| Now, the first thing I’d like to do, Sputnik, is clear up what your name actually is. Now I understand Brumbaugh was your stepfather?
Yeah. I was born in Dodge City, Kansas, 1928, December the 18th, and my father’s name was Merrick. He died in an airplane accident two months before I was born. Okay, and where does Monroe and DiGrazio come from? Are those names in your family? Monroe’s my middle name. Rocco Monroe Brumbaugh. DiGrazio was a name I made application to join the Navy in, because I was underage, and it didn’t go through. Someplace down the line in the Merricks, there’s the DiGrazios. When do you remember first becoming aware of wrestling? What was it got you into wrestling as a whole in the first place? My mother’s father, Andrew Jackson Gosee (go-SAY), was a bare-knuckle fighter and he had three--- four grandsons me included, and I was the only one he picked to make a boxer out of. When I was probably five years old he was putting me through the stance, and how to punch, and all that, and it seemed like a long time from when I was a little guy to maturity. And we worked on the bag and all that, and then when I was seventeen I went in the Navy and I worked out with the fighters in the Navy, and then I got discharged and everything was black, there wasn’t no white fighters in 1948 and -9. So were you aware of professional wrestling before you actually got into it? Ever go to the matches as a kid, anything like that? No. I, let’s see, I started wrestling in the ninth grade cause there wasn’t no fighters around, no boxers, and my coach, Stub Mayo, said I was so aggressive I might not pin anybody but I might kill ’em. And then I got ribbed on a, by a friend, we went to a carnival and they had an Athletic Show, and they were giving five dollars a minute if you could stay with the guy five minutes, and my buddy, he said, “C’mon, Rock, try’m.” And I said, “Well, I, you know, he’s a professional, I---” “Ah, what the hell? He ain’t gonna break your leg or nothin’.” And, the guy wasn’t lookin’ for me to have any knowledge, and I leg-dived him and took him down and cross-barred his arm and he had to give up. So I got the money and they got kinda interested in me. And the guy asked me if I would be interested in wrestling for the carnival. His name was Jack Nazworthy. A very tough guy. So it was actually Nazworthy (Jack Nazworthy ran the most successful string of AT Shows in the carnival business) himself you took your very first time? No. It was Bill Ely. All the wrestlers at that time, in ‘47, -’8, -‘9, had big bellies on ‘em, like Sumo wrestlers, and I was streamlined, I moved around good and everything, and the guy offered the thing and my buddy, he says, “Why don’t you take him up on it, you know, you get this under your belt and be a pro?” And I laughed and I said, “Well, I’ll try it, you know, while they’re here.” And Nazworthy said, “If you get beat you’re finished, just pack your bag and go.” I thought, ‘what a cruel son of a gun THAT is‘. But I didn’t get beat the five years I was on the carnival. How exactly did the AT Shows at that time work? I know you would have the shoots with the marks, but there were also worked matches between the pros, right? Yeah, if we didn‘t have any comers, we had a stick man out in the crowd, and he‘d come in the last two days. If we didn’t have much action Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, then Friday he would come in. Buck Fanning was our stick man, from Wichita, Kansas. And he would set it up like he was one of the marks coming in. Yeah. Not many people know how to talk about this. I interviewed Les Thatcher for the magazine---he said to tell you hello, by the way---and he worked AT Shows for Tony Santos his first couple of years in, and he said in his time they would have the midgets and the girls with the troupe. Was there any of that when you were doing them? No. You talked about how Red Berry came in and did a little work with the AT Show. Did he come in as the stick man, or did he come in announcing he was Wild Red Berry, Professional Wrestler? Emporia, Kansas, I think. The circus, or the carnival was there, and they had wrestling for the grandstand people or whatever, they had a wrestling show and I went over there and challenged him, ‘Nazworthy sent me and I‘m challenging you‘, and we sold out the AT Show about four or five times and then he