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 Beer.
Speaker 2: As we charted the complete Hulk Higen Boss the Seminole
Speaker 2: run in Southeastern Alabama wrestling Andre the Giant and Harley
Speaker 2: Race and Austin Idel and Ox Baker, you may recall
Speaker 2: that Hulk Hogan all of a sudden, of course, working
Speaker 2: as Terry the Hulk Boulder at the time, made a
Speaker 2: side quest to Memphis brother exactly all of a sudden,
Speaker 2: as Ron Fuller, the promoter down in Southeastern is doing
Speaker 2: all of these things to architect what hul Hogan would
Speaker 2: become in so many ways. And we talked to over
Speaker 2: the break here with none other than Charlie Platt, the
Speaker 2: voice of Southeastern Wrestling. It was our distinct pleasure to
Speaker 2: bring you that interview as you really put us on
Speaker 2: the front row seat of what it was like to
Speaker 2: see Terry Boulder come off the Cocoa Beach run and
Speaker 2: find out what the Hulk was going to be. All
Speaker 2: of a sudden, He's in Memphis, and we know that
Speaker 2: there was some connective tissue between the Alabama and Memphis
Speaker 2: offices at the time, But we didn't get a whole
Speaker 2: lot into it. Because if we're going to talk about
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine in the life of Terry Boulder or
Speaker 2: Terry Bolea, Ry God Terry oh Man, I had it, Terry,
Speaker 2: Terry Boldrea, Terry Boldrea, We've got to slice and dice
Speaker 2: this thing a million different ways, and we've got to
Speaker 2: play around with the timeline just a little bit.
Speaker 3: Listen, it makes sense. I think I think it's a
Speaker 3: good idea to kind of in a way keep it
Speaker 3: to the territory, you know, like kind of just focus
Speaker 3: on one Terrier, Terry Tory there. It is territory and
Speaker 3: one Terry at a time.
Speaker 2: The territory days as it were, the territorial days. Ough
Speaker 2: as we rock into a new year here, but just
Speaker 2: turn another page on the complete Hull Cogan journey, and
Speaker 2: who knows how many more years are to unfold before us,
Speaker 2: because we will not stop until everything that can be
Speaker 2: said about Terry Bolea is said. And Memphis was key,
Speaker 2: but also brief, perhaps even briefer than the things we
Speaker 2: talked about in our last installment that he did in
Speaker 2: the Alabama Pensacola Gulf Coast area because it was coming
Speaker 2: to Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler, who were running c
Speaker 2: W a Continental Wrestling Association the Memphis territory at the time.
Speaker 3: I mean, I know, I know, I know that. I
Speaker 3: know that he was there obviously because he faced Jerry Lawler,
Speaker 3: and I have that. I've had that tape forever. But
Speaker 3: it's just a it's still fucking weird to know to
Speaker 3: even think that even before or he you know, before
Speaker 3: he was in Minnesota, before he was in New York,
Speaker 3: he was in Memphis. It just doesn't sit right. It
Speaker 3: doesn't sit right. Yeah, you know it.
Speaker 2: That's why we have to slice in DAE seventy nine
Speaker 2: because it's Alabama, it's Memphis, it's Georgia Championship Wrestling on
Speaker 2: the Hobs, and yes, it is the World Ride Wrestling
Speaker 2: Federation in New York. All in one year, the first
Speaker 2: year that he becomes the Hulk. Everybody wants to book
Speaker 2: this guy, or at least he finds a way to
Speaker 2: navigate the business such that he ends up working for
Speaker 2: a lot of the most prominent promoters operating on the
Speaker 2: East coast of the United States. In nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 2: It is a dizzying year not to use upon on
Speaker 2: the future name for Ed Boulder Dizzy Hogan, which we'll
Speaker 2: get to.
Speaker 3: Brother, big dizzy dude, Big dizz dude, what's the dizz
Speaker 3: ed Boulder. That's what it is. We've got a double
Speaker 3: dizz brother.
