by Bob Backlund
According to plan, Vince was on television talking about how my comeback effort had fallen just short, but what a wonderful story it all was, but in the ring, the story was just beginning, as the real angle was about to bloom. Bret extended a hand to me in a token of sportsmanship, and whereas the old Bob Backlund would have shaken it and held his arm up in a token of victory—the newly emerging Mr. Backlund stared him down for a long beat, and then slapped him across the face, put him in the Chickenwing Crossface, and refused to release the hold.
The fans turned on me in a heartbeat, and I grimaced and scowled and bugged my eyes out, and acted like I had gone insane—refusing to release the hold until a bunch of other wrestlers jumped into the ring and intervened. I then did that little gesture where I turned my palms up and looked down at my hands, as if I wasn’t even sure what I had done—and that little gesture became my new calling card.
To this day, fans still do that when they see me.
From there, I set about building up a “voluminous vocabulary” so I could “agitate the plebeians.” I donned the red suspenders and bow tie, and set about to become everyone’s moral conscience.
And suddenly, the people hated me with a fury hotter than lava.
Over the next several weeks on Monday Night Raw, we cemented that hatred through a couple of additional in-ring angles. First, they had Arnold Skaaland intervene and try and talk some sense into me—but I refused to shake his hand and blamed him for throwing the towel in the ring back at the end of 1983 and ending my six-year reign as WWF champion. He apologized and insisted he did it to save my career, and I snapped again and put the Chickenwing on him, and refused to release it until he was injured.
Then I slapped it on WWF writer Louis Gianfredo, and I almost killed him.
All of this not only brought the fury of the people upon me, but it also cemented the Chickenwing Crossface as a fearsome finishing hold. Unfortunately, half of the new guys weren’t even flexible enough for me to apply the hold properly by bending their arm back behind them far enough for me to apply the Crossface and clasp my hands—which is one of the reasons why the Chickenwing Crossface that I used in 1982 and 1983 looked better than the one I used in 1993 and 1994. It wasn’t that I was being sloppy with it—it was that many of the guys I was putting it on in this chemically enhanced generation had such ridiculously big and inflexible arms that you couldn’t bend their arm behind their back without breaking them.
All of this activity, of course, led to a rematch with Bret Hart for the WWF title, where Bret’s Sharpshooter submission hold was pitted against my Chickenwing Crossface. It was a submission match, and appropriately for the storyline, the only way to lose the match was to have your corner man throw the towel in on your behalf. Owen Hart (Bret’s brother) was my second, and British Bulldog Daveyboy Smith (Bret’s real-life brother-in-law) was his second. Bret’s mother Helen and father Stu were both in the crowd. Bret and I had another great scientific match trading holds and counters until eventually, I got him in the Chickenwing and had him in the hold for eight minutes—until my fingers literally went numb from holding it on him for so long. The announcers played it up that Bret was going to suffer permanent injury to his shoulder and Owen pleaded with his mother to convince Daveyboy to throw in the towel, which he had thus far been refusing to do. Finally, Bret’s mother couldn’t take it anymore, grabbed the towel from Daveyboy, and threw it into the ring signaling Bret’s submission.
And with that, I was the world champion once again.
The crowd jeered venomously at me, which was everything we had hoped for. I played it up in my post-match promo—holding the belt up and looking into the camera with an insane look in my eyes and exclaimed, “I feel like God!”
Of course, that brought their hatred down even more strongly.
Before the match, Vince and I had talked. Seeing the way the fans were reacting to me, he told me that he was going to let me run with the title as a heel for about a year and then ask me to return the honors by dropping it back to Bret. I was excited for the opportunity to run with the title as a heel, and really irritate and antagonize the people. I had a couple of scheduled title defenses over the weekend against Daveyboy, and then went to Madison Square Garden as the champion where I was scheduled to face Diesel.
In the interim, “Macho Man” Randy Savage, who had been one of the company’s biggest babyfaces, had unexpectedly jumped to WCW. We were losing the Monday Night Wars to Ted Turner and WCW, and WCW had started raiding our talent. That night, when I got the Garden, Vince pulled me aside and explained to me that they needed someone to replace Savage and they had decided to try and get Diesel over in that role, but they needed to give him the belt. The plans had changed. Vince asked me to drop the belt to Diesel that night, and to do it as convincingly as possible.
Needless to say, I wasn’t crazy about putting Diesel over because I had been told I was going to run with the belt for a year, and now, my run was ending after only three days. But I also understood that business was business, and if that is what Vince needed me to do, that is what I was going to do for the benefit of the company as a whole. So we agreed that the bell would ring and that I would stick my hand out to shake Diesel’s hand, and that he would kick me in the gut, pick me up, and Powerbomb me in the middle of the ring and get the three count right then and there. I figured that would put him over as strongly as I could possibly put him over—and that to top it off, I would sell his Powerbomb by laying in the middle of the ring for a while and then crawling out of the ring and all the way back to the dressing room.
So that’s what I did.
