| CONVERSATIONS |
Did you ever tell Harley the story?
Oh yeah. He was working in the booking office at the time, he knew all about it. Gorgeous George and myself, later on when I left Amarillo,
we went as a team on the trip to Japan.
Was that the first---well, did you go to Japan more than once?
Only once.
Might as well stick with this now. Tell me about Japan.
Well, I had spent a couple of years in Japan when I was stationed there in the Marine Corps, but the economy of the whole town
depended on the military base. When I went there as a wrestler, it just really sucked. The food sucked, the trips sucked, the people
sucked, the bathrooms sucked. The only good thing was I was making good money, and I stayed there for a double tour. The normal tour
was six weeks and I stayed three months.
Other than George, Jr., who were some of the other American guys? Was it the deal where the guys who were killing each other
back home are suddenly tag team partners?
No. I remember Gordon Nelson was there, but other than him, it was mostly Europeans. There was one guy who was from Russia…
And the fans you said were very much like the Indians in New Mexico…
It would take a lot to get them going.
What about the wrestling style?
Very much what we did here. Wasn’t that much different. Like when I left Oklahoma, Amarillo, pretty much like we did there.
Okay. Now Amarillo, you were pretty much right in on top, working the Funks, this title that title…
Yes.
Now I see a match here, you and George, Jr., against Griz (Jake ‘Grizzly’ Smith) and a guy who would surface again later in your
career, and that was Man Mountain Mike.
Yeah, I wrestled Man Mountain Mike quite a few times.
What was that like… ?
(laughs)
… what do you do with a guy like that?
Awkward…
… yeah…
… awkward. You know, on that videotape, that’s got me working with Man Mountain Mike, and years later, after that match there---that was
on TV, and Louie Tillet was booking, and Louie had to talk to Mike, Mike was leaving the territory and he said, “Look, I’m submitting, I don’t
want that on TV,” and Louie told him, “Don‘t worry, that stays here in Florida.”
I saw Mike about two years later, and he said, “Boy, Louie Tillet told me that match wouldn’t get out of Florida, and, you know, I’m sitting up
there in Boston one day watching TV, and all the sudden there you are making me squeal like a pig on TV.”
(laughs)
Florida tape went all around the country.
Now when you came back from Japan, did you go back to Amarillo?
(laughs) No. In fact… there were two promotions in Japan, and on my plane back to the States from Japan, Dory Funk, Jr., Dory, Sr., were
on the same flight. And when I left Amarillo, they had wanted me to come back to Amarillo after I toured Japan. And when I left Amarillo, my
wife at the time lived in Atlanta, and we drove to Atlanta, dropped her off at her parents’ house, that’s when I went by the office and talked
to Leo Garibaldi, and we worked out a deal for me to come into Atlanta when I got back from Japan. That was when I called the Funks and
told them I wouldn’t be coming back to Amarillo.
And we were on the plane coming back together, working for different promotions in Japan, and Dory, Sr., was very upset with me, that I
wasn‘t coming back to Amarillo, he says, “You know, I spent a lot of money getting you built up on TV.”
I said, “Well, I can make more money in Atlanta, what do you want me to do?” So anyway after I came back I worked with Dory Jr., I never
saw Dory, Sr., any more after that, but I worked with Dory, Jr. God, I can’t count the number of times after that.
You know, again, I was watching the tape earlier, and that match with Dory, Jr., I’m reacting like I’m watching it for the first time, my
pulse gets a little elevated, and I’m on the edge of my seat, like it’s a real contest and like I’ve never seen it before…
See, nowadays, the problem with people is nobody knows how to sell, they, they… and the match doesn’t get over unless somebody
sells. But now they’ll take these fantastic bumps all over the place, over the top rope, out in the middle of the ring and onto the floor---and
before you can blink your eyes, they’re back in the middle of the ring again, like nothing hurt them. And if you don’t sell what they’ve done
to you, it means nothing.
Okay, now, when you went to Japan, you went for the IWE, which was Isao Yoshihara---the Funks were there for Baba, and they were
already booking for Baba I believe at that point, so how did it come to pass that you went to Japan from Amarillo and didn’t go for
Baba?
Well, I was a star in Amarillo, and they’re not going to send a star away for three months. They want you there where you can draw money
for Amarillo and Albuquerque and El Paso, all of their towns.
Okay. So, back from Japan, and Buddy Colt is about to enter Georgia, for the first time as Buddy Colt. Who was booking at the time?
It was Leo Garibaldi.
Do you remember when Tom Renesto got the book?
One day I went in the wrestling office, and Leo Garibaldi was packing up his desk, and I asked him what happened and he said he was
going to Florida, that Ray Gunkel had fired him, and Ray was there, and I asked him and he confirmed that he was bringing in Tom
Renesto.
How would you contrast them as bookers?
Well... Leo Garibaldi I think had the more creative mind, as far as doing something original and not just doing the same old things over
and over. I thought Leo Garibaldi had a great booking mind.
Now initially I believe you went in with Homer O’Dell as a manager and teaming with Paul DeMarco.
Yes. Paul DeMarco was a great, great talent. I don’t think he got used anywhere near as well as he could have. He was very good in the
ring and a very good interview.
What was O’Dell’s story?
Well… he was a fat, arrogant prick. He had never made it as a wrestler, and he didn’t have to do anything to get the wrestling fans to see
him as a prick, he really was a prick. He wasn’t very good on interviews, but he was very over as a manager just because of his attitude
and how he was, and when you’re a heel coming into a territory and they put you with a manager who’s already over, you’re automatically
over. I remember when he walked out of the territory, it was after a match that was a six-man tag team match with Ray Gunkel and… I don’
t remember who the other two babyfaces were, but Ray Gunkel ripped O’Dell’s pants down and by the time I got back into the dressing
room, he was already packing to walk out, and he says, “I’m not going to take that.”
I told him, “Homer… it’s a work.”
But he didn’t care, and he told me, “You might as well come with me, you’re nothing without me.”
I said, “Homer, I’ll take that chance,” and then I was making more money than I ever had with him, because I didn’t have to pay him his cut.
He was like a Klan guy, right?
Well, yes and no. One time when he needed a lawyer, he hired this lawyer out of Alabama, I forget his name, but he was always in the
news, this crippled guy, talking against the blacks. But O’Dell, he was all for the Aryan people. He was the most racist human being you
could ever meet.
Did it ever create any problems?
No… in fact, it was ironic, a few years later, in Tennessee, in the motel where the wrestlers stayed, he roomed with… the black guy who
teamed with Sputnik Monroe…
Norvel Austin.
Yeah. Here’s this racist prick with a black guy as a roommate.
Strange business.
Yeah, it is.
Now along in here, I guess it was Ward’s towns, I’m seeing these city titles---Macon championship, Macon tag championship…
I don’t really remember too much about them, but I think Fred Ward was thinking, from when there had been the split before, if it ever
happened again, he wanted to have his own champions in place. He didn’t want to be left without champions.
I see here a program with a guy who they would later bring into Florida, Tim Geohagen.
Tim Geohagen was a good guy to have on a card, a good worker, but I never saw him as a main event talent. He just didn’t have the drive
or the charisma. He would always do these strongman stunts, but he didn’t look like a strongman. They would introduce him ’Tim
Geohagen, the Irish Strongman’, ‘The Master of the Sleeper Hold.‘ I remember Tom Renesto talked Ray Gunkel into doing the gimmick
where you bring a couple of marks out of the audience and Tim would put them to sleep and wake them up, and Tom Renesto told Ray
Gunkel, “Don’t worry, nobody can break Tim’s sleeper.”
This was a shoot?
Oh, yes, it was a shoot.
Was there money on the line?
Oh yeah, it was a thousand dollars to anyone who could get out of the Sleeper. And this one time, this guy who had a brother-in-law, Ron
Starr, who also got in the business, came in, and his name was Jim McKinney. So he comes in the ring, and Tim puts the Sleeper on
him, and the guy turns and breaks out of it. Tim starts saying, “I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready,” and they talk this poor dumb mark into a do-
over. I’m in the dressing room and all the guys are rolling on the floor because it’s so damn hilarious.
So they set up again, Ed Capral is in the ring with them, and he holds the mic up, “Are you ready?”
And Tim says, “Yes, yes I’m ready,” and the guy turns his head to the left and turns to his left and breaks out of it again. Tim has this look
on his face of disbelief that the guy had broken out of the Sleeper hold not once but twice, and in the back we’re all dying of laughter by
this point.
So now Tom Renesto has some explaining to do to Ray Gunkel. The way he gets out of it is, the next week on TV, here’s Jim McKinney, in
a suit, out there with Ed Capral, and Ed Capral gives him the check, and Jim McKinney gets on the mic and says that he always been a
big wrestling fan, and that what he’s always wanted was to be a wrestler, and that they had offered to train him to wrestle, and as a
gesture he is going to donate the check to the Fund To Benefit Retired Professional Wrestlers, which of course did not exist.