Speaker 2: Well, we talked so much in the episodes about the
Speaker 2: Bolder Brothers. We asked Charlie Platt about it. While he
Speaker 2: certainly remembers Eddie Leslie working there as said Boulder, we
Speaker 2: did kind of press him like was he ever involved
Speaker 2: with this Hulk that we're talking about in seventy nine
Speaker 2: on television? And it was hard. It was hard to
Speaker 2: pin down where there is no match result in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy nine in the Alabama territory where I had shared
Speaker 2: the ring with Hulk, but he was clearly living with him,
Speaker 2: and they were doing the beach lifestyle in Pensacola with
Speaker 2: the van and all that stuff and involved in some
Speaker 2: other activities, as the great Charlie Platt brought to our attention,
Speaker 2: and I say, yeah, they.
Speaker 3: Were working as a unit.
Speaker 2: Well before they were working as a unit on a
Speaker 2: wrestling television show where Terry and Ed but it's here
Speaker 2: in Memphis that the Boulder Brothers become a thing. It's
Speaker 2: here that Hulk and Ed share the screen and convey
Speaker 2: to the audience in a way that survives on videotape
Speaker 2: that they are in fact brothers, and in more than
Speaker 2: just the sense that Terry calls everybody brother. Of course,
Speaker 2: at his time on Earth. Going back to their partnership
Speaker 2: in the gym on Cocoa Beach, they both got gassed hard,
Speaker 2: hit the weights and hit the Lloyds as hard as
Speaker 2: they could until they couldn't be denied as attractions. Because
Speaker 2: one of the key lessons of The Complete Hull Cogan
Speaker 2: is that if you roid the fuck up, people.
Speaker 3: Want to see you do things.
Speaker 2: Yep, and Terry Bulea learned that very early and ran
Speaker 2: away to the bank with it, despite having to deal
Speaker 2: with a lifetime chorus of people saying he didn't have
Speaker 2: it in the ring. Well, we're going to get a
Speaker 2: lot of a chance this time on the Complete Hull Cogan.
Speaker 2: To make a true assessment of that is early seventy nine,
Speaker 2: because right, boss, all we've seen him to this point
Speaker 2: is him training a little bit at this sport at.
Speaker 3: Tium, right dam it's that or or you know him
Speaker 3: him in that arm wrestling match with dere which was
Speaker 3: a match, but you know it's certainly him. You know
Speaker 3: he's selling and stuff and he's vicious and whatever. So
Speaker 3: I'll take it and the bear hug with the outlaw.
Speaker 3: That's right, that's right.
Speaker 2: But as we talked about, this is Ron Fuller set
Speaker 2: saying do this, do this, do that, three minutes that's it.
Speaker 2: Fare hug people to blood comes out of their mouth,
Speaker 2: and just do the most basic things you want to
Speaker 2: be Goldberg, Yes, that's the supreme That would have been
Speaker 2: the supreme irony of Hulk Hogan didn't do business with
Speaker 2: Bill Goldberg in nineteen ninety eight, he would have been
Speaker 2: He would have been protesting a push that mirrored precisely
Speaker 2: how he became the biggest box office attraction in the
Speaker 2: history of wrestling.
Speaker 3: That sounds that's like something he would do to prevent
Speaker 3: somebody else from becoming the biggest bo box office and draction.
Speaker 2: So any time you ever find yourself in the future
Speaker 2: pooh poohing or decrying the Goldberg push, know that it
Speaker 2: was the Hogan push first, and it's the reason professional
Speaker 2: wrestling became a multimedia. It's the reason it's a multi
Speaker 2: billion dollars It's the reason there was a Goldberg push exactly.
Speaker 2: A Goldberg push is also known as a real push.
Speaker 2: There you go, That's right, and not every every promoter
Speaker 2: took their try at it with Hulk Hogan. And then
Speaker 2: as soon as they tried that with Hulk, he found
Speaker 2: a way to leverage that for a better pay day
Speaker 2: elsewhere Fuller did it with him. Suddenly he's playing off
Speaker 2: Memphis and getting a higher pay day there. As we've
Speaker 2: already alluded to in prior episodes of The Complete Hullkogan,
Speaker 2: and we'll get into a bit more detail here. He's
Speaker 2: going to do the same thing to Jerry and Jerry
Speaker 2: Lawler and find his way over to vern Gania eventually
Speaker 2: in the AWA as well as Vince mcmahnon Senior in
Speaker 2: New York. And then he's gonna do the same thing
Speaker 2: to vern Gania to make his way over to Vince
Speaker 2: McMahon Junior. And he's gonna play Japan off of Vince
Speaker 2: McMahon Junior and Vince McMahon and he's gonna play the
Speaker 2: WWF off WCW. He's gonna keep you lying it's fine.
