by Bob Holly
The rest of the ’92 season went by with Bob and me exchanging wins. It looked like the next season was going to be real interesting. Even though I was only in about half of the races, I finished fifth overall on points that year. I figured I had a good shot at winning in ’93. I set about working on my car to make sure it was ready. I had been winning some money in those races and it went right back into improving the car. I got a good sponsor, Port City Marble, and was coming back to take that championship from Bob House.
In one of the last races of the ’92 season, I met a guy who would end up helping me quite a bit. Something happened to my car during a heat race, and I pulled into the pit. I started yelling to the crew that my clutch was gone and this guy, who I’d never met in my life, dove in the passenger side, got underneath the dash where the pedals were, and put the rod back in the slave cylinder. Incredible — just like that, I had my clutch back. He got out and I got back on the track and finished the heat. Afterwards, he introduced himself and said he wanted to help me on my car, if that was all right by me. That is how I met Jimbo Walker.
CHAPTER 9
A POLITICAL RACE
I rebuilt my car over the winter, getting it ready and in great shape for the new season. I was in the zone and ready to go — and despite getting in a crash in the first race, I won. A car spun right in front of me and I T-boned him, right into the driver side door. It pushed my hood up and wrinkled the whole front end of my car, but I never went into the pits; I just kept on racing. My hood kept popping up and blocking my vision — the officials in the tower were probably thinking about black-flagging me — but it wasn’t affecting my driving. I kept on going all the way to first place. Bob House didn’t place. He didn’t even race — he’d given up. I’d been looking forward to showing him who the new guy in town was and he had skipped out on me. Maybe he didn’t like the competition. I guess I must have run him out of town . . .
Competition showed up anyway in the form of Rod Merrill. It was either me or him each week. If I didn’t win, he did. If he didn’t win, I did. We were evenly matched but there was a discrepancy as far as the track being against me; Rod’s father was the flag man and it sometimes seemed like they made decisions that favored Rod. He raced dirty too — on the second week, coming off a corner, he got up underneath me, got his front fender underneath my left rear quarter panel, and spun me out. He won that week and I came in second. I got him back the next week by doing the exact same thing. I spun him out and won the race — a little payback. He didn’t like that so much. The next week, when we ended up in the same heat race, he hit me pretty hard. That pissed me off, so I spun him out again. The officials didn’t take a liking to that and made me start at the back of the field in the feature. That made me even madder, so when I’d managed to work my way up to second place, I made a point of spinning Rod out again. This went back and forth for several weeks, tit for tat. It was getting out of hand. Eventually, the officials pulled us both aside and told us to knock it off or they were going to park both of us for the rest of the year. We made an agreement to lay off each other and shook hands — we said we’d just race for points from then on. It didn’t quite work that way.
After a few weeks of fair racing, I was leading Rod overall by 10 points. Coming off a turn in a heat race, he was passing but hit me on the way. It wasn’t an accident. He pushed me down the back straightaway and I had to do everything I could to keep control of my car. I managed to get it back on track and got a good run on him. This wasn’t intentional at all but I turned him — we both went spinning off the back straightaway into the dirt, up a 10-degree banking. They black-flagged me for that and I lost points for the heat race. I thought that was kind of unfair because I’d just been racing hard, trying to get by him, but ended up going into him instead. I started at the back of the feature and came through the field to reach second. With a handful of laps to go, I got underneath Rod and managed to drive past him. Then he started shoving me all the way down the back straightaway. It was blatant. I decided that if he was going to mess with me, he was fixing to pay for it big time. I was going to teach this motherfucker a lesson. As we went into a turn, I backed off to give him the lead and then turned early so I could hook his right rear bumper. It turned him completely and instead of spinning out, he shot off the banking. It was about an 18-degree angle with no wall. It simply dropped off, and he disappeared over the bank. I thought for sure they’d black-flag me for that but they didn’t. They must have seen him screwing with me earlier so they let it go, thinking turnabout was fair play. They sent a wrecker down to pick him up; he was done for the night. When he went off the track, his motor spun backwards. That messed his car up pretty bad. I won that race and got a lot of points on him.
