| CONVERSATIONS |
Now we come up to the night of August 1st, 1973, the tag match in Miami Beach, Florida, with you and Johnny Valentine against Lou
Thesz and Paul Jones, with Jersey Joe Walcott as the special referee. Okay, let me read you Paul’s version of this, then I want yours.
I’ll never forget that night. Lou had come out of retirement to be my partner for this match at the Convention Center. It was August 1, 1973,
and I think we sold the building out. Walcott was a hell of a guy, and I met him again years later in Baltimore when the NWA ran shows up
there. The wrestling promoter in Miami was Chris Dundee, and his brother was Angelo Dundee, the guy that managed Muhammad Ali. I
knew a little about Muhammad, and he was a good friend of Lou’s. Well, Ali was there that night and came down to the ring and climbed
up on the apron and shook our hands. Valentine then walked to the middle of the ring and started swinging his arms wildly, motioning for
Muhammad to come in the ring with him. He wanted a piece of him. The people were screaming, I mean going crazy, and the only thing
Ali could do was to try and get in the ring. So he took off his shirt and the fans started screaming even louder, and then tried to come in.
Well, Thesz and I held Muhammad back, and Johnny’s in the ring screaming “let him go, let him go.” I wonder what would have happened
if we did let Muhammad go. That was a big night on the Beach. I still have a photograph from that match.
You know… um… Paul lives close by now, Paul came down here a few months ago, from Charlotte, and he brought me a picture that he
had of Muhammad Ali, Joe Walcott, himself and Lou Thesz, standing on the side of the ring --- and Paul told me, he said, you know, that
one of the greatest publicity matches he ever had, was the night of this picture… and Paul tells me the same story he told you, only it was
me, he tells me it was me, not---… he had Johnny Valentine, you know, standing in the corner, you know, being his arrogant self, but the,
the picture, he used was… Johnny Valentine in… no, no, absolutely not. I was the one challenging him and begging him to come in the
ring, and Paul said, he was terrified, I mean Paul was telling me about that night, how I kept challenging Muhammad Ali and Muhammad
Ali wouldn’t get in the ring, and how he, how he said that for him and Lou Thesz to hold Ali back, all they had to do was just barely touch
him and he wouldn’t come in, and Lou Thesz told him, “Don’t go in, Buddy’s serious, you‘ll get hurt,” if, uh, Paul told you differently, that’s,
that’s unbelievable, ‘cause Paul---…
… actually, it wasn’t me, this was an interview he did on CWF Archives, the Florida website, and it’s up there on line, I’m reading it out
loud word for word.
I’m gonna ask Paul about that. Because Paul, when he tells me, the story, I mean he brought it up to me, I never thought of it again after
he moved down here in February, he was telling me all about that night, and about how I was challenging Ali.
Okay, and for what it’s worth---
Johnny was standing in the corner going, “Yeah, c’mon,” but I was running around the ring challenging him and begging him to get in the
ring.
Okay. For what it‘s worth, I don‘t know if you know, Jack (Brisco), in his book, tells the story the same way Paul told it.
Jack wasn’t even there. I mean I’ve got the, actually, I have the card right here in front of me, ‘Wrestling, Miami Beach Convention Hall,
Double Main Event, Lou Thesz, Paul Jones versus Johnny Valentine and Buddy Colt, Special Referee, Former World’s Boxing Champion
Jersey Joe Walcott’, there’s ‘The Samoans versus Mike Graham and Kevin Sullivan‘, then ‘Tim Woods versus Don Carson, Midget Girls,
Darling Dagmar versus Diamond Lil’. So Jack wasn’t even there.
Okay.
I’m going to ask Paul. That really came out of nowhere. He was talking about how Johnny Valentine was just basically standing in the
corner, and I was doing all the challenging.
Ali knew what was going on, right?
Oh, yeah, obviously---Ali? Well, wait a minute, if he came in the ring, I was gonna charge him and double leg dive him and take him down.
I wasn’t gonna stand there and let him, try and box with him and let him make a fool out of me.
I mean, he realized it was a work, right?
Oh yeah. But Lou Thesz told him, he said, “Don’t get in there, Buddy’s serious,” and I was serious. I’m not gonna let some boxer make a
fool of me.
I understand, he’s going off somewhere else and you gotta come back the next---
---back the following week. That’s the same reason that I wouldn’t put Andre the Giant over on TV. I had to come back the next week.
And then the next night in Jax, you had a singles match with Thesz.
I believe so. I worked with Thesz a number of times, always had good matches with Thesz.
Okay, there was an angle a little bit later in ‘73 where you were suspended and there was a Mr. Florida mask and it was alternately
either you or Dick Slater under the mask.
That was me, yeah. This would have been part of the time that I was in Atlanta the second time, and then they would fly me back as Mr.
Florida. You know, also, Mr. Florida was Paul Jones part of the time.
Different time, though, I think.
Yeah, I think that was later...
Yeah. We were trying to count the Mr. Floridas one time.
Anybody can put on a mask (laughs) and call himself ’Mr. Florida’. But I came down here several times during my suspension.
Why were you suspended, allegedly?
Jumping off the top rope, I think. When you would jump off the top rope, it was an automatic suspension or automatic disqualification. I
thought it was a dumb rule.
That was another thing I noticed, like when you would do a top rope move, the timing was that you were down across the other guy’s
back before he even knew you were up there, and you go ‘that could happen that way’, as opposed to now, where you have both
guys up on the top visibly talking to each other for like thirty seconds while they’re setting it up. I just find it ironic that the change
was supposed to be according to McMahon to ‘stop insulting the fans’ intelligence’. So now everybody’s ‘smart’, and the wrestling is
ridiculous, and suspension of disbelief factor doesn’t even matter any more.
Yeah. The more intelligent person doesn’t even go to the matches any more, because it’s all too obvious. The average wrestling fan
doesn’t want to be smart, because it takes away from the excitement. How many times does the WWE run in Miami? Once or twice a
year? And draw 25,000 people? We used to draw four or five thousand people every single week.
And meanwhile, back in Georgia, here I see a Macon title match with you vs. The Sheik, Eddie Farhat. Now this had to be heel vs. heel,
right?
I was always the heel in Georgia, no matter who they brought in. They brought him down to wrestle me several times and the people
always cheered him when he came to the ring. I wasn’t going to let anybody top me. If he stabbed me once, I stabbed him five times.
You know… what did it feel like to work with him? Jack Brisco said he wanted to hide under the ring. I watch Farhat’s matches on
tape and I just don’t get it.
I don’t get it either. He did not do one wrestling move, one wrestling hold. It was all stabbing people with knives or throwing fire and all of
these antics, but with his charisma that he projected, he drew a lot of money over the years.
Along about in here was when they put Jack Crawford, Dandy Jack, with you as a manager in Florida---I never got that. You were
obviously established as a star and you didn’t need a mouthpiece…
Well, the promotion, Louie Tillet just wanted to give me something different for a while, just for a change. It wasn’t my idea. I never let
Dandy Jack ride with me, I would drive from town to town in my Cadillac, and I never let him in the car. But you know, a manager, or
anything, can add something different, a little color. It only lasted about two or three months. There was, you know, no real rhyme or
reason.
Yeah, that was the thing: Buddy Colt needs someone to talk for him?
Like in Atlanta, for a little while they put Bearcat Wright with me.
That was a little later on, right?
Well, that was about, that was after the split, so like 1973. (Actually ‘74---ed. note) At this point there was a lot of discrimination going on in
Atlanta, and Thunderbolt Patterson had filed a lawsuit against the NWA, and Bearcat had called Barnett wanting to work, and saying that
wrestling ’owed him something’, but he was sick, I think he had sickle-cell anemia which he eventually died from, and couldn’t perform
properly in the ring. And if he had gone to the big civil rights leaders, the Jesse Jacksons or Al Sharptons, in Georgia at the time, and
claimed that we were discriminating against black wrestlers and not using them properly---which wasn’t true, Thunderbolt Patterson was
a star, Bobo Brazil when he came in was always a star, main event---it still could have caused trouble for the office, and just to avoid that,
Barnett came up with the idea of using him as my manager. And it was at a time when I didn‘t want Bearcat Wright as my manager, so I
said, “No,” I said, “why don’t we call him my ‘advisor’.” And so he was my ‘advisor’ in Atlanta, and that lasted maybe five or six months. But
I want it clear that this idea that we were discriminating against black wrestlers was complete absolute horse shit.
