On the wrestling front, I embarked on a two-year run for Don Owen. In the process, I started to carve out a name for myself that really meant something in the business. Owen would bring in Lou Thesz, the World Champion, once a year. When I got to work with him, I was in heaven. He’s one of the greatest of all time, and I learned a lot from those experiences as well.
It was never quite like in Boston, but I always enjoyed Portland and the wrestlers would inevitably have a good laugh. I remember the guy who would bring our jackets back to the dressing room. Every time he did, someone would yell “Kayfabe.” It was common practice each time an outsider entered the sanctuary that was our dressing room to yell that code word. It simply meant we should not be talking about business. That went on a few times each night for several weeks. Then one night, the guy decided to stand up for himself and told the whole dressing room: “I don’t mind the yelling, but I want to let you know that my name is not Kayfabe. It’s Mark.”
We all burst out laughing and told him we’d call him Mark from then on with tears in our eyes. What he didn’t know is that wrestlers called people outside of the business “marks” — that’s why we were yelling kayfabe in the first place.
Another interesting person I met during that time was a Japanese wrestler called Kazimoto. It was my job to take care of him while he was in town, so he traveled with me everywhere. I knew of a Japanese restaurant in Portland — now they’re everywhere, but back then they were hard to find. I took him there so he could feel a bit more at home and he went on to eat at the place every goddamn day, every meal. He was with us for about six months. I took good care of him and said a pleasant goodbye to him when he left. I had no idea I was going to work in Japan someday; I just wanted to be nice and help him. Many years later, I ended up wrestling in Japan. While I was waiting for the train with some other wrestlers, bad guys on one side and all the good guys on the other side, I spotted this tall man with the group on the other side. I asked the other wrestlers the big guy’s name.
“It’s Inoki,” someone said. “He’s the big star here. Don’t mess with him.”
I knew better: that’s not Inoki. I wrestled that guy in Portland: his name is Kazimoto.
That night I sneaked into the babyfaces’ dressing room. We really were not allowed to do that in Japan; they insisted on separate dressing rooms. I snatched him aside and asked, “You remember me?”
“It’s you, Patterson, with blond hair,” he said.
From that point on, I was taken care of like you would not believe. I never had a problem in the ring or out while working in Japan. We respected each other as human beings and as wrestlers, despite our cultural differences. While working for Vince Sr. later on, I flew to Tokyo from New York to wrestle Inoki in a sixty-minute television match, then flew right back to New York the same night. No hotel, no restaurant, just airports and the arena. Coincidently, Inoki was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame at the same time as Mad Dog.
In Oregon, it may rain every two days, but they also have mountains nearby. Louie and I went skiing a few times and loved it. We made a lot of friends and our life was good. But after a long run, it was time for me to move on. Portland was a small territory and I had done everything that could be done. Roy Shire promoted in San Francisco, California, and Pepper Martin kept telling me I should go there — that I was a perfect fit. Louie and I felt that the more clement weather was worth risking our cozy life in Oregon. Pepper told me, “You have the style that Roy Shire likes.” And that helped convince me. I had heard a lot about his star, Ray Stevens, and a few of the guys actually said that if we tagged, we would be the greatest team of all time. Talk about putting on the pressure, but Shire had a good reputation and it was a big territory.
I finally called him.
“Hello, it’s Pat Patterson.”
“Yeah, what can I do for you?” he said in his best grumpy old man voice.
“I would love to come to work for you. I have been in Oregon for two years now, and I am on top and doing good business. Some of the guys told me I would be a great partner for Ray Stevens.”
He shouted, “The wrestlers don’t decide what I do. I decide.”
Right away I backtracked, saying I was not telling him what to do, just offering my services. He used to team with Ray Stevens himself, when Ray played his “brother” Ray Shire. He might have been sensitive about anyone else being partnered with Ray. He snapped that I should send pictures and hung up.
It was not what I expected at all. Still I knew if I wanted to make it, I needed to go to a bigger territory. If I made it there, I would be a real top guy. So I took the chance, just like I had when I moved to Boston. I knew things were about to get interesting, I just had no idea how interesting.
READY FOR MY CLOSE-UP
“Regrets, I’ve had a few, but then again, too few to mention”
Want to know something funny? When I decided we were going to move to San Francisco and Big Time Wrestling in 1965, I had no idea the city had a large and vibrant gay community. Louie and I were quick learners, however, and we enjoyed life in California for a long time. San Francisco is a fantastic city, one of my favorites in the whole world, and being gay was never an issue there . . . Now if I could just change the promoter’s mind . . .
My first match in the new territory was for a television taping in Fresno. Roy Shire, the promoter, was a former wrestler and he told me he’d pick me up and take me there himself. The very first thing he said to me was “I heard you’re different.”
“How so, Mr. Shire?”
“I heard you’re a queer.”
That’s it for me, I thought, I’m not going to be here long. “I will be honest with you, sir, I will work hard and I will never embarrass you. As for the rest, I prefer gay.”
“OK. But you look like shit. You should start working out.”
