by Bob Backlund
You know, the first guy I wrestled in my career when I was twenty-three years old in 1959 was Gorgeous George. The match happened in Convention Hall in Philadelphia. I was excited—I was 275 pounds, I wrestled amateur but I was also a weightlifter. I was so nervous about wrestling this guy, because I was a rookie, and he was a big name, you know? He had been really big in the ’40s and part of the ’50s, but in 1959, he was no longer a star. People were catcalling him saying, “Hey, Bruno, don’t hurt the old man.” It made me feel sad for George. I made myself a promise that I would never let that happen to me—and that when it was time for me to go, I would leave on top.
They asked me who I wanted to drop the belt to the second time, and I didn’t want anything to do with that decision. I had nothing against Billy Graham personally, but I did not like the drug use. The younger people weren’t thinking long range—they just wanted to take the shortcut to be the next guy. I even spoke to him a couple of times and told him that what he was doing with the drugs could leave a very negative lasting effect on him. But Billy didn’t take my advice. They all acted like I was from the Stone Age. You know, you get results when you train hard—but by taking the chemicals, you get twice the result for half the effort, and it seemed like everyone was willing to make that tradeoff.
Vince never asked me about Bob Backlund or about making him the next champion. Shame on me, but I had never even heard of Bob Backlund before they mentioned that he was coming in for TV. When I first saw him, though, I could tell that he was not on the juice, and that he was a legitimate athlete who trained hard. I remember saying to DeNucci how happy I was that Backlund was not a chemical freak. Skaaland spoke well of Backlund too. He was of the same ethnic background as Backlund (from Sweden), and he told me that he was going to be Backlund’s manager the same as he had done for me. As I got to know Bob, it became apparent to me that we actually had a lot of things in common, one of them being that he and I were two squares who were still playing by the rules and coming by our bodies legitimately, which of course made me happy to see.
I liked the way that Bob was built—he was very athletic looking and possessed a very good knowledge of amateur wrestling. When I first saw him, I thought that he was going to be a high flyer who did dropkicks and flying head scissors, which he didn’t do that much, but I liked that he was using real technical wrestling. And he did, in fact, look like the All-American Boy. You know, the previous babyface champions had both been ethnic stars. Pedro was from Puerto Rico, and I was from Abruzzi, Italy. Backlund was a change—he was the All-American Boy from Minnesota. It was good. It was different. Backlund represented a change from the norm, and it worked out well for the organization.
The model in the WWWF had always been to have a babyface champion. You see, a heel can go on television with a manager, wreck a babyface and say, “That’s what I’m going to do to Bruno or Backlund”—and bingo, you have a draw at the box office. But it takes a babyface a lot longer to get “over” and to see if the people are willing to accept him and rally behind him. So it was a lot harder in the WWWF to have a heel champion for any sustained period of time because it took too long to develop babyface challengers. You could do it in the NWA, because the heel champion traveled from territory to territory wrestling the top babyface in each of them. But in the WWWF, there were no other territories, so the champ was a babyface, and the heels were imported from outside for short runs.
The guys in the locker room understood that McMahon needed to bring in new blood and wanted someone fresh and new and different. After Backlund won the title, I wasn’t around regularly anymore, so I can only tell you some of the things I heard. Some of the guys thought that Backlund might have lacked a little bit of charisma, and some of the heels, at least in the very beginning, felt that they had to wrestle his match, as opposed to their match, because Backlund wasn’t a natural when it came to brawling. But to be honest, there really weren’t a lot of complaints. Some of the guys in the dressing room were wondering whether Backlund could fill the Garden. But McMahon and Junior were both very much behind Backlund.
