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

by Bob Backlund

I told him that I would do whatever he wanted me to do—and I asked him what that was.

  As it turned out, Vince Sr. had been on the phone arguing with Crockett, the president of the NWA, about the finish. I did not know Vince and Crockett to be close, and they traded talent very infrequently, so I was much more on edge about this match than I ever was wrestling in Florida for Eddie, or in St. Louis for Sam, or even over in Japan where “unusual” things were known to happen on occasion and blamed on the language barrier. Vince Sr. told me that several people on the NWA Board had gotten themselves involved in the discussions. He told me not to worry, but to sit tight and stay near the phone, and that he would call me back.

  If Vince had called back and told me that he was worried that the Crocketts were up to something, I would have done whatever was necessary to protect the WWF title that night, including shooting on Ric Flair if that’s what was necessary. Other than running away and getting counted out of the ring, there is absolutely nothing that Flair would have been able to do about it. That’s what made this whole situation so strange. The NWA Board knew that when they decided to have Flair beat Dusty for the belt, they had chosen to put the NWA World Heavyweight Championship on a man who was a great worker in the ring, and a great performer on the microphone, but someone who could absolutely not protect himself in the ring, and would stand no chance against a guy who decided to shoot on him.

  Ordinarily, no one would have had any concerns about me trying to do that to Ric, because I had grown up in the NWA, had a lot of respect for most of those promoters, and had worked with a lot of them. But now, I was in Atlanta representing Vince McMahon Sr. and the rival WWF at a time when tensions between the WWF and the NWA were high, and I was prepared to do anything necessary to protect Vince Sr.’s and the WWF’s reputation. Business was business.

  The silence, however, coupled with the knowledge that I had just gained from Vince Sr. that there was some “dispute” going on over the finish to our match, was very unnerving. If there wasn’t some discussion about one of us going over the other in some fashion, then what could possibly have been serious enough to get so many members of the NWA Board of Directors on the phone on the night of a match? A decision to go Broadway would have been expected, so that wouldn’t have raised an eyebrow. A decision to call for a disqualification or countout finish, whether it put Flair over or put me over, wouldn’t have hurt either one of us at all, and that wouldn’t have merited such a call either. So the finish being discussed must have been something more serious. Put into context of what was going on politically at the time between the WWF and the NWA, it was not at all beyond the realm of possibility that the Crocketts might have been trying to pull some kind of power move on Vince Sr.

  Whatever the problem was, Vince apparently solved it by talking to Jim Barnett, who acted as a go-between with the Crocketts. A little while after Vince and I talked, and before Vince even called me back, Barnett approached me and tried to smooth things over. He had the Crocketts in tow, and they all explained to me that the match was going to spill out of the ring and end in a double-countout. I eyed them all suspiciously, and just nodded to acknowledge that I had heard them, but I didn’t say much.

  No one will ever convince me that a double-countout finish was enough to warrant scrambling so many members of the NWA Board of Directors for a conference call on the day of the event—so you really have to wonder what it was that had started the controversy. I have never been able to find out, but I’d love to know.

  Apparently, one of the ways that this disagreement and concerns about a possible rogue finish was resolved was by a mutual agreement between Vince Sr. and the Crocketts not to tape the match. That way, if anything funny happened, there would have been no proof of it to put on television. As amazing as it seems in retrospect, this historic match was, in fact, not taped. That was a pretty unusual decision for a match of this magnitude and historical significance, especially given the fact that it had received so much national attention on WTBS. It was certainly not a choice that would have been made voluntarily and in the ordinary course of events.

  I never got to the bottom of it, but something had definitely been up, because by the time Barnett found me and tried to calm me down, word that I was onto it had gotten back to Flair, and now he was then worried about what I might do to him in the ring that night. When Ric found me before the match later that evening, he was acting strangely and was very sheepish toward me. I guess he felt like had to say something to me to break the ice and to put my mind at ease and to let me know that the plan, whatever it had been, was off—because the first thing he did when I saw him was to come up to me in a friendly, joking way and say, “Don’t hurt me, Bob.”