The Fund To Benefit Ray Gunkel. Pretty quick thinking on Renesto’s part.
I thought it was a shitty thing to do.
I mean insofar as saving his own ass with Gunkel.
He saved his ass but I thought it was shitty. The guy signs the check and turns it over to Paul Jones, not the one I wrestled, the older Paul
Jones, who was the front man as the promoter. Tom Renesto conned this guy out of his thousand dollars, and they smartened him up
and broke him in the business and he went nowhere, because he was an absolute jabroni, you could talk to him for two minutes and tell
that was all he would ever be. Just pay the guy his thousand dollars and get rid of him, rather than smarten him up which means you’re
probably smartening up half his home town, you know, this was during the time of kayfabe where if somebody in a bar says wrestling is
fake you have to beat their ass. You don’t bring a guy into the business who has nothing to contribute. If he’d been a Hulk Hogan, with a
look, or charisma, that would have been one thing, but you don‘t bring in a guy who‘s just going to drag the business down. I thought what
Tom Renesto did was horseshit.
I see a guy who seems to be in the same place as you a lot, and that’s Chati Yokouchi.
I first met Chati Yokouchi in Tulsa, when I was Handsome Ronnie, and then when I was in Amarillo he came in as a tag team with Mr. Ito.
He was more or less the booker or the contact man for the Japanese promoters, so they came into Amarillo and watched me work, and
that was when they offered me the contract to go to Japan.
In Georgia he’s teaming with Yasu Fuji---is this the same guy as Mr. Ito?
Yes. Another guy I worked a lot of matches with was Bill Dromo. They didn’t use him in Atlanta as a main event, but down in Fred Ward’s
towns we must have wrestled 12 or 13 returns. We drew a lot of money down there. Bill Dromo was very believable in the ring, nothing
fancy, but a solid worker, kind of like Bob Orton, Sr., or even Johnny Valentine. He made you believe his matches. I see him sometimes at
the reunions.
Another guy you’re working with a lot in here is Nick Bockwinkel.
Yes. When I came in to Georgia, Nick Bockwinkel was on top as a babyface. I thought he was a great worker. Very smart man. I have a lot
of respect for Nick Bockwinkel.
A funny thing that happened with Nick was, when I was in Hawaii, he was there, and I was riding with Nick Kozak, and Nick Bockwinkel
came riding up toward us on the street, riding a little motorcycle. Nick Kozak was driving, and I was sitting in the back seat, and when Nick
Kozak stopped the car and opened the window to talk to him, I was able to reach over and turn off the motorcycle and get the keys without
Nick Bockwinkel noticing, and we drove off and left him there trying to start the thing. We came back, Nick Kozak just drove around the
block, and Nick Bockwinkel had the motorcycle over on the side of the road, trying to start it and cursing us out. Cursing in a funny way,
you know.
Nick Kozak was another guy who seemed to do well everywhere. I remember him and his brother Jerry teaming when I was a kid in
Florida, then Nick came back as a single years later.
His brother could do more of the fancy stunts in the ring, but he didn’t have the charisma Nick did. Everybody liked Nick.
Okay, this is a name that keeps coming up down in Ward’s towns and none of us have any idea---who the hell was Choo-Choo Lynn?
(laughs) He was an actual railroad guy, an engineer. When I came to Georgia, the second time, I think, in 1964, as Cowboy Ron Reed,
all the sudden all the fans start going ‘choo-choo-choo-choo’, and here comes this big fat guy, he must have been six foot five and 350
pounds, wearing this actual railroad man’s outfit with the big hat and the purple and black stripes running up and down. He couldn’t
wrestle a lick, but I think when the split happened, Fred Ward wanted to build some local draws and he put this guy in the ring. He was a
joke, just a comedy act.
And here comes Freddie Blassie as a babyface.
Freddie Blassie. Another great worker. We had great matches. They were bringing him back because the fans would think finally here
was somebody who was gonna beat my ass, and when he walked out on the stage in the City Auditorium the crowd went nuts cheering
for him as a babyface, and he pulled out a file and started filing his teeth, which was one of his gimmicks, filing his teeth because he was
going to bite people, and they went even more nuts.
I remember when Johnny Valentine turned babyface in Miami Beach, that same kind of reaction. It was like he had the audience
choreographed.
Johnny Valentine was a master of ring psychology and crowd control. He had psychology down to a science.
After being over as the lead heel in the territory, he was more over as a babyface when he turned. Was it the same with Blassie in
Atlanta, is that the rule?
Yes. When you’re over as a heel, and you turn babyface, you’ll automatically be just as or even more over as a babyface, but you have to
be really over as a heel first. If you’re just so-so as a babyface it won’t matter. It’s like the guys on WWE now, they all seem so generic,
that when they turn it doesn’t matter.
I see Apollo in here too---you had worked with him in Oklahoma…
Vittorio Apollo, yeah. He was like a monkey, doing backflips and cartwheels. He was a good guy to have on the underneath card, for
something different, but not a guy you could put in the main event and keep him there any length of time.
Now it looks like Gunkel gets into the program with you and Blassie. Give me your thoughts on Ray Gunkel as a worker and a
promoter.
As a worker he was mediocre. As a promoter, I have to give him credit, because he always brought in the right people. When I was there
before, he brought Fred Blassie in to book, and Fred Blassie brought the territory to life. When he brought in Leo Garibaldi, Leo Garibaldi
brought the territory back to life. Fuller brought the territory back to life. So Ray Gunkel kept the territory alive and drawing money for years.
What was the division of labor with him and Fuller at this point?
Ray ran the office. Fuller was more active with the booking and the matches.
I’m trying to follow this thing with the Georgia title---do you even remember how many times you held it?
Well, only once. I had the longest time with the Georgia title anybody ever had, about three years. We did angles where it would be held
up, but I never lost it until I was ready to leave the territory and go to Florida, and then I lost it to Roberto Soto. That’s how business is
done. They take care of you when you come in, and you take care of them on your way out.
Around in here you renew acquaintances with Dickie Steinborn.
Dickie is another one who was a great worker in the ring. He was never really used in any territory as a top main event singles wrestler,
and I think it was because of the heat he had with some of the promoters, some of the things he had done, but as far as ability and
charisma and personality in the ring, he was a top worker.
Somewhere in here, Bobo Brazil comes in, and you and he have what I believe was the first interracial match in Georgia.
Yes. It was the first interracial match. Up until then, if a black came in, they had to bring in another black to wrestle him. You know, there
was tremendous racism against the blacks in Georgia in those times. Who was the guy, owned a chicken restaurant and gave out ax
handles to hit blacks with if they tried to come into your business?
Lester Maddox. He was gov--
---right. He becomes governor of the state. This racist who had been handing out ax handles.
Was the ‘first interracial match’ angle played up in the buildup?
I made it a part of the angle. I went on TV and said, “You dumb rednecks, here I am wrestling this big black guy, you should be cheering
for me.” As far as they were concerned it was this big black guy who might finally be the guy to beat my ass. Here were all these racists
and rednecks at the matches cheering for big black Bobo Brazil to beat my ass. He might have beat my ass a couple times, but he never
won the title.
Atlanta’s a highly black town---did a lot of blacks come to the matches?
Yeah. A good number. Maybe 25% of the crowds.
Was there any anxiety in the office over the potential for riots or whatever?
No. No that I remember. If he had been the heel, it would have been different.
Now all through here, starting back in Amarillo, here in Georgia, and ahead in Florida, even after the plane flight back from Japan,
many, many matches for the title with Dory Funk, Jr.
Dory Funk Jr., as NWA heavyweight champion, was just the most smooth worker you would ever see. He knew how to get a match over,
all the times I saw him, he never had a bad match. He could have a great match no matter who was working with. As the world’s
champion, I saw him doing moves I think he had picked up from me in Amarillo. You talk about the guys… Dory, Jr., was one of the guys
who could have a great match with a chair.
You say ‘moves he picked up from you’---do you mean heel things to incite the crowd for when he had to work heel, or---
Sort of. I mean things like, I would let him get the headlock on me and tell him, “When I try to break out, don’t let go,” so when I would
make the move to throw him into the ropes, he wouldn’t let go. You know, usually a guy does that, the first time and the other guy is going
to the ropes, but we would do this five or six times, and then maybe on the seventh time, let go, run into the ropes, come off, get the
headlock again. Or the same thing with kicking the guy in the chest from the Spinning Toehold. And I saw him do some of these things as
the champion.
Another guy I wanted to get your take on is Sputnik Monroe.
Sputnik was in Georgia the first time I got here. Buddy Fuller always used him as a heel and he always drew money for Fuller, I don’t
know if he drew money for anybody else. He was an ordinary worker, not a great worker by any means. He didn’t have any class or flash.