Okay, what about Bearcat? This is a guy you hear the most mixed things about over the course of his career.
Well, he was a… arrogant racist. Another guy who was like that was Thunderbolt. Bearcat was always taking apart, he said, “Well, yeah,
you know, those damn racist promoters, they said I was from Jamaica”, and all, and I said, “Well, you know, Bearcat, it’s no different from
all these guys that claim to be Russian, they’re not from Russia, they’re from Alabama. It makes no difference, it just gives a little
individual personality versus being from Tampa, Florida,“ but he was still upset that the promoters wanted to call him from Jamaica or
wherever---I think it was Jamaica they said he was from…
Yeah it was, but, shit, that was ten, fifteen years before that…
Yeah. And he was still upset about it. They ‘wouldn’t let him be black’, or whatever.
He built up a terrible reputation for double-crosses and no-shows.
Oh yeah. That’s why the promoters didn’t want to do business with him. And Thunderbolt Patterson, same thing. Some of the black guys,
they were the racists, not the white guys. Not all, but some.
Yeah, with Bearcat there was that whole deal in LA where he double-crossed Freddie Blassie, then stole the belt.
Yeah. If you don’t want to do a job, tell them up front. Make yourself known. Don’t pull a double-cross.
There was the other thing in Chicago in the ‘60s where he was supposed to go over Moose Cholak, and they got into some kind of
altercation in the dressing room and Bearcat showed him that he was taking a pair of brass knuckles to the ring in his tights, and
Cholak who was a big huge 350-pound guy who had been both a legit boxer and wrestler, threw out the finish and just wiped the
floor with him.
I can see Bearcat doing that. Bearcat was that kind of guy.
Hell of it was, I always thought he was talented as hell in the ring. I think if he hadn’t shot himself in the foot, he would have been
bigger than Bobo.
He would have been bigger at the box office than Bobo Brazil and he had more personality than Bobo. Bobo was solid, and a good
worker, but not a lot of color.
Okay, you mentioned Thunderbolt, let’s get this out of the way: his good buddy Jim Wilson.
Thunderbolt had got to the point that he wasn’t showing up for his matches, or when he did he was stoned, and Jim Wilson was worse.
And they were buddies, and they both wanted to be booked in main events, and they filed a lawsuit against the NWA, and against the
Atlanta office, saying that they weren’t used properly, which wasn‘t true. The thing was that Thunderbolt Patterson was a star, and Jim
Wilson wasn’t. They put him in the main event in Athens, Georgia, because he had played football and been an All-American there, but
when you’re a star, you prove yourself to be the quality to be in the main event, and Thunderbolt Patterson was a big draw if he stayed
away from the drugs and the dope, but Jim Wilson on his best day couldn’t draw a dime or work a lick. We were working a deal to send
them to Japan, we would have sent them anywhere. We made some kind of settlement in the lawsuit, I think, just to get rid of it, because it
had been an ongoing thing.
And as far as Wilson goes, he went on 20/20 with Eddy Mansfield, let’s dispose of this, he claims that Gunkel was going to push him
to be NWA champion and put up the belt deposit, and he’s also the one who claims that when he was in Australia Barnett
propositioned him that he would be NWA champion if he… played ball, or whatever, and that when he turned Barnett down he was
blackballed.
There’s no such thing as ‘blackballed’. No matter what you say. If you are a star in one territory, the promoter can say whatever he wants
to the other promoter, but the promoter will book you in the other territory if they think you can draw money, and he knows it. There is no
such thing as blackballed. It’s hearsay and I’ve heard it all of my life. The NWA, the promoters make an agreement when they have the
convention in Las Vegas that they won’t steal wrestlers from another territory. Well, Leo Garibaldi when he was in Atlanta sure as hell
stole me from Amarillo. Amarillo stole me from LeRoy McGuirk. And Florida damn sure stole me from Georgia. And every time I left a
territory, like when I left Oklahoma to go to Amarillo, I went in the office and gave three weeks notice to LeRoy McGuirk, and he was blind,
and he gets all upset, telling me that, “You can’t leave here, I spent all this money building you up,” and he said, “I’ll kick your ass right
now.” Here’s a blind man, tells me he’s gonna beat my ass. And he says he’s gonna blackball me. But hey, I went straight to Amarillo,
and from Amarillo to the other territories. If you can hold your own, you’re not getting blackballed, that’s all bullshit.
And Barnett might have propositioned Jim Wilson, I have no way of knowing that and like I said really I don‘t care, if he did it was between
them. I know he never propositioned me, and I was a good-looking babyface when I worked for Barnett. But Jim Wilson was never a top
talent, never a star, never would be considered for world’s champion. Neither would Thunderbolt Patterson, he was a gimmick wrestler.
And Wilson was always a top college football player, but when he tried to get into the pros he couldn’t make it, and he was just a
mediocre professional wrestler. Would never, never have been considered for world champion.
I gotta tell you, I had to have seen him wrestle in Florida, and I had no memory of him. He made no impression whatsoever. Hell, I
know I saw the 20/20 show, and I didn’t even remember him from that, all I remembered was Eddy Mansfield.
Eddy Mansfield had far more charisma and personality than Jim Wilson. That’ll tell you how much charisma and personality Jim Wilson
had.
(laughs)
Yeah. Now, early in ‘74 I see a match where you’re tagging with Don Greene, who had been on the other side of a tag in your first
professional match.
I don’t really remember the match per se, but he was an underneath card in Georgia by that point, and a lot of the time when you have a
top guy in a tag, somebody has to lose the fall.
Right. Now around here the program with Watts in Florida starts.
I had a lot of matches in Georgia and Florida with Bill Watts.
I remember what I guess was a blowoff match, a Texas Death in Miami Beach, where Watts came in with his cowboy belt around his
neck so you couldn’t use the thumb, and I remember being really disappointed in the match as a fan, because it was like the story of
the match was ‘Buddy Colt can’t use the thumb so there’s nothing else he can do’, and you had had so many great matches with
Watts, like one of the matches on the tape, where you would be trading leglocks.
I remember the match where Bill Watts came in with the belt around his neck, but I don’t remember the mechanics of the match.
Always baffled me. Okay, now the 8th of May in Atlanta, there was a card with a Georgia title match with you and Walker, or rather
Wrestling II, and there was some kind of incident where a fan ran into the ring and the cops got involved? That ring a bell?
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. A fan ran in to the ring, I had Johnny down, and a fan came in the ring and… grabbed my leg or something, I
had to break loose and I turned around, but by then the cops had the fan and hauled him out to the back.
There was some controversy about this on the Wrestling Classics board---one guy said you laid the guy out and all the heels, and
babyfaces including Andre, came out of the dressing room and ran to the ring, another guy said it was only the heels and you never
hit the guy, and that the guy later became a worker.
I don’t know anything about that. I don’t remember anybody coming to the ring. I had Johnny down, the fan came in, I turned around,
Johnny Walker was going to go after him, by then the cops had gotten hold of him. My mind is not completely clear on the incident.
Now was Louie Tillet booking in Atlanta around then? Like late ‘73, into ‘74?
Yes. This would have been when Tillet was booking.
And back in Atlanta and in Florida, Jack has the title now, and this whole series of great matches between you and Brisco, following
up on the great matches from before he won the title, over the Florida title and all.
And after the airplane crash, Graham told me that if I hadn’t got hurt, I was the next world champion.
That was on my list to ask. I always wondered if that was ever on the table.
I heard that from several people, that when Terry Funk beat Jack, it would have been me instead.
Tell me about working Jack in the ring, I mean it’s kind of obvious, but go ahead.
Well… Jack was not a great worker, but he was a very good worker… and Jack---
Okay. Why was Jack not a great worker?
Jack always worked with great workers which made him look great. Jack always wanted me there, he wanted Paul Jones there, and the
promoters, of course, whenever Jack was world champion, traveling around the country, he only worked with their top guys. And Jack was
a very good worker, Jack didn’t do the same match---normally the heel leads the match which was normally always the case when I
worked with Jack, and he was great to work with, very smooth, never any problems with him, and he was an excellent worker. But not what
you would call a great worker.
But you wouldn’t put him on the level of Dory as a worker?
