Georgia Wrestling History - the Home of Peach State Pandemonium: Features - Conversations

I heard kind of a WAY flip side to that, this must have been a little later when Eddie was already running Detroit, this is a story I heard from Don Leo, not directly, but from Don Leo Jonathan. Don Leo was heading back west, and he stopped off to work a week in Detroit, for Eddie, and he booked them together in the main the first night, and Eddie said like ’I want you to blade’, and Don Leo was like ’I’m just getting over a staph infection, no fuckin’ way’. So okay so fine, daDA daDA daDA, Don Leo telling the story says, “Remember to always tip the ring boys, because one of them came up to me and said, ’You know, look, man, uh… Eddie’s planning to blade you tonight anyway.’ “ And so they get in the ring, Eddie’s doing his number on the prayer rug, and---you remember, this is Don Leo, who nobody fucked with knowingly---and while he‘s doing his, you know, his ‘yibble yibble‘ thing, Don Leo from across the ring in his corner says, ’If you have that shit in your tights or your boots and I find it, I will end your career right here tonight.” So the bell rings, Eddie jumps out of the ring, runs around in circles till he gets counted out, Don Leo said, “Fuck this,“ and headed back to the dressing room, Eddie threw chairs around for twenty minutes, didn’t book them together again for the rest of the week, and Don Leo never worked for Eddie again.

Well, you know what? I’ll tell you one that’s damn similar to that, and happened right here in Cincinnati Gardens, and I get the feeling after what you just told me, that our friend Don Leo didn’t like to do blade jobs anyway. Again, as a young guy, I was receptive to, “ ‘Les, you know… ’ ‘What do you need done? Yes, sir, I’ll do that.’ “ This had to do with when Bill Miller, Dr. Big Bill Miller, was working under the sock, ’Mr. X’ or ’Dr. X’ or whatever the hell he was here at that time, and we were at Cincinnati Gardens, and I was, you know, a hometown boy, and then I’d get put over somebody like Gary Hart who was working as a preliminary wrestler at the time, but then of course, you know, I’d work with somebody like Art Nelson and, you know, get my ass handed to me, so I don‘t remember who I worked with that night, but Bill was working against Don Leo, but the story as I recall it was that Don Leo---Bill was using the foreign object in his mask, you know like with a head butt, and so he had had guys get juice, and they were working, I forget what the deal was but anyway it was to get Bill‘s gimmick over and they had wanted Don Leo to get juice, and I think the story was then that Don Leo told them was that he was up for a movie part, and he didn‘t want to be scarred, you know, because he was doing a screen test or something, and of course I can remember Bill mumbling and Bill wouldn‘t have been like Sheik, if Don said he was gonna kick Bill‘s ass, he‘d a had to try. And I ain’t real suuure what’d happen.

I’m not real sure what woulda happened with THAT one either.

So Bill was, I remember hearing Bill go (once again Les does a dead-on imitation), “… fuck about a MOVIE, this fuckin’ SHIT, we gotta draw money HERE,“ and that sorta shit, and he’s looking around, and for whatever reason he had taken a shine to me, the first time I worked with him was in Huntington, West Virginia, and you know and of course I knew his reputation, we ALL did, right? And I’m thinkin’ ’God, I hope I don’t screw up here’, right? And of course I was nervous, and he came over to me, he said, “Yer a Buckeye too, arncha?”

And I said, “Yes, sir.”

And he said, “Wayull, us Buckeyes gotta stick together,” he said, “now y’know, we’re goin’ out there tonight and they’re gonna think cause a the diffurnce in our size that I’m just gonna run over you. But---we’re not gonna do that,” he said, “I’ve seen you work before...” So he laid this thing out, you know, where I’m arm-draggin’ him and dropkickin’ him and he’s bailin’ out, to establish the fact that, you know, he’s got some respect for me up front, which again is, is a lesson that a lotta young kids should learn today---it’s not ’I gotta get MY shit in’, it’s ’let’s make the other guy that I’m beating look good so I BEAT somebody’---and so I did a good job for Bill and Bill and I became at that point---in fact Danny Miller and I became partners later---but at that point Bill was always very good to me and was helpful and gave me advice and suggestions.

So they were gonna do this thing with Don Leo and, Don Leo wasn’t gonna go for it, so Bill’s, I can hear him mumbling under his breath, over on the other side of the dressing room, so he’s looking around and finally says, “Thatch.”

“Yes, Bill.”

“C’mere a seckint. Wonder f’yood do me a fayver.”

“What’s that, Bill?”

“Wayull, I wanna git this, and got-dam Don won’t git inny juice,” he says, “we’re trine a git this gimmick over.” He said, “Y’know, I’m ‘onna beat him, I’m ‘onna figger up a way to fuck him, right? Behind the referee’s back.” And he said, “Then, after that, once the match is over, and Don’s sellin’,” ---you know, whatever it is---, “I’d like you to run out and jump up on the apern, and stooge me off to the referee.”

“Okay, Bill, I can do that.”