He was too rednecky. But he’s a character, one of the only ones left. There will never be another Sputnik Monroe.
I see here they bring in Wilbur Snyder, another big gun from outta town.
Wilbur Snyder had a reputation as a top worker. See, all these guys you’re mentioning, are all top workers. The underneath guys come
and go, and you don’t remember one of them from the other. There might be somebody you know will give you a great match every time,
but I would have to think to remember one of them. I think the promoters decide, after you’ve been in the business two or three years,
whether you’re a jabroni, an up and down guy, or main event, and that reputation precedes you. By the time you get there they know how
they’re going to use you.
Another guy who you would work with in both Georgia and Florida was Big Bad John.
He wasn’t a great worker. He wasn’t even a good worker, like a lot of guys his size, but he was smart. He knew what to do to get his
matches over, when to sell, when to make his comeback, and he was a very good interview. He was a little strange, I remember one time
when I was riding with him and there was a stretch of the interstate that was just going in, and he pulled over, got out some pistols and a
couple of rifles and started shooting at the road signs, then he smoked a joint. Definitely an oddball, but I always got along good with him.
Now they bring in Haystack Calhoun. What do you do working him? Was it any different than working Man Mountain Mike?
Well, Calhoun was a better worker than Man Mountain Mike. You have to do the fat man spots. Bounce off the ropes, run into their
stomach, all that. It’s like when you see on the tape, I’m trying to slam Man Mountain Mike and he falls on top of me. If I had slammed him
it wouldn’t have been believable. You can get over as a heel by putting over their size and strength and then getting the advantage by
hitting them with a chair, or raking the eyes. Never in the stomach. You have to make it believable.
The first time I met Haystacks, one of the first jobs I had after I got out of the Marines was as a bus driver for Trailways, and one time
Haystacks and his manager at the time, Judo Jack Terry, got on the bus and rode between towns. And when I next met him, I reminded
him of it, and he remembered the bus ride, but of course he didn’t remember me, ‘cause I was just the bus driver.
Okay, now there’s one odd week in May, ‘72, you seem to be wrestling the heels. Assassin 2 in Columbus and Ox Baker in Atlanta.
I was always the heel in Georgia. No matter who they had against me, even in a heel vs. heel, if the crowd was going to make anybody a
little bit of the babyface, it was always the other guy.
Another one of the guys who would follow you to Florida was Bob Armstrong.
I thought Bob was a great worker. Tremendous energy, he was always doing something in the ring, maybe too much energy sometimes,
he would be moving around the ring when he should have been selling and you had to slow him down. Being in the ring with him was
like being in the ring with a whirlwind. I thought they could have used him better in Atlanta than they did, he was another one who drew
money with me main eventing in Fred Ward’s towns, but they didn’t use him as a main event in Atlanta. He came to Florida and I was
about to go back to Georgia and I dropped the North American or Southern or whatever title it was to him. He was only in Florida about
four or five months, which means he really didn’t get over. By the time I got back he was gone.
I hear he’s still trying to work, and it’s not because he wants to, he’s flat broke. He used to be a fireman, him and Derrell Cochran, and I
remember him telling me he was thinking of quitting the fire department and wrestling full time. I told him I thought he was making a
mistake, as a fireman you have a pension and benefits and as a wrestler you don’t have any of that. He said, “But I’m making twice as
much money wrestling.”
I said, “Yeah, but wrestling doesn’t last forever, and the fire department does.” So he quit the fire department, and now he’s flat broke.
Derrell Cochran stayed with the fire department, and when he passed away his wife has his pension and is provided for the rest of her
life.
About here is when you left Georgia and came into Florida. How did that come about?
Louie Tillet was booking in Florida, and he kept coming up to Atlanta on business and making me offers to come to Florida. I found out
later Jack Brisco was behind it, I had worked with Jack when it was Jack Donovan and myself and the Brisco Brothers, both Jack and
Gerald, in Oklahoma, and Jack loved working with me and the way I made him look good in the ring. So he kept telling them in the Florida
office, “We have to get Colt in here,” and Louie Tillet kept making me offers, and I kept telling him, “Hell, no, I can’t go to Florida, Florida
has a terrible reputation for payoffs.”
So finally he made me an offer, and I said, “Does this include a contract?”
And he said, “Yes.’
I said, “Does Eddie know about this?”
He said, “Yes, Eddie signed the contract.”
So I went into the Atlanta office and told Ray Gunkel I was going to Florida and was leaving in two weeks, and that I had to go down
Saturday and do the TV, and of course he got all pissed off. He told me, “Well, I can’t stop you,” and he said, “but if you ever do this again,
you may not ever be able to come back to Georgia.”
I said, “Not sure I’m gonna want to come back, Ray.”
Do you remember who the first programs you worked were with in Florida?
Well, I was on TV for two weeks, and then I was main event, so it was probably Tim Woods and Jack Brisco. They were the top babyfaces
in Florida when I got there.
And so you were already in Florida when Ray Gunkel died. Did you just hear it in the locker room?
Yeah, pretty much.
Do you remember your reaction?
Well… it wasn’t like we were big friends or anything, he was just another promoter. A little surprised, of course, and it’s always a little bit
of a shock when someone dies in the ring, but Ox Baker was clumsy, he had already killed Alberto Torres in the ring. Not intentionally or
anything but…
Well, yeah, I don’t think there’s any question Ox was clumsy in the ring, but what Dickie Steinborn said was that Ray had told him to
‘lay them in’, his heart punches, it was some kind of a blowoff match, and he also said, and I had heard this before, that Ray, for
some reason, incredibly, had eaten a huge meal shortly before the match, and that put compression on his heart---…
That doesn’t sound like Ray. Eating the big meal before the match, I would never eat my big meal before the match, I would always eat it
after the match, even if it was one o’clock in the morning. Telling Ox to ‘lay them in’, that sounds like Ray. As the promoter, you want the
match to look good, you don’t want the wrestling fans saying, “Look at that pulled punch,” so yeah, I can see Ray telling him that.
Another thing Dickie said was that he spoke to the coroner, who told him that there was bruising on Ray’s heart consistent with the
impact of punches.
I can believe that. What I can’t believe is that Ray ate a big meal… but what I remember hearing is that Ox came down across his chest
with a kneedrop.
I thought that was what happened to Alberto Torres, and actually that it was Ox’s partner in the match who did that.
I heard it was the same thing with Ray. But I wasn’t there, and if Dickie was, he would know better than I would.
So what did you know, at the time, about what was going on in the office in Georgia?
Well, here was the thing: Ray Gunkel had about 28% of the office, Buddy Fuller had about 34%, and Paul Jones had the rest, whatever the
exact percentages were, but it was between the three of them. And Ann Gunkel could have just collected off Ray’s percentage, but she
decided she wanted to step in and run the office. See, Fuller was drawing off his percentage, and also drawing a salary of probably two
thousand a week. Ray was collecting off his percentage and drawing his salary, which was probably larger because he was the one
running the promotion. Ann Gunkel wanted that, she wanted to run the promotion and collect that salary, and… the only one still alive who
really knows what happened is Jody Hamilton. Do you talk to him?
We do, the site and the magazine, yeah.
What does he tell you?
Jody basically says that by the time they were putting Ray in the ground, Les Welch, Eddie Graham, Fuller and whoever else were
plotting how to get Ann out of the promotion.
Well, that’s right, they wanted to get her out of the office. Buddy Fuller was from a wrestling family all his life, Lester Welch, Ann Gunkel
didn’t know the first thing about running a wrestling promotion. They wanted her to stay home and collect her checks, see, Ann Gunkel
hated Buddy Fuller, and Buddy and Lester Welch traded their shares and Buddy Fuller went down to Florida and Lester Welch came into
the Atlanta office. But Tom Renesto had been the booker, and he was now going to be out of a job, and Tom Renesto, he was slick.
He’s dead now, but he was a slick guy. Ann Gunkel couldn’t run a promotion, but Tom Renesto and Jody Hamilton could. The contract
with the TV was for Georgia Championship Wrestling, not Ray Gunkel or any individual. Tom Renesto went to Ann Gunkel and said,
“Look, they’re going to push you out,” and he convinced her to keep the TV and start the new office. Ann Gunkel wouldn’t have done that on
her own. Tom and Jody Hamilton got on the phone and called everybody up and said, “Look, here’s what’s going on,” and they got
everybody to cross over except for Bill Dromo and Bob Armstrong. It was a conspiracy, and it never would have happened if Tom Renesto
didn’t get in Ann Gunkel’s ear.
Okay, well, Jody is loyal to Tom’s memory and he will not say anything against him in public.
