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BOOK DETAILS Paperback: 384 pages Dimensions: 6x9 Publisher: Crowbar Press Photos: 130 b&w ISBN: 0-9745545-0-2 Item #: cbp01-oa Price: $19.95
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Ole shares his insight, views, and opinions on just about every subject imaginable. Here are a few of the subjects he covers.
As instructed, I showed up at WTCN-TV Channel 11 dressed in a sweatshirt, sweat pants, sweat socks and tennis shoes. Channel 11 was in the old Calhoun Beach Hotel in Minneapolis, right off Lake Calhoun, which is where they taped the wrestling matches on Saturdays. There were several wrestlers there when I walked in the door, but Verne was the one who started the tryout. Verne had me do all sorts of things. He started by having me run back and forth in the ring, rebounding off of the ropes. Of course, I had never done that before. When you do it the first time, it's really difficult. It's tough enough to just run in the ring, but hitting the ropes is really a trick. It looks easy, but it isn't. I did everything Verne asked. He finally asked, "Can you do pushups?" "Sure." I did pushups. I did squats. He worked my butt off — and I was sweating like a pig. Then Verne asked me, "Are you tired yet?" I didn't hesitate. "Hell, no!" I was smart enough to know that you never admit that there's anything wrong. Even if there was, you don't admit it. I learned that lesson as an amateur wrestler. You never let anybody know that you were tired. You just keep on going until you drop.
When we went out to the ring to work that night, Jose was fighting for his life, hoping he wouldn't get killed. I was the drizzling sh—s, but I remember Harley Race telling me, "As soon as I met you, when you first started your training, I knew you were gonna make money in this business." Whether he was just trying to blow smoke up my ass, I have no idea. From that day on, though, Jose Quintero was scared to death of me.
Back to my call from Lars. He told me, "I'm in the Carolinas wrestling with Gene Anderson. We're wrestling as the Anderson brothers, the Minnesota Wrecking Crew. Why don't you come down and join us as the third Anderson brother." In mid-June 1968, I drove down and we started wrestling as the three Anderson brothers. I liked the idea of wrestling as an Anderson, but when I asked, "What's my first name?", Lars suggested Ole. I thought it was a rib, so I just laughed it off. I didn't know they really meant it until I got into the ring and the ring announcer introduced me. "In this corner ... from Minnesota ... at 270 pounds — Ole Anderson!" I realized then that it wasn't a rib, but I thought, What's the difference? From that day on, I've been known as Ole Anderson.
That's pretty much the way we operated. That was the way all the old promoters operated — Verne Gagne, Eddie Graham, Bill Watts, Roy Shire. They knew they had to have some wrestling. They knew they had to have some bullsh–. Even the Sheik, Ed Farhat. Talk about bullsh–. Farhat ran his whole business on bullsh–. But. The one ingredient Farhat had that worked was that the fans believed he was nuts. They believed he was nuts. They really did believe that his Sheik character was legitimate. They didn't think he was a wrestler. They thought he was a lunatic who would cut you in a heartbeat — and he would. He taped razor blades to his fingers. When he left the ring, he would cut people on his way back to the dressing room. I don't know if anybody ever put two and two together and realized that he had razor blades on his fingers, but even if they did, they would have simply said, "He's got razor blades on his fingers and he's cutting people with them. What a madman. What's fake about that? He's crazy!" That's all Farhat wanted. You didn't hear the Detroit fans say, "The Sheik is phony," because they were scared to death of him.
Once I applied the sugar hold, I would really work it. The most effective thing I did with it was to take a mark to the edge of passing out, then bring him back. In other words, as he started to go under, I'd ease up on the pressure and let him relax for a second. Just as he began to take a quick breath, I'd clamp down on the hold and push him forward again. It's the most miserable feeling you could ever have because you get panicky. The worst thing about it is, you can't do a thing about it. You can kick or do whatever you want to do, but you just can't do anything to get out of it.
I went right on. "Spit it out! What are you stuttering about? If you guys came up with that finish, then one of you is stupid." What I didn't realize was that George had walked in and was standing behind me. It turned out to be George's finish — one that he had been saving for that very moment. Well, I had already said what a dumb idea I thought it was. Naturally, George was pissed. He said, "Why don't you just do whatever you want to do."
