| A TRIBUTE TO JIM BARNETT
October 2004 – Rich Tate Note: This article first appeared in a print edition of Peach State Pandemonium. The tribute to the late Jim Barnett is a compilation of our own research and information, as well as some points we borrowed from other sources, such as Mike Mooneyham’s brilliant article from the Charleston Post and Courier, Greg Oliver’s features from SLAM! Wrestling, and Scott Teal’s Whatever Happened To…? . There were also some other comments added from our own past publications, as well as comments we sought after his death from our various contacts who worked for and with Barnett over the years. On September 17, 2004, professional wrestling lost one of the most important innovators of the last half-century. Jim Barnett, a man who struck gold everywhere he went in this business, died at the age of 80 at a hospital in Atlanta. He had been battling cancer for many years, but had recently broken his arm in a fall, and complications from surgery led to the contraction of pneumonia, ultimately causing his death. Although the average wrestling fan may never have heard of Barnett, the most ardent fans and researcher/historians know the name well. He was an early leader in the production of territorial wrestling on television, and also was one of the initial masterminds of WrestleMania. Still, even though the serious fan of wrestling knows the name, very few people actually knew the man on a personal level. In this tribute, we will attempt to outline the professional achievements of Barnett, as well as try and add a little insight from those who knew him personally as well. Although Barnett made his living in the wrestling business, his stature was a stark contrast to those around him. Houston promoter Paul Boesch once wrote, “Wrestlers were afraid to breathe too hard in his presence, lest Barnett should break apart at the seams." Jack Brisco, a former NWA World Heavyweight Champion, and a shareholder for Georgia Championship Wrestling during Barnett’s tenure in Atlanta, had this to say in his recent autobiography: "He was a flamboyant dresser, always wearing three-piece suits and his ever present horn-rimed glasses. Jim looked like a character out of a Noel Coward play.” Barnett, originally from Oklahoma City, earned a Masters degree in business before getting involved in pro wrestling. He enjoyed the fine arts and classical music. While President Jimmy Carter was Governor of Georgia, he appointed Barnett to the National Council for the Arts. However, his penchant for the finer things in life – and his seemingly lavish lifestyle – were questioned by many who knew him the best. "He tried to portray someone who came from 'old money.' I have no idea if he did or not, but I do believe it was more of an act than reality," recalled Brisco. "He would always come up to me and say, 'Jack, my boy, how are you today?' When he had all the wrestlers together, he would say, ‘When I look at my boys, I see stars.' He was quite a character." Whether he really had the money he wanted people to believe, Les Thatcher said, “There are a million stories as to how he got in our business, why he was in the business, and did he or did he not have a lot of money. One thing for sure, he rubbed elbows with many important people from big business, politics, and the arts.” His first foray in the wrestling business was working for promoter Fred Kohler in Chicago, at a time when nationally televised matches were shown on the old Dumont network. There has been some debate among historians as to whether he really was the mastermind of studio wrestling, but Nick Bockwinkel claimed, “He was the father of television studio wrestling.” “After he started working for Fred Kohler in Chicago, he got the television people to understand how much they could profit from airing their shows,” the former AWA Heavyweight Champion added. “He never tried to promote professional wrestling as being something that it wasn’t, even in the days of tight kayfabe. Everything was handled from a professional, intellectual point of view.” Dory Funk, Jr., former NWA World Heavyweight Champion, said, “Jim Barnett was a legend. He broke into the wrestling business working for Fred Kohler in Chicago. He was the first to realize the power of television and its relationship to professional wrestling. Jim was able to get Wrestling from the Marigold syndicated across the United States and thus was born the first national wrestling television show.” In 1955, he teamed with Johnny Doyle to run the Indianapolis promotion, one of the first full time promotions Bill Dromo worked for. “Barnett called Bert Ruby and asked if he had any talent to send him, and Ruby told him about me. I worked there for Jim for a few months. He respected you, and treated you good. He sent me down here to Atlanta.” Dory Funk, Jr., remembers that “... one of the places I traveled to was Indianapolis where I worked for Jim Barnett. My opponent that night was the father of Macho Man Randy Savage, Angelo Poffo. Dick the Bruiser and Tokyo Joe were the main event. Mr. Barnett told me that he thought I would do well in the wrestling business. He liked my work and said he would help me when the opportunity was right.” Nine years later, after selling the rights to the Detroit office to Ed “the Sheik” Farhat and Indianapolis to Dick the Bruiser, he and Doyle went to Australia to form a promotion known as World Championship Wrestling. The continent never had a permanent promotion, and all the wrestling fans had seen there before Barnett and Doyle arrived was on the underneath portion of boxing cards. After a huge stadium show in October 1964, the promotion became a hotbed of talent, and eventually spread to New Zealand as well. Barnett considered Australia as one of his biggest accomplishments: "I took a country that had never had wrestling and I went for six months and stayed for 10 years and did very well.” Funk, Jr., recalled how well foreign wrestlers had it when they made the trek to Australia: “Jim Barnett's promotion in Australia was one of the classiest promotions I have ever worked for. We traveled daily by the new 727 jet aircraft criss-crossing a country the size of the U.S. We worked five nights a week plus TV. Weekly we worked Sydney, Melbourne, Perth, Brisbane, Adelaide and sometimes drove ninety miles north to New Castle. All the wrestlers dressed suit and tie for travel across the country.” During his run as promoter down under, he brought in such big names as Bruno Sammartino, Ray Stevens, Mark Lewin, Billy Robinson, Pepper Gomez, Skull Murphy, Bill Dromo, the Mongolian Stomper, and Killer Kowalski. "My first trip to Australia, I was there one whole year," Kowalski once said. "That was when I was world's champion. Then I left, and every six months, I came back, stayed six months. My first time there was in '65, and my last show there was about in '73." Dromo almost decided to make Australia his home after accepting an invitation from Barnett to tour there. “He wanted me down there for six weeks and I stayed for about three months. I almost stayed in Australia because of the homesteading factor. You could get three or four thousand acres, and if you kept it in good working order for a year, it was yours. So I almost did it.” The partnership between Barnett and Doyle was such that they worked separately, with each working six months of the year in rotation. Killer Karl Kox once told an interviewer: "When Doyle was there, business was terrible, because he didn't want any heat. The business really jumped up when Barnett got there because he let all the guys do what they wanted. That's why he was so successful in Australia. He booked good talent in there with good ideas." Archie Gouldie, better known as the Mongolian Stomper, added “Barnett was a fantastic businessman, but he knew what would draw money. But he always had a smart booker. If he didn't like what the booker was doing, he'd change. He knew what to do, how to draw money." In addition to the big names, Barnett also gave less proven American wrestlers a chance to show their stuff to Australian fans. One of those was Jim Wilson, a former University of Georgia football star who also had an injury shortened career in the NFL. During the off seasons he worked for Ray Gunkel in Georgia, and also went to wrestle in Australia while Barnett was working there. Wilson co-authored the 2003 book called Chokehold, and in it he claims Barnett ruined his wrestling career when Wilson didn’t accept sexual advances from Barnett, who was gay. However, many have come forth to dispute that Barnett ever crossed the line between personal and professional ethics. Barnett was quoted as responding to Dave Meltzer's question about Wilson's claims by saying, "Me wanting to have an affair with Jim Wilson would be like you wanting to have an affair with the Fabulous Moolah." Jody Hamilton, one of the Assassins, said, “Jim Wilson is a notorious liar, a fact I was aware of before his book, then confirmed by his book in which he claims Barnett had him blackballed because Wilson resisted his sexual advances. I knew Barnett since 1957 and never knew him to mix his personal life with business. Wilson's career was headed to hell in a hand basket – not because of anything Barnett may have said or done, but because of his own stupidity and mostly because of a serious lack of ability.” When asked what he thought about wrestlers even having the potential to be blackballed, Buddy Colt said, “There’s no such thing as ‘blackballed’. 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.” Colt added, “If you can hold your own, you’re not getting blackballed, that’s all bullsh*t. 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.” “I think a lot of the stories came about because Jim Barnett was a gay guy and I know he liked to be around professional athletes and wrestlers,” Colt continued to tell us. “And what he did, he did away from the ring and away from the building and what he did on his own is his business and what the guys did with him, that’s their business.” Atlanta ring announcer Jay West agreed: “Jim certainly had more wrestling enemies outside the ring than in during his career. He had his own agenda and he finally got a chance to express it in his book. In my opinion his wrestling skills were limited, certainly not main event caliber.” Sputnik Monroe, when told about Wilson’s accusations about Barnett, responded by saying, “I can’t believe that guy said something about sex, because he never went that route. He never played those games. He was straight-up-and-down when you were doing business with him.” Wilson even attempted in his book to further the allegations that Tommy Rich submitted to performing sexual favors for Barnett in order to win the NWA World Heavyweight Title in 1981. That rumor has been denied by everyone that was working in Georgia and would know the facts. “Tommy didn’t know he was winning that title until he got into Augusta that Monday night,” Bobby Simmons told us. Simmons worked in the office and was practically the right hand man to Barnett and Ole Anderson. “He had no clue what they were doing. The only people who knew ahead of time that he was getting that title that were there that night were Harley Race, Ole Anderson, Jim Barnett and myself. That was done as a favor to Jim Barnett by the Board of Directors. It was done to legitimize our top babyface and give him some credibility, and all that other stuff floating around is just people trying to look like they know more than they do.” Ric Flair, who won the NWA World Heavyweight Title more than anyone, and also has held Vince McMahon’s top title on multiple occasions, had this to say about Barnett: "He was one of the most influential people I ever dealt with in the NWA. He was a very good friend to me, and was an old-school guy who paid me a lot of respect. At one time he had as much political stroke as anyone in the industry, and he was a very good payoff man who made a lot of people a lot of money." Bill Watts summed it up by saying, "Jim would get very infatuated with a piece of talent as far as who he liked and who he didn't. He never came on to me. He loved Dusty Rhodes, but he never came on to Dusty. The same with guys like Ric Flair, Robert Fuller, Cowboy Bob Ellis and Mark Lewin when they were young stars. But I never heard about anything like that happening, and this is the wrestling business, where it would be very hard to keep a secret like that." It was in 1962 during a run in Indianapolis that Bill Watts remembers meeting Barnett for the first time. He recalls learning that Barnett may have had a relationship with actor Rock Hudson back in the 1950s. “Sam Menacker, who later became my television announcer and taught me to fly, was Barnett's commentator at the time. Sam had a Rolls Royce and Jim didn't drive. But Jim would borrow Sam's Rolls Royce whenever Rock was in town for a week, and he'd hire a driver." After Barnett’s passing, Wilson stood firm on his opinions and recollections, but offered up condolences: "Jim Barnett had a long life and did a lot in the business," said Wilson, “but there are no hard feelings. They saw things the way they did, and I just believed in another way. I've always tried to walk a couple miles in somebody else's shoes, but it was what it was. I went through a lot of hardship. The business does funny things to people. But I hope he didn't suffer, and I sincerely hope he's in a better place." After Doyle passed away in 1969, Barnett stayed on about five more years as sole promoter for the company until leaving to return to the states. However, in a few short years, the business dropped significantly in Australia, and Barnett was looking to get out. At one point, it is believed that Eddie Graham, along with Milo and Dick Steinborn, were negotiating with Barnett to buy out the company, but for whatever reason the deal fell through. It is likely that the potential buyers learned what Barnett already knew. "We did tremendous business up until the last year," Barnett once said for an interview. "It began to tail off. They changed governments, they had had a very, sort of Republican government and then suddenly they got a Labour government and they wanted all American promoters to have Australian partners. Sort of like the Nazis did with the Jews. I did get two Australian young guys, gave them five per cent each." It was in 1974 when Barnett joined up behind the scenes for Georgia Championship Wrestling. He bought thirty-eight percent of the promotion, which equated to $268,000, of which he paid for in cash. Paul Jones had become the Atlanta wrestling promoter in 1944. He stepped down in 1962, making way for Don McIntyre to take over the job. After McIntyre sold his shares to Buddy Fuller two years later, Les Wolfe promoted for awhile, but Jones returned in the summer of 1964. However, Ray Gunkel was really the man running the show. Still, Jones’ name was put forth as the promoter because of his savvy and public status in the city. After Gunkel’s death in 1972 resulted in arguably the most famous promotional war ever, Georgia Championship Wrestling found itself needing help. Eddie Graham, Jerry Jarrett, and Bill Watts, among others, came in from various promotions to rebuild the promotion after Ray’s widow Ann started a rival promotion, taking most of the talent with her. In 1974, the war was going strong, and the interim leaders needed to pull out and put more focus into their own promotions. Both companies were neck and neck in terms of drawing fans, and the NWA side asked Barnett to take over. It was that year that led to the demise of Gunkel’s All-South Wrestling, and it has been alleged that Barnett’s power and money won the final battle. Watts has been quoted as saying, “Barnett was a master manipulator, in the same league with Vince McMahon and Sam Muchnick, and knew like few others how to play both ends against the middle. Barnett, who had introduced Gunkel to her late husband, Ray, would later get Gunkel to indemnify him in her antitrust suit against Georgia Championship Wrestling. Jim was very savvy as far as connections. He tried to continually maintain strife among people and pit them against one another. But he had a certain knack. He was very fickle. But he was extremely successful in the business for a lot of years." Colt confirmed what Watts and a few others have been known to say about Barnett’s skills to use people to get what he wanted, saying, “He was a snake in the grass, always telling stories on people and setting them against each other.” “When he owned the promotion in Knoxville during the World’s Fair of the 1980s he called me and said if I hadn’t been to the Fair already, to pick him up at the Knoxville Airport and I could go with him,” remembered Les Thatcher. “I told him the horror stories of long lines for every exhibit, and his comment was, ‘Don’t worry about it, Leslie, we have VIP all the way.’ You know what? Jim was right. We had access to every exhibit on the fair grounds through the VIP entrances. We waited in no lines and had a golf cart to ride us around if we wanted it. I was amazed at the treatment we received.” Much like Atlanta promoter Paul Jones, Barnett built and maintained connections with the most useful people he could during his time in Georgia. He had networking down to an art, and he became quite powerful in the NWA as well, eventually becoming the man responsible for the booking of the NWA champion. "He had a lot of political connections," recalled Hamilton. "He always maintained a working relationship with the police department, which was very important, and he always made sure that certain judges got very nice gifts, along with senators and state reps. That's why he was so successful all these years keeping the athletic commission out of Georgia." "I learned a lot from Jim," said Watts. "One of the most important things I learned was to cultivate relationships with the station managers who controlled your television show." But it wasn’t just the connections and networking skills that made Barnett so successful in the business. Anderson said that “Barnett would come up with an idea on occasion. His strong suit was being able to recognize what he considered good talent. He saw Tommy Rich and brought him down, and after the first night he wanted to get rid of him because he thought we’d killed him. He recognized Roddy Piper had talent. I’d already been booking Piper for a year up in the Carolinas so that wasn’t any great revelation. He did, though, have a knack to a certain degree for being able to recognize talent. I don’t know whether that’s unique to him or anybody, but there are some people who couldn’t recognize anything. I’ve been accused of that because I was one of the first guys to have Hulk Hogan and I let him go.” Anderson even added that “When I left as a booker, Jim Barnett could have had anyone else, but he’d always call me and say, ‘Oh, Ole, can you come back?’” Renesto, Hamilton’s partner in the original Assassins team, had been booking for Georgia Championship Wrestling at the time of Gunkel’s death. He left abruptly to join All-South in the same role, but ironically would return to the NWA side after All-South closed its doors. Simmons told us, “The talent that we had tried to bring in – big name talent – they were getting bought off, paid off, scared off. I think we just reached a point where we had exhausted all the avenues we had. We were still drawing decent houses in the spot shows, but we weren’t selling out anymore. I hate to say this, but it’s out there already, and nothing I created. It’s purely conjecture – a gentleman took it to his grave with him, so if it happened I don’t know it as a fact. I think Renesto was gotten to, and I believe he was paid off. I saw Tom do things in his booking, and I saw some of the talent he used, and he would’ve never done it under normal circumstances. I don’t know for a fact, it’s just my opinion based on what I saw.” Jerry Oates agreed with Simmons’ observation, stating, “I have heard that from day one, and you know what? I believe it. Renesto started booking Don Serrano in main events on their side. They were putting him in main events with Ernie Ladd. What the hell is that going to do?” Renesto had this to say about Barnett in a 1998 interview: "A lot of people don't like him, but you can quote me on this. As far as I'm concerned, Jim Barnett was good to work for and paid good money. When I went to work for him after Mrs. Gunkel got out, he gave me a thousand dollars a week. As long as you made him money, he paid you right." “Our relationship was that he always treated me with respect, and I was well paid for my work,” Thatcher recalls. Funk, Jr., had this to say about Barnett while he was booking the champion: “In 1969, I became NWA World Champion and for four-and-a-half years worked exclusively for the NWA. In those days, Jim was not a member of the National Wrestling Alliance and I did not work for him again until the Muhammad Ali-Antonio Inoki mixed boxing wrestling match. Ali and Inoki fought in Japan, Andre the Giant fought Chuck Wepner at Shea Stadium in New York and once again working for Jim Barnett this time in Atlanta on May 25, I wrestled Jack Brisco at the Omni in Atlanta. It was a closed circuit TV broadcast originating from Tokyo, Atlanta and New York. After my match with Jack Brisco, I showered and watched the Ali-Inoki match from the Omni with Jim Barnett and Eddie Graham who had recently become partners in the Florida and Georgia territories.” He stayed in Georgia until he was asked to step down as President and Chairman of the Board of the company by the Board of Directors at the end of 1982, but would remain living in Atlanta until his passing. Anderson, part owner in the company at the time, claims he discovered Barnett had been embezzling money for quite some time and brought it to the attention of the other board members. After he confronted Barnett, Jim decided to resign rather than be fired. Even if it was true that Barnett was skimming money off the top, longtime Georgia referee Charlie Smith said, “I made a lot of money working with Jim. He took care of people. The only person to pay me better was Vince McMahon.” Johnny Walker, better known as Mr. Wrestling #2, who no doubt benefited from Barnett’s tenure in Georgia, simply put it that Barnett was “a good man.” After his exodus from the Georgia promotion, he teamed with another visionary – Vincent Kennedy McMahon – and helped create the annual extravaganza known as WrestleMania, which recently celebrated its twentieth anniversary. Barnett was quoted in 2001 as saying, "From 1983 to 1987 I was Senior Vice President. I was real important in the early years of the World Wrestling Federation." In 1984, McMahon – no doubt having help and inside information from Barnett about the financial state of Georgia Championship Wrestling, as well as the layout of the players holding stock in the company – purchased controlling shares in the promotion. It led to Ole Anderson and the remaining loyalists to give up the fight and sell what was left. The following year McMahon found himself getting an ultimatum from WTBS owner Ted Turner, who had made GCW a national promotion through the airwaves only, and Jim Crockett, owner of Crockett Promotions in Charlotte. As a matter of fact, it was Barnett who helped broker the deal so that McMahon could get out without too much financial loss. Barnett and Crockett remained in contact despite working as opposition. In 1987, McMahon caught wind of the ongoing relationship and abruptly fired Barnett, who shortly thereafter overdosed on sleeping pills. After making a complete recovery, Barnett went back to work. Just before Crockett sold the company to