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

by Bob Backlund

  The referee counted one, two, three, and it was over.

  The crowd was stunned. They were screaming and cheering and jumping up and down in the stands.

  The fans in Abilene could not believe what they had just seen. If I was sitting in the stands, I would have been shocked too. I had only been in the territory for three weeks, and I had just beaten Terry Funk to become the Western States Heavyweight Champion—my first championship as a professional.

  The crowd was roaring. The upset was selling.

  Terry had given me a lot of offense in the match, and basically made me look like a million bucks. Again, this was part of the ebb and flow of a feud and a territory. Terry and Junior had decided that they were going to push me. I got the early draw against Terry on television to establish credibility, then took that momentum out onto the road and beat a lot of good competition around the circuit, leading up to this title match in Abilene. By letting me catch that upset fall on him for the belt, Terry elevated my status with the fans to the next level. Did it rob Terry of any of his status? Not really. It was a hard-fought, highly entertaining match with a quick and somewhat fluky, yet decisive, finish. Enough to get my credibility to the next level, while also leaving Terry with more than enough credibility to come back and challenge for the belt in rematches around the circuit and ensure future business for the territory.

  The title win also had the not-at-all-insignificant economic benefit of moving me to the main-event position on virtually every card that didn’t feature either the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, who was only in the territory a few times a year, or a title defense by the International Heavyweight Champion, who came through every couple of months. I began to earn the first really meaningful money since I left Minnesota.

  Looking back with the perspective of time, even though I would hold the Western States title for only a short time, this was the moment that signaled the end of my time as an inexperienced rookie in the world of professional wrestling, and propelled me forward as a serious wrestler in the eyes of the fans, and someone who was now being relied upon to draw houses for the promotion.

  Amarillo was a great place to learn how to tell a story during a match—starting with nothing and creating love and hatred, finding a peak, and then delivering a finish that left the people wanting more. Terry and Junior, like their father Dory Funk Sr. before them, emphasized that part of the art. That part of the learning experience, coupled with the fact that both Dory Sr. and Junior had held the NWA World Heavyweight Championship, made Amarillo a great territory for developing talent.

  Terry and Junior also enjoyed a very good rapport with the promoters in most of the other NWA territories, which made talent exchanges into and out of Amarillo a regular occurrence. There was always tremendous talent down there, and while I was there, I got to wrestle and learn from a lot of great wrestlers of varying styles, including both Terry and Junior, Stan Hansen, Tommy “Jumbo” Tsuruta, Pat O’Connor, the great Mexican wrestler Ricky Romero, J. J. Dillon, and Kurt Von Steiger.

  The Funks were also very big in Japan, and at the time I arrived in the territory, they had developed a new professional relationship with Japanese promoter Shohei “Giant” Baba and his promotion, All-Japan pro wrestling. Through this arrangement, the Funks would book Amarillo guys to work over in Japan, and Baba would send one or two of his hot young rookies over to train with the Funks and learn the American style. In 1974, Tommy “Jumbo” Tsuruta, who would later go on to become the AWA World Heavyweight Champion, came into the territory. Tsuruta was on the Japanese Olympic wrestling team at the 1972 Olympic Games in Munich. Given that Tommy and I were both trained in amateur wrestling, the two of us spent a lot of time training on the mats and working on things together while he was in Amarillo.

  When Tommy returned to Japan, he told Baba about me and insisted that I should be invited to come over and wrestle a tour in Japan. At the time, Japan was known to be a tough place for a young American wrestler to “get over.” It would often take years of tours and jobbing to the Japanese stars before an American wrestler would be put over. Because of Tommy’s kind reference, however, I didn’t have to go out and prove myself for years in the ring in Japan. Even though he was a rookie, because he had made the Japanese Olympic team, Tommy had instant credibility with Baba, and Baba had a lot of respect for him.

  The International Heavyweight Championship was created and used by Baba and the Funks as a bridge during their talent trade. When the International Champion was in the territory and on the card, he was on top. At the time I was there, Ciclon “Cyclone” Negro was the International Champion. I had several matches with him for the International Heavyweight Championship, and really enjoyed working with him. He was a big man who knew how to wrestle and could really move. He had wrestled all over the world, particularly in Australia and New Zealand, and because of that, he had learned different styles and ways of calling matches from the people he had worked with over there. He was an artist in the ring.

  Outside the ring, I was a little leery of Cyclone because he was kind of a tough guy who seemed to attract more than his share of trouble … but inside the ring, he was always very professional. He knew that in most of the places he went as the champion, his match was the main event—and because of that, he was always oriented toward making sure that the people got their money’s worth out of his match. Cyclone is not nearly as well known in the United States as some of the other top guys of our era, but I’d put his skills right up there. He was a good hand who didn’t mind traveling the world, could work heel or face, and worked well with all styles, shapes, and sizes. I think that’s why Baba and the Funks chose to put him on top.