Speaker 2: I don't see what you're who is.
Speaker 3: It's just normal, Okay, It's just it's just business, brother, right.
Speaker 2: And as he wins every single showdown he has with
Speaker 2: every promoter he ever faced, you start to understand why
Speaker 2: folks in the business get so jealous about the quote
Speaker 2: unquote Goldburg push. It allows people like Hull Cogan to
Speaker 2: make so much more money than they could ever hope
Speaker 2: to make. And so we're gonna chart that as well
Speaker 2: as a through line in the complete hul Cogan.
Speaker 3: It is in new year. It's twenty twenty six. Boss.
Speaker 2: We are very happy to be back at the controls
Speaker 2: after a well deserved break. Oh fuck yes, absolutely listen
Speaker 2: you know I I you say. I do always enjoy
Speaker 2: the way we close off a year. I think we
Speaker 2: do it in stead.
Speaker 3: Oh does it better? I No fucking way anyone comes close.
Speaker 3: So I was. I was pretty proud of that whole
Speaker 3: of how we rolled out twenty twenty five, and yet
Speaker 3: here we are twenty twenty six. Just keeps on fucking rolling.
Speaker 3: I'll get you with the.
Speaker 2: Double where me on the main feed. We'll talk about
Speaker 2: cinemat in a second. But Charlie Platt filling in all
Speaker 2: the color we could hope to get about Terry Bullay's
Speaker 2: earliest days in Southeastern and becoming the Hulk, and the
Speaker 2: match with Harley and all the gimmicks around the fucking
Speaker 2: rip Use Stadium show and who was selling tickets and
Speaker 2: vials and royds everywhere, and just a tremendous amount of
Speaker 2: truth telling. Okay, tremendous amount of truth telling. And then
Speaker 2: we dropped on you an interview with Kit Parker of
Speaker 2: the Wrestling Gold Series. You mentioned having that Hulk Hog
Speaker 2: and Jerry Lawler match from Memphis on PHS Boss.
Speaker 3: Oh Yes, absolutely, yep.
Speaker 2: That, among so many other things, including the aforementioned hulkg
Speaker 2: and Andre Arm wrestling footage from Alabama, came to us
Speaker 2: courtesy of Kit Parker Films in the Wrestling Gold Series,
Speaker 2: and it was our pleasure to welcome him as well
Speaker 2: as Stuke Gans, who was sort of the co creator
Speaker 2: of the Wrestling Gold Series and at one time an
Speaker 2: announcer for the WWF, just as they begin their expansion
Speaker 2: out in the Bay Area in California. We welcome them
Speaker 2: for a special interview that we shared with you over
Speaker 2: the holiday break as well to color in how as
Speaker 2: best we could. This hul Cogan Andre footage made it
Speaker 2: to the surface, yet we don't have anything else from
Speaker 2: that time period. Memphis is a little different because, for
Speaker 2: whatever reason, it was a territory where I don't know,
Speaker 2: maybe VCRs were more replete. You can tell that the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy nine Memphis footage that survives of Hulk, Hogan
Speaker 2: and all the rest is taped off of television, unlike
Speaker 2: the Gulf Coast Andre footage, which appears to be off
Speaker 2: the Masters. This is clearly just stuff that's on YouTube
Speaker 2: and taped off TV, and it's been seen a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, you've probably seen we'll get to it. Of course.
Speaker 2: Have you seen before the vignette where Hulk is set
Speaker 2: against a completely black background and litten away where he's
Speaker 2: heavily shadowed and the announcer dramatic proclamations about his dimensions.