Turner, Barnett returned to the business. As usual he was working in a behind the scenes status as a consultant and seeking new talent for the company. He remained there until the company was purchased by McMahon in 2001. "I'm just on leave from World Championship Wrestling, which just shut down...they gave everybody so many weeks, so I still am working for them, but not,” Barnett said in an interview. “So I really don't know what I'm going to do. I'm going to be 77 in June and I've always worked, so I don't know what it'll happen." When WCW was bought out by McMahon, Barnett found himself once again receiving a salary from his former employer, which he received until his death. He supposedly had weekly phone calls with McMahon, often giving feedback or suggestions based on what he saw on WWE television programs and Pay Per Views. Regardless of what you want to believe about the way he conducted himself – either personally or professionally – Barnett’s history cannot be overlooked. Everywhere he worked, he produced results and helped make money for everyone who worked for or with him. You cannot fault him for that. After all, isn’t that what pro wrestling is all about? ADDITIONAL COMMENTS When Barnett passed, I went immediately to the two guys whom I knew had the most respect for what he had done in the business and had worked with him closely over the years – Jody Hamilton and Bobby Simmons. Here is what they had to say: I first met Jim in 1956 while doing TV in Kansas City, MO. Of course, I had heard a lot about this promoter that had a very distinct way of talking, and a lot of guys made remarks about his sexual persuasion and imitated the way he talked. In 1956, Jim was really just starting to make his mark in the world of professional wrestling. During my career as a wrestler and as a booker, I worked for Jim on about ten different occasions. Most were very amiable, but a couple of those occasions were somewhat heated. Regardless of how heated the situation might become we always worked things out in a professional business manner. When I worked for WCW, and Jim was there, also. Even though we were friends before WCW, it was during our tenure at there that we became very good friends and I got to know a side of Jim Barnett that few people ever knew. Away from any type of ownership in a wrestling company Jim was a very kind, compassionate, and generous person – somewhat different that the person that had owned several wrestling companies over the years. Although Jim had a reputation for being a excellent payoff promoter, he also had the reputation of being almost impossible to work for over a period of time. As a promoter, Jim was bright, energetic, and had a creative energy possessed by very few. Now his creative energies were in the overall field of promotion – not in the booking end. In the booking end Jim knew he was not creative so he tried to hire bookers that were. In the promotional end Jim had great vision and foresight and actually was the front-runner of wrestling promotion as we know it today and was instrumental in helping Vince McMahon become the worldwide promoter he is today. Jim made a definite impact on the world of professional wrestling and will be missed by all those that know and love wrestling and understand just what he did for the sport. – Jody Hamilton I went to work for Jim Barnett at Georgia Championship Wrestling in November 1974. On my first day in the office he doubled my salary from what I had been making with All-South. I went from barely getting by to making a decent living overnight. My respect for Jim was immense. I worked for him full time until 1983 and was his office manager from 1979 until I left. He was a very private person and hard to get to know. He was generous to a fault and took care of many people over the years. He was a perfectionist and expected the same from those that worked for him. Because of his private nature he was taken advantage of by many people. He was sued numerous times for things that had absolutely no validity, and he settled those suits to simply maintain his privacy. Those individuals that took advantage of him in those ways will no doubt reap what they have sown someday, if they are not paying already. Jim Barnett was my friend and employer for many years and I will miss his wit and great sense of humor. For those that did not know him personally, but only knew him through rumor and innuendo, let me tell you he was a good person who made the world a better place for those who knew him. Many ‘Superstars’ would never have been such had it not been for his keen eye for talent. I will always be thankful I had the chance to get to know him and call him my friend. – Bobby Simmons |
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