left. And we became real good friends, I was from Wichita, he was from Coffeyville, Kansas. I saw something about he was at one point I think MAYOR of one of the towns in Kansas, or was that just kay fabe? He may have been, I don’t know. You‘ve mentioned a few times in the stuff I‘ve read that there would be some degree of interplay, cooperation, between the actual pro wrestling circuit and the AT Shows, they‘d try not to conflict with each other, so on and so forth, and there‘s be some back-and-forth with the guys, like you were just talking about with Red. Did you go in and work in spots on regular cards while you were still basically doing the AT Shows, before you ‘officially‘ turned pro? My actual name was Pretty Boy Roque (‘Rocky ’ ) and I got Mel Peters, who was a copy of Gorgeous George, and he got hurt, and he couldn’t wrestle any more, so I bought his wardrobe, it was a real flashy four or five pieces, a cape and stuff. And I had talked to… Orville Brown’s stick man, what was his name… Pearl Christy, and I told him that I’d like to wrestle in Wichita, and he said, “You won’t do any good in your own home town, nobody does any good in their own home town.” So I had my hair permed, and I rocked and rolled and they were very satisfied with me, but they kept me out of Wichita, and I worked Salina, Topeka, Dodge City where I was born---sold that out---but I got my start with Pearl Christie, and he sent me to St. Louis and I wrestled in St. Louis for awhile, I don’t remember exactly, it wasn’t too long, 6 or 8 weeks was all you could stay in a territory at that time, and then went back to Wichita and worked for Max Bowman, who was runnin‘ opposition. Orville Brown hated Max Bowman with a passion. Was this before or after (Sam) Muchnick and (Lou) Thesz had merged, do you remember? Well… Thesz was on the road, just occasionally did he come in to St. Louis. And Sam Muchnick had Billy Darnell as a booker, and I was the only man in the Club. I lived in a hotel about two blocks down from the St. Louis Wrestling Club office, which was in another hotel, and I got introduced to Ed ’Strangler’ Lewis and Bill Longson, who was the main man you had to see before you could see Sam Muchnick. So Billy Darnell called me and told me Strangler Ed Lewis was in the office, and I oughtta come up and introduce myself. So I came up and he said, “I hear you’re a pretty tough little guy. You wanna pull necks?” God, I was thrilled to death. So I took my coat off and man, I reared back and nailed him and we hooked up and he sat out and said, “My God, who taught you how to work?” I hung around there, I went to Toronto from there as Pretty Boy Roque, and the Louisville promoter, Frank McKenna, thought I looked like Elvis and called me Elvis ‘Rock’ Monroe, and if you say that fast, Elvis Rock Monroe, it sounds like ‘Elvis Rock and Roll’. ElvisRockMonroe---okay. So then I went to Toronto, and then I went to Minneapolis, and the main man in Minneapolis had just passed away and his son was doin‘ the booking and took me to the office--- Tony Stecher and Dennis Stecher. Dennis, yeah, he was the stick man and he asked me how I‘d like to go to Salt Lake City, and I went to Salt Lake City. The star of the show was Roy Shire---he and Dave Reynolds took over the territory when I was on the road---and he had me second him because of my mouth and my ability to talk. Now Shire was a talker himself as I recall. Yeah. Bob Corby was my main man, he was an old-timer and they teamed me up with him as a tag team, and he coached me, he told me, “When you see Shire do something that you like, that appeals to you, copy it.” And consequently I did that, and became Elvis ‘Rock’ Monroe. Could Roy shoot? I‘ve heard conflicting things. Gosh, I don’t know whether he could or not. There wasn’t any call for it. Uh… (pause) I was trying to think of the top Italians who were rough, tough and hard to bluff… Guy Brunetti and… Joe Tangaro. --- Joe Tangaro, yeah. Were they doing the Brunetti Brothers at that point? Yeah. I think so. They were shooters? Well, as far as I know. I never tried either one of ‘em or anything, but they jerked some guys around in Salt Lake City. Okay, about what year are we right now? ‘52 and ‘53. And then like I said, you really had to rock and roll if you were gonna stay very long, because about six or eight weeks they’d put you on the road goin’ someplace