I don’t think it’s saying anything against him. Shit, if I was in their position I think I would have done the same thing. They didn’t want to
move, they wouldn’t have been out of work because they were a great tag team and could have gotten booked anywhere in the country,
but they had been there three or four years and they were starting to burn out. You get comfortable. Jabronis and underneath guys had to
move every three or four months, stars had to move every three or four years, and they didn’t want to.
So Ann Gunkel began to run, with Tom Renesto as her booker, and the Atlanta office was left basically with just Bill Dromo and Bob
Armstrong. And Eddie Graham talked to me about going back up to Georgia, I had been the big draw up there for the past three years,
and that was when I was offered to buy into the Atlanta office.
Eddie had a piece of it, right?
It was his piece that I bought.
Okay. Who else bought in around that time?
Well, Tim Woods. I offered him a piece of mine, and it was a cash deal, and Tim bought in with me. He was a big star in Georgia.
Barnett?
Barnett bought in after we did.
Jack Brisco?
Jack was already in.
Okay. You know, what a lot of people think is, when All-South finally folded, was that Barnett had gotten to Tom Renesto and paid him
off and that Renesto deliberately booked All-South into the toilet, because when it folded, right away he had a job with Barnett.
I can believe that. That was something Barnett would do. He was a snake in the grass, always telling stories on people and setting them
against each other. He was a smart promoter, but when he died, I don’t think anybody missed him. But everybody had a job, all the
wrestlers who had gone with Ann Gunkel, when the split was over, if they didn’t get back into the Atlanta office, Barnett picked up the
phone and got them booked someplace else. That was the way things worked in those days.
I’ll tell you what Ann Gunkel should have done. I’m sure she had offers to buy her shares. She should have sold her shares. She probably
could have gotten half a million dollars for them.
One thing Les Thatcher said to me, he’s very sharp, and he wasn’t there then, but he did some business with her later, was that he
thinks, the way she was, she had been a model, he thinks she wanted to be a star, come out on TV, have her own music…
I can see that. I didn’t know Ann well, but I knew her, and I could see her wanting to be in the spotlight, be on TV as the promoter.
See, all the wrestling promoters got pissed off when someone ran opposition, and I never agreed with that. I think it’s good for your
business, if people get interested in coming to the wrestling matches, and when they see that you have the bigger stars, then they’ll come
to your cards. And a lot of times that’s where you get your underneath cards and your jabronis, from the other promotion. It was like when
Malenko started to run opposition in Florida, and come on TV with his sons and they would challenge Eddie and Mike Graham.
Right, that was Malenko and Louie Tillet and Don Curtis, when they split off and formed Sunbelt Wrestling.
Well, Malenko is the only one I remember coming on TV. You never answer a challenge like that, you don’t give them credibility by
acknowledging them.
I remember hearing though that what the Tampa office would do, would be to announce on TV that ‘tonight’s card in Plant City’, or
Palatka or wherever, ‘has been cancelled’, and of course it was one of the opposition cards.
I can believe that. That was something the office would do. It’s like a war.
Okay, coming back to Florida, and here I guess we’re seeing Buddy Fuller, here’s Jacksonville and here’s a Cadillac tournament. You
won one of those, right?
Yes. The way those worked was you could buy the Cadillac, and the promotion would make part of the payment…
Huh, I always thought those were just a total work.
No, you had to buy the Cadillac, but you got it at a lower price. The promotion would take a couple of hundred dollars off each card when
they were building up to the tournament and put it on the car. And Buddy Fuller had the Cadillac, it was brown, and I told them I wanted to
buy the Cadillac, but not that Cadillac. So I bought the Cadillac in Atlanta and drove it down and turned it over to the office, so they could
use it in the publicity.
And then the night of the Cadillac tournament, the final match was me and Joe LeDuc, and Paul Jones was on the card, Paul had rode
with somebody else, so I asked Paul if he would drive the car back to Tampa for me, and I would ride with someone else, because if the
car was parked, and the wrestling fans came out before I did…
Right. I heard one time Johnny Valentine did something like that---he drove in to the arena, and there were already some of the fans
there, so he did some business with somebody else’s car to make them think it was his car, and then when he came out of the
arena sure enough the poor guy’s car was trashed.
That sounds like something Johnny would do. So anyway Paul Jones was earlier on the card, and the Cadillac was parked right out on
the stage. So I told them to get it out of there before the final match with myself and Joe LeDuc, and Paul finished his match, and the car
was parked right out back, and he and a couple of other guys drove it home. And then the next morning the whole back seat was full of
beer cans.
So at this point basically you start going back and forth between Florida and Georgia and basically working at the top or one of the
top heels in both promotions. In Florida, along with Tim and Jack, there were programs with Johnny Walker---…
Johnny Walker was a guy that, if having a match was ever like being in a shoot, it would be having a match with Johnny Walker. You know,
the wrestling fans will come if they think there might be a shoot on the card, and it would be Johnny Walker’s match they would think
would be the shoot. If he was selling his little finger, everyone in that arena knew which finger hurt him, because he was so good at
selling. We worked a bunch of returns in Tallahassee…
You know, Bill Watts said that the only ones who drew in Tallahassee were you and Jack Brisco.
Well, that’s not true, because my matches in Tallahassee with Johnny Walker---
No, he didn’t mean you versus Jack, he meant that if you or Jack was on the card, the card would draw, but if neither of you were
there, it wouldn’t. Now the angle with Johnny Walker was that you broke his arm twice…
Yes, and on the videotape, the matches are backwards, the first one should be second and the second one should be first, they got them
reversed when they were putting it together.
Very tough on the mat, I understand.
It wouldn’t surprise me, but I wouldn’t know, I never tested him on the mat.
Gene Kiniski said Bruno did once, in the gym back around 1960, and Johnny Walker handled him easily.
I can believe that. Bruno couldn’t wrestle a lick. He was a weightlifter.
You and Eddie Graham had some matches about this time, also, I remember some of them as real rough matches.
Eddie was kind of like Johnny Walker in that sense. Nothing fancy, he never went up in the air, no dropkicks, but everything was
believable, he knew when to sell, and you knew you had been in a match.
There was one card in Tampa, November ‘72, you and Eddie were the main, and Verne Gagne was in against Ronnie Garvin and
Verne Gagne was fourth from the top. Ring any bell?
No, I don’t remember exactly, but nobody knew who he was. He was the champion in the AWA but in Florida if you said ‘Verne Gagne’ the
wrestling fans would say ‘Verne who?’
There’s a match on the tape that happened the same month, which was a stip match with you and Tim Woods, where the first fall
was one foul was an automatic DQ, the second fall was No DQ, and the winner of the shorter fall picked the stip for the third fall---
Tim won the shorter fall and picked No DQ, exactly the opposite of what you’d expect the babyface to do. Great match, and still
stands up to this day.
That was Louie Tillet as the booker. He was very creative with ideas.
I see another match here in Miami Beach around that same time with you and Big Bad John, with Joe Louis as the referee. I think
Joe kayoed three times as many wrestlers as he did boxers---did you become one of his KO victims?
No. I wouldn’t do it. I’m not going to let a boxer who’s going to be gone the next week make me lose my heat. If it was some kind of angle
and we were working a return, that would be different, but this wasn’t that. Back in Oklahoma one time, when I was Handsome Ronnie,
my tag team partner, Jack Donovan, let Louis knock him out, but I wouldn’t do it.
It was the same thing later in Georgia when Harley Race was the booker and he wanted me to put over Andre the Giant on TV. I refused to
do it. I was part owner of the promotion and I had to come back the next week and the week after that and he would be gone. We did a
double DQ or countout or whatever it was.
Christmas of either that year, ‘72, or ‘73, you and Paul Jones took the program up to Charlotte.
It was ‘73. Paul was already up there. I only went up for about a week.
Some of the fans up there remember it and remember seeing the matches from Florida they showed during the buildup, so it made
an impression. Now looks like early in ‘73 started the program with Mark Lewin in Florida, and one of the matches on the tape is with
Mark and the booking is very unusual---Mark as the babyface just suddenly shakes his head, like ‘this guy’s too tough’, and rolls out
of the ring and quits the match. I watch this and think ‘what an effective way to get a heel over as a serious threat’, and something
that wouldn’t usually be done.
Again that was Louie Tillet as the booker.
What are your thoughts on Mark as a worker?
Very good worker, very smart worker. He knew when to sell, he knew when to make his comeback, he knew how to make his matches
believable. He used the Sleeper hold, so the whole match, he would work your neck, he would work your jaw, to set it up so that when he
got it on, the fans would think ‘that’s why he worked on the jaw, to make it weak’.
I’m noticing some things here where it looks like you did double shots the same day, like a TV in Atlanta in the morning and a main
event in Florida at night.
Oh yeah, there were a lot of those.
Was this about when you started flying again?
Yeah, I had got my Private Pilot’s license in Atlanta, after Barnett had bought into the office.
