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

by Bob Backlund

  When I was little, I was a huge fan of E. T. the Extra Terrestrial—the character from the Spielberg movie. I had everything—the E. T. sheets, pillowcases, stuffed animal, sleeping bags, anything with E. T. on it. I was totally smitten by E. T. Well, one day, Dad arranged for one of the young wrestlers that he was working with to dress up as E. T. and knock on our front door. I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t know what to say. I was about six years old, and I thought that my dad actually knew E. T. and had arranged for him to come and visit me. That’s the kind of thing my dad would do. I will never forget that.

  I always saw Dad with his red wrestling boots on and his briefcase that he used to carry with him, so whenever I went anywhere with him, I would always want to be like my dad—so I would always put my little red rain boots on and carry a little lunchbox and try to be just like him. I played the violin—and I didn’t think my dad could really relate to that—so when my recital was over, I would always do a couple of cartwheels at the end because I thought that’s what my dad wanted to see. He was always so active and working out, so I thought that’s what he wanted me to be doing to—not sitting still and playing violin!

  We didn’t have a television in our house when I was growing up—so I didn’t ever see my dad wrestle on TV when he was the champion. Even today, it is hard for me to watch a match from back then where he got beat up and bloodied because it’s my dad—and even though I know it was all a show, it’s still hard to see that. Of course, the people I grew up with in Glastonbury knew that my dad was a professional wrestler, but he lost the title when I was six, so we didn’t talk about it much. In junior high and high school, though, when my dad was back in the business, we would have parties at my house and the girls would all be downstairs dancing and waiting for the guys to come down, and the guys would all be upstairs talking to my dad about wrestling. They weren’t intimidated by him or anything, they just wanted to talk with him about it because so many of them were fascinated by it.

  I can remember one day when I was young I pulled open the drawer to my parents’ nightstand in their bedroom and saw the gold belt in there. I was definitely interested in that! When my dad was home, that was where he kept the belt because it was obviously valuable and important to him.

  Whenever we went out in public to a restaurant or just out and about when he was around, people would always come up and pat him on the back or the shoulders or shake his hand and ask for autographs. People always went crazy around him, and I didn’t understand it and I didn’t like it because I only got to have a couple of hours at a time with my dad and when I had him I didn’t want to have to share him with anyone, especially a crowd of strangers that I didn’t know. But my dad was always polite and accommodating to everyone, and kept reminding us that it was the fans that were providing us with the good living that we were enjoying, and so it was important to give back to them. To this day, I don’t like to go to restaurants because I still associate eating out with the memory of the three of us getting accosted by people trying to get my dad’s autograph and taking some of our precious time with him away from us.

  I do also have some memories from childhood that involve wrestling. I can remember one time Andre the Giant came over to our house and was laying on the floor playing with me. I think he was traveling with my dad. He was enormous, but he was very gentle. I remember The Iron Sheik coming over to the house also. Those are the two guys that I can remember seeing at the house. My dad had a very good relationship with both of them, and they were two of the only guys that my dad ever let me be around.

  I did see some wrestling on television at my friends’ houses—but I would never watch my dad. Whenever we were watching, they would always tell me when his match was over. I went to a few live matches with my guy friends around junior high or high school time—and that’s when I started hearing people in the arena saying bad things about my dad. That was during the “Mr. Backlund” days in the mid-1990s. I knew that it was predetermined and that my dad was just playing a role—but I was definitely scared for my dad’s safety because there are all kinds of crazy people in the world looking for their fifteen minutes of fame—and what better way to get that than to attack a wrestler who was trying to incite you anyway? Those were the things that I worried about most.

  To be honest, thanks to my dad, and the limits and boundaries that he imposed for us, I had a pretty normal life growing up. My dad was a wrestler from day one in my life, and that was just something we had to deal with. One week, when I was in eighth grade we were down at Walt Disney World and one night we went to Pleasure Island and we were dancing together at a nightclub and when my dad left the floor to get a drink this guy came over and said, do you know who you were dancing with? That was Bob Backlund, the world champion wrestler! And I said, “Yeah, he’s my dad!”

  I know now that Dad gave up a lot for me by not becoming a bad guy after he lost the championship in 1983. He didn’t want me to have to face my little friends on the playground at school telling me that my dad was a jerk. Dad was always known as the “All-American Boy”—and the fact is that it wasn’t really a character he played. The character he portrayed in the ring and the person he actually was as home and in our community were one and the same. Dad knew that he was a role model and a hero to a lot of kids, and that was a role and a responsibility that he held as a sacred trust. Even though the wrestling part of his job was predetermined, the role model part wasn’t. It wasn’t just about the wrestling to my dad. It was the whole package. My dad wasn’t the kind of person who would even consider letting those people down just so he could make a buck. It may sound old fashioned, but Dad was, is, and always will be a man guided by his principles.

