by Bob Backlund
In the second match of that series, Mr. McMahon asked me to go out and put Bobby over in less than a minute—and I would have done almost anything for him, but I said, “I don’t think that’s the right thing to do, and I’m not going to do it.” And Mr. McMahon looked at me, surprised, and asked me, “Why?” And I told him that I thought we would be screwing the people by giving them a one-minute main event, and that it would be bad for business. So Bobby and I went out and had a shorter match, maybe ten or twelve minutes, most of which was done outside the ring, but it had a much better finish, and I think the people really liked it.
—George “The Animal” Steele
At the television tapings immediately following the July 1981 Garden show, Vince Sr. decided to switch the tag-team titles back from the heel Moondogs to the former champions, the sensational young babyface team of Tony Garea and Rick Martel, who had previously dethroned the seemingly invincible Wild Samoans. This change occurred, in part, because the Moondog team had changed from “Rex” and “King” (Randy Colley and Sailor White) to “Rex” and “Spot” because White, a Canadian, was having work visa issues and not allowed to reenter the United States. Spot was just not as fearsome or convincing as the 300-plus-pound King had been, and White’s visa issues had effectively killed the team.
I knew Rick Martel from the time we spent together at Florida Championship Wrestling. Martel started in the business very young, when he was only sixteen or seventeen years old, and to be exposed to the professional wrestling life at that age—the drugs, women, the politics, and unscrupulous promoters and journeyman wrestlers looking to take advantage of you—must have been very, very tough on him. As a young wrestler, the industry just looks like an never-ending game. Just about everything in the world of professional wrestling is a work, so you start to question whether anything or anyone is actually real. Having said that, Martel did an amazing job of keeping himself on the straight and narrow—and like I did, he managed to run into the right people who helped his career along.
Tony Garea, meanwhile, was a longtime WWF guy, having debuted in the federation in 1972. Vince Sr. had briefly considered Tony for a babyface run with the championship in the early ’70s, but by the time I came upon the scene, Vince wanted someone from outside the regulars and was looking for an All-American Boy, not a New Zealander with tattoos and a heavy accent. That said, Tony was a good friend and occasional travel companion for me, and he and Martel worked very well together. They looked good, were good performers, and they could really get the crowd going. Of course, they also had some good talent to work with on the heel side, from Afa and Sika, to the Moondogs to Mr. Fuji and Mr. Saito, in addition to various heels finishing their run in the promotion like Mosca, Khan, Hogan, the Hangman, and others who the promoters would put together to create an interesting tag-team title match to fill out a card.
With very few exceptions, no one match on its own would fill up a big house. If one of the big houses out on the circuit sold out, which many of them did while I was champion, it was because the promoter had put together a good solid card all the way through. Having an interesting and exciting tag-team title match on the card, especially with good babyface champions, definitely helped to accomplish that. The women fans, in particular, loved Garea and Martel, and they played the babyfaces in peril role perfectly. Martel was a fresh and interesting face who injected a lot of energy and excitement into the WWF. He was fast, and a high flyer and constantly in motion. Garea, on the other hand, was the veteran presence on the team—a very solid worker who knew how to pace a match and how to control and build the energy in a crowd. I worked with them a few times in six-man tags, and their energy was truly infectious.
After the Garden show in July and the subsequent television tapings, Muraco and I headed down to Florida for Eddie Graham, and on July 23, 1981, at the Convention Center in Miami Beach, Don and I had our first match together as the WWF’s respective champions. Don and I had been in the ring together before when I defended the WWF title against him back when he was the Florida champion, but this was a particularly interesting night because Don, as the WWF Intercontinental Champion, and I as the WWF World Heavyweight Champion, were the main event on the NWA Florida Championship Wrestling card. Vince Sr. sent us both down to Eddie’s territory to get comfortable with each other because we were about to start a historic program up in the WWF territory.