else. Nobody stayed in a territory like they did later, like I did in Memphis, I was there a year… probably fifteen, sixteen months. But after Salt Lake… I was in Seattle, then I went from Seattle to Mobile, Alabama, and I pooped out. I left on Thursday to be there on Saturday, and I drove as far as I could drive, and then I’d sleep, and then I’d drive, and then I’d sleep. And I finally got where I was---I had a thermos of coffee, and I would get out and walk around the car, and then get back in and drink a little coffee and go on down the road a little further, sometimes 8 or 10 miles before I’d get on the nod again. And when I got to Greenwood, Mississippi, I was really plumb out, and there was a little black guy hitchhikin’, and I asked if he can drive, and he said ‘yeah’, and I said ‘okay’, and I told him to be very careful because I’m a wrestler and I’ll break your legs if you get wild. So he had to take care of business, and I’ll take a nap. So he drove me to the TV studio, in Mobile, and that’s where I got the name. An old lady called me a ‘nigger-lovin’ son of a bitch’, and this really blew up, and when we got in the arena---the TV studio---they had bleachers on one side and curtains on the other side of the ring, and I’d open the curtains and act like I was kissin’ the little black guy and that old lady would just raise holy hell. And finally Security told her if she kept cursing he was gonna have to put her out, and she says, “What he really is, by God, is a damn Sputnik.” The Sputnik had just went up, I didn’t know what the hell it was. And everybody took up on it, the announcer and the commentator started calling me ‘Sputnik’ on TV in my first match in Mobile, and then everybody picked up on ‘Sputnik’, like, you know, it was a big deal. But, finally, maybe a month later, I figured it out that it was, Russia had beat us into space with a ‘Sputnik’. And my middle name, Monroe, fit right in there. When did you first get the ‘Sweet Man’ tag? The blacks in Memphis. They’d call a tall guy ‘Shorty’ and a fat guy ‘Slim’, and they said, ‘You’re so bad, you’ve gotta be a pretty boy.” Cause you wanna know what I just read? Swear to God, somebody wrote that you got ‘the Sweet Man’ because you had diabetes. (laughs) I‘ve had a lot of things, but I have never had diabetes, knock on wood. So how long in Mobile this time… ? It was probably six or eight weeks, and Fuller bought the Memphis territory. There was a Nashville territory and a Memphis territory, and Memphis covered north Mississippi, west Arkansas, and Dyersburg and some towns in the western part of Tennessee. Now this is Buddy Fuller, right? He must have started promoting almost as soon as he started wrestling. Yeah, he was a Welch, his father was Roy Welch… … and Les was his uncle… … and more important is the fact that I introduced him to the House Of Horizontal Refreshment. (laughter) So you got into Memphis, and I believe very quickly won a tournament for the state title, right? Yeah. Now I’ve got a story here that I’ve got several versions of, of the next night, you going to the Mid-South State Fair, and… punching a cowboy’s horse…? And--- That is the most ribbed-up story in the damn world, and I got a front page of the (Memphis) Commercial Appeal with me and the cowboy and President Eisenhower on the front of it, on the first page of the newspaper. I did not---I didn’t hit him, or hit the horse, or anything. I was sittin’ on the fender of a friend’s truck, who had a, I don’t know how to say, he had four or five horses that did a circus act kinda thing? And I was settin’ on the fender waitin’ for him, because we were gonna go eat together. And I had strutted over and kicked a Brahma bull in the ass and he went right in the chute like I was directing him. And I strutted my little strut by the fence and come down and got on the fender of the car. And some cowboy said somethin’ and I said, “Well, you would-be cowboys and goat-ropers, I come from a family of a REAL bunch of cowboys.” My uncles on my mother’s of the family side were all cowboys and worked hard at it. When I was talkin’ about the goat-ropers and whatever I said, it pissed this guy off, and he come over and told me to get off of their asses, don’t push my luck, and then he threw a punch at me which was like hittin’ me with a powder puff and I slid off the fender of the truck and leg-dived him