Speaker 1: It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast special report. The Lapse
Fan presents the Complete Hull Cogan, a real American story,
brought to you by Garage Pierre.
Speaker 2: You know, JP. We talked so much on The Complete
Hull Cogan about what it would have been like to
just be a fan or someone kind of just inside
the business as Hull Cogan came to the WWF for
the first time in November nineteen seventy nine, staying there
through nineteen eighty one. And it's hard, it's hard to
get that full sense. But but what if I told
you we could get the guy who started Hull Cogan's
first fan club.
Speaker 3: I would not be surprised at this point if you
got someone like that.
Speaker 2: He's out there in the wild. He produced several issues
of Hulkster's First Fan Club News. Well again, these came
out in seventy nine, eighty time period. These came out
when he was still a.
Speaker 3: Heeled That's that's kind of the amazing thing is that
this is happening before that, before that, that that golden era,
which is that's that's what's so thrilling.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, we wouldn't be surprised to hear there
was a whole Cogaan fan club and say eighty four
or eighty seven, thirty six. But to hear that this
Michael O'Hara who's joining us right now on the complete
Hulk COVID here in the Lapsed fan started the fan
club so long ago just was a subject of deep
fascination to us. And we got our hands on a
couple of these fan club newsletters, and what a great perspective.
We're really looking forward to talking to you.
Speaker 4: Mike.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: Hi, Jack, I JP. It's a pleasure to talk to
both of you. This is unusual for me. I've just
kind of come out from my hermit mountaintop and to
talk about wrestling, particularly the time at about a person
that really meant a lot to me.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is this is crazy because you became acquainted
personally with him, and so we're going to get that
view of what it was like to deal with Hult
on a person on a level when he was just
starting in New York. I should say right off the
top early and often that Mike is sort of liquidating
a lot of his great archival stuff, the stuff he's
collected over the years, he's done wrestling magazines, He's worked
in wrestling publications back in the era we're talking about.
You can check out his store on eBay, which is
a new wave Wonders. He's got all kinds of wonderful
stuff up there from fifty years of not only wrestling
but pop culture collecting, and Mike, I'd love to start.
I think it makes the most sense to start with
how you met Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 4: Okay, And actually the beginning of this meeting Hell Cogan
is also an untold story about how Hogan came into
the WWF, So that's go. The only other person I
ever told this story to God Rest his soul is
Wally Yamaguchi over in Gong Magazine. Yes, and I don't
know if he ever had it printed because it's in
Japanese and I don't read Japanese. So at any rate,
I was a wrestling fan. I had been doing a
wrestling newsletter. I started watching wrestling probably in nineteen seventy four,
and I love the territories. The time that I really
liked the best was that, and I caught the tail
end of it from seventy four. I'd tell you too
about eighty four so I had a good ten years
of really enjoying the wrestling and becoming more and more
immersed in it. So there used to be an organization
called the WFIA, the Wrestling Fans International Association, and once
a year they would hold a convention of fans and
the wrestlers would show up in different places, predominantly in
the Southern States, and I only went to two of them.
I think nineteen seventy nine was Memphis, and I think
nineteen eighty was their very last one, which was Atlanta, Georgia.
So at any rate I met Memphis, We're going and
they they had it wonderfully set up. They had wrestling matches.
Monday night was midtalk ment South Coliseum in Memphis, and
locally you could date be in driving distance to wrestling
on that circuit. So there was our Coola, Arkansas and
this and that, all different places very nearby, and it
was a wonderful circuit. Jerry Jarrett and I guess to
a later a greater extent later, Jerry Lawler, and they
had a TV taping on Saturday morning, and we attended.
They had tickets for us as conventioneers, and at the
TV taping was Terry the Hulk Boulder and his tag
team partner Dizzy Boulder. Yes, why came up with Dizzey Boulder?
I have no idea. They were feuding with the Southern
Tag champs, which were Wayne Ferris and Larry Latham, and
Wayne Ferris went on to become the Hosky talk Man
and Larry Latham became a moondog spot one of the
w w F Tag champs later and then I don't
know what happened them after that. So that was the
bit of the feud. And they were there and I'm
watching video, didn't even wrestle. I think they only just
did the interview segment with Lance Russell and Terry did
all the talking because he basically stood there. But I
was just so impressed with his size, and even then,
you know, he's pretty much a neophyte in terms of wrestling.
I think he had wrestled in Pensacola, Florida, not far
from where he lived. I think for I forget who
the Ron Fuller, and yeah, Ron Fuller. I was going
to say Bob Armstrong, but yeah, you're right, the Fullers.
So this was like his second big break and he
was terrific on the mic. He had the southern drawl
at the time, which he worked on later to get
rid of. But I was just so impressed with him
because he had the size and I was a huge
fan of Superstar Billy Graham, and I thought, wow, this
is like the second coming of Superstar. So, to make
a long story short, the convention lets out. We'll get
in our cars or whatever, and we're going to meet
at one of these It must be all over the country,
places where you can get a steak and to make
potato and cornbread, you know, those kind of Sisler kind
of restaurants. So we go in and we're sitting down
and who comes in but Terry and Dizzy ed Leslie
later Brutus Beefcake. They come down and they and Terry
and Dizzy or Ed sit right next to me, right
across from me. He said, oh, how you doing as
we're at the convention. I'm from New York, blah blah blah.
So he was all excited, Oh you're from New York,
and you know, his eyes lit up, and I said yeah,
And I do a newsletter and at the time I
was just around the edges of wrestling, uh, doing small
articles for wrestling news and ring Wrestling and a couple
of other couple of other things. So I had Kay
was kind of a connection to New York and in
his mind anyway, and I was a little bit and truthfully,
as you will see, I was a connection for him.
So I said, well, you know, you got the right
size and you're great on the mic and blah blah blah.
Would you want to come to New York. Well, when
I said that, he was just like non stop. We
were just talking about you know, how he's in training
and blah blah blah. And he says, oh, when I
put at the time of you said, you saw the
picture that I sent you of the two of us together,
and I like to call that when we both had hair,
So he was praising. He said, oh, you know when
I pulled my hair back like this, you look just
like the Superstar.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: So he was he was very enamored with. I mean,
at the time, Superstar was kind of the template for
anybody that was a bodybuilder slash wrestler. So anyway, I said, listen,
if you want to come to New York, I know
where their office is. I said, well, mean, and we're
eating and you know I'm with all these other wrestling
people and he said, Mike, your steak is getting cold
and blah blah blah. So I'm talking to him and
I pull out some papers. It give me your statistics.
How tall are you? What's your weight in your dimension?
I said, legit, don't give me the you know, say
uh stop, how can you be Where have you worked?
Who did you work for? And who trained you? And
how can you be contacted? So I said great, I
did so. I said I'll bring this over to It
was at the time, Capital Wrestling Corporation. So he said, oh,
that it'd be great, and I gave we swapped phone numbers,
and then I said, is there anywhere that I can
contact you? He says, well, I'm on the road. Now,
this is the thing about this, and most people won't
probably even grasp, is this is so pre technology that
there was no way for us to really contact one another.
He was on the road. There's no cell phone, there's
no internet. And I relied on him to either really
to contact me because I couldn't contact him wherever he was.
So he said, oh, he was still living home with
his folks in Tampa, Florida. So he says, Oh, I'm
going to give you the address and phone number for
my mother and father, Ruth and Peter. So my relationship
with Terry really built up with the intermediary being his mom.
For most of the years that we were dealing with
one another, I had to contact her or she would
contact him and let me know so, and then she
would call me, I'd call her. So anyway, I took
all of this information and I quote unquote typed up
a resume form and the day that wrestling used to
be every month at the WWF at Madison Square Garden
once a month. Now I think it's maybe if they're
lucky two three times a year. I don't even think
they'd do that many. But anyway, to make a little
story short, I typed up this resume and I waited
for the day of wrestling to take place at Madison
Square Garden on a Monday, making no arrangements, not making
a phone call, not making an appointment or reservation to
talk to someone. I had the address for Capital Wrestling Corporation,
which I believed the name of the It was a
really rundown flop house of a hotel like a Welfare
Hampton hotel.
Speaker 2: Or something like that.
Speaker 4: I think it was the Holland Hotel. Anyway, it was
like a mot away from Port Authority, right in the
heart of the Vipers then of Times Square. And this
was back of the days when it looked like Robert
de Niro's taxi driver. It wasn't diusnified as it is now.
It was a mess. And anyway, I went to the
I had my little resume and photographs that they had
taken to Terry in Memphis, and it was such a
rundown place. I think they were on the second or
third floor at the time. And I didn't even want
to take their elevator because I didn't trust it. And secondly,
I thought I might even get mugged getting into the elevator,
so I took the stairs up. So I went up
two three flights of stairs. I got to the door
and they hit it. It was a big steel door
as if, like I guess, the place had been broken
into a few times. And they put this huge, just
gray steel door, and it had a sticker lettering, you
know when you would just put lettering on it on
some one at a time. So it says Capital Wrestling Corporation.
But it was like playing Wheel of Fortune. If you
didn't know where you were going, you had to assume
it said Capital Wrestling Corporate Liberation because half of the
letters were missing. So that'll tell you the kind of
operation they were running back in nineteen seventy nine. So
this is either. I would say if the Memphis was July,
I probably was pretty zealous about going up there and enthusiastic.
So I probably went up there for the August wrestling show.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I knock on the door, no reservation, as they say,
no one at the front desk. There was no front
desk to say where you're going. Knock on the door,
and Arnold Skolan answers the door, and I says, you know,
can I help you? I said, yeah, I'd like to
drop off a resume for wrestler. I mean, it sounds bizarre,
but it's true. And then he says come in. I
came in and Angelo Savaldi was there, sure, And it
was a tiny little room. It couldn't have been bigger
than it was, like a nine x twelve room. Ben
Natsen painted in a long time pictures on the wall.
I don't know if you ever saw Woody Allen's movie
Broadway Danny Rose where he had this little RinkyDink kind
of that's what this place looked like. So I pull
out the resume, I pull out the photos and I
put them on the table and skuland really lit up.