Continued
Oh yeah. He was working in the booking office at the time, he knew all about it. Gorgeous George and myself, later on when I left Amarillo,
we went as a team on the trip to Japan.
Was that the first---well, did you go to Japan more than once?
Only once.
Might as well stick with this now. Tell me about Japan.
Well, I had spent a couple of years in Japan when I was stationed there in the Marine Corps, but the economy of the whole town
depended on the military base. When I went there as a wrestler, it just really sucked. The food sucked, the trips sucked, the people
sucked, the bathrooms sucked. The only good thing was I was making good money, and I stayed there for a double tour. The normal tour
was six weeks and I stayed three months.
Other than George, Jr., who were some of the other American guys? Was it the deal where the guys who were killing each other
back home are suddenly tag team partners?
No. I remember Gordon Nelson was there, but other than him, it was mostly Europeans. There was one guy who was from Russia…
And the fans you said were very much like the Indians in New Mexico…
It would take a lot to get them going.
What about the wrestling style?
Very much what we did here. Wasn’t that much different. Like when I left Oklahoma, Amarillo, pretty much like we did there.
Okay. Now Amarillo, you were pretty much right in on top, working the Funks, this title that title…
Yes.
Now I see a match here, you and George, Jr., against Griz (Jake ‘Grizzly’ Smith) and a guy who would surface again later in your
career, and that was Man Mountain Mike.
Yeah, I wrestled Man Mountain Mike quite a few times.
What was that like… ?
(laughs)
… what do you do with a guy like that?
Awkward…
… yeah…
… awkward. You know, on that videotape, that’s got me working with Man Mountain Mike, and years later, after that match there---that was
on TV, and Louie Tillet was booking, and Louie had to talk to Mike, Mike was leaving the territory and he said, “Look, I’m submitting, I don’t
want that on TV,” and Louie told him, “Don‘t worry, that stays here in Florida.”
I saw Mike about two years later, and he said, “Boy, Louie Tillet told me that match wouldn’t get out of Florida, and, you know, I’m sitting up
there in Boston one day watching TV, and all the sudden there you are making me squeal like a pig on TV.”
(laughs)
Florida tape went all around the country.
Now when you came back from Japan, did you go back to Amarillo?
(laughs) No. In fact… there were two promotions in Japan, and on my plane back to the States from Japan, Dory Funk, Jr., Dory, Sr., were
on the same flight. And when I left Amarillo, they had wanted me to come back to Amarillo after I toured Japan. And when I left Amarillo, my
wife at the time lived in Atlanta, and we drove to Atlanta, dropped her off at her parents’ house, that’s when I went by the office and talked
to Leo Garibaldi, and we worked out a deal for me to come into Atlanta when I got back from Japan. That was when I called the Funks and
told them I wouldn’t be coming back to Amarillo.
And we were on the plane coming back together, working for different promotions in Japan, and Dory, Sr., was very upset with me, that I
wasn‘t coming back to Amarillo, he says, “You know, I spent a lot of money getting you built up on TV.”
I said, “Well, I can make more money in Atlanta, what do you want me to do?” So anyway after I came back I worked with Dory Jr., I never
saw Dory, Sr., any more after that, but I worked with Dory, Jr. God, I can’t count the number of times after that.
You know, again, I was watching the tape earlier, and that match with Dory, Jr., I’m reacting like I’m watching it for the first time, my
pulse gets a little elevated, and I’m on the edge of my seat, like it’s a real contest and like I’ve never seen it before…
See, nowadays, the problem with people is nobody knows how to sell, they, they… and the match doesn’t get over unless somebody
sells. But now they’ll take these fantastic bumps all over the place, over the top rope, out in the middle of the ring and onto the floor---and
before you can blink your eyes, they’re back in the middle of the ring again, like nothing hurt them. And if you don’t sell what they’ve done
to you, it means nothing.
Okay, now, when you went to Japan, you went for the IWE, which was Isao Yoshihara---the Funks were there for Baba, and they were
already booking for Baba I believe at that point, so how did it come to pass that you went to Japan from Amarillo and didn’t go for
Baba?
Well, I was a star in Amarillo, and they’re not going to send a star away for three months. They want you there where you can draw money
for Amarillo and Albuquerque and El Paso, all of their towns.
Okay. So, back from Japan, and Buddy Colt is about to enter Georgia, for the first time as Buddy Colt. Who was booking at the time?
It was Leo Garibaldi.
Do you remember when Tom Renesto got the book?
One day I went in the wrestling office, and Leo Garibaldi was packing up his desk, and I asked him what happened and he said he was
going to Florida, that Ray Gunkel had fired him, and Ray was there, and I asked him and he confirmed that he was bringing in Tom
Renesto.
How would you contrast them as bookers?
Well... Leo Garibaldi I think had the more creative mind, as far as doing something original and not just doing the same old things over
and over. I thought Leo Garibaldi had a great booking mind.
Now initially I believe you went in with Homer O’Dell as a manager and teaming with Paul DeMarco.
Yes. Paul DeMarco was a great, great talent. I don’t think he got used anywhere near as well as he could have. He was very good in the
ring and a very good interview.
What was O’Dell’s story?
Well… he was a fat, arrogant prick. He had never made it as a wrestler, and he didn’t have to do anything to get the wrestling fans to see
him as a prick, he really was a prick. He wasn’t very good on interviews, but he was very over as a manager just because of his attitude
and how he was, and when you’re a heel coming into a territory and they put you with a manager who’s already over, you’re automatically
over. I remember when he walked out of the territory, it was after a match that was a six-man tag team match with Ray Gunkel and… I don’
t remember who the other two babyfaces were, but Ray Gunkel ripped O’Dell’s pants down and by the time I got back into the dressing
room, he was already packing to walk out, and he says, “I’m not going to take that.”
I told him, “Homer… it’s a work.”
But he didn’t care, and he told me, “You might as well come with me, you’re nothing without me.”
I said, “Homer, I’ll take that chance,” and then I was making more money than I ever had with him, because I didn’t have to pay him his cut.
He was like a Klan guy, right?
Well, yes and no. One time when he needed a lawyer, he hired this lawyer out of Alabama, I forget his name, but he was always in the
news, this crippled guy, talking against the blacks. But O’Dell, he was all for the Aryan people. He was the most racist human being you
could ever meet.
Did it ever create any problems?
No… in fact, it was ironic, a few years later, in Tennessee, in the motel where the wrestlers stayed, he roomed with… the black guy who
teamed with Sputnik Monroe…
Norvel Austin.
Yeah. Here’s this racist prick with a black guy as a roommate.
Strange business.
Yeah, it is.
Now along in here, I guess it was Ward’s towns, I’m seeing these city titles---Macon championship, Macon tag championship…
I don’t really remember too much about them, but I think Fred Ward was thinking, from when there had been the split before, if it ever
happened again, he wanted to have his own champions in place. He didn’t want to be left without champions.
I see here a program with a guy who they would later bring into Florida, Tim Geohagen.
Tim Geohagen was a good guy to have on a card, a good worker, but I never saw him as a main event talent. He just didn’t have the drive
or the charisma. He would always do these strongman stunts, but he didn’t look like a strongman. They would introduce him ’Tim
Geohagen, the Irish Strongman’, ‘The Master of the Sleeper Hold.‘ I remember Tom Renesto talked Ray Gunkel into doing the gimmick
where you bring a couple of marks out of the audience and Tim would put them to sleep and wake them up, and Tom Renesto told Ray
Gunkel, “Don’t worry, nobody can break Tim’s sleeper.”
This was a shoot?
Oh, yes, it was a shoot.
Was there money on the line?
Oh yeah, it was a thousand dollars to anyone who could get out of the Sleeper. And this one time, this guy who had a brother-in-law, Ron
Starr, who also got in the business, came in, and his name was Jim McKinney. So he comes in the ring, and Tim puts the Sleeper on
him, and the guy turns and breaks out of it. Tim starts saying, “I wasn’t ready, I wasn’t ready,” and they talk this poor dumb mark into a do-
over. I’m in the dressing room and all the guys are rolling on the floor because it’s so damn hilarious.
So they set up again, Ed Capral is in the ring with them, and he holds the mic up, “Are you ready?”
And Tim says, “Yes, yes I’m ready,” and the guy turns his head to the left and turns to his left and breaks out of it again. Tim has this look
on his face of disbelief that the guy had broken out of the Sleeper hold not once but twice, and in the back we’re all dying of laughter by
this point.
So now Tom Renesto has some explaining to do to Ray Gunkel. The way he gets out of it is, the next week on TV, here’s Jim McKinney, in
a suit, out there with Ed Capral, and Ed Capral gives him the check, and Jim McKinney gets on the mic and says that he always been a
big wrestling fan, and that what he’s always wanted was to be a wrestler, and that they had offered to train him to wrestle, and as a
gesture he is going to donate the check to the Fund To Benefit Retired Professional Wrestlers, which of course did not exist.
