Louie had lived all of his life in the same city with his family, who he was close with. He had never been anywhere until we started living together and moving for my work. Louie made friends very quickly wherever we went, because everyone loved him, and I think he enjoyed the adventure as much as I did. He was two years older than me and a little wiser. Whenever we moved to a different place in the same city, Louie hunted for a new apartment and made a first visit. When I was available and back from the road, we would go see it together. He was great. The “friend” of my dreams, I was lucky to have found the person who wanted to share my life with me. We were perfect for each other. Still, my career was very important to me, and in the Portland years I was looking for a way that Louie might become a part of it.
Harry Elliott was the promoter in Seattle, Washington, who worked for Don Owen. He came up to me one day saying that he had a great idea, that he was going to do something good with me. He knew that I had a “friend,” so he came up with the character “Pretty Boy” Pat Patterson. I would wear lipstick, use a long cigarette holder, and wear sunglasses and a beret. Louie made me a flamboyant ring jacket and he would also play the role of my chauffeur/manager. We had that kind of stereotypical abusive wrestler–manager/valet relationship where I’d push him around when he dropped something and generally make his life miserable. It was done to make people hate me and feel sorry for him — a little bit like the Ted DiBiase and Virgil relationship years later in WWE for those of you familiar with that story.
One night I was wrestling a Japanese wrestler named Haru Sasaki, who was really popular. I sent him outside the ring and he got at Louie, chopping and kicking him. I went completely crazy, selling how mad and distressed I was that Louie was being mistreated by someone else. I then defended my poor manservant and beat the other wrestler for attacking my property. People felt even sorrier for Louie. Louie loved being a manager. I wasn’t too much into it, but it worked for a while. When I would rough him up as part of the show, I would get so much reaction from the fans.
The “Pretty Boy” gimmick was only used in Seattle at first. (The television broadcast of the show from Portland didn’t reach Seattle, and vice versa, even though it was the same territory.) Don Owen didn’t like the angle. But when he kept hearing stories about how the thing was getting over, one night he said, “Why don’t you wear the goddamn beret and the gimmick and everything?”
To be completely honest, I was embarrassed doing that at first because it’s not me in real life. But even while doing that gimmick, I never had problems with the other wrestlers. I was so good that everyone wanted to work with me, whatever their feelings might have been about my personal life. Some of the old-timers who always stayed in the same territory knew I would extend their careers. If anyone had a problem with me and who I was, it was never brought up.
Despite what I had learned in Montréal and Boston, Portland was the real start of my wrestling career. It was still the minor leagues, but because Don Owen was so good to his wrestlers, a lot of wrestlers wanted to work there. I was in Oregon for about eighteen months, wrestling in a real promotion, with television exposure and a regular circuit. And I was making a living.
Then one day in 1963 Don told me he was sending me to Texas. He explained I needed to get out so I would return fresh with new stories to tell. At that time, promoters were always trading guys, sending you somewhere else. I expected to be treated the same there as I had been in Portland, or at least like Boston. Once I got to Texas, I was starving. I was in for a rude awakening.
* * *
I bought a car for the first time to make the trip south. Louie and I left in it with everything we owned. The engine blew before my run in Texas ended. It was a real piece of crap, a big 1958 Lincoln. Years ago, cars would get very hot if you drove for long distances. And when you had to drive for miles and miles in the middle of the desert, on dirt roads since there were no highways, the car engine got very, very hot. Every 200 miles or so, you had a little place by the side of the road where you could buy food and water in a bag to keep the car cool. You would hook those to the back and front bumpers. If the car heated up in the middle of the desert, you could stop and put water in the radiator before anything bad happened. It’s only been fifty years since then, but it seems like centuries ago.