Speaker 3: And things like that. Yeah, I've seen that one. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So those are the kind of things that survive because
Speaker 2: Memphis was a territory where people hung on to tapes
Speaker 2: of shows or had VCRs in nineteen seventy nine to
Speaker 2: tape the shows. So we did talk about Southeastern really
Speaker 2: geographically was a relatively tiny territory, especially when you consider
Speaker 2: that the stuff Hulk was doing with Andrea didn't even
Speaker 2: necessarily air in every market that Ron Fuller had under
Speaker 2: his aegis. It was sometimes just limited to the feed
Speaker 2: that a few cities in Alabama even got some of
Speaker 2: the stuff we need to feel the most. Like the
Speaker 2: Dothan match with Harley, I think the homie Matt put
Speaker 2: it well, Dothan Forever. I think, oh yeah, definitely a
Speaker 2: takeaway thus far right.
Speaker 3: I think I think yep. I think Dothan extreme is
Speaker 3: what's called with in extreme wrestle Andre the Giant for
Speaker 3: the first time in the city. If he's going to
Speaker 3: attack Andre in a TV studio for the first time
Speaker 3: in the city, and if he's going to wrestle Harley
Speaker 3: Race in an outdoor football stadium for the NBA Championship
Speaker 3: just a couple of months into the business in the city,
Speaker 3: it is indeed Dothan Forever, the original DX with an extreme,
Speaker 3: but it's it's definitely Memphis time. And I think we've
Speaker 3: gotten the pump primed with the aforementioned interview series that
Speaker 3: we did with folks who played no small part and
Speaker 3: why we're able to not only read about and learn about,
Speaker 3: but you know, feel and re experience what it was
Speaker 3: like for those earliest days before the whole world was
Speaker 3: hip to the fact that Terry Bolea was about to
Speaker 3: become the biggest box office attraction the pro wrestling industry
Speaker 3: had ever seen. Now that isn't all that we delivered.
Speaker 2: Over the break, of course, as always, folks subscribe to
Speaker 2: our patreon aton dot com slash lapsed Fan got a
Speaker 2: full on, full frontel assault in the form of Christmas
Speaker 2: Movie Season, a drop.
Speaker 3: On Christmas Day. Listen, you know, there there's there's nothing
Speaker 3: like being Home Alone two and getting lost in New
Speaker 3: York on Christmas Day. It's just there's there's there's nothing better.
Speaker 3: And we had a not only Christmas movie season, but
Speaker 3: a season of sequels as we charted h A Jingle
Speaker 3: all the Way to Die Hard, to Die Harder, and
Speaker 3: Home Alone two, Lost in New York, the New Batch,
Speaker 3: and you know, we we got to we got to
Speaker 3: kind of dig in a little bit on on that
Speaker 3: on on Donald Trump and his kind of is is
Speaker 3: some wacky I mean, listen, his whole affiliation with the
Speaker 3: ww' is whacky, but some other like something like some things,
Speaker 3: like you you hadn't heard about the gangrel story that
Speaker 3: we talked about, and and and there there were some
Speaker 3: things in there that I just thought were It's just wild.
Speaker 3: It's just wild to think that that you know, that
Speaker 3: there were so many other stories besides the ones that
Speaker 3: we knew from him being on TV. But yeah, I'll
Speaker 3: tell you what, I'm very excited. I'm not gonna I'm
Speaker 3: not gonna blow the lot off of yet, but I
Speaker 3: think I think we're going to be in for quite
Speaker 3: a treat twenty twenty six. We got something. I got
Speaker 3: something that's been cooking for quite a while, and I'm very, very,
Speaker 3: very very excited to drop it on you this week.
Speaker 2: In the format of under the Cinemat Yeah, in the
Speaker 2: format of yeah, yes, yes, yes. Perhaps by the time
Speaker 2: you hear this first TLF episode of twenty twenty six,
Speaker 2: you'll already be hip to what we're talking about if
Speaker 2: you're in the EP tier or above over at patreon
Speaker 2: dot com Slash the Laps fan. Of course that is
Speaker 2: inclusive of the Moat tier. And of course it's a
Speaker 2: new year, but Mama Sorrow is still up to her tricks.
Speaker 2: Wrestle Mam Yeah.
