Speaker 1: It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast special report. The Lapse
Speaker 1: Fan presents the complete Hull Coogan, a real American story,
Speaker 1: brought to you by Garage.
Speaker 2: It is a fascinating point in Terry Bolay's life. He
Speaker 2: makes ways to Cocoa Beach for a year and it's
Speaker 2: just like he gives up wrestling for a little while
Speaker 2: and all of this stuff happens in his life. He
Speaker 2: has this fascinating sort of running hard bachelor period with
Speaker 2: his buddy ed Leslie. It's at the Anchor Club. And
Speaker 2: we just were so starved for color as to what
Speaker 2: that whole time period was like because Terry Boley for
Speaker 2: the first time falls out of the newspapers and you know,
Speaker 2: he's just he's just pursuing this private glory.
Speaker 3: It's like this, it's like this, like this, this just
Speaker 3: this this black hole of time where I need more information.
Speaker 3: I need it all, I need it now.
Speaker 2: And it was truly a godsend as we went through
Speaker 2: our research on this period in Terry Bullet's life to
Speaker 2: realize that not only you know, was the Anchor Club
Speaker 2: something that the papers would write about in and around Florida,
Speaker 2: but that the announcement of a new manager around the
Speaker 2: time that Terry was running hard over there was somebody
Speaker 2: that the world knows and just amazing to think that
Speaker 2: these two paths crossed at a certain period in time
Speaker 2: in Cocoa Beach before they were famous, so to speak.
Speaker 2: And we are thrilled here on the complete Hull COGD
Speaker 2: on the Lapsed Fan to welcome now don the Dragon Wilson,
Speaker 2: eleven time championing kickboxing star of stage and screen. Donn.
Speaker 2: It is so great to have you on the show.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 4: Well, thank you for having me on. A little bit
Speaker 4: sad of the subject matter that we're talking because Terry's
Speaker 4: asked on, but still, you know, everything I know about
Speaker 4: Terry is good and he was always a positive person.
Speaker 2: That's excellent. So I'd love for you to set us
Speaker 2: up back then mid seventies seventy eight, I think in
Speaker 2: Coco Beach. How did you come to work at the
Speaker 2: Anchor Club and when do you first remember meeting Terry Belea.
Speaker 4: Well, it was I started working at the Anchor Club
Speaker 4: in the early seventies. I don't know the exact year,
Speaker 4: but I was attending college and it was the perfect
Speaker 4: job because I could work on the weekends and didn't
Speaker 4: go to school during the week And I also was
Speaker 4: on a wrestling scholarship, so I'd have to go to
Speaker 4: wrestling practice afterwards, and so I had a pretty busy schedule.
Speaker 4: When I first worked at the Anchor Club, it was
Speaker 4: as a bouncer. I was already a black belt in
Speaker 4: kung fu so and I was a collegiate wrestler. So
Speaker 4: I was in pretty good shape. Wow, and yeah, that
Speaker 4: was my qualifications. Now, Terry I did not need at
Speaker 4: the Anchor Club. He was just a bass player in
Speaker 4: one of the bands that played there. Yes, it came
Speaker 4: from Tampa. The band came from Tampa, and Terry came
Speaker 4: and he got to know the owner of the club.
Speaker 4: We just his name's Charles Bridges, but we just call
Speaker 4: him Whitey yep. And they became friends, and so it
Speaker 4: started off.
Speaker 2: Was there is there a reason why he was called Whitey?
Speaker 2: I mean curious about that.
Speaker 4: He was. You know, sometimes people get what they call
Speaker 4: the premature white I guess.
Speaker 2: Oh in the hair.
Speaker 4: Yeah yeah, yeah, his hair was, uh, well you call it.
Speaker 4: I think he would call it blonde, but uh, I
Speaker 4: think it was more the whitest blonde and it wasn't
Speaker 4: a look that I think. There was not even no
Speaker 4: dye or anything. It just I think his hair just
Speaker 4: premature gray. I guess, as he was not an older guy,
Speaker 4: he was probably in his I would guess he was
Speaker 4: in his hu because nobody ever asked him his agent
Speaker 4: that I knew, probably late thirties, thirty forties.
Speaker 2: Got it, got it okay. So that makes sense that
Speaker 2: that rhyme's done with what we've heard about how Terry
Speaker 2: knew Whitey Bridges before going to work for the Anchor Club.
Speaker 2: Because what happens is Terry goes and trains a bit
Speaker 2: in Tampa to become a wrestler and kind of gets
Speaker 2: disillusioned with the whole thing. He's not making a lot
Speaker 2: of money, he's not getting booked a lot, and so
Speaker 2: he just quit. At some point he did. And what
Speaker 2: he said in his book and stuff is that he
Speaker 2: just sits down, what am I going to do next?
Speaker 2: And he remembers that Whitey had said something to him,
Speaker 2: if you ever need work, or if you ever need
Speaker 2: you know, a new chapter in life, give me a call.
Speaker 2: Is is that how you understood he came to work for
Speaker 2: an Anchor Club.
Speaker 4: Yep, yep, that's that sound like a story and h
Speaker 4: but I will say this he then I tell people
Speaker 4: he's one of the life lessons that I teach. It
Speaker 4: is Terry's life, I said. He went back the second time.
Speaker 4: The first time, I believe he was called the.
Speaker 2: Destroyer, Super Destroyer. That's right.
Speaker 4: He was what they called a heel like he was
Speaker 4: a bad guy. Yes, you know you're supposed to when
Speaker 4: he comes out of the auditorium, they're supposed to be.
Speaker 2: Booming, right.
Speaker 4: Uh. But then he went back in with with the
Speaker 4: new image of a Hulk and and that the hulksters
Speaker 4: the little kids. He'd rip his t shirt off and
Speaker 4: throw it out to the kids. In other words, he
Speaker 4: came back as a good guy. And that's when his
Speaker 4: career took.
Speaker 2: A absolutely true. Yeah, that's where all hit hit the
Speaker 2: ground running. And that's why this period of his life
Speaker 2: is so fascinating because he hadn't quite yet figured out
Speaker 2: Hulk Hogan. He wasn't Hulk Hogan yet. He was still
Speaker 2: just this guy that was Super Destroyer for a handful
Speaker 2: of matches in the fall of seventies.
Speaker 4: Yeah, he was not happy when we discussed his wrestling
Speaker 4: when he was doing those shows. He was not happy,
Speaker 4: and I believe. Look, I don't know the exactly how
Speaker 4: it happened, but he got an injury. He has signed
Speaker 4: a contract to do more than a multiple appearance thing.
Speaker 4: He or he injuried himself the first day and he
Speaker 4: couldn't do the next appearance, next show, and they the
Speaker 4: way the contracts were they, I guess they don't have.
Speaker 2: A union for wrestlers, oh not at all.
Speaker 4: But they didn't have to pay him for the first
Speaker 4: one because he didn't show up at the second one right,
Speaker 4: and he got really upset and he came to work
Speaker 4: as a bartender again. And then I don't know if
Speaker 4: it was Eddie or he decided, you know, I'm gonna
Speaker 4: try it one more time, and he went back. And
Speaker 4: that's when he went back as became a star. Told
Speaker 4: me how he got the stallone thing. I bumped into
Speaker 4: him at a restaurant we had dinner together, and he goes,
Speaker 4: don you know how I got on Rocky And I go, no,
Speaker 4: how he goes, I wrestled, And I believe his Madison
Speaker 4: Square gardens. I guess he was used to wrestle there,
Speaker 4: but he wrestled. He went to this hotel room and
Speaker 4: now his name is never listed in the hotel directory
Speaker 4: when he's staying there for a wrestling match, otherwise can
Speaker 4: get bothered by the fans. So he hit the phone
Speaker 4: call and he's said he was sorry, we say that. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I'm going to uh see if I turn this thing off.
Speaker 4: I don't even know how.
Speaker 2: That's no problem. If you need to take it, go
Speaker 2: ahead to you.
Speaker 4: But we're about to probably just nobody word nobody. But anyway,
Speaker 4: so this is a story of Terry. Terry's telling me
Speaker 4: the story of the Rocky thing, how he got the
Speaker 4: Rocky because you know, that was a major break for
Speaker 4: him as well as far across across there's people who
Speaker 4: were not wrestling fans, all known because everybody saw Rocky
Speaker 4: and uh, he said, he gets a phone call in
Speaker 4: this hotel room and and the guy says, hello, this
Speaker 4: is I'm sliced alone. I like when you come in
Speaker 4: and read for a movie. And he thought it was
Speaker 4: a crank call, and how'd you get my number? He goes, blank,
Speaker 4: you and he hung up on him. And so then
Speaker 4: rock stallone calls back and he said, you know, he
Speaker 4: looked at me. Terry said, he said, you know, don
Speaker 4: I recognize his voice because Stallone has a kind of
Speaker 4: distinctive voice.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, definitely to him.
Speaker 4: But he was so mad in the beginning because he
Speaker 4: thought it was a crank call that he didn't pay.
Speaker 4: The second time he called, he listened and he said,
Speaker 4: I realized it was him, Yes, And that was his
Speaker 4: big breakthrough, you know. The after that he just shot
Speaker 4: the top, and I think Championship wrestling also, timing wise,
Speaker 4: became much bigger. They had what they call WrestleManias.
Speaker 2: Of course, yeah, yeah, we we We're going to get
Speaker 2: to all that for sure as we go through the
Speaker 2: sort of chronicling of his life in time, I got to.
Speaker 4: Take a couple of coincidents with me and and hope
Speaker 4: that you will not know. But it's it's kind of
Speaker 4: hard to believe that I get a phone call. He
Speaker 4: used to wrestle in Japan, Terry, and he wrestled for
Speaker 4: a guy named Sima. So out of the clear Blue,
Speaker 4: I get a phone call from Shima and he says
Speaker 4: he's interested in promoting me as a kickboxer in Japan.
Speaker 4: So so my first fight in Japan was the same
Speaker 4: promoter that Terry years after we knew each other was
Speaker 4: wrestling for in Japan. Sima was his name. And then
Speaker 4: when I get to La to be an actor, I
Speaker 4: was going to make a crossover from kickboxing to actor.
Speaker 4: Chuck Norris said, don you need the right attorney, And
Speaker 4: I got the guy. His name's Henry Holmes.
Speaker 2: Henry Holmes, Henry George Foreman.
Speaker 4: He handles a lot of athlete entertainers, so I signed
Speaker 4: with him. As I'm leaving Henry's office, I look at
Speaker 4: a painting on the wall and it's Terry Wow, And
Speaker 4: I go, what's this doing here? And he goes, that's
Speaker 4: one of my clients. Now that's a coincidence. We ended
Speaker 4: up with the same attorney in La Me and Terry
Speaker 4: after all those years.
Speaker 2: Now, did you recognize him on the painting dawn as
Speaker 2: Terry Bolea from the Anchor Club or did you know
Speaker 2: he was a wrestler or you didn't even know that.
Speaker 4: I know all about his rusting career.