Very very few people are on that level. Dory was exceptional as a worker.
Okay. Who are the other people who would be on that level?
Well, Buddy Rogers, obviously, would…he was not a routine worker. When you’re the world’s champion, when you go into a territory, you’
re gonna work with their top guy that is already over very strong, whether it be babyface or heel. You get into the ring, the match is over
before you start, it doesn’t really matter whether or not it turns out to be a great match. And the world champion has the advantage where
he knows he can do a routine match, which Ric Flair did, which Harley Race did, Lou Thesz did, night after night, ‘cause they‘re in a
different town, they‘re not coming back the following week. You can’t do a routine match every night in the same town, week after week.
But if you’re traveling around the country, you can, where a routine match, it‘s like drop down, leap frog, get it again, you can, and it gets
over. You can’t do that every night.
Okay. Now, to my perception, Flair definitely routine match, Harley I see it, even Lou I see it, with the little elbow spot and that whole
thing, but---
Jack was not routine.
Right. And Dory was not routine.
No, because Jack was a babyface. Jack was always workin’ with the heels, and the heels in the different territories had a different style of
working, and he could follow any heel. He had a lot of great matches, but the match was over even before he got there.
Who else would you put in that elite great worker niche along with Dory and Buddy Rogers and that level of guys?
It’s… it’s so hard to say. Paul Jones. He was not a routine worker at all. You know, he was a great worker. Um… Terry Funk was not a
routine worker, he was a wild worker, but he got his matches over, he did what it took to get ‘em over, with no routine. You know, there’s
so many good workers, like I said when you’re main event you’re working with the top workers, and to disparage any of them, I don’t want
to do.
Okay. We’re getting toward the tail end of ‘74 here, and you started working some matches in Atlanta against Mike McCord, and of
course Mike McCord would be on the plane with you when it went down, and later would completely transform himself into Austin
Idol, and I did not recognize him.
Well, all I knew about Mike McCord is that he trained down here with Matsuda and broke in the business at the same time as Mike
Graham and Steve Keirn and some of those guys, and…
Yeah, went to high school with them, too…
… I never perceived him as a great worker. He was an ordinary worker in the ring when I knew him as Mike McCord in Florida, and he
didn’t develop his personality until he became Austin Idol.
What are your thoughts on the Andersons?
Well, I know them very well. I first met Gene in Kansas City, and then when Gene and Lars were a tag team in Atlanta in 1966, Leo
Garibaldi called me and I came in to Atlanta as their brother. I came in under a hood as Nils Anderson.
You were… was that the Masked Mr. Nils?
Yes. My background was an amateur wrestling champion from college and I was wearing the mask so as to not expose my identity and
keep my amateur status.
I’ll be goddamned.
I worked in six-mans with Gene and Lars. They were both very good workers and they were very hard workers. And then later on you had
Ole Anderson and then Arn Anderson, but I was a brother before Ole. It was a short program with Tim Woods and Ray Gunkel and… I don’
t remember who the third babyface was. There were three babyfaces in Atlanta at the time. Leo Garibaldi was the booker. I wore the same
outfit as Gene and Lars at the time, they wore that burgundy color, but I had a mask.
Was Ole booking yet at any point when you were wrestling?
No. The last time I was in Atlanta was when I was partners with Barnett, and Ole was in the territory but he was not booking. He started
booking after I came back to Florida and after the plane crash. Ole is… boy, I know he’s a smart guy, but Ole did an exceptional job at
booking. Very smart booker.
Now it looks like one of your last programs in Atlanta was with Rocky Johnson.
I had worked with Rocky many times in Florida.
Very fluid guy in the ring.
Very smooth.
Okay, now we’re into 1975, and of course February 20th was when the crash happened. Were you fully expecting to be able to make
a full physical recovery and make a comeback?
At the time, yes, I would have, but the injury to the right ankle developed gas gangrene, and it was the infection that actually put me out of
wrestling. Gangrene got in the right ankle. I was in the hospital, it was like night and day, I was expecting a full recovery, because the
broken bones were not that severe and the doctors said I’d only be out of wrestling four to six months. I was feeling good, and in fact on
Thursday my wife had brought a small bottle of wine into the hospital room. Then I started feeling bad, and on Sunday morning they had
me down taking cultures from my ankle, and then the doctor said they had just called for an ambulance to take me to Shands Teaching
Hospital, in Gainesville, and that the ankle had developed gas gangrene. I said, “Well, why go to Gainesville?“
They said, “Because the only other hospital in the state that has this hyper baric oxygen chamber is in Miami.”
I said, “Why not go to Miami?”
“There may not be time to get you there.”
That must have been an ‘oh shit’.
I didn’t realize how bad it was. The hyper baric oxygen chamber which is the treatment for gas gangrene was rare at the time, now every
hospital has it. But the infection got in the bone and fused the bones in my ankle and they had to take some bone out, and now the right
leg is probably about an inch shorter than the other leg. I wear a shoe with a built-up heel. But it was the infection that put me out of
wrestling, not the injuries from the plane crash.
Now another guy who was on the plane, who did not survive the crash, you had worked as a tag with the night before, and had
worked with I believe quite a bit in both Florida and Georgia, was Bobby Shane.
Yeah, I’ve heard stories about Bobby Shane, and how he died in the plane crash. What did you hear?
That he couldn’t get out of his seat belt.
Well, see, the true story is, he didn’t get out of his seat belt, no, but he drowned.
… yeah...
Because I found out later he couldn’t swim a stroke, and when you can’t swim a stroke and you get under water the first thing you do is
you gasp, because, you know, you’re in shock, and as soon as you gasp you’re inhaling all the water into your lungs. So he inhaled the
water into his lungs and he drowned.
Yeah, I had never heard anything other than that he died by drowning.
I’ve heard that his neck was broken, his back was broken. And you know, the water there was only about 12 foot deep.
And how far off shore were you? ‘Cause I remember I heard all kinds of figures, a mile, this, that, about that, too.
About 300 yards.
Of course, later that year there was the other plane crash, with Flair, and Johnny, and Tim Woods, and Bob Bruggers---
… and David Crockett, yeah.
Just seems so odd, looking back, the two most… ‘famous’ isn’t the right word---infamous plane crashes in wrestling happened so
close to each other.
Did you know about the other plane crash? About a year later?
Which one?
With Sonny Myers?
No.
After I got out of the hospital, I got my Special Pilot’s License, so I could work as a commercial pilot. And then about a year later, Sonny
Myers was in Florida as a Special Referee…
… right, I remember that…
… he said he had a pilot’s license---which it turned out he didn’t; he had had maybe a couple hours of instruction---and he had bought an
airplane, pretty much the same type as I crashed, a Cessna. I was wrestling, or rather managing, at the time, and he had asked me to fly
his airplane, in between towns---which he couldn’t fly---and in return for flying his airplane I would get free transportation. So I was flying
Sonny’s airplane in between Tallahassee, Jacksonville, all around the state.
So one night, I couldn’t go, so Sonny hired a Special Pilot out of Tampa to fly him one-way into Miami. And there was heavy cloud cover,
and neither the pilot nor Sonny was watching the altimeter, and the clouds kept getting lower and lower, and he kept flying lower and
lower, until all the sudden they crashed into the Everglades. The passengers were Tony Marino, and Buddy Roberts. But they had just
gone over a road, and nobody was seriously injured, and they were all able to get out and march back to the road.
And then Sonny Myers tried to collect on his insurance and it turned out the insurance wouldn’t pay anything, because he got it saying he
had a pilot’s license, and he didn’t. They can only sell insurance to a qualified pilot, so the insurance was null and void. But that was the
third crash in less than two years.
I had never heard of that before. Less severe than the other two, I guess---
Less severe in terms of injuries, but it’s still scary. Three plane crashes in less than two years.
Tony Marino, I remember watching here when I was a kid as the ‘Mr. America’ gimmick as a babyface, and then he came back some
years later, which I guess was at this time, with the ‘Italian Stallion’ gimmick and he was more of a tweener. I understand he lives in
Tampa.
Yeah, I used to run into him every now and then, but then somebody told me he died, and somebody else told me he hadn’t. But he lived
out in this general area where I live, and every time I’d see him I’d go, “What are you doing, Tony?”