Speaker 3: Mama Sorrow just never stops at her old tricks, and
Speaker 3: you know, coming I'm trying to what this would have been. So,
Speaker 3: you know, every year the week before the Rumble, I
Speaker 3: try to get a rumble in. I tried it, been
Speaker 3: doing them in order with my mom and I think
Speaker 3: I think it's ninety one this year. So that was
Speaker 3: a treat for me. Oh that's massive. That was a
Speaker 3: treat for me. That's coming up in a couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: You know, there's there was a page one show when
Speaker 2: we started this whole podcast.
Speaker 3: Absolutely it was it was my u it was my
Speaker 3: was it the first one when we did our little
Speaker 3: Chairman's choice before we started on the the Wrestlingia Journey
Speaker 3: was one of my my shows for that one of
Speaker 3: my three shows I think that I chose, and it
Speaker 3: was it was a no brainer. It was like, that's
Speaker 3: that's absolutely what's going to happen. And it's because of
Speaker 3: Hogan later with no longer alive, exactly, it's always Hogan.
Speaker 3: I was trying to think here what they just what
Speaker 3: you just would have seen, oh, you would always a
Speaker 3: good sign when simply reading the title of the episode,
Speaker 3: const you would have just heard me and my mom
Speaker 3: watch the debut of the shock Master. That's how we
Speaker 3: start twenty twenty six. Yeah, okay, by stumbling through a
Speaker 3: hole in the wall, through all on the walls how
Speaker 3: I started my year two and uh and we go.
Speaker 3: We go back to basics for my mom. Actually, this
Speaker 3: is the next one coming up for those who may
Speaker 3: be uh, who may still be a little like on
Speaker 3: the fence. You want to hear my mom go back
Speaker 3: to like her her fandom days, like her warm and fuzzies.
Speaker 3: We get to tell, we get watch a match with
Speaker 3: the Haystax Calhoun and Tony geriad taken on Tanaka and Fuji.
Speaker 3: That's about as northeast as it gets. Haystax Calhoun is
Speaker 3: just the one that you know, my mom gets a
Speaker 3: big thrill out of that. And Killer Kowalski, the Polish guy,
Speaker 3: obviously Polish exponent. So yeah, just because the holiday season
Speaker 3: is behind us doesn't mean that the warm and fuzzies
Speaker 3: of the living room carpet have to be behind you.
Speaker 3: If you're Remote tier member at Patreon, shared the carpet
Speaker 3: with Mamasarrow and the Boss as they take in the
Speaker 3: wrestling matches of yours all the more difficult access now
Speaker 3: as Peacock has taken down the entire archive, and it
Speaker 3: appears that Netflix is going to at least or has
Speaker 3: already put up all the WWE pay per views in
Speaker 3: the past. But all that means, you know what that
Speaker 3: means nice, All that matters is we keep track of
Speaker 3: what we don't have, right That's the only thing anyone's
Speaker 3: going to talk abou yep, yep. And you know, I
Speaker 3: do feel very lucky that we do have. We have
Speaker 3: a significant archive, you know, elapsed archives.
Speaker 2: The Solar system isn't going to let that kind of risk.
Speaker 2: They're not going to tolerate that kind of risk.
Speaker 3: You know. It's it's it's really it's unbelievable how much
Speaker 3: stuff we've been we've been gifted over the years, and
Speaker 3: how much stuff we still have. So you know, we
Speaker 3: have we have content for years to come, hands down.
Speaker 3: But enough about the complete Hulk Ogan Brother. Yeah, we'll
Speaker 3: be covered as well as we get to the points
Speaker 3: in Hulk's career where we just do traditional deep dives
Speaker 3: like you've come to expect from us over a decade,
Speaker 3: you know, and we've got those shows at the ready
Speaker 3: in the chamber. Uh fool proof, risk proof, not a
Speaker 3: problem as you as you would have expected. By now
Speaker 3: you talk about what a fucking shit show. I can't believe,
Speaker 3: you know, it's funny. I actually haven't even been on
Speaker 3: on on Pecock in a while, and it says, what
Speaker 3: a what a what a what a fucking I mean,
Speaker 3: you know, the whole fucking what a mess? What a mess?
Speaker 3: That like, they can't I'll tell you what here, here's
Speaker 3: where them and the gran I know they don't care.
