After that, Louie always set up a makeshift barbershop backstage at every taping, so the wrestlers could look their best.
We became a trustworthy part of the team, and we did it without kissing anyone’s ass.
As Vince Jr. began taking over for his dad, I was already an established presence backstage, in the role of what we called an agent back then and a producer today.
A few weeks before Vince Sr. passed away, we were working like crazy getting the national expansion under way with big television tapings all over the country. The old man called me from his deathbed. He wanted to make sure I would do something for him.
“Pat, make sure they take good care of André. André is our man, you know. I know Junior wants to do too much sometimes, so please keep an eye on my son, too.”
“Don’t worry, sir, I will always be there for them.”
I get all choked up when I think about this, and it shows you how deep my relationship runs with that family. Until the day I die, I have that promise to live up to. On May 4, 2015, on Pat Patterson Appreciation Night, Vince Jr. said I was a member of his family. I feel exactly the same way, but it was very special for me to have him express it like that, in front of fans in my hometown of Montréal. He also mentioned Louie on that night and that touched me deeply. I can finally be proud of who Louie and I were.
When Vince Sr. first put me on commentary with Jr., I didn’t know him very well. He can seem kind of distant when you don’t know him, and I didn’t know how we would click. Apparently we did.
At first, when he took over, some of the talent was going nuts. The kid is going to kill the business . . . The kid doesn’t know what he’s doing . . . I heard it more than a few times.
Everyone was knocking him, but he did it his way, and he was right in the end. When we started taping television in St. Louis, many of the other promoters in the different territories across the country got nervous. They were very unhappy, but he stuck to his vision. The idea that he was making the old guard unhappy never undermined his determination. All of those guys would have done the same if they had had his vision and his dedication.
I made my home in Florida at the time, and on the road I worked as an agent with Jay Strongbow, Rene Goulet, and Jack Lanza. In 1985, George Scott was Vince’s first right-hand man in the office, but that didn’t last. The first time I went north to help Vince after Scott left, Vince was far behind, trying to do everything by himself. I had ten days off from the road and I told him that if he wanted, I would use that time off to help him in the office in Stamford. I explained that I thought I could help him with production, in the hope that he could take a breather and catch up on the rest of his workload. No one else ever offered to work on their days off and, let me tell you, I didn’t have to offer twice.
I went to work in the basement because I could smoke there. (Vince hates smoking. I always find a place to hide to get a quick smoke, even today. When we are in his limo, Vince complains about my breath, even when I chew gum trying to hide it. He must have a bionic nose or something. “I still smell the cigarette, damn it.”) I did my thing: I started to map out the next two months of shows. Vince would come down and sit with me while I worked. He never once complained about my smoking, and he watched and he learned. He was impressed by my vision. Some have said that if someone has a single idea, I might turn it into a story that will go on for the next six months. Now I don’t know about that, and I sure don’t agree with everything that was ever said about me, but in this case I will agree and say that I am a very creative person.
After those ten days in the basement, Vince told me I was not going back out on the road.
“What do you mean?”
“You’re working in the office now.”
My heart almost fell out of my chest. All my life, I tried to escape white-collar jobs, and I still end up in an office? Isn’t life something? I am a team player and this was where I was needed the most, so I agreed to the change.
I moved into a Connecticut apartment with Louie. We didn’t sell our home in Florida right away; I didn’t know if an office job was going to work out for me. But it did and we sold the house and bought a condominium close to the WWE office we used to call Titan Tower. I hated living in Stamford — I’m just a regular guy, and everyone has big money there. I never quite felt comfortable in that kind of crowd.
After three weeks working in the office, Vince and his wife, Linda, took me out for dinner. She was the one who told me.
“Pat, we have something important to tell you. As of now, you are a senior vice president for the company.”
“Vince . . . Linda . . . I have no idea what this means.”
“Linda, didn’t I tell you it wouldn’t mean anything to him?” Vince said. We all had a good laugh. And then he started to explain to me what a vice president was. “It’s a great title. It means we have confidence in you and that you are an important part of the company.”
“Vince, I just know wrestling . . . I’m not sure I can be a good senior vice president.”
Apparently, I was wrong.
In the office, I took care of everything regarding the talent side of the business since I knew what it was like for the boys out on the road. I knew a few ways we could immediately make things better and get them to the next city on the schedule more efficiently. The timing was great: my body could not keep on wrestling forever, but my mind was still as sharp as ever. As Mad Dog Vachon used to say, “Getting old is not for sissies.” I’m allowed to say that, right?
I was very fortunate to get this opportunity, and the reality is not all former wrestlers are qualified for an office job. The transition meant I could stay at the top level in a business that I love. At age fifty, there are no main-event matches anymore . . . at least not for 99.9% of us.