Speaker 2: I mean, oh, for sure. So that's a point he's
Speaker 2: already reached that yeah, because in Japan that was kind
Speaker 2: of before he was a huge deal in America. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of what.
Speaker 4: When he was rustling Proshima. Maybe I don't know. Yeah,
Speaker 4: I just know that I found out at some point,
Speaker 4: and I did speak to Terry about we Our past
Speaker 4: did cross a couple of times, and there was even
Speaker 4: a white He asked me for Terry's number, so I
Speaker 4: didn't have it on me, so I called my agent
Speaker 4: and my agent Terry has representation out here. Well, he
Speaker 4: did have representation of my agent called his agent and
Speaker 4: we gave the number to Whitey for some something. I
Speaker 4: don't know what. He just wanted to say hi to Terry.
Speaker 2: Or oh wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that was the closest thing we got to
Speaker 4: actually communicating. Now, I didn't talk through him, but but
Speaker 4: I did arrange for Whitey to get Terry's phone number.
Speaker 2: That's amazing. So that that the Henry Holmes connection. Yeah,
Speaker 2: we hear so much about Henry Holmes. In fact, one
Speaker 2: of the things Terry always said in his life was
Speaker 2: that he was going to get the George Foreman grill.
Speaker 2: But he didn't. He couldn't take the call from Henry Holmes.
Speaker 2: So Henry Holmes turned around and gave it to George.
Speaker 2: Do you believe that.
Speaker 4: I have no reason to doubt it? Things happening you know,
Speaker 4: Hollywood is an absolutely bizarre thing. Uh yeah, you know,
Speaker 4: all kinds of crazy things happen here. And then that
Speaker 4: doesn't sound any crazier than that I've come up with.
Speaker 4: I mean, there's no way I never should have got
Speaker 4: in my I had a Corvette, read Corvette. I got
Speaker 4: in it, and I don't know if you know how
Speaker 4: big Corvette is, but not very big. I mean, I'm
Speaker 4: saying the interior. I put everything I could fit in
Speaker 4: there and moved to LA to be an actor. And
Speaker 4: I knew nothing about acting. So a lot of people said, well,
Speaker 4: how did you find out about it? I said, well,
Speaker 4: I enrolled in some acting schools and they told me
Speaker 4: to go to this bookstore called Samuel French, and there's
Speaker 4: books aren't acting. So I bought a book and I
Speaker 4: read it by the swimming pool. It said how to
Speaker 4: be an actor in LA And I followed everything the
Speaker 4: book said, and but within three months I was on
Speaker 4: General Hospital and then I I got cast in Blood
Speaker 4: Fist started the movie. It was one of the top
Speaker 4: one hundred independent films of all time. Roger Corman produced it.
Speaker 4: Really a very great thing. Yeah, Roger Corman, he did
Speaker 4: twelve movies I did more movies for Roger than any
Speaker 4: other actor.
Speaker 3: That's like, I mean that, that's you know, legendary for
Speaker 3: basically like uh, being the greatest film school of all
Speaker 3: time just working with Roger Krmack I.
Speaker 4: Started Jack Nicholson yep. Uh Scorsese transit for.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: He gave a lot of people their breaks, and he
Speaker 4: gave me mine. He passed me in a movie from
Speaker 4: not being an actor as the lead in a movie
Speaker 4: called Blood Fists.
Speaker 2: Yep. There's been so many movies when he was done.
Speaker 4: He made the movie really cheap in Philippines. He sold
Speaker 4: it to MGM and he made a lot of money,
Speaker 4: and MGM bought Blood This too and made a lot
Speaker 4: of money. And so Rogers thought, you know what, I'm
Speaker 4: going to keep the rights to Blood This three and
Speaker 4: see if you you could still make money for me,
Speaker 4: and ended up we end up doing eight Blood Fists.
Speaker 2: What a franchise, Rogers. That's so great. So so we
Speaker 2: got an idea of where you and Terry are heading
Speaker 2: in your respective careers, and it's great. Heights I wanted
Speaker 2: to reset are a few movies as well. Oh yeah,
Speaker 2: for sure, we'll talk about those. But to reset back
Speaker 2: to the you know those earlier days before you quote
Speaker 2: unquote famous at Anchor Club. One of the things we're
Speaker 2: dying to get a sense of done is what Anchor
Speaker 2: Club was like. It sounds like a pretty wild place
Speaker 2: where people were partying.
Speaker 4: If there was a studio fifty four in Kogo Beach.
Speaker 4: I mean, the Miami Dolphins would come up from Miami
Speaker 4: and they got plenty of the good nightclubs in Port Laerdale,
Speaker 4: South Florida. They came up and would hang out at
Speaker 4: the Anchor Club. The Astronauts hung out there, I believe
Speaker 4: it because they were called the Houston Astros. It was
Speaker 4: his baseball team that had a summer camp in the
Speaker 4: Perhaps just everybody would go to the Anchor Club. It
Speaker 4: was the place to be. It had live music and
Speaker 4: also it had a DJ. Let me tell you the
Speaker 4: DJ was. Have you ever heard of the band called
Speaker 4: Casey in a Sunshine Band?
Speaker 2: Of course?
Speaker 4: Yes, okay, Well one of their members, oh h, it
Speaker 4: must have been a singer or something. But he sang
Speaker 4: for a different band for a while. He saw the
Speaker 4: Anchor Club and he quit Casey in a Sunshine Band
Speaker 4: because he said he wanted to be His gold was
Speaker 4: to become a DJ. Wow, because that disco was just
Speaker 4: starting and the movie Saturday Night came out and I said,
Speaker 4: you know what I told Whitey I was managing the club.
Speaker 4: I said, Whitey, we should have Monday Night tever. He goes,
Speaker 4: what do you mean? I said, we don't make any
Speaker 4: money on Monday nights, right, He goes, yeah, it was empty.
Speaker 4: I said, well, we're gonna have a dance contest and
Speaker 4: it's gonna be just like Saturday Night Fever. We're gonna
Speaker 4: get a dance light, a dance floor, and we're gonna
Speaker 4: get a good like a celebrity DJ. So I got
Speaker 4: this guy like I think his name might have been Charlie,
Speaker 4: but anyway, he was the quick Casey the Sunshay Band
Speaker 4: worked as my DJ, and we had a packed night
Speaker 4: every Monday night. So I I so Friday and Saturday
Speaker 4: was packed, Monday was packed.
Speaker 2: You know what that sounds like, don is Hulk opened
Speaker 2: his own place on Clearwater Beach later in his life
Speaker 2: and he had Monday Night karaoke. It sounds like that's
Speaker 2: where we got the idea from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, he might have. He might have taken it
Speaker 4: because because we were packed on a Monday night and
Speaker 4: nobody's packed on Monday night in nightclub.
Speaker 2: So how how wild did it get? I mean weekends
Speaker 2: when that place is jam and I mean we're talking sex, drugs,
Speaker 2: and rock and roll. Can you get us closer to it?
Speaker 4: But in my mind, the sex or the it was
Speaker 4: mainly sex, alcohol and rock and roll got it. The
Speaker 4: drug thing for me, it didn't. I didn't see it.
Speaker 4: And I guess people figure if Don doesn't do it,
Speaker 4: we shouldn't be doing it around him, right saying there's
Speaker 4: no there's no professional athletics you could do consistently and
Speaker 4: be a winner doing drugs, any drugs, I don't care.
Speaker 4: If it could be marrot pot. You know that was
Speaker 4: very illegal back then. But people smoke pot and to
Speaker 4: coach your lungs and it messes up your I don't
Speaker 4: know that THC is a drug that does not lead
Speaker 4: your blood instantly. You know it stays in your system
Speaker 4: like weeks everything. I was science major. My father worked
Speaker 4: at Candy Space Center, so I was an engineering major
Speaker 4: in school. I'm a big believer in science, and the
Speaker 4: science is anything that alters you is not in man
Speaker 4: mad is ninety percent of the time is going to
Speaker 4: be bad, right, I mean alcohol bad, pot bad, cigarettes bad.
Speaker 2: Needless to say. So, do you remember Terry, you know,
Speaker 2: working the bar there? Would he drink?
Speaker 4: Yes, he did. He did drink, and I did drink
Speaker 4: a sum but but not when I I had to
Speaker 4: quit the Anchor Club to become a kickboxing champion. When
Speaker 4: I really made my mind up that that's what I
Speaker 4: wanted to do, I quit, and Terry quit to become
Speaker 4: a wrestler. Become You can't be a wrestler in Coco Beach, Florida.
Speaker 2: Now tell us, tell us exactly what you remember Terry doing,
Speaker 2: because some people say he was like a bouncer. Others
Speaker 2: say he was a bar tender.
Speaker 4: If he's never a bouncer, never a bouncer. He never
Speaker 4: fought anybody. First of all, nobody's gonna fight a guy.
Speaker 4: You just take a one to look at Terry. He
Speaker 4: was still big then, you know, he was tall, and
Speaker 4: and I don't know if you were how old you are,
Speaker 4: but there's a thing that we all wore them. I
Speaker 4: wore them too.
Speaker 2: Platform shoes, sure, yes.
Speaker 4: And those shoes lift you up probably four inches. In
Speaker 4: other words, if Terry was uh six six, he was
Speaker 4: six ten what he puts his shoes on. Yeah, so, uh,
Speaker 4: nobody's gonna mess with Terry. And he was behind the bar,
Speaker 4: you know. Uh, and I'm sure he was doing I
Speaker 4: did not keep up. Well, we don't, we don't. We
Speaker 4: don't keep track of each other. But there was a
Speaker 4: lot of a lot of promiscuity.
Speaker 2: Yes, if uh AIDS had not come out yet, yes,
Speaker 2: that's important. Yet at that point it did.
Speaker 4: But they called it at the time, they called it
Speaker 4: a gay disease, right and and and and heterosexuals never
Speaker 4: worried about it. We figured, well, I'm not gay, so
Speaker 4: I don't have to worry about it. Right later they
Speaker 4: found out it's a virus and anybody can get it.
Speaker 4: But but during the times the disco era now, and
Speaker 4: I'm talking about specifically Saturday Night Feaver when it was released, Yep,
Speaker 4: the peak of the disco era hit right after that.
Speaker 4: Everybody watched that movie and said, that's what we want
Speaker 4: to do on Friday and Saturday nights. Go have dance,
Speaker 4: you know, go to dancings, you know, go to clubs
Speaker 4: and dance. And yeah, Terry was there. So Terry did
Speaker 4: drink and I did drink as well. I don't deny it,
Speaker 4: but yeah, I never knew him did use any drugs.
Speaker 4: And you know, people take steroids, but when you're as
Speaker 4: big as Terry, I'm not thinking he was. Maybe you
Speaker 4: know today they did have this stuff called HGH human
Speaker 4: growth hormone. Yes, they have certain things that are not
Speaker 4: as probably effectives. Is the hardcore steroids.
Speaker 2: Well, he was very open later in his life and
Speaker 2: people around him about how he got hard on Diana
Speaker 2: Ball and really really when he went to Cocoa Beach
Speaker 2: and they opened that gym.
