I really enjoyed Frank's story (WHT Special Edition #1: Frankie Cain), especially the early years. He had a gift. I was raised in a wrestling family with a silver spoon in my mouth. All I had to do was wrestle. I didn't mind if someone wanted to shoot, but I wanted to work. My dad used to have a saying, "Work a shoot." It was like you were shooting, but working. So I would struggle, and I would fight ... but it was a work. My dad once asked me, "Look, do you like wrestling?" I said, "Yes." He said, "Then whatever they (promoters) pay you is a gift. You'd wrestle for nothing, wouldn't you?" I said, "Yes."
Frank's situation was different. He was a struggler, so when he started to call the shots, he knew how to draw money. I didn't. Later on I did, but not at the time. I was surprised when I first met Frank. It really floored me. I thought, "Who is this guy telling me what to do to draw money." To me, he was just one of the guys ... yet I found out that he did know how to draw money. Then you had Fred Ward and his son-in-law, who was the booker, who didn't know a damn thing. I used to take the finishes over. If I tried to send a finish that was a little complicated, the son-in-law would say, "Why don't you just small package him?" That's all he could remember to do. I remember thinking, "Geez, you can't get anything done with these son-in-laws. They think they're bookers, yet they can't comprehend the finishes." It's because they never were wrestlers in the first place.
Frankie was always a mild mannered person. When my father was promoting in Orlando, he asked me to put a wrestling program out. I called it "Milo's Mat." I'd print two or three hundred a week, then it grew to five hundred a week. We sold them for 25-cents apiece, then 35-cents, and eventually 50-cents. Business was going real good and I was selling like six or seven hundred programs per week. The wrestling office sent me some pictures of Mephisto and Dante, which was Bobby Hart and Frankie Cain, and I put their picture on the cover. They had a manager, (Sir Roger) Mitchell. Just before I left the printer, I asked, "Can you do me a favor? Print me up about some strips that read, 'Frankie Cain and Bobby Hart.'" He printed about twenty, and I glued them on the programs.
At seven-thirty, the box office opened and the guy starts selling the programs. The guys didn't usually get there until a quarter until eight, so I dropped about ten in one dressing room, and ten in another. I walked out and stood where I could watch the boys walk into the dressing room. They always used to go in there and grab a copy, because they loved to read that program ... what I said about 'em, who was doing what. I always made sure I said something about everybody, and had pictures of everybody.
A little while after Frank goes into the dressing room, I walk in. He walks up to me with the most mournful look on his face you've ever seen in your life. He quietly says, "Dick, what the hell's going on?" I said, "What?" He said, "Look at this program. Look at this." I said, "So what. That's you and Bobby." He says, "Yeah, but the names ...!" I said, "Well, that's Bobby Hart and ...", then trailed off. I smacked myself in the forehead and said, "Oh, geez! We've had eight hundred of these sold already." As serious as he could possibly be, Frank says, "Dick, what are we gonna do?" I started to peel the label off as I looked up and said, "You mark!" I wrote him a letter last week and said, "Had I known how tough you were all those years, I'd have never pulled that rib on you."
It was also interesting to read about Frank doing jobs as a boxer. I remember Muhammad Ali getting on the Donahue show and talking about having to go out of the country to make big money, because of the taxes, the commission, and everything else. We were watching a TV in the Evansville, Indiana dressing room one night. I think Norvel Austin brought the TV in. Ali is fighting Leon Spinks. Muhammad Ali got on his bicycle, and he backpedaled and backpedaled. Norvel said, "Man, he's not fighting ... he's working." I say, "What do you mean working?" He said, "Man, he's not fighting. Look at him." Sure enough, if you look at the record, Leon Spinks won by a one-point margin. That's how close it was. Muhammad Ali got on his bicycle, and didn't want to mix it up with Spinks. Later on, we found out that he had a contract with Leon Spinks. If Spinks should, for whatever reason, defeat Muhammad Ali, then Ali got a return match. Sure enough, Ali won a return match and got thirteen million dollars. He knocked Spinks out in the sixth or seventh round, and that was the end of that. Frank was right. The boxers would do a job.
One time, Paul Anderson was in Atlanta and wanted to be a boxer. He was wrestling, but decided he wanted to box.
Vince McMahon, (Jim) Crockett, and (Cowboy) Luttrall had Paul under contract. He didn't like to fly, so he'd drive from New York, down to Charlotte, and to Florida. This boxer got ahold of Paul and starts training him. Ray Gunkel called me and said, "Man, he's losing so damn much money, it isn't funny." Sometime later, he goes into Charlotte and has his first boxing match.
Now, Gorgeous George told me this story. Crockett called New York and asked for the names of ten stumblebums. He sent down the worst. Crockett told the guys, "Look, there's five hundred extra dollars in it for you if you catch the right punch." Paul Anderson didn't know a thing about it. Gorgeous George told me that before Anderson went into the ring, one of the boys went up to him and says, "Listen, Paul. If you can't make it ..." They knew he couldn't make it, because he was too heavy. He was about 320 pounds, after losing thirty or forty pounds. Anyway, he tells Paul, "If you get into a little trouble, pick him up and slam him." That's what they told him to do. Paul went out there and his tongue was hanging out in the first round. He went back over to the corner during the rest period, but he was so exhausted that he couldn't sit down. Meanwhile, the poor guy he's fighting is out there looking for Anderson to throw the big punch ... like Frank was. Anderson can't even muster enough strength to throw the damn punch right. It was too telegraphed. In the third round, he came out, took a last-minute, desperate swing. The stumblebum moved to the left, and Paul fell on his face. He got to his knees and said, "Stop the match." Two weeks later, Paul runs a little wrestling show down in Greenville, South Carolina. What do you think he did in the first round ...? Picked the guy up and slammed him. That's the God's honest truth.