Don and I worked very well together. The crowd was familiar with both of us and was very into the match, and the timing, precision, and execution of moves in that match was as good as anyone I had worked with. I could barely contain my enthusiasm in the dressing room afterward. Don was aggressive, focused totally on the match rather than on ego, and was someone who I grew to respect immensely.
When I got back from Miami, I explained to Vince Sr. how well things had gone with Muraco, but he had already heard from Eddie that our match in Miami had been sensational. Then, for the first time in my career as the WWF champion, I asked Vince Sr. for a booking favor. I explained to Vince Sr. that after such a long run of consecutive brawls at the Garden (Hansen three times, Mosca twice, and Steele once), I wanted to show the fans something different—namely a wrestling-driven, one-hour Broadway with Muraco at the Garden. Vince Sr. readily agreed, and our first match on August 24, 1981, at the Garden was a one-hour time-limit Broadway.
As a general matter, Vince Sr. wasn’t big on Broadways—he was worried about anyone being able to properly pace a match to hold the crowd’s attention for an hour, because in the history of the WWF, there hadn’t been anyone with enough of a repertoire to pull off an hour-long match without having it become repetitive. He was also concerned that a one-hour match would necessarily truncate all the other matches on the card to fit a two-and-a-half-hour package—and, of course, it was the full card, not just one match, which drew the house and made the people happy.
No matter how engaging a card might be, two to two and a half hours is the limit on what people can take. If you’re going to have a Broadway on a card, you need to keep the other matches short, or have fewer matches on the card without telegraphing to the people that you were planning for that.
Given his faith in Don and me, though, Vince Sr. was willing to give it a go.
In our first match, Don and I spent ten minutes just playing off a short-arm scissor, and we had the people totally engaged in it. It was interesting to show Vince Sr. that the New York fans had grown to appreciate the more nuanced, strategic style of my matches, and that they weren’t just bloodthirsty and craving a brawl. Vince watched that entire first match at Madison Square Garden from his spot at the curtain, listening to the fan reaction. The match went very, very well, and the fact that it was champion versus champion was a nice add-on. That hadn’t happened in well over a year (since my match with Ken Patera in May 1980), so that, coupled with the fact that Muraco had steamrolled over Pedro Morales, himself a former WWF World Champion in winning the Intercontinental Championship, added another layer of drama to the match. Many of the fans were seriously questioning whether Muraco might be the guy with the skill set to beat me—which, of course, is exactly what you need to build a good house.
When the match was over, Muraco and I were both drenched with sweat. I had lost five pounds in the ring during that hour, and Don, who was about fifty pounds heavier than I was, lost more. We were exhausted but exhilarated at the same time, and when we came through the curtain, Vince Sr. congratulated both of us with more enthusiasm than I had seen him display since the Patterson double knockout. By the time of the television tapings the following week, Vince Sr. had re-jiggered the booking plan and ordered up six more one-hour Broadways in the coming weeks—the first time that had ever been done in the WWF.
On October 17, we actually wrestled two one-hour Broadways on the same day. Aside from the sheer physical toll that wrestling two Broadways on the same day would take, the problem was complicated by the fact that because Landover, Maryland, and Philadelphia were only two hours apa
rt by car or train, we knew that the matches needed to be totally different because some people would go to both cards. I remember that we finished the Broadway in Landover, showered and dressed, and then drove to Philly for the nightcap. During the ride, I drank a lot of water and thought about how to change things up to make sure the Philly match was different. When we got to the Spectrum that night, Vince Sr. was there, making a very rare appearance in a building other than the Garden, and the three of us found ourselves standing there together in the back hall. Muraco was laughing with me about being forced to wrestle two Broadways in one day, mentioned how much weight he had lost in the first match, looked at Vince Sr. and jokingly asked him, “What were you thinking?” And Vince joked right back with Muraco telling him, “Well, Don, we need to get this right, so we’re going to do it one more time.”