And he said, “Wouldja do me another big fayver, Thatch?”

“What’s that, Bill?”

And he said, “Wouldja git a little culler fer me?”

And I said, “Yeah.”---well, again, of course, at that stage ’yes, sir, I, you want me to cut my nose off, I can do that’, you know, just whatever so that I can learn the business and continue to learn. So that’s what we did, I made a blade and ran out there, and of course it was the local boy getting his, you know, gettin’ the juice, so it got some heat and Bill got his desired effect out of it, but I guess---you know what, I don’t know, I’ve spoken to Don Leo at the CAC convention, I don’t really know him, I haven’t sat down and discussed any of that with him, but maybe he just never liked to get juice, some guys didn’t.

True. But it coulda been true about the screen test, cause I DO remember that he was getting some---

Yeah. I remember reading someplace that he WAS up for some movie roles and stuff.

Okay, so we’re in KC, and… I’m looking here, and for most of ‘63, ‘64, ‘65, I got a blank as far as where you were.

Well, I was around here for the most part, except for Kansas City, Charlotte, ‘63, ‘64, well, during that period of ‘65 and up into ‘66 as well, it was Pontiac, the GTOs came out in ‘64, and that was one of the cars we bought to race, and a Pontiac dealer down here in Milford was a partial sponsor, we had his name on the car, so for a period of time especially through the Summer, I would sell down there part time, I was kind of the ‘performance salesman’. Now in ’66, Lew Eskin, from Wrestling Revue magazine, had hooked me up with… Ernie Mohammed, out in Phoenix. Bob Harmon and I went to see him, and spent the Summer out there---well, Bob left before I did---but see, that’s where I met Eddy Guerrero’s dad, Gory, there for the first time. Jody Hamilton and Tom Renesto were there. Gorgeous George Jr., I met for the first time there, Frank Monte, Don Arnold who I bought tickets to see here in the late for, uh, in the ‘50s was wrestling out there, and so I spent the Summer in Phoenix---

Arnold was one of the main guys for Haft during the ‘50s, right?

Yes. He was.

He’s sort of forgotten now.

So many guys back then that---well, you know, I was doing ‘word association’ for a guy that we did seminars for back in February up in New England, and he said, “Territories.” I said, “Tremendous, great workers who if I mentioned their name you have never heard of.” And there were a lot. Guys who, never got out of a particular territory, who, you know, were great workers and for whatever reason never traveled---I had one of them for a partner in Knoxville, Whitey Caldwell.

Right, and we’ll get to him, too. So, Ernie Mohammed, I read something you said, was he the prototype money mark, kind of?

Yeah, well, he, you know, he, I guess he made his money in construction, or road construction or something, in the state. He had a great---he bought an old, I don’t know if he leased it or whatever, but it was an old supermarket, where he had his offices and a gym, and he ran in that building, did the TV in there once a week, and then he did a house show, he ran Casa Grande, and Tucson, and, uh… gosh, there were several other towns, we worked---we worked the Indian Reservations for the first time, where no one applauds, or they APPLAUD, and there’s no, nobody boos or, you don’t know WHAT’s getting, I mean, if you go out there and cut somebody’s head off, you get a polite round of applause, which was really kind of… ODD, to work in that environment.

That’s what a lot of guys said about the first time they would go to Japan back then.

Yeah. Because you’re not, you’re trying to---I was never, I mean I was a heel for a short time in Canada, but 99% of my career I was a babyface, and you’re doing things to get heat and to help the heel get heat, and instead you’re getting polite applause, you wanna turn around and say ‘DAMMIT, that’s not what we’re WORKING for here! WORK with us here, dammit!’ But anyway, spent the Summer out in Phoenix, enjoyed that---saw a guy there who I thought, I’m not a big country music fan, but I really liked this guy who was out in Flagstaff, and that was Waylon Jennings. Met him later on, in Nashville.

But anyway, came back home in ‘66, and Roger and Dennis had gone to Atlanta. They had written me a letter, I had written them a letter, whatever. So we’re corresponding back and forth, and they said ‘man, you’d like it here, it’s good, we’re having a good time and, money‘s not bad, you know, the trips are not long, and you know, we always had fun together, the three of us, traveling, driving around this territory,’ and so they say ‘well, we’re gonna talk to, Leo Garibaldi is the booker,’ now, I was a big Garibaldi mark, too. I mean, there was a guy, I always tell all the babyfaces I train, “You know, when a babyface makes a comeback, there should be sparks shootin’ out his ass. I mean, he should show that kind of fire,” and Garibaldi, when he and his dad were a team, the old man would give Leo the hot tag, and Leo would do his ‘Bombs Away’---the knee lift---but he was just, I mean he was a good-lookin’ young guy, but he just had ALL kinds of fire. And he was the booker and of course, I was a mark for Leo Garibaldi but, then I became a BIGGER mark later on after I really got to know him. He was the best booker I ever worked for in my life, period, end of story.

Dickie Steinborn said the same exact thing.