  Cyclone worked frequently in Japan, but that belt also provided a lot of booking flexibility in the United States. As the “international” champion, he could (and did) travel to different territories as part of talent exchanges, and defend the title in other NWA territories where his in-ring skills immediately established his credibility, even to a crowd that had never seen him before. He also became an immediately credible challenger to the NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and provided some additional booking interest by offering the possibility of a champion-versus-champion tilt.

  The Funks also maintained a very cordial relationship with St. Louis promoter Sam Muchnick, so they were able to trade talent with Sam quite a bit to keep new faces coming in and keep the booking fresh and interesting.

  It was also during those early days in Amarillo that I started what would become my career-long tradition of using my free time to visit with kids in the local hospitals, or finding local youth wrestling teams in the towns we visited, meeting their coaches, and helping to train the kids. The drives from town to town in the Amarillo territory weren’t that bad, so I usually had a good part of each day free to spend as I wanted. A lot of the guys liked to get to the towns early and either play cards, work out, or spend time socializing with the ladies.

  Having been given such a big break down in Amarillo, and having been so surprisingly and warmly embraced by the fans down there, I was on top of the world and wanting to find a way to give something back. As you now know, I spent a lot of my early years living on the edge. My life could have gone either way except for the fact that I had a couple of teachers and coaches who had cared enough to save me from myself. With this first taste of professional success and kids now waiting to shake my hand or get my autograph, I recognized that I might now be in the position to do the same thing for others.

  I resolved that I wanted to try and use my story to inspire other kids to stay in school, find their passion, and stay out of trouble.

  I just started doing these things because it made sense to me. No promoter ever talked to me about these things, but apparently, I was the only athlete down there who was doing these things regularly. People were responding so positively, which only made me want to do more of it. For me, I think that realization represented my passage into adulthood. I was a professional wrestler now, and I was
on my own. I no longer had my parents or a teacher or a coach looking over my shoulder and telling me what I should be doing. There was no one making sure that I was following a proper diet, not drinking too much beer at night, getting my daily workouts in, or staying true to my core principles. Now, the only person that I had to answer to was myself.

  In early May 1974, Eddie Graham came to Amarillo. Eddie was the boss of the Florida-based NWA promotion Florida Championship Wrestling. He and the Funks had a very close relationship, routinely trading talent and good-natured ribbings. At this point in their long history of going back and forth, I think the Funks had most recently ended up keeping some of Eddie’s best young talent a little too long, and Eddie was looking to exert some revenge.

  At the time Eddie visited, I was the Western States Heavyweight Champion, and Eddie walked into the dressing room with me and yelled out, “Hey Bobby, you’re coming back to Florida with me!” He did that to serve notice to Terry and Junior that he intended to get even with them. Little did I know that later that year, the rib would end up coming true!

  I got to carry the Western States championship for about ten weeks, and during that time, had some terrific matches with people like J. J. Dillon, Junior, Tommy Tsuruta, Chris Taylor, and Pat O’Connor. I also teamed with Dick Murdoch and Junior at various times. Those were exciting days, and things really got rolling along.

  Stan Hansen was also in Amarillo coming up through the ranks at the same time that I was. Stan was a couple of years ahead of me in terms of overall experience and eventually, because of the Funks’ relationship with Baba, he became a really big star in Japan. Stan went to college in Texas and he was from nearby Borger, originally—although I don’t think he trained as much with the Funks as I did. There was always a little bit of tension between Stan and me about that because he literally grew up in that territory, and yet I came in there and got the push. That deep-seeded animosity would eventually boil over in 1981 when Stan came to the WWF for a series of matches with me at Madison Square Garden over the WWF title.

  Karl Von Steiger was another monster heel in the territory at the time. Karl played a goose-stepping Nazi, and he was very good at it. He wasn’t just all punching and kicking though—he was big and imposing and knew how to wrestle. The memories of World War II were still fresh enough down in Texas back then that the people utterly despised him. He was a good person for me to work with, because it was easy for me, as the young American rookie, to get the people’s total sympathy and for Karl to bring the full fury of the people’s heat down on himself. That recipe proved to be box office gold.

  Going through that process with Karl was a very valuable learning experience for me, as it gave me my first real exposure to wrestling’s well-worn concept of the ethnic heel, and how to play off of that as a babyface. I had had a good run, but now the Funks were setting up for the next big thing—a new feud between Karl, as the hated German heel, and Dick Murdoch as the outlaw Texas cowboy and soon-to-be American hero.

  Once more, the ebb and flow of wrestling was calling for a change, and this time, it was my turn to make it happen for someone else. The plan was to have Karl cheat, but to beat me pretty convincingly for the championship—and then to mock me as an American who couldn’t beat him. I dropped the Western States title to Karl on May 22, 1974, in Lubbock, selling like crazy in the process. The next night, I had a rematch with Von Steiger in Amarillo, and once again, sold like crazy for Karl—so that the fans would see him as a seemingly unbeatable villain. I then stepped out of the way as Dick Murdoch adopted the role of the unlikely babyface promising to liberate the Amarillo territory from Nazi tyranny.

  One week later, with everything properly set up, Murdoch beat the tar out of Von Steiger in Amarillo, reclaimed the Western States Heavyweight Championship for the people, and the tide rolled in again.