  To this day, I still can’t go anywhere with my dad where we don’t get stopped by someone looking for an autograph, or to tell a story, or to connect with him in some way. A couple of years ago, we were walking on Duval Street in Key West and got stopped by a guy who called his friend on his cell phone and pushed the phone into Dad’s face just wanting to put him on the phone with his friend, who he said was a huge fan, and I was like—my God, we’re just trying to live our lives here, can you give us a break and let us have a little privacy here? Whether it’s pumping gas, or in the grocery store, or whatever—Dad is always getting stopped. And he always seems to make time for those requests. Growing up, I used to hate when that happened because it took away from what little time I had with my dad—but now I understand that if it wasn’t for the fans, he wouldn’t have been who he was.

  I always looked up to my dad, and I still do, to this day. I always wanted to emulate him. He was always so positive—whenever we sign letters to each other, we always sign off with “PMA”—which means Positive Mental Attitude. As my dad taught me, even if you’re having the worst day, putting a smile on your face or just saying hello to a random person can make you and them both feel better. I try to be pretty positive about life, just like he is.

  A lot of people will know this now, now that this book is out, but Dad had to work very hard for everything he got. Nothing was ever handed to him. A lot of people climb the ladder in life, but they use people and contacts and favors to get where they are going, and then they forget about the people that they’ve climbed past. My dad has never forgotten where he came from, and instead of climbing over people, he was very generous with his time. He was always visiting sick kids in the hospital trying to cheer them up, or working with kids in area schools to try and repay the favor done for him while he was in high school. Dad always remembered his past—and the fact that it was one or two people who made the difference in his life and put him on the right path. And I think he saw it as his responsibility to pay that forward in everything he did.

  —Carrie Backlund

  14

  The Build-Up

  “Enthusiasm takes the drudgery out of your work and makes it a labor of love.”

  —Napoleon Hill, “Control Your Attention”

  At the November 1977 TV tapi
ngs, Vince Sr. booked me into three different singles matches and then into a six-man tag-team match with the tag-team champions Jay Strongbow and Billy Whitewolf. The idea was to keep me at the front of people’s minds as a still-undefeated young wrestler who would eventually get a chance at the gold. My presence was like a pressure building up, more and more each week—with the people eagerly anticipating what the explosion would look like.

  I saw Vince Sr. at that taping, and he pulled me aside and confirmed to me that I was going to get the championship from Billy at the Garden in February, and that he was going to build my push both at the Garden and out in the territory with that schedule in mind. I did ask him about Billy and whether that plan might change because Billy was so red hot in the territory at the time. Vince Sr. explained to me that unlike the NWA, the WWWF was a babyface territory, where the heels cycled in and out as challengers, and only served as transitional champions to get the title from one babyface to another, and didn’t ever keep the title very long. He told me that Billy was already scheduled to get the longest heel reign in the history of the company, but the time was rapidly approaching to make the change because he had pretty much run through the roster of credible babyfaces to wrestle.

  I started out full-time on the house show circuit on December 1, 1977, in Asbury Park, New Jersey. At the TV tapings in Allentown and Hamburg, Vince Sr. had a little area with a table where he would sit, and he had a calendar ledger for the year with all of the dates ahead for at least the next three weeks. In some of the bigger arenas, the dates were scheduled out for the entire year. At that time, the WWWF ran on a three-week schedule—so the full schedule of who would appear on what cards was fully known three weeks ahead of time. I would go into the office, look at Vince Sr.’s ledger, and copy down my schedule into my own ledger for the upcoming three weeks so I would know where I needed to be, and when I needed to be there. My first time going around the territory, I didn’t know where any of the buildings were, so I’d just head to each town and find my way. This, of course, was well before GPS or iPhones, so you’d have to simply stop at a gas station or something and ask a couple of times to find the way to the building. If we were wrestling at a spot show in a smaller town somewhere, the matches were usually held at a community college or high school gym, and in those cases, the town was usually small enough that you could find the place without too much trouble. Once you’d been to a building once or twice, it became almost second nature to you. I could probably still find my way to most of the buildings in the WWWF territory—if they still exist.

  In most of the big hockey and basketball arenas, with the exception of Madison Square Garden, we changed and showered in the same locker rooms that the pro teams changed in—which meant that the accommodations were clean and bright and well-defended. My first time around, I’d just find the side door where the most people were hanging out and go in there. Since the arena security guys didn’t really know me at first, they’d check my ID and then point me to the locker room area.

  Once I found the locker room area, the dressing rooms would be designated—one for heels and one for faces—and you’d just go where you were supposed to go and get ready for your match. In the dressing room, you’d usually see Monsoon and Skaaland and Blassie and maybe a couple of the other guys in there playing cards. I usually got to the venue one hour before the matches were scheduled to start.

  Vince McMahon Sr. was in charge of deciding the booked finishes, but the agent in charge of each building would decide the order of the matches and how much time to give to each match. The agent, whether it was Gorilla Monsoon, Phil Zacko, Abe Ford, Angelo Savoldi, or Arnold Skaaland, would post the night’s lineup card somewhere on an interior wall of the dressing room out of sight to any members of the general public who might be walking around backstage. The card had the order of the matches circled right next to it. They’d also post the approximate amount of time they had designated to each match so that the whole card would last for the right amount of time.