Uh huh. (Roddy) Piper would be another. And I know Kevin Sullivan said that. There’s, Frankie Cain might tell you that too, a lotta guys who could tell you that. In fact, I think if based now and not even having worked in the business, he could probably jump right back in and do the job. I mean he was ahead of his time if anything, I mean just a great guy, and, I don’t, can‘t speak for the rest of the world, he knew how, what buttons to push on me to get the best out of me. And I think, that’s the reason I think he’s the best booker that I ever worked for.

But anyway, I was sitting at home---the house I’m in right now as a matter of fact---and the phone rang, and it was Dennis, and he said, “Hey! We’re in the office down here, and I’m gonna put Leo Garibaldi on the phone and, we’d like you to come down, n’he‘s gonna talk to you about it.”

I said, “Ookay… “

So he got on the phone, he said, “Kirby and Hall say you can work, kid.”

And I said, “Well, I try.”

And he said, “Well, let’s find out. Let’s get you a start date and get you in here.”

And I said, “Okay. We’ll do that.”

So that’s what happened, and they were living out in Hapeville, actually Dennis was getting ready to finish up and go, he was going down to Tampa for awhile. So I came in, to Atlanta, and the first night I, again, I won’t tell you it was ’the highlight of my career’, but to me, acknowledgement from your peers that you were growing, doing the right job, are obviously the ones that I choose to be most important, you know, I mean if Richard Petty tells you you’re a great stock car driver, that’s far superior to your mother, or the next door neighbor, or a big fan. So anyway, got there and the first night in, I worked the old Auditorium on Friday night, Kirby and I, against a new young team by the name of the Andersons.

Okay, and this is what I’m looking at here… this would have been November, maybe? I’m looking at November 4th and November 11th, you and Roger against Lars and Gene.

Uh… gosh, no, it was earlier than that, I think September. Well, there WAS a return out of that first week, that first Friday night, and it---we went to the ring and that wasn’t to be the case, and that’s the part I remember so vividly. Because Leo not only was the booker, but was also a referee as you know, and the finish, whatever it happened to be, was we were gonna put the Andersons over, because, you know, they were planning on giving them a big push, as far as a team. I had never SEEN these guys, never laid eyes on them in my life.

And we went out there, and literally were tearing the friggin’ house down. And having a hell of a match, and I remember Leo coming by, I was in the ring with one of them, and I don’t know what we were doing, I was selling, they, I don’t even know what but Leo coming by and saying, “Don’t worry. You ain’t doin’ a job tonight, baby. We are bringin’ this BACK. It’s too good to just leave it laying,” and he changed the finish on us right there in the ring. He’s running around like, you know, to every, I mean which obviously he could go talk to everybody for some reason, he’s setting up a new finish, right there on the spot, as we’re in the match, to work a return. And I couldn’t have asked for a nicer compliment.

And this was your first match in.

My first match in Atlanta, as a matter of fact or in the territory. So that was my introduction to Leo.

But also, what I learned from Leo, and along with his partner Ed Capral, because he was one of the participants in this particular story I’m about to tell, was one of the things I founded my ’Personality Profile’ series---in Southeastern---on, in later yea---in fact almost ten years later, in 1974. And that was, when I sent the resume and the pictures down to Leo, to get the first time on Atlanta TV, he said, “Well, baby, you know, you’re not involved in any angles, but we wanna get you on TV and I want Ed to talk to you, to try to get you over,” he said, “is this drag racin’ stuff that you sent me on your resume, and the pictures, is that legitimate, is that a shoot, or is that just part of the gimmick?”

I said, “No. It’s a shoot.” I said, ‘”I run at the Nationals in Indianapolis, and I’m NHRA Division 3 B-stock champion, and…”, yadayadayada.

So he said, “Well, do you know anything about Georgia drag racing?”

I said, “Certainly. Don Nicholson‘s down here, and the Platt brothers,” and, you know, and I, some of the drag strips and I mean I was really heavy into it.

And he said, “Well, that’s what we’re gonna talk about. We’ll just talk about that and your background,” he said, “that’ll be a little different anyway, and that’ll be something to get you over.”

Now probably most bookers back in that era would have said, “Whaddaya wanna talk about drag racing for?“ I would never have suggested it, but Leo did. So that was my first interview in Atlanta was with Ed Capral, and Ed said, ’Now, I understand you’re in drag racing.”

“Yes, sir.”

And, “Well, what do you know about the scene in Georgia?”

I said, “Well, I know Yellow River Dragstrip, and… “ this, and so, but that’s what we talked about. Well now, here’s where, the part where I say this, that kind of laid the groundwork for my psychology in terms of making the ’Personality Profile’ series in Southeastern.

Later, a week later, two weeks later, whatever the cycle of the tape was, that was the following Monday or the Monday after that, that we were in Augusta, Bell Auditorium. And I had finished the match, I don’t remember anything about the match, but I was standing outside watching the matches, and this, you know, elderly lady came up to me and said, “Hello, Mr. Thatcher, are you going to be out here for a while?”

