by Bob Backlund
Dusty raised his arms in the air and the crowd met him with … silence. The crowd in Osaka was totally stunned by their hero’s heel turn. He walked around and raised his arms to another part of the crowd.
Silence.
Meanwhile, I slammed the mat and rose to my feet with fists clenched, and the crowd roared in approval. Dusty backed off into the corner and threw his arms in the air.
“Hey, Bobby … Bobby … whoa now …”
Far too late for apologies, I kicked Dusty hard in the gut, tossed him out of the ring and returned the favor by slamming his head into the ringpost and he likewise collapsed to the floor to get color.
I picked him up and we battled outside the ring, both of us now bleeding profusely and mugging for the legion of Japanese photographers who were blinding us with their flashbulbs—two of the biggest American babyfaces beating the living daylights out of each other and bleeding like stuck pigs in Japan. It was definitely a moment for the magazines. What in the world would they say about this back in the United States?
We brawled in the ring until we were pulled apart—both of us asking the referee for five more minutes, and teasing a restart. The cheering crowd implored the referee to allow it, but then Dusty bailed out. I grabbed the belt and held it out for him to see and yelled, “Come on Rhodes—come and get it!” and the crowd roared again.
Dusty and I had the place eating out of our hands.
Dusty then retreated from the ring area to a chorus of boos and the ring announcer made the announcement that I had retained the world title on a disqualification. The fans rushed the ring as I was presented with the winner’s trophy and cheered wildly as I lifted it above my head and played it up to the fans.
The match had gone wonderfully, due largely to Dusty’s brilliant swerve in adopting the heel role mid-match with such conviction. Not everyone would have been willing to risk their fan base in Japan to make a match—but Dusty was confident enough to do so—which is a huge credit to him. It certainly made for one of the most memorable matches of my career.
Dusty and I would cross paths wrestling on the same cards both in the WWF and in other places many more times in our careers—always with a kind word, a fond recollection of that night in Osaka, and a healthy respect for one another. But we would never wrestle each other again.
Corki found it particularly distressing that Dusty and I were bleeding all over the place. On that same tour, Andre the Giant and Stan Hansen wrestled and caused a near riot in the crowd. Corki was sitting near the announcer’s table when Andre and Hansen spilled out of the ring and started brawling in the ringside area. The match ended with Andre outside the ring running around throwing chairs and chasing Hansen through the ringside seats, which caused the people to jump all over each other to get away from him. Corki got caught in the chaos out there and nearly got trampled. So suffice it to say, Corki stayed back at the hotel for the remainder of the tour rather than coming to the matches, and she never went back with me to Japan.
Upon my return to the United States, I faced Larry Zbyszko in a world title match at Madison Square Garden on the June 16, 1980, card. I liked Larry a lot—he was great in the amateur style and could really move in the ring, and he was a master of ring psychology. There were few people better at getting the fans truly aggravated with him than Larry—which made wrestling him all the more fun. As I recall, we started by just having a really good wrestling match with good pacing and mirroring what Bruno and Larry had done on television with Larry getting frustrated that he “couldn’t keep up” with my amateur moves, and resorting to cheating and jumping in and out of the ring. He eventually rammed my head into the ringpost, and stole a cheap win via a blood stoppage so he could keep his heat for his main-event Shea Stadium cage match with Bruno in August.
I was looking forward to working more with Larry at the Garden after the Shea Stadium card, but it never happened. Larry and Vince Sr. had some kind of a dispute about the payoff from Shea Stadium, I think Larry said some things to Vince Sr., and after that, Vince Sr. just moved on and wouldn’t give Larry another night at the Garden. I did have some great matches with Larry elsewhere around the territory, most notably in Philadelphia, where promoter Phil Zacko (and the Philly fans) liked the matchup enough to go with it three times.
On July 23, 1980, I headed down to the Convention Center in Miami to face Eddie Graham’s Florida Champion, Don Muraco. Eddie explained to me that he was about give Muraco some pretty big exposure by putting him in a WWF title match with me at the Last Tangle in Tampa supercard at the football stadium, so he wanted to give us the chance to work together a little bit before that big card. The finish in Miami, with me winning by countout, allowed me to keep the title and Don to keep his heat. They didn’t film that match, so the only people who saw that “rehearsal” were the people in the building that night. Don and I worked well together, though, as Eddie knew we would, and I looked forward to going back down there for the big supercard in August.
On July 30, 1980, I made a special trip to Honolulu, Hawaii, to defend the WWF championship against Wildman Austin at the Blaisdell Arena. My old friend Peter Maivia had purchased the Hawaii promotion and had almost immediately gotten into financial trouble because people had stopped coming to the matches. Peter called Vince Sr. and asked him if he would be willing to send some people out there for a big show. It was just a one-shot deal, out and back to try and help Peter out. Nick Bockwinkel defended the AWA World Title on the same card, as Verne Gagne had also responded to try and help Peter get out of financial trouble.