He changed his approach after that — his team started protesting my car and saying I was cheating. It got ridiculous. One night, after I’d won the race, they protested the exhaust on my car because it was two inches too short. They disqualified me for that, so Rod won by default and got all the points. Another time, one of the guys took me aside and told me that he’d heard Rod was planning to protest the size of the number on my car after the race. I thought it was pathetic that his team was going to stoop to that level. I took some duct tape and outlined my number to give me an extra inch. Rod won the race that night but he couldn’t protest my second place so I didn’t lose too many points. His team was just going to try and find every way to fuck with me and win the championship.
He had a buddy who raced sometimes, a guy named Tommy Daniels. With four weeks left in the season, I was leading overall so all I had to do was make sure I finished in front of Rod. Places were important in the heat race too, because there were some points on the line. I was behind Tommy but in front of Rod, so I figured I would just stay put and not try anything fancy. That was until Tommy pushed up a bit, so I thought I’d get another position and pushed my nose up there to pass him. He suddenly turned a hard left into me. His job that day was evidently to take me out and he damn sure did that. He turned me completely around and I T-boned the guard rail. It ended up being a four-car wreck. I didn’t manage to finish that heat race because there was so much damage, but Rod finished third and got a lot of points on me. Rod and Tommy got out of their cars after that race and were laughing and high-fiving . . . I was about ready to kill Tommy for what he did. Jimbo told me to calm down and to get new tires mounted. I was too mad to do anything so I just sat there, trying to keep calm and mind my own business. At that point, Tommy wandered over casually and stopped about 10 feet away. Sipping a cup of coffee, being all cocky, he said, “Tore up your car, huh? That’s too bad.”
That sent me over the edge — I went over there and fucking drilled him. It was like a cartoon; his coffee flew into the air, and he flew backwards, landing hard on his ass. One of his buddies picked him up and they hurried off. I thought that was the end of that, but a while later some officials came over to me and said Tommy had told them that I hit him. I tried to explain myself but they didn’t care. They told me to load my car up and go home.
Jimbo was pissed off with me for losing my cool. I thought it was just sad that I got disqualified because Tommy went and tattled on me like a schoolboy instead of being a man and dealing with it. And that wasn’t the end of it — Tommy pressed charges that night and they took me to jail. When I got out the next day, a letter from the racetrack was waiting for me, informing me that I was suspended for two weeks for fighting. That made no sense because, just the week before, one of the other drivers had started a fight and he got to come back and race the next week. They were doing everything they could to help Rod win the championship. In the two weeks I was out, Rod caught up and passed me overall and ended up 25 points in front of me. I was furious. There was no way I was going to make up 25 points in the last two weeks of the season.
I guess luck was on my side in my first race back though. Rod ended up wrecking in the heat race and I won, so I got some points back
there. Then he wrecked again in the feature and couldn’t come back because he tore up his car so badly. I had nothing to do with it, in case you were wondering. I came fifth in the feature because Tommy spun me out on the last lap, but I still got a heap of points back on him because he scored nothing that day. I ended up back ahead of him by seven points going into the final race of the season. It was tense to say the least.
In that final race, I wouldn’t even have to beat Rod and I’d still come first overall. If he beat me, as long as it wasn’t by much, I would still win the championship. I didn’t care about winning that one race; I was riding to finish ahead of or near Rod. As it was getting down to the final couple of laps, I was in third with Rod two cars behind me. I figured I had this one in the bag and then, all of a sudden, I heard this horrific knock. My engine started making a noise and I began to lose oil pressure. All year long, I hadn’t had a single mechanical failure and here we were, two laps to go in the whole season with the championship on the line, and my car was slowing down. I could not believe it. I had it floored and it wasn’t going anywhere. Cars started passing me. I was trying to count them to see how many points I was losing. I couldn’t see where Rod was anymore. One of my buddies tried to stay behind me to help me get as many points as I could, but I was going so slow he had to pass me. It was horrible. My heart was in my throat. Finally, I crossed the finish line. I knew I’d lost and that Rod was the champion.
