The Hardcore Truth

by Bob Holly

  After a while, WOW started running house shows (non-televised events) too, which drew 300 to 400 people per show. It grew until we were getting 700 to 1,000 people at our weekend shows at high schools or armories. Though I was getting paid at this point, I was lucky to get 40 dollars for a house show. A year after we started running the weekend shows, Tyler and Sweetan were doing such good business that they decided to start doing house shows during the week as well. They wanted both me and Lenny to quit our jobs and move to Pensacola to make sure we were at all the shows. At 40 bucks a night minus travel costs, we weren’t going to make any money, so we both refused. We enjoyed our jobs and we were making good money. They tried to tell us that we’d make more as wrestlers, but that was bullshit and we knew it. We figured out a way to do the shows and keep our jobs too. A regular day for us went like this: we’d get off work at 3:30 p.m., drive to the house show, wrestle, drive back, and get in about 2 a.m. We started work again the next day at 7 a.m. It got even harder whenever we had to do mandatory overtime. We’d have to work two extra hours and then haul ass to whatever town we were wrestling in. I was burning the candle at both ends to say the least, but I was young and I could handle it. It gave me a whole lot of experience, which was the most important part of getting into the big leagues. I needed to hone my craft and get used to working an audience.

  I also needed to get used to other common practices in wrestling, such as making myself bleed. Most people nowadays seem to know how this is done; you cut off a corner of a razor blade, wrap it up in tape so that only a bit of the edge is exposed, and then cover that with tape too until the time comes to cut yourself. Then you hide the blade somewhere on your body. Some guys put it in their trunks or under their wrist tape. I always kept it in my mouth. It was much easier and more convincing. I didn’t have to dig around for it; I’d just get hit, put my hands up to my face in order to sell that hit, spit the blade out into my hands, and, boom, away I went. People ask me how I managed not to swallow the blade — it’s simple; you just don’t, unless you want to have a major problem later!

  I did about 15 or so bladejobs with WOW. It was part of the business and had been forever. A heel would beat down a babyface and make him bleed, and then you’d want to pay to see the babyface get his revenge. Simple and effective booking. My first bladejob was by far the worst — or best, depending how you look at it — of my career. The booker came up to me backstage at the Waterfront Arena in Pensacola and said, “You’re getting color tonight,” and that was that. I just thought, “Well, that’s part of the business, I might as well get used to it” and went about making my blade. I was wrestling Pat Rose that night. The match was going fine and then it came time to get color. The problem was that I dropped the blade. The bigger problem was that he found it first and said, “Here, I’ll do it” and gigged me. That’s a big no-no in wrestling; you never blade a guy unless he asks you to do it for him. He went too deep and cut an artery in my forehead. As soon as I sat up, blood shot out of my forehead like a spigot had been opened. Every time my heart pumped, more blood shot across the ring. It was a mess. After we finished the match, they had to take a mop and bucket to clean the mat and the floor. We didn’t have trainers or medical people backstage at those shows, and rather than going to the hospital, I taped it up myself. It took forever to stop bleeding. Later on, when I took the bandage off, I saw the cut was about an inch long and about half an inch wide. It was awful, so I figured then that I should probably go to the ER. It’s a good thing I did: I needed stitches, and when they were stitching me up, it started to bleed again. It took ages for the blood to stop. In the end, they gave me 18 stitches — 10 on the outside and eight on the inside. I didn’t feel too good that night, given how much blood I’d lost.

  I got paid 25 dollars for that match.

  I literally put my blood, sweat, and tears into my work with that group, but World Organization Wrestling came to a close after about two years. The TV shows were really good and we were drawing good crowds at the house shows, but it turned out that someone was stealing money. Mr. Ito decided to pull the plug on it.