and when I come up on him to work him over, about six policemen picked me up and carried me off and I didn’t get to make my comeback, but he hit me like a girl or somethin’. Anyway, there wasn’t much to it, and that was the way the thing wound up and ended. I didn’t hit the horse. I’d kick the shit out of somebody that hit my horse. And I think then that got all screwed up, and then the, I don’t know who the sportswriter was for Memphis Commercial Appeal, but I called him ’Buddha’ because he’d set in a big chair with his legs crossed in his lap, know what I’m talkin’ about? And I called him Buddha and that really pissed him off. Well, the picture on the front of the newspaper, there was the cowboy with his hat on, and me with a bandage over my eye. He didn’t do anything to me, I got the eye from Billy Wicks. And the blacks outnumbered the whites in Russwood Park, and grabbed me and took me up in the air and then passed me through 10,000 people. There were 20,000 people there. Rocky Marciano who was the guest referee made five grand, Billy Wicks and I made five hundred. That was the all-time attendance record in that ballpark, too. Okay, you got the eye from Billy Wicks---that was in the finals of the title tournament. I had the belt so it musta been. So this sportswriter was the one who trumped up the story about the cowboy beating the shit out of you? I don’t know who started that story. Because, I mean, Dory (Funk Jr.) tells the story that way, whole bunch of people tell it that way. I believe Billy Wicks even told it that way to Scott Teal. I can’t help what they say. I’m telling you how it is. Okay, I hear you. So the tournament was for the belt and the Cadillac? No. It was for the belt, and I had it remade to my specifications, and Billy Wicks won the Cadillac. I had Chico Cortez, God bless his soul, he passed away, but I had him as a stick man in the crowd, and I told him, “If it gets too bad, come in the ring and save me.” And Wicks busted my eye and I looked like I was painted red, where I bled, and Chico rolled in the ring and raised up, and Marciano knocked him out, and that was the end of that, and I whipped Billy Wicks‘ ass till he joined the police force. I gave him a real good ass-whippin‘. Here in Memphis in ‘59 also I see you did a boxer vs. wrestler match with Joey Maxim, who had been the light heavyweight champion from ‘50 to ‘52. Yeah. He knocked me on my ass. The deal was that we would box three rounds, and then wrestle. And he stood up for his business, and I stood up for mine. I beat him in two or three minutes. So he won the boxing and you won the wrestling---was this a shoot match? Oh, yeah. Okay. That’s different. Do you remember how it came about? I don’t know for sure. I think it was through Marciano bein’ the guest referee, I don‘t know---… gosh darnit, there was a booker and I can’t think of his name… who had Memphis before Fuller got it? Big, tall, robust, good-lookin’ guy… Okay, wait, so the ballpark and the Maxim match were before Buddy bought the territory? No. Okay, so where does the guy you’re trying to think of come into it? He helped out in the office with the newspaper people and all that stuff---Les Wolfe! Okay, and I‘ve got something to ask you about him when we get to Georgia. Now, I think you worked back in the Gulf Coast territory somewhere around here too? No, after I went to Memphis I stayed out of Mobile until Rocky McGuire, who was a small-town promoter, said he had a guy that looked exactly like me and he named him Rocket, and his name was Maury High--- Okay, that’s already getting us into like ‘66, right? Yeah. Okay, let’s get back to that, cause here’s what I wanted to ask. Jody Hamilton said that in Mobile, at some point in ‘59, they billed him as Ricky ‘Rocket’ Monroe, and I think dyed the streak in his hair, it was just for a week, so I was wondering if you were there or if you even knew about it when it was happening. I was there for that. That was before I went to Memphis. His brother Larry and I were real good friends. I stayed in Memphis about fifteen or sixteen months, and then I went to Texas, Houston, and Bill Fletcher, an old AT Show buddy, was my Rocket. Now was that when, I got here about you working Dory Dixon and I’m not sure if that was supposed to be the first integrated match in Houston, but was this that far back? ‘60? Yeah. Was Dory just coming up