And I said, “Yes, ma’am.”

“My grandson came with me tonight just expressly to see you. Would you wait here while I go get him and, so he can get your autograph?”

“Why sure, I’d be happy to do that.” So she came back with the grandson, who was I would have guessed probably 14, maybe 15 years old, and so, you know, I shook his hand, and then he and the grandmother and I are talking, and so I, obviously one question, “Well, how long have you been a wrestling fan?” and ‘well, such and such and such’, and, “Do you come with your grandmother all the time?”

And before he could say anything, she spoke up and she said, “No, Mr. Thatcher, he has never been to Bell Auditorium. He always watches every Saturday with me, but he has never been to the matches---until he saw you on the television.”

And I said, “Well… really?”

“Yes, and he didn’t come because of the wrestling.”

I said, “Well---why did he come?”

“Because you were talking about drag racing and he’s a big fan of that as well. He wants to build a racecar when he gets his driver’s license.” And it just amazed me, at that point, I thought ‘okay, I sold a ticket tonight, to the matches, but it WASN’T because of wrestling, it was because of my hobby, because he related to that.’

Well, of course, as I grew older and matured a little bit, and got a little sense of, you know, of working, you know, how to work the general public and everything, I realized, what the hell is NASCAR? It’s ’HEY, he’s driving MY car.’ I mean that’s the identification thing, and then I got to thinking, ‘oh, okay, HOBBIES’. That, you know, if you read that such-and-such a movie star, if you collect coins, ‘well, so-and-so collects coins‘, ‘well, gee, we have something in common’.

And it makes that much easier to project yourself into the protagonist’s experience when you go watch him in a movie.

Yes. And that was the thing that I kept internally, in the back of my head, and when Ron Fuller gave me carte blanche to develop this program, a new TV concept, and format it as I saw fit, and---well, this actually started in ’74, we went on the air with the new concept in ’75---that was the first thing that came to mind, to do the ‘personality profile’, and that was due to that particular incident, and again that was Leo and I think that most bookers wouldn’t let you talk about anything but wrestling, they wouldn’t have even CONSIDERED that.

So that was kind of the ‘light bulb’ for you for all, for the stuff that you eventually did in commentating and publishing and the---

Yes. Absolutely, yes. Well, if you look at some of, like, some of the magazine stories that I wrote about back there, it was, like with (Blackjack) Mulligan, who was a great character in himself, but he would talk about riding in his pickup truck and listening to Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings or, and these things that you knew fans could identify with, you know, trying to give them little ‘hooks’, and, a lot of times, well, I know I tease Jimmy, Jim Ross about this, because a lot of people used to get mad at him, him and his football analogies, and I couldn’t understand that. Because to me, BEFORE Jim Ross, I was doing the same thing, and the reason was, is that wrestling is a smaller, you know, niche audience, or cult following or whatever the hell you wanna call it, and I’m thinking ‘okay, if you can hook it to something that’s more mainstream, maybe you can catch their attention better, hook them better with it‘, so you know, like you say, “My God! The Andersons are almost like the Pittsburgh Steelers’ Steel Curtain!” Okay, now, a football fan may not understand the Andersons really, who is a casual wrestling fan, but they damn sure understand who the Steel Curtain is, and they understand who the Steelers are, so, you know, they can make that analogy. I mean, you know, it didn’t change the course of anybody’s life…

… but it might have sold a few more tickets here and there.

Yup. And I think, and honestly, I think our Southeastern thing changed, opened a lot of people’s eyes on what you could do with television, and we can talk about that later as we go, but I just want to say, again, I admire Leo, I respected him, because he---he‘s a friend, and I‘m looking forward to, he and Louis Tillet, we’re hoping have dinner in Vegas this next month when we go out there.

Well, that’s another match I’m looking at here---December 2, 1966, Atlanta City Auditorium, Louis Tillet defeated Les Thatcher.

Yup. The Little King. Louis Tillet, yes.

Okay. Have we started the Cousins gimmick yet, or are we getting to that?

Actually, we did and we didn’t. When I came, I mean, that was when I saw in the Atlanta program, and they said, you know, ‘Dennis and Roger’s very close friend Les Thatcher‘, and the fact that they were cousins, and so we were looking for a hook, because what actually happened is, Leo loaned us out to Rocky McGuire in Mobile---or, well, in Dothan actually, and there’s a little town between Dothan and Tallahassee that they were in, for the life of me can‘t think of the name of it, but we went down and we worked Dothan, and this town, for Rocky. And I was letting Kirby do, you know, he’d been, honestly I’d been in the business a little bit longer, but he had been out working these promotions and knew these people, so just kinda, you know, let him use his head in terms of what we did and didn’t do. So we worked a few shots in Dothan and whatever the other town was for Lee Fields---Rocky McGuire was the booker---and so our next plan was, on that second day, Rocky sat down with Kirb and said, “You know, Stud, Lee is looking for a good babyface team to work with the Daltons“---Donnie Fargo and Frank Dalton and Johnny Long, as Daltons, you know, kind of a trio---”over in the Louisiana territory.” Lee Fields, a lot of people, everybody says ’Louisiana’, everybody thinks of Bill Watts or Leroy McGuirk, well, Lee ran, based out of Baton Rouge, ran Lafayette, Alexandria, Morgan City, Thibodeaux, Loranger, and, you know, several towns like that. So Rocky said they were looking for a babyface team to get into a feud over there, and, you know, ‘you guys, it would help if you can find a third guy, to work in the 6-mans.’