  I was the only one from WOW who went on to the big leagues. Lenny could have if he’d wanted to — he was a good wrestler but what he excelled at was talking on the microphone and getting heat. I think he would have made it big back when having heel managers at ringside was hot. He could have been one of the very best. He taught me a lot about talking for the business and working on camera. We even had our own 30-minute show on local TV every Wednesday, The Marvellous Marcel Pringle and Beautiful Bob Holly Show. You can find one episode of it on YouTube, in which an old grandma puts a pie in Marcel’s face and I’ve got long hair and a terrible moustache. Marcel also had connections — he’d grown up with Percy Pringle, who went on to become Paul Bearer and work as one of the top managers in the WWF. Lenny could have easily got looked at for the big time, but he just didn’t think he could handle the traveling that went with working for them. Some are made for it and some aren’t. He had a great job at Taylor Wharton and was happy wrestling locally. Good for him, I always thought.

  Once Mr. Ito pulled the plug, everything started winding down, but I wasn’t ready to let that stop me. I’d worked damn hard to get that far and I was going to keep wrestling for damn sure . . .

  PART 1: “IS IT FAKE?”

  It doesn’t bother me anymore when people describe wrestling as fake. I just tell them, “It’s fake to a degree — just like watching a movie.” It’s an athletic soap opera. When I started out, sure, it bothered me that people called it fake, but all that did was get me into a few fights here and there. People can think what they want; everybody is entitled to an opinion.

  I think that a lot of people only say it’s fake because they want to see you get mad. I’m not going to do that. I won’t sit here, tell you it’s all real, and insult your intelligence. I am going to explain to you why we do what we do, why it hurts, and how seriously we can get hurt. Getting slammed on the floor is real. Hitting the ropes hurts — most people don’t even consider that. Sometimes we end up getting hit in the face for real and all it takes is one good shot to fuck you up. If you’re wrestling night after night, somebody is going to slip up and somebody is going to get hurt. How can you get hurt if it’s fake?

  When wrestling is called fake, nobody in the business gets too offended anymore, especially since Vince McMahon came out in the late ’90s and basically admitted it was entertainment, not sports. Some people who don’t like wrestling started going, “Oh, I always knew it was fake.” People who like wrestling pay their money to suspend their disbelief for a few hours.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE WRESTLING GRAVEYARD

  Now that WOW was out of business, if I wanted to keep wrestling, I was going to have to look farther away. Just like everybody else, my goal was to get into the WWF, but although I’d improved and learned a lot, I wasn’t ready to try out for the big leagues. I was still trying to make a name for myself, so I was going to have to go to another territory first. Since I was living in the South, the best bet seemed to be the Southern promotions. Pat Rose made up for attempting brain surgery on me by calling around, and he got us a spot as a tag team with Mid-South Wrestling in Tennessee. That territory was run by the Jerries — Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler. They had a TV show, so it would be good for exposure, and the territory had been running for a while so people knew about it. People also knew about some of their wrestlers, including Scott Steiner, the Fullers, the Moondogs, and Jeff Jarrett, the son of the promoter, who obviously was getting a pretty big push and was treated like a star. Jerry Lawler was their main attraction — they loved him in Memphis.

  The promotion got a lot more coverage in the wrestling press and on TV than WOW ever did, so I thought it was going to be my ticket to the WWF. They didn’t make me and Pat any promises in advance about our push or what they would pay us; they just said, “You’ll make enough money here to live comfortabl
y.” I thought hard about that one and came to the decision that if I wanted to make it in wrestling, this was something I was going to have to do. If I didn’t try, I’d never know. Plus, I’d heard the territory was hot and drew good crowds, so I figured I was going to make decent money. I quit my job at Taylor Wharton, packed up all my worldly possessions into my car, and got on the road to Memphis.

  Bob and Rotten Ron Starr: tag team partners in WOW, April 1988.

  Pat and I were going to come in as a heel team. I’d had some experience in WOW working as a heel towards the end. They had brought in Ron Starr from Puerto Rico and we’d tagged together; I learned how to be a heel from him. I enjoyed it and I learned how to get a lot of heat, so I was comfortable starting out in Memphis as a heel. We weren’t given a gimmick though; we were just a straightforward tag team who happened to be bad guys.