Speaker 3: They don't care, number one, that's the bottom that's really
Speaker 3: the bottom line. They don't care. But my biggest issue
Speaker 3: is like why couldn't they have Why couldn't they have
Speaker 3: like all the things like warmed up in Netflix? Why
Speaker 3: do they have to just wait? You know, like why
Speaker 3: couldn't they have everything loaded up? Obviously don't don't, don't
Speaker 3: drop it when you know, until you until you have
Speaker 3: the legal rights to do so. But like, why couldn't
Speaker 3: they have everything that they have on Peacock or god forbid,
Speaker 3: the fucking network and the old network and just let it,
Speaker 3: you know, like have it ready to go and then
Speaker 3: all of a sudden you drop it and boom, there
Speaker 3: it is. But you know, it's all anybody would be
Speaker 3: talking about. I know, the first of the year. I know.
Speaker 2: I mean if it was all there and unleashed upon
Speaker 2: us and we had that that security. But it's fine whatever,
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not fine going around fucking playing little
Speaker 2: games with this content apparently isn't important. It doesn't mean anything.
Speaker 2: But you're already slicing the dice in it. So Netflix
Speaker 2: gets some of the archive, Vault gets some of the whatever.
Speaker 3: What will be your guide? As always?
Speaker 2: What will be your beacon in the storm here at TLF.
Speaker 2: You mentioned lost in New York. Terry Boley is about
Speaker 2: to get lost in New York here completely, I'll go
Speaker 2: good pretty soon. I couldn't let that one pass in
Speaker 2: terms of where we're heading. But yes, so, Patreon dot
Speaker 2: com slash the lapsed fan your source for all things
Speaker 2: exclusive TLF your way to prove to us that you're
Speaker 2: worthy of the effort that we put in. And further
Speaker 2: to the point, it's it's it's live call season. It's
Speaker 2: gonna get a little silly, little as you can imagine. Yes, So,
Speaker 2: as a precursor to to the next remarks about what
Speaker 2: to expect from a programming announcement perspective on our live
Speaker 2: calls and such, we should share with the Solar System
Speaker 2: some exciting news. Boss for those approximate to Broadway. You
Speaker 2: you're going to be taking the stage.
Speaker 3: I'll be I'll be lost in New York myself for
Speaker 3: for quite a while. While lost in New York in
Speaker 3: twenty twenty six, Uh yeah, just desserts a musical bake off.
Speaker 3: I am returning off Broadway this January thirtieth through February
Speaker 3: twenty through February twenty second short run of this of
Speaker 3: a of a very funny, hilarious musical that takes place.
Speaker 3: It takes place during and around a baking contest. If
Speaker 3: it's not all about food, okay, I mean, are you
Speaker 3: fucking like seriously? And I play an Italian, an Italian
Speaker 3: from Brooklyn who bakes and eats. So I guess they
Speaker 3: just looked at me and we're like, oh, okay, we
Speaker 3: got you. Good.
Speaker 2: Well, when Hope gets to New York, he'll be an
Speaker 2: Italian in Brooklyn bakes and eats.
Speaker 3: He eats, and he bakes and well not necessarily the
Speaker 3: way you mean bakes, as as it says on the
Speaker 3: on the on the website, a mysterious man from Brooklyn
Speaker 3: who arouses suspicion of out his past brother. What dude,
Speaker 3: sewn o'shay like? But yeah, we're at the the a
Speaker 3: MT Theater on forty fifth Street. You can get tickets
Speaker 3: those who are in the area or who want to
Speaker 3: travel to the area a MT Theater dot org slash
Speaker 3: just Desserts and you can you can buy tickets there.
Speaker 3: And the fun thing about are about this particular this
Speaker 3: particular production is that there will be a guest baker
Speaker 3: every show really and so there will be like you know,
Speaker 3: there'll be an array of of of of treats and
Speaker 3: whatnot every every show. Like they've I got the list
Speaker 3: right here, we got the uh Invictus Bakery. I'm not
Speaker 3: sure some of these are all these are most of
Speaker 3: them are local, obviously, I should take that back. All
Speaker 3: of them are local, uh New York places. Actually a
Speaker 3: former uh you know, she's a friend. I'll just call
Speaker 3: her a friend, Alison Mahoney. She's called the Singing Baker.