He says, Wow, this guy looks like Superstar, and no
disrespect to Superstar. But I said to him, yeah, he's
but he's even bigger. He's bigger than taller than and
bigger than a superstar. And I said, and he's younger.
So and they said, well wait, I said, wow, I
really don't know him, but I said he's I had
seen him wrestle then at the Mid South Coliseum. The
time I saw him at the TV tapings, he did
not wrestle, and so I explained to him he's very good.
And you know, he was trained by Hero Matsuda, so
they knew who Matsuda was. I said, so he has
the fundamentals of wrestling. I said, he can move, he
really put on a good match. Blah blah blah. That
was it. I called his mom, I think that night,
and said, listen, I dropped off all your stuff. You
tell Terry that I dropped off his photos and the resume.
And then I had mailed the resume to her so
he could see it, and then he called me. Eventually
he had left Memphis and he told me he was
going to be well. I think he was already in correction.
I think he was in Atlanta and he had changed
his name to Sterling Golden. So I was able at
that point in time. That was big technology. We're talking
about the pre technology days. I was able to watch
wrestling from Atlanta, Georgia on cable TV, so I'd watch
it on the weekend and he showed up as Sterling
Golden and we cut in touch a little bit, but
there wasn't anything. What was he going to tell me?
And I had nothing to relate to his mom. And
November seventy nine rolls around and a friend of mine
was at the TV tapings. He told me that he
had heard from them, but he didn't have anything specific
to say with they were going to take to bring
him in. I don't know what the specifics of what
he did, you know, because back in the day, I
don't know if he was had access to videotape that
he could tape send them his matches. But at least
they could see him from Atlanta because he was with
TBS with the superstations, so they probably saw him working Atlanta, Georgia.
By anyway, make it looks very sure. Somebody went to
a friend of mine where, you know, I had a newsletter,
so people would give me results from all over the place.
And the WWF used to do TV tapings every three weeks,
one in Allentown, Pennsylvania and one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and
that would do for the next three weeks of TV,
the one hour shows that they had. So friends said, oh,
they got a new guy came in, Hoggs Hogan. I said,
Hoggs Hogan. He says, yeah, he's a big blonde guy
and he's a bodybuilder. He looks like superstars Hoggs. I said,
Hoggs Hogan. Well, he got it wrong every way. And
I said, Hoggs Hogan, I said that. I said that
sounds like it would be guy, like a fun guy,
a farm boy. Why would they call him Hogs? So
lo and behold, I'm watching TV and I didn't even
hear from his mom, And lo, behold, Hulk Hogan shows
up on TV and says, oh, it's Hull Cogan. It's
not Hogs. And so I contacted his mom. He let
me know that he was in You know, he and
I had seen that he was with Blassie and all,
and he was excited. So I contact I said to
his mom, do you have any dates for him that
I can connect with him where he's going to be
so that we can get together. So she's the only
thing I have right now is to TV tapings Allentown
and Philadelphia. Well, Philly was he I'd never been Talentown.
I've been to Philly a few times. I said, tell him,
I'll be at the next TV taping and I'll go over.
There was like a curtain the wrestlers could look out.
I said, I'll go over by the curtain. I'll wave
so you'll see that it's me. So I went to
the taping and it's the Actually the date of the
official date of the Hulk Hogan Fan Club is the
day that I had seen him at Philadelphia. So it
was Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, December fourth, nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: You're talking about or Hamburg, No, this is Philadelphia.
Speaker 4: They used to do the Philadelphia Arena.
Speaker 2: Now, they used to do Hamburg and Allentown at the time.
It was one of those two films I think, Yeah, I.
Speaker 4: Think Philly Club they closed it up. It was kind
of in a rough, tough party. Anytime I did anything
in wrestling, it was always in a rough party. Yeah.
So anyway, I met him there. We started talking and
I said, oh, so this is great. Yeah, I'm in.
I'm gonna be bad guy. And they gave me blasts heed,
which I had already seen, and I said, listen, while
you're right here. I had it already. I had a
piece of paper. Unfortunately I didn't have a pen I
had a pencil. I said, listen, can I get your
permission to start a fan club for you? So he
signed this. So I still have this page I hear
by Michael Harra permission, but it's in pencil. But anyway,
that's when it all started. And so want you give
me some questions out from there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's great, great start. So that was kind of
when you did fan club newsletters for wrestlers. You had
to have that signature page to what signals that you
were like authorized to do this to people who subsisted.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I mean I don't think it was anything official. Anyway,
I had done that. I had no intention. I had
only done a club before that. For who I was really,
I was a fan of uh was for years. Was
picked the Bulldog Brower and I met him and we
became very good friends. He was like really like an
uncle to me. We us when he would travel, he
would send post. I was much closer to Bulldog Power
than I was with Terry. As time goes on, because
of the way that the business had changed, and also
my involvement in the business had changed, and so there's
a strain that comes later down the line, which was
was kind of we can deal with to.
Speaker 2: Like, if we could get into your head at that
restaurant in Memphis at DP wane to jump in, I
just want question.
Speaker 3: So I was like, you know, I.
Speaker 4: Lost it.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry.
Speaker 2: Okay. So when you're sitting at the table with Ed
and Hulk Mike in Memphis, what what in you says like,
I want to get a relationship, start with this guy
and actually try to book them. That to me, like
if I went to a fan convention, particularly in the
k Fabe era of the seventy nine, and I saw
wrestlers sitting down next to me.
Speaker 3: Sorry, yeah, that was my question. Sorry, I don't mean
you're jacking in. But that was my question. I wanted
to go back to that because I was I was wondering, So, like,
that's what it is, these these fan conventions. It was
they were all cafe like. They weren't. They weren't like
talking about the business, were talking as if they were
real people. They were talking in character.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I for the most part, I would say most
everybody knew how the business operated, but you didn't really
talk about it. And most people that these things had
a relationship in their territory with wrestlers, you know, or
even when we were at this, So it was kind
of an unwritten law rule that the wrestlers that did
and the wrestlers would show up for all the days
at the convention who were in Memphis and in Atlanta,
they would show up and walk around and look at
the displays that we did. And so it was kind
of the wrestlers could let their hair down and be
kind of normal. They weren't going to expose the business.
But if somebody, for example, was a heel, he didn't
stay in heel a persona. He was accessible and friendly
and chatty, but there was no talking about you know,
juicing or anything, you know, pre determining, so it was
a really nice period of time, and also the wrestling fans,
for the most part that showed up. We're all involved
in some capacity with either a fan club or a newsletter,
and then we all would swap with one another. There
was another period that was kind of comparable to this,
not with wrestling, but with science fiction. In the nineteen thirties.
There was these science fiction conventions, and people who were
writers of science fiction would order this convention and kind
of cross pollinaate with one another, and it was in
a very small way that's what was happening with wrestling.
There was no Internet, We had no way of knowing
what was going on anywhere. The wrestling magazines by and
large were pretty lame. They really didn't do anything to
help educate people or inform you as how the whole
business worked, not in terms of how the matches are,
but in terms of, you know, territories. No one really
if you weren't living somewhere else, you really were in
your own little sphere, and it was very hard to
get that information. So we were all very grateful that, oh,
you're in Kansas City, somebody would send me a program
in exchange I'd send you my newsletter, so you had
all of this this kind of thing. So it was,
it was, it was. It was kind of an unwritten
law that everybody had a kind of a nudge in
it and a wink. But we loved wrestling. We thought
everybody was a dynamic personality. Not everybody was a great wrestler,
but the personalities I think superseded everything else at that
period of time. And the wrestlers were grateful that people were,
you know, respecting of them because back then there was
there was again, pre technology, wrestling didn't exist. There was
no wrestlers on talk shows. It was if you got
a news result, you would it would be like one
one inch, you know, a column inch of what the
match results were. There was nothing to be had on wrestling.
So when you came along and you were doing this, uh,
it was it was mind boggling that this underground movement
had existed. And it wasn't just some guy in New York,
but somebody in California and Kansas and Texas. Every area
had some pockets of people who were compiling this stuff.
It was like the monks in Ireland keeping civilization alive.
We were writing all of this down match results. You know,
newspaper clips we would swap with one another, which were
wonderful because they were unique to the territory. Now just
generic ads if they run ads at all. But back
in the day, everyone had their own unique looking heads.
And you've seen the newsletter the fan club brother and
and I Ransom in there. Everybody had a different little
graphic and it was just was exciting. Everything that came
in was different. It wasn't like the sameness of now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is so true. Flipping through the fan club newsletter,
a lot of it. And we've been spending time on
our Hull Cogan project, you know, just going through the
contemporaneous news articles in the Northeast and you know, Alabama
and Georgia two to the extent that he was written
up in those in those parts in Memphis, and it's just, yeah,
I can see how much of a hunger there would
be to be able to see just a clipped out
article from a part of the country that you really
had no access to whatsoever. You couldn't you know, you
could not look them up on the Internet, to say
the least, And just to compile those was a great value.
Add We definitely take for granted how easy the access
is now with centralized archiving of all these these newspapers.
But Mike, I wanted to get back to when you're
sitting with Terry and ed Leslie in Memphis again, where's
the mentality come from that I'm going to kick into
a gear of trying to get this guy booked in
New York. Yeah, it's very nice to meet you, while
can I get a picture?
Speaker 1: Like?
Speaker 2: Where does that kind of entrepreneurial side come from? Is
that what the fans were like at WFIA.
Speaker 4: I was always already entrepreneurial. This is seventy nine, so
I'm twenty years old, so I'm a little bit up
up the food chain in terms of being a fan.
But I started working at the age of twelve. I
used to do comic bood conventions in the city, and
even when I went to wrestling matches. When I first
started going, I guessing around I was about fifteen or sixteen.
I used to now try and do this today anywhere.
I used to go to Brooklyn by use wrestling magazines
or returns from the newsstand for thirty cents a piece,
like a bundle of the same magazines. But that would
be a year or two old. And I would take
a suitcase of these to the garden, and after the
matches were over, I would lay them out on like
a planter outside Madison Square Garden. There's people coming down
the ramp. I would sell magazines from buck apiece. Wow.
So literally I went to Catholic high school. Literally paid
in my high school. So I was always a business guy.
And even when I did my newsletter, I started the newsletter,
I would always draw from somewhere else. And there was
a great publisher named Jim Warren who put out something
called Famous Monsters of Film Land, and in that he
would have page after page of after page of monster
masks and model kits and T shirts and this and that.
So even in my little neo fight way, when I
did the newsletter, I had a back page which was
all back of issues of wrestling magazines or programs or
whatever I had. So I was always buying and selling.
I'm kind of the William Shatner of wrestling.
Speaker 3: I was.
Speaker 2: I'm the Huckster's the huckster. That totally adds up. That's great.
So what was your thought as to getting Hulk introduced
in New York. Why did you think that that was
a ball you could run with?
Speaker 1: He just had you know, I.
Speaker 4: Wasn't going to pursue him. He just kind of sat
down and it was one of those things that I
don't know it was in Massachusetts in New York a
big thing that people are looking for common ground when
they're walking their dog and somebody will come and say, oh,
what kind of a dog is?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 4: Kind of like an icebreaker. Well, he was a wrestler.
I was a wrestling fan. He sat down next to
me and then I just you know, made the visual assessment.
He had a great look, he had the great size,
and he had he had the ability on the mic.
So he was sitting next to me, What else can
we talk about? And you know, I was just talking
about where I came from and what I was doing.
And then he was a bit excited. And Terry was
an entrepreneur. I mean prior to wrestling, as you know,
he had the rock band, but he also had a
gym that didn't last. I have a business card somewhere
Terry and Whitey's gym, and so he was he was
always looking to do something entrepreneurial. Well, and then later
when he had money, how many different things did he
go into. So the whole conversation just kind of was
serendipitous and just free flowing, and it was just it
was something that we both had something to talk about,
which was the common ground of wrestling.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. One is that you brought the resume into
our soul and personally, that's like because as you know,
in wrestling, Mike, I mean, you know, every origin story
has a million authors. You know, I can't tell you
how many people we've read trying to I don't want
to put this in like a negative way, it's not negative,
but they have their story about how they got hulkbooked
in New York.
Speaker 4: Well of course the lassie and just everybody. And it's like, well,
there's nothing that I can really do with this. It's
not like, what, what's my claim to fame other than
it's an anecdote as far as I'm concerned. Yeah, but
it's an amazing.
Speaker 3: No one's actually ever said, though, like you've got the
unique position by because you brought the resume. I don't
think anyone's ever said I brought the resume up to
Usually it's I made a call, like you know, anyone
can make a call. You brought you a physically brought
the resume, which is it's just tremendous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I just assumed somebody would be in the
office because it was the day of the garden. And
and I also being the hoarder that I am, I
have all of his mother, Ruth Bolt's letters still inside,
so I know in one of them somewhere I have,
you know, thanks for everything that you've done for In fact,
and even what I have up online, which I really
don't want to part with, is the only thing that
I have signed from Terry other than the permission slip,
which was a Japanese magazine. It's up on the stores,
dot eBay, dot com, Forward Slash New Wave Wrestling. It's
a wrestling Japanese wrestling magazine, and he just wrote it
to Mike, thanks for everything. So I don't really have
anything other than my own, and wherever the letters are
that I do, I do have my all of her
letter I never threw any of it out, and she
just to send me pictures. I have pictures of Terry
as a toddler and in grammar school and then when
he was just really started training and ruckus the band
that he was in. So I have stuff. I just
have so much stuff. It's just it's just getting to it.
It's fifty years of stuff just being put in a
box and put away. It's kind of Citizen Kane with Rosebud.
Not quite but I'm close. That's much stuff.
Speaker 2: So yeah, So what's amazing to me, you know, in
thinking about that all these people that have talked about
introducing Hulton New York Hulk. Hulk would credit Terry Funk
when he was thinking about quitting the business because he
was dissatisfied with his Memphis payoffs and kind of the
trajectory there that Terry Funk put him back on to
get hooked up with Vince. Jerry Briscoe, of course, who
kind of helped break Hulkin in Florida in seventy seven,
has a story about how he had Hulkin head over
to the house once and called Vince senior year and
put him on the line with them. It goes on
and on and on as far as who who claimed
to make the introduction. But you were under the impression
when you went in there, Mike into the Capital office
that they had not heard of him before, that they
had no clue who this guy was.
Speaker 4: At least those two people didn't. At least heal skull
and a little SAVOLDI didn't now he might have. He
was personable, and he was very personable. I mean when
I sat with him, I wasn't late. And Terry was
a big guy. If you look at the picture of
me with him, I'm like five eight, So he really
It wasn't like I was intimidated. He came across like
a person. You just were one on one with someone.
So I could certainly see how people would say, hey, listen,
you got the size, or you know, Jerry Briscoe or
Eddie Graham, somebody would, although I can't see where at
the time Jerry Briscoe was not part of He was
in Georgia at the time. Were Bda Briscoes Atlanta? Yeah,
I don't even so the whole business of them all
wanting to push Terry to come to New York makes
no sense whatsoever.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a pretty strong there was a strong
alliance between Vincentia and Eddie Graham. They swapped talent a
ton in the seventies, came up a superstar. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
you mentioned superstar. Did you think as a Superstar fan
of that vintage that Hulk was really kind of trying
to rip off Superstar. It's always hard for me to
tell if the fans are like rolling their eyes at
this guy's trying to imitate Graham, or if they're like
loving it.
Speaker 4: I think he was. At the time, he was somewhat
of a tribute performer to Superstar because some of the
pictures that I gave from Memphis, he had a Tide
muscle a tea's leaveless T shirt, a muscle tea that
was tie die on, so he had no he had
no robes or anything at the time. And then he
had the the I forget what it's called, like the ringlets.
It wasn't just trunks, it was the I don't know
if they caloted an executioner wrestling trunks that were over
the over the like suspenders you know with England, right
like Lawla had the one strap, but he had the
two strap, so in some respects, and then he had
the mushroom for the atomic mushroom cloud hairschetting, so in
some respects he was trying to be his own man,
but he couldn't deny the fact that people would look
and say oh wow, that he looked. I mean, Skoland
said it to me before. I didn't even say it
to him. He said at TAngelo SAVOLDI because hey, he
looks like Superstar. So they immediately saw it. But I
think he did. You know, there was a tribute even
when we were sitting down where he clothes stroked his
hair back and said, oh, look when I pull my
heat back, like, does that look like Superstar? So there's
definitely there's no question that he was an influence, But
I think he was. He was still, in essence, trying
to be his own man. He nearly didn't depend upon
the test of strength stuff to that much. At least
Memphis had him like, you know, bouncing off of the ropes,
and he was pretty mobile, I would say, right from
the get go, and Superstar really depended a blonde bear
hugs and the test of strength. As much as I
loved him, he wasn't really that much of a a
visual performer.
Speaker 2: Now you're talking about his background and kind of what
he had done in building up a resume for him.
Did he mention that by that point he had already
wrestled Andre in Alabama? He had already wrestled Harley Race
for the nw A title in Alabama.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but enough for some reason, he didn't mention that.
And then the only thing that he was praising, and
it was a little bit of tay fade. He was
telling me how he beat ox Baker with a bear
hug in like X amount of seconds. I don't know how,
So I don't know why he was investing me with that,
but that was that was a big one. But he
had said he had wrestled Andre and wrestled Harley Rays,
but his big thing was bear hugging ox Baker into submission.
I don't know that is that who we beat for
the Southeastern So he had the Southeastern title therefore, wik
he did.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he was involved with Austin Idol and Ox Baker.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, so that's it, because I have I have
a photo somewhere inside that he had sent me wearing
the belt. That was a nice belt. It was like
a red, white and blue leather strap and I have
that inside somewhere, and I just remember that was a
big thing.
Speaker 2: Do you remember thinking Knox Baker that he was maybe
equal parts inspired by Austin Idol as much as Billy Graham.
Speaker 4: Well, Superstar still came before Austin Idol. And then the
thing that I really love about Austin was how he
uh re envisioned himself. He remodeled himself from Mike McCord
to uh to Austin Idol. But so there's no question
about it. I mean, Graham was there, he was the template.
He did it. Austin did it in a different way
than Superstar, but he went with the blonde, you know, bodybuilder.
He didn't have the size and he didn't really have
the definition of Superstar, but he had he had a
great physique, and he had a he was great on
the mic, and he was a very good He's a
very good wrestler. I talked with Austin a while back.
I was trying to develop a one man play where
he could go up because he always tells everyone about
the plane crash, right and how you know. So I
was in contact with him maybe about four or five
years ago about putting together a one man show for
him to kind of tour or to be somewhere in
theater doing a one man talking about his life. And
it's as like as it is with many projects. They
start off and then some of them.
Speaker 2: Just so because you know idle Mania, he was on
Georgia TV and cupping the some of the gestures.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he definitely, there was no question. And then and
he was the name when when Terry came in to
be Sterling Golden, Austin Idel was positioned as as one
of the main heels in Atlanta. So I'm sure he
looked at Austin Il the way Austin Idel looked at Superstar.
So there's this kind of little steppings to everyone's on
everybody else's shoulders to some extent. But Austin Il definitely
took from Superstar and then uh, Terry took it from
Superstar and also also Austin Idel. I mean no question
about taking from Austin Il. With you know idle Mania
and the cupping of the ear and all, there's no question.
Speaker 2: One of the things I really want to talk to
you about, Mike is in going through the first three
ISSU chose the fan club magazine. I think it's the
third one, or maybe the second one. It says, right there, Hulkamania,
this is nineteen eighty and you're already Hulkamania is already
enough of a thing that you're putting the term on
the cover of one of the issues of the newsletter,
and this blew our mind because we're trained to believe
that Hulkamania was a babyface thing that he only started
talking about that in and around rocky three, and when
he went to verne Ganya. The idea that Hulkamania was
something that he said as a heel and something that
you know, a fan running his news club is a
fan club would have picked up on and published. Is
kind of like a movement in as early as nineteen eighty.
The winter issue number three really really blew my mind.
Can you tell us everything you remember about Hulkamania becoming
a thing that early.
Speaker 4: And what it meant from dard to time in the
Combat Sports newsletter that I did if somebody said something
that was funny or something that didn't was off, I
would run a quote. I would throw a poll quote
in the newsletter, And so my ear was always up
for something that was different and unusual. So coming off
of it off of Atlanta, where Austin Idol was using
idle Mania, Hogan obviously procured the slogan. He wasn't using
it to a great extent, but I heard it enough
times that he did use it that then I just
I just put it down and then it wasn't really
full blown and developed until later either. I don't. I'm
not sure with Ganya. If you say it was with Ganya,
I say that, but certainly as a marketing tool when
he came in with the great WW expansion and trying
to take over the business. So I mean, I know
that it was around, but I think McMahon or maybe
Gania ran with it to use it as kind of
the running of slogan. But it was around, he had
used it, and it was because of just coming fresh
out of Atlanta with the idle mania.
Speaker 3: Got it.
Speaker 2: That makes a ton of sense. Yeah, just we're going
through sort of like chronologically the tape that's available of
his run, and we land on this what was it September.
Speaker 3: September, Yeah, September nineteen eighty, and it was it was
kind of mind blowing to think that it was, says
Hulcomania in New York in nineteen eighty, well before any
sort of babyface run, and it was it was it
was shocking.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, that's the amazing thing about you know, and
back in the day, if you even used wrestling jargon,
you know, baby face heel or any of that stuff.
No one would no one would know what you're talking about.
And then somehow, just through cross pollination and with fans
and at places, it becomes the norm. So Hulchomenia was there,
was out. It wasn't just being used in a very
prevalent way.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 4: It would he'd say it here or there in an interview,
and I just picked up on it on one of
the local because they had to then do all the
individuals for Boston Gardens, they had to do interview segments
Madison Square Garden. Everyone had their own, So everybody probably
heard Hulkamania just in passing. But I picked up on it.
I think also because of Austin Idol, but it just sounded,
you know, well, also Beatlemania was around, so Austin Idols
stole it from the Beatles the beatle tribute shows. So
Beatlemania was around, and then we had idle Mania, and
then we had Hulkamania.
Speaker 2: You mentioned your history in comic books, and this is
an opportunity to ask something that also blew our mind,
that came up to us and pointed out to us
because we were trying to trace back as far as
we possibly could, Mike, what was the name Hulk Hogan?
You know, like, was there there was a Spider Man
Crusher Hogan, who was a wrestler in the comic. This
was decades before Terry came into the WWF, and it
it kind of strange credulity to suggest that, like, you know,
the brain trust that WWF would have seen this comic
character and thought about it as a name. But you know,
Hogan was you know, he was already Hall. We know
this Hogan was the one that the piece of it
that was added. And then we're looking back and someone
had pointed us to some vintage comics, what JP as
far back as it was ninth the issue was nineteen
sixty one that were that that has this two Gun King.
Two Gun Kid.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Two Gun Kid was the series early Marvel.
Speaker 3: Atlas comics at the time, before it was even Marvel Comicsyo.
Speaker 4: Yeah right.
Speaker 2: It says the hands of the Hulk and there's a
character who towers over everybody else who goes to war
with the baby Faces in this comic and his name
is Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 4: And I'm just not something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just wondering if to you when they named
Hi Hulk Hogan, if what that touched off for you
knowing comic books.
Speaker 4: No, the only other the big thing at that point
in time why they took Hulgland was because on TV
they had the Hulk TV show, which was pretty weak
with lou Figno. So the connection there was Vince mcmahn Sr.
Wanted something with alliteration to it, and I think he
wanted it for whatever reason he wanted Hogan. I mean,
Hulk was already is Terry the Hulk Boulder. He dropped
it to be Sterling Golden, which I think Terry the
Hulk Boulder wasn't a bad name either. It was a
little bit maybe of a tongue twister. But Hulk Hogan works.
I mean, I just think everyone says the story that
all he wanted to make of an irishman, which I think,
to myself, well he's reached blond. I don't really see
the connection, but so I think it was more along
the lines of a lufa Igno and the book on
his size. You know, it connected from people because I
don't think the obscure things also with Marvel or Atlas
or Timely whatever you want to call it. At the time,
they had him in Tales to Astonish or Tales of Suspense.
There was a big monster, one of these gigantic, you know,
one hundreds foot monsters called the Hulk, and there was
that came around the same time as Two Gun Kid.
I didn't know about the Two Gun Kid, which was
fully Hulk. Hogan stan Lee used the name Hulk again
somewhere else as the Hulk before he did The Incredible Hulk.
So but I think it was the TV show and
for Igno and the popularity of the time of that
show that he just went with that wrestling's great at
stealing stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, oh for sure. And you know now that
years later Ron Fuller actually did a podcast and he
was the one with Louis Tillette booking him in you know,
Pensacola Slash the Gulf Coast area that gave him the
name Terry the Hulk Boulder, And we were looking at
old news clippings and they would just call him the
Hulk in the beginning. They were just kind of they're
almost intimating that if you came to the arena, you
would see this big green comic book character killing people
who towered over everybody else. Do you remember Mike any
sensitivity around like the copyright on that, because we know,
come eighty five, they've got to cut a deal with
Marvel to keep calling him Hulk and share with all
of these.
Speaker 4: Definitely there was, it didn't show up until that point
in time. That's around the time that I started having
trouble with Titan Sports, and in essence, that was pretty
much kind of where Terry and I started parting ways
because I was involved with wrestling magazines to a greater
extent at that point, and then I was also being
an editor in chief of a whole lot of new titles,
and I became aware that they became aware of my
existence because of the club, and then they became aware
of my existence to the magazines and my stories, and
my magazines were not the pedestrian there. I always like
to say, they were kind of rhetorical stories about you know,
so and so, is this the end for some and
but not in a phony way, just saying did somebody
run their course or is this character feasible? And I
started having problems with WWF at the time, and Terry
was between a rock and a hard place. He couldn't
do much for me because he was still you're an employee,
you know. And then in Ruth and I would talk
about email or call one not email, but write one
another or call one another about you know, what was happening.
And you know, I ultimately had to let the club
go because he couldn't he couldn't do anything they want.
They owned the rights to the Hulk name, the whole
Hogan name, but I had him signed to this little
flimsy contract to say, well I have this, and he
was just in the Plazer, so oh my, you know,
I mean, I can't really get really involved with it
if you can figure something out. And then I talked
with his mom and saying, well, I don't know what
I could. I guess I could have turned it into
the Terry Bowlet. What could they do about that? But
I was at the point I was already you know
that that was I was younger, and I was a fan,
and then I was kind of moving into being an
associate editor and then an editor in chief and then
later publisher magazine, the Fan.
Speaker 2: Club Newsletter out all the way through eighty four eighty five.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, like I think, uh, there's a cover with
Hogan b An dericature of Hogan holding the belt and
he's sitting on top of the iron cheek. I don't
know which issue of And I think the newsletter the
fan club thing became the hulk of many. I think
I Terry changed the name to all Comania, so it
went on to like eighty. I know we I'm just
trying to think because you know, I lived it, so
it doesn't mean it. I can tell you more about
a comic book cover and who did the art and
who wrote what when it's because it's something that I
was enamored with. But my own stuff I have a
harder time. But I think when once Hogan had the belt,
and I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that that answers the question.
Speaker 4: I mean, if you have I think John Studd was
the top opponent. I think that was my run at
the end where we kind of parted ways, and also
a relationship he didn't like. He really didn't like where
I was going. And I said, well, Terry, you don't
pay my bills. You know I'm doing this. I'm I'm
in the business on a different end of it. So
we you know what I mean, We don't leave on
on bad terms. Oh you know, you have to write
about this. You have to do that. And then I said, well,
you know, I've tried really hard to differentiate myself from
other magazines. And I was also f I think my
voice writing, because doing a newsletter, you're basically putting so
and so beat so and so. You know, by pinfall
twelve minutes and eight seconds, there's really no writing to it.
So you know, all of a sudden, you're you're trying
to develop provocative cover lines in this and that, and
and they became a problem for us.
Speaker 1: He's Lapsed fan Wrestling podcast with Jack incrn SEO and
j Piso, a lap fan Wrestling podcast.
Speaker 3: You talked about you know, you talked a lot about
your relationship with with his mom, Ruth, Like how how
close did you guys get?
Speaker 4: We were on the phone a lot. I really relied
upon her to let me know where he was. If
I could go to a show that was local. I
wasn't really traveling big time. I go like when he
never got a title shot with that backland in New York.
So I went to Philadelphia for the match and the rematch,
and I'm I'm some of that I read. By that
point in time, I knew what was going on Beho.
I had enough contacts, but I would more or less
contact her to say, can you tell Terry I'm going
to be here or there? Because I really didn't I
didn't have access to him. There was no cell phone. Yeah,
so I saw him in Philly the picture I sent
you and some other stuff. It was never at the garden.
I really we never really met at the Garden. I'd
need him around the time that he was here, but
I would catch him at Embassy Hall in North Bergen,
New Jersey, or Wagner College in Staten Island. So it
was always a white Chester Westchester civic center. I was.
I could get access to him at the small arenas
somewhere like the garden. You just it was just too difficult.
Speaker 3: I mean, did you ever did you ever go down
and to Tampa and like visit in person or was
it always.
Speaker 2: Over the phone?
Speaker 4: It was always over the phone. I was I was,
I was still I was doing Guy was a college
student and uh, and then just doing the magazine stuff.
We really just took up so much of my time
at the time because I was building, I was developing
at that time. There was a lot of stuff change.
Wrestling became more particularly the the later period, not so
much with with the early days of Terry Uh as
a villain, but once the WrestleMania thing took off, you know,
I was then at the helm of like six wrestling
magazines nine times a year, a lot of stuff, you know,
So I was I was just kind of directing traffic
at that point.
Speaker 3: I'm always fascinated with with people who kind of had
a relationship with his parents because I feel like these
are kind of unsung heroes for uh Uh, you know,
for any wrestler really, but specifically with Ruth and Pete
with Hogan.
Speaker 4: So, yeah, his mom was so terrific and she was
just so proud, and so Pete was very quiet. I mean,
any time they were there, I was dealing with them,
or if I called and Pete picked up the phone,
he pretty much was ill hold on and that was
out of it. Ruth would just go. And then the
thing is that they would come to New York. Ruth
had a relative, and I assumed it was Terry's an
elderly relative, and I guess I don't know how old
Ruth would have been, maybe in her fifties, late forties,
fifties at the time, but they had an elderly relative,
an aunt that lived maybe about five or six blocks
from my where I grew up in an apartment in Manhattan,
and so when she would come to visit her aunt,
I would meet them there. I would meet Pete and Ruth.
So we would have dinner at the at the apartment.
That was pretty much it. So you spend the night
talking and blah blah blah, how was you know, what's
how's Terry and what I was doing? And so that
was nice for the most part. If it wasn't for Ruth,
I'd have had a very hard time of communicating with him.
But he truthfully, he lived at home, so when he
wasn't on the road, he came home. So that's when
I think they would catch up about what they're going
to do with me, and then she would relay to
me what he said or whatever. So it's kind of
amazing we did talk. I mean, Terry would call me,
but I was living home. I was still a kid
and not a kid, but I was, you know whatever,
merging into adulthood. So if he called me from being
on the road, then betimes where I wasn't home. You know,
I was twenty and I'm in New York City, I'm
not home a lot, so I missed a few calls
and then you're waiting for him to call back and
he's onto the next town or whatever. So if not
for if not for Ruth, I don't know what I
would have done in regards to Terry. I had other
connections in terms of match results and things of that
nature all around the city, of country, and around the world,
but just to get really pinpoints specifically where he is,
what's going on, and to let him know I'd be
in such and such an area, I couldn't have done
it without her at all.
Speaker 2: So this really corroborates kind of what we've heard studying
roots role in Help's early career that she was sort
of like the show mom for him. She dove headlong
into any opportunity to kind of, you know, talk about
his background, where he came from, his upbringing, what kind
of person he was, and didn't shy away from the fact. Mike,
and I don't know if this ever crossed your mind,
that you know, on television, everyone is being told he
was from Venice Beach, California, that he was this sort
of like you know, delivered from some other universe kind
of force. And here here's his mom telling anyone who
called the house, like you know that he grew up
in Tampa and he used to play Little League baseball.
There was never a conflict there with her just telling
everyone about Terry Bolea when what they were selling was
Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 4: There's so much contradiction in terms. There was that We
magazine that with my boy the Hulk, where she did
an interview where there's an article I know if you've
ever seen it, yep, and there's Hulk and she's proud
of Terry and there he is avoiding with topless women,
one of which was Linda.
Speaker 2: So you know.
Speaker 4: So there's these contradictions in terms everywhere, and I don't
know if people did, you know, for the uninitiated, they
didn't connect the dots. For people who kind of were
following and and pursuing wrestling on a deeper level, if
such a thing exists, they would they would say, ah, huh,
here's information. It's not about eventage speech and you know
he's not just saying his prayers and he and taking
his vita. You know, so you'd have to look for it,
and it was always there, you know, in wrestling in general.
Speaker 2: Why do you think she was so willing to help
out somebody like you? What was she trying? What to
her was made it worse than time.
Speaker 4: I think initially she just wrote a nice letter that
because I, well, I first of all, I got him
booked here, so that was his dream come true. And
when I when I wrote to her, she wrote back,
and then she sent me pictures right out of the gate.
I just think, you know, he didn't know me from her.
I met him once. I met him once in Memphis.
That was it. It's not like throughout the convention we
just constantly. That time at the steakhouse was it. And
I just then went home typed it up. I said,
I'm going to bring it over and I'm thinking, oh,
I don't know when they're going to be there. I'll
wait till the day of the next Garden show. And
that was it. So I think the very fact that
I did that and then she wrote back to me
and I'm I'm kind of like a New York City
version of Bob Becklan. I'm a prayer. I was pretty
much an all American boy. I was I wasn't a
bad guy. So I think she's it came through in
a while, and I'd said to the newsletters. She saw
I was industrious, you know, I was selling photos through
the thing, and I was consistent. The newsletter was every month,
so she saw that there was really a legitimate It
wasn't somebody that's kind of I'm here today, gone tomorrow.
I was very consistent, and so it built over that
and she saw I had a genuine affection for him.
Even in those early newsletters. Is you know, there was
nothing that help number of the first issue spanlight on
the Hulk. I mean, what am I grabbing on. I'm
not really doing much. I don't think there was anything
Terry Boulder. I'm just grabbing on whatever was Hulk Hogan.
And that's like right at the I gave you the
first TV taping result and then the TV taping that
I went. So she saw that I'm compiling this. It
was something that she was amazed that somebody could even
keep that kind of attention on him, and she wanted
to know what he was doing too, So I you know,
worked both ways, but she really was very loving, very
kind to me.
Speaker 2: That's great. You feature photos on the very first issue
of him posing in Memphis, with the chest hair and
all of that and the bomber shades. And you credit
miss Kathy Dowd for those photos. Can you talk me
about Kathy? She was at it.
Speaker 4: There's somebody that I met at the w FIA convention
and you swapped, you know, business cards and you if
you whatever, I'd give a newsletter out and we kept
to touched. She was giving me results from the AWA.
I believe she was in Colorado, and.
Speaker 2: She would take pictures of Terry down.
Speaker 4: In Memphis as she would take she was down. That
was pictures taken where we were all in Memphis together
where he comes from. That was from the same time
that I was there.
Speaker 2: Apropos of nothing. Besides, we always like to grab these
little details if we can. Do you have any memory, Mike,
of what Terry and Ed ordered at that Memphis steakhouse?
Did they just house like six quarterhouses?
Speaker 4: I don't think we had any choice. Everyone had the
steak to bake potato and the corn bread that was
in a nice tea.
Speaker 3: I think I'll elaborate a little bit. How many steaks
do they have? Is the real question?
Speaker 4: Well, well, I was with other people and I wasn't driving,
so I had to leave when they were leaving side.
He was still there when I left, so he could
very well have gone on. It was one of those places,
you know, the steaks were good and it was darn cheap.
It was probably like under five bucks. This is nineteen
seventy nine. But ed Leslie didn't open his mouth once.
He didn't say how about me, right, It was just
you know, it's just me talking with Terry.
Speaker 2: That's so unbranded in a way. So he handed you
the business card for Whitey's gym? Was that at that meeting?
Was he still kind of no?
Speaker 4: His mom sent me that later to give me backstory
on what he had done. She sent me pictures of
Ruckus and he was in good shape, but he was
very thin, but he was you could tell he worked out,
but it wasn't like pro wrestler bodybuilder physique, and pictures
of him as a kid. Like I say, he'd be
in the backyard and he would dig a ditch and
you'd see him like just clapping the dust off his hands.
So I have a lot of stuff like that, the
more inside. So we got very close like that, and
I was always sending Ruth photos as well. If I
went to the South Mountain Arena and the Orange New Jersey,
and I took pictures of him. She would get pictures,
She would get photos from that.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a very well but you're
on the road with him and she can't get out
on him because he's in New York. Yeah, just to
circle back to the idea of the copyright stuff in Marvel,
I understand that com eighty five in Junior takes over.
It gets a lot more kind of I don't know,
spress aggressive. Yes, yeah, but even back in nineteen eighty
seventy nine, we note when we watch the TV that
they keep changing if they refer to him as Incredible
Hulk Hogan or not. They say fabulous a lot of
the times. And we've heard from announcers like Charlie Platt,
who did the television for Fuller and Southeastern, talked about how, yes,
at a certain point in time, it was like, let's
not say Incredible Hulk anymore because that could be an issue.
Do you remember, because you know, you put Incredible Hull
coll of the newsletter and stuff, do you remember that
being kind of a sensitivity even way back then.
Speaker 4: Well, I think the thing that I don't really remember
the sensitivity to it. But I do remember that they
would call him the fabulous Hulk Hogan, the incredible Hulk Cogan.
But I think they also divved it up so that
it didn't seem as if they were just making him
incredible Hulk, so that if an arena announcer made the
announcement to say, well that was his you know, choice
of an adjective, it's not what we're necessarily doing. Yeah, well,
it's all get Joe mceue. He's the best that that
did that. So you know, I think in some respects
they just kind of, uh, they waited to see what
was going to happen. And I think then ultimately w's
even when with WWF that they had to let it go,
which kind of was a bit crazy, but that's the
leigiousness of the society we live in. But I mean,
even for me, I mean the whole Cogan fan club,
it was kind of ridiculous that they're coming after me
and they're battling me, and I'm well, I have the
rights to the club, I have a design signature, And
it really wasn't like this great I was. It was
five dollars membership. You got basically four dollars and ninety
nine cents worth of merchandise. It wasn't something that I
made money off of, but I did, honestly, can honestly
say it was selling other stuff photos. That's where I
made the money that it was. The loss leader was
the fan club. So for me, like with the club,
it's like, well, do you realize your heart that's one
hundred thousand dollars a year. It wasn't it was. There
was like no money to the club. It was really
a labor of love with benefits through hard work and
putting other things together. But it was still a thing
where you say, you gotta do after this guy with
this little funther coffee thing. I mean, come on. Jerry
mcdividd and Vince McMahon. Jerry mcdividd was his guy back
in the day.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, he sicked.
Speaker 4: I just remember the letters would go back and for
them and I used to and I'd send them something short,
you know. Jerry mcdivivian would send me this two three
page thing and w W Stay Sherry, which I just
thought was great. Oh I got w W Sta. I
didn't care what you know it was about. And I'm thinking,
why is this guy wasting his time, but I guess
he had nothing else to do. You had to earn
his key to show vinces. Look, I sent out this
leader to this kid. You know.
Speaker 2: So I don't know you mentioned when when Hulk kind
of got you know, involved with Vince Junior in that
sensitivity there. You know, he'd say a couple of times,
do you have to write about that? Can you remember
one thing that that Hulk didn't want you to write
about or ask why you wrote about it?
Speaker 4: Well? I think one thing that it was, and it
wasn't related to him, but it got it was I
was doing stuff for wrestling Eye. This is before I
even did my own magazine. And Mike Bluw, who was
like the brother I never had god rest him.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: We just hit it off like peanut Butter and Jelly.
We were sitting in a bar somewhere and Mike was
a boxing person. He really wasn't a wrestling person, but
we would we would just kind of get ready. No
one would, the publisher was not would let us go
where we wanted to go. As long as it wasn't
profanity or nudity. We could do whatever we want. I
remember sitting with Mike in a bar somewhere, and I
just said to him, why don't we do up an
article about the secret language of wrestling? And we put
every we did it like a two or three page,
four page article I don't even remember in Wrestling Eye magazine.
And that brought me to the really kind of the
attention of uh so that the didn't like me, let
me just put it that way. So that's the one
that really stands out. I did other stuff about you know, uh,
in fact, a couple of times with with with Terry,
because I just think he, you know, as much as
I loved him, you know, the way that the business
was marketed later and and and I really if you
read any of the magazines that I did, I was
already against a lot of the stuff that kind of
came after the expand the w W expansion and then
the consolidation of the territories and that it just became
very corporate. And so we were we were at different points.
He was making money and I was making some money,
but uh, you know, more or less being kind of
the the guy that's telling everybody that the sky is falling,
the sky is falling, and uh, wrestling inside people in
the business didn't want to hear that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a fascinating position to be in. So do
you remember this one? This is one that kind of
threw us for a loop. But Hogan talked about it
in his in one of his books January nineteen eighty.
He's in the territory for a couple of months. He's
driving on January the third on Highway in New Jersey
and gets arrested for possession of a firearm. The state
police pull him over and that Wild and Owens are
in the car. He gets indicted and it gets thrown
out eventually, and he's talked about it. Do you remember
that that that would have happened right when you were
publishing the newsletter.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I remember it. I don't even know. I may
have had a newspaper clipping in the in the newsletter,
not in the Hulk Hogan Fan Club. No, I mad
because I would always I would always put anything like
the Iron Chic and Jim Duggan getting busted in the
car traveling, or mister Saiito and Ken Peter throwing the
boulder through the window with McDonald's. So I covered it.
I don't think I wouldn't have covered it in the
Hulk fan club thing because of the fact that you know,
they're Hulk people. Hulk a maniac, So I don't think
they would want to hear about him running around with
a gun in his glove compartment. But I did cover
it just out of whatever the local newspaper and I
reprinted in Yeah, it kind of it sets.
Speaker 2: Us off on like a journey, you know, as far
as like why did he have a gun? What was
the deal? You know, he he lived pretty he partied
pretty hard in Coco Beach in seventy eight with Ed Leslie,
you know, that White Bar and everything that. You know,
it's not that hard to find news articles that indicate that,
you know, the FBI was sniffing around down there. He
worked with Don the Dragon Wilson, future martial arts movie star, right, yeah, yeah,
and he was talking to us about how that that
place would kind of be, you know, one could call
it a Deneville repute. At certain points in time, did
you get a sense that Terry Ever kind of lived
lived on the edge in that way, particularly as he
was just transitioning into wrestling and before he really hit
it big.
Speaker 4: I think I think at that period of time where
like he wasn't taking he didn't have a goal of
professional wrestling. Yeah, he lived a pretty wildlife.
Speaker 2: He was.
Speaker 4: He was in the band, you know, so you're you're
you're in that entire lifestyle. You're a being, You're in
a beach lifestyle. So we we talked about it a
little bit. But by the time I hooked up with him,
he was, you know, big time bodybuilding and weightlifting, and
I think he put some of it to the to
the side, and I guess, you know, steroids and muscle
enhancement came to the forefront more than anything else. But
I mean I went out with him a few times
and he pretty much was doing beers. I mean, I
don't really remember hard liquor, but he was a beer drinker,
you know, so, and I don't remember him being to
really excess. I think he really at some point watched
his calories. He didn't watch his carbs in the early
days because he was big, but he really haven't men
much definition at all, as opposed to Billy Graham in
many instances, Billy would watch his carbohydrate intake and was
pretty cut, so he was he was a bit loose
with beer drinking, but I never saw him with anything else,
and I'm sure there was you know, weed was around
and stuff, But I think for the most part, I
think he was trying to be a good boy in
the early days where he was getting this in the WWF.
Speaker 3: Did the ladies line up whenever he'd walk into a room?
Speaker 4: I'm sorry, what was that?
Speaker 3: Did the ladies line up whenever he'd walk in a room?
Because we've been hearing some quite a few cheers from
from women, and even when he's a heel in some
of these these clips we've seen, believe it or not.
Speaker 4: In terms of me seeing him at the arenas, it
was just me kind of coming over by the curtain
or whatever, or getting behind the curtain at the places
that I would be out with him early days. For
the most part, in the like when he was just
here as a villain, I think there was a certain
amount of freak appeal if you weren't a wrestling fan.
I think people just looked at him like wow, you know,
they would be off in a distance. Now when he
became Hulk in eighty four and got the title and all,
I really wasn't out that much with him to have
seen it, but I'm sure he was mobbed, but I
was I was pre good guy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's fascinating too, because I want to talked
about this that the fan club letters kind of take
up arms for the fact that Hogan's not getting the
opportunities at Bob Backland that he deserves, you know. And
he came in and he worked back them quite early,
but to your point, never had a Madison Square Garden
main event against Bob Backland. They talked a lot on
television about how Fred Blassie wanted to lead him to
the title and all of that, and how he saw
the next world champion at Hogan, and then they started
almost just as quickly talking about dissension between him and Blassi,
although they never had a formal on screen split. Then
the Andrea Program happens, and after that he's off to
do Rocky and they kind of just like cycle him out.
He FEUs with Tony Atlass towards the end, and Blassi
isn't really anywhere to be found towards the end of
Hogan's run. Was there a sense in that early time
of his run, Michael, from the people that you were
publishing this fan club newsletter for that Hulk just wasn't
getting the opportunity that he would justify that that would
be justified just looking at the guy.
Speaker 4: I think everybody more or less had the of the
same sense that you know, the bigger arenas. I mean, Philip,
the Spectrum was a big arena, but yet to kind
of bypass the Garden was a bit of a surprise.
And then to really just immediately push him into the
program with Andre for the most part as the big
confrontation in New York at Chase Stadium and whatnot, was
a bit of a surprise. But I also think that
was the old school of wrestling. He was not in
the business long enough. They're not going to bring him
in and let him without earning his keep. You know, Yeah,
he had a great look. I mean, now you'll have
guys that they'll put a belt on somebody because they think,
you know, I'm then is nan Housen destined for the
world title? I mean, they don't really care. It's not
like the way it was back then. They will just
not to say I don't like that, And I really
think he's one of the best things going right now.
But I think that their attitude as he's a young kid,
he's grain, he doesn't know anything. We'll give him andre,
we'll season him, we'll give him some matches with backline
around them around the horn, but not at the Garden.
And then he kind of error and unceremoniously the the area.
He got beat by Tony Atlas at the Garden. I
think his last match, Tony Adams lifted him up over
his head and slammed him. Sure did, so I was thinking,
what's up with that? I mean, they were to me,
it just seemed like they were really kind of closing
the coffin on him. And but but from what I understand,
and you know, I again, you get a lot of
different stories. The thing with Rocky was with the blessing
of the WWF and not with the blessing of the
WWF and not, you know what I mean. So it
just seemed like they used them up kind of quick
and then they wanted to dump them out.
Speaker 2: Yeah. The second issue of the newsletter, the Fan Club Newsletter,
has a picture of him that you stenciled of him
flexing the double bicepstance as a heavyweight champ. The continuing threat.
You know, so you're like, you're you're fully plugged into
this idea that like him winning the title is a possibility.
But really knowing that the territory as you did, did
you really just see him as like the next big
heel that Backlan would turn away or did you did
it ever actually enter your mind that they would put
the strap on him in nineteen.
Speaker 4: Eighty, you know, in eighty I just think to some
extent we had Backland then for about two years, right,
and he pretty much went to a lot of the
big players of the time period. You didn't see on
the horizon really in eighty four. Even Backland saw it
and he thought how well he would have done against
people like Roddy Piper and Paul Arndorff and that type.
But he wasn't. They weren't there for him when he
had lost the belt by that point. But looking at
it for a snapshot of seventy nine, you just said,
I don't know who's left for Backland to really take
on that's going to draw. You know, they were bringing
I mean, I like I say, I love Bulldog Brower.
He was like an uncle to me. That they gave
Backland Brower to Backland in nineteen eighty terrible match and
they broke I was in like Swede Hansen. You know,
you saw guys around the around the ed just later
kill a Cohn or whatever, and it's like, to a
great extent, Hogan looked like would have been obvious to
give him the belt for a while. And then even
he was young enough, you could certainly have turned him
a babyface somewhere down the line, but start him off
as a heel, let him beat back then and then.
But you never knew what they were going to do.
I wasn't really privy too in hindsight hindsight twenty twenty.
You know, I think that they just looked and said,
he didn't he hasn't earned his spot yet here.
Speaker 2: Kind of interesting.
Speaker 4: Gave him enough, They gave him enough of a push,
but not too much of a push.
Speaker 2: It's kind of interesting to me, Mike, that anyone would
even subscribe to a fan club newsletter for a heel
in nineteen eighty Yeah right, you know what I mean, Like,
what's the mentality of the fan that wants that fan
club newsletter if he's not a good guy.
Speaker 4: A lot of them came over from my newsletter Combat Sports,
but also anyone that was doing that and reading the
match results, like I'd have match results from Massachusetts, I
have results from the Garden. I'd have something from maybe
the New Jersey or Philadelphia. Somehow, I'm amazingly these results
were all almost the same, you know, night after night,
so people could you know. I didn't labor the fact,
but the people who were buying the newsletters were pretty
much keyed into how the business was, and they liked Hogan.
They n liked the dynamic personality and just the way
that he was. Just backstory a bit. When I became
a wrestling fan everywhere, even at these small little arenas,
I would go to the matches with two or three
friends and we would always root for the bad guys.
So we were making no friends with anybody. So there's
that mentality out there of people that I don't want
to call me a spoiler, but we would be you know,
it would be Hans Schroeder, which would be like a
really low level enhancementalion, and we would be chanting, go, go,
go go. So it's like, you know, there's that personality
across the country and around the world. So those were
my newsletter people, and those were my fan club members.
Speaker 2: Did you that swelling for Superstar? You know, He always
talked about how kind of disenchanted he was that Vin
Senior insisted on him losing the belt to Backman in
February seventy eight when he was failing the garden, even
though he was a heeled champ, and that wasn't exactly
how they ran the territory. But it also seems like
Superstar kind of had the spark that Hulk would get
in eighty four as a guy that the fans eventually
just thought was so cool and so dynamic and so
wild that they kind of started cheering him. Do you
remember that?
Speaker 4: I do remember that, And I think the only thing
that SuperStar's health was already bad, and you could see
that Hid in essence was not able to do what
he did, and his physique, well, he had bulked up
a bit. You could see it was an older body.
So I think, in some respects I would have loved
to see I mean, it never happened. I would have
loved to see Superstar versus Hulk few somewhere down the line,
you know, that would have been through even if they
weren't good matches, which I suspect they probably wouldn't have been.
But I think they were going to do something like that,
but Billy's body just gave out on him. You know,
I met Billy later. I had pictures with Superstar and
Superstar one time was like six foot four the picture
of Superstar and me together and I'm five eight. We're
about just about the same height. So he lost a
he had a lot of disintegrating spinal activities. So that'll
just tell you to lose that kind of height because
he was a big Superstar was tall. He was a
bit leaner, lankier than Terry, but he was tall. And
then when we finally met and we had a few
pictures taken together, I was just kind of amazed that
we were just almost, you know, shoulder to shoulder.
Speaker 2: One of the things it's great to say a club newsletters,
you're on hand December seventeenth, nineteen seventy nine at Madison
Square Garden where Hulk Hogan wrestled his very first MSG match.
It was against Teddy Biassi, and you've got great first
hand photographs of this whole thing that turned out to
be quite a bit of history. What do you remember
about Hulk wrestling in the garden for the first time, Well, actually, I.
Speaker 4: Went to the gym with Terry that day he was
at he was at the mid City Gym, I think
it was called in forty ninth Street in Midtown, and
I went with a couple of times when he was
in New York. I would go with him to the
gym when he when he because it was the easiest
thing and he was working on I think I'm going
to work out too, And all I really wound up
doing was spotting him. And then when he would take
a break and I was going to do something and
he would be talking, he would just go on about, oh,
I got to the bass tonight and I'm going to
do this, so that he was very enthused. So the
thing that I really remember more than anything was that
afternoon working out with him, that he'd do his set
and then he'd put his waist down or if he
was on Nautilus equipment, he would then just go on about,
you know, this match and how really important it is,
and it's you know, he's they really give him a
great break, and he really was very respectful of Vince McMahon.
Senior never really mentioned Vince Junior to me back in
the day, but Senior was the guy calling the shots,
but he was just so worked up. He was just
so excited that night. And I didn't see him after
the matches that way, I didn't see him. I guess
he was on the next down. I didn't think to
meet him, you know, because I'd spent the afternoon with him.
It wasn't like I said, oh, when we go, we're
going to do something afterwards, you know. I figured let
him have his privacy. But the match itself, I mean
it was. It was a good match. He was he
was fast and was a great opponent. TBS was one
of those real prototype NWA guys should have been like
if it had still continued on the NWA World Champion.
He had that style and Terry was familiar with it
from working you know, terror NWA territories, and he held
his own. I mean, I think Terry ted Debac was
very uh decent. The way that he let Terry get
you know, a nice push.
Speaker 2: Absolutely a key match for him and DEBIASI remembers it well.
One of the other things that kind of blew my
mind was all the way in nineteen eighty, considering the
limited communication in the time you were able to get
results into the Hult Coke and fan Club newsletter of
his matches in Japan his very first tour in May
of nineteen eighty. I'd love to get the detail as
to how you know a guy in New York ends
up with the results from what he's doing in Japan.
Speaker 4: Again, the funny thing about wrestling at the time, your
name would get handed to somebody else, and I was
doing the newsletter, and then somebody probably sent my newsletter
to a correspondent he had in Japan, and somehow, some
way I wound up with pretty much the preeminent photographer
I guess journalists I don't know, because I couldn't read
Japanese in Japan. His name was Koichi Ashizawa, and Koichi
supplied me with photos and match results for years and
years and years, even in when I did the wrestling
the newstand magazines, Koechi's material leagues. Many of the people
who were with me as a newsletter and when it
started out as a photocopy and then offset and then
making the transition into being a magazine editor and then publisher,
many of those people came with me. Many of them
from the early days wound up writing something or more so.
The photographers so and in the many instances. If you
see somebody photo in the newsley, in the newsletter or
in the wrestling fan club, you'll see them later. They
were with me all the way through. They were part
of my group.
Speaker 2: And one of the things that you would print his
poems from the Fans and Catherine el Burke April twenty first,
nineteen eighty. Let me tell you about the greatest wrestler
that I have ever met. This guy weighs in at
three hundred twenty pounds and stands write at six feet eight,
and if you ever see him wrestle, you'll understand why
he is so great. A lot of people dooo this
man and call him names while he is in the ring,
but these people have something to learn. This man was
taught to wrestle and not to sing. I don't believe
that this man could be considered bad just because he
comes out that door. I think that everyone will admit
that none of his matches are a bore. Some people
will say he's not so great, but don't just take
that he is. Don't take that he is from me.
Go to any wrestling match around where you know that
hul Cogan will be just love it.
Speaker 4: I just want to say to both of you. I
expect you both to memorize.
Speaker 3: That I'm done.
Speaker 2: Okay, there will be a test, Yes, it will be.
Speaker 4: I'm going to I may come. I may just call
one day and give you guys a quiz on that cheating.
Speaker 2: I am just I love the idea that there's a
Catherine el Burke somewhere out there who took the time
to write that, to put it in your rise letter.
That just that's so gone from wrestling.
Speaker 4: Now we will in general, we were right at the
end of the whole period of that kind of stuff,
even in terms of music and actors, you know, Bobby Sherman,
David Cassidy, hul Cogan. I mean, we were basically right
at that point where people you know, I mean even
at the time when I was doing those two fan clubs,
I mean, two guys so dramatically opposite of one another,
Bulldog Brower and Hulk Coogan. There was a boy, there
was a Bob Backland fan club, and I don't know
who else there was at the time. Wow, it was
mostly newsletters or people covering the area of Florida, or
they focused in on Jim Cornette was involved with a
guy named Norman Dooley, God rest him, and they did
the Weasels Weasel's Wrestling Report, and they did all the
breakdown of the Memphis shows, the us w A or CWA,
whatever they would call themselves at that time. So for
the most part, people did their territorial newsletters. I was
like a mini McMahon. I did everywhere I was, you know,
I did a little bit of everything, and New York
was lousy because we really all we had was we
had Atlanta on the weekend. Tuesday night, we had an
hour of wrestling from Florida on a Spanish language channel.
We had two hours of WWF during the week which
were all lopsided matches. And we had on Wednesday night
on Channel forty one, also Spanish language, in Spanish wrestling
from the Olympic Auditorium. That's it. We didn't have. I
don't cook anything else was I was dependent upon all
my peeps.
Speaker 2: I love that. That's such a great that's such a
great thing, such a great like affirmation. There's like, you know,
fellow passionate fans. I mean, now you look at social
and it's media and it's hard to tell, Like I mean,
obviously people are into it, but they're into it like
for their own aggrandizement. They're not into it to associate
with other fans as much. And I saw one of
the issues you talk about Dizzy Hogan, right, uh, and
you portray him to the to the fan club subscribers.
Who is he? Where is he going? What does he
want meet? The Halt's younger brother? Next issue? Did you
believe in the beginning that ed Leslie was actually Hult's brother?
Tell me about that.
Speaker 4: He told me already that when we were there in
the restaurant. That's because I think Terry was doing all
the talking. Did make no ense, would comment, but he
just would say, oh, my friend, my friend did and
so he was very Oh. He wasn't saying my friend
Dizzy or my brother Dizzy. So I knew from that
that that it wasn't his brother.
Speaker 2: But you wouldn't in a fan club newsletter Mike that
they're not actually brothers.
Speaker 4: No, I would I would have. I would have done
it elsewhere.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: I think I just in passing. If I was giving
a match result from Memphis and it said Dizzy Hogan
in parentheses, ed Leslie. Leslie defeated Wayne Ferris on account
out but I wouldn't make a big stink out of it.
That's how I was even with the magazines. I even
with the magazines later, and I was somewhat disenchanted with
the direction of wrestling. As I said, I never went
out of my way to like hurt anybody's enthusiasm. Ford I.
You know, we did interviews with people where they they
broke a k fabe in the interviews, or Chris Jericho.
The issue that I sank to you was pretty open,
but not about how the mechanics of the business work.
I left things there. There was a lot of space
between the lines, so to speak, that people could fill
in their own gaps and figure out what was what
if they wanted to. But I wasn't there to be
a curmudgeon. I don't like it working with the comic
book business, like they'll take a comic book character and
they'll because you've been around the business so long. I'm
sixty seven, so I should be so jaded that I
everything that I have to write has to ruin it
for somebody that's fifteen or twenty years old coming in
and being an enthusiastic No, I've been added the game
too long that if I'm going to do that. So
if I have to take the Incredible Hulk or Iron
Man and make them an alcoholic and give them all
these other you know what I mean, don't do that.
Create another new character with all of that stuff and
see if it sells, But don't take a character that
people have grown up with. And I think wrestling is
that way. You know, there's things about wrestling right now.
I don't like that. It's not a business that doesn't
appeal to little old ladies and teenagers. You know, there
used to be populated little front row. We used to
be little old ladies aid these matches with their handbags
hitting the wrestlers. Why not. I mean, that's part of
the world's demographic. Let everybody be in there. Don't make
it just so demographic specific. And it became more and
more that way. And I don't watch it that much now.
