny was used in the ring if the referee needed to communicate something to the wrestlers, or if wrestlers needed to communicate to each other within earshot of the fans. But we also talked Carny in bars, nightclubs, airports—anywhere we wanted to communicate privately with each other when there were marks around.

  Another thing I did not fully appreciate back then was understanding how much politicking was going on behind the scenes, with guys trying to ingratiate themselves with the bookers in order to get better angles, or better spots on the cards. Some of the boys in the dressing room were always working the promoters or the booker for angles, spots, and titles, or were constantly grousing about the way they were being used. Early on, I made the decision not to get involved in any of that, to understand my role on a particular card, whatever it was, and then to simply go out and execute my match to the best of my ability. Maybe it was naïve, but I trusted that if I got over with the people and did my job for the card as a whole—that the rest would take care of itself.

  As the days stretched into weeks in the Amarillo territory, the Funks continued to put me over, and I started to build a relationship with the fans on the circuit, who were now waiting to greet me at the arena doors, gathering in my corner of the ring for pre-match autographs, and cheering for me with increased energy. I had also been accepted by the boys in the dressing room, and was getting included in the carpools between towns to save money, and asked to go out and have a few beers after the matches. It felt good to be part of the group down there. I felt more at home in Amarillo than I did in any other territory in my career.

  During my time in Amarillo, I called Corki three times a week from a payphone somewhere out on the circuit. She was still back in West Fargo, North Dakota, where, right out of college, she had secured her dream job as a teacher and gymnastics coach. She would always ask me how things were going, and I would tell her that I was having fun and doing well, and learning a lot. Corki wasn’t smart to the business back then—she didn’t really understand what it was all about, and her father understood it even less. But on one of those calls, she announced that she missed me too much for us to stay apart any longer, and so she was quitting her job and coming down to Amarillo to join me. She attached a U-Haul trailer to her Volkswagen Beetle, filled it with all of her earthly belongings, and then pointed the car south and made the long drive to Amarillo to be with me.

  Corki and I have been together ever since.

  In the Amarillo territory, the big territorial belt was the Western States Heavyweight Championship. Unless the NWA World Heavyweight Champion or the International Heavyweight Champion was on a swing through the territory, the Western States Heavyweight Championship match was usually the main event at the top of the card, and the contests and feuds, or both, that developed around that belt were primarily used to draw the houses out on the circuit. When I got to the Amarillo territory in the spring of 1974, Terry was the Western States Heavyweight Champion, which made all the sense in the world to me, because Terry knew what he had to do to draw a house, how to develop angles, and how to keep the people coming back.

  One afternoon, after I’d been wrestling in the territory for about three weeks, we pulled into Abilene, Texas, which was our weekly Friday night stop. Abilene was run by a promoter who was very close to the Funks. I had been scheduled to wrestle Terry there for the Western States Heavyweight Championship, and in the dressing room a few hours before the matches, Terry pulled me aside.

  “You know, Bobby—these fans are really taking to you,” he said. “I just talked it over with Junior, and we think that in order to keep that going and to get this to the next level, we’re going to put you over tonight and get the championship on you for awhile.”

  I was shocked.

  Less than a month before, I had been laying down for every guy on the roster in Tri-States, and sleeping in the trunk of my car with a baseball bat. Now, I was about to pin Terry Funk and become the lead guy in the Amarillo territory.

  The tide was coming in.

  The Funks had some really good performers in Amarillo at the time, and it made me feel pretty good about myself that they had chosen me for a run with the strap, especially so soon. I also think they were doing their friend in Abilene a favor by having the title
change in his town—because whenever a title changed in a town, it would bump the gates there for a good while afterward.

  As hard as it may be to believe, at the time, Terry Funk was a very popular babyface champion in the Amarillo territory. The fans had not seen him pinned very often, and he wasn’t about to let just anyone walk into his territory and pin him. But that night in Abilene, Terry finally came clean. He explained to me that both he and Junior saw something special in me, and they thought that I would really connect with the area fans by scoring an underdog, upset pinfall victory over him and taking the championship.

  And so it was decided.

  Terry and I had a very clean wrestling match that night. There wasn’t any punching or kicking or eye gouging—because neither one of us wanted to turn the other heel, which can easily happen in a babyface match if either one of the wrestlers is perceived to be adopting heel tactics to get the advantage. So we just did some good old-fashioned back and forth chain wrestling, letting the cheers of the crowd be our guide. Eventually, we had the people at a high point, and Terry gave the signal that it was time to “go home” with the finish he had dreamed up for this, which was, in essence, a prolonged false finish followed by a surprise ending.

  I had Terry up for the atomic kneedrop, which I had recently adopted as my finishing hold and which others in the territory had been selling to the moon for me on our previous runs around the territory. Terry, though, was holding onto the ropes in an attempt to block the execution of the move. The fans were on the edges of their seats, cheering and yelling and dying to see what was going to happen next. We held the move there long enough to get the crowd to a frenzied peak, and then, just at the right moment, I abandoned the effort and just dropped Terry into a hard side suplex and quickly covered him for the pin next to the ropes.