The problem was, Diesel was a little too excited about the match, and probably a little nervous also—and he slammed me down on my hips instead of flat on my back where I could have cushioned the blow. That’s the problem with the Powerbomb—there really isn’t any way for the person getting Powerbombed to participate in the hold or to do anything about it. You are totally in the hands of the person applying the hold—and if he doesn’t drop you correctly, there is virtually nothing you can do to defend yourself. I felt that blow rattle up my spine, and it hurt a lot.
To Diesel’s credit, despite the fact that he had a lot to celebrate, he checked on me in the locker room immediately after the match to make sure I was okay, and to thank me for putting him over so strongly. I know that was a big deal to him, and he knew that I didn’t have to sell the loss as much as I did—but knew that it was my job to put the hold over as strongly as I could for him. That was what was right for the business, no matter how I might have felt about it. One last time, the tide that had flowed in and given to me, was now flowing out and seeking a return. It didn’t matter to me that Diesel wasn’t a wrestler—what mattered to me was giving him the best possible start as champion that I could give him.
After the loss to Diesel, Vince didn’t really know what to do with the Mr. Backlund character. That was the only problem with it—it had a limited shelf life in that you could only milk it for so long. Vince more or less just stopped booking me, and the character just died off. But it was a great run while it lasted. For a time, the Mr. Backlund character was as over as any heel in the company had been for a very long time. In fact, Mr. Backlund was so hot that I was getting death threats at home, and I could give an interview by simply standing at the microphone and looking into the camera and not saying a word. All I needed to do was bring the microphone to my mouth, and the closer I brought that microphone to my lips, the louder the cascade of boos became. I never needed to say a word because the people didn’t want to hear anything. I think I was the first person in the history of the WWF to go into an arena to do a five-minute interview at a house show and to never actually have to do anything but come out and look into the camera—the fans hated me that much. What took thirty minutes for the babyface Bob Backlund to do—to bring the crowd to its emotional peak—Mr. Backlund could do in thirty seconds.
That is what it meant to get over. Making the people hav
e an emotional reaction to you.
Going back to the WWF in 1992 was good for me. It was something that helped get me going in the right direction again. For nearly all of my life, I lived as the All-American Boy, quiet and shy, with lots of confidence in the ring, but not much confidence outside the ring. When I became Mr. Backlund, it helped pull me out of my shell, and I was very motivated to try to do the same things as a bad guy that I had done as a good guy.
When I became a heel, the hatred I felt from the fans everywhere I went in the ’90s was even stronger than the love and adulation I got from the fans when I was the champion in the ’70s and ’80s. It made me wonder whether the raw emotion of hate is stronger than love.
I was glad I had the chance to heel once in my career—but I’m glad I waited to do it until it made sense in my life. And I think we made a memorable time of it!
27
Looking Forward, Not Behind
“Put ideas and your definiteness of purpose to work.”
—Napoleon Hill, “Develop Definiteness of Purpose”
And thus, we come to the present of my story.
I say the “present” and not the “end,” because I don’t believe the best years of my life are yet behind me, and I certainly don’t believe that we are at an “end” of anything. We are merely at a place where we have stopped for a time to acknowledge and reflect on what has come before. Five years ago, I could have never imagined that I was about to receive a letter from an old fan that would set into motion this book about my life, a reconciliation and renewed relationship with Vince McMahon Jr. and the WWE, and an induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. Before Rob reached out to me, I had pretty much given up hope on the idea that I would ever get to tell the story of my life—or even that there was anyone left out there who cared to hear it. Over the years since I first lost the belt in 1983, a number of sportswriters had contacted me asking me to do a book with them, but none of them fully understood me, what I was about, and why I made the choices I did. Rob says, in his introduction to the book, that he reached out to me at a time in his life when he needed his hero again. Well, the same can be said for me. Rob reached out to me at a time when I needed to be a hero to someone again—to be remembered. So this project has been a remarkable re-awakening for both of us.
I have much to be grateful for in my life. I owe much to my two greatest role models, Vince McMahon Sr., who was like a father to me and the most honorable man I ever met in the wrestling business; and to my wife Corki, who has provided the stability and support for our family for all of these years. But I also recognize that the remarkable experiences I have had, and the many things I have been taught and lessons that I have learned over the past fifty years or so have left some clues that I hope others might follow. So before I close this chapter of my life, I thought it might be valuable to sum up the major lessons I have learned on this remarkable roller-coaster ride that has taken me from the farm fields of Princeton, Minnesota, to the top of the world, and then all the way back again with a safe landing.
I think of these as my Eighteen Principles of Healthy Living. I hope some of these might resonate with you as well.
1. In each and every interaction you have with people, treat them the way you would want to be treated. Be kind to each other. The fact is, if everyone in the world just did that, most of the world’s problems would be solved. I have tried my best to do this every day—both inside and outside the wrestling business—and it has served me well.
2. Find a way to get your kids involved in athletics from a young age. Doing so will teach them discipline, responsibility, and how to be part of a team. It will give them strength and balance and build their concentration and their self-esteem. As this story has shown, although I did not get involved in athletics until I was ten years old, once I did, athletics saved my life.