Flair was making $750,000 or more. Luger must have been making $500,000. They were paying me $250,000. $250,000? That was fine with me. I was happy with that. But paying those two more than a million dollars between them? I thought that was absurd. Worse than that, they were dumb enough to think they were going to continue making that amount of money forever. And worse than that, that amount of money wasn't even enough. They still complained and insisted that they should be paid more. After all, they both insisted that they were the stars.
It could have been a combination of Barnett, Crockett, and Herd getting Dusty. At that time, I wasn't aware that Dusty was involved to any extent, but I did know that Crockett was mad at me because I had told him off so many times. What I couldn't understand was why Crockett was still in love with Dusty, even after Dusty took Crockett's multi-million dollar business and flushed it right down the toilet. When people ask me why Jimmy continued to use Dusty, I don't have an answer, other than the fact that he was blown away by Dusty's bullsh–. Dusty told Jimmy what Jimmy wanted to hear. I never did.
Barnett used to hold meetings every so often. He would tell all the guys to come down to the Sports Arena, an old building that Paul Jones used to own, where we taped the TV. There would be 30 or 40 of the wrestlers there. An amusing incident happened at one of those meetings. Barnett said, "Boys, next week, the champion will be in the territory. As you know, we have to pay the champion 10 percent, and we have to pay an additional 3 percent to the National Wrestling Alliance. That means you boys will be getting a check for a little bit less than you normally get." A voice piped up from the back, "Jim, judging by my checks, the champion has been here all year."
Bill Watts got fired during the first couple of months of 1993. Bill was always being Bill. He stepped on a lot of toes. Bill would wear what Bill wanted to wear. Bill would act the way Bill wanted to act. Bill wasn't above putting his legs up on the desk and farting, just to see what your reaction would be, or farting and not paying any attention to what your reaction was. Bill just didn't care. But the problem was, we worked for The Suits, who couldn't understand Bill's way of doing business. Bill would tell people what he was thinking, which didn't get over with The Suits.
When one of the guys wanted time off because his grandmother had died, I started to grill him. "What are you going to do — resurrect her from the dead?" He stammered. He didn't know how to respond. "If you wanna work, then let's get to work," I suggested. As I walked away, the guy pulled a gun out of his bag and aimed it at the back of my head. I didn't know about it until Stan Hansen and some of the guys told me about it later. I asked Stan, "Why didn't somebody warn me?" He just grinned and said, "We wanted to see if he would actually shoot you."
I keep referring to Dory Funk Jr. versus Jack Brisco, or Verne Gagne and just about anyone, but with Jack and Dory, you won't find a better example of a great wrestling match. The odd thing about it was, there was no punching, no kicking, no hair pulling, and no eye gouging. They weren't ripping at each others' face. They were wrestling. Would that work today? No. Why wouldn't it work today? Because nobody knows how to do it. That's the bottom line. It wouldn't work because the promoters don't have anybody capable of having a match like Dory and Jack had.
If you look back at other cities, you can find comparable figures across the board. When I came to Atlanta in 1974, Atlanta was a city of 600,000 people. Ticket sales ran $20,000 to $25,000 every week, except when we went to the Omni, once a month, where tickets sale totals ranged from $35,000 to more than $45,000. If you add those figures up, along with all the other shows we ran on a regular basis, we had a $5 million territory. That was with an average ticket price of less than three dollars. If we charged what Turner and Vince charged in the ‘90s, when ticket prices increased dramatically, we would have had a gross business of $35 million.
Let's put it this way. Make a list of the wrestlers (and I use that term loosely) who are now working for Vince McMahon, the owner of World Wrestling Entertainment, or what used to be known as the World Wrestling Federation. Let's imagine that you still had territories and regional television in places like New York, Atlanta, Tampa, San Francisco, and St. Louis, not to mention the 20 or 30 other territories that were running prior to the 1980s. And let's suppose each territory extended no more than 200 miles outside of each city. In your wildest dreams, do you think you could draw a house with anybody that Vince has working for him? I'm not talking about once a year. Could you draw a house week after week? End of conversation.
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