Going Broadway
When I got to New York in 1981, they did things a little bit backward with me. Usually they would bring the heel in and you would do TVs and then they’d put you right in with the champion at the Garden. But for some reason I generated a whole bunch of heat with Pedro, so they decided to put me into a series with him over the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship before I ever got to Bob. And both of those belts were drawing good money for them. So I won the title from Pedro in Philadelphia and then did a series with him before I faced Bob, and once we got together, I had the Intercontinental Heavyweight Championship and Bob had the World Championship, so that really added something to the series. And then once we got together, they decided to put us into a whole bunch of one-hour Broadways to start and you know, those were all good matches but an hour match is always a hard match because you have to mix it up and keep it interesting. We tried really hard to make them all different—and that was easy to do because Bob’s incredible athletic ability made it so that there was a lot we could do. He used to love to pick me up in the short-arm scissors, and we’d build that up for awhile until he’d pick me up over his head and put me on the turnbuckle and the fans always loved that. But you had to be in some kind of shape to be out there sweating like that and knowing that you were in it for an hour—or on that day, two hours!
Bob had a lot of fire in his comebacks—it was a lot of fun being in there with Bob. We drew really good money together, and he was always very professional and had great energy. The Philly/Washington night was the one that really sticks out because that was the day we did two on the same day, so we were in there wrestling with each other for hours.
—Don Muraco
I loved doing Broadway matches, because, in addition to the obvious physical challenge that they presented, they also offered a mental challenge to try to build the people’s energy over an hour, keep them on the edge of their seats, and build their energy to higher and higher levels throughout the match until we had them at the peak just as the bell rang signaling the expiration of the time limit. You don’t get to have a winner and a loser in a Broadway, so at the end, you have to try to get the people’s emotions to a place where you have a peak and an abrupt ending or false finish and leave them begging for five more minutes.
The five more minutes would come on September 21, 1981, the next card at Madison Square Garden, where we staged the rematch—which, for the first time in Garden history, the WWF World Title match was scheduled for one fall with a two-hour time limit. To create some additional intrigue, and because we hadn’t had one in the Garden for a while, the match was booked as a Texas Death Match to signal to the people that even though this was a match that involved two champions, it would have a decisive finish.
This time, because we knew we were going to a finish, and because we were both in such great shape after going for hours and hours all over the territory, we decided to really up the work rate, do false finish after false finish, and try to lather the crowd up into a complete frenzy. At about the twenty-eight-minute mark, after Muraco had pounded me with a ringside chair and a variety of stuff the fans had thrown into the ring, I began to make my comeback. We could feel the energy rising as Muraco gave me the Hawaiian Hammer inverted piledriver, leaving me to kick out at two … a suplex with me kicking out at two … and a splash from the top rope that saw me kick out at two and a half. Finally, he tried a double underhook, and I backdropped him into a bridge. He put his foot over the bottom rope, the ref didn’t see it, and three seconds later, the Garden literally exploded. It was one of my favorite finishes in all my matches in my career, because I’m not sure I have ever had a crowd any higher than they were that night. That is the emotional magic that a great wrestling match can conjure.
For much of the second half of my time as the WWF champion, Muraco was either the Intercontinental Champion, or was chasing Pedro for it. That meant that we were on the cards together in all of the big buildings in the territory. Muraco was one of the very few people whose matches I routinely watched while I was champion, because I respected him and his work so much. The man could flat out wrestle. I am asked many times who my favorite opponent was. I have had many great matches, and many great series with most of the very best wrestlers in the world from the late ’70s and early ’80s—but in trying to answer that question, Don Muraco would definitely be on the short list. He was also one of the funniest guys in the business. When Don was on, no one cut a better or more entertaining promo than he did.