When I got out of my car, Jimbo told me that Rod hadn’t won the race and he actually finished quite far back, so it wasn’t a sure thing that I’d lost. The officials calculated all the points and found out that he got seven points back on me that night, so we ended up tied for first on paper. They also found a discrepancy in the calculations for the season so they wanted to go back and do a recount for all the races. It was the final race of the season, and usually you would find out who won the championship and get to celebrate. But all they could tell us on that night was that they didn’t know who had won overall. We loaded up and went home, and I started looking through my records, trying to figure out how many points I had for the season. They called me a few days later and asked me to come down to the track so they could go through all the points for each week, all the heats and features, with the officials and both me and Rod there.
I got there and met Rod. Everything was fine between us, the season was over and we both just wanted to know who won. They went through the whole year, recalculating it all, down to the last race, and found out they had made a one-point mistake. They checked it through to confirm it and finally said, “Bob, you won the championship by one point.” I was glad that I’d won, but the fun had been taken away since we were sitting in an office a week after the final race. It felt kind of flat. I got a trophy and the winner’s check — I won $2,500 for the year. For local track racing, that’s decent. It was always a hobby for me, never a job. I figured I’d take that money, invest it back in the car, work on it over the winter, and come back for the ’94 season to win by more than one point. Meanwhile, I kept on working at Cowin Equipment. I had no reason to want to go anywhere else; management was so nice that it made you want to work hard for them. They believed the better they took care of their employees, the better their employees would take care of them. They were right — I loved working there.
My life was going well and I was pretty damn happy. Then, one day in November 1993, I came home from work and found a message on my answering machine from J.J. Dillon.
CHAPTER 10
WHO THE F*CK IS THURMAN PLUGG?
It was Paul Bearer who got my foot in the door. Lenny had grown up with Paul in Mobile and the two were so close that they originally shared the same surname for their wrestling personas — they were Marcel and Percy Pringle. Percy had gone on to join the WWF as Paul Bearer, the manager of the Undertaker. ’Taker had become one of the group’s top stars and Paul was right there by his side, doing the talking for him.
Lenny, as I said before, didn’t want to get into the WWF because he didn’t feel he could handle the travel. But, for me, getting into the WWF was my main wrestling goal. I honestly hadn’t been thinking about wrestling since stepping away from it in 1992; I had become wrapped up in my car racing. Lenny had gone ahead and given the tape of my matches to Paul, asking if he could pass it on to the powers that be up in Stamford at the WWF headquarters. It had taken a long while to get looked at, but evidently they got around to it and liked what they saw. Paul didn’t have to do it but he had seen something in me and kept pushing for them to check me out. Paul’s a great guy and I’ve always been grateful to him for helping get me started with the WWF.
J.J. Dillon was in charge of hiring and firing at that point and he was looking to add some workers to the roster. He said he’d arrange for the WWF to fly me up to Stamford so that he could interview me. Of course, I was happy to do that. Even if I wasn’t as into wrestling as I’d once been, I figured there was no harm in hearing what they had to say. I didn’t know what was going on in the wrestling scene at that point. I didn’t even know who the main stars were. When I stopped watching, Ric Flair had just gone to the WWF, the Ultimate Warrior and Randy Savage were working on top, and the Undertaker was starting to become a big deal.