Working in the office was something new and interesting for me. I did a lot of my work with Vince at his house, which made it a lot more fun. There were so many meetings when we were at the office, and that got old very quickly. At least for me it did. Still, I had to meet and work with a lot of new people with many different skills, all of whom were important in the company’s growth. During that time, I really had no idea how a senior vice president was supposed to act . . .
Just to show you how clueless I was, I would often have so much clerical stuff to do that I could barely keep up. Then one day Vince checked in on me and found me filing. He said, “Why are you doing all of that? That’s why you have a secretary working for you.” I didn’t even know what I should or should not ask the secretary to do. Don’t laugh, it’s true — but at least I knew the important stuff about the show.
In those early days, I did everything in the office at one point or another, including the payroll. And essentially I was working on talent relations before there even was such a department. At that time, talent relations was me telling guys to do their job on the road, in every sense of the word, while attempting to get them to call me at home as little as possible. I was the point person for the producers who were on the road. Talent would call me for all sorts of nonsense, like helping them find the closest gym, even after I had clearly let them know that wasn’t my responsibility. Not so glamorous, is it?
I was also the de facto company travel agent. When someone missed a plane or if the plane was delayed, I was the man. The producers would call me looking for a missing talent, and the talent would call to tell me what was going on and why they were late. I had to find solutions for everyone and get them in communication with each other. Before cell phones, communication on the road was no fun at all — especially when you were everybody’s contact person. Even I have an iPhone today, and let me tell you, the kids have it easy . . .
In 1989, we were running four shows in the Northeast on New Year’s Eve. To make it even more fun for me, we also had the biggest snowstorm in years. No one could get anywhere. That’s also the year I had the brilliant idea to
invite all of my brothers and sisters to Connecticut for the first time to celebrate the new year. I ended up spending my evening on the phone speaking with talent and coordinating with the office. Again and again, time after time, I said the words “There’s nothing they can do” and “We’re all stuck” and “I’ll keep you posted.” On another line, I kept telling Vince that we needed to cancel everything, but he wanted to wait a little longer.
After three hours with no improvement, we finally canceled three of the four shows because not enough talent could get to those venues. Vince’s patience saved one show. It was a goddamn nightmare. The following day, we were able to get people going again, so they could get to the next town.
Even without a snowstorm, there were road issues to deal with on a regular basis. One time, the British Bulldogs called to say they’d lost Matilda, the pet bulldog that was their mascot.
“What the fuck? How do you lose a dog on a plane?” I asked.
“We don’t know what’s going on, Pat; she didn’t come with the luggage. We have to wait until we hear back from the people at the airport. At best we’re going to be late for the show,” they said.
The airport staff eventually found the dog safe and sound, but not before my life was made miserable for a few hours. On one of the worst of these kinds of occasions — because Matilda was lost more than once — airport personnel ended up delivering the dog to the arena a few minutes before Davey Boy and Dynamite were to make their entrance for the main event. The dog almost didn’t make its booking . . . And I thought I had seen everything by then.
Almost all of the talent would call me, asking about the direction of their career or what Vince had planned and more often than not, I didn’t have an answer or wasn’t allowed to answer. I always told the guys to ask Vince the next time they saw him. And that’s part of the reason why I never wanted to have the “boss” title. At the end of the day, Vince always had the final word. When taping television, I was also dealing with all the local talent brought in as enhancement for our Superstars. They were all hoping to be discovered and that took a lot of time to manage as well.
When that wasn’t enough, I would even get jokes played on me.
One time, Vince was having a meeting with the Moondogs, Rex and Spot. They started to run tons of crazy ideas past him. Vince didn’t have the time to listen to everything they were saying and cut them off. “It’s good stuff, please run it by Pat.” After I got through with them, I tried to figure out what Vince liked about their suggestions. When I spoke to Vince later, I said, “You mean to tell me you liked their ideas?”
“Well . . . I just wanted you to listen to them.”
He had thrown me to the Moondogs . . . It was a harmless prank, and we laughed about it. At the end of the day, that’s all that mattered.
I remember another time when, thirty minutes before the show was to begin, there was no ring at the arena. The truck had gotten lost. And who do they call? Me. The show was in North Dakota, and Stu Hart was the one bringing the ring. At the office, I got word he was going to be late, but he never actually made the show. We had to put mats down on the floor. We had our Superstars do matches like it was Olympic wrestling. The fans were actually happy to see such a unique display — and that’s what’s important when the show is over. That kind of thing happened to me too when I was a wrestler — you might not have the type of match you’d planned, but you can do something to send the customer home happy. That kind of stuff happened more often than you’d think, but most of the time it wound up being nothing more than a close call.
One time, a number of Superstars were late for a show in Dayton, Ohio. We were actually missing half the crew. After two matches, we had an intermission, then there were two more matches. So then I had the ring crew “work” to “repair” the ring. But they were actually stalling to buy us time. It wasn’t broken and nothing needed to be fixed.