  Notwithstanding these strange circumstances, I liked Ric. I wasn’t worried that he was inclined to try to do something on his own, nor was I worried about my ability to take care of myself in the ring with him if he did. What I was worried about, though, is what his boss might have instructed him to do, or that something else might be going on with a referee that might have been made to look like a mistake or an accident after the fact. My lack of familiarity with the players involved definitely made the situation tense and uncertain. Ric was relatively new in his role as the NWA World Champion, and obviously wanted to make himself and the NWA World Title look as powerful as he could. Of course, I wanted to do the same for myself and the WWF. The growing strain between our two organizations, however, was the new variable that hadn’t been present in these types of matches in the past—and that was weighing heavily in my mind. Beyond that, I knew that having to wrestle defensively and not being able to completely trust Ric would detract from the overall quality of the match—both for us and for the people watching that night at the Omni.

  Our match was the final one that night, and when we got to the ring, everything went well. We did the short-arm scissor, which really got the crowd going, we did the double bridge, and a whole series of holds and reverses and suplexes and speed moves that the average person out there couldn’t do. He got me in the figure-four leglock in the middle of the ring, which as the closest we got all night to any kind of false finish. I could tell from the way Ric applied the hold that night that he had no intention whatsoever of getting cute with me, or even leaving open any possibility for any misunderstanding about that. Everything Ric did in the ring that night was feather-soft. I sold the figure-four for him for awhile before I eventually reversed it to escape. Because of all of the pre-match suspicion, however, neither of us permitted any close calls or two counts that night in either direction. I was in their territory, and once the referee calls for the bell and raises someone’s hand, what are you going to do? So I wasn’t about to allow my shoulders to be down for a two count and leave myself vulnerable to a referee changing his cadence or making a quick count, or some other mistake. Meanwhile, based on the comment that he had made to me, I’m sure Ric was also a little concerned that if he let me get him in a compromising position with his shoulders on the mat, that I might not let go, and the referee would be forced to make the three count against him.

  The match came off as well as it could have given our defensiveness stemming from the cloud of suspicion that hung over the match that night. It was not the kind of fluid, easy, enjoyable match like I had had so many times with Harley, or like the match I had had with Nick Bockwinkel up in Toronto—where you could just put yourself in the hands of the other guy, who was as talented as you were, and not have to worry about a thing. The match was stiff and lacking in drama, and given our unwillingness to include any near-falls, in the end, I think the match was a bit of a disappointment.

  Back in the dressing room, Ric and I shook hands, and thanked each other, which was customary after a big match, and that was the end of it. Nothing more was ever said about the controversy that surrounded the match, although perhaps not surprisingly, July 4, 1982, was the last time there was ever a unification match between the NWA and the WWF World Champions. The WWF withdrew from the NWA
shortly thereafter, and the war was on.

  After the match with Flair, I flew back home, then headed down to Wildwood, New Jersey, with Corki and Carrie for a week on the shore, and I enjoyed some much-needed time off.

  After the three-match brawl with Snuka, which featured very little in the way of actual wrestling, Vince Sr. was looking to shift gears and again give the fans a little something different. Bob Orton Jr. was the guy he called on. As I mentioned before, I knew both Bob Jr. (Randy’s father) and his father, Bob Orton Sr., from my time in Florida. Eddie Graham had liked Orton enough to make him the Florida Heavyweight Champion, so I anticipated that he would have talked Orton up to Vince Sr. enough so I would get to do at least a couple and maybe three matches with Orton at the Garden.

  But it was not to be.

  The match hadn’t done a great advanced sale at the box office, which probably had more to do with the date, August 2, than with the fans’ response to Orton. New Yorkers tended to escape the heat of the city and head for the shore in early August. Vince Sr. decided to feed Orton to me in a one-and-done match at the Garden, and also called for Orton to submit to the Chickenwing Crossface—a new submission move I had recently debuted.

  The Chickenwing Crossface was a fun addition to my matches. Up to that point in my career as champion, I had beaten nearly every challenger I faced with some form of pinning combination—either the atomic kneedrop, the rolling reverse, the inside cradle, or the German suplex. Adding a legitimate-looking submission move was something that made sense for someone like me, who tended to use a lot more wrestling moves in my matches. I had also wanted to do it to add psychological interest to my matches. Now I could “soften up” a challenger’s arm during the early stages of a match, not simply to try and disable it for the purpose of rendering the challenger’s finisher less workable, but to make my own finisher more credible. Applying the Chickenwing Crossface was also pretty dramatic-looking. It was a complicated hold that had never been seen or done before in the history of the WWF—so I was excited to bring that new element to the fans and see how they reacted to it.

  Orton and I had a nice match at the Garden full of fast-paced, amateur moves, playing off the television storyline that we had known each other since our high school days in the amateurs (which was not the case). Orton was in shape, and had no problem keeping the pace of the match fast and furious—and we played it up that when I got the upper hand, he got frustrated, which increased my credibility with the fans. He applied his finisher—the “Superplex” (a suplex off the second rope), and then strutted around, cockily jawing at the fans before giving me a lackluster cover in the middle of the ring, which I kicked out of. Eventually, I slipped behind him and applied the Chickenwing Crossface, and the fans reacted to the hold in a way that made it very clear to both Vince Sr. and to me that we had something.

  Orton became my first challenger to go down to defeat by submission.

  I was very grateful to Orton for putting the hold over like that. I wish we could have extended our series at the Garden, because I really enjoyed wrestling him. He was a perfect match for me, physically, as we were both about the same size and the same shape, and could use just about everything in both of our repertoires. It would have made perfect sense, coming on the heels of three months of brawls with Snuka, to do a Broadway with Orton in our first match—but the timing just didn’t allow for it.

  The undercard of that match saw Andre wipe out Blackjack Mulligan in a wild Texas Death Match. That’s the problem with a glut of great heels like we had in the summer of 1982—eventually, you have to start giving the people some clean outcomes so they don’t get frustrated with the booking—and Andre got one here over Mulligan, which really made it impossible for Vince Sr. to then book him into a title match with me the following month. All of this goes back to Snuka, and the fact that, when these three guys were brought into the territory in the early spring of 1982, no one anticipated how “over” Snuka was going to get, which ended up creating a booking logjam that forced Mulligan and Orton into their secondary matches (with Andre and Morales respectively) before either of them got a main-event opportunity with me.

  The July 1982 television tapings saw the arrival of “Playboy” Buddy Rose from Don Owen’s Pacific Northwest Territory. Rose exemplified the old saying that you should “not judge a book by its cover.” He was a bleached blonde playboy character who was, even at that time, pretty overweight and utterly lacking in muscular definition, but a legitimately good athlete who had played baseball and hockey, and who could flat out work. Knowing that the fans would prejudge him on his appearance, Vince Sr. and Don Owen conspired to put some heat on Buddy before he ever set foot in a WWF ring, and to create some buzz and fan interest around his arrival. To accomplish that, they filmed some fun television vignettes to announce Buddy’s arrival in the WWF, including shots of him boarding “his” Lear jet, playing hockey with NHL players and baseball with MLB stars, and being followed around everywhere by two female valets who tended to his every need, including taking his robe off when he made his ring entrance.

  This led to the natural booking idea of Buddy, having been born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, wrestling me, the handscrabble, poor Midwestern boy from Minnesota. Vince Sr. knew that the largely blue-collar and middle class fans of the WWF’s big cities would instantly relate to that storyline, and would relish the opportunity to watch the coddled rich guy get his shoulder ripped apart by the Chickenwing Crossface.