When I got to Stamford, I sat down with J.J. and Vince McMahon for my interview. Everyone in the WWF HQ was very polite to me, including Vince. My first impression of him was that he was a nice guy. The interview didn’t last long — we talked a bit about what I’d been doing for the last few years and I told them about my job and the car racing. They told me that they’d seen my tape and thought I was a solid worker. They were refreshing the roster and had dropped a lot of the guys who had been around a while and never got over, so they were looking to add some solid workers to the company. They didn’t explain anything about what I would do, who I would work with, how they would use me, or even what my name or gimmick would be. They just said that they’d send me a contract and give me a job as a wrestler. That was good enough for me. Going up there for the meeting made me remember how much I’d wanted to get into the WWF, how hard I’d worked to make it. Sleeping in my car in rest areas, eating nothing but crackers and sausage, getting cut open for $25, traveling ungodly distances after a full day of work to do a house show in the middle of nowhere, being tortured to the point of exhaustion by Bob Sweetan . . . it had all paid off and I was going to get a WWF contract. I had finally made it to the big time and was going to make lots of money.
After the meeting with J.J. and Vince, I did some research on the company and found that some things had changed. The biggest surprise was that they had TV on a bigger scale now — they had started a show called Monday Night RAW in ’93 and were taping in front of arena crowds. They were doing a lot of the shows live too. It was pretty impressive.
The Thurman Plugg gimmick and gear were not particularly to Bob’s tastes! (photo by George Napolitano)
Another surprise was that a lot of the top wrestlers weren’t as big physically anymore. Where they’d had muscle guys like the Warrior and Hogan before, they now had my old favorite Bret Hart as their top babyface. The Undertaker was a close number two. Shawn Michaels, a guy I had known mainly as a tag team wrestler, was now a heel and one of their best workers. They still had some big guys, like Lex Luger, but the crowd wasn’t into him as much as they were into Bret and Shawn. It was weird because they had these straightforward, good wrestlers working at the top, but underneath they had a lot of cartoon character gimmicks, like Adam Bomb (a radioactive wrestler), Bastion Booger (a smelly hunchback), Ludvig Borga (a Finnish strongman who was pissed off about the environment), and Doink the Clown (a wrestling clown — obviously). Wrestling had always had cartoon gimmicks, but these gimmicks seemed a little too silly to me. It made me wonder what sort of gimmick they were going to give me.
When the contract arrived shortly afterwards, the first thing I noticed was the name of my character. Thurman “Sp
arky” Plugg. “Who the fuck is Thurman “Sparky” Plugg?!” I thought at first. But you know what? It was the WWF, I didn’t give a damn what they called me because it was worldwide TV and everybody in wrestling wanted to get in the WWF. If other wrestlers were going to make fun of me for being called Thurman Plugg, I didn’t care because I was there and they weren’t. If the WWF came knocking on their door and offered them a job, they would accept any damn name they were given. I couldn’t tell them, “No, that’s not the name we’re going to go with.” I was the one who wanted a job. They wanted me to be Thurman Plugg so, okay, I was going to be Thurman Plugg.
I recently found out that it was actually J.J. Dillon who came up with the name and character. They had gone off my racing background and wanted me to be a “two-sport superstar,” a guy who went full speed both on the racetrack and in the ring. It wasn’t what I would have chosen, but I figured it could have been worse. Over the next couple of years, they would bring in some truly ridiculous gimmicks like Duke Droese (a wrestling garbageman), Henry Godwinn (a wrestling hog-farmer), and Mantaur (half-wrestler, half-bull, total bullshit — and, yes, I’m serious; he even had a cow costume to wear to the ring). So I figured I got off lightly, all things considered. It didn’t matter what they wanted me to do; I was going to be laughing all the way to the bank.
They didn’t negotiate their contracts. You either accepted the deal or you didn’t. There wasn’t a downside yearly guarantee at that point; all they said was that they would guarantee you $50 per match and pay for your airfare. If the show you were wrestling on did well on pay-per-view (PPV) or on TV or at the box office, you’d get paid a lot more than that 50 bucks though. If your character got over and you had merchandise on sale, you’d get a cut of that too. Thurman Plugg T-shirts, baseball caps, bobblehead dolls for cars . . . well, I wasn’t sure about any of that but the perception was that the guys working for the WWF made hundreds of thousands or millions, so I figured I’d make at least a couple hundred grand after a year or so. Boy, was I wrong . . .