And Kirb said, ’Well hell, we’ve GOT a third guy,” and that’s when we came up with the idea for the Cousins. Just, you know, to link the three of us a little closer together, to give us more of like a family tie obviously, you know, ‘blood is thicker than water’, that sort of thing. So Kirby said, “Heck, we can go in there, and, you know, and get some new experience working on top.”

I said, “Well, I just got to Atlanta, I don’t wanna burn that bridge.”

“Well,” he said, “Leo’s a good guy and he understands, and he’s open-minded, and, you know, let’s go see what he’s got in mind, and then we make a decision.”

So, we went in and talked, and of course he said, “You just GOT here,“ and I said, “Yes, sir, then I‘ll stay here, if it’s gonna burn the bridge, I’m not going anyplace,” but he understood the situation, and, we were gonna, at that point, with the crew that was in there, we were gonna be mid-carders, so, we, you know, this was obviously good for us, you know, to get the top experience working main events, and get involved in our own programs, and so Leo gave us his blessing, and, I don’t know, we worked out another month, I guess, to finish up before we went into Louisiana.

But that’s when we started the Cousins gimmick. And of course, we set it up to work the angle with the Daltons where they always had somebody, you know, the one who was interfering, and then after the first of the year we brought Dennis in, and worked the 6-mans out, and this is late ‘66, early ‘67.

So it started that far back. How long did it end up lasting and what territories did you do it in?

Well, it, you know, it was kinda halfway done and it started, initially, it started in Georgia, and then we did it in the Louisiana territory for Lee, we did it in Tampa, in Charlotte, aaand, that was---ah, in Kansas City, and that was it, and, of course, we tried---the three of us tried to stay together, as much as we could, so from when we first kicked it off in ‘66, through, gosh, what, ‘sixty-… well, ‘70 I guess. And we weren’t always together constantly, but we were working deals where the third guy, even if he wasn’t there, would come in.

So we went down there to Louisiana, and we were doing 60-minute broadways with the Daltons for the NWA US tag titles, and Lee, or Bobby (Fields), or whoever the hell, I forget who, had told the timekeeper in Baton Rouge, ‘well, you can shave, if you can spot, a couple minutes, if you can find a good spot, go ahead, you know, they got the people rockin’, don’t be afraid to cut it a minute or two’. So the four of us were surprised when we heard the bell ring, we had split falls, and we were going through, and, damned if he hadn‘t, I mean he cut it a few minutes, he cut it like eight minutes. And the problem was, there was about a dozen fans in the audience keeping time too. So they went straight to Bill Golden, who was the promoter of record, Jimmy Golden’s dad, and so that was where we came back, I mean, we just had to use it as an angle. You know, that the Daltons had bought off the timekeeper to save the titles, and the next one was two timekeepers, not two referees, two timekeepers, and a 90-minute time limit.

But going along with that hour thing again, we did that around the territory, and we got up to Alexandria, and for whatever reason I, it escapes me, we did not have a referee. Now what happened, I don’t know if he had car trouble, there was only gonna be one referee on the card. So we had---I made sure the promoter wasn’t handling this---but there was a fan, who was a regular fan, and I guess was a Little League coach, or something like that, that they decide ’well, this guy’s gonna be the referee‘.

Oh brother.

We’re workin’ with a mark referee.

OH brother.

YOU know. So we split falls---and of course we’ve got, I mean legitimately now, the heels have to heel, right? I mean and they have to hide the pulling of the hair and this and that, because this guy is in for the babyfaces---and we‘re not getting the time cut on us on this one, and we get to 60 minutes, and that was supposed to be the end of it. So Kirby is just workin’ the referee, not even thinkin’ that this guy’s a mark, right? I mean, which he knows he is, but he’s not thinking ’well, the guy’ll take me seriously’, cause we’re used to doing this thing, and Kirby says, “Give us five more minutes. Give us five more minutes.”

Guy says, “Okay! You got five more minutes.”

(laughter)

So NOW we gotta go five fuckin’ more minutes. So Kirby thinks this is really funny, so now, at the end of THAT five minutes, “Give us five more.”

“Okay!”

(laughter)

So we go five MORE. I said, “Listen you asshole,”---

(laughter)

“--- if you ask for five at the end of THIS one, you’re gonna have Frank, Jack, AND Les Thatcher on your ass. Not when we been out here for SEVENTY MINUTES, and at this rate this asshole’ll let us go all NIGHT.”

(laughing) Probably. HE’S probably having the time of his fuckin’ life.