On the day Louie and I were about 100 miles from the Texan border, we stopped in a shitty little place to eat because there wasn’t anything else for miles around. We went to the bathroom and there were three little stalls. Two of them said white and one said black. It was a shock for us coming from Portland and even Boston, and yet we were still in the same country. My first night in Texas was in Beaumont. I finally found the arena and when I went to wrestle, I saw they had all the black fans in one area and all the white fans in another. It was a long time before they had a match with a white man against a black man. Eventually, promoters saw the money in that and things changed. I definitely wasn’t in Portland anymore.
We worked in Houston, Dallas, Corpus Christi, and Austin, mostly in small arenas. Louie was alone a lot in Texas. The travel was too extensive, and I was barely home. The day we rented our apartment in Houston was the day John F. Kennedy visited: November 21, 1963. Louie even went to see him in person. The next day, the President was shot in Dallas.
The “Pretty Boy” gimmick didn’t work in Texas and I pretty much dropped it after that. As far as the guys went, there was a clique in place and they wouldn’t let me be part of the team. I kept developing my craft, but it was no fun wrestling with them, not like it had been in Boston or Portland.
My car blew up just as I was giving my two weeks’ notice in Texas; I needed to get it fixed quickly if I wanted to leave. Some of the other guys from the territory told me about a mechanic who gave wrestlers a deal. A week later, my car was ready and I owed $350. I told the mechanic I would swing by later to pay him, but I never did. Back then you needed to survive — and moving on to the next territory was the only way to do that. I wasn’t proud of it, but I had been so miserable in Texas, and I needed to get out. I was not expecting to go back there anytime soon, so I took my chances and got away with it.
After Texas, I spent three months in Arizona. I had to ask for a $200 advance just to put gas in my tank. The advance was to be paid back slowly, by taking off a little money from each payment. I was already behind, and I hadn’t even competed in one match. It looked like I’d jumped from the frying pan into the fire by going to work there. And I had.
The only good thing was that I became the top guy. The first time I “main-evented Madison Square Garden” was . . . in Phoenix, Arizona. Shades of things to come, you might say. If the promoter, Ernie Mohammed, hadn’t been a no-good bastard, things could have been good. I had a little leverage as the champion and I tried to use it by cussing him and forcing him to do the right thing. However, my own money situation got so bad that I held him up for a grand before dropping his championship to “Bulldog” Don Kent and leaving the territory. Imagine that, I was the champion and I was broke. It shows you how successful that piece of shit was as a promoter.
Louie and I stayed with one of the referees during that time. His name escapes me, but he was originally from Québec and he had a big house with orange and grapefruit trees in the yard. We would open our windows in the morning and pick fruit for breakfast. It doesn’t get any fresher than that, does it? They had also had a stable and in the morning Louie and I would ride horses. We spent a lot of quality time like that over the years. Even though I wasn’t making any money, we enjoyed at least part of our stay in Arizona. I like to think that’s who I am — a person who finds some way to have fun no matter what. And, no matter what, it was an interesting life; I mean, it had to be a lot more fun than being yelled at in a factory, didn’t it?
I went to Oklahoma next. Leroy McGuirk promoted the territory. Leroy was blind, and he had a matchmaker named Leo Voss. Leo also refereed house shows and took care of t
he money and all of that stuff. He was in charge of everything, like a producer on the road today with WWE. Everyone told me I should be careful around him. He had a reputation as a snitch who’d go back to Leroy with everything he saw on the road. But we actually became good friends and never had any issues. We hit it off right away and I just loved the guy.
McGuirk, on the other hand, gave me a rough time about screwing the Arizona promoter on my way out. He explained that if I did that again, promoters all around the country might stop booking me. But ultimately I did really well for him. The territory was built around “junior heavyweights,” so at the time I was a perfect fit. Mike Clancy and Danny Hodge, the Olympic silver medalist, are two of the most well-known wrestlers from that territory that I was matched against for the next six months. I became a true star in that territory. I was the champion and I was getting real main-event money at last. It was no different then than it is today: if you’re the champion and selling tickets, you make more money than the curtain jerker. It was quite the experience for Louie and me; it seemed like everyone wore a cowboy hat and, once again, we traveled small dirt roads through miles of desert just to get anywhere. The food was different, too. Your choices always seemed to be either barbecue or Mexican; for a kid from Montréal who had always eaten the same thing, it was eye-opening.