  The observant long-time fan will note the remarkable similarity between this setup and the storyline we used nearly twenty years later at Madison Square Garden when another hated ethnic heel, Khosrow Vaziri (The Iron Sheik), ended my nearly six-year run with the WWF championship, only to have another American hero, Hulk Hogan, step in the following month and vanquish the hated Iranian to win the title back for the USA. Once a successful storyline—always a successful storyline …

  As I have already mentioned, Dick Murdoch treated me like a son during my time in the Amarillo territory. Aside from buying me my first pair of cowboy boots, Dick also let me ride with him from one town to another. He had a pickup truck with a gun rack on the back and a big pitbull he used to ride around with. He was also really into country western music—especially Tammy Wynette.

  Back in those days, though, there was something about Dick’s life outside the wrestling world that was tugging at him. Dick clearly missed his family when he was out on the road, and he was on the road a lot back then. When I was riding with him, he never wanted to talk about his family or anything other than the wrestling business and country music. The only thing he would say to me, over and over again, was that it was critical to keep your family life separate from the business. I think it was one of those unspoken “learn from my mistakes” moments, delivered from the wise veteran to the idealistic rookie with the young girlfriend.

  I took Dick’s advice to heart, which is why, during my forty years in professional wrestling, Corki and I always kept our family far away from the wrestling business. In fact, in all of those years, Corki saw me wrestle only a handful of times. I also tried to shield Corki from associating at all with just about anyone in the business—and to be honest, she wasn’t hard to convince about that!

  A lot of the women who were married to or associated with wrestlers were actually living off the wrestling and the wrestlers—most of them didn’t have their own lives, interests, or careers. Corki was the total opposite—she was a very independent and educated woman, and as soon as she got down to Amarillo, she set about on finding a job and building her own life for herself.

  It should also come as no surprise that there are things behind the scenes in the wrestling business that are not conducive to the stability of a wrestler’s family—and the wrestlers’ wives and girlfriends were always talking about that. A lot of them were very gossipy, sharing road stories while simultaneously worrying about what their own husbands or boyfriends were doing. In every town we stopped in, there were groups of young women hanging around outside the dressing rooms looking to meet wrestlers. Many of these women would literally throw themselves at you as you were arriving at or leaving the arenas. It was just one of the realities of the business.

  There was also always a place in each town where the women would congregate after the matches—usually the bar at the motel where we would stay overnight. They knew when we would be there because the schedule was pretty regular and they’d be there on the same schedule if that was something you wanted to be involved in. I was completely committed to my relationship with Corki, so that scene was not anything I ever got tangled up in. That was just another reason, though, why we thought it best for Corki to keep her distance from the business.

  I did enjoy going out and raising heck with the boys after the matches. I liked to drink beer, and I could drink with the best of ’em. We played all kinds of games in the bars in those towns, played pool and darts, and just had a great time.

  Tommy Tsuruta’s kind words to Baba earned me an invitation for the first of what would end up to be many opportunities to wrestle in Japan. My first trip was a long three-week tour from July 9–24, 1974, as part of the Amarillo/All-Japan talent exchange. We went over there in the heat of the Texas summer because the buildings in the Amarillo territory were not air-conditioned and it got so sweltering in those venues in July that it was hard to draw a good house no matter how good the card was.

  That first trip to Japan was hard for me. It was my first time being overseas, and the thought of being in a foreign country for three weeks was both exciting and scary. I didn’t have much money to allow me to expl
ore the country, and I didn’t really even have a proper suitcase to travel for that many days.

  When I arrived in Tokyo, I was anxious to set up a routine, so I asked one of the guys where the gym was that the wrestlers used. He directed me to the place, and when I got to the building, the name, Hatch’s Gym, seemed awfully familiar to me. I asked around, and suddenly realized why. As improbable as it sounds, Clark Hatch, the gym’s owner, was, in fact, from my little hometown of Princeton, Minnesota!

  The Hatch family was involved in construction, and I knew Clark’s brother well from my childhood days in Princeton working on his crew. Clark had gone over to Japan during the war and stayed there when it ended and opened a gym. Needless to say, I logged a lot of time there over the years. Hatch’s Gym became my “home away from home” whenever I was in Japan.

  The first thing I had to learn on that initial foray into the Japanese rings was just how differently Japanese fans reacted to a professional wrestling match. In Louisiana, Texas, and New Mexico, which had been the geographic limit of my experience in professional wrestling to that point, I had grown accustomed to the southern fans being very boisterous and animated at the matches. American fans typically cheered wildly for the babyfaces and screamed and threw things at the heels. They were very emotional, wore their hearts on their sleeves, and always let you know what they were thinking. Back in the early to mid-1970s in Japan, however, when you would go to the ring, the fans in the arena would barely cheer at all—they just sat and watched. People over there were taught, from a young age, not to show emotion. As a wrestler, that cultural difference made it very hard to gauge the crowd’s response to anything, so we used a style almost like shoot wrestling and tried to read faces and figure out how the fans were reacting.