Well, that’s what Jack, you know, that’s what Donnie Fargo said, he said, “DAMN, Kirby,” he said, “if you say that again we’re gonna hafta put you over just to get the fuck OUTTA here. Otherwise we‘ll be here all damn NIGHT.”

So from Louisiana, from there back to Mobile. For whatever reason, for the Winter, at that time, they weren’t running a full schedule of towns down the Mobile end. Like they were just running Dothan TV, and Dothan, so they told us ’when you guys finish up the program in Louisiana, we’ll just put you on Mobile,’ and so we worked through the deal there and went down the Mobile end. Now Rocky had a different idea. He wanted to use Kirby and Hall as a tag team, and he decided that I should, since Bobby Shane was getting over as ‘The Teen Sensation’---who, by the way, he also, I mentioned that Heenan had carried my jacket, well, Bobby also did the same thing, in St. Louis… and a few years later I could’ve carried both their jackets, but that‘s neither here nor there---…

St. Louis when… what? When you were working out of KC?

Well, out of KC and out of Indianapolis. We used to go in to St. Louis and do the TV sometimes, from Indianapolis. And Bobby’s dad was a referee over there, and Bobby was carrying jackets. And that’s when we first met.

But anyway they had brought him into Atlanta, while we were down in Louisiana, as ‘The Teenage Sensation’, and he legitimately was 17 years old. And so Rocky McGuire said, “You know, Thatcher, we can pass you off as seventeen.” And so I, they had me dye my hair dark---my hair was sun-streaked a little bit, then we had put some color in too, because Kirby had light hair and we tried to dress alike in the ring, and we even had some street stuff that we’d wear to the matches, matching slacks and shirts, and that kind of stuff---so we go into Mobile, and I’m ‘The 17-Year-Old Sensation‘. The problem is, ‘The 17-Year-Old Sensation’ is twenty-six years old, and his twenty-seventh birthday is going to be that year.

Never crossed my mind what this was going to do to my social life.

And of course we’re talking about the era of kay fabe now, right? Okay, so, that was one of the things that Kirby and Hall and I enjoyed together too, was, being able to socialize, and party, I mean---even now, Dennis and I just laugh at each other if I say---… I mean, we just get off on each other, right? My wife will tell you the same thing, we look at each other and start laughing. And you know finally down in Mobile---in fact back in the days when we were single, one time we double-dated, and the girls said, “We’ll never go out with you guys again, you enjoy each other more than you enjoy us,”---so anyway we were living in a duplex over in Pensacola, Kirby and his girlfriend had one side, and Dennis and I had the other. But I was ’The 17-Year-Old Sensation’, and so, the problem with that being, I had to ACT seventeen---which meant that, when Kirby and Hall went to a nightclub, I couldn’t GO. And, that, when, they would say, “Boy, we just met some nice-looking girls, and they’re 25 years old, or 24,” well, they didn’t want anything to do with a 17-year-old. And I couldn’t say, “Well, kay fabe!”, because that just wasn’t DONE, dammit! And the wild thing was, the girls who HAD an eye for me thought I was seventeen, so they were 14 or 15 or 16, and I damn sure didn‘t wanna mess with THEM!

I told Rocky, he said, ‘You been going pretty good, kid.”

I said, “Rocky… I have NO social life.”

He said, “That’s all right, just keep workin’.” So as much fun as I had in Gulf Coast that first time in, in the Mobile area, my social life lacked a lot. Which was not what we were THERE for, obviously, but… it’s like, the wrestling was good, the social life was horrible, the first time around.

So then, we were involved in, they had a tag-team tournament in Dothan. And so since Roger and Dennis were linked on that end as a team, to make it a better deal, Championship Wrestling from Florida came into Dothan. So they brought Sam Steamboat and Eddie Graham up, as a team, and Lester Welch came up with them. And they teamed Lester and I, in this tag-team tournament, I guess because we were both named ‘Les’---everybody thinks my name is Lester, and it’s not, it’s Leslie---but because of ‘Lester‘, I suppose, but anyway, that was my first time I ever met any one of the three, and of course I, God knows I knew who Eddie Graham was, and Sam, and I knew the reputation of the Tampa territory and at that point, I am honest enough to say, I didn’t think I was packin’ the gear to go---I mean I would never at that point have sent a resume, or pictures, or at that point even ASKED to go to the Tampa territory. Cause I thought ‘man, that’s one of the premier territories of the country, I, I should, I don’t know… ‘

So we did this, the Dothan tag-team tournament, and they also worked at a spot show the next night, and, so, Lester and Eddie pulled me off to the side, and they said, “Listen, we like your work, and we’d like to have you in Tampa,” which floored me. I mean it was a great compliment, but there was also a supply system, and they said, “We’ve spoken with Rocky and Lee, and if you’re interested, we’ll bring you in,” and what they ended up doing was making me ’Rookie of the Year’---my seventh year in the business.

Right.