And he’d say, “Well… I’m retired,” but then I’d see him driving a truck or working in a club or bouncing at some bar. I’m not even sure if he’
s alive or dead now.
Never heard anything about him dying. Okay, and as we mentioned before, you worked as a manager for awhile, you did some co-
commentating with Gordon---
For five years.
… tell me your thoughts on Gordon Solie.
Oh, the best wrestling commentator in history. He never screamed or hollered or anything, but he was able to make a boring match
sound interesting. He was able to keep the heat. He was excellent at what he did.
And I think you refereed occasionally, too… ?
I refereed; I managed King Curtis Iaukea… and you know…
… that was the other time I jumped bond. I was managing King Curtis Iaukea at a spot show in Palatka, Florida, which ran about twice a
year. And I’m sitting ringside, I was wearing a steel brace on my leg, which my right leg was messed up in the plane crash, and with a
mahogany cane that was a gift from Rocky Johnson, the father of the Rock, that he brought me from the Philippines.
So anyway during the match I’m doing what a manager is supposed to do, and some wrestling fan leaned across the barricade, and I
just noticed it just in time so I could duck out of the way so he couldn’t take a swing at me. So I just, with reflex, I swung the cane at him,
and hit him across the mouth, busted his lip open. Broke the cane, later one of the wrestling fans brought me the head of the cane back
and I managed to glue it back together. So the match finishes about then, I go back to the dressing room, the cops come back, they tell
me I’m under arrest for Assault and Battery.
They take me down to the police station, and they get me to the police station and there was so much commotion going on outside, the
wrestling fans running back and forth---somebody ran into a tree…
(laughs)
… everybody in the town was at the police station watching me get arrested. I told them to get me a bondsman, they said, “Oh, all the
bondsmen are asleep now, and we‘re not gonna wake anybody,“ and they said, “you’re going to jail, boy.” They wanted to put me in jail.
This one fat, ugly cop, this jerk was really pushing to put me in jail. So the local promoter working for the Tampa office, Mickey Barnes---
that was the same guy that had been running Kingsport and Johnson City and Bristol, Tennessee, for Gulas back in 1962---came there
and posted a cash bond. He had the night’s receipts so he had the money. I was supposed to come back the following week for trial and
I never showed up.
Then they booked me there again the next year, or six months later, and I went on the TV, when we would cut promos for the local shows,
and said, “You, the short fat ugly pig-face cop, if you try to fuck with me”---well, what I said was ‘mess with me’---but I was never going
back to Palatka, because they were going to put me in jail. And so I never heard from them again, and that was the last time I jumped
bond.
But I managed Curtis, I managed… Abdullah the Butcher, Larry Hennig, Mark Lewin when he came back as the Purple Haze, um, quite a
few guys. I... I never felt comfortable doing anything other than wrestling. I felt that I was always hoping to get back into wrestling. I saw,
about the fourth time I had surgery on the right ankle was when I saw it wasn’t going to happen.
Yeah, in all honesty it just didn’t seem like you were… it never seemed like you were Buddy Colt when you were commentating or---
I was never coming back, that’s why my heart wasn’t in it---it was good for business, for my sales business, people would see me on TV,
which was an asset, but I never felt comfortable being a commentator or a referee or a manager. It was like a brain surgeon going down
to be an orderly.
Okay, now you said that in ‘83 was when you bought into Florida---did you retain your shares in Georgia till the buyout?
I sold my shares in Georgia to Gerry Brisco. Gerry wanted to get in. Very few people are allowed to get into the promotion once it’s
established. Gerry then sold his to Vince McMahon, and he’s still got a job because of it. Later was when I bought shares in Florida
championship wrestling.
Then in January of ‘85, Eddie Graham committed suicide. Did this come as a bolt out of the blue to you?
Kind of. The Wednesday before that we were in the wrestling office going over the TV, and all, and Eddie really acted more depressed
than I’d ever seen him, and it was the following Sunday, just a few days later, that he committed suicide. And it really was kind of a bolt out
of the blue, but when you stop and think about it, the wrestling business was going down, Vince McMahon was getting stronger, Eddie
had made some bad business dealings in the real estate business and was under some other personal pressure, and he went into a
severe depression, and it was a surprise, you know what, but---… and Eddie knew what was happening to the wrestling business, and
the promoters knew, that were in on it, they knew that it was going nationwide, and if you didn‘t have the nationwide cable network like
Turner Broadcasting, that pretty soon Vince McMahon was going to take over, and he did.
What about the ensuing couple of years that Florida still hung on after that?
Well, it never made any money after that. You know, every time you get a star started, then the star would leave and go to New York. You
go where you can make money and… that‘s just the nature of the business. So Crockett was buying up big stars, Vince McMahon was
buying up the stars, and, while you’re in the business you go where you can, you only have so many years and you have to make the most
of it, so I don’t blame the guys at all, say ‘there was no loyalty‘ but loyalty is bullshit, and so you go where you can make the money at that
time. That’s why I left so many territories where promoters were pissed, because I left that I saw where I could go somewhere else and
make more money. It’s just business.
But there was no blackballing, because they couldn’t blackball you if you were a top guy. The other promoters didn’t give a shit. Like when
Nick Gulas pulled the gun on me, I was afraid he might blackball me, Vince McMahon thought it was a joke. He told me, “God, if you
stared me down with a gun in your face, I’d put you in the main event.”
Okay, run it down for me how things ended up. My understanding was that (Jim) Crockett (Jr.) bought the office.
Well… pretty much. He bought it or took over it. The business here got bad because all the stars had gone to Charlotte or to New York, or
they had left the territory because they weren’t drawing and you can’t draw without stars. So we, in the office, they called Crockett and said,
“Look, we need some help down here,” and then Crockett flies down with his top guys, you know, Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes and all, they’
re at the office and so they start booking and we draw a couple of good houses. But the deal was, we had to take out the taxes and send
Crockett all the money, he would send back, he would take out his percentage, he would send back the left over. And it got to where he
wasn’t sending any money back, he was fuckin’ us. And finally we had a big house at the, over in St. Pete at the Bayfront Center, and we
said, “Fuck Crockett,” we didn’t send him nothing back.
So there was never any formal documents signed as far as Crockett buying us out or anything, and we had stopped sending him money
and essentially we then closed the doors. We were trying to pay off our bills that we owed the TV stations, the ones that did the
advertising, and pay off all our other bills, and so to do that we actually stiffed Crockett on the money from the Bayfront Center, but we had
no choice because he never sent any money back.
Was that the last big show, big gate?
The last big show and we stayed in business probably another five or six months.
Without Crockett?
No. He had nothing to do with it. We didn’t send any money that time, it had got to where he was doing nothing for us.
Okay, he did nothing, you stopped doing anything, and that was that.
Yeah. He wanted us to send him all the money but he did nothing in return.
Okay. So there was never any formal sale.
No. We finally closed up the office. Crockett had nothing to do with it.
At that point who was in the office? It was you and Duke (Keomuka) and Hiro (Matsuda) and who else?
Um… well, Mike (Graham) still had part of the office, and… Skip Gossett, Eddie’s brother, still had part of the office… Jack Brisco had
sold his shares back to the office… and Dusty Rhodes, he had part of the office. Dusty, Dusty was supposed to be coming down from
Charlotte and helping draw houses, but then we were sending all, one hundred percent of the gate, the night’s gate after taxes, to Jim
Crockett, but he never us sent anything back from his end. We didn’t send Crockett any money, that was when Dusty stopped coming in.
What is your take on Dusty overall?
Uh… well… as far as being a great, great ring personality, a lot of charisma… and, uh, when they did put the belt on him a few times up
there in the Charlotte territory, I never really considered him as a world’s champion, more as a regional champion. He wasn’t like the
world champions who traveled around the world, around the country, a world’s champion. But he was charismatic, and he drew money
and so that makes him a good worker. In the Florida territory, he was an attraction.
Yeah, I can vouch for that. What about him as a booker and an office guy?
He was a smart booker, but the one thing that was wrong with him as a booker is that he would always book himself on top in the main
events. That’s why I’m against a wrestler who is active also being the booker, unless he books himself like Louie Tillet. When Louie Tillet
was booking, he would book himself on the underneath card. George Scott would book himself on the underneath card.
Okay. Buddy, any closing thoughts you would like to communicate to people?