Much has been made over the years about Backlund having more support on his undercards, but I’ll tell you, someone like Andre the Giant was not the kind of attraction they made him out to be. Andre was a novelty guy—he couldn’t be in a territory for very long and couldn’t be used a lot. Andre wasn’t a hell of a lot of help to Backlund—Backlund did what he did mostly on his own. The facts are the facts, and the facts show that Backlund was able to fill the Garden. If Backlund hadn’t been able to get over, believe me, Vince would have switched horses like he did with Buddy Rogers. Buddy Rogers was killing the territory as champion, so Vince switched the title. You never really know who the people are going to buy until you see it with your own eyes. If Backlund had not drawn well, he would have been out of there, no matter what promises might have been made to him. McMahon might put someone over, but if the people don’t end up coming out to see him, his headlining days would be over quick. The name of the game was selling tickets.
—Bruno Sammartino
They Had Plans for Backlund
I was around at the time that the transition away from Bruno began. Bruno was tired of the grind and had wanted to come off the road for some time, and he really wanted me to have the belt. There was a big, big fight with the old man about it because the old man wanted Superstar to get the run, and Bruno wanted me to have it. He put the belt on Billy mainly because Eddie Graham wanted him to do that and the old man and Eddie were very close. Right after he did that, the old man said to me, “Well, we’ll figure out who the real heel is between you and Superstar,” and he booked a couple of test matches in some small towns mostly up in Maine, away from the big cities just to see what would happen. The one match of those that I distinctly remember was up in Portland, Maine, in the old expo center up there. Billy and I had a hell of a matchup there, I think we went about twenty or twenty-five minutes and we wound up out on the floor in some sort of a double countout with blood all over the place, but three minutes into the match, I had turned Superstar stone cold babyface. The crowd was cheering Billy like crazy, and I don’t think the old man liked that at all. Anyway—the experiment proved to the old man that I was the bigger heel.
I remember I was up in Portland and Bangor, Maine, on the northern swing with the kid—Junior–Vinnie—we used to call him Vinnie or Junior—I’m talking about Vince McMahon Jr. now. We were riding back from the show in Bangor down to New Haven, Connecticut, and he was telling me that they had big plans for Bobby Backlund. Vinnie told me that they were going to have Superstar drop the belt to him at the Garden, and that the plan was to run with Backlund for at least five years. And I looked at Vinnie and said, “Five years?! What about me?” The old man had more or less been promising me for some time that I would get a run with the belt at some point. I mean, he never really came out and promised me that in so many words, but it was pretty much the plan for about a year and a half, that I was going to be the one to take it off of Bruno when the time came—and that’s what everybody thought.
So Vinnie looks at me and says, “Well, you know Kenny, things change, and this is the direction we’re going in.” I talked to his dad a day or two later at the Garden and asked him about it, and he said, “Well Kenny, you know, I talked to Eddie Graham, who is a good friend of mine, and Eddie wanted me to put the belt on Superstar.” Superstar had been doing a lot of wrestling down in Florida for Eddie Graham and had been the Florida Heavyweight Champion, so I guess Eddie thought it would be good for business to have Superstar get the WWWF title for awhile. And I guess it turned out that way, because after he won it, he went down to Florida with it and defended it down there, and people knew him, so he drew some pretty nice houses.
Anyway, I reminded the old man that the expectation had been that I would be the guy to take the belt off of Bruno, and now that wasn’t going to be the case, and on top of that, I’m hearing that Bobby Backlund is going to have the belt fo
r five years, so where does that leave me? You know? So I asked him, can you give me some idea of what my future looks like here? Do I need to go somewhere else? So the old man looked me in the eye and told me straight up, Kenny, you don’t need a belt to draw—but I told him I thought that was a line, because everyone knows the champion gets the main events and gets the big checks, and I told him that I thought I had proven myself.
Anyway, the old man wanted me to stay two more years, but I told him I wasn’t going to stay two more years if I wasn’t going to get a chance to carry a belt. I was living down in North Carolina at the time, and so I told him I was going to take off and head down there and work for Jimmy Crockett and Crockett promotions. Well I’ll tell you, he was pissed. He really got pissed about that. The old man also suggested that during the next two years, he would set me up to go over and work for Inoki in Japan because the old man was trying to work out a reliable relationship with Inoki and New Japan. Well, I stayed for a little while longer, but after that, I did go down and work for Jim Crockett down in Mid-Atlantic, and while I was there, I went over and worked for Baba in All-Japan—which was Inoki’s big rival. Well that really pissed off the old man, let me tell you. He was really big time pissed. But what the hell? He fucked me out of the goddamned belt!