When I got home, I told Louie that Shire didn’t like gay people and that I wasn’t sure what the future held for us in the Bay area. And then I decided to start going to the gym — because I was definitely not going to embarrass him.
It’s funny how things work out. Louie and I ended up getting our first home in San Francisco. And I wound up making truly good money for the first time. We stayed there on and off for almost fourteen years. And I helped a homophobic promoter turn a healthy profit.
Despite his early prejudice, I learned the business side of wrestling from Roy Shire. He was one of the few true geniuses of the sport. Even if we had our differences at the end, I appreciated the opportunity to learn the psychology of wrestling from him.
My first match at the Cow Palace, the biggest arena in the territory, was against Red Bastien. He was a fantastic performer, who wrestled elsewhere full-time but lived in San Francisco. Every once in a while, he would come in to be with his family. We tore the house down; people were going banana when I won the match. When we got back to the dressing room, Bastien looked at Shire and said, “Holy shit, where the hell did you get this guy?”
That he said it in front of everybody in the dressing room was important. You can’t overestimate what it meant to have a respected veteran like Bastien say something like that. It wasn’t long before I was tag-teaming with Ray Stevens as part of the Blond Bombers. I got my hair dyed blond for the first time in San Francisco to fit better with Ray. We had an almost instant chemistry and we were recognized as one of the best tag teams in the business for a long time. Backstage the other wrestlers also loved us, because we were there to have fun. There was no politics and no bullshit with us. Ultimately, Ray was just like me, except he was crazy about women.
(I have a full chapter of Ray Stevens stories in Chapter Eight. Skip ahead if you wish. I will still be here when you return.)
(Hope you enjoyed my Ray Stevens stories; I just loved the man.)
Many Quebecers have had good wrestling careers in America, but most were also limited because of
their inability to do a good interview in English. One Friday night when I first arrived in Portland, Don Owen told me to go to the balcony: I had five minutes to talk.
I think I said, “Me don’t speak English?”
He told me it didn’t matter, that I should just say whatever I could. I was terrible. I would say I was the best and I would fake jumping over the balcony. I would do anything to try to get a reaction. I would yell, half in French and half in English, until I finally got it. I hated cutting promos at first, because I sounded like an idiot most of the time. Each time I got a little better and by the time I made it to San Francisco, I’d started to get it. But I needed to be thrown out there to learn. Not a lot of what I did in San Francisco survives on video, but a fan used to record the audio from television, so I have a few of those recordings to help me remember the good old days.
The first time I ever watched wrestling on television in Montréal, the voice of the show was Michel Normandin. The program was promoted by Eddie Quinn. I saw a retiring Yvon Robert teach his heir apparent Johnny Rougeau the Japanese hammerlock. It’s funny which memories stick with you. There were a few more Quebecers on the tube: Ovila Asselin, Larry Moquin, Bob Langevin, and Omer Marchessault. Never in a million years did I imagine being on TV like them. It was always fun to have people from Québec come into the territory. I guess Maurice Vachon rubbed off on me the right way.
One of my favorite visitors from la belle province was midget star Sky Low Low. Crazy things happened when he was drunk, and we’d often play pranks on him when he went to the restroom. Stupid shit mostly: I would sit on his hat “by mistake” and then he would make a big scene. As always, it was all about having a big laugh. One time on the road, I went to his room late at night. When he opened the door, I pulled him out into the hall and locked him out of his room, buck-naked. As I fled the scene of the crime, I had to stop in the stairs because I was laughing so hard. When I got to the lobby, the clerk wanted to know what was going on. I told him to just wait — while I hid in the corner. Who exited the elevator? A naked Sky Low Low, acting like nothing was out of the ordinary.
Another time, Sky was drinking in the bar across the street and had passed out. Two cops came in who knew all the wrestlers. I asked them to play a prank on him. “Just tell him you are sending him to jail as you wake him up. Don’t worry, he will get angry, but that will be it, and it will be funny.” The joke turned bad, however, and Sky went berserk. I found it funnier that way, but the cops didn’t feel the same way.
Another time we were playing pool when I took some water from a fountain in the room. The next time I passed by Sky I faked a sneeze and threw that water on him. He chased me all around the bar with his pool cue.
This was our everyday life on the road: playing jokes and having fun. When I would ride in the car with Sky, I would always get him mad. He would yell and scream all the time. Man, what I put that poor guy through. There were no limits to what we would do to each other for a laugh on the road. I used to buy small padlocks and hook them behind a new guy’s license plate, so they would hear them clicking for hours before figuring out what was going on. It would drive them nut. I never pulled a joke to be mean, or to get someone in trouble. It was always done for everyone to have a good laugh.
When you drive all the time like that, or fly from city to city, you don’t really think about it. You just want to get to the next town. When you start looking back, all that travel doesn’t make much sense. I think that’s why I loved California, we were home almost every night. We could have a life and enjoy it. Some of the wrestlers liked getting booked in places like Hawaii for two or three months to get a vacation from the road. They didn’t make a lot of money but they were on the beach every day with their wives. That wasn’t for me. I did go there with Ray Stevens as part of the Blond Bombers, but we never stayed for more than two weeks at a time. Ray always made those trips memorable, one way or another.