Speaker 4: With white he had with Whitey, Yeah, he had a gym.
Speaker 2: Do you remember that stuff going around and people getting
Speaker 2: just huge on bodybuilding drugs?
Speaker 4: I do not, I do, I didn't. You know what,
Speaker 4: I think there was a kind of an attitude among
Speaker 4: athletes and if you're using drugs, it's kind of like
Speaker 4: cheating a little bit. It's like you're kind of of course,
Speaker 4: right yeah, and you don't they don't admit it. Like today,
Speaker 4: we know for a fact there's not a bodybuilder that's
Speaker 4: ever won that Mister Universe that didn't take some kind
Speaker 4: of drug. Yeah, you know what I mean. I mean,
Speaker 4: it's just the human body does not.
Speaker 2: React like that it's grown like that to the point about.
Speaker 4: Nobody admitted it. I don't think Terry would have admitted it.
Speaker 4: Never talk to me about it and never he just
Speaker 4: you know, don, I'm taking some steroids and it never
Speaker 4: came out. Never. And we have lifted weights together, I've
Speaker 4: gone to the gym and we worked out together. Sure,
Speaker 4: and yeah, but it never came up.
Speaker 2: What was that, Jim, Like, did you ever go in
Speaker 2: there Terry and Whitey's Olympic gym?
Speaker 4: You know what?
Speaker 3: It was?
Speaker 4: Not a plush is that call? It was like, uh,
Speaker 4: it was a barbell. It was like a dumb bells,
Speaker 4: bar bells, you know those kind of things. Uh. Maybe
Speaker 4: they had a few universals. They called it universals machines. No,
Speaker 4: what was the name of it. I don't remember that.
Speaker 4: But they had some machines back in the seventies, but
Speaker 4: not like today today. You go into a gym and
Speaker 4: there is an area for freeways, but it's small and
Speaker 4: it's mostly just a bunch of machines. Right. Well, those
Speaker 4: machines were not totally invented and not even probably fully
Speaker 4: accepted when Terry's gym was there. I think Terry mainly
Speaker 4: had a you know, bar Bell freeways, freeweight gym.
Speaker 2: Yes, just just just lifting and getting as much of
Speaker 2: a pump as you could. And he described it as
Speaker 2: a place him and ed Leslie put it together with
Speaker 2: Whitey as a place where were they only wanted hardcore bodybuilders.
Speaker 2: It wasn't like a place that the general public would
Speaker 2: come to get fit. It was like, really for these
Speaker 2: psycho weightlifters, right.
Speaker 4: Well, there's not a lot of those, you know, So
Speaker 4: obviously Terry wasn't you know. Terry's probably was doing it
Speaker 4: just to the means, to an end and the end
Speaker 4: to his wrestler. Yes, and he needed to change his
Speaker 4: body a little bit. He needed a little time. So
Speaker 4: he worked for Whitey and he made a good living.
Speaker 4: And you know, look when you're working in a nightclub
Speaker 4: and it's all pretty girls and you're behind the bar,
Speaker 4: I mean it just uh. I tell people, when I
Speaker 4: left the Anchor Club, my life's been downhill ever since. Well,
Speaker 4: my jah life just knows dive. And I'm telling you,
Speaker 4: Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt could not have it any
Speaker 4: better than me and Terry had it back in the
Speaker 4: aggera club packed with beautiful girls. By the way, you
Speaker 4: guys don't probably remember this, but the drink and age
Speaker 4: was eighteen. Yeah, Now, what a dumb thing we did.
Speaker 4: Because I'm now seventy one and I can barely handle
Speaker 4: my liquor. How could an eighteen year old kid drink
Speaker 4: just to ride a map where he's not gonna kill
Speaker 4: himself in the car crash and you know, and he's
Speaker 4: gonna have a fun night and in a night club.
Speaker 4: It was. It was stupid. And after a few years
Speaker 4: they went back to twenty one.
Speaker 2: To twenty one. I remember reading some of the stuff about,
Speaker 2: like some of the stuff in the papers from back
Speaker 2: then about how you guys had a real youth focus
Speaker 2: in the beginning, and then later on it was like
Speaker 2: when you became manager, it was like, all right, we're
Speaker 2: gonna go a little bit more, you know, a little older,
Speaker 2: a little more mature.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well I wanted to go dress up, like I
Speaker 4: wore a three piece suit every night. Oh wow, manager,
Speaker 4: And yeah, we dressed up. And uh, actually, unfortunately for us,
Speaker 4: we're in a beach town and guys with holy jeans
Speaker 4: and all that, bikers would come in and I had
Speaker 4: the bouncers. No, they're not allowed in with those with
Speaker 4: holes in their jeans and grease all over their shoes
Speaker 4: and all that. And I've had to go outside myself
Speaker 4: and fight a couple of guys and I end up
Speaker 4: having to go before judge. And luckily, you know, I
Speaker 4: made the right because I'm telling him they can't come
Speaker 4: in and they want to fit, they want a strong
Speaker 4: arm the way in I'm talking about bikers. Uh, there
Speaker 4: was a certain biker club trying to think of the
Speaker 4: name of them. Oh, they're called the Outlaws. There. You
Speaker 4: got all the outlaws, and the FBI end up shutting
Speaker 4: them down. But they were coming in the Anchor club,
Speaker 4: and I had the bouncers not allowed them in anymore
Speaker 4: because the clothes they were wearing did not fit our
Speaker 4: dress code. And so I had to literally go out
Speaker 4: there and help my bouncers, because it's rare when you
Speaker 4: have a manager who's actually more experienced at fighting than
Speaker 4: the bouncers.
Speaker 2: Absolutely. Yeah, man, that's.
Speaker 4: Pulled on me and one knife and two guns?
Speaker 2: How did how did the gun incidents resolve?
Speaker 4: Did you like thatn happen on the very first night
Speaker 4: I worked at the night club? Are you eighteks ago?
Speaker 4: I was eighteen working at the door and I'm standing
Speaker 4: outside of the Anchor Club in the front of it
Speaker 4: with two off duty police officers and white the owner
Speaker 4: of the club, and we're talking and a guy pulls
Speaker 4: up in his car in front of the club gets
Speaker 4: out of the car. Now, I'm saying to us, he
Speaker 4: was an old man. He's in his fifties probably I'm
Speaker 4: seventy one now. He's a young kid to me now.
Speaker 4: But he got out of his car and he starts
Speaker 4: talking kind of crazy, like like like a garbled kind
Speaker 4: of the English. We didn't know. We all laughed at him,
Speaker 4: We literally laughed. And he said something and I didn't
Speaker 4: hear it, and he turned around. He walked back to
Speaker 4: his car, which was parked right in front of the club.
Speaker 4: He parked right in front the club, and when he
Speaker 4: both off duty police officers by the way, said not
Speaker 4: a word to me and Whitey and they went into
Speaker 4: the club. When he went into his car, they went
Speaker 4: into the club. I think he's faded and admit this,
Speaker 4: but I think he said something like, you won't be
Speaker 4: laughing when I come back. Oh no, because he went
Speaker 4: back and got a gun. I didn't see it. But
Speaker 4: why isn't it a coincidence. Both off duty police officers
Speaker 4: knew enough to go back in the club.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 4: So he must have said they must have got some
Speaker 4: kind of win, unless it was just luck that they
Speaker 4: weren't sitting out there when he can't have the gun,
Speaker 4: but he had it pointed right at me, my mid section,
Speaker 4: and he was probably he was still so far away
Speaker 4: no martial art technique would get to him. So if
Speaker 4: he pulled the trigger, I'm gone. And it was about
Speaker 4: maybe twelve feet away from me. And then I realized
Speaker 4: he was pointing a gun and I'm sitting on a
Speaker 4: stool outside the nightclub, and I stood up. He looked
Speaker 4: at me and he said, shut up and sit down.
Speaker 4: And I've told this story to other martial artists. Andy
Speaker 4: go don what did you do? What did you do?
Speaker 4: I said, I shut up, and I sat back down
Speaker 4: in his chair. He said something winning this car drove away.
Speaker 4: Now we know everything about him because he picks up
Speaker 4: the hitchhiker, and the hitch hiker could see something's wrong
Speaker 4: with the guy. He's acting crazy, and he tells the guy,
Speaker 4: you need to get a hotel room. Sleep this off.
Speaker 4: So he convinces him to get a hotel room. While
Speaker 4: they're checking into the hotel, he's standing at the reception.
Speaker 4: The hitchhiker sucker bunches of them. And we know the
Speaker 4: story because the police came right to the Anchor Club
Speaker 4: and told us what happened. They came and they said,
Speaker 4: he literally you know how there's a term, I knocked
Speaker 4: the shit out of him.
Speaker 2: Yes, this guy shot his pants right.
Speaker 4: It's I've never seen I've seen one hundred knockouts in
Speaker 4: boxing and kickboxing matches. I've never seen anybody go to
Speaker 4: the bathroom like that. But I guess we're not hitting
Speaker 4: each other as hard as this guy did. Because this guy,
Speaker 4: the police were laughing. They said, yeah, don he just
Speaker 4: shited his pants, man, he just he was out. We
Speaker 4: took him to the hospital.
Speaker 2: I was reading about its seventy four a guy there
Speaker 2: named uh Cotton Higgins was sued for throwing throwing someone
Speaker 2: out and beating the shit out of white like whities.
Speaker 2: Oh okay, Cotton there you Yeah, it looked like someone
Speaker 2: actually turned around and and sued the club for roughing
Speaker 2: him up. It sounds like sometimes they had to get
Speaker 2: really hardcore to get people out of there.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, I doubt Cotton would sue the club because.
Speaker 2: No, no, no, someone sued the club because Cotton roughed
Speaker 2: him up, thrown him out.
Speaker 4: Oh could have been? Could have been? And uh I
Speaker 4: did get Okay, here here's what happens. One time, there's
Speaker 4: three guys and they want to come in the club
Speaker 4: and they they they got jeans, so we didn't allow jeans,
Speaker 4: and especially jeans like theirs. They're there bikers and they
Speaker 4: got holes in them. Right, they're the bad It's not
Speaker 4: like Sergio Valente jeans. It's you know. Yeah, So I
Speaker 4: hit the fountain, comes to me down cold, you talk
Speaker 4: to him. They want to talk to the manager or whatever.
Speaker 4: So I come outside. I go, hey, guys, I'm sorry,
Speaker 4: this is a rule. This is not coming from me.
Speaker 4: This comes from the owner of the club. He's changed
Speaker 4: the image of the club. And he guy goes, hey,
Speaker 4: I used to come in here with gens all the time.