No… not really---I want to talk to Paul Jones.
(laughter… )
Wait! There's more ...
Thesz and Paul Jones, with Jersey Joe Walcott as the special referee. Okay, let me read you Paul’s version of this, then I want yours.
I’ll never forget that night. Lou had come out of retirement to be my partner for this match at the Convention Center. It was August 1, 1973,
and I think we sold the building out. Walcott was a hell of a guy, and I met him again years later in Baltimore when the NWA ran shows up
there. The wrestling promoter in Miami was Chris Dundee, and his brother was Angelo Dundee, the guy that managed Muhammad Ali. I
knew a little about Muhammad, and he was a good friend of Lou’s. Well, Ali was there that night and came down to the ring and climbed
up on the apron and shook our hands. Valentine then walked to the middle of the ring and started swinging his arms wildly, motioning for
Muhammad to come in the ring with him. He wanted a piece of him. The people were screaming, I mean going crazy, and the only thing
Ali could do was to try and get in the ring. So he took off his shirt and the fans started screaming even louder, and then tried to come in.
Well, Thesz and I held Muhammad back, and Johnny’s in the ring screaming “let him go, let him go.” I wonder what would have happened
if we did let Muhammad go. That was a big night on the Beach. I still have a photograph from that match.
You know… um… Paul lives close by now, Paul came down here a few months ago, from Charlotte, and he brought me a picture that he
had of Muhammad Ali, Joe Walcott, himself and Lou Thesz, standing on the side of the ring --- and Paul told me, he said, you know, that
one of the greatest publicity matches he ever had, was the night of this picture… and Paul tells me the same story he told you, only it was
me, he tells me it was me, not---… he had Johnny Valentine, you know, standing in the corner, you know, being his arrogant self, but the,
the picture, he used was… Johnny Valentine in… no, no, absolutely not. I was the one challenging him and begging him to come in the
ring, and Paul said, he was terrified, I mean Paul was telling me about that night, how I kept challenging Muhammad Ali and Muhammad
Ali wouldn’t get in the ring, and how he, how he said that for him and Lou Thesz to hold Ali back, all they had to do was just barely touch
him and he wouldn’t come in, and Lou Thesz told him, “Don’t go in, Buddy’s serious, you‘ll get hurt,” if, uh, Paul told you differently, that’s,
that’s unbelievable, ‘cause Paul---…
… actually, it wasn’t me, this was an interview he did on CWF Archives, the Florida website, and it’s up there on line, I’m reading it out
loud word for word.
I’m gonna ask Paul about that. Because Paul, when he tells me, the story, I mean he brought it up to me, I never thought of it again after
he moved down here in February, he was telling me all about that night, and about how I was challenging Ali.
Okay, and for what it’s worth---
Johnny was standing in the corner going, “Yeah, c’mon,” but I was running around the ring challenging him and begging him to get in the
ring.
Okay. For what it‘s worth, I don‘t know if you know, Jack (Brisco), in his book, tells the story the same way Paul told it.
Jack wasn’t even there. I mean I’ve got the, actually, I have the card right here in front of me, ‘Wrestling, Miami Beach Convention Hall,
Double Main Event, Lou Thesz, Paul Jones versus Johnny Valentine and Buddy Colt, Special Referee, Former World’s Boxing Champion
Jersey Joe Walcott’, there’s ‘The Samoans versus Mike Graham and Kevin Sullivan‘, then ‘Tim Woods versus Don Carson, Midget Girls,
Darling Dagmar versus Diamond Lil’. So Jack wasn’t even there.
Okay.
I’m going to ask Paul. That really came out of nowhere. He was talking about how Johnny Valentine was just basically standing in the
corner, and I was doing all the challenging.
Ali knew what was going on, right?
Oh, yeah, obviously---Ali? Well, wait a minute, if he came in the ring, I was gonna charge him and double leg dive him and take him down.
I wasn’t gonna stand there and let him, try and box with him and let him make a fool out of me.
I mean, he realized it was a work, right?
Oh yeah. But Lou Thesz told him, he said, “Don’t get in there, Buddy’s serious,” and I was serious. I’m not gonna let some boxer make a
fool of me.
I understand, he’s going off somewhere else and you gotta come back the next---
---back the following week. That’s the same reason that I wouldn’t put Andre the Giant over on TV. I had to come back the next week.
And then the next night in Jax, you had a singles match with Thesz.
I believe so. I worked with Thesz a number of times, always had good matches with Thesz.
Okay, there was an angle a little bit later in ‘73 where you were suspended and there was a Mr. Florida mask and it was alternately
either you or Dick Slater under the mask.
That was me, yeah. This would have been part of the time that I was in Atlanta the second time, and then they would fly me back as Mr.
Florida. You know, also, Mr. Florida was Paul Jones part of the time.
Different time, though, I think.
Yeah, I think that was later...
Yeah. We were trying to count the Mr. Floridas one time.
Anybody can put on a mask (laughs) and call himself ’Mr. Florida’. But I came down here several times during my suspension.
Why were you suspended, allegedly?
Jumping off the top rope, I think. When you would jump off the top rope, it was an automatic suspension or automatic disqualification. I
thought it was a dumb rule.
That was another thing I noticed, like when you would do a top rope move, the timing was that you were down across the other guy’s
back before he even knew you were up there, and you go ‘that could happen that way’, as opposed to now, where you have both
guys up on the top visibly talking to each other for like thirty seconds while they’re setting it up. I just find it ironic that the change
was supposed to be according to McMahon to ‘stop insulting the fans’ intelligence’. So now everybody’s ‘smart’, and the wrestling is
ridiculous, and suspension of disbelief factor doesn’t even matter any more.
Yeah. The more intelligent person doesn’t even go to the matches any more, because it’s all too obvious. The average wrestling fan
doesn’t want to be smart, because it takes away from the excitement. How many times does the WWE run in Miami? Once or twice a
year? And draw 25,000 people? We used to draw four or five thousand people every single week.
And meanwhile, back in Georgia, here I see a Macon title match with you vs. The Sheik, Eddie Farhat. Now this had to be heel vs. heel,
right?
I was always the heel in Georgia, no matter who they brought in. They brought him down to wrestle me several times and the people
always cheered him when he came to the ring. I wasn’t going to let anybody top me. If he stabbed me once, I stabbed him five times.
You know… what did it feel like to work with him? Jack Brisco said he wanted to hide under the ring. I watch Farhat’s matches on
tape and I just don’t get it.
I don’t get it either. He did not do one wrestling move, one wrestling hold. It was all stabbing people with knives or throwing fire and all of
these antics, but with his charisma that he projected, he drew a lot of money over the years.
Along about in here was when they put Jack Crawford, Dandy Jack, with you as a manager in Florida---I never got that. You were
obviously established as a star and you didn’t need a mouthpiece…
Well, the promotion, Louie Tillet just wanted to give me something different for a while, just for a change. It wasn’t my idea. I never let
Dandy Jack ride with me, I would drive from town to town in my Cadillac, and I never let him in the car. But you know, a manager, or
anything, can add something different, a little color. It only lasted about two or three months. There was, you know, no real rhyme or
reason.
Yeah, that was the thing: Buddy Colt needs someone to talk for him?
Like in Atlanta, for a little while they put Bearcat Wright with me.
That was a little later on, right?
Well, that was about, that was after the split, so like 1973. (Actually ‘74---ed. note) At this point there was a lot of discrimination going on in
Atlanta, and Thunderbolt Patterson had filed a lawsuit against the NWA, and Bearcat had called Barnett wanting to work, and saying that
wrestling ’owed him something’, but he was sick, I think he had sickle-cell anemia which he eventually died from, and couldn’t perform
properly in the ring. And if he had gone to the big civil rights leaders, the Jesse Jacksons or Al Sharptons, in Georgia at the time, and
claimed that we were discriminating against black wrestlers and not using them properly---which wasn’t true, Thunderbolt Patterson was
a star, Bobo Brazil when he came in was always a star, main event---it still could have caused trouble for the office, and just to avoid that,
Barnett came up with the idea of using him as my manager. And it was at a time when I didn‘t want Bearcat Wright as my manager, so I
said, “No,” I said, “why don’t we call him my ‘advisor’.” And so he was my ‘advisor’ in Atlanta, and that lasted maybe five or six months. But
I want it clear that this idea that we were discriminating against black wrestlers was complete absolute horse shit.