Speaker 3: She's going to be a guest baker on February eleventh,
Speaker 3: Junior's Oh fucking Juniors Cheesecake is going to be there.
Speaker 3: Fuck it fuck it, send e nest to go pick
Speaker 3: up some of that that's already tasty. This is the
Speaker 3: it's it's it's definitely worth it. If even if you
Speaker 3: don't like musical theater, come for the food and you know,
Speaker 3: come to see me play this kind of like the podcast,
Speaker 3: you know, yeah, right, eat, you don't like us, come
Speaker 3: for the food. Puns man, right, if you don't like wrestling,
Speaker 3: stay for the other stuff. There's plenty of that. So yeah,
Speaker 3: just dessert. It's a musical bake off, very fun, exciting
Speaker 3: CoA chairs no send us an email LAPS fan at
Speaker 3: gmail dot com. If boss Man can expect you, I'm
Speaker 3: sure will be three yes, please do already know some
Speaker 3: members of the Solar System are making plans. I do.
Speaker 3: I've gotten quite a few dms on Instagram specifically, we
Speaker 3: had a couple of Black Friday deals and what not
Speaker 3: going right around Thanksgiving and in the holidays, and some
Speaker 3: people a message thing they already got their tickets and
Speaker 3: I really appreciate that, so you know, come on out,
Speaker 3: come on out. But you know, given that the dates
Speaker 3: that we have there, it does create some conflict, not
Speaker 3: not too much, but to it, we do want to
Speaker 3: get word out early and often, so Roller Rumble this
Speaker 3: year is in fucking Saudi Arabia, So it's going to
Speaker 3: be on at two o'clock in the afternoon, which is
Speaker 3: already bullshit and already sucks and already gives us all
Speaker 3: the cover we need to just not do it live.
Speaker 3: But because of the show schedule, we're not going to
Speaker 3: be able to do the Word Rumble until the Sunday night.
Speaker 3: It's a Saturday afternoon on the East Coast this year.
Speaker 3: I got I got a two show day that day,
Speaker 3: so unfortunately, I will not be able to do it
Speaker 3: to do it live as I have I have that
Speaker 3: fucking one. I gotta have it. You're not willing to
Speaker 3: make it a three show day, that's for sure. Well, hey,
Speaker 3: you know, I wouldn't mind doing it, but we wouldn't
Speaker 3: be starting till eleven o'clock at night. Okay, I'll do it,
Speaker 3: all right, I'll do it. I'll do it o'clock all right.
Speaker 3: So maybe maybe we'll hate you with the surprise, but
Speaker 3: we want to prepare you for it the very least.
Speaker 3: The fact that the Royal Rumble this year, which is
Speaker 3: only appropriate because if they're gonna do something as goofy
Speaker 3: as bring it to Saudi Arabia that we can do
Speaker 3: whatever the fuck we want when we said is going
Speaker 3: to at least not be live as far as that afternoon.
Speaker 3: Every time they've done a premium live event in the
Speaker 3: afternoon on a Saturday, we all kind of understand that
Speaker 3: you're really reaching the bottom of the barrel. I mean,
Speaker 3: what are you willing to give their whole Saturday away
Speaker 3: for what you have? I'm fucking doing for God's sakes?
Speaker 3: Like what a rumble? What a dumb ass fucking thing,
Speaker 3: Like you know, I you know what, why even bother?
Speaker 3: I mean, I know people are like, you know, you
Speaker 3: want the live stream and whatever. I know, it's not
Speaker 3: like ninety two or you can settle with a delay.
Speaker 3: You're not gonna get any news, but you know, come
Speaker 3: the fuck on, like, why do that? Why have it
Speaker 3: live live for people who are gonna be you know,
Speaker 3: fucking hu, who's listen? No one's gonna fuck it? I mean,
Speaker 3: I know, I know, I'll a lot of people are
Speaker 3: not going to sit there and fucking watch that thing live.