On October 12, 1981, I headed north of the border for a rare babyface matchup in Montreal with Ray Rougeau. I enjoyed working with Ray, who was very popular in Montreal, and the two of us treated the crowd at the Montreal Forum to a really nice scientific wrestling match that I eventually won with a quick pin, and which ended in a handshake and both of our arms raised to a cheering crowd. I liked having one of these babyface matches every now and again because it was a challenge to try to get the people into the match without the usual love-hate thing going on, and to get them to just pop for the high spots and the story that we were telling in the ring. I never got to have any of these babyface matches at the Garden, and really only had a handful of them anywhere in the WWF territory during my six years as the champion because I don’t think that Vince had any confidence that a babyface versus babyface main event would draw money in the territory.
As some of you may know, Vince Sr. tried this once in 1972 when he had Pedro Morales defend the WWWF title against Bruno Sammartino in the main event at Shea Stadium. The match went to a sixty-five-minute curfew draw because what other outcome could there be? Bruno and Pedro were the top two babyfaces in the federation at the time, and if one of them beat the other, you’d be taking drawing power away from the losing babyface. Beyond that, you’d be running the risk that the fans would turn one of the babyfaces into the heel because the crowd was so conditioned to think that one guy had to be “good” and one “bad” that they would want side with one over the other. Given how difficult it was to build up a successful babyface in a territory, as a promoter, neither of these scenarios is anything you would ever want to risk.
It is important to remember, also, that first and foremost, Vince Sr. was marketing hope. He was all about good triumphing over evil in the end, and he thought that was good for society. There were many different ways to tell that story, so I don’t think he wanted to confuse things by putting two good guys in there together. A lot of the guys also wouldn’t have been good at having pure babyface matches. Chances are someone would have naturally gravitated to the heel role because it was easier, and that could have easily messed up the booking plan going forward. The promoter was always thinking about how to put people in seats, and in a babyface versus babyface match, one forearm shot would sometimes be the only heel move in the match. But it could sometimes be enough to turn the crowd against you. I remember watching Nick Bockwinkle’s dad Warren Bockwinkle wrestle Wilbur Snyder in a two out of three falls match that went almost an hour. Snyder threw only one forearm in the entire match, but that was enough to cause him to draw heel heat from the fans.
Many people over the years have asked me wheth
er there was ever any talk of a Sammartino-Backlund dream match, or a Morales-Backlund dream match, and the simple answer is no. There would not have been a good way to end a Sammartino-Backlund match, or a Morales-Backlund match—so there really wasn’t any point in having those matches. I took a lot of heat in the wrestling magazines for not putting the WWF title “up” against other babyfaces in the WWF, but there were very good business reasons why those matches weren’t booked in the WWF. I loved having those kinds of matches—I just had to have them out of the territory.
The October 1981 television tapings saw an incoming tide of fresh and new heel talent into the WWF. Fresh off a stint in Verne Gagne’s AWA, Adrian Adonis and Jesse “The Body” Ventura made their WWF debuts, both managed by Freddie Blassie. The taping also saw the return of Greg Valentine, who had been wrestling in the Mid-Atlantic area of the NWA, managed by the Grand Wizard. This was typical of how things worked in the office at the time. Every three or four months, Vince Sr. would bring in a fresh group of new heels from the NWA territories, the AWA, or Japan. He would have the Garden dates in his book six to nine months in advance, and once he got a look at the new heels at the television tapings, he would determine how many title matches he wanted each to get at the Garden, figure out how to get the new heels over with the fans by putting some heat on them, and then build the cards around that in a never-ending effort to draw fan interest and sell tickets. If a formula proved successful at the Garden, it was then sent around the territory to the other arenas.
This period in 1981 was a period of deep talent, and big business. There were a number of very talented and colorful heels coming and going, a lot of great storylines progressing, and exciting young guys like Rick McGraw and Curt Hennig on the undercards who were getting beat in long twelve-to fifteen-minute preliminaries, but in the process, building their in-ring skills and getting over with the fans. The fans loved to cheer these guys on, so eventually, the promoters started putting them over more because that was what the fans wanted to see.