Okay, what about Bearcat? This is a guy you hear the most mixed things about over the course of his career.
Well, he was a… arrogant racist. Another guy who was like that was Thunderbolt. Bearcat was always taking apart, he said, “Well, yeah,
you know, those damn racist promoters, they said I was from Jamaica”, and all, and I said, “Well, you know, Bearcat, it’s no different from
all these guys that claim to be Russian, they’re not from Russia, they’re from Alabama. It makes no difference, it just gives a little
individual personality versus being from Tampa, Florida,“ but he was still upset that the promoters wanted to call him from Jamaica or
wherever---I think it was Jamaica they said he was from…
Yeah it was, but, shit, that was ten, fifteen years before that…
Yeah. And he was still upset about it. They ‘wouldn’t let him be black’, or whatever.
He built up a terrible reputation for double-crosses and no-shows.
Oh yeah. That’s why the promoters didn’t want to do business with him. And Thunderbolt Patterson, same thing. Some of the black guys,
they were the racists, not the white guys. Not all, but some.
Yeah, with Bearcat there was that whole deal in LA where he double-crossed Freddie Blassie, then stole the belt.
Yeah. If you don’t want to do a job, tell them up front. Make yourself known. Don’t pull a double-cross.
There was the other thing in Chicago in the ‘60s where he was supposed to go over Moose Cholak, and they got into some kind of
altercation in the dressing room and Bearcat showed him that he was taking a pair of brass knuckles to the ring in his tights, and
Cholak who was a big huge 350-pound guy who had been both a legit boxer and wrestler, threw out the finish and just wiped the
floor with him.
I can see Bearcat doing that. Bearcat was that kind of guy.
Hell of it was, I always thought he was talented as hell in the ring. I think if he hadn’t shot himself in the foot, he would have been
bigger than Bobo.
He would have been bigger at the box office than Bobo Brazil and he had more personality than Bobo. Bobo was solid, and a good
worker, but not a lot of color.
Okay, you mentioned Thunderbolt, let’s get this out of the way: his good buddy Jim Wilson.
Thunderbolt had got to the point that he wasn’t showing up for his matches, or when he did he was stoned, and Jim Wilson was worse.
And they were buddies, and they both wanted to be booked in main events, and they filed a lawsuit against the NWA, and against the
Atlanta office, saying that they weren’t used properly, which wasn‘t true. The thing was that Thunderbolt Patterson was a star, and Jim
Wilson wasn’t. They put him in the main event in Athens, Georgia, because he had played football and been an All-American there, but
when you’re a star, you prove yourself to be the quality to be in the main event, and Thunderbolt Patterson was a big draw if he stayed
away from the drugs and the dope, but Jim Wilson on his best day couldn’t draw a dime or work a lick. We were working a deal to send
them to Japan, we would have sent them anywhere. We made some kind of settlement in the lawsuit, I think, just to get rid of it, because it
had been an ongoing thing.
And as far as Wilson goes, he went on 20/20 with Eddy Mansfield, let’s dispose of this, he claims that Gunkel was going to push him
to be NWA champion and put up the belt deposit, and he’s also the one who claims that when he was in Australia Barnett
propositioned him that he would be NWA champion if he… played ball, or whatever, and that when he turned Barnett down he was
blackballed.
There’s no such thing as ‘blackballed’. No matter what you say. If you are a star in one territory, the promoter can say whatever he wants
to the other promoter, but the promoter will book you in the other territory if they think you can draw money, and he knows it. There is no
such thing as blackballed. It’s hearsay and I’ve heard it all of my life. The NWA, the promoters make an agreement when they have the
convention in Las Vegas that they won’t steal wrestlers from another territory. Well, Leo Garibaldi when he was in Atlanta sure as hell
stole me from Amarillo. Amarillo stole me from LeRoy McGuirk. And Florida damn sure stole me from Georgia. And every time I left a
territory, like when I left Oklahoma to go to Amarillo, I went in the office and gave three weeks notice to LeRoy McGuirk, and he was blind,
and he gets all upset, telling me that, “You can’t leave here, I spent all this money building you up,” and he said, “I’ll kick your ass right
now.” Here’s a blind man, tells me he’s gonna beat my ass. And he says he’s gonna blackball me. But hey, I went straight to Amarillo,
and from Amarillo to the other territories. If you can hold your own, you’re not getting blackballed, that’s all bullshit.
And Barnett might have propositioned Jim Wilson, I have no way of knowing that and like I said really I don‘t care, if he did it was between
them. I know he never propositioned me, and I was a good-looking babyface when I worked for Barnett. But Jim Wilson was never a top
talent, never a star, never would be considered for world’s champion. Neither would Thunderbolt Patterson, he was a gimmick wrestler.
And Wilson was always a top college football player, but when he tried to get into the pros he couldn’t make it, and he was just a
mediocre professional wrestler. Would never, never have been considered for world champion.
I gotta tell you, I had to have seen him wrestle in Florida, and I had no memory of him. He made no impression whatsoever. Hell, I
know I saw the 20/20 show, and I didn’t even remember him from that, all I remembered was Eddy Mansfield.
Eddy Mansfield had far more charisma and personality than Jim Wilson. That’ll tell you how much charisma and personality Jim Wilson
had.
(laughs)
Yeah. Now, early in ‘74 I see a match where you’re tagging with Don Greene, who had been on the other side of a tag in your first
professional match.
I don’t really remember the match per se, but he was an underneath card in Georgia by that point, and a lot of the time when you have a
top guy in a tag, somebody has to lose the fall.
Right. Now around here the program with Watts in Florida starts.
I had a lot of matches in Georgia and Florida with Bill Watts.
I remember what I guess was a blowoff match, a Texas Death in Miami Beach, where Watts came in with his cowboy belt around his
neck so you couldn’t use the thumb, and I remember being really disappointed in the match as a fan, because it was like the story of
the match was ‘Buddy Colt can’t use the thumb so there’s nothing else he can do’, and you had had so many great matches with
Watts, like one of the matches on the tape, where you would be trading leglocks.
I remember the match where Bill Watts came in with the belt around his neck, but I don’t remember the mechanics of the match.
Always baffled me. Okay, now the 8th of May in Atlanta, there was a card with a Georgia title match with you and Walker, or rather
Wrestling II, and there was some kind of incident where a fan ran into the ring and the cops got involved? That ring a bell?
Yeah, I remember that. Yeah. A fan ran in to the ring, I had Johnny down, and a fan came in the ring and… grabbed my leg or something, I
had to break loose and I turned around, but by then the cops had the fan and hauled him out to the back.
There was some controversy about this on the Wrestling Classics board---one guy said you laid the guy out and all the heels, and
babyfaces including Andre, came out of the dressing room and ran to the ring, another guy said it was only the heels and you never
hit the guy, and that the guy later became a worker.
I don’t know anything about that. I don’t remember anybody coming to the ring. I had Johnny down, the fan came in, I turned around,
Johnny Walker was going to go after him, by then the cops had gotten hold of him. My mind is not completely clear on the incident.
Now was Louie Tillet booking in Atlanta around then? Like late ‘73, into ‘74?
Yes. This would have been when Tillet was booking.
And back in Atlanta and in Florida, Jack has the title now, and this whole series of great matches between you and Brisco, following
up on the great matches from before he won the title, over the Florida title and all.
And after the airplane crash, Graham told me that if I hadn’t got hurt, I was the next world champion.
That was on my list to ask. I always wondered if that was ever on the table.
I heard that from several people, that when Terry Funk beat Jack, it would have been me instead.
Tell me about working Jack in the ring, I mean it’s kind of obvious, but go ahead.
Well… Jack was not a great worker, but he was a very good worker… and Jack---
Okay. Why was Jack not a great worker?
Jack always worked with great workers which made him look great. Jack always wanted me there, he wanted Paul Jones there, and the
promoters, of course, whenever Jack was world champion, traveling around the country, he only worked with their top guys. And Jack was
a very good worker, Jack didn’t do the same match---normally the heel leads the match which was normally always the case when I
worked with Jack, and he was great to work with, very smooth, never any problems with him, and he was an excellent worker. But not what
you would call a great worker.
But you wouldn’t put him on the level of Dory as a worker?