  In most of the arenas and gyms, we typically aimed to have a card to last somewhere between two hours and ten minutes and two and a half hours to correspond roughly with people’s attention spans. Anything longer than that, and the people started to get restless and unruly no matter how good the matches were. The matches were also ordered to keep the energy flowing. The card was carefully orchestrated so each match would finish at its peak, and to have the night build to a crescendo in the same way—so the night ended on a high and sent the people running to the ticket windows to buy tickets for the following month’s card.

  Where you were on the card, and who you were, determined how much you got paid. In the WWWF, the guys in the opening match on a Tuesday night in a high school gym might take home $100, and the amounts would go up from there to my match, with the title, which might have been worth $800 to $1,000 for my opponent and me. Our payouts, of course, depended on the size of the building and the size of the gate, from the smallest high school gyms and fieldhouses to Madison Square Garden, which provided the biggest paydays in the territory. At the Garden, the opening match typically earned each guy $300 to $500, and then up from there through the card to the main event, which might have been worth $5,000 to $10,000 to each of us, again, depending on who was on the card, how many people were in the building, and whether the Felt Forum, and its additional seating, was open for a closed-circuit broadcast of the matches.

  In the NWA, the championship match was usually at the end. But in the WWWF arenas that we visited monthly, they would announce the matches for the next card before people left. That usually required my match to happen before the intermission so if I was coming back the following month in a rematch or against a new opponent, they could announce it in the building that night and get everyone excited to buy tickets.

  I was excited to finally arrive in the WWWF full time. I was excited to get to know the guys on the roster a little bit better by traveling the circuit with them, and to go out to the arenas, introduce my style to the people, and to be able to build a match, tell a story, and show the fans what a good, competitive wrestling match looked like. Obviously, the goal was to make the people in every town and every gym and arena believe that what we were doing in the ring was real, and to draw them into the emotion of it.

  It was very valuable for me to finally get out and travel the circuit. I have never been the most naturally charismatic guy—that part of the business just didn’t come naturally to me, so it was something I had to work on. I have always been a soft-spoken, humble, and frankly, pretty shy person. In order to connect with people emotionally and to get them to know and appreciate me, I had to spend time in the ring wrestling in front of them and tell them stories through wrestling. I knew I wasn’t going to be able to talk them into the seats as well as some of the other guys could. I had to do my talking in the ring.

  When I arrived in the WWWF, I also resumed my tradition of going to hospitals and kids’ wrestling clubs. I started connecting with high school coaches and interacting with people around the territory. I recognized pretty quickly that on my first time around the circuit, I wasn’t getting the same kind of consistent adulation from every crowd in every town that I had gotten in St. Louis. In some places, the crowds were hot—but in other places, their reaction to me was a little flat. That told me that I still had some work to do to get the people in my corner.

  It also meant that I needed to be in the ring with opponents with whom I could tell a story, draw the people in emotionally, and whenever possible, make my opponents have the kind of matches that I wanted to have. I liked to have matches where I could showcase my speed, chain wrestling moves, and counters, and have my opponent fight the match with me move for move. I knew from all of the good experiences that I had already had wrestling in the various territories where I had been that the more the people felt they were emotionally invested in my match, move for move, the better it would be. So that was my goal the first time around.

  To be honest, thou
gh, it was difficult. Unlike in Amarillo, Florida, Georgia, and St. Louis, where the talent pools had been so incredibly rich, back in 1977, the WWWF roster was noticeably sparse on talent—and particularly heel talent. Because there was currently a heel WWWF champion (Graham), there wasn’t a lot of fresh and excellent heel talent in the federation to feed to me. There were a bunch of older guys like Baron Mikel Scicluna and Professor Tanaka, who were all well into the back nine of their careers and who really didn’t have the spark for the business anymore, so it was hard to develop a hot program with any of them. There were no hot young heels in the territory, because with Graham in the top spot and no other secondary title to compete for, there wasn’t any place for those heels to go. I quickly realized that this was why Vince didn’t want me out on the road earlier getting stale wrestling these guys month after month.

  If you take a look at the WWWF cards from 1977, and compare the matches that occurred, say, at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, or the Bayfront Center in St. Pete, or the Omni in Atlanta with the matches at Madison Square Garden during the same time period, the comparison is stark. You will see a really profound difference in work rate, crispness of execution of moves in the ring, and consequently, in the number of good wrestling matches. The WWWF looked tired and old, and the NWA had it all over the WWWF at that time. I think that was definitely one of the things that Vince Sr. was looking to change.

  I think that at least during the nine months that Billy had the belt, with the exception of Sammartino and Graham and their opponents in the main events, and maybe a couple of other exceptions, people had largely gotten fat and happy in the WWWF. I think that for too many years, people had grown accustomed to relying on Bruno (and then Billy) to draw the houses, and had gotten a little lazy with the work rates and creativity in the semi-final and mid-card matches. If you go back and watch some of those matches today, some of them are so bad that they are almost unwatchable. There is no story being told, the in-ring execution is bad, and many of the wrestlers themselves really just seemed to be mailing it in.