There was one show in Toronto when, by the opening bell, the only Superstar in the building was The Honky Tonk Man. Everyone else had been held up at the border. I finally got the call that they were on their way, but I again had to buy some time. So I sent Honky out there and he must have stalled, and sung, and sung again, for close to thirty minutes. Every time it looked like he was done, he would come back to the ring and tell the crowd they were such a beautiful audience that they deserved an encore — and then he would sing again, one “last” time. People wanted to kill him.
When Vince Jr. campaigned to end regulation, I was cool with the decision. I knew firsthand how most of the “athletic commissions” were trying to take advantage of us and our success. But I still really don’t like to publicly discuss the inner workings of our business. When I see a good magician, I don’t want him to explain everything to me; it takes away from the beauty of his performance.
Enjoying a drink after work with my friend Kevin Dunn on the company private plane.
When we first started running nationwide, it was the local promoters who controlled those athletic commissions. The commissioners would make it extra hard for us to run their friends’ territory. One time in Louisville, I was told that if the doctor wasn’t showing up, they were going to pull the plug on the show.
“That’s not my problem,” I told him. “You hired the doctor, right? You make sure he shows up. If you want to cancel the show, you asshole, you’ll be the one getting into the middle of the ring to announce it. Fans are going to jump on you, not on me.”
He became defiant. “Don’t try to be smart with me.”
“I’m not trying to be smart; I’m just running a business.”
They gave us a hard time every time we came to their city. I hated all of them because they were acting dishonestly, trying to prevent our business from growing, even when we made them money. Some of the commissioners would take advantage of their position by bringing kids and family members backstage, and I would make sure they were kicked out. That was bullshit — they didn’t belong in the dressing room. All they were supposed to do was license the wrestlers and then their job was done. They would threaten me with suspension and I would tell them to try; I wasn’t the one in the wrong. Anyway, when the office spoke out about the entertainment part of what we do and got rid of most of the commissions, I was all for it because it made my job a lot easier not having to deal with all that pain-in-the-ass bullshit.
When Vince Jr. took over, we were taping television in small buildings. We had a few cameramen, and Kevin Dunn’s father, Dennis, was in charge. That’s how Kevin got into the business. He started at the bottom and worked his way up from there. Today, Kevin is executive vice president of television production. Vince started to change the camera angles and added more cameras. The intention was to change the way the product looked on TV — make it look better than ever. Everyone thought Vince was out of his mind, but he knew exactly what he was doing. All other wrestling programs had the same look from one territory to the next, with interviews always taking place near the ring in front of the people. We would record hours of interviews backstage, with all the guys tying what they said to their upcoming appearances in the different markets and then we aired each in the appropriate city. It was an unbelievable time for the company, and I believe we achieved so much with so little. It got to where we were running four towns a night almost seven days a week. We run two shows a day today — and the company has more resources than it had back then.
My duties also included putting the matches together for each show, specifically ordering each card in just the right way. And I had to communicate how the office wanted the matches to take place to the producers on the road. By that point, producers no longer had to carry the gate receipts with them; they were transferred to the company’s bank account directly. When I was first running small towns for Vince Jr., the box office would give you the money in cash, $5,000 or $6,000 each time, and you would carry it with you on the road until you returned to Connecticut.
That’s when I realized that — yes, you’ve probably figured it out — I had left the briefcase at the restaurant. I jumped right out of bed and drove all the way there. The place was closed, but luckily there was still a cleaning crew working. I banged on the windows to get their attention but they just made signs for me to go away. I started screaming for them to come to the goddamn door. I was finally able to explain that I’d forgotten my briefcase earlier in the evening. They let me in and it was right there under the chair where I’d left it. I was so relieved.
Even though I was primarily working from the office, I was traveling so much that people always wanted me to bring them back something. There was this one guy working in the office who loved to smoke pot and play golf. Louie and this guy were friends and would play golf on a regular basis. He said to me, “You’re going to a show in New Orleans, and I’ve got a friend who lives there. He’s going to give you a couple joints for me.”
“I don’t smoke it, sell it, or carry it — so forget about it.”
“Please, Pat, it’s only a few joints.”
When I go to the show in New Orleans, his friend came to see me and he handed me the biggest bag of pot I have ever seen in my life. Just a few joints, my ass.
I was pissed about being put in that situation, and then the guy just disappeared. After the event, the wrestlers went out to party on Bourbon Street. I was the last one to leave the building before joining the crew for a few drinks. I’ve never done drugs, but I’ve also never said no to a good drink after a hard day of work. Before I went out, I hid the pot under the spare tire in the trunk of the rental car. I was scared about getting pulled over, so I wanted to be able to say that it had been left in the rental by someone else if something happened. Brilliant? You have no idea . . .
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