  It all started well enough. We traveled around, wrestled six nights in a row, and were off on Sunday. I started to learn from some of the others; it was good experience to watch and work with a new bunch of wrestlers. I worked on my craft, got information about how to play out different scenarios, and was given critiques on my work here and there, what to do, what not to do. It all helped polish me. I got to wrestle at the Mid-South Coliseum, which was a hotbed for Southern wrestling. It was a piss-stained hellhole with wooden benches instead of real chairs but it was a wrestling venue. They did a lot of good business in that place, so I was just glad to be there, wrestling.

  I was told we would get paid every two weeks, but when that first paycheck came, I knew something wasn’t right. Jeff Jarrett came in with everybody’s envelopes and handed out the checks. Everybody looked at them and, to a man, everybody looked so depressed. Jeff came back in later, all smiles, and said, “Damn, you guys are all acting like somebody died.” Somebody else said, “You get the fucking paycheck we just got, you’d feel the same damn way.” He didn’t say anything. He knew.

  Nobody was making money. The most I ever made working for Jeff’s useless fucking Pappy was $189 for two weeks’ work. $189 for 12 shows. That’s about 15 bucks a match. You couldn’t even eat and get to the shows on that. Everyone piled four or more into a car to travel. I took showers at the buildings, ate nothing but crackers and Vienna sausage, because I couldn’t afford any other food, and slept in my car in rest areas. It was terrible. Meanwhile, Jarrett and Lawler were putting all the money in their own pockets. The only wrestler they paid well was Jeff. He was driving around in a nice vehicle and making a ton of money. What could any of us say to him? His dad was the promoter! Jeff was a real dickhead back then. Still is, as far as I’m concerned. He reminds me a lot of Triple H — and that’s not a good thing. Jeff will stab you in the back because he’s not man enough to stab you in the front. When you talk to him face to face, he’s charming and he’ll suck you in, make you feel you can trust him, but as soon as you’re gone he’ll bury you, and you’ll never know it. He’s the furthest thing from a man. I ended up working with him in the WWF years later and he just kept doing things that made me realize how worthless he is. . . .

  But I’ll get to that later.

  Mid-South Wrestling wasn’t working out. They’d told me I’d make enough to live comfortably but one step up from being a vagrant didn’t seem too comfortable to me. After a couple of months, I couldn’t take it any more so I went crawling back to Taylor Wharton in Mobile and got my old job back.

  I called around looking for other places to wrestle and ended up hearing from a guy I knew, who asked if I wanted to go to Atlanta and do a couple of shots for the NWA. At that point, the NWA was the second biggest promotion in the United States, so it looked like a huge step forward on paper but it wasn’t anything like that in reality. Guys who knew how to bump were needed to lose to the wrestlers the NWA were building up as stars — what, in the business, is known as a jobber or an enhancement talent. It was a nothing job where you’d go in, the superstar would throw you around and beat you, you’d get paid, and you’d go home. I was trying to get my foot in the door anywhere I could though, so I said, “Sure, let’s get to Atlanta.” I hoped that, if I did okay in the ring, they might look at me seriously.

  The first time I was up there, I got put in a six-man tag team match, me and two other enhancement guys against Sid Vicious, Arn Anderson, and Tully Blanchard. I didn’t get a chance to show anything there — I was in the ring for about 40 seconds. I got beat up a bit and tagged out before Sid hit his finishing move on one of the other jobbers. That was it. I got paid $250 for that. It would have taken me three weeks to earn that with Jerry fucking Jarrett. I thought, “Hell yeah, I’m okay with earning that sort of money for a long drive and less than a minute’s work!” They called me back to do another squash match soon after that. Easy money, I figured. I drove to Atlanta, walked in the arena, and was told, “You’re working with Flair.”