from Mexico? I think so, yeah. And Bill and I had the tag team titles there in Houston, and I don’t know whether Roy (Welch) called me or Nick (Gulas) called me, one of the highers-up asked me to come back in with Fletcher, and we went back to Tennessee. The Nashville territory. Yeah. Now Buddy Fuller started promoting Phoenix in there somewhere, and you guys went out there. Yeah, and that was easy, an easy town. They really responded to the big mouth, ‘the Body Women Love and Men Fear’. Didn’t stay in Phoenix very long, I don’t remember but it wasn’t six months, or maybe nine months, but I won a Cadillac tournament there. Buddy Fuller liked those car tournaments, didn‘t he? I got you in them all over the place, Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, now Phoenix, and I think they were all when he was promoting. Well, they drew like hell. They would make a list of maybe twenty or thirty guys, and we got guys in Phoenix for the blowoff on that Cadillac tournament, they sent guys in from California, I think there was a couple of guys from Amarillo… I think I won my first Cadillac tournament in ‘64, but it might have been ‘63 with a ‘64 car. You and Bill went up to New York for awhile as Sputnik and Rocket, too, right? Yeah. I left Fletcher there. He didn’t wanna leave, and then I booked myself in Mobile and left. It was the shits, the bookings, it’s the shits when you gotta go from New York to Chicago, you gotta take a plane. Right, that’s when they were sending the talent to work for (Fred) Kohler, so like ‘61, ‘62. And then I think I went to Amarillo. First time? Yeah. Tell me about the Old Man (Dory Funk, Sr.). He was a real ball buster. He weighed about a hundred and eighty pounds, and he was rough, tough, and hard to bluff. I had some great matches with him. He put Dory Jr. in with me in Amarillo and said ‘teach him’ and I was very aggressive and taught him, and then the next shot was Terry Funk--- And that was his first match… … and I heard somebody in the dressing room say somethin’ about his nose bleedin’ easy, and I hooked him in a headlock and rubbed his nose and made his nose bleed, and the Old Man came from the office upstairs, he was standin’ up there watchin’, and then he come down the stairs and told him if he didn’t do somethin’ HE was gonna kick his ass. So I put him over, and everybody was happy. Okay, another little story about that time, this is in ‘64, in Plainview, Texas---let me read you what Junior wrote: “B.T. Bridges,”---this was the local promoter, guy in his 80s---”sat down to talk to my father. He said, ‘We have a problem Dory. We have Opposition here in Plainview.’ Sputnik Monroe jumped out of his seat and said, ‘Who is the puke that is running opposition here in town. I'll go kick him in the ass so hard I will be hopping around on one leg, because the other one will be stuck up his ass. Dory I'll will whup him like Borden House Pie I'm a Diamond Ring and Cadillac Man and nobody is going to mess with my way of making a living.’ My father said, ‘Who in the Hell is running here? Is it Fritz?’ (Referring to Fritz Von Erich, NWA promoter in the Dallas territory) B.T. said, ‘No Dory, it is nothing like that, it is the Catholic church here in town, they are having wrestling shows at their recreation hall on Wednesday nights.’ “ That ring a bell? Yup. Well, I was a little goofy because I’d rather fight than make love to a pretty girl, so--- I‘ve heard that… … I wasn’t exactly ‘right’. (laughter) Now from Amarillo we went to… I think Buddy had bought Georgia. Had he already bought it by the time you got there or did (Don) McIntyre still have it? No, Buddy had bought it, was in the office when I got there. Now Les Wolfe was apparently booking somewhere in between them, was he still there when you got there? Yeah, he helped out in the Georgia office because it was a big city and… I don’t know how to say this… it was a big city and Fuller was… he needed help. Les was there in the promotion, and Fred Ward had Columbus, Georgia, had some little towns around there. Who was actually booking when you came in? Was Little Eagle ever the booker when you were there? No. Do you remember when Leo Garibaldi came in? Was that a little later? Yeah. I don’t remember who the hell it was doing the booking when I got there. You had a few run-ins with Antonino Rocca in Georgia. I didn’t have any run-ins