Very very few people are on that level. Dory was exceptional as a worker.
Okay. Who are the other people who would be on that level?
Well, Buddy Rogers, obviously, would…he was not a routine worker. When you’re the world’s champion, when you go into a territory, you’
re gonna work with their top guy that is already over very strong, whether it be babyface or heel. You get into the ring, the match is over
before you start, it doesn’t really matter whether or not it turns out to be a great match. And the world champion has the advantage where
he knows he can do a routine match, which Ric Flair did, which Harley Race did, Lou Thesz did, night after night, ‘cause they‘re in a
different town, they‘re not coming back the following week. You can’t do a routine match every night in the same town, week after week.
But if you’re traveling around the country, you can, where a routine match, it‘s like drop down, leap frog, get it again, you can, and it gets
over. You can’t do that every night.
Okay. Now, to my perception, Flair definitely routine match, Harley I see it, even Lou I see it, with the little elbow spot and that whole
thing, but---
Jack was not routine.
Right. And Dory was not routine.
No, because Jack was a babyface. Jack was always workin’ with the heels, and the heels in the different territories had a different style of
working, and he could follow any heel. He had a lot of great matches, but the match was over even before he got there.
Who else would you put in that elite great worker niche along with Dory and Buddy Rogers and that level of guys?
It’s… it’s so hard to say. Paul Jones. He was not a routine worker at all. You know, he was a great worker. Um… Terry Funk was not a
routine worker, he was a wild worker, but he got his matches over, he did what it took to get ‘em over, with no routine. You know, there’s
so many good workers, like I said when you’re main event you’re working with the top workers, and to disparage any of them, I don’t want
to do.
Okay. We’re getting toward the tail end of ‘74 here, and you started working some matches in Atlanta against Mike McCord, and of
course Mike McCord would be on the plane with you when it went down, and later would completely transform himself into Austin
Idol, and I did not recognize him.
Well, all I knew about Mike McCord is that he trained down here with Matsuda and broke in the business at the same time as Mike
Graham and Steve Keirn and some of those guys, and…
Yeah, went to high school with them, too…
… I never perceived him as a great worker. He was an ordinary worker in the ring when I knew him as Mike McCord in Florida, and he
didn’t develop his personality until he became Austin Idol.
What are your thoughts on the Andersons?
Well, I know them very well. I first met Gene in Kansas City, and then when Gene and Lars were a tag team in Atlanta in 1966, Leo
Garibaldi called me and I came in to Atlanta as their brother. I came in under a hood as Nils Anderson.
You were… was that the Masked Mr. Nils?
Yes. My background was an amateur wrestling champion from college and I was wearing the mask so as to not expose my identity and
keep my amateur status.
I’ll be goddamned.
I worked in six-mans with Gene and Lars. They were both very good workers and they were very hard workers. And then later on you had
Ole Anderson and then Arn Anderson, but I was a brother before Ole. It was a short program with Tim Woods and Ray Gunkel and… I don’
t remember who the third babyface was. There were three babyfaces in Atlanta at the time. Leo Garibaldi was the booker. I wore the same
outfit as Gene and Lars at the time, they wore that burgundy color, but I had a mask.
Was Ole booking yet at any point when you were wrestling?
No. The last time I was in Atlanta was when I was partners with Barnett, and Ole was in the territory but he was not booking. He started
booking after I came back to Florida and after the plane crash. Ole is… boy, I know he’s a smart guy, but Ole did an exceptional job at
booking. Very smart booker.
Now it looks like one of your last programs in Atlanta was with Rocky Johnson.
I had worked with Rocky many times in Florida.
Very fluid guy in the ring.
Very smooth.
Okay, now we’re into 1975, and of course February 20th was when the crash happened. Were you fully expecting to be able to make
a full physical recovery and make a comeback?
At the time, yes, I would have, but the injury to the right ankle developed gas gangrene, and it was the infection that actually put me out of
wrestling. Gangrene got in the right ankle. I was in the hospital, it was like night and day, I was expecting a full recovery, because the
broken bones were not that severe and the doctors said I’d only be out of wrestling four to six months. I was feeling good, and in fact on
Thursday my wife had brought a small bottle of wine into the hospital room. Then I started feeling bad, and on Sunday morning they had
me down taking cultures from my ankle, and then the doctor said they had just called for an ambulance to take me to Shands Teaching
Hospital, in Gainesville, and that the ankle had developed gas gangrene. I said, “Well, why go to Gainesville?“
They said, “Because the only other hospital in the state that has this hyper baric oxygen chamber is in Miami.”
I said, “Why not go to Miami?”
“There may not be time to get you there.”
That must have been an ‘oh shit’.
I didn’t realize how bad it was. The hyper baric oxygen chamber which is the treatment for gas gangrene was rare at the time, now every
hospital has it. But the infection got in the bone and fused the bones in my ankle and they had to take some bone out, and now the right
leg is probably about an inch shorter than the other leg. I wear a shoe with a built-up heel. But it was the infection that put me out of
wrestling, not the injuries from the plane crash.
Now another guy who was on the plane, who did not survive the crash, you had worked as a tag with the night before, and had
worked with I believe quite a bit in both Florida and Georgia, was Bobby Shane.
Yeah, I’ve heard stories about Bobby Shane, and how he died in the plane crash. What did you hear?
That he couldn’t get out of his seat belt.
Well, see, the true story is, he didn’t get out of his seat belt, no, but he drowned.
… yeah...
Because I found out later he couldn’t swim a stroke, and when you can’t swim a stroke and you get under water the first thing you do is
you gasp, because, you know, you’re in shock, and as soon as you gasp you’re inhaling all the water into your lungs. So he inhaled the
water into his lungs and he drowned.
Yeah, I had never heard anything other than that he died by drowning.
I’ve heard that his neck was broken, his back was broken. And you know, the water there was only about 12 foot deep.
And how far off shore were you? ‘Cause I remember I heard all kinds of figures, a mile, this, that, about that, too.
About 300 yards.
Of course, later that year there was the other plane crash, with Flair, and Johnny, and Tim Woods, and Bob Bruggers---
… and David Crockett, yeah.
Just seems so odd, looking back, the two most… ‘famous’ isn’t the right word---infamous plane crashes in wrestling happened so
close to each other.
Did you know about the other plane crash? About a year later?
Which one?
With Sonny Myers?
No.
After I got out of the hospital, I got my Special Pilot’s License, so I could work as a commercial pilot. And then about a year later, Sonny
Myers was in Florida as a Special Referee…
… right, I remember that…
… he said he had a pilot’s license---which it turned out he didn’t; he had had maybe a couple hours of instruction---and he had bought an
airplane, pretty much the same type as I crashed, a Cessna. I was wrestling, or rather managing, at the time, and he had asked me to fly
his airplane, in between towns---which he couldn’t fly---and in return for flying his airplane I would get free transportation. So I was flying
Sonny’s airplane in between Tallahassee, Jacksonville, all around the state.
So one night, I couldn’t go, so Sonny hired a Special Pilot out of Tampa to fly him one-way into Miami. And there was heavy cloud cover,
and neither the pilot nor Sonny was watching the altimeter, and the clouds kept getting lower and lower, and he kept flying lower and
lower, until all the sudden they crashed into the Everglades. The passengers were Tony Marino, and Buddy Roberts. But they had just
gone over a road, and nobody was seriously injured, and they were all able to get out and march back to the road.
And then Sonny Myers tried to collect on his insurance and it turned out the insurance wouldn’t pay anything, because he got it saying he
had a pilot’s license, and he didn’t. They can only sell insurance to a qualified pilot, so the insurance was null and void. But that was the
third crash in less than two years.
I had never heard of that before. Less severe than the other two, I guess---
Less severe in terms of injuries, but it’s still scary. Three plane crashes in less than two years.
Tony Marino, I remember watching here when I was a kid as the ‘Mr. America’ gimmick as a babyface, and then he came back some
years later, which I guess was at this time, with the ‘Italian Stallion’ gimmick and he was more of a tweener. I understand he lives in
Tampa.
Yeah, I used to run into him every now and then, but then somebody told me he died, and somebody else told me he hadn’t. But he lived
out in this general area where I live, and every time I’d see him I’d go, “What are you doing, Tony?”
And he’d say, “Well… I’m retired,” but then I’d see him driving a truck or working in a club or bouncing at some bar. I’m not even sure if he’
s alive or dead now.