The Fund To Benefit Ray Gunkel. Pretty quick thinking on Renesto’s part.
I thought it was a shitty thing to do.
I mean insofar as saving his own ass with Gunkel.
He saved his ass but I thought it was shitty. The guy signs the check and turns it over to Paul Jones, not the one I wrestled, the older Paul
Jones, who was the front man as the promoter. Tom Renesto conned this guy out of his thousand dollars, and they smartened him up
and broke him in the business and he went nowhere, because he was an absolute jabroni, you could talk to him for two minutes and tell
that was all he would ever be. Just pay the guy his thousand dollars and get rid of him, rather than smarten him up which means you’re
probably smartening up half his home town, you know, this was during the time of kayfabe where if somebody in a bar says wrestling is
fake you have to beat their ass. You don’t bring a guy into the business who has nothing to contribute. If he’d been a Hulk Hogan, with a
look, or charisma, that would have been one thing, but you don‘t bring in a guy who‘s just going to drag the business down. I thought what
Tom Renesto did was horseshit.
I see a guy who seems to be in the same place as you a lot, and that’s Chati Yokouchi.
I first met Chati Yokouchi in Tulsa, when I was Handsome Ronnie, and then when I was in Amarillo he came in as a tag team with Mr. Ito.
He was more or less the booker or the contact man for the Japanese promoters, so they came into Amarillo and watched me work, and
that was when they offered me the contract to go to Japan.
In Georgia he’s teaming with Yasu Fuji---is this the same guy as Mr. Ito?
Yes. Another guy I worked a lot of matches with was Bill Dromo. They didn’t use him in Atlanta as a main event, but down in Fred Ward’s
towns we must have wrestled 12 or 13 returns. We drew a lot of money down there. Bill Dromo was very believable in the ring, nothing
fancy, but a solid worker, kind of like Bob Orton, Sr., or even Johnny Valentine. He made you believe his matches. I see him sometimes at
the reunions.
Another guy you’re working with a lot in here is Nick Bockwinkel.
Yes. When I came in to Georgia, Nick Bockwinkel was on top as a babyface. I thought he was a great worker. Very smart man. I have a lot
of respect for Nick Bockwinkel.
A funny thing that happened with Nick was, when I was in Hawaii, he was there, and I was riding with Nick Kozak, and Nick Bockwinkel
came riding up toward us on the street, riding a little motorcycle. Nick Kozak was driving, and I was sitting in the back seat, and when Nick
Kozak stopped the car and opened the window to talk to him, I was able to reach over and turn off the motorcycle and get the keys without
Nick Bockwinkel noticing, and we drove off and left him there trying to start the thing. We came back, Nick Kozak just drove around the
block, and Nick Bockwinkel had the motorcycle over on the side of the road, trying to start it and cursing us out. Cursing in a funny way,
you know.
Nick Kozak was another guy who seemed to do well everywhere. I remember him and his brother Jerry teaming when I was a kid in
Florida, then Nick came back as a single years later.
His brother could do more of the fancy stunts in the ring, but he didn’t have the charisma Nick did. Everybody liked Nick.
Okay, this is a name that keeps coming up down in Ward’s towns and none of us have any idea---who the hell was Choo-Choo Lynn?
(laughs) He was an actual railroad guy, an engineer. When I came to Georgia, the second time, I think, in 1964, as Cowboy Ron Reed,
all the sudden all the fans start going ‘choo-choo-choo-choo’, and here comes this big fat guy, he must have been six foot five and 350
pounds, wearing this actual railroad man’s outfit with the big hat and the purple and black stripes running up and down. He couldn’t
wrestle a lick, but I think when the split happened, Fred Ward wanted to build some local draws and he put this guy in the ring. He was a
joke, just a comedy act.
And here comes Freddie Blassie as a babyface.
Freddie Blassie. Another great worker. We had great matches. They were bringing him back because the fans would think finally here
was somebody who was gonna beat my ass, and when he walked out on the stage in the City Auditorium the crowd went nuts cheering
for him as a babyface, and he pulled out a file and started filing his teeth, which was one of his gimmicks, filing his teeth because he was
going to bite people, and they went even more nuts.
I remember when Johnny Valentine turned babyface in Miami Beach, that same kind of reaction. It was like he had the audience
choreographed.
Johnny Valentine was a master of ring psychology and crowd control. He had psychology down to a science.
After being over as the lead heel in the territory, he was more over as a babyface when he turned. Was it the same with Blassie in
Atlanta, is that the rule?
Yes. When you’re over as a heel, and you turn babyface, you’ll automatically be just as or even more over as a babyface, but you have to
be really over as a heel first. If you’re just so-so as a babyface it won’t matter. It’s like the guys on WWE now, they all seem so generic,
that when they turn it doesn’t matter.
I see Apollo in here too---you had worked with him in Oklahoma…
Vittorio Apollo, yeah. He was like a monkey, doing backflips and cartwheels. He was a good guy to have on the underneath card, for
something different, but not a guy you could put in the main event and keep him there any length of time.
Now it looks like Gunkel gets into the program with you and Blassie. Give me your thoughts on Ray Gunkel as a worker and a
promoter.
As a worker he was mediocre. As a promoter, I have to give him credit, because he always brought in the right people. When I was there
before, he brought Fred Blassie in to book, and Fred Blassie brought the territory to life. When he brought in Leo Garibaldi, Leo Garibaldi
brought the territory back to life. Fuller brought the territory back to life. So Ray Gunkel kept the territory alive and drawing money for years.
What was the division of labor with him and Fuller at this point?
Ray ran the office. Fuller was more active with the booking and the matches.
I’m trying to follow this thing with the Georgia title---do you even remember how many times you held it?
Well, only once. I had the longest time with the Georgia title anybody ever had, about three years. We did angles where it would be held
up, but I never lost it until I was ready to leave the territory and go to Florida, and then I lost it to Roberto Soto. That’s how business is
done. They take care of you when you come in, and you take care of them on your way out.
Around in here you renew acquaintances with Dickie Steinborn.
Dickie is another one who was a great worker in the ring. He was never really used in any territory as a top main event singles wrestler,
and I think it was because of the heat he had with some of the promoters, some of the things he had done, but as far as ability and
charisma and personality in the ring, he was a top worker.
Somewhere in here, Bobo Brazil comes in, and you and he have what I believe was the first interracial match in Georgia.
Yes. It was the first interracial match. Up until then, if a black came in, they had to bring in another black to wrestle him. You know, there
was tremendous racism against the blacks in Georgia in those times. Who was the guy, owned a chicken restaurant and gave out ax
handles to hit blacks with if they tried to come into your business?
Lester Maddox. He was gov--
---right. He becomes governor of the state. This racist who had been handing out ax handles.
Was the ‘first interracial match’ angle played up in the buildup?
I made it a part of the angle. I went on TV and said, “You dumb rednecks, here I am wrestling this big black guy, you should be cheering
for me.” As far as they were concerned it was this big black guy who might finally be the guy to beat my ass. Here were all these racists
and rednecks at the matches cheering for big black Bobo Brazil to beat my ass. He might have beat my ass a couple times, but he never
won the title.
Atlanta’s a highly black town---did a lot of blacks come to the matches?
Yeah. A good number. Maybe 25% of the crowds.
Was there any anxiety in the office over the potential for riots or whatever?
No. No that I remember. If he had been the heel, it would have been different.
Now all through here, starting back in Amarillo, here in Georgia, and ahead in Florida, even after the plane flight back from Japan,
many, many matches for the title with Dory Funk, Jr.
Dory Funk Jr., as NWA heavyweight champion, was just the most smooth worker you would ever see. He knew how to get a match over,
all the times I saw him, he never had a bad match. He could have a great match no matter who was working with. As the world’s
champion, I saw him doing moves I think he had picked up from me in Amarillo. You talk about the guys… Dory, Jr., was one of the guys
who could have a great match with a chair.
You say ‘moves he picked up from you’---do you mean heel things to incite the crowd for when he had to work heel, or---
Sort of. I mean things like, I would let him get the headlock on me and tell him, “When I try to break out, don’t let go,” so when I would
make the move to throw him into the ropes, he wouldn’t let go. You know, usually a guy does that, the first time and the other guy is going
to the ropes, but we would do this five or six times, and then maybe on the seventh time, let go, run into the ropes, come off, get the
headlock again. Or the same thing with kicking the guy in the chest from the Spinning Toehold. And I saw him do some of these things as
the champion.
Another guy I wanted to get your take on is Sputnik Monroe.
Sputnik was in Georgia the first time I got here. Buddy Fuller always used him as a heel and he always drew money for Fuller, I don’t
know if he drew money for anybody else. He was an ordinary worker, not a great worker by any means. He didn’t have any class or flash.