with him. I beat the shit out of him and he run out of the ring. Okay, was that the match… I‘m looking here and I show two matches with Rocca, one in March and… one in June, at the Ponce de Leon Ballpark... I only had one match with him and that was in the (Municipal) Auditorium. And I told his manager, whoever the guy was, that he would have to put me over, or I would get over, and I told (Rocca), “Are you gonna put me over?” and he said, “No,” and I hit him right in the nose and beat the shit out of him and he ran. He tried the old street fighter, he didn‘t do well, he thought he would kick me in the balls or somethin‘ and take over but he didn’t get there. Now I see, and I remember this from the magazines at the time, you guys going in and wrestling at the Atlanta Penitentiary. Yeah. I really got over there. I didn’t wanna go there to start with. I said, “I ain’t goin’ there,” and Fuller said, ‘Yes, you are, you S.O.B. .” So, I thought ‘how the hell are you gonna entertain a buncha killers and rapists and all that?’, and then I snapped. I was wrestlin’ Greg Peterson and I took him down and pulled his tights down off of his butt and went to fumblin’ with myself and they tore the bleachers down. They thought I was gonna screw him right there in the ring. I didn’t get that far, he hit me in the eye, eleven stitches worth. Did you guys go back? No, just the one time. Cause I got you in a tag match, you and Treach Phillips against Fuller and Joe Scarpa at the pen. Oh. Yeah, that is right. I beg your pardon. I think we were there the one time only, so we must have had the team match after the single match. And now we‘re coming down to the Atlanta Speedway, the tournament finals for the Cadillac AND the initial Georgia Heavyweight championship, and you and Dick the Bruiser. Yeah. They imported him, they thought he would be a big draw. I won the Cadillac and the title, cause I was the local boy and all that shit. He really worked me over, beat the shit out of me. He wasn’t a regular in Georgia at that time at all? No. And Bruiser worked very stiff with you? Nobody worked stiff with me. They may have come out of the corner wantin’ to, but they didn’t get there. The only guy who really paddled my ass was Danny Hodge. Bruiser just beat the shit out of me. It was like a workin’ shoot. He’d throw me out of the ring and come out and beat the shit out of me when I was tryin’ to sell and get my breath back. Everybody was greatly impressed with the match. Joe Scarpa was the main man as a babyface and he really got pissed off when they brought Bruiser in for the blowoff. It woulda drew more money with Scarpa, but Fuller made a deal with the Bruiser and they went through with it. Do you remember how long you held the state title? Probably about a year. Did it up your payoffs or make any kind of difference to you? No. Now around in here you started having some matches with Hiro Matsuda, who had taken the Junior title off Danny Hodge at that point. He was a great hand. We had great matches. Really super matches. I don’t know where the belt went from him, back to Hodge? Yeah, and we’ll get to what happened in Tulsa in 1970. Now I see Eddie Graham was coming up and wrestling some matches with you around this time too. Yeah. He was the main man in Cowboy Luttrall’s office. He was the main man in Florida. Yeah, which is where I grew up and I remember all of that very well. I spent a lot of time in Florida. Yeah I remember, and as a matter of fact, I still got this and the picture will be in the article, in 1965 Wrestling Revue came out with a photo album magazine, full page pictures, and it was broken up into regions, and you were in the South, and, musta been a little bit after that, when you were in Florida and you were a babyface, I got your autograph on that picture. I’ll be damned. You know, I met this pretty little girl in the Tampa office… (Sputnik proceeds to tell a story that we are NOT gonna print.) … you were better off with the sister you HAD. Uh… okay. I notice you traded off the Georgia title with Donnie Fargo. Who the hell was the babyface? It was heel vs. heel. He was very good. Okay, I’ve got you in Georgia until about March of ‘65 and then back to Amarillo, and Terry Funk’s debut match that we already talked about… and then back to Georgia around the end of the year… Yeah. … and you’re a babyface. Did you go back in as a