Speaker 4: And I said, yeah, but they're not allowed anymore. And okay,
Speaker 4: I'm talking to one of them. Unbeknownst to me, one
Speaker 4: of them goes over to the side of me, just
Speaker 4: slowly moves away from in front of me, and he
Speaker 4: throws a punch at me. Cold cott. He hits me,
Speaker 4: but he hits me in the one place you cannot
Speaker 4: knock the guy out. He hit me in the neck,
Speaker 4: the side of my neck. Oh, by the way, back
Speaker 4: in those days, I wait, two oh five, I'm walking
Speaker 4: around now. Probably won eighty. I fought at one sixty
Speaker 4: middleweight and light heavy. But I was bit and it
Speaker 4: hit me in the side of the neck. And I
Speaker 4: looked at him, and that scared the crap out of
Speaker 4: hm because he hit me with I guess he considered
Speaker 4: it his best shot. And I didn't budge, and I
Speaker 4: grabbed him and I hit him. I don't know how
Speaker 4: many times, but at least four times in the stomach.
Speaker 4: Probably broke broke a rip or something. But I hit
Speaker 4: him and they ran, jumped in the car, and unbeknownst
Speaker 4: to me, they went right in the police department fouled
Speaker 4: charges against me because their car was all dented up.
Speaker 4: I see, because, as it turns out, you know, I
Speaker 4: wanted to pay back. I got sucker punches.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I kicked car door and I jumped up, and I
Speaker 4: might have broke the windshield. I might have dent the
Speaker 4: top of their hood. I didn't I couldn't hit them
Speaker 4: because they were in the car, so I attacked their car,
Speaker 4: I admitted. Now I get called before the judge, and
Speaker 4: I bring a half a dozen witnesses that saw them
Speaker 4: hit me first, you know, uh not employees. I'm saying,
Speaker 4: tuck people, Yeah, good customers. Yeah, let's go down. They
Speaker 4: were watching their their eyewitnesses. And so the judge goes, okay,
Speaker 4: mister Wilson, I understand you got sucker brunch and they
Speaker 4: hate you. First, you're defending yourself. He goes, but what
Speaker 4: were you doing on top of the car. And I
Speaker 4: looked at the judge, and you know, judges are like
Speaker 4: light detectors. You can't light it, and they know they
Speaker 4: smell a liah my. I looked at it and I said,
Speaker 4: your honor, I thought he was trying to run over me,
Speaker 4: so I thought it'd be safer on the car. Mister Wilson,
Speaker 4: charge was dismissed against you whatever. You know, he reallyeved,
Speaker 4: He said, but I don't want to see you in
Speaker 4: front of me again, ever again for something like this.
Speaker 4: And he released me. Yeah, he he knew. I was
Speaker 4: not thinking they're trying to run me over, and I
Speaker 4: was trying to smash their but you can't hit them.
Speaker 4: I was trying to get in the car.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, what a job I would I can't believe you
Speaker 2: remember this, don is the greatest years of your life.
Speaker 2: It sounds very scary and stressful.
Speaker 4: Having guns pointed at you. Uh, that's the closest I
Speaker 4: probably could come to dying because that guy, Oh, the
Speaker 4: story of him was this. He was from the New
Speaker 4: England area. He uh cut my cheating on him or something.
Speaker 4: He took a bunch of drugs, got his car and
Speaker 4: drove all the way to Florida. Wow, from New England.
Speaker 4: I don't know. New England is Connecticut, New Hampshire of
Speaker 4: course that area. And and the police told us this
Speaker 4: after they rested and they got all his idea of it.
Speaker 4: That's the closest came to because that guy was mentally
Speaker 4: ill and he had not slept for like three days. Yeah,
Speaker 4: and he's all got that gun. He was shaken and
Speaker 4: uh yeah, he could have accidentally pulled the trigger and
Speaker 4: just that my first night of the nightclub. Now I
Speaker 4: think why he probably thought I was gonna quit that night.
Speaker 4: You get a jump hold on you first night now. Now,
Speaker 4: the only other time it happened was because the guy
Speaker 4: was scared. Uh. Basically, I kicked his friend in the face,
Speaker 4: knocked all his teeth out, his whole front mouth. And
Speaker 4: I found that out because the police came and they
Speaker 4: told me. They said, don what did you hit that
Speaker 4: guy with? I said nothing. I said, I kicked him.
Speaker 4: He goes. I said why and he said because he
Speaker 4: knocked all his teeth out. And Jesus, people asked me
Speaker 4: what kick was it and I said, well, it was
Speaker 4: not a karate kid. I punted his head like a football.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, Well.
Speaker 4: Because it was this. He was a biker. He took
Speaker 4: his shirt off and he wanted to fight me, and
Speaker 4: he reached for me and I grabbed his hand. I
Speaker 4: pulled him so when I pulled him, he went down
Speaker 4: on all fours. When he looked up, he kind of
Speaker 4: looked up barely got his hands off the ground. And
Speaker 4: I kicked him with my right foot. I like, but
Speaker 4: not like a karadi gig.
Speaker 2: It was like you know how you can pun a
Speaker 2: football totally? I can picture it.
Speaker 4: Ye kick it like forty yards and I heard a
Speaker 4: noise and the noise the noise was Jackie was like
Speaker 4: hearing two two. I forced hit each other like a crack.
Speaker 4: I thought I broke his neck. So what I thought was,
Speaker 4: I'm going to be uh manslaughter, Yeah, which is accidental killing.
Speaker 4: But you killed somebody, you gotta you gotta be punished,
Speaker 4: of course. And uh luckily though I guess I didn't
Speaker 4: break his neck. He must have been you know, I
Speaker 4: had leather shoes on so much just smack the side
Speaker 4: of his face and just made the noise that sounded.
Speaker 2: Like, yeah, the big smack, and it might be clear done.
Speaker 2: So this is not the kind of thing that Terry
Speaker 2: would have done. He wouldn't have been involved.
Speaker 4: Cherry never did this. Though Terry was behind the bar.
Speaker 4: Oh you know, get back to Terry. And Terry was
Speaker 4: a great barge at you know, you could see him
Speaker 4: from my a way. He had his own section of
Speaker 4: the nightclub. The whole front bar was Terry's. And yeah,
Speaker 4: it was a long you know, countertop and always, as
Speaker 4: I recall, lined with a bunch of girls. You know,
Speaker 4: you had that long blonde hair back then. Yes, And
Speaker 4: he was lean and he was tall, and you know,
Speaker 4: girls like the guy's working in the clubs for some reason,
Speaker 4: you know, our bouncers and bartenders, we all had.
Speaker 2: Luck lock. Yes, I'm glad you said it, because I
Speaker 2: was reading like some Facebook things of people reflecting on
Speaker 2: memories of the Anchor Club and memory what it was like.
Speaker 2: And someone she didn't spare any words. She said, there
Speaker 2: was quite a bit of hanky panky going on, and
Speaker 2: so I think we.
Speaker 4: All Well, it was easy for me because I lived
Speaker 4: on top of the club in a penthouse. Oh you did,
Speaker 4: oh no viral staircase. Yes you you would go into
Speaker 4: the back rooms in the Anchor Club. There's a spot
Speaker 4: ral staircase. I take the girls up there. I opened
Speaker 4: the door. Now, Whitey the owner made the place for himself.
Speaker 4: He lived there, but his wife, he had a new wife.
Speaker 4: She refused to let him go back in there because
Speaker 4: she knew he had experienced with a lot, that it
Speaker 4: was a penthouse on top of the nightclub. And he
Speaker 4: walked to me and he goes, hey, by the way,
Speaker 4: my nickname was not the Dragon. I was called chopped
Speaker 4: chop like chop suey or chop you know, karate chop. Yeah,
Speaker 4: he says, chop. Here are the keys of the penhouse.
Speaker 4: It's all yours. Oh my god, yes, get a girl,
Speaker 4: bring her up there it was, And I get into
Speaker 4: Playboy Mansion and Hugh Heffner keeps that place pretty plush
Speaker 4: and everything, but it's a dunk compared to Whitey's penhouse.
Speaker 1: It was.
Speaker 2: Yeah, describe it for me.
Speaker 4: Well, it had a bar. As soon as you walk in,
Speaker 4: there's a big bar there, you know, and then big
Speaker 4: push couches. They didn't have big screen TVs back then,
Speaker 4: but if they did, they would. He had as big
Speaker 4: as screen as you can get, and and he in
Speaker 4: the front of it. And then you open up the
Speaker 4: door there's a bathroom and a huge master bedroom. In
Speaker 4: the bat master bedroom, that bed could tell stories.
Speaker 2: I gotta ask you, don uh did did you ever
Speaker 2: hand the keys to Terry?
Speaker 4: Uh no, no, no, no Terry ever you know, I
Speaker 4: we didn't know we were both going to become they
Speaker 4: must say anything. Actually, you know we we did not.
Speaker 4: Uh uh. There was no competition, like but we He
Speaker 4: was like everybody else. I know as much about Terry
Speaker 4: as I do the other bartenders or the other bouncers,
Speaker 4: and the janitor and the waitresses. You know, there's a
Speaker 4: lot of people working in that club, absolutely, and and
Speaker 4: you know, Terry didn't work there for like like me
Speaker 4: for like, you know, six seven straight years.
Speaker 2: He was there for you know a year maybe a year. Yeah,
Speaker 2: But it's like this, like when you look at his
Speaker 2: record of like all his wrestling matches, there's this like
Speaker 2: whole of the year it stands out and it's because
Speaker 2: he was doing this and that's why wrestling fans are
Speaker 2: so fascinated by what he was up to.
Speaker 3: He had.
Speaker 2: Do you remember ed Leslie his buddy.
Speaker 4: Yes, Eddie, why all you know Eddie?
Speaker 2: Eddie?
Speaker 4: As I recall, he was a younger guy, but he
Speaker 4: was big as well. He was you know what I
Speaker 4: mean big, I mean big for a normal human. But
Speaker 4: both of them got much bigger when you do the
Speaker 4: wrestler yes, yeah, you know, on the weights and you
Speaker 4: get on a little bit of what they're called performance enhancers. Yep,
Speaker 4: you grow, you get bigger.
Speaker 2: And both of them did absolutely and uh you know
Speaker 2: Edis told a story about how him and Terry kind
Speaker 2: of did like a you know, there was a girl
Speaker 2: that wanted both of them and there was like a
Speaker 2: competition to see who could get it get it first,
Speaker 2: because Terry had responsibility for cleaning up the bar and
Speaker 2: closing down, whereas Eddie was just working the doors, and
Speaker 2: he tells was a hilarious story of how he that
Speaker 2: this apparently this girl was a screamer and by the
Speaker 2: time Eddie came out doing his thing with her, Terry
Speaker 2: uh checked out. He wasn't interested in competing on that level.
Speaker 2: That's not right to you.
Speaker 4: Well, listen, I did not, but I was not promiscuous
Speaker 4: around Terry or Eddie, right you know. Uh, like I said,
Speaker 4: they kind of came in and kind of left. It
Speaker 4: was just a short stop for them. Now, the other bartender,
Speaker 4: I still talk to him to this day. He lives.
Speaker 4: I named George, and uh, you know he I knew
Speaker 4: everybody in the club, but you know, I didn't know
Speaker 4: in the future that Terry would become some famous.
Speaker 2: You're right, he didn't, right, So you were like watching
Speaker 2: his every move knowing that this guy is a huge deal.
Speaker 2: Now I understand, I understand.