I was discovering the world with the man I loved, but I still didn’t feel like I could bring him anywhere. Once again, Louie was stuck in our apartment, waiting for me to come home. Oklahoma was tough on him, even if it was a good place for me to work. In Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma, I don’t think anyone really knew that we were gay. Some guys might have suspected, but there were enough “smoke and mirrors” that no one was sure. When somebody asked me if I was a queer, I would always tell them to go to hell and play the tough guy.
There was a time, however, I was sure the truth would come out and I would be in trouble. Early one morning, one of the referees, an old-timer, knocked on our door. Louie opened it — in his underwear. The referee asked if I was there and he said yes. I pulled myself out of bed to speak with him. The message was simply that they needed me in the office at 2 p.m. that afternoon. No problem, I said. What I was soon to find out is that he immediately spread the rumor back at the office that my boyfriend had opened the door naked. It spread like wildfire; I found out before even going to the office that afternoon. When I got there, I was Mad Dog Vachon mad.
“Where is that goddamn asshole referee?” I yelled.
I proceeded to rant about the lie he spread about my friend Louie and me. I told everyone who’d listen that if the no-good son of a bitch showed his face, I would beat the hell out of him. I made sure Leo Voss, especially, knew I was serious.
“Please, Pat, don’t do that. I will fix this,” he said.
I yelled, still doing my best Mad Dog Vachon impression, “Why would he start shit like that? It’s not true. He opened the door in his underwear. That’s it. No story.”
I was pissed off and made quite the scene. I wanted to show I was ready to fight if they tried to intimidate me.
Afterward, I started to regret how far I’d gone with my outburst. Maybe that referee was a friend of Danny Hodge. If he was, I wouldn’t get to tour the territory competing against Hodge, who was a top guy, which meant I’d been out a lot of money that I desperately needed after Texas and Arizona. Worse, what if I did have to wrestle him? Was Hodge, who was legendarily tough, going to squeeze the living hell out of me? Remember, Louie and I were two men living together in Oklahoma in 1963. I didn’t want to get blacklisted, or worse. I was a good professional wrestler, but I wasn’t a tough guy. It turned out nothing happened, and I had a great time wrestling with Danny, who to this day is known for being able to squeeze apple juice out of an apple with his bare hands.
It was the same with Mike Clancy when he saw me compete — he wanted to work with me, too. It was beautiful wrestling with him, like fine craftsmanship. I had so much fun and learned so much; he even invited me to his house and everything. I had dinner with his family, but I could not bring Louie.
When I had had enough of the Oklahoma territory, I called Don Owen and asked if I could come back. He gave me a start date and, before I knew it, my career really took off. I was on top of the world as Pacific Northwest Champion.
* * *
I was fortunate to meet another great teacher when I returned to Portland. Maurice Vachon had moved out of the territory, and I was on my own. Pepper Martin was another Canadian, from Ontario. He later became an actor, and he’s probably best known for his role in Superman II — he was the truck driver who sucker-punched Superman when the Man of Steel lost his power. Anyway, I was just coming back into the territory and we were watching each other wrestle. As he was coming back from the ring one night, I told him I couldn’t wait to wrestle him. He said he felt the same way.
So obviously, the first match we had together we . . . completely sucked. He was trying to lead; I was trying to lead. After every move, we’d argue about what to do next. Finally, I asked him to just follow me and told him not to worry.
Whether I was the good guy or bad guy, I always worked best when I was the one leading the dance. Martin went to Don Owen and requested a series of matches with me. It was one hell of a program we worked together for the title. Yet what I remember most is something funny that occurred, and nothing to do with a championship bout.