babyface, or--- Yeah. I went back in as a heel and then turned. Do you remember the angle you turned on? Damn. Maybe it’ll come back to me, I can’t remember. Yeah, because I’ve got you teaming with Fuller and (Ray) Gunkel--- It’s a strange thing about promoters. All the promoters… Gunkel died, Savannah, Georgia, in a dirty dressing room and he hated a dirty dressing room, they always had to go in and be damn sure it was clean. Eddie Graham committed suicide, shot himself in the temple and blowed his eyes out, and then shot himself again in the mouth. Buddy Fuller was operating in baby diapers and didn‘t know what planet he was on. So the thieves in the wrestling business… it was amazing how much money they made, in comparison to what they paid. They threw the money at a ladder and the bills that stayed on the ladder, that’s what they paid us with. (Pause.) And all those guys got what they deserved. Who were the good payoff guys? Uh… LeRoy McGuirk was fair, but they all were pretty much the same. They took advantage. You know, it’s an amazing thing, there’s no tape of me. Yeah, I know you’ve been looking for some years. You know, Mike Graham, I’ve been hearing for years that he has everything in a refrigerated vault. I don’t know if it’s true, but I’ve been hearing it for years. Well, it would be great to be able to get some of it. They’re gonna do a picture show of me, and it sure would be great if we had some film. I cussed Mike out, so he ain’t gonna do no business with me. He’s a, what did I call him? Daddy’s Boy. Jack Brisco said the same thing, in his book. (laughs) Said that Eddie had him come out and work out with Mike, to help him with his wrestling, and Mike didn’t want any part of it. Now at one point, you said you saw Eddie rip somebody’s nose off. No. Not off, but damn near off. He wanted Brisco to jerk the guy around, and Jack said he would prefer not doing that, and Graham got kinda hostile and said he’d do it himself. He got the guy down on his hands and knees in a start position and reached over his head and jerked his nose. Tore his nostrils loose off his lip. He didn’t want him to run opposition any more. Now when was this? Was this when Don Curtis and (Boris) Malenko and Louis Tillet split off, or---… ? Oh, this was way before that happened. I don’t remember who the guy was. Okay, so now we’re in early ‘66, and that’s when you came down to Florida, and right away I see a program with Buddy Fuller. Now did Buddy have an interest in the Tampa office at that time? I don’t know what the deal was. He took over the bookin’. His uncle Lester was the booker and I don’t know if Buddy was the front man or whatever you might call him, I don’t know. I see in the summer a program with Les, in Fort Lauderdale, a series of stip matches---a glove match---you remember what that was…? No. … the next week a Texas Death, the next week a Bare-Knuckles No DQ, and this is all in Lauderdale. Yeah, we sold out Lauderdale, we broke a record for attendance, I guess I worked with Graham, and we had 16 or 18 weeks, returns. And then came another Gold Cadillac tournament, and now the first Florida heavyweight title, and that came down to you putting over Les Welch in the finals. Yeah. Very colorful guy. (laughs) That was the biggest mistake ever made in wrestling. That guy has no personality, or flash. (laughs) Let me tell you why I’m laughing. You know this fella Kurt Neilson? No. Well, he does a lot of stuff for the CAC, does their website and all that kinda stuff, and he’s a good artist, and this last year he did caricatures of the boys, and Les was one of the guys who was being honored, and he knew I go back to that era in Florida, and he said, “Okay, Les Welch, I’m trying to capture something about him, what was there to capture?” and I said, “Uh… “ (laughs) That’s perfect. After the title match, did you and Les go into a program over the title? Yeah, we picked up where Eddie and I done the long run in Lauderdale, Lester and I did about five weeks. This was after the title tournament? Yeah. Okay, these dates may be screwed up. Here’s something else I heard about I wanted to ask you---do you remember a time Eddie Graham wanted you to shoot on Don Serrano? Yeah. Okay, I got Terry Funk’s version of the story---tell me what you remember and then I’ll tell you the way Terry tells it, cause it’s funny as shit. Serrano was running