—Ken Patera
Corki became pregnant with Carrie in February 1977 and shortly after that, we headed back to Minnesota because we wanted our daughter to be born there. I called Verne, told him that my wife was going to have a baby and that after that, we were going to be moving to the New York area to work for the WWWF. I asked him if he wanted to book me while I was in the area, and he said that he would see what he could do.
As it turned out, Verne kept me pretty busy. News traveled quickly in the territories back then, so many of the promoters knew what the plan was—and Verne had a very good relationship with Vince Sr., so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the two of them had a conversation about “protecting” me while I was home in Minnesota and working in the AWA. Even though there was no crossover television between the two territories at that time, I was now a “made” man in New York, and I’m sure Vince asked Verne to respect that. Given their relationship at the time, and what ended up happening to me while I worked for Verne, I’m pretty sure that Verne did what Vince asked.
Even though I was wrestling in the AWA at the time, I had my first match at Madison Square Garden in New York City on April 25, 1977, against Masked Executioner II (Killer Kowalski) on the undercard of Bruno’s final title defense at the Garden against Baron von Raschke. The Garden almost always had at least 20,000 people in it, and it was a very strange feeling going from wrestling in a little high school gym in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota to wrestling in one of the largest venues in the world in the middle of New York City. It was odd just being in New York, getting recognized, having people wishing me luck, and recognizing me from the TV tapings—I could actually feel the amount of exposure I was getting from the TV time. It was rewarding but sort of scary at the same time because it became pretty evident that I was losing my anonymity and my privacy.
Wrestling Kowalski in my debut match at the Garden was quite an honor, although I wouldn’t have minded being in the ring with someone who could have moved around a little more so I could have used a few more of my moves. Kowalski was really slowing down by then, and I wasn’t able to have my best match with him. It was still great being there, though, and the energy in that building was like nothing I had ever experienced.
With Bruno Sammartino making his last ever WWWF title defense in the Garden on that card, he was a big presence in the dressing room area that night. Bruno didn’t really know me, and I didn’t know him at all, so we didn’t speak much at that card. To be completely honest, because I hadn’t grown up watching him, I didn’t idolize Bruno like many of the other young guys. He wasn’t a hero of mine—and I don’t mean that at all in a negative way, I just didn’t know a whole lot about him. I knew Bruno only by reputation—that he was a fitness fanatic who worked hard, ran hard, trained hard, and put a lot of miles on his body investing in his craft. I knew that he worked way above and beyond what the average professional wrestler did—and I definitely respected him for that, because I shared those values too.
Bruno and I shook hands in the dressing room that night. It was just a quick handshake—but in reality, it was an important moment there in the back hallway of Madison Square Garden. Both of us knew what the future held, so in effect, that moment represented something of a passing of the torch. A few nights later, Bruno would go to Baltimore and lose the title to “Superstar” Billy Graham and set into motion the events that would eventually lead to my becoming the next babyface WWWF champion.
Shortly after that first appearance at the Garden, I learned another important lesson about professional wrestling that would stay with me for the rest of my career. It was Harley Race who really accentuated the critical importance of respecting your opponent’s body in the ring. Professional wrestling might have predetermined outcomes, but it is also a very athletic pursuit, and when you are in the ring in front of thousands of people executing high spots like suplexes and piledrivers with adrenaline coursing through your veins, it is critical to remember that the high spots you are doing can cripple your opponent in an instant if you aren’t careful. When you call a spot, you are responsible for making it look good, but even more importantly, you are responsible for your opponent’s body and for making sure that your opponent makes it all the way back down to the mat safely and without getting injured.