Speaker 4: You do it to me. I mean I was just
Speaker 4: good guy old at the time, managing the club, and
Speaker 4: I got it by default because what happened was on
Speaker 4: one night they caught the real manager stealing oh and
Speaker 4: they fired it in the middle of the night. They
Speaker 4: need somebody to take over. They just said, don you,
Speaker 4: you just take over and we'll find a new manager. Well,
Speaker 4: I started changing things, and they, like I said, we
Speaker 4: had Monday Night Fever. Then we had a thing called
Speaker 4: the Wet t Shirt Contest. And then as a lady,
Speaker 4: so we had five nights a week. We're packed like
Speaker 4: weekend nights. And Whitey saw no money coming in, and yeah,
Speaker 4: I and they never got rid of me. I had
Speaker 4: to quit and become a kickboxing champion. And white he said,
Speaker 4: if it doesn't work out, he said, you come back
Speaker 4: to Florida, we'll open up a club in Fort Loder.
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Speaker 2: That manager you took over for, Don? Was he like
Speaker 2: just skimming off the top or was he like making
Speaker 2: off with the money never to be seen again? What
Speaker 2: was that whole thing?
Speaker 4: It was his banker was the mother of one of
Speaker 4: the bartenders.
Speaker 2: Okay, and he didn't know that.
Speaker 4: He's coming in every week jumping thousands of dollars into
Speaker 4: his personal checking account.
Speaker 2: Oh there it is, And yeah, and he he didn't.
Speaker 4: Realize it, but he started buying properties up around Cocoa Beach,
Speaker 4: like big, beautiful homes, and in his mind he was saying,
Speaker 4: oh h there. He didn't tell anybody there were his properties.
Speaker 4: He said, Oh, I'm taking a side job because I
Speaker 4: take extra money and I'm taking care of the yards.
Speaker 4: So he would I guess he would go and either
Speaker 4: pretend or he would actually mow the lawns and take
Speaker 4: care of the gard I don't know, but he he
Speaker 4: claimed that all these houses he had to do this
Speaker 4: were extra work. Now that makes you sound like a
Speaker 4: pretty honest bartender, because if you're doing yard work to
Speaker 4: supplement your income and you're actually managing one of the
Speaker 4: most successful clubs in Central Florida, you're not a thief, right.
Speaker 4: I wouldn't steal one penny. There's no difference in my
Speaker 4: mind to steal a penny or steal a million dollars
Speaker 4: for somebody. Yes, yeah, it's the same thing. Show goes,
Speaker 4: not like, oh well I only took it. It was
Speaker 4: just right. I'm not that guilty. No, it's the whole
Speaker 4: it's the concept of it. Yeah, you know, that's that's
Speaker 4: the best job I ever had working for Whitey and
Speaker 4: I'm gone from him. No, No, I did just the opposite.
Speaker 4: Everything I did was to increase the income. And from
Speaker 4: what I could see, Terry was the same way. He
Speaker 4: had the same assu as me. We appreciated Whitey highering us,
Speaker 4: and that's why Terry became instantly became good friends with Whitey.
Speaker 4: As a matter of fact, I think I'm not one
Speaker 4: hundred percent sure, right, I think Whitey was his best
Speaker 4: man at his Weddy.
Speaker 2: I've heard that.
Speaker 4: I think he was. I think he was. Now you
Speaker 4: know what's not just a boss when you get to
Speaker 4: that level, right, and when when he's in your family like.
Speaker 2: That, absolutely, well, white He's fascinating because you know I
Speaker 2: was looking through like when he would show up and
Speaker 2: after Anchor Club closed, he got into the strip business.
Speaker 2: He had I think treasure around.
Speaker 4: I visit him in Miami.
Speaker 2: He had a strip club, that strip club, and then
Speaker 2: he opened other places I think along the years in
Speaker 2: other states. And at one point even I was reading
Speaker 2: don that there was some the FBI was looking at
Speaker 2: mafia ties and like the mid nineties, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I've actual see some agents undercover guys came
Speaker 4: and talked to me when I worked at the Anger Club.
Speaker 4: You know, I don't even know why they did it,
Speaker 4: but but they came and they said, look, we're not
Speaker 4: looking at you. We know you're not involved, the guy saying,
Speaker 4: and I don't, thinking to myself, well, the agents aren't
Speaker 4: supposed to tell anybody that they're investigating the club. And
Speaker 4: it could could have been tax fraud because you know,
Speaker 4: every dime that comes in almost back in those days
Speaker 4: was cash, yes, you know, and how can you find
Speaker 4: out you can estimate what they're making by the amount
Speaker 4: of whiskey scotch rom they're ordering. You can kind of
Speaker 4: extract I'm saying, if they want to do, because but
Speaker 4: nobody's going to go in there and count every drink
Speaker 4: somebody's got. They're doing so the I R S. Maybe
Speaker 4: it was an I r S investigation, or it could
Speaker 4: have been they might have thought Whitey was laundering drug
Speaker 4: money because there's a lot of going on in Florida
Speaker 4: in the seventies. But but I I never was involved
Speaker 4: in anything. And you know, I know, being innocent does
Speaker 4: it always protect you, right.
Speaker 2: Fortunately, it's ancient enough history because one of the things
Speaker 2: you know, they said was that you know, in like
Speaker 2: the late eighties when White he got involved with with
Speaker 2: the treasure run. Then he ended up getting like physically
Speaker 2: assaulted by some some mafia related guys. So it seems he.
Speaker 4: Actually there's a guy named Frank. Yeah, and Frank and
Speaker 4: White he became good friends. And Frank is an old
Speaker 4: Italian Chicago guy. And and through a complete coincidence, I
Speaker 4: met an actor out here who's related to Frank, and
Speaker 4: he knew Whitey and we knew all the same people.
Speaker 4: And the guy now he does he out here, he
Speaker 4: acted for a while, but he went back to Chicago,
Speaker 4: but he's part of the same Chicago. Uh. Listen, this
Speaker 4: is the way a mob works with legitimate businessman you
Speaker 4: don't have, let's say, but you know how to run
Speaker 4: a nightclub or whatever. They give you the cash to
Speaker 4: open up your club, and then you give them x
Speaker 4: amount every week under the table yep. Catch of course,
Speaker 4: you know, you don't send them checks. But and then
Speaker 4: they they they basically just say, hey, you know, we
Speaker 4: we want we want everything on it.
Speaker 2: And now I'm not saying why he did that, No, no,
Speaker 2: of course I know, but that's that was the scene.
Speaker 4: Yeah, the type of thing they would do with a
Speaker 4: nightclub like that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's some that that's kind of what topless cub
Speaker 2: the same thing, topless clubs. Yes, specially you know you
Speaker 2: hear about it even more in the strip club business.
Speaker 4: You know that you don't need as big as a
Speaker 4: crowd because if you're laundering your money, right, you don't
Speaker 4: care how much profit comes in, really, right, you you're
Speaker 4: you're what you're actually doing is.
Speaker 2: Is hiding the source of the illegal funds. Yeah right, yeah,
Speaker 2: that that's you know, there's a reason Tony Soprano has
Speaker 2: the strip club, right, it's it's.
Speaker 4: My brother served three years for counterfeit help prison and
Speaker 4: one he had twenty five yeercent, so he served eighty
Speaker 4: five percent. So he was in for over twenty years
Speaker 4: for cocaine smuggling. And it was only one plane load
Speaker 4: that they caught him with. And according to the DEA,
Speaker 4: the plane was holding fifty million dollars of cocaine.
Speaker 2: Holy shit, Now if and my brother said he.
Speaker 4: Hit it for eight years, he was bringing it in.
Speaker 4: He had three three airplanes, one helicopter. He had boats,
Speaker 4: you know, ships and stuff. So he's bringing out his
Speaker 4: cocaine for eight years and one of them had fifty
Speaker 4: million dollars. Now, how much coke would you bring if
Speaker 4: you had two airplanes, boats and all that. You bring
Speaker 4: it as much as you could, right, And he did
Speaker 4: that and he got caught and he fought the case
Speaker 4: and everything, and I helped him. I get as much
Speaker 4: money as I could first lawyers and detectives and all
Speaker 4: that stuffy and he served his time.
Speaker 2: Though there you go, and yeah, so you know, you
Speaker 2: know you're talking about in other words, you've seen.
Speaker 4: This well, Florida. It was those days. You know, there's
Speaker 4: a lot of legal stuff going on. And my brother
Speaker 4: served his time and he's out now, he's free, produced
Speaker 4: two movies.
Speaker 2: Good for him, that's awesome. Yeah, because you know, the
Speaker 2: part of the reason I went this way and my
Speaker 2: head don was because when Terry one time is in
Speaker 2: twenty sixteen, he posted on Facebook because someone had put
Speaker 2: a picture up of him shortly after this time in
Speaker 2: his life when he got back into wrestling, and he
Speaker 2: had said, you know, I just bought I just bought
Speaker 2: this wrestling gear because I quit wrestling for a year
Speaker 2: to run a bar, the Anchor Club in Coco Beach, Florida,
Speaker 2: and also had a gym called white Terry and then
Speaker 2: he said the cops. The cops gracefully asked me to
Speaker 2: leave town as the reason that that he stopped working
Speaker 2: at the Anchor Club. And so obviously my mind and
Speaker 2: our mind and wrestling fan's mind is like, what, why
Speaker 2: were the cops involved? Does that make any sense to you?
Speaker 4: Well, that's kind of what they did to me. Though.
Speaker 4: Some guy came to the Anchor Club and he tried
Speaker 4: to talk with him, and he said, hey, listen, we're
Speaker 4: investigating this place, and we know you have nothing to
Speaker 4: do with it and whatever, but I'm just letting you
Speaker 4: know right now that we are. So I maybe at
Speaker 4: some point, uh you know, since Whitey did have some
Speaker 4: connections with with people that which they call they call
Speaker 4: it organized crime. It's not like they're going to go
Speaker 4: bob somebody grandmother, no understood. They have businesses where money
Speaker 4: is being made not in a legal way, and then
Speaker 4: they're using legitimate businesses to launder the money. Correct, And
Speaker 4: then that's organized crime. And they and they pay their taxes,
Speaker 4: you know, they're tax paying criminal. Yes, And I don't
Speaker 4: know I never saw anything like that. Why's club any
Speaker 4: of them? Uh? But I was A guy came to
Speaker 4: me one night and said that to me, warned me
Speaker 4: that they're they're they're getting ready to bust the Anchor Club,
Speaker 4: and they know that I'm not involved with it.
Speaker 2: I see.
Speaker 4: Even told me that.
Speaker 2: So one of the we we are to understand that
Speaker 2: the Anchor Club pretty much closed because Whitey's wife was
Speaker 2: sick of him being on that scene. It sounds to
Speaker 2: me like the Anchor Club closed because agents were coming
Speaker 2: around asking questions.
Speaker 4: Good, good day, Right, that it was under investigation.
Speaker 2: And and now so you were gone by the time
Speaker 2: the club, the club still existed when you left, right,
Speaker 2: It didn't close while you were there.