Speaker 3: I'm sure if you were able to look at the
Speaker 3: numbers for United States viewers, let alone people like on
Speaker 3: the West Coast where it's going to be on at
Speaker 3: eleven am, Like, what the fuck? What's the matter with them?
Speaker 3: You make an interesting point, like you know, it's one
Speaker 3: thing when they go to Perth, Australia or Paris, France, yes,
Speaker 3: or any of these markets on a Saturday afternoon where
Speaker 3: you know you're not going to be able to stop
Speaker 3: people from taking video in the arena and uploading it
Speaker 3: to Twitter and everyone getting spoilers. Saudi Arabia, though, I
Speaker 3: don't know, call me, you know, color me prejudicial, but
Speaker 3: I'm pretty sure there's a way to stop people from
Speaker 3: taking video inside of the arena and sharing it of
Speaker 3: all the arenas, of all the countries. It might not
Speaker 3: necessarily be legal, but I'm sure that there are ways
Speaker 3: to stop people from taking.
Speaker 2: Depends we're talking about international law or saudistraw, but that's
Speaker 2: your point, you know, Yeah, there could be away. I'd
Speaker 2: imagine where they could actually have the rumble at a
Speaker 2: time that makes sense for the locals and not be
Speaker 2: available for streaming internationally until or traditional time.
Speaker 3: Slote. I just they I mean again, they did it
Speaker 3: for they did it for the summer seminy two. We
Speaker 3: could delayed for a day or two, like it's it's possible.
Speaker 3: I know again, you know it's different, the the technology,
Speaker 3: the internet, everything is is obviously much. You know, we
Speaker 3: can we can we we can know results before they happen. Yes,
Speaker 3: you know these days, but still I wouldn't listen. It's
Speaker 3: not hard, I think I am. I am a I
Speaker 3: think I am at testment to the fact that it
Speaker 3: is not hard to get to not miss spoilers, wait
Speaker 3: wait to miss spoil It's not hard to miss spoilers
Speaker 3: basically because I don't even I don't even think about it.
Speaker 3: You know, I don't even think about it. When we
Speaker 3: have a delayed call and I just go and then
Speaker 3: it's like, oh yeah shit, I didn't even I didn't
Speaker 3: nothing came up. I don't even have to hide anything.
Speaker 2: So all of this also is to say, I defy
Speaker 2: you to show me one human being on planet Earth
Speaker 2: who will not watch the Rumble when it's uploaded. If
Speaker 2: you do a delay like we're talking about because they
Speaker 2: saw spoilers on Twitter. One person, right, one person exactly
Speaker 2: who will say I'm not going to watch it.
Speaker 3: Now everyone's gonna watch it. Yeah, So there goes that argument.
Speaker 3: So whatever.
Speaker 2: The whole point is, if you're strapped in at two
Speaker 2: eastern Saturday afternoon, January thirty first, whenever the fuck it is,
Speaker 2: we're not gonna have a live call, but it'll be
Speaker 2: there soon enough, as soon as we feel like it.
Speaker 2: Maybe we'll just do the Rumbel matches on Saturday and
Speaker 2: give you the rest of the day. I don't know,
Speaker 2: but it's they fucked it up, so don't don't fuck
Speaker 2: don't fucking look at us.
Speaker 3: Yep.
Speaker 2: Therefore the same they do the same thing to us
Speaker 2: by pushing WrestleMania out deep into April, when like THISERI
Speaker 2: vacation's going on. It's like, whatever, dude, we'll figure that
Speaker 2: out too. But fair warning there we will be doing
Speaker 2: the Saturday It's main event, the first live call of
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six. There was a reason to hang on
Speaker 2: to your peacock, Ah, Jesus Christ, that's all. I like
Speaker 2: my peacock anyway. But man, what the fuck all it
Speaker 2: is now is Saturday Night's made event and nxt P
Speaker 2: l E S no no archives, that's it.
Speaker 3: That's what you get. They don't even have I just
Speaker 3: look at they don't even have a WWE thing. Anymore,
Speaker 3: Like they don't even have a course, not.
Speaker 2: They don't have any WW content on there beyond quarterly
Speaker 2: Saturday Night's Mad Event specials.
Speaker 3: Fuck sad, