by Bob Backlund
Don’t get me wrong, Billy Graham worked out very hard at the gym, and he took his weight training as seriously as anyone in the business—but the problem was that the results he had gotten were muscles supported by chemicals, and that’s what the people had grown accustomed to seeing. When you stop taking the chemicals, you can’t lift the same weights, and even if you put in the same effort, your muscles don’t respond the same way and you don’t get the same look—and when that happens, the confidence that you once had goes with it. The Billy Graham who returned to the WWF in 1982 wasn’t the “Superstar” who had beaten Bruno Sammartino in 1977, and who I’d beaten for the championship in 1978. Graham knew it—and his interviews did not have the power and the confidence that they had back in 1977 and 1978.
Second, Graham’s effort to destroy the belt on television actually failed. He repeatedly smashed it against the concrete floor and then unsuccessfully tried to rip the metal plate off the plastic backing. For Graham, a strongman-type character, to be unable to tear a metal piece off of a rubber backing made him look weak, and made the entire angle look ridiculous.
My part in the angle didn’t come off very well either. I was supposed to have been battered by both Hansen and Graham, so after Graham “knocked me out” with the belt, I couldn’t just jump right up, go out of the ring, and express outrage over what had happened. I needed to appear groggy from the attack I had just sustained—so I crawled out of the ring, collapsed onto the pieces of the belt, and just screamed “Why!?” over and over again. I thought it was okay when I was doing it live, but the way the whole thing came out on tape made me look weak.
I wasn’t happy with any of it.
To be honest, though, the bad kickoff angle was the least of our problems once Billy and I started wrestling around the horn. The bigger problem was that Billy really couldn’t get up and down much anymore because his hips were so badly damaged from the years of steroid abuse, and his limited wind allowed him to go only ten or fifteen minutes before he blew up and became visibly gassed. So all of that had to be managed as we went around the territory.
Graham had been promised three title matches at the Garden. Because Vince Sr. was a man of his word, Vince Sr. honored that promise to Billy. As a consequence, though, all of our matches at the Garden were shorter than necessary to really draw in the crowd, because Billy’s physical condition limited both his offensive repertoire, which had never been huge to begin with, and his ability to take bumps in the ring, which had once been his greatest in-ring strength. Despite all of these problems, our Garden matches still drew pretty well. The first of these was on October 4, 1982, where, the premise was that I was so angry over what Billy had done to the championship belt that we brawled for twelve minutes before I got disqualified for manhandling the referee and refusing to break a chokehold.
We came back for the return match at the Garden in November 1982 and agreed to just go at it again in an all-out brawl for as long as we could, and then take the match right back into the dressing room with the premise that we were going to blow off with a lumberjack match the following month.
That match lasted ten minutes.
We came back with the lumberjack blowoff match at the Garden in December 1982, which had the added attraction of the first-ever “heel” guest referee—the same Swede Hansen I had been wrestling on television when Graham attacked me to start the feud. That was done to add a little intrigue to the match, and to make the fans wonder if I was somehow going to be robbed of the belt by a heel referee.
Although I didn’t have too many of them, I liked lumberjack matches—it was fun to use the guys outside to help develop the match—especially in a match against a guy like Billy who, at that point in his career, needed the help. As a consequence, I spent the majority of the match letting Graham throw me out of every side of the ring and use the lumberjacks outside to work me over, while Graham got to stay inside the ring to work the fans and preserve his wind. I was hoping that by doing that, we could extend the in-ring time of our blowoff match by a few minutes to build it up a little better. Billy was hurting pretty badly that night, though, so we were even more limited than usual in what we could do.
We teased some false finishes with Hansen doing his part in the drama of the match by giving Graham an extremely fast count when he had my shoulders down on the mat, but giving me an eternally slow count when I had Billy down in a winning combination. That little gimmick also helped us to get the crowd going.
When Billy could only hold me up in the “Superstar Bearhug”—his former finisher—for a few seconds, I knew we had to go home, so we went right from there to the finish, with me applying the Chickenwing Crossface at the twelve-minute mark. It was a nice finish that Vince Sr. had chosen—with Hansen having no discretion to count fast or slow, and being left with no choice but to call the match and ring Billy out in what would end up being one of the shortest title defenses of my career.
I knew that Billy was still angry about the switch in 1978, that he legitimately didn’t respect me as the champion, and that he didn’t want me to be where I was. That was hard for me, given how hard I had worked both to get to be the champion, and after I became champion. I had hoped my hard work would have changed his view of me, but apparently, it hadn’t. This was the man whose brief words to me in the YMCA in Fargo, North Dakota, in 1972 had pushed me to become a professional wrestler. I had a lot of respect for Billy’s ability to work a crowd and work the microphone, and talk people into the seats. I appreciated the fact that when he had been asked to put me over for the belt at the Garden in 1978, even though he opposed the move with every ounce of his being, he had still done so professionally without underselling my offense or doing anything else to make me look bad, and that he had subsequently worked hard in all our rematches around the territory. Billy had been a man ahead of his time, and a real visionary in the profession that many guys, most notably Jesse Ventura and Hulk Hogan, went on to emulate. I felt bad for what had happened to him—although in some ways, I was happy for him, because at least he wasn’t taking the steroids anymore.
What was really alarming, though, is that not being on steroids had changed his look and every aspect of his life. He was a completely different person. There is no doubt that the drugs had propelled Graham to stardom, and had given him all the notoriety, but at what price?
Meanwhile, promoters in other cities around the territory were also reacting negatively to Billy’s look and new gimmick. In Boston, on November 6, 1982, the promoters abandoned plans for a first match and put Billy and me right into a cage match blowoff without any initial development of our feud. In Baltimore, after our first match in October, 1982, ended inconclusively when I was disqualified for hitting the referee after about ten minutes, the promoters decided not to schedule a return match, but instead, to have a battle royal the following month with the winner to get the world title match with me. In Philadelphia, promoter Phil Zacko skipped Graham entirely—opting to give an extra main event to “Playboy” Buddy Rose, and then passing over Graham and moving right on to the returning “Magnificent” Muraco.
It was a sad end for Billy—who had meant so much to the Federation, and to our sport in general. It was very clear to me that the premise of our feud was a good one—but it was an angle and a feud that should have happened a couple of years earlier when Billy was still in good physical shape and still had his “look.” Had this angle been tried in 1980 or 1981, it almost certainly would have been a big hit with the fans.
Meanwhile, the October 1982 television tapings saw the return of the “Magnificent” Muraco and the arrival of Ray “The Crippler” Stevens. Stevens had been Pat Patterson’s partner out in Roy Shire’s San Francisco territory for a lot of years, and Patterson, who was now doing the color commentary on the WWF’s Championship Wrestling and All-Star Wrestling television programs with Vince McMahon Jr., had been instrumental in convincing Ray to come East for a run in the WWF. Stevens was, at that point, approaching legendary sta
tus in the business. He was a terrific in-ring talent who understood how to develop a match, tell a great story, and get over with the fans. Outside the ring, he was also a great storyteller. Stevens came in to much fanfare (assisted, in large part, by his old partner Patterson on television), as the master of a “crippling” piledriver that Stevens claimed had been “banned” in several states and, according to Patterson, had put countless people out of wrestling. In a memorable television interview with a visually disgusted Vince Jr., Stevens, who was managed and accompanied by fellow West Coast legend Freddie Blassie, announced that he “would cripple my own grandmother if there was money in it.”
Shortly thereafter, in a segment of Buddy Rogers’ Corner televised on Championship Wrestling, Rogers interviewed Stevens and Blassie. and Stevens produced a check and challenged Snuka to a match on television. Although seemingly heel versus heel, the purpose of this match was to turn Snuka face, and to ignite a feud with Snuka that would provide another main-event feud that could headline a building when I was elsewhere.
Naturally, Snuka accepted the challenge, and the “match” was scheduled for Championship Wrestling. The match, of course, never began because its real purpose was to allow Captain Lou Albano to attack Snuka, who was being restrained by Stevens. Then Stevens threw Snuka out onto the arena floor (which had been pre-treated with some spilled water) and piledrived him twice into the concrete. Snuka, who had already bladed while getting attacked by Albano in the ring, then bled into the spilled water, making the entire spectacle look like a murder scene. Snuka was then stretchered out of the arena.
At the November 22, 1982, Garden card, Stevens put the piledriver on his next victim—Chief Jay Strongbow—and beat the Chief in under a minute, after which the Chief was likewise stretchered out of the Garden to the horror of the fans. Vince Sr. was really pushing Stevens in an attempt to get him over as a monster heel, and I’m sure that Jay thought they were getting Stevens set up for something pretty big if they asked him to put Stevens over that strongly.
Stevens and I had our first main-event title match out in Harrisburg at the Zembo Mosque a couple of days after Thanksgiving, on November 26, 1982, and surprisingly it didn’t draw well. It felt very strange to be wrestling Ray Stevens in the WWF because I had grown up watching him in the AWA. He’d been around a long time by then, and although he had slowed down some and didn’t have as much fire as he once had, I was truly honored to have the opportunity to be in the ring with such a legendary talent.
Although Ray was one of the best workers in the business, he was short and not particularly well-defined muscularly. The people I’d had the great fortune to work against in the territory over the prior year and a half were a combination of great workers or monsters (or both) so it took a lot for a heel, particularly an unknown heel who had not appeared in the territory before, to measure up in the eyes of the fans. At that point in his career, Ray Stevens, even with his piledriver and his “crippling” of the Superfly, just didn’t move the fans in the same way that Stan Hansen or Sergeant Slaughter or Don Muraco had.
Both Vince Sr. and I wanted Stevens to get over so we could do a longer program with him. Shortly after the match in Harrisburg, I wrestled Stevens again at the television tapings in Allentown because Vince wanted to see Stevens in person and understand why our match, which looked so good on paper, wasn’t drawing the fans’ interest. The same thing happened in Allentown that had happened in Harrisburg—although the match was good from a technical and artistic standpoint, Stevens, with his short stature and pudgy physique just didn’t strike fear into the hearts of the fans. Although Stevens had been a huge success all over California, in Minneapolis, and in virtually every other territory he had appeared in, he was passed over for main-event title matches at the Garden, the Spectrum, and many of the territory’s other primary buildings, and ended up feuding with Snuka for the remainder of his time in the territory.
Buddy Rose was the primary beneficiary of the problems with both Graham’s and Stevens’ anticipated title runs, because he had outperformed expectations and, as a consequence, ended up getting more main-event dates with me around the territory. It was ironic that the glut of heel challengers we had faced not six months earlier had vaporized—and now, with a sudden lack of heel challengers, promoters were forced to schedule me into additional matches with Rose, or to hold a battle royal with the winner to receive a world title match. The battle royal gimmick often had the effect of drawing a curiosity crowd, since the people thought they might get the opportunity to see something novel and unexpected.
Meanwhile, at the November television tapings, a new monster heel in the person of the six-foot-ten-inch, 364-pound Big John Studd made his “first” appearance, and started to take the territory by storm. I put “first” in quotes because Big John Studd, whose real name was John Minton, had previously wrestled in the WWWF as the Masked Executioner #2, and had actually been the first man I ever faced and defeated at Madison Square Garden.
As 1982 ended, the booking began to stabilize, and I looked ahead to the new year, and what, as it would turn out, would be a year of recycled challengers, political turmoil, disappointing bookings, and ultimately, the end of my reign as the WWF champion.
22
It Takes Two to Tango (1983)
“Nothing about life is static.”
—Napoleon Hill, “The Rhythms of Life”
Eager to get back into a knowingly profitable series of matches, many of the promoters around the territory looked to recapture old magic by starting the new year booking title matches between me and the newly returned “Magnificent” Muraco.
Since our historic series of matches in 1981, Don had split his time between the mid-Atlantic and Georgia areas, and had also done some tours of Japan, but returned to the territory retaining his rugged look and exceptional ring skills. Needless to say, I was thrilled to see him return to the territory, and we immediately started a series of matches in Boston, Pittsburgh, Hartford, and Landover—places that had passed up long series with Graham and Stevens.
At the Garden, however, on January 22, 1983, I faced the challenge of Big John Studd. Since Vince Sr. had sidestepped booking me into “big man” world title matches with Blackjack Mulligan in 1982 and Hulk Hogan in 1980 to leave those guys unscathed for their matchups with Andre, I had not faced a true “giant” at the Garden since Ernie Ladd in 1978.
Coming into the match, Studd was promising the people on television that he would not just beat me, but to hurt me so badly he would retire me from the world of professional wrestling. Even Vince McMahon Jr., in our pre-match promotional interviews, warned that notwithstanding my many victories over formidable men at the Garden over the past five years, people were calling Studd the “prohibitive favorite” in the bout.
I hope nobody actually took McMahon’s advice and laid money on the challenger that night.
Because of Studd’s size and girth, there wasn’t a whole lot that I could realistically do with him in the ring. It’s not like I could throw credible armdrags and hiptosses and dropkicks at a guy who stood six feet ten inches tall. Further, unlike Ernie Ladd, Studd was not particularly agile, and wasn’t the kind of big man who could quickly get up and down a lot in our match. When we met with Vince Sr. in the dressing room before the match, Vince Sr. called for me to go over Studd by pinfall with a quick leverage move that would be made to look like a total fluke. That way, Studd would look like he could have handled me easily, and as such, would still be strong for his upcoming summer series with Andre.
As John and I had not met in the ring since 1977, we retreated into the bathroom, reminisced a little bit about that night, and then quickly set about to working out a few things that we wanted to do in the ring, including what kind of move would work for the kind of finish that Vince Sr. was looking for. John came up with the idea of catching me in his finishing hold, the over-the-shoulder backbreaker, clamping it on, and making it look like I had no choice but to surrender the title, b
efore he stumbled a little too close to the ropes which would allow me to use the top rope to kick myself off of his shoulder and backdrop him while holding onto his legs into a quick pinning combination that would knock the wind out of him, causing him to roll out a split second too late.
Since John was going to be holding onto me rather than spreading the impact of that move across a wider area of his body when he hit the mat, that was a very big, and largely unprotected bump for a 364-pound guy like Studd to take. It was inevitable that he was going to hit the mat pretty hard on the way down with my 234 pounds on top of him. I had been thinking of some kind of simpler and much less dramatic leverage move down on the mat, so John’s willingness to take that big bump for the good of the match and to put me over in that way was very generous of him.
We needed to make sure that my win was both credible and flukey—just a quick and clever little leverage move that would allow me to get past Studd, but leave him with all of his heat for his future series with Andre. The plan we hatched in the bathroom was for John to block everything I tried to do to him and to just pound on me and totally dominate the match—because, in reality, how would it be any other way? Studd had me by eight inches in height and more than 130 pounds, so the only way to make this match look legitimate and leave Studd with his heat was to have him totally and completely manhandle me for the whole match prior to the finish. I had to be the underdog with no way to win—except to survive what Studd threw at me and hope he would make one mistake that I could capitalize on and catch him with … and that’s exactly the way the match came off.