Speaker 4: No, No, it was. It was, yeah, it was. It was.
Speaker 4: It was actively making money. And you know, everything was
Speaker 4: the same except I was gone. I left because I
Speaker 4: wanted to be a kickboxer, yes, And with Terry, he
Speaker 4: left because he wanted to be a wrestler.
Speaker 2: I don't and I don't think anything ever came of
Speaker 2: the kind of investigations you're talking toout. It's not like
Speaker 2: there was like some big raid that.
Speaker 4: No, no, no, why do He never got busted as
Speaker 4: far as I know. And he had a partner named Ed.
Speaker 2: Yes, he did, and uh.
Speaker 4: I got to know Ed a little bit. I don't
Speaker 4: think they were actually part friends as partners, I did.
Speaker 4: They were not friendly to each other. Isn't that a
Speaker 4: hard way to do business? You're in business with a guy,
Speaker 4: but he's not actually your.
Speaker 3: Friend, right, Not a lot of trust there, you know,
Speaker 3: that's you know, I mean there is, there can be trust,
Speaker 3: but it's different when you're you're a miser of a friend.
Speaker 4: I think.
Speaker 2: Ed was.
Speaker 4: Ed was there at the club, and instantly when they
Speaker 4: fired this guy Dell, he put me in charge. Why
Speaker 4: he wasn't even at the club then, I don't know
Speaker 4: where he was. He was he was partying, maybe in
Speaker 4: Miami or something, but he wasn't physically there. It was
Speaker 4: like a Friday night, Saturday night. And I became manager,
Speaker 4: and so they're gonna they're looking for a new manager.
Speaker 4: And a week goes by. In another week and I'm
Speaker 4: having ideas about you know, ladies night. Uh oh, we
Speaker 4: had a what they call a wet T shirt night.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Anyway, I'm planning on things to make money with the club,
Speaker 4: which these two guys never did. Ed and White never
Speaker 4: came up with one idea. And that guy Dell, the
Speaker 4: other manager. He didn't have one idea to increase their
Speaker 4: cash flow. So I thought, these I'm coming up with
Speaker 4: ideas and they're all successful. And so Ed I think
Speaker 4: Ed would have complained and White he would have complained
Speaker 4: about me taken over the club because I had no
Speaker 4: experience running a nightclub and you know, I was barely
Speaker 4: a bartender. And but they saw that there's only two
Speaker 4: things I can do well, kickbox and run a nightclub.
Speaker 4: It just happened that that I.
Speaker 2: Was got the chance to do both. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 2: really terrific.
Speaker 4: And as first Terry, it was great bartender, always had
Speaker 4: a great attitude. You know, in a club like that,
Speaker 4: you can't come in in a bad mood, you know
Speaker 4: what I mean, everybody's going there to have fun. You
Speaker 4: gotta smile, and you gotta talk and make conversation and
Speaker 4: and Terry did that stuff. It's the added thing. You
Speaker 4: don't just serve the drink and go and then go
Speaker 4: to the end of the bar and stay away from
Speaker 4: all the company customers. They're socializing going on. And he
Speaker 4: was really good at that. He was good. Everybody like
Speaker 4: talking to him and everybody and he was friendly with everybody.
Speaker 2: So as we were talking about kind of that scene,
Speaker 2: you know, Florida in the seventies done, And one thing
Speaker 2: that came to mind is later on is Terry gunn
Speaker 2: into wrestling? You know, he had a lot of friends
Speaker 2: and he made some enemies too. Of course it's the
Speaker 2: wrestling business.
Speaker 4: Yo.
Speaker 2: Jesse Ventura didn't like him very much. Think this guy
Speaker 2: David the movie with Rowdy Riddy Piper. Oh, we know
Speaker 2: that we were going to ask you about made you
Speaker 2: want to you want to tell us that story?
Speaker 4: He was great, Yeah, yeah, well, okay, I'm gonna tell
Speaker 4: something now. Roddy's passed away now, but he knows I
Speaker 4: hold nough Rodgers. The very first fight scene we did,
Speaker 4: the very first one. We do the choreography that's been
Speaker 4: planned for that part. You know that goes to a
Speaker 4: certain level, and then we we only have a certain
Speaker 4: number of moves, like I throw six punches, he throws
Speaker 4: six punches, something like that.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: Well, the director didn't know he's seen it for the
Speaker 4: first time. He didn't know when to say cut. So
Speaker 4: when we did the last technique, he rocked. Now, this
Speaker 4: is the first fight scene we do for the movie.
Speaker 4: He is all amped up like as a Drillon's going
Speaker 4: and he's like, he must have flashed back that we're
Speaker 4: we've got a live audience. He can't stop. He grabs
Speaker 4: a PVC pipe on the wall, a real one, pulls
Speaker 4: it off and hits me right in the face with it.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, Oh my god, hits me out my.
Speaker 4: Chin, blood spurts out everywhere. He throws the PC he
Speaker 4: piped down on the ground. This is not Corey Graph,
Speaker 4: by the way, and he grabs he goes down down.
Speaker 4: I'm so sorry.
Speaker 2: I don't know how. I don't know what I was thinking.
Speaker 4: In other words, he just something. He flipped out because
Speaker 4: he didn't say here the director didn't say cut because
Speaker 4: he didn't know we were to have finished the fight scene.
Speaker 4: But he's he's used to going line where there is
Speaker 4: no stopping in the middle of a fight scene, right,
Speaker 4: but you gotta keep making things look real. So he
Speaker 4: I don't know, I don't know what happened. He flashed back. Now,
Speaker 4: that was the first fight scene in the movie. This
Speaker 4: is in Toronto. I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna
Speaker 4: be a hard movie because that the very first fight
Speaker 4: scene we're doing. And I get hit in the face
Speaker 4: with a pipe and blood's coming out, you know, but
Speaker 4: it didn't need to be stitched. Oh thank goodness. But
Speaker 4: they covered it with makeup afterwards. I think sometimes you
Speaker 4: might be able to see it, but you know, this
Speaker 4: is early in the movie First Fight Team. We did
Speaker 4: so from then on though, Rowdy Roddy Piper, of all
Speaker 4: the stuntman actors that I worked with, was the most gentle,
Speaker 4: safest one I worked with. That he was great because
Speaker 4: he goes you know what I think, he felt so guilty.
Speaker 4: He went above and beyond the call of duty, if
Speaker 4: you know what I mean, Yes, I really care about
Speaker 4: the other person. Look, then, this is a small world
Speaker 4: Hollywood martial art action guys. We work with the same
Speaker 4: stunt guys. Van Dam knocks people's feet out, he breaks
Speaker 4: their noses. He broke one guy. He broke his neck.
Speaker 4: A guy's a small fracture in one of his bones
Speaker 4: in his neck by hitting m in the side of
Speaker 4: the head with a kick. And Segal he grabs guys
Speaker 4: by the wrist and he he hurts guys as well.
Speaker 4: And I saw a guy came into my set once
Speaker 4: I was doing a movie for HBO called Red sun
Speaker 4: Rising and he takes his shirt off and he's got
Speaker 4: bruises on his arms and I go one of those
Speaker 4: and he goes, oh, well, yeah, last week I did
Speaker 4: a fight scene with Steven Skall and he likes to
Speaker 4: go full contact with his blocks, like throwing a fake
Speaker 4: punch right and Segals just slamming his arm with a
Speaker 4: hammer fist in the same spot over and over and
Speaker 4: over for the movie. And that guy it was all
Speaker 4: bruised up. That's ridiculous. Yes, that's you know what. He's
Speaker 4: not going to hit me with one of those shots,
Speaker 4: because gapidated say with Van Dam you know, I mean,
Speaker 4: we don't, we don't. I don't speak negatively about Nanda,
Speaker 4: but people ask me about him. They say, done, how
Speaker 4: good of a kickboxing champion was? I said, to my knowledge,
Speaker 4: he never had one pro fight. He had about eighteen
Speaker 4: amateur fight three round fights as an amateur kickboxer, and
Speaker 4: that's it. He's not a world champion kickboxer.
Speaker 2: He's not even the top ten I've seen. I've seen.
Speaker 2: You know, people ask you questions about him, and you know,
Speaker 2: you lay that case out JP. Are you going to
Speaker 2: ask something there?
Speaker 4: Well?
Speaker 3: I was just curious like what you know, I mean speculating,
Speaker 3: like why what is the mentality of like of them?
Speaker 4: Just in the very beginning he thought he needed to
Speaker 4: lie to get his foot in the door. But here's
Speaker 4: what is. When Sean my best friend was Chris Pam,
Speaker 4: so I hung out as well. You know, I was
Speaker 4: going to talk to Chris rest in peace. But but
Speaker 4: Sean has celebrity guys. They ask him, they find out
Speaker 4: that he knows me. They asked him if they could
Speaker 4: take me out to dinner because they want to meet
Speaker 4: me because being a retired not because I do low
Speaker 4: budget B movie acting, because I'm a world champion kickboxer.
Speaker 4: They respect them, like like there's a wedding and Dustin
Speaker 4: Hoffman asked his wife if he could sit next to
Speaker 4: me because his wife knew my wife. And so I go, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 4: he can sit next to him down and so Justin
Speaker 4: Hoffmann goes JHN. He goes, oh, you don't think I'm
Speaker 4: bothering you. He said, I've never met a kickboxer or
Speaker 4: really a pro fighter. He said, I asked some questions,
Speaker 4: can I will you give me answers to some questions?
Speaker 4: And he asked me things like what does it feel
Speaker 4: like to knock somebody out whether or do you have
Speaker 4: second thought? Do you feel sorry for them? Or do
Speaker 4: you are you worried about their health? In other words,
Speaker 4: he was asking, he's never gonna get in the ring
Speaker 4: to fight anybody, right, but he's going to get from
Speaker 4: the horse's mouth what I my honest opinion, how I
Speaker 4: felt about what I did for a living, and so yeah.
Speaker 4: But but like Robert du Ball, he took me out
Speaker 4: to dinner. Guys that you consider that I would consider
Speaker 4: famous and prestigious are interested in none my background and
Speaker 4: what it's like to be a pro fighter, and.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, thats a lot.
Speaker 4: You know. We just saw called up Chris and asked
Speaker 4: him if because he felt that I get through somebody.
Speaker 4: We're best friends. We lived together and Brad pitt'son fans
Speaker 4: of the UFC. Well, I was the original and one
Speaker 4: of the original announcers for the UFC. He sees me
Speaker 4: on that and Brad Pitt asked if I'll be his
Speaker 4: personal trainer and teaching him fight moves, and I said no,
Speaker 4: I said, I'm trying to do a movie career myself.
Speaker 4: I said, I, you don't have time, and anybody can
Speaker 4: teach you the basics of martial arts. You know, Brad
Speaker 4: Pitt doesn't need Don the Dragon Wilson for that. Turns
Speaker 4: out he was doing a movie called Fight Club and
Speaker 4: he wanted to earn some kickbox and stuff like if
Speaker 4: I sidekick, maybe a spin kick, or he wanted to
Speaker 4: add some kickbox, and of course I would have been
Speaker 4: easily able to and then I would have on the
Speaker 4: relationship with Right right now, has Bratt done a couple
Speaker 4: of successful action movies? I think so, like, what could
Speaker 4: they have an Asian guy doing martial arts and Troy.