  Ric Flair was a multiple-time World Champion and, at that point, already considered one of the greatest wrestlers who ever lived. I was a nervous wreck when I found out I would be working with him. The agents — backstage managers — were matter of fact about it: “You’re with Flair, just do what he says.” I went up to him in the locker room and said, “Mr. Flair, I’m working with you tonight. I can pretty much do whatever you need me to.” He said, “All right, just listen to me out there,” and walked off. He didn’t shake my hand, didn’t talk about the match, nothing. This was Ric Flair, the biggest name in professional wrestling, and he acted like it too. I got so wound up before that match. I just didn’t want to fuck anything up, but he hadn’t talked to me about anything. I didn’t even know what the finish was going to be. I had to go out there without knowing a damn thing, listen, and just do what he said. It was intimidating to say the least.

  When it was time, I went out to the ring. No music, no fanfare, no reaction. I just stood in that ring, shaking like a leaf. Flair’s music hit and there he was, in one of his extravagant robes, strutting to the ring for a match with me. I might have looked calm, but I was panicking on the inside. We locked up and he started calling things to me, telling me what to do. He had me bump him around at the start. I thought, “Damn, he’s giving me an awful lot already. . . .” I threw him around with some tackles and clotheslines. I did a hiptoss out of the corner on him, being sure to protect him by tucking his head as he went so he got over and didn’t hurt his neck. I had thought he’d just go out there, run through a couple of his moves with me, and finish me off in two or three minutes. We ended up going back and forth for about 10 minutes before he got me in the figure-four leglock and I gave up. I couldn’t believe it. I was the guy they brought in for the stars to beat the piss out of, and here was the biggest star of them all giving me some offense and making me look like I stood a chance. He didn’t treat me like just a job guy out there; he gave me more than he gave most other enhancement guys. It was a great experience.

  Coming to the back, I waited for him by the curtain so I could thank him for the match. After he’d finished celebrating in front of the crowd, he got to the back, walked over and just kept walking. I didn’t know what to do. It was common courtesy to thank your opponent after the match, or at least that’s always what I’d been taught. I thought I’d better go find him. I caught up with him in the locker room, walked over, and said, “Thank you for the match.”

  He just said, “Yep.”

  I went to leave and then he said, “Hey, when you gave me the hiptoss, you held my head down. I hold my head up to get up high on that. Don’t hold my head down.” I apologized and that was that. He turned away and went about his business. Back then, I didn’t know much better — I thought, “Hell, he’s one of the biggest stars in the business.” But when I reflect back, it’s wrong in so many ways.

  Bob in WOW.

  Whenever somebody let me beat them, even when I was on TV a lot and at the highest point of my career, I still made sure to thank the guy who p
ut me over, because he had helped make me look good. I didn’t make them come looking for me. My ego was never that big that I made people track me down and thank me for beating them! What Flair did was kind of fucked up, in my opinion. I appreciated how much he gave me in the match, but the way he acted afterwards left a little to be desired. As great as he was, who was he to do that to somebody who put him over and made him look good? You can be the biggest star in the entire wrestling industry and you’ve still got no right to not thank someone. It’s just courtesy.

  Years later, in the 2000s, when Flair and I were both working for WWE, I told him that I’d worked with him back in the NWA and he didn’t remember. That didn’t surprise me because he worked so many matches. He was Ric Flair, so of course I’d remember. Who was I at that point? Not memorable enough to stand out from all the other jobbers, obviously! I didn’t tell him about how he treated me after the match though. I didn’t see any reason to bring it up. I’ve got a lot of respect for Ric, for what he’s done in the business and who he became. It’s just sad to see him now when he’s in his 60s and still out there trying to wrestle. He’s become a parody of himself. He needs to get out of the business. He needed to years ago. WWE gave him a huge send-off in 2008 at WrestleMania XXIV, where he had what was supposed to be his final match against Shawn Michaels. They put him in the Hall of Fame and threw him a huge retirement ceremony on the RAW after ’Mania. It was the perfect way to retire. Then he signed up with TNA, a group that likes to kid themselves that they are competition for WWE, and he’s still doing matches now and then as I write this book. It’s really sad. His retirement was the biggest send-off WWE had ever done by a mile and him coming back to wrestle for TNA was a total slap in the face both to Shawn and to Vince McMahon.