In one particular match, I was supposed to hit Martin with some brass knuckles. I was trying to hide them from view, and the referee grabbed me so hard that they went flying into the crowd. Martin and I both dove outside the ring to get the object as though we were competing for a gold medal. We were able to get them back just in time before a fan had a good look. We were scared out of our minds. I can laugh about it now, but back then protecting the business was often the most important part of our job.
Another memorable match was one I had with an interesting stipulation: if you lost, you had to ride a donkey out of the building. It was just like the wild west, back when they would literally run people out of town. It was epic — I wonder why we’ve never done it in WWE.
There were many wannabe promoters in those days, most of them moonlighting in the role, running a small town. I’m told there are still people doing the same thing today. One of them booked me in a haircut match: I lost and had to shave my head bald. In theory, the gimmick was supposed to generate extra cash for everyone. The promoter presented it this way: “If you do it, maybe we’ll get a better house next time?” That meant a bigger cut for me. Ultimately, I think I wound up making fifty dollars a night instead of forty.
I started to wear a mask to hide my baldness from the fans. I didn’t get a bonus for it, mind you, but people went crazy whenever an opponent would try to unmask me to expose my bald head. One night in a small town just outside of Portland, we worked a mask match like this and I lost, but the people didn’t see me without the mask. No payoff kept the crowd hot. But the promoter had taken a picture of me backstage and, without my knowledge, sent the picture to the newspapers. When I found that out, I did my best Mad Dog impression again: “Why would you do that?”
“People were really mad because they didn’t get to see you bald.”
“Sure, they were mad, you dumb shit. That’s why they were going to come back next week.”
Because of him, we never had that return bout and we lost that payoff. It still pisses me off today.
One guy I learned a lot from was Nick Kozak. He was a great worker and I wrestled with him more times than I can count. He would have me put him into a hold and insist I keep him down, not let go. He wanted me to really dominate so that he could sell it and get the crowd behind him. Then he would get me to let him stand up, only to follow up by pulling his hair and putting him down again. The fans would go damn near crazy. This guy could sell like you would not believe. When he made a comeback, the crowd jumped to their feet. My God,
he was great. And this is how I really learned how this business worked. He wasn’t selfish; he knew that if he wanted his comeback to mean something, he needed to give me a lot of offense. Normally, guys don’t want to wait that long before they get their turn to shine. He was a great teacher.
Years later, when we were in Houston for Monday Night Raw just before WrestleMania X-7, I received a call. I don’t know how Nick Kozak got my number, but I’m glad he did. I got him front-row seats for Raw. I brought him backstage and introduced him to Vince. He was happy to meet Nick, because I had told him many times how the guy had really helped me learn the business when I was a kid. Vince told him, “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for what you did for the business. If you want to come back for WrestleMania X-7 bring anyone you want; you’ll be my guest.” It made me feel real good to give a little something back to Nick Kozak all those years later. He’s in his eighties now and he still looks great.
Being back in Portland was also good for Louie. He was accepted there, a part of everything because of the time we’d spend hanging out with Mad Dog. There was one gay bar where we could be together without hiding. It was great to enjoy ourselves outside of the business and we even made some gay friends. It was the polar opposite of the previous year when I was on the road working Southern territories. In Oregon, Louie had friends and he could go to the bar with them when I was on the road for a long time. He was also working and meeting new people on his own. Louie was one hell of a dancer. He knew all the ballroom dances, waltzes and that sort of thing. Louie found a job teaching dance to women and he loved that job like crazy. He was making extra money and that made him happy, too.
When he got tired of teaching, he got a job as a busboy at a very nice downtown hotel. Well, tabarnak, after a week there they made him a waiter because he was great with all the upscale parties. I was wrestling for thirty-five dollars a night at the time and as it turned out he was making fifty a night on tips alone. He was making more money than I was. He did that for a long time.
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