Speaker 2: Don. You know, it's funny because I was talking about
Speaker 2: you mentioned Piper, and you know that was another guy
Speaker 2: that Hogan made a lot of money with. But you know,
Speaker 2: until the very you know, up until they reconciled later,
Speaker 2: they had some tension. I brought up Jesse Ventura, and
Speaker 2: I brought up another guy, David Schultz, because things that
Speaker 2: they've said, you know, in the past about Hulk was
Speaker 2: that you know, it wasn't it wasn't necessarily a secret
Speaker 2: according to them. According to them, that you know, if
Speaker 2: you needed to get stuff be at drugs. I suppose steroids,
Speaker 2: they're not really very specific, but that you know there
Speaker 2: was Terry had a reputation of someone that could get
Speaker 2: you connected to.
Speaker 4: Think anybody in LA can do that. You know what
Speaker 4: I free for fitness guy I got. He's fitness guy
Speaker 4: for stars. Now one of the stars, Angela Bassett. Have
Speaker 4: you ever heard of her?
Speaker 2: She of course, okay, she needed to get in shape.
Speaker 4: She hired this guy. And so anyway, when I got him,
Speaker 4: the very first thing he said to me is he goes, Okay,
Speaker 4: I can get you anything, what kind of things? And
Speaker 4: he just went down like a laundry list of drugs
Speaker 4: that he's got access to that he can give me
Speaker 4: and I'll just my body will reshape within three weeks,
Speaker 4: four weeks. And because that's what actors do, they hire
Speaker 4: a guy who's got access to all the drugs. Obviously
Speaker 4: they've got a doctor given it to him. Because it's
Speaker 4: not stuff that you it's prescription. It's not just protein
Speaker 4: tablets that you get at Costco. It's high grade enhancers
Speaker 4: that will make your body look great. But I didn't
Speaker 4: want to do any of that stuff. I didn't do
Speaker 4: that in my career. What I do is this, I
Speaker 4: diet before a movie and I dropped, you know, ten
Speaker 4: or fifteen extra path and then I look a little
Speaker 4: bit cut. But my characters are not bodybuilders in the movies.
Speaker 4: If you see any of them, like one of them,
Speaker 4: I'm a father and I've got a daughter. I'm a
Speaker 4: repo man, another one, I'm a uh, the male man.
Speaker 4: I'm in the Air Force and I'm in them delivering
Speaker 4: the mail. In other words, I'm not supposed to look
Speaker 4: like a bodybuilder in my movies.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, And that's that's kind of what ends up happening.
Speaker 2: Is as Terry gets back into wrestling, all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: the business is full of these bodybuilders who have these
Speaker 2: cartoonists and you know.
Speaker 4: The guys like the Rock.
Speaker 2: Now that guy is talented, sure, absolutely.
Speaker 4: He can do all that. He's got the look and
Speaker 4: then he could do all the wrestling stuff. He's also
Speaker 4: he could do comedy for gosh sakes, yes, yes, and
Speaker 4: any and he can do drama and he's just all
Speaker 4: around talented entertainer. And you know, I think me and
Speaker 4: Terry probably should have at some point work together in
Speaker 4: a movie. We should have done some movies together, absolutely
Speaker 4: bad guys and good guys. And yeah, but you know what,
Speaker 4: he wasn't to my knowledge, he wasn't living anywhere where
Speaker 4: I would run into him.
Speaker 2: Or oh he stayed in Tampa. He was in Tampa
Speaker 2: pretty much his whole life.
Speaker 4: Okay, he wasn't in l A. Then.
Speaker 2: Now, well, you know his wife is from LA and
Speaker 2: he I think he had a house in La as
Speaker 2: he became a bigger deal and stuff, and he was
Speaker 2: known in LA. But I was going to ask, you know,
Speaker 2: does it make sense to you that even you know,
Speaker 2: running a gym and stuff, that's where all the steroids
Speaker 2: were traffic through was the gyms. Would it surprised you
Speaker 2: if maybe part of what those agents were looking into was,
Speaker 2: you know, sales of steroids because those were huge in Florida.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Well, you know what, I'm old school. You know
Speaker 4: what is You take your vitamins, protein, towns maybe, yeah, prayers,
Speaker 4: AIG diet and train hard. I'm not into the drugs.
Speaker 4: I just I just there's a lot of science that's
Speaker 4: come out. It says it does if it enlarges your muscle,
Speaker 4: your heart is a and damages your heart.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I think that's having a lot of.
Speaker 4: People and I think Dan dam has even had some
Speaker 4: heart trouble and I think Stallone may have had some
Speaker 4: heart trouble, maybe even Schwarzenegger, but I think, uh yeah,
Speaker 4: I damage the illegal drug, well very illegal, but even
Speaker 4: if you get the legal if some doctor prescribes it
Speaker 4: or whatever, it's damages your heart. And you know what
Speaker 4: I I I tell people, there's no there's no drug
Speaker 4: I can take that'll protect my chin.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 4: So I'm just gonna get my card, you up, and
Speaker 4: my defense, my reflexes sharp, and yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody knows better than that a wrestling fan, the
Speaker 2: kind of heart effects that steroid use can have on somebody.
Speaker 2: So many wrestlers have died so young. And I just
Speaker 2: wondered because the steroids were so replete back then, Like
Speaker 2: you said, it wasn't quite you know, from a federal
Speaker 2: lot perspective, it wasn't illegal like to have them. I
Speaker 2: mean you probably needed a prescription and stuff, and there
Speaker 2: were state laws, but it wasn't doctors can prescribe them,
Speaker 2: of course, and they did. And that's why the WWF
Speaker 2: had such trouble with the indictments and stuff, was because
Speaker 2: they had a doctor that was given the guy stuff.
Speaker 4: Look, I had a friend of mine that was I
Speaker 4: think he had cancer at some point, but they gave
Speaker 4: him some steroids because he needed to gain weight. And
Speaker 4: I don't know steroids do help you.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, there's legitimate useless for them.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, it gives you a little bit more metabolism,
Speaker 4: speeds or metabolism or something. So there are reasons why
Speaker 4: they create that drug, and doctors have access to it.
Speaker 4: But you got to get somebody kind of a little
Speaker 4: on the side, and that's why they got trainers. That's
Speaker 4: what I found out because the trainer came to me
Speaker 4: immediately said he's got access to all the stuff that
Speaker 4: I would need should change my body. And I said,
Speaker 4: I'm not using any of it. I said, just helped
Speaker 4: me with a weight training and with my diet. And
Speaker 4: then because you know I fought for years, that won
Speaker 4: my walk around waight was two o five when I
Speaker 4: was young, and I thought it won sixty five. So
Speaker 4: and I wasn't fat at two o five. I mean
Speaker 4: I played basketball. I mean I was just big and
Speaker 4: strong and muscular, and I played football as well, and
Speaker 4: I played I did three clatand sports wow football in wrestling. Yeah,
Speaker 4: well I played basketball and football for the Coast Guard. Okay,
Speaker 4: then when I went to Brevard Community College. It when
Speaker 4: when the draft ended after one year. I went to
Speaker 4: college in seventy three, and the after I went through
Speaker 4: a year. So I got out of the Coast Guard
Speaker 4: and went to a junior college and wrestled for two
Speaker 4: years of the junior college. And what we did was, Man,
Speaker 4: they used to like roll my windows up. I'd put
Speaker 4: a rubber suit on and drive around in my car
Speaker 4: and be like one hundred and thirty degrees. If I
Speaker 4: wasn't eighteen years old, I would have been dead because
Speaker 4: I would just dehydrate myself. That's how I get Nate Waite.
Speaker 2: Oh, man, that's dangerous stuff. So did do you? Did
Speaker 2: you have a sense done of why the the gym
Speaker 2: closed that Whitey opened with Terry.
Speaker 4: No, I did not, other than the fact that Terry's
Speaker 4: interest the gym was a means to an end, I believe,
Speaker 4: and the ending true for him. He got accepted for tryouts,
Speaker 4: and he got accepted as a wrestler, and he had
Speaker 4: a career as a pro wrestler. Why does he want
Speaker 4: to come up to Congo Beach and run Jim?
Speaker 2: Did did you ever go see him him wrestle?
Speaker 4: Ever?
Speaker 2: In Florida.
Speaker 4: No, I never did. I never saw Terry wrestle. I
Speaker 4: did go to that story he had in Orlando once.
Speaker 2: M store of memorabilia yea or something.
Speaker 4: Products from his UH wrestling background. But but I've never
Speaker 4: I've never been to a live wrestling match any any
Speaker 4: of them.
Speaker 2: Did any of the companies ever try to recruit you
Speaker 2: into doing a match?
Speaker 4: No, because you know what I think. My period of
Speaker 4: athleticism professional although I fought until two thousand and two,
Speaker 4: so I from nineteen seventy four twenty eight years of
Speaker 4: kickboxing fighting. My real career was in the eighties. I
Speaker 4: was Fighter of the Year in eighty four, and I
Speaker 4: was the first fighter to fight on ESPN. I've got
Speaker 4: a lot of first because you know, I started a
Speaker 4: sport in this country. My first fight was in seventy
Speaker 4: four and it was a second kickboxing promotion in America.
Speaker 4: They had one in la and then my brother promoted
Speaker 4: one in Orlando, Florida, and I fought in the one
Speaker 4: in Orlando, Florida, and that was, yeah, the beginning of
Speaker 4: kickboxing for America. And then in seventy nine, I fought
Speaker 4: the first fight televised on ESPN. Really and they liked
Speaker 4: it so much they bought a show. They signed a
Speaker 4: contract for a show every week.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot. There were a lot of first generation
Speaker 2: American kick boxing fans that grew up on those ESPN
Speaker 2: two fights as you're as you're recalling. Yeah, back then
Speaker 2: they called it full contact karate, full contact karate, right.
Speaker 4: Yeah, full contact art. But it's really not. It's kickboxing,
Speaker 4: you know. That's that's the sport it is. You have
Speaker 4: phone pads on your feet.
Speaker 2: Fascinating. Eighty four was eighty four was your year? And
Speaker 2: for Terry, eighty four is when he won the title
Speaker 2: in Madison Square Garden and launched his WWF the run
Speaker 2: of the Big, Huge Run. So both of you guys
Speaker 2: that year had a huge, huge year.
Speaker 4: That's strange. I'll admit it's a But my life, like
Speaker 4: I said, is one series of odd, unbelievable coincidences. Yeah,
Speaker 4: like things that things that actually cannot happen but happened
Speaker 4: to me. I'm gonna give you just one example. This
Speaker 4: is not even for the end.
Speaker 2: Just to go ahead, please.