But, you could legitimately, what they legitimately said was ‘well, he’s got the background, but he hasn’t wrestled in the NWA for that long’, you know, so, ‘everything else is minor league’, and this is his first year…

Ohh, okay, the “ ‘NWA’ Rookie of the Year”!

Right! Exactly! Exactly! So anyway, we set that deal up, and Kirby said, “Well, what am I supposed to do?”, and I said, “Well, maybe we can set something up for later,” which we did, he ended up coming in on my heels, and I wasn’t the 17-year-old sensation down there, so he and I were teamed up down there, in ‘67, Summer of ‘67, so I went down there, as a single. First time I ever laid eyes on Gordon Solie, first time I ever saw a TV commentator---well, Ed Capral, I shouldn’t say that, Ed did a pretty good job---but Gordon was the Archduke, he‘s STILL the Archduke as far as I’m concerned. He was the first guy to call everything just straight-across-the-board serious, and of course you know back during that time, a LOT of the commentators were your local weatherman, or a kiddie show host, and they were more into, they were getting maybe 25 bucks to do the show, extra and over and above what their salary was at the station, and they weren‘t wrestling fans necessarily, and they spent more time trying to get themselves over than they did the wrestlers.

Did you ever hear the story about how Gordon got the gig… ?

He got the gig through Don Curtis…

… about what happened with the guy before him? Salty Sol Fleischmann?

That was the guy’s name?

Yeah. He was the sports guy, big fisherman, always wore a yachting cap, and it’s before I remember, but the way I heard, he was not smartened up, and he became legitimately so incensed at Saul Weingeroff for being a Jewish guy managing a Nazi tag team (the Von Brauners) that he walked off.

That right? (laughs) But I was so fascinated the first time I saw Gordon, I thought ’shit! This is The MAN!’

Well, you know, the funny thing was, from the opposite perspective, I grew UP watching Gordon. I was like ’okay, this is what a wrestling announcer is, he’s kind of like ANY OTHER KIND of sports announcer.’

Sure.

But then, when I started seeing the OTHER territories, I was like ‘what the FUCK is this?’

(laughs) Yes, I know.

‘ … How is anybody supposed to BUY what‘s going on in the RING if the ANNOUNCERS are treating it as a---’ you know… well, I don’t have to tell you.

I remember---we were talking about when I was a kid here---from New York, and Chicago, Dennis James, who was a big game show host, what was the dancing cigarette packs? Old Gold. I remember him doing wrestling from New York, and when somebody would have somebody in a hold, he was cracking his knuckles.

Yeah, or twisting a comb, all that stuff, and I watch some of the older tapes, and the announcers kind of have that smirky thing going on, ’Hans Schmidt the Meanie from Munich’, and ’no no, Georgie,’---you know, Gorgeous George---’mustn’t talk back to Mr. Dempsey’…

Sure. Well, I can tell you right here in Cincinnati, there was a local chain of bargain stores, and one of the owners, Hy Ellner, the Ellner family owned the thing, Hy was, he and a local TV celebrity called ‘Willie Phall’ did the commercials for the Bargain City who sponsored wrestling, and did them live from another studio. And he always called himself ‘The Bargain City Kid’, and ’The Bargain City Kid Willie Phall’, and ’The Bargain City Kid’ wore a goofy cowboy hat, and two toy guns---backwards---and, ‘Willie Phall’ dressed up like some old country guy, like a Lil Abner sorta thing, and they would go out and say, “Boy, we’ve got all these non-breakable dishes!” you know, “a whole set of nonbreakable Melmac dishes here at Bargain City for just five ninety-five!” or whatever it was, and they’d start throwing the dishes and breakin’ ‘em. You know, and stuff like that. And I know, they used to have the Sheik, Eddie Farhat, would run into that studio in the middle of a commercial, and rip through the place, you know, and tear up stuff, and threaten them.

And now you were mentioning Saul and the Von Brauners, and I remember when the Von Brauners first came into the territory here in the early ‘60s, and we were doing Cincinnati TV, and they---Ellner came into the dressing room, and the Von Brauners go, “Get out,” cause, they didn’t know who he was.

“Hey! I’m the sponsor, and---”

“We don’t give a shit who you are, get outta here,” you know, “you’re not a wrestler.”

“Well here, I got this time here, you know, you guys have that German gimmick, and your manager, and we want you to come over there, and do this and we’ll do that and you’ll do this---”

And they basically said, “Hey, FUCK you. WE don’t do comedy, we don’t do that shit, we’re not clowns. We’re wrestlers. If I come over there and hit you, I‘m gonna hit you. And if you come in while I‘m in the ring, and fuck with me, you won’t ever do it again.”

“Well, I’m the sponsor!”

“I don’t give a shit WHO you are.” And that was the way they stood on it.

But you’re right, that was the kind of shit that went on. And Gordon was just such a, so DIFFERENT, it was just amazing. But the whole Florida experience at that time, was---first guy I worked with, was in Tampa, was Don Curtis, who has become a lifelong friend, in fact I saw him, he was in Mobile, he and Dottie, who are two of my favorite people in the entire world. He was such a vital, intelligent, quick-witted guy, I mean, just a great human being.