He was too rednecky. But he’s a character, one of the only ones left. There will never be another Sputnik Monroe.
I see here they bring in Wilbur Snyder, another big gun from outta town.
Wilbur Snyder had a reputation as a top worker. See, all these guys you’re mentioning, are all top workers. The underneath guys come
and go, and you don’t remember one of them from the other. There might be somebody you know will give you a great match every time,
but I would have to think to remember one of them. I think the promoters decide, after you’ve been in the business two or three years,
whether you’re a jabroni, an up and down guy, or main event, and that reputation precedes you. By the time you get there they know how
they’re going to use you.
Another guy who you would work with in both Georgia and Florida was Big Bad John.
He wasn’t a great worker. He wasn’t even a good worker, like a lot of guys his size, but he was smart. He knew what to do to get his
matches over, when to sell, when to make his comeback, and he was a very good interview. He was a little strange, I remember one time
when I was riding with him and there was a stretch of the interstate that was just going in, and he pulled over, got out some pistols and a
couple of rifles and started shooting at the road signs, then he smoked a joint. Definitely an oddball, but I always got along good with him.
Now they bring in Haystack Calhoun. What do you do working him? Was it any different than working Man Mountain Mike?
Well, Calhoun was a better worker than Man Mountain Mike. You have to do the fat man spots. Bounce off the ropes, run into their
stomach, all that. It’s like when you see on the tape, I’m trying to slam Man Mountain Mike and he falls on top of me. If I had slammed him
it wouldn’t have been believable. You can get over as a heel by putting over their size and strength and then getting the advantage by
hitting them with a chair, or raking the eyes. Never in the stomach. You have to make it believable.
The first time I met Haystacks, one of the first jobs I had after I got out of the Marines was as a bus driver for Trailways, and one time
Haystacks and his manager at the time, Judo Jack Terry, got on the bus and rode between towns. And when I next met him, I reminded
him of it, and he remembered the bus ride, but of course he didn’t remember me, ‘cause I was just the bus driver.
Okay, now there’s one odd week in May, ‘72, you seem to be wrestling the heels. Assassin 2 in Columbus and Ox Baker in Atlanta.
I was always the heel in Georgia. No matter who they had against me, even in a heel vs. heel, if the crowd was going to make anybody a
little bit of the babyface, it was always the other guy.
Another one of the guys who would follow you to Florida was Bob Armstrong.
I thought Bob was a great worker. Tremendous energy, he was always doing something in the ring, maybe too much energy sometimes,
he would be moving around the ring when he should have been selling and you had to slow him down. Being in the ring with him was
like being in the ring with a whirlwind. I thought they could have used him better in Atlanta than they did, he was another one who drew
money with me main eventing in Fred Ward’s towns, but they didn’t use him as a main event in Atlanta. He came to Florida and I was
about to go back to Georgia and I dropped the North American or Southern or whatever title it was to him. He was only in Florida about
four or five months, which means he really didn’t get over. By the time I got back he was gone.
I hear he’s still trying to work, and it’s not because he wants to, he’s flat broke. He used to be a fireman, him and Derrell Cochran, and I
remember him telling me he was thinking of quitting the fire department and wrestling full time. I told him I thought he was making a
mistake, as a fireman you have a pension and benefits and as a wrestler you don’t have any of that. He said, “But I’m making twice as
much money wrestling.”
I said, “Yeah, but wrestling doesn’t last forever, and the fire department does.” So he quit the fire department, and now he’s flat broke.
Derrell Cochran stayed with the fire department, and when he passed away his wife has his pension and is provided for the rest of her
life.
About here is when you left Georgia and came into Florida. How did that come about?
Louie Tillet was booking in Florida, and he kept coming up to Atlanta on business and making me offers to come to Florida. I found out
later Jack Brisco was behind it, I had worked with Jack when it was Jack Donovan and myself and the Brisco Brothers, both Jack and
Gerald, in Oklahoma, and Jack loved working with me and the way I made him look good in the ring. So he kept telling them in the Florida
office, “We have to get Colt in here,” and Louie Tillet kept making me offers, and I kept telling him, “Hell, no, I can’t go to Florida, Florida
has a terrible reputation for payoffs.”
So finally he made me an offer, and I said, “Does this include a contract?”
And he said, “Yes.’
I said, “Does Eddie know about this?”
He said, “Yes, Eddie signed the contract.”
So I went into the Atlanta office and told Ray Gunkel I was going to Florida and was leaving in two weeks, and that I had to go down
Saturday and do the TV, and of course he got all pissed off. He told me, “Well, I can’t stop you,” and he said, “but if you ever do this again,
you may not ever be able to come back to Georgia.”
I said, “Not sure I’m gonna want to come back, Ray.”
Do you remember who the first programs you worked were with in Florida?
Well, I was on TV for two weeks, and then I was main event, so it was probably Tim Woods and Jack Brisco. They were the top babyfaces
in Florida when I got there.
And so you were already in Florida when Ray Gunkel died. Did you just hear it in the locker room?
Yeah, pretty much.
Do you remember your reaction?
Well… it wasn’t like we were big friends or anything, he was just another promoter. A little surprised, of course, and it’s always a little bit
of a shock when someone dies in the ring, but Ox Baker was clumsy, he had already killed Alberto Torres in the ring. Not intentionally or
anything but…
Well, yeah, I don’t think there’s any question Ox was clumsy in the ring, but what Dickie Steinborn said was that Ray had told him to
‘lay them in’, his heart punches, it was some kind of a blowoff match, and he also said, and I had heard this before, that Ray, for
some reason, incredibly, had eaten a huge meal shortly before the match, and that put compression on his heart---…
That doesn’t sound like Ray. Eating the big meal before the match, I would never eat my big meal before the match, I would always eat it
after the match, even if it was one o’clock in the morning. Telling Ox to ‘lay them in’, that sounds like Ray. As the promoter, you want the
match to look good, you don’t want the wrestling fans saying, “Look at that pulled punch,” so yeah, I can see Ray telling him that.
Another thing Dickie said was that he spoke to the coroner, who told him that there was bruising on Ray’s heart consistent with the
impact of punches.
I can believe that. What I can’t believe is that Ray ate a big meal… but what I remember hearing is that Ox came down across his chest
with a kneedrop.
I thought that was what happened to Alberto Torres, and actually that it was Ox’s partner in the match who did that.
I heard it was the same thing with Ray. But I wasn’t there, and if Dickie was, he would know better than I would.
So what did you know, at the time, about what was going on in the office in Georgia?
Well, here was the thing: Ray Gunkel had about 28% of the office, Buddy Fuller had about 34%, and Paul Jones had the rest, whatever the
exact percentages were, but it was between the three of them. And Ann Gunkel could have just collected off Ray’s percentage, but she
decided she wanted to step in and run the office. See, Fuller was drawing off his percentage, and also drawing a salary of probably two
thousand a week. Ray was collecting off his percentage and drawing his salary, which was probably larger because he was the one
running the promotion. Ann Gunkel wanted that, she wanted to run the promotion and collect that salary, and… the only one still alive who
really knows what happened is Jody Hamilton. Do you talk to him?
We do, the site and the magazine, yeah.
What does he tell you?
Jody basically says that by the time they were putting Ray in the ground, Les Welch, Eddie Graham, Fuller and whoever else were
plotting how to get Ann out of the promotion.
Well, that’s right, they wanted to get her out of the office. Buddy Fuller was from a wrestling family all his life, Lester Welch, Ann Gunkel
didn’t know the first thing about running a wrestling promotion. They wanted her to stay home and collect her checks, see, Ann Gunkel
hated Buddy Fuller, and Buddy and Lester Welch traded their shares and Buddy Fuller went down to Florida and Lester Welch came into
the Atlanta office. But Tom Renesto had been the booker, and he was now going to be out of a job, and Tom Renesto, he was slick.
He’s dead now, but he was a slick guy. Ann Gunkel couldn’t run a promotion, but Tom Renesto and Jody Hamilton could. The contract
with the TV was for Georgia Championship Wrestling, not Ray Gunkel or any individual. Tom Renesto went to Ann Gunkel and said,
“Look, they’re going to push you out,” and he convinced her to keep the TV and start the new office. Ann Gunkel wouldn’t have done that on
her own. Tom and Jody Hamilton got on the phone and called everybody up and said, “Look, here’s what’s going on,” and they got
everybody to cross over except for Bill Dromo and Bob Armstrong. It was a conspiracy, and it never would have happened if Tom Renesto
didn’t get in Ann Gunkel’s ear.
Okay, well, Jody is loyal to Tom’s memory and he will not say anything against him in public.