Speaker 4: I had four HBO world premieres. So what they did
Speaker 4: was they paid five hundred thousand dollars to the producer
Speaker 4: of one of my four of my movies, and they
Speaker 4: could show up one time, and the producers love that.
Speaker 4: That's like an extra bonus. I half a million dollars each,
Speaker 4: So I got four of those. So HBO invites me
Speaker 4: every year to go to New York Timee Square and
Speaker 4: go to the big party. They have a big party.
Speaker 4: It's called Urban Action Showcase. And so I go there
Speaker 4: and I do everything for HBO. I sign, I take pictures,
Speaker 4: and you know, I kind of I was tired. I
Speaker 4: wanted to get back to my hotel room. And it's
Speaker 4: like a one block away. It was called the what's
Speaker 4: the name of thet I can't even remember the name
Speaker 4: of it, but it's in Tinmee Square and it's just
Speaker 4: walking distance from the event. And so I'm walking really fast,
Speaker 4: and I thought to myself, it's night now. I don't
Speaker 4: know if you've been in New York City Timee Square
Speaker 4: Saturday night. A's like nine o'clock, ten o'clock prime time.
Speaker 4: It's packed. It's just I'm saying, thousands of people on
Speaker 4: the sidewalks, and I think, oh, I might have passed
Speaker 4: my hotel. I was walking so fast, I might have
Speaker 4: passed it. So the first woman, the young woman, is
Speaker 4: walking past me. I go, excuse me this, do you
Speaker 4: know where the oh it was called the Margaritaville Hotel?
Speaker 4: I said, you know where the Margaritaville Hotel is? And
Speaker 4: she looks at in her mouth opens up. She goes,
Speaker 4: are you Aubreanna Wilson's father? And I said, yeah, that's
Speaker 4: my daughter. She goes, I'm road me. Your best friend
Speaker 4: used to drive.
Speaker 2: Me to school every day in law.
Speaker 4: And I looked at her, my daughter's best friend in
Speaker 4: high school, who I had not you know, I didn't
Speaker 4: recognize her because four years a high school girl changes? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Did did it kind of freak you out? Like maybe
Speaker 2: she was coming up behind you, like maybe she was
Speaker 2: like stopping you in front of me, coming in my
Speaker 2: direction in front And I.
Speaker 4: Just looked at it and said, do you know where
Speaker 4: the Margaritaville hote And she was. She was in shock.
Speaker 4: She couldn't believe she's so I said, let's take a
Speaker 4: picture for both of us so we could tell people.
Speaker 4: So I take the picture and I posted on Facebook.
Speaker 4: That's the only social media I do is Facebook. I
Speaker 4: posted and I said, I ran into my daughter's best friend.
Speaker 4: What of the eyes, I'm going to run into my
Speaker 4: daughter's best friend? And Times Square Saturday night, yeah, in
Speaker 4: New York. And and one after another, they go, you
Speaker 4: gotta play the lottery, You gotta play the lottery. You
Speaker 4: got to go to Vegas. All of a sudden, they
Speaker 4: think I can beat all the odds because there are
Speaker 4: no odds. Right, you're you're you're not gonna bump into
Speaker 4: your daughter's bed. And then and think about this, it's
Speaker 4: just the first person I asked walking past me. It's
Speaker 4: not like we agreed to you know.
Speaker 2: It's funny because we were talking down about how you
Speaker 2: and and Terry's respective careers developed on a similar timeline.
Speaker 2: But I'll tell you if he if he ran into
Speaker 2: someone he knew in the middle of Times Square like that,
Speaker 2: he would he would be paranoid that that person was
Speaker 2: following him. There's no coincidences to him.
Speaker 4: Well, listen, there are there. It's called syncreticity. Yes, And
Speaker 4: we live in an infinite universe. And I'm a science major.
Speaker 4: My dad, like I said, my dad work at the
Speaker 4: Kenny Space Center. My interest is kickboxing. But late at
Speaker 4: night I stay up and I just watched documentaries. After
Speaker 4: the document it's all my wife s a, you're obsessor,
Speaker 4: I said, well, I I interested in these subjects. But
Speaker 4: we live in an infinite universe. That means everything that
Speaker 4: can happen, will happen, and will happen again. I'm saying
Speaker 4: the most unbelievable things at a certain point. It's justly
Speaker 4: as you're rolling dice and you said, well, I'll never
Speaker 4: roll snake eyes ten times in a.
Speaker 2: Row, yeah, roll them up.
Speaker 4: Well, if you roll it infinitely, there'll be a time
Speaker 4: where it's gonna hit. That's just odd. That's just a
Speaker 4: natural law. That's like the nature's laws. It's like, yes,
Speaker 4: you know gravity or something. You know, we can't control it.
Speaker 4: It's just if when it's infinite, everything can happen, does happen,
Speaker 4: and happens over and over and over.
Speaker 2: Wow. Insights from Donald, the dragon Wills and tremendous down.
Speaker 2: I'd ask in that vein just to close out here,
Speaker 2: how are you how do you remember the ank? How
Speaker 2: are you gonna remember the Anchor Club?
Speaker 4: What is it? Uh?
Speaker 2: What does it go down in your memory? And Terry
Speaker 2: being there too, it's just such a fascinating little pit
Speaker 2: stop for both of you guys.
Speaker 4: I think I remember mainly all the different women. Yes,
Speaker 4: I I didn't think it was going to be a
Speaker 4: big thing at the time. But now I look back
Speaker 4: and I thought, you know, it was a different era.
Speaker 4: It was at a different time, and I was in
Speaker 4: my ear, you know, eighteen years old, I mean, and
Speaker 4: I got to learn things about women. I got to
Speaker 4: know them because as an athlete playing football, basketball, running track,
Speaker 4: wrestling and all the sports I did, there's no women around, right,
Speaker 4: But working at the Anchor Club, I well, first of all,
Speaker 4: I hired all the waitresses, so I got waitresses. He
Speaker 4: had one woman we used as a bartender, but that
Speaker 4: was in what they call the harpoon room. But I
Speaker 4: was surrounded by women all the time, you know, for
Speaker 4: my first time in my life. I got to know
Speaker 4: them and uh the kind of women I like. And uh,
Speaker 4: although I did make a lot of mistakes in my life,
Speaker 4: I don't know why, because now I think back, I
Speaker 4: should have. I know, I have a certain body type
Speaker 4: that I like. And why would you if you know
Speaker 4: that's your type? Why they any other time?
Speaker 2: But you did, well, you know, if you if you're
Speaker 2: going to point to that down I got to ask you,
Speaker 2: can you tell us just one particular wild story from
Speaker 2: in the sex category from Anchor club days.
Speaker 4: A wild story would be there was a night correct,
Speaker 4: and I tell you other people because it's there was
Speaker 4: a night, yes, where it's I tell people it's either
Speaker 4: my best night or it's some It depends on how
Speaker 4: you look at it. It's the worst night, it's the
Speaker 4: only Oh, that's a horrible night for you. You're terrible
Speaker 4: for having done those things. I had a knight where
Speaker 4: I met three girls at different dark girl women women
Speaker 4: but they're eighteen, and took them up to my penhouse.
Speaker 4: We got to know each other there really quickly, and
Speaker 4: I brought them back down in one night, three different
Speaker 4: ones and one. Now now that's pretty greedy anyway, but
Speaker 4: they were beautiful, and I guess enough time. I guess
Speaker 4: I was twenty one because I was manager. Then you
Speaker 4: know it's twenty one. Wow, and yeah, I to me, well,
Speaker 4: I wasn't overly. I nobody said done. These three girls
Speaker 4: are going to offer themselves. You can pick one which one.
Speaker 4: It was like three girls or women that were very attractive,
Speaker 4: very smart, very because what happened was we would get
Speaker 4: groups of girls coming in who are on college vacations.
Speaker 2: Oh boy, here we go.
Speaker 4: And when I see a table of beautiful young eighteen
Speaker 4: year old girls, I always bottles of champagne there you
Speaker 4: have need for all the girls. They all get one drink.
Speaker 4: And they were so impressed by that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a great You learned quite a bit about
Speaker 2: how to get in that front door, didn't you that.
Speaker 4: That sheep bottle of champagne? Then now white he made
Speaker 4: you know, I told you I went to Playboy mansion.
Speaker 4: I know what Hugh Heffner's place looks like. It's plush
Speaker 4: and it's fun. Whitey's was, uh not a level above,
Speaker 4: but it was. It was like that. It's like if
Speaker 4: the Elvis. I used Pressley's room one time in Caesar's
Speaker 4: Palace where I had a fight. They said, you know,
Speaker 4: I always used this for his uh dressing room. You know,
Speaker 4: so I know plush. When I got gaudy plush like
Speaker 4: Trump likes it. You know, gold gold, it's gold played
Speaker 4: it either it's all fake, but it's gold colored.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and white he kept it.
Speaker 4: That was Some girls would come up and just you
Speaker 4: didn't have to say anything important or smart or fun.
Speaker 4: The work, Yeah, they go up and they feel there's
Speaker 4: something special. You know, maybe I would have another bottle
Speaker 4: of champagne.
Speaker 2: Baby.
Speaker 4: Anyway, I did that three different girls in one night, and.
Speaker 2: Uh, person a personal a personal record, A good good night.
Speaker 3: For Dawn or how disgusted, So someone list every as
Speaker 3: long as everybody was satisfied, that's all the counts.
Speaker 4: Well, you know what, I hope they girls, But I
Speaker 4: was mad mind everything.
Speaker 2: This is exactly what I hoped for. Non as far
Speaker 2: as like putting us into that place and time and
Speaker 2: what what a what a time it must have been
Speaker 2: for you, for Terry, for for everyone on that scene.
Speaker 4: Yeah it was. And I'm sure there's a lot of
Speaker 4: New Yorkers who talk about Studio fifty four because from
Speaker 4: what I understand, it's the same kind of surreal place
Speaker 4: where everybody had to go and it was the place
Speaker 4: to be and whatever. Well in the those days in
Speaker 4: the seventies, like I don't know when Saturday Anteaver came out,
Speaker 4: but it was right around okay, well right around that time.
Speaker 4: It was the place. It was the club. When when
Speaker 4: it comes to Central Florida, it was the club.
Speaker 2: It was the club. It was the club. Indeed, and
Speaker 2: we want to thank don the Dragon Wilson, star of
Speaker 2: stage and screen, kickboxing legend and a legend now in
Speaker 2: our minds because what a great uh, what a great
Speaker 2: window into what it was like. Donnie. We can't thank
Speaker 2: you enough for all of your recollections here. It's so great.
Speaker 4: Oh well, thank you for inviting me. I honored to
Speaker 4: be part of Terry's legacy. And as you know, his
Speaker 4: life and his is I know nothing but good things
Speaker 4: about him. And yeah, we we went off in different
Speaker 4: directions but in some ways, and then we ended up
Speaker 4: with the same lawyer.
Speaker 2: Oh man, that's quite a story. So don thanks again, man.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thank you guys.
Speaker 2: Preous is a city preceding announcement as a t.
Speaker 1: J DeSantis production. Its content is intended for private use only.