I knew my time in the AWA was going to be short-lived and that I wasn’t going to climb the ladder there toward a shot at the AWA world title. My job was to just keep my skills sharp and stay in shape wrestling in the middle of the cards there. I was grateful to have a place to do that so close to home, and to get paid for doing it. My ticket had already been punched for New York—and this was just a stop on the way to allow Corki to be in Minnesota when our daughter was born.
While I was in the AWA, I liked working with Jim Brunzell and Billy Robinson. Robinson was one of the best shoot wrestlers in the world, and he was there because of that. If Verne was having a problem with someone, he’d book the person into a match with Billy Robinson and tell Billy to “stretch” the guy, and that would take care of the problem. These were the guys that I watched while I was growing up—so it was a real pleasure to be able to get into the ring with some of them, or even to share a spot on a card, or be in the dressing room with them.
Life, however, had one more curve ball to throw at me.
Right before I went to the WWWF, I bought a brand new 1977 gray Buick Electra in Cambridge, Minnesota, and I was showing it off back in Princeton. We had all had a few beers, and I was going home late at night and went to make a right turn onto Silver Lane, lost control of the car in the gravel, slammed into a telephone pole, and put my head through the windshield.
There was only 58 miles on the car at the time of the accident, and frankly, I was lucky to have lived through it.
As the police approached the scene, I jumped down into the grass and pretended to be looking for the keys. I figured that the police couldn’t arrest me if they couldn’t find the keys to prove I was driving the car. They eventually locked me in the back of the cruiser, but they never found the keys. That’s because they were buried deep in my inside pocket the whole time. Things certainly might have turned out very differently for me, and for Corki, if anything about that accident had gone a different way. Given the lateness of the hour, Corki eventually came out looking for me and came upon the accident scene. She was very pregnant, and about to give birth to our daughter at the time, and she was not at all happy with me.
That was the last time I ever drank and drove an automobile or got into the car with anyone who had been drinking. I was very fortunate to learn that lesson and to be able to live to tell about it.
I went back to Philadelphia for the first set of May TV
tapings for the WWWF. By that time, Billy Graham had the title, having just beaten Bruno at the Baltimore Civic Center, and they were showcasing him as the new champ. I was wrestling in individual matches but also teaming with Chief Jay and Billy Whitewolf to keep the focus on me as an up-and-coming babyface who was allied with the other, more established heroes in the territory.
At the second set of May TV tapings, I wrestled only in singles matches as Vince began the process of establishing me as a singles wrestler. At those tapings, I wrestled Buddy Wolfe on television. Buddy was a very good performer from Minnesota, and was a lot of fun to work with because he was energetic and had very good timing. Buddy also grew up about 30 miles from Princeton, so we tended to see a lot of things the same way.
On May 27, 1977, I went back to St. Louis for Sam Muchnick, and had my first WWWF title match against “Superstar” Billy Graham at the Kiel on the top of that card. St. Louis was a very safe place for Billy and me to meet in our first match to begin to get familiar with one another and to get our timing down. There was no cross-pollination of St. Louis television anywhere in the WWWF territory, so at the time, very few people outside of St. Louis knew that the match even happened.
Frankly, I was surprised to be getting a match against Billy so soon, but apparently, Sam was anxious to be the first promoter to put the two of us together in the ring. Because Sam had been right in the middle of the NWA World Title discussions a year earlier that had resulted in Vince McMahon Sr. taking me to New York, he already knew that I was the one who was eventually going to beat Billy for the belt—so he wanted to get ahead of other promoters and be the first to book us together.
The fact is, Billy Graham looked like a professional wrestling champion, and as everyone knows, he was also terrific on the microphone, but when it came down to actual execution, there was really only so much that Billy could do in the ring. That first match in St. Louis evolved into a fight in and out of a few basic wrestling holds, and Billy won and retained the title, beating me by countout. The countout ending was frequently a pretty unpopular one with the fans and almost always left everyone wanting more—which, of course, was the whole point of having that kind of a finish. Winning or losing a match by countout never really hurt anyone’s standing, but it also didn’t really do anything for anyone either. It was essentially just a way to tread water until the next card, where the inconclusive finish could help to draw the next crowd if we were coming back against each other.