I don’t think it’s saying anything against him. Shit, if I was in their position I think I would have done the same thing. They didn’t want to
move, they wouldn’t have been out of work because they were a great tag team and could have gotten booked anywhere in the country,
but they had been there three or four years and they were starting to burn out. You get comfortable. Jabronis and underneath guys had to
move every three or four months, stars had to move every three or four years, and they didn’t want to.
So Ann Gunkel began to run, with Tom Renesto as her booker, and the Atlanta office was left basically with just Bill Dromo and Bob
Armstrong. And Eddie Graham talked to me about going back up to Georgia, I had been the big draw up there for the past three years,
and that was when I was offered to buy into the Atlanta office.
Eddie had a piece of it, right?
It was his piece that I bought.
Okay. Who else bought in around that time?
Well, Tim Woods. I offered him a piece of mine, and it was a cash deal, and Tim bought in with me. He was a big star in Georgia.
Barnett?
Barnett bought in after we did.
Jack Brisco?
Jack was already in.
Okay. You know, what a lot of people think is, when All-South finally folded, was that Barnett had gotten to Tom Renesto and paid him
off and that Renesto deliberately booked All-South into the toilet, because when it folded, right away he had a job with Barnett.
I can believe that. That was something Barnett would do. He was a snake in the grass, always telling stories on people and setting them
against each other. He was a smart promoter, but when he died, I don’t think anybody missed him. But everybody had a job, all the
wrestlers who had gone with Ann Gunkel, when the split was over, if they didn’t get back into the Atlanta office, Barnett picked up the
phone and got them booked someplace else. That was the way things worked in those days.
I’ll tell you what Ann Gunkel should have done. I’m sure she had offers to buy her shares. She should have sold her shares. She probably
could have gotten half a million dollars for them.
One thing Les Thatcher said to me, he’s very sharp, and he wasn’t there then, but he did some business with her later, was that he
thinks, the way she was, she had been a model, he thinks she wanted to be a star, come out on TV, have her own music…
I can see that. I didn’t know Ann well, but I knew her, and I could see her wanting to be in the spotlight, be on TV as the promoter.
See, all the wrestling promoters got pissed off when someone ran opposition, and I never agreed with that. I think it’s good for your
business, if people get interested in coming to the wrestling matches, and when they see that you have the bigger stars, then they’ll come
to your cards. And a lot of times that’s where you get your underneath cards and your jabronis, from the other promotion. It was like when
Malenko started to run opposition in Florida, and come on TV with his sons and they would challenge Eddie and Mike Graham.
Right, that was Malenko and Louie Tillet and Don Curtis, when they split off and formed Sunbelt Wrestling.
Well, Malenko is the only one I remember coming on TV. You never answer a challenge like that, you don’t give them credibility by
acknowledging them.
I remember hearing though that what the Tampa office would do, would be to announce on TV that ‘tonight’s card in Plant City’, or
Palatka or wherever, ‘has been cancelled’, and of course it was one of the opposition cards.
I can believe that. That was something the office would do. It’s like a war.
Okay, coming back to Florida, and here I guess we’re seeing Buddy Fuller, here’s Jacksonville and here’s a Cadillac tournament. You
won one of those, right?
Yes. The way those worked was you could buy the Cadillac, and the promotion would make part of the payment…
Huh, I always thought those were just a total work.
No, you had to buy the Cadillac, but you got it at a lower price. The promotion would take a couple of hundred dollars off each card when
they were building up to the tournament and put it on the car. And Buddy Fuller had the Cadillac, it was brown, and I told them I wanted to
buy the Cadillac, but not that Cadillac. So I bought the Cadillac in Atlanta and drove it down and turned it over to the office, so they could
use it in the publicity.
And then the night of the Cadillac tournament, the final match was me and Joe LeDuc, and Paul Jones was on the card, Paul had rode
with somebody else, so I asked Paul if he would drive the car back to Tampa for me, and I would ride with someone else, because if the
car was parked, and the wrestling fans came out before I did…
Right. I heard one time Johnny Valentine did something like that---he drove in to the arena, and there were already some of the fans
there, so he did some business with somebody else’s car to make them think it was his car, and then when he came out of the
arena sure enough the poor guy’s car was trashed.
That sounds like something Johnny would do. So anyway Paul Jones was earlier on the card, and the Cadillac was parked right out on
the stage. So I told them to get it out of there before the final match with myself and Joe LeDuc, and Paul finished his match, and the car
was parked right out back, and he and a couple of other guys drove it home. And then the next morning the whole back seat was full of
beer cans.
So at this point basically you start going back and forth between Florida and Georgia and basically working at the top or one of the
top heels in both promotions. In Florida, along with Tim and Jack, there were programs with Johnny Walker---…
Johnny Walker was a guy that, if having a match was ever like being in a shoot, it would be having a match with Johnny Walker. You know,
the wrestling fans will come if they think there might be a shoot on the card, and it would be Johnny Walker’s match they would think
would be the shoot. If he was selling his little finger, everyone in that arena knew which finger hurt him, because he was so good at
selling. We worked a bunch of returns in Tallahassee…
You know, Bill Watts said that the only ones who drew in Tallahassee were you and Jack Brisco.
Well, that’s not true, because my matches in Tallahassee with Johnny Walker---
No, he didn’t mean you versus Jack, he meant that if you or Jack was on the card, the card would draw, but if neither of you were
there, it wouldn’t. Now the angle with Johnny Walker was that you broke his arm twice…
Yes, and on the videotape, the matches are backwards, the first one should be second and the second one should be first, they got them
reversed when they were putting it together.
Very tough on the mat, I understand.
It wouldn’t surprise me, but I wouldn’t know, I never tested him on the mat.
Gene Kiniski said Bruno did once, in the gym back around 1960, and Johnny Walker handled him easily.
I can believe that. Bruno couldn’t wrestle a lick. He was a weightlifter.
You and Eddie Graham had some matches about this time, also, I remember some of them as real rough matches.
Eddie was kind of like Johnny Walker in that sense. Nothing fancy, he never went up in the air, no dropkicks, but everything was
believable, he knew when to sell, and you knew you had been in a match.
There was one card in Tampa, November ‘72, you and Eddie were the main, and Verne Gagne was in against Ronnie Garvin and
Verne Gagne was fourth from the top. Ring any bell?
No, I don’t remember exactly, but nobody knew who he was. He was the champion in the AWA but in Florida if you said ‘Verne Gagne’ the
wrestling fans would say ‘Verne who?’
There’s a match on the tape that happened the same month, which was a stip match with you and Tim Woods, where the first fall
was one foul was an automatic DQ, the second fall was No DQ, and the winner of the shorter fall picked the stip for the third fall---
Tim won the shorter fall and picked No DQ, exactly the opposite of what you’d expect the babyface to do. Great match, and still
stands up to this day.
That was Louie Tillet as the booker. He was very creative with ideas.
I see another match here in Miami Beach around that same time with you and Big Bad John, with Joe Louis as the referee. I think
Joe kayoed three times as many wrestlers as he did boxers---did you become one of his KO victims?
No. I wouldn’t do it. I’m not going to let a boxer who’s going to be gone the next week make me lose my heat. If it was some kind of angle
and we were working a return, that would be different, but this wasn’t that. Back in Oklahoma one time, when I was Handsome Ronnie,
my tag team partner, Jack Donovan, let Louis knock him out, but I wouldn’t do it.
It was the same thing later in Georgia when Harley Race was the booker and he wanted me to put over Andre the Giant on TV. I refused to
do it. I was part owner of the promotion and I had to come back the next week and the week after that and he would be gone. We did a
double DQ or countout or whatever it was.
Christmas of either that year, ‘72, or ‘73, you and Paul Jones took the program up to Charlotte.
It was ‘73. Paul was already up there. I only went up for about a week.
Some of the fans up there remember it and remember seeing the matches from Florida they showed during the buildup, so it made
an impression. Now looks like early in ‘73 started the program with Mark Lewin in Florida, and one of the matches on the tape is with
Mark and the booking is very unusual---Mark as the babyface just suddenly shakes his head, like ‘this guy’s too tough’, and rolls out
of the ring and quits the match. I watch this and think ‘what an effective way to get a heel over as a serious threat’, and something
that wouldn’t usually be done.
Again that was Louie Tillet as the booker.
What are your thoughts on Mark as a worker?
Very good worker, very smart worker. He knew when to sell, he knew when to make his comeback, he knew how to make his matches
believable. He used the Sleeper hold, so the whole match, he would work your neck, he would work your jaw, to set it up so that when he
got it on, the fans would think ‘that’s why he worked on the jaw, to make it weak’.
I’m noticing some things here where it looks like you did double shots the same day, like a TV in Atlanta in the morning and a main
event in Florida at night.
Oh yeah, there were a lot of those.
Was this about when you started flying again?
Yeah, I had got my Private Pilot’s license in Atlanta, after Barnett had bought into the office.
Continued