* * *
The Cow Palace was a dangerous arena, and it was a long walk to the damn ring. The aisles were very narrow, with fans always almost touching us. Security guards wore riot gear and often swatted at fans with billy clubs. Back in the day, there were no barricades, and when you came down the aisle, people — even the women — would kick at you and spit on you. One night in San Francisco, a lady took her hatpin and stabbed me with it. It stayed stuck in my shoulder until I reached the dressing room. I was in pain and I was mad. It wasn’t a big injury, but I was so pissed. We had little patience with fans who would do something like that. We were always in danger; fans scratched my car on a regular basis and I had to get good at finding hidden or secret parking spots. Sometimes, driving on the highway, they would even throw beer bottles. They were trying to kill me.
In San Francisco, some fans discovered where I lived and threw rocks at my windows. It was serious in my day: bad guys today don’t know what real heat is. Heat is a business term, and it means how much people hate you. In my day, there was actually such a thing as too much heat.
In San Jose one night, I wasn’t taking any chances and I got to the show real early and parked my car three blocks away from the arena. No one saw me come in. But after the show, I still needed help to get out. I had heat like you would not believe — it was actually dangerous. People were waiting for us villains, and to get at me in particular.
That night I strategized my escape with one of the referees: “Here is my key; go out the front door and walk three blocks west and you will see my car. Then come by the building and pick me up. I will be in the lobby and I will look for you and jump in as soon as you are there. Then get us out fast.”
As soon as he showed up, I ran for the car like I was at the Olympics. But when I got there, the door was locked. I was pleading for him to open the damn door, but he couldn’t find the button. By the time he did, it was too late. I was already running down the street and the fans were already throwing rocks at me. I took refuge in a nearby hotel lobby of the Sainte Claire. They literally were throwing shit at me that day. Someone from the hotel had to call the police so I could leave. When WrestleMania 31 was on the West Coast in 2015, I went back to visit the same hotel, now the Westin San Jose, because it was near where we were staying and such an architectural treasure for the city.
Another time I was driving to a show in Eureka, California, in my brand-new Cadillac. I employed the same strategy and parked three blocks away. Only this time, I gave the ref the night off and had the police escort me back to my car after the show. When I got there, I had two flat tires and my Cadillac was all scratched up. I got pissed when things like that happened. The promoter would get us security sometimes, but would never pay the bill.
I would tell Roy that some of the stuff we did was creating too much heat for me. He would say, “Patterson, if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen.” That was a big help. Thanks, Roy.
It’s unbelievable the lengths people would go to back in the late sixties. And when you think about it, everything we used to do for wrestling was stupid. We would defend the business to the point of getting in trouble with the law or, worse, putting our lives at risk. We’re lucky there was never a real tragedy — even though some wrestlers were stabbed with knives instead of hatpins. Actually, I was lucky it never escalated. We all had short tempers, though I kept mine in check most of the time.
One night in Sacramento, however, it wasn’t a fan I had trouble with. We were working with an athletic commission referee. Those guys never liked it when we tried to create heat with them. On this occasion, I was using the official, a former wrestler and boxer, to make the match more intense. It got out of hand. When the match was over, he was really furious. I was more than a little worried: he could be a tough son of a bitch and I was definitely not. I decided to stand my ground against him in the dressing room and prepared to fight. Because the truth was if he hit me first, I was done. Just as I thought, he came at me. I welcomed him with a chair shot
to the head and split him wide open. At that point, the other wrestlers came in to pull us apart. When we cooled down, we both apologized. That’s the kind of stuff that sometimes happened. It was my only dressing room fight, and I’m glad it was. I’m not a fighter, but we all had to be able to defend ourselves in certain situations.
I was lucky and I was careful; I didn’t do stupid things like that too often. Still, San Francisco was the one place where I became so hated that it became dangerous for me outside of wrestling. When I finally became a good guy — a babyface — it all went away. (I will get to that later; don’t worry.)
In 1969, while I was still working in San Francisco, I was sent to Amarillo for a few months. I had a good time there, too. Roy was good friends with the Funk family, who owned the territory. He wanted me to go there for four months to learn something new. I had a blast in Texas: the Funk brothers, Terry and Dory, are great guys. (The whole family is crazy, just like me.)
Though I was in Texas again, it definitely was not the same territory I’d worked during my first visit. This Texas experience felt more like a vacation. The drawback was still the long ride between towns, almost 300 miles between each venue. Louie traveled with me on these road trips, but it wasn’t much better for him than during our first stay in Texas. Still, while we were in Amarillo, Louie went to barber school. Later on, when we were back in San Francisco, Louie had no problem taking the course to get his California barber’s license.
It was also in Amarillo where, one night, I was the last one out of the building and I found a dog. It was a dark and cold evening, as a night in Texas can be at the wrong time of year. So there I was face-to-face with this nice little puppy, and it was shaking, and there was nobody for miles around. I felt bad for the poor thing and I put it in my car to bring it home. Right away, Louie said, “You’re not keeping the dog.”
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