I'll turn it on here and there just to get
a sense of what's going on. But I think I
took you off whatever we were talking.
Speaker 2: Oh that's great, now, that's what I wanted. A Disney
Hogan and you know, telling people was with his brother
you did?
Speaker 4: Yeah, no he didn't. And the truth be told I
think in the later issues. I don't think I didn't.
I don't think I did much on Dizzy. He was
well it. Dizzey was gone by that point, yeah, because
he disappeared and then ultimately came in his brutus beefcake,
and I didn't want to do anything there to say, oh,
did you know that was originally Dizzy Hogan Dizzey Boulder
rather so well, I just left it. It may have
been in the newsletter, the Combat Sports newsletter and the.
Speaker 2: Third issue of the Fan Club newsletter. You did print
a picture I believe supplied by Ruth of a Hulk's
nephew Mike. If you your Horace Hogan, son of his
brother Allan, holding a number one sign in the backyard.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I just remembered. I never met him, but I
didn't when he became Horace Hogan. I was like, I
just remember that photo of him and he had that
like muscle tea on that was swimming on him, and
I'm like, wow, he really uh came a long way
and didn't didn't, I guess didn't stay with the business
that long. He did. He had a Japan tour.
Speaker 2: I know that he did a lot more Japan. Yeah,
I mean he he got you got a push when
Hulk was in w W in like two thousand for
a little while.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but I remember I think that more than anything
was he he got a little bit more action. Like
you say, Japan was his his uh, his spot, and
then I don't know what what happened after. It's hard,
I mean, especially if you're doing the Japanese tours. That
was the funny thing when I was just off off
on a tangent.
Speaker 2: Uh.
Speaker 4: The first issue of the news of the fan club, Uh,
Terry was all worried about going to Japan because they
were scaring him. He says, Oh, I want to go
over there. I have to there's no toilets, I have
to shit in a hole on the floor and blah
blah blah. So he says, oh, I don't know if
I'm gonna be able to do that. It's impossible, you know.
So we was going on. So the first time when
I saw him, when he came back, I say, carry,
how was your fan Did you go to the bathroom?
So that was the big and he rolled his eyes.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he certainly didn't mind going back. After that first
tour he went.
Speaker 4: They scared him. They really scared him that, well, you
know it's going to be like this and that. So
he really was and I said, I don't think it's
really that bad, because all these guys said, I know,
the money must be good because everybody goes back. Oh
they told me there's no toilets over there.
Speaker 2: So he was terry easily kind of messed with. Do
you know what I mean? Was it easy to get
in his head?
Speaker 4: I didn't try. He stood like, you know, a footballer
of me. He was about one hundred pounds heavier than me.
And I never saw anybody give him, you know, flip
him anything, you know, in the gym or or if
I was out a little bit with him. I think
he was liked, I mean overall. I think in the beginning.
I remember even when he came in to work for McMahon,
he was at a TV taping. I wasn't there, but
I heard from Ruth that he had like a one
hundred and two degree temperature or something that he was
really sick. And he did the TV tapings and he
did all three hours. He did matches what they were short, nonetheless,
but he still was there and he did all the
interview segments for all the different towns, you know, So
I think he earned this, you know, I think they
saw that he was a worker and a trooper. He
did the job. But I just don't know what happened
at the end, Like when we were saying of that
of his first run as a heel, that they just
seemed to pack him up and then push him out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, comes rather suddenly and Blassie disappears. Did you
ever get in color from Terry about Blassi? Because Blassie
he only says like one line about Hulk in the book.
Hulk doesn't say a lot about Blassie. It doesn't seem
to me like they really close at all or anything.
Speaker 1: Not at all.
Speaker 4: They weren't close. There was nothing. Blassi was an office
guy at that point in time, so his was his
thing more than anything was you know, whatever they told
him that he needed to do. I mean, he wasn't
on the road. Put it this way. I mean Blassi
only showed up at the garden and at the tapings. Yeah,
and there was there was two tapings, you know, one taping, uh,
two tapings once a month before it really picked up later.
But he had they only brought him in for Allentown
and Hamburg and then Philadelphia. Uh, and then he showed
up at the Garden. He didn't show up at any
of the other arenas. I don't think if he went
to anything like a Boston garden or somewhere, there was
no Blassie.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that's all very very true.
Speaker 4: Well, so the truth be told, he probably dealt with
Blassi three times a month.
Speaker 2: It is just amazing, Mike, all these all these memories,
and you were at the vanguard of this whole Campania
phenomenon before before it was anywhere close to like a
household thing. And I guess we can close by asking
you what it was like. I mean to come to
find out. I didn't know this till we talked that
you were still publishing the newsletter all through you know,
him rising in the AWA and coming to Vincent when
the title for the first time Vince Junior. That is
what was it like? Kind of watching this guy who
you met in Memphis at a restaurant and you know,
started a fan club newsletter for him become the biggest
name ever in the business. It must have been so
weird to think of that as the same terry that
used to give you time, you know, at the gym
before a match.
Speaker 4: Yeah. You know. The thing that was funny is, you know,
it's all hindsight to see it and to look at
it the way it was, the way that it turned out.
But to a great extent, no one saw it really coming.
You know, to a degree, what he became was a
terror recres and the result of Vince McMahon junior. You know,
even when he was with Gania as the as the
baby face, I didn't really feel it worked that great.
I still thought, wow, you know, they would have been
much better having him in the territory as as a heel.
Even though they had Petera and Ventura and I had
seen some of their matches. There was something there that
he I mean, he was still polishing up the whole
good guy thing. And when McMahon just consolidated and started
bringing people in, he was just at the right place
at the right time. I don't know who would have
worked better, you know, I always think to myself, Paul Londorff,
but I don't know. And then when Orndorff, you know,
got his shot as being an ab face, he didn't
have it. I mean, there was something about Terry. You'll
see that even with movies and music, So it may
not even have a great voice, or you're watching a
movie and they may not even be the lead, but
you'll watch that person. And he had that. So no
one saw it. No one knew that every territory would go.
It would just be w CW and WWF or WWE
over time. I think that as that happened, it just
became more of a surprise how corporate to me, how
really more and more how corporate the business became. So
I just the marketing was more surprising to me than
actually the rise of Terry, because I thought he had talent,
he had the look, he was very good on the mic.
Even he worked on himself in terms of that. He
went to have voice lessons. I think he went to
the same guy that went to that Dolph Lungren went
to get rid of Yeah. So he if you would
hear those early Southern DROL wrestling interviews in comparison to later,
he kept his voice. I mean, he had any other old,
very distinctive sound. Brother. So it's like that's wonderful about him.
Tell me somebody right now that has a distinct voice
in wrestling. You know, you had Macho Man, you had Hogan,
you had even Nick Bokerkle. People had a certain flare,
you know, I don't find today anyone has that. And
he was at the right place at the right time
he had to look. They could package this corporate promotion
around him and it worked. But I don't think anyone
saw it happening except Vince McMahon junior.
Speaker 2: Really really, really interesting stuff. So we ask this of
all of our guests inclosing here on the complete Hull
Cokein series. Your reaction, Mike, when you found out that
Hull passed away last summer, it was a shock to
many in terms of how suddenly the decline seemed to come.
What went through your mind considering how long you knew
the guy.
Speaker 4: I was surprised that he had died, and at the
same time I wasn't. I knew I hadn't been in
touch with him. His mom and dad had passed, so
my connection in terms of getting first hand information wasn't there.
But I know, just of all the surgeries and just
his own personal life stories that have taken their toll
with the son Nick and the divorce and you know,
and all of the surgeries and then when I saw
his last appearance in the WWE, he looked bad. You know,
there's one thing we getting old. We all get older
and we don't look like we did from nineteen seventy nine.
I can at testify to it, and I walk out
and I do everything that I can do, and I'm
a relatively good boy and healthy. But I knew something
was wrong, so I didn't note to that extent how
far down the road he was. Flair would comment and
on it from time to time. He's, oh my god,
all the surgeries that he's had, you know how he
can keep going. So you had it in the back
of your head that he wasn't doing well. I thought
he would have lived longer. But even people say, well,
I didn't really wrestle that hard, get picked up and
slammed the night after night after night the thirtieth Even
if you're not doing tremendous tiger mass dynamite kid moves,
it takes its tall on you. I mean the best
of wrestlers, I mean Brunos San Martino was a pretty clean,
loving guy and he lived to the right old age
of eighty one, I guess, and all these other guys
is you know who were enhanced their physiques, you know,
the Ultimate Warrior and Crispin Juan, you know Piper even
or you know they were uh they burned the candle
at both ends, so he wasn't a choir boy. And
but I also just think the sis didn't help. I mean,
it rotch your bones, there's no question about that. And
he's a he's an example of that, so a superstar,
Billy Graham. So it was a sad moment. You know,
I can't fat him even to this day that he's
really dead. I we didn't, I didn't deal with him,
but I knew he was out there and I still
kind of feel that way. But my my, for all
intensive purposes, I guess my I finished. We felt well,
we find our last dealings with one another was probably
around eighty seven. Yeah, so that's a long time, you know.
So he was a part of my life. And then
Ruth and I drifted because I had nothing to tell her,
you know, we were kind of done. And uh so
for for the moment, party just listen, It's like leaving
a flashlight on and the battery batteries are going and
the light's going out. The light's going out. The light
went out, and that was basically my relationship with the
Bolet family.
Speaker 2: Unreal Minelohera, the creator and founder of Hulk Hogan's very
first fan club, taking it into what it was like
to watch him break through in the wrestling business. A
real pleasure to have you on the show man, Thank
you so much for that.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much. And one more last time doing
my William Shinner. I'm stores dot eBay, dot com, forward
slash new wave wonders buy stuff from me.
Speaker 2: Thank you absolutely. I'm sure you saw a couple of
items here with your.
Speaker 4: With your reflection, you did, and thank you for your purchases.
I appreciate it. Thank you guys, all the luck in
the world. Thank you, thank you to you, Bye bye.
Speaker 2: Cras Eails is a production of the Labs Entertainment Group.
Speaker 4: It's content is intended for private use.
Speaker 1: Holy