opposition in Puerto Rico and Eddie had Puerto Rico and Serrano didn’t think he knew? Yeah. I don’t remember much of it because Serrano was a knockoff guy and not a big deal, he lives here, in Houston, he used to call me about once a week, he hasn’t called in some time now, but he didn’t want any of me. Do you remember---because Terry wasn’t sure---was it you and Terry against Serrano and somebody, or Terry and Serrano against you and somebody? It was me and somebody against Terry and Serrano, and Terry would, every time he possibly could, he’d tag Serrano, and Serrano was kinda with the program, he knew something was in, and he’d tag out all he could. Okay, here’s the way Terry tells the story. Terry said that Eddie comes up to you, wants you to kick the shit out of Serrano cause he‘s running opposition, and Terry says that your sense of honor was such that you told Eddie, “Eddie, I can’t shoot on a guy without telling him it’s a shoot,” and that Eddie said, “I don’t care how you do it, just do it, just kick the shit out of him.” So Terry says the match starts… you were in with Serrano… you did a workin’ takedown on him,,, and got up before he could get up… and yelled out, ‘IT’S A SHOOT!” and kicked him right in the face. (long laugh)… (pause)… Yup. (laughter) Oooookaaaaaay. Did I tell you when I had my last match? Nope. I was 70 years old and wrestled in Texas City, Texas, a couple of days before my birthday, and I wrestled a little Mexican and it was just a kind of a half-shoot, they like to fly and I grounded him, and Serrano was promoting it and he said, “Take it,” so when I got ready I took it. Somewhere in here, ‘66. That’s when it started with Maury High as Rocket, right? Way before that. Maury, I think he… I think he joined me in Georgia. What I’m looking at says Mobile. It may have been, I’m not sure, but I waited for Norvel Austin to come of age… Norvel was even in the picture that far back? He was seventeen when I went into Nashville, and I had a lot of opposition, Jackie Fargo and all these guys would not come up with a tag team partner for me, so Saul Weingeroff told me about Norvel, and he was a black young guy--- Okay, Sputs, do you remember what year this is? Cause I think we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Well… I’m not sure. I think it was ‘70... Norvel, on his 18th birthday I took him to Japan, I booked us in Japan, and he thought I knew everybody in the world… Okay, then let’s hold off on this one just a little bit. Let me jump back to you and Maury as Rocket. You think it was before ‘66 that you and Maury started? Because we did an interview with Maury and that was the way he remembered it, that you hooked up in ‘66 in the Mobile territory. Ah, goddamn, I can’t remember. Probably right. What was he like as a partner? Well, he was a silent partner. He was very bad on interviews, so I did all the interviews, and… he was not a flashy guy. I don’t know how to explain that. Well, that explains it pretty good. I know Saul was your manager, was he your manager from the beginning? From the beginning of Maury and I? I think so. Now Maury said, I don‘t remember exactly how he put it, that he resented Saul even being in on the gig, that he wasn‘t necessary. Saul took up all the slack that Maury didn’t have. When we have the reunions in Mobile, Maury usually comes down and he looks like death warmed over, and thanks me generously for giving him a chance in doing what we did... … the team got over and got around, I remember you guys in Florida… … he had no color, man. Continued |
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| FEATURES: CONVERSATIONS - SPUTNIK MONROE |
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All rights reserved. |
| This interview was conducted by Crimson Mask in May 2004.
Sputnik Monroe is one of the most colorful, controversial, outspoken and most written-about personalities even in the often bizarre world of professional wrestling, and he hasn’t mellowed a whole lot with age, as we will see. His single-handed integration of Memphis arenas and challenging of the ‘color bar’ in professional wrestling are the stuff of well-documented legend, as is his display in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. As always, we try to elicit stories and angles not previously documented, so let’s get right to ‘The Sweet Man’ and what he has to say. |