  Buddy and I had some great matches together. He was a very agile worker with a lot of great moves, and given how athletic he was, we could do just about anything in the ring together, which really allowed us to put together entertaining matches for the fans. He was also willing to do anything for the match and the storyline, including submitting at the end of most of our matches. Many heels were reluctant to do that, because it is such a decisive victory that it steals a lot of a heel’s heat. But Buddy didn’t care about that. He understood the storyline and knew that it would really get the people amped up to see him forced into that position—and the people responded. All you need to do is listen to the roar of the crowd at Madison Square Garden at the end of our match in August 1982 when Buddy submits to the Chickenwing, and you’ll see what I mean. I think Buddy was probably my most “underrated” challenger in terms of the fans’ expectations—I doubt there were many people who saw one of our matches who left the arena disappointed.

  As was usually the case, September represented a new “season” in the wrestling business. With the kids back in school, parents settled back into their school-year routines, and everybody back around to watch the television shows on weekends, it was time to roll out the next big angle.

  The September television taping in Allentown, Pennsylvania, saw the return of “Superstar” Billy Graham—the man I had beaten for the championship now almost five years earlier. But the Billy Graham who returned to the WWF in 1982 was not the same man who defeated “The Living Legend” Bruno Sammartino to become the federation’s seventh world champion, and who had thrilled crowds around the territory for most of 1977. I hadn’t seen much of Billy since he left the territory in 1978, and frankly, like most of the rest of the locker room, I was shocked by his appearance upon his return. Gone was the hulking physique, the rippling muscles, the deep tan, the tie-dye, and the flowing blonde hair that had made Billy such a sensation with the fans. Gone too was the confident, cocky attitude, and the easy manner on the microphone. What appeared instead was a much thinner and less muscular Billy Graham, with a bald head, karate pants, and a mustache. He was pained and tentative, noticeably less confident, and a shadow of his former self. People were actually wondering whether Billy was seriously ill.

  Graham was still managed by the Grand Wizard, but this time with a karate gimmick that didn’t make a lot of sense and never really got over with the fans. Meanwhile, at the same time, Vince Sr. had decided that he wanted to get a new, bigger world title belt (the big green one)—whi
ch I didn’t like at all. I was used to wearing the one that Bruno and I had worn for years. That one fit comfortably between the top of my trunks and the bottom of my ring jacket, which allowed it to be seen when I entered the ring, but didn’t make it hard to walk while wearing it. The big green belt wasn’t comfortable, and I also didn’t think it looked nearly as good as the smaller one that Bruno and I had worn before.

  Going to a new belt wasn’t my choice, but once Vince decided that was what he was going to do—since we knew that something dramatic had to be done to create heat for Graham anyway—we decided to have Graham come out during a televised match that I was having with Swede Hansen, grab the WWF championship belt, and claim that I had “stolen” the belt from him. Graham would then interfere in my match, “knock me out” with the belt, and then proceed to smash it to pieces on the concrete floor claiming that if he couldn’t have the belt, “nobody could.”

  The angle, which seemed so promising on paper when we discussed it, fell flat when we did it. First, Graham just didn’t seem nearly as threatening with his body looking like it had wilted away like an un-watered plant. Billy had battled depression and addiction during the years after he left the WWWF in 1978, which forced him to stop taking steroids. Getting off the juice, of course, was an incredibly positive step in the right direction for his physical health, but it had also hurt his look—and losing his look had a serious effect on his confidence. The loss of his look and his confidence then led to a serious effect on his mental health. It was a very tough downward spiral for Billy, and one that everyone reading this should think about. I know that if Billy Graham was sitting here today, he’d want to warn all the young kids out there not to make the choices he made, and what those choices ultimately did to his health and to the quality of his life.

  I respected Billy for trying to get off the steroids, and I encouraged him as much as I could, but Billy and I were never that close. Billy and I didn’t have any real heat, but I think he always resented me as the “child” who cut short his run with the title, so there really wasn’t much that I could say that would get through to him. Billy’s problem was that he had created his own prison. The “Superstar” Billy Graham character had gotten over with the fans because of his superhuman appearance—but that superhuman appearance wasn’t sustainable. Steroids give you big muscles and the big muscles give you big confidence—but it’s all artificial. When I worked out at the gym, the muscles and muscular definition that I got was a direct consequence of my diet and exercise, and nothing more. Billy’s muscular definition depended on the supplements he was taking.