Never heard anything about him dying. Okay, and as we mentioned before, you worked as a manager for awhile, you did some co-
commentating with Gordon---
For five years.
… tell me your thoughts on Gordon Solie.
Oh, the best wrestling commentator in history. He never screamed or hollered or anything, but he was able to make a boring match
sound interesting. He was able to keep the heat. He was excellent at what he did.
And I think you refereed occasionally, too… ?
I refereed; I managed King Curtis Iaukea… and you know…
… that was the other time I jumped bond. I was managing King Curtis Iaukea at a spot show in Palatka, Florida, which ran about twice a
year. And I’m sitting ringside, I was wearing a steel brace on my leg, which my right leg was messed up in the plane crash, and with a
mahogany cane that was a gift from Rocky Johnson, the father of the Rock, that he brought me from the Philippines.
So anyway during the match I’m doing what a manager is supposed to do, and some wrestling fan leaned across the barricade, and I
just noticed it just in time so I could duck out of the way so he couldn’t take a swing at me. So I just, with reflex, I swung the cane at him,
and hit him across the mouth, busted his lip open. Broke the cane, later one of the wrestling fans brought me the head of the cane back
and I managed to glue it back together. So the match finishes about then, I go back to the dressing room, the cops come back, they tell
me I’m under arrest for Assault and Battery.
They take me down to the police station, and they get me to the police station and there was so much commotion going on outside, the
wrestling fans running back and forth---somebody ran into a tree…
(laughs)
… everybody in the town was at the police station watching me get arrested. I told them to get me a bondsman, they said, “Oh, all the
bondsmen are asleep now, and we‘re not gonna wake anybody,“ and they said, “you’re going to jail, boy.” They wanted to put me in jail.
This one fat, ugly cop, this jerk was really pushing to put me in jail. So the local promoter working for the Tampa office, Mickey Barnes---
that was the same guy that had been running Kingsport and Johnson City and Bristol, Tennessee, for Gulas back in 1962---came there
and posted a cash bond. He had the night’s receipts so he had the money. I was supposed to come back the following week for trial and
I never showed up.
Then they booked me there again the next year, or six months later, and I went on the TV, when we would cut promos for the local shows,
and said, “You, the short fat ugly pig-face cop, if you try to fuck with me”---well, what I said was ‘mess with me’---but I was never going
back to Palatka, because they were going to put me in jail. And so I never heard from them again, and that was the last time I jumped
bond.
But I managed Curtis, I managed… Abdullah the Butcher, Larry Hennig, Mark Lewin when he came back as the Purple Haze, um, quite a
few guys. I... I never felt comfortable doing anything other than wrestling. I felt that I was always hoping to get back into wrestling. I saw,
about the fourth time I had surgery on the right ankle was when I saw it wasn’t going to happen.
Yeah, in all honesty it just didn’t seem like you were… it never seemed like you were Buddy Colt when you were commentating or---
I was never coming back, that’s why my heart wasn’t in it---it was good for business, for my sales business, people would see me on TV,
which was an asset, but I never felt comfortable being a commentator or a referee or a manager. It was like a brain surgeon going down
to be an orderly.
Okay, now you said that in ‘83 was when you bought into Florida---did you retain your shares in Georgia till the buyout?
I sold my shares in Georgia to Gerry Brisco. Gerry wanted to get in. Very few people are allowed to get into the promotion once it’s
established. Gerry then sold his to Vince McMahon, and he’s still got a job because of it. Later was when I bought shares in Florida
championship wrestling.
Then in January of ‘85, Eddie Graham committed suicide. Did this come as a bolt out of the blue to you?
Kind of. The Wednesday before that we were in the wrestling office going over the TV, and all, and Eddie really acted more depressed
than I’d ever seen him, and it was the following Sunday, just a few days later, that he committed suicide. And it really was kind of a bolt out
of the blue, but when you stop and think about it, the wrestling business was going down, Vince McMahon was getting stronger, Eddie
had made some bad business dealings in the real estate business and was under some other personal pressure, and he went into a
severe depression, and it was a surprise, you know what, but---… and Eddie knew what was happening to the wrestling business, and
the promoters knew, that were in on it, they knew that it was going nationwide, and if you didn‘t have the nationwide cable network like
Turner Broadcasting, that pretty soon Vince McMahon was going to take over, and he did.
What about the ensuing couple of years that Florida still hung on after that?
Well, it never made any money after that. You know, every time you get a star started, then the star would leave and go to New York. You
go where you can make money and… that‘s just the nature of the business. So Crockett was buying up big stars, Vince McMahon was
buying up the stars, and, while you’re in the business you go where you can, you only have so many years and you have to make the most
of it, so I don’t blame the guys at all, say ‘there was no loyalty‘ but loyalty is bullshit, and so you go where you can make the money at that
time. That’s why I left so many territories where promoters were pissed, because I left that I saw where I could go somewhere else and
make more money. It’s just business.
But there was no blackballing, because they couldn’t blackball you if you were a top guy. The other promoters didn’t give a shit. Like when
Nick Gulas pulled the gun on me, I was afraid he might blackball me, Vince McMahon thought it was a joke. He told me, “God, if you
stared me down with a gun in your face, I’d put you in the main event.”
Okay, run it down for me how things ended up. My understanding was that (Jim) Crockett (Jr.) bought the office.
Well… pretty much. He bought it or took over it. The business here got bad because all the stars had gone to Charlotte or to New York, or
they had left the territory because they weren’t drawing and you can’t draw without stars. So we, in the office, they called Crockett and said,
“Look, we need some help down here,” and then Crockett flies down with his top guys, you know, Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes and all, they’
re at the office and so they start booking and we draw a couple of good houses. But the deal was, we had to take out the taxes and send
Crockett all the money, he would send back, he would take out his percentage, he would send back the left over. And it got to where he
wasn’t sending any money back, he was fuckin’ us. And finally we had a big house at the, over in St. Pete at the Bayfront Center, and we
said, “Fuck Crockett,” we didn’t send him nothing back.
So there was never any formal documents signed as far as Crockett buying us out or anything, and we had stopped sending him money
and essentially we then closed the doors. We were trying to pay off our bills that we owed the TV stations, the ones that did the
advertising, and pay off all our other bills, and so to do that we actually stiffed Crockett on the money from the Bayfront Center, but we had
no choice because he never sent any money back.
Was that the last big show, big gate?
The last big show and we stayed in business probably another five or six months.
Without Crockett?
No. He had nothing to do with it. We didn’t send any money that time, it had got to where he was doing nothing for us.
Okay, he did nothing, you stopped doing anything, and that was that.
Yeah. He wanted us to send him all the money but he did nothing in return.
Okay. So there was never any formal sale.
No. We finally closed up the office. Crockett had nothing to do with it.
At that point who was in the office? It was you and Duke (Keomuka) and Hiro (Matsuda) and who else?
Um… well, Mike (Graham) still had part of the office, and… Skip Gossett, Eddie’s brother, still had part of the office… Jack Brisco had
sold his shares back to the office… and Dusty Rhodes, he had part of the office. Dusty, Dusty was supposed to be coming down from
Charlotte and helping draw houses, but then we were sending all, one hundred percent of the gate, the night’s gate after taxes, to Jim
Crockett, but he never us sent anything back from his end. We didn’t send Crockett any money, that was when Dusty stopped coming in.
What is your take on Dusty overall?
Uh… well… as far as being a great, great ring personality, a lot of charisma… and, uh, when they did put the belt on him a few times up
there in the Charlotte territory, I never really considered him as a world’s champion, more as a regional champion. He wasn’t like the
world champions who traveled around the world, around the country, a world’s champion. But he was charismatic, and he drew money
and so that makes him a good worker. In the Florida territory, he was an attraction.
Yeah, I can vouch for that. What about him as a booker and an office guy?
He was a smart booker, but the one thing that was wrong with him as a booker is that he would always book himself on top in the main
events. That’s why I’m against a wrestler who is active also being the booker, unless he books himself like Louie Tillet. When Louie Tillet
was booking, he would book himself on the underneath card. George Scott would book himself on the underneath card.
Okay. Buddy, any closing thoughts you would like to communicate to people?
No… not really---I want to talk to Paul Jones.
(laughter… )
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