3. Eat to fuel your body, not for emotional support. Quality going in means quality coming out. People have always asked me what I ate to maintain such a healthy body for so many years. For breakfast, I have either an emulsification of raw spinach, raw sweet potato, banana, yogurt, a scoop of low-sugar protein powder, and strawberries or blueberries or cantaloupe; or oatmeal with peanuts, raisins, and pumpkin seeds. I also take one multivitamin and a shot of Braggs Apple Cider vinegar, which I am convinced eliminated the rheumatism in my joints. Lunch is lots of veggies and some lean protein—I don’t eat bread anymore, and I never put man-made sugar into my body. Dinner is a wrap, or a salad with chicken or turkey on it, or we make homemade soup. Basically, the more green you eat and the less meat you eat the better off you are. Doing those things has helped me maintain a strong body, overcome a bout with Lyme Disease, and battle the aches and pains that invariably come from forty years of bodyslams and suplexes.
4. Get enough sleep. Getting enough rest at night is how your body heals itself and how your immune system gets restored. I go to bed at 9:30 or 10 p.m. every night and get up at 6:30 a.m. If you are ever short on sleep, lie down on the floor, put your hands by your side, get in a relaxed state, and try to lower your heart rate as much as you can and get into a meditative state for fifteen to thirty minutes. After that time, your body will be revived and you will be able to finish the day with energy and enthusiam, but not affect your sleep at night.
5. Maintain a positive mental attitude (PMA) no matter what happens to you. Search tirelessly for the silver lining that will allow you to turn a negative into a positive—as there is almost always a way through the toughest of times. If you ever find yourself feeling hopeless, just remind yourself that—before I became a world champion—I was homeless, starving, and living in the trunk of my car. Imagine how different my life would have been if I had abandoned my PMA and given up.
6. Apply mental focus. I have been physically and nutritionally fit for most of my life. But in 1984, when I got out of the wrestling business, I realized how important the intellectual part of life was, how lacking I was in that area, and how hard it was to change something that you had been ignoring for thirty-five years. When I got my mind set the right way, I realized that it was probably going to take me until the end of my life to get my mind where I want it. And I’m willing to accept that challenge. Remember that both the mind and the body have to be exercised, and that both will get better with age and use as long as you continue to use them. You can augment your intelligence at any age—it’s when you quit using it and get lazy that your mind deteriorates. There are two books I read that helped me get my mind in the right place after wrestling—Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich, and his Seventeen Principles of Success. I recommend them both to you for your thought and reflection.
7. Cultivate a healthy self-esteem. Find little ways that you can “win” every day, whether that is simply by pushing hard through a daily workout or practice, solving a tough problem, or just by eating right all day. By accumulating these little victories, your self-esteem will grow from a seedling into an oak tree.
8. Resist peer pressure, and set the example you know is right for others to follow. After my experience at the Kitten Club in eighth grade, I learned never to do things because other people wanted me to, to make other people happy, or to try and make friends. Instead, I tried to be a role model for others to follow. It was not always easy.
9. Be respectful. Be more concerned about giving respect where it is deserved than getting respect, because the fact is, when you give respect, you get respect. Teach your children to respect themselves, their teachers, and their elders. It is an increasingly rare sentiment in the world that instantly makes the world a better place.
10. Be reliable. Be on time, trustworthy, and accountable. When you say, do, and when you promise, deliver. That is the stuff that champions are made of.
11. Be self-reliant. Be hard-working and industrious and take control of the things that matter in your own life. If you depend on yourself, you should never be disappointed.
12. Save money on a daily basis. Save to educate your children, and teach
them, also, to put a little bit away every day. Pay yourself first with the money you make so that there is always something in the kitty. My wife and I play a little game each day where we each try to find the most money that other people have dropped or left lying around. It helps to keep us focused on the importance of every dime, and to remember the days when we didn’t have enough.
13. Don’t live above your means. Financial struggle is one of the biggest strains on marriages and families. Someone who doesn’t have the income to support it shouldn’t have three big-screen TVs and a Cadillac. For a long time, I was one of those people. I’ve eaten a lot of tuna fish out of a can, and Corki and I bought our first house with cash, not a mortgage. Try to have at least a year’s worth of money saved up so if things take a turn for the worse, or you are confronted with an unusual opportunity, you won’t be caught short. Remember that when Vince Sr. asked me if I had the $80,000 deposit for the world title, I had the money to give to him, even though he never actually made me produce it. Imagine how I would have felt if I hadn’t saved enough for the deposit, and had been passed over because of that?
14. Find something to do that you love doing, and then keep doing it. I know a lot of people who are over eighty, didn’t retire, are still active physically and mentally and spiritually, and are still going strong. I started an oil business when I was fifty-nine years old, sold it when I was sixty-five, and am now moving on to the next exciting phase of my life as an author and a motivational speaker.
15. Make your work life fun. You can find some way to do this no matter what your career is as long as you can get your mind focused on the right thing. When I was delivering oil to someone’s house, I focused on how I was keeping other people’s children warm, and that’s what got me up at 3:30 on a snowy and cold morning to deliver that oil.