Two supercards were held around the wrestling world in August 1980—and I had the good fortune to be part of both of them. First, on August 3, 1980, at “The Last Tangle in Tampa” supercard promoted by Eddie Graham at Tampa Stadium in Tampa, Florida, I defended the WWWF title against Florida Champion Don Muraco. This was the rematch from our bout in Miami ten days earlier. We wrestled outside and drew just under 18,000 people—which, at the time, set a new attendance record for wrestling in the state of Florida. On the same card, Dusty Rhodes challenged Harley Race for Harley’s NWA World Heavyweight Championship.
Muraco and I had another great wrestling match, which I won by disqualification after a dramatic, see-saw battle. Eddie obviously thought a lot of Don, not just because he chose to put the Florida Heavyweight Championship on him, but because right after that event, he recommended Don to Vince Sr. for a run in New York. Eddie certainly had an eye for talent. Muraco went on to be one of the very best heels to ever challenge me for the WWF title, and was the number-two man in the federation (as the Intercontinental Champion) for most of the next three years.
Even though Eddie drew a great crowd that night, I never enjoyed wrestling outside as much as I did inside. Even with 18,000 enthusiastic people packed into the lower tiers of Tampa Stadium, we didn’t feel the energy and the emotion of the fans as much as we would have even in a much smaller venue because the fans were farther away. Also, in an open-air stadium, the crowd noise just dissipates up into the air rather than echoing off the walls. You also had to worry about the intense heat from wrestling in the hot Florida sun, or rain or humidity making the mat slick, which was a big injury risk for the wrestlers. That night, the card started when the sun was still out, and it was in the ’90s and incredibly humid. By the time Harley and Dusty came out in the main event, the sun had set, but it was still very, very warm out, and they were scheduled to do a Broadway. I don’t know how much water weight those two guys lost in that main event, but it must have been a lot. Rain was probably the biggest concern for a promoter of a big outdoor card, though. Eddie Graham had a lot of guaranteed money invested in the talent for a stacked card like the Last Tangle in Tampa. If it had rained and he didn’t draw a good walkup crowd on the night of the event, it would have been a financial disaster for the promotion. Luckily, however, the weather was good, and the event was an unqualified success.
Bleeding the Hard Way
I knew Bob from his early
days down in Florida when he was down there getting some experience, but not really more than a handshake and a hello. Our first big match was at the Last Tangle in Tampa, the big outdoor show at the Tampa Stadium, and I think we drew as much of that crowd as the NWA World Title match that night. The really memorable thing about that night, though, was that Bobby and I were working hot and heavy and I was spinning around coming out of a move and I accidentally hit him just above the eye with the tip of my elbow and it split his eye open and he just started gushing blood the hard way all over the place and I was like, “Oh shit … there goes my chance of making it to New York!” That was the thing I remember most about that match—having the opportunity to get into the ring with the WWWF champion on the top of the card at a big show like that with all kinds of people watching and then splitting his eye open. But Bob was great about it. He just kept going like it was all part of the show.
—Don Muraco
After the Tangle, I flew back up to Connecticut and appeared on the WWF’s Shea Stadium Supercard on August 9, 1980. I had first learned about that card when I picked up my bookings at the TV tapings three weeks earlier. There has always been a rumor floating around that the original plan was for Harley Race and me to meet in an NWA-WWF title unification match on the Shea Stadium card, but if that was ever part of the plan, neither Harley nor I ever knew anything about it. Given that Vince Sr. had Bruno and Larry in the cage on top—which could have probably drawn the house nearly by itself, I think it is very unlikely that Vince Sr. ever seriously considered that plan, because he wouldn’t have wanted to “spend” a match like that on a card where he was already guaranteed a huge house. There were also eleven other matches already scheduled for the Shea card, including the big grudge match between the undefeated Andre the Giant and the undefeated Hulk Hogan, the Intercontinental title match between Patera and the undefeated “Mr. USA” Tony Atlas, and matches featuring guys from other promotions to whom Vince Sr. had promised time and exposure. The amount of time that Vince Sr. would have had to devote to a world title unification match between Harley and me that night would have made that card far too long. I found out at the television taping about a week before the event that Pedro and I would be working as a tag team at that event and challenging the previously undefeated Wild Samoans for the WWF World Tag-Team Championship.
Vince Sr. drew a terrific crowd of about 36,000 for the event at Shea—maybe 10,000 to 12,000 more fans than he could have put into the Garden and the Felt Forum. Everybody was pretty excited about the night, but there was also some friction from an ongoing disagreement that Bruno and Larry were having with Vince Sr. about the gate. There were a lot of things going on, there was a lot of press, and because of the new venue, everyone was out of their usual routine.
On the typical wrestling card, there is no one match that draws all the people—but it seems like the guy on top always gets the blame when the gate is bad. But when the gate is good, everyone gets credit. Other guys in the dressing room would comment when the crowd wasn’t the best, but more often than not during the days when I was in the WWF, the crowds were good. When they were, people rarely thanked you or credited you for that outcome. I want to change that a little bit here by saying this, and hopefully putting some myths to bed.