And what a great friggin’ wrestler he was.

Oh yes. Well, see, and that’s the other thing too. I mean, you know, I’ve got a little amateur background, and I can take care of myself, but I, listen, I’m no shooter, by any stretch of ANYBODY’S imagination, I’m a worker. And so I saw in the Tampa paper, my first night in Tampa itself, and I’m working with Don Curtis.

Oh, CHRIST.

You know, it’s kinda like the first time I worked with Bill Miller. But I’m sitting in the Tampa dressing room, and I see him walk in---I mean, I knew him from the magazines, he was in all the wrestling magazines, when he was up in New York, doing the thing with the Grahams---and speak to a couple people and then look over my way, I guess he had asked ‘who am I, who’s this guy I’m working with tonight’, so he came over and said, “Hi! I’m Don Curtis. We’re working together tonight.”

“Yes, sir,” and I’m yes-sirring him and no-sirring him.

“Mind if I sit here, Les?”

“No, Don, no, just, please, make yourself at home.” So he sat down, and we talked, and never, I mean, he didn’t even start talking about wrestling, or ‘here’s something I wanna do’, just said ‘where are you from?’, and ‘how long you been in the business?’, and all this, so then finally Eddie came over and said ‘well, this is what we wanna do’, and bladadada, so---I don’t remember what we did, a draw, or, a 15-minute draw, or something, I don’t remember, cause they were---obviously I wasn’t gonna beat him, but since they were gonna make me Rookie of the Year, they wanted to take care of me a little bit too. But anyway, by the time we went out there, I felt like I’d known Don Curtis all my life. And I was comfortable. And that was just because of Don, and his professionalism, and his willingness to take care of a young guy, who he’d never laid eyes on in his life.

You know, another thing about Don Curtis, how ahead of his time he was---I talked to a guy who talked to a guy who has some of the damn New York films from the ’50s, and he hit the Grahams with a Missile Dropkick, off the top rope--a DOUBLE Missile Dropkick, on BOTH Grahams, and this was like 1957.

And he did then, what they call a Huracarana now, we just called a Front Flying Head Scissors, and I’d never seen anybody do it the way he did it, and I never tried it that way, I mean I did mine like the Buddy Rogers Flying Head Scissors. But yeah, Curtis was, talking about, you’re right, ahead of his time. That‘s why the first time they said, “ ‘what the heck is that? ‘it‘s a Huracarana‘,” I said, “No, it’s not, that’s a Front Flying Head Scissors.”

“Well, that was invented by luchadors.”

“Well, I don’t know about that, but the first time I saw it was in ‘67 and it wasn’t a luchador.”

So that was the start down there, and then the neat thing, and I always tease Terry Funk about it, that was the first territory Terry ever came to, outside of Amarillo, which he came in ‘67, and we got to be buddies then. The storyline was, that the three guys, three finalists in the Rookie of the Year were Bobby Shane, Terry Funk, and myself, and I won---I still have the trophy that Gordon presented me, here at the house---and I see Terry years later, I say, “Well, you know, I won Rookie of the Year and got the trophy, but you got the money over the long haul. So, who won out? Who actually won the Rookie of the Year?”

That was a good run down there, and again, got to work with a lot of top guys, you know, Dean Malenko’s dad Larry (Simon aka The Great Malenko) was there, and I got to work with him, and… I was teasing Sputnik (Monroe), I was telling this in Mobile a few weeks ago---I met Sputnik first time in Kansas City, and that’s the first time I ever worked with him, and he scared the SHIT outta me, too---and not like he was gonna beat me up or anything, but he said (another dead-on imitation), “Kid, when you go to give me the Backdrop,” he said, “you‘ll feel me put my weight on you,” he said, “put your---,” he said, “shove up with all---,” he said, “use your hands off your own legs, for leverage,” and he said, “and give me all the air ya can.”

“Oh, okay, yes sir, Mr. Monroe.”

So anyway when he called for the Backdrop, and we set up, and I gave it everything I had, and with the momentum of gettin’ him up I kinda lost my balance, which you’ll do in that situation anyway, and by the time like I took a half step forward and I had caught my balance and turned---he was still in the air! I said, “Aw FUCK!”

I had never seen anybody get that high on a Backdrop---well, I shouldn’t say that, I saw Ray Stevens and Red Bastien working against each other, when Ray and Art (Nelson), and Red and Lou Klein, were working, in Indianapolis. Well, I saw Ray break in, at 15. Cause when Ray and I first met---well, hell, when he broke in at 15, I was like 10, right? Or whatever, and of course I figured he must be a hundred years old, right? He’s an adult, he’s a professional wrestler---so then when we first met each other, years later, and we’re talking about age, and he’s, you know, trying to tell me he’s only five years older, I said, “BULL SHIT! I was a little KID when that---”

He said, “Well Les, so was I.”

(laughter)

“I was 15 years old when I started.”

Continued

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