I have read and heard Hulk Hogan say that it was his match with Andre the Giant that drew the house at Shea Stadium, and that he should get the credit for putting 36,000 butts in the seats that night. Make no mistake about this—it was Bruno and Larry’s cage match fueled that tremendous gate at Shea Stadium. There were definitely people who came out to see the battle of the giants between Hogan and Andre, and there were a lot of people in the crowd hoping to see the unbeaten “Mr. USA” Tony Atlas win the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship from Ken Patera. And the match pitting Pedro and me against the Samoans, two seemingly unbeatable teams in a best two out of three falls tag-team title match was interesting as well. But Bruno and Larry were the story that night, and anyone who says otherwise is just trying to re-write history.
To be completely honest with you, I would have been perfectly happy being off that night, and having an unheard-of Saturday night off to be with my family. Vince Sr., however, felt that I was his champion and since this was the WWF’s Supercard, I had bet on it. Harley and I could have followed all of this and still gotten the people, but the name of the game is putting butts in the seats, and the fact is that the culmination of Bruno and Larry’s feud in the steel cage was so hot, a world title unification match between Harley and me wasn’t necessary to draw the crowd that night. The incremental gain from having that match that night would not have been worth the additional cost, nor the opportunity cost. That crowd was coming to Shea regardless, so why not hold off the world title unification match for another day when you needed it to draw?
Like September 22, 1980, at the Garden, for instance.
Vince never mentioned to me that Harley was coming into the territory for a world title unification match until I saw Harley walk in to the Ag Hall in Allentown for the television tapings. I was genuinely happy to see him, and very excited to learn of Vince Sr.’s plans to hold a world title unification match between us at Madison Square Garden. Harley, more than any other individual wrestler I’d been in the ring with, had helped me to hone my skills and to become what I had become in professional wrestling. I was thrilled to be able to get in the ring with him, now with both of us at the top of our profession as champions, on the greatest stage in our sport.
Whenever I got into the ring with Harley, other than knowing the booked finish, we never knew how the match was going to go, or what we were going to do, but I think both of us knew that we going to have a great match. By that point in my career, I was very confident about my ability to control the ebb and flow of a match, and to know if someone was trying to take too much. That never happened with Harley, of course—we had known each other for a long time and trusted each other completely, so we could just settle in and focus on putting on a great match for the fans.
Never Heard a Crowd Pop Louder
The reason for the match at MSG was that Vince Sr. knew that if he brought me to the Garden, that I would go out there and have as good a match with Bobby as he could possibly have with anybody. Bobby trusted me enough, and I trusted him enough so that we could have that kind of match together without either one of us having to watch our backs or worry about the belts.
I know there have been rumors that our match was supposed to happen at Shea Stadium, but as far as I know, that match was always planned for the Garden. That was where Vince Sr. wanted his top match. The Garden always came first. He called Sam, and Vince and Sam had their discussion of how it was going to be paid, and from that, what we were going to do. From there, I got a call saying you can do this, but you can’t do that, so that neither title was diminished. On the night of the match, Vince just called me and Backlund together in the dressing room at the Garden and told us to have fun out there.
Just being there in front of a crowd like that and with all the press that was in the house for that event—I knew that when I left, I was going to leave in a much better position than when I arrived. Back then, two thirds of the national press and publicity for our industry was headquartered out of New York. The people in the New York area didn’t know much about who the NWA World Heavyweight Champion was, because not much of our television penetrated the New York market at that time—so that match definitely raised my credibility in the New York area. For Bobby, it got him worldwide recognition across the NWA to have a title versus title match with the NWA World Champion in his home arena. Even though we went to a finish with Bobby going over by a disqualification, the feedback after the match was exactly what I thought it would be—the way the press handled it—it was a huge positive for both of us.
And let me tell you this about Bobby—when I went into the Garden to wrestle him, I went out to the ring first, and when he came through that curtain, I don’t think I have ever heard a
crowd pop louder for anyone. I don’t think that I have ever wrestled anyone anywhere in the world who was more over than Bobby was at the Garden. He did a great job up there during his time as champ. As to Bobby and Sammartino, it was a flip of the coin as to who was more over at the Garden. In all the places we were together, and there were a lot of them, I can never remember the people not just loving Bobby Backlund. He was always the people’s favorite.
As the heel, I called every match we had. I like to look at it as devotion to the business. If I don’t make my opponent look good, how the hell am I going to look good? My whole ballgame as the NWA World Heavyweight Champion was the have the best possible match I could have with anyone, everywhere I went. In most of those matches, I was going over, so why would you not want to beat someone that the people were left thinking had an excellent chance of beating you? That’s what sells tickets.
I’ve known Bobby Backlund virtually since day one of his career. Speaking of him as a person, I don’t think I’ve ever met a kinder, nicer person. The guy would literally do anything for you, and like me, he was all about the match, and giving people the very best wrestling match he could give them. He was a true professional. As for all of the golly gee and aw shucks stuff, don’t let that fool you. I know Bobby as well as anyone in the business knows him, and Bobby Backlund was the smartest dumb-fuck you ever saw. In the ring, I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone any tougher than Bob. He could really take care of himself in there. I know that there have been a few people during his career who have tested Bobby out there, particularly early on, because they were deceived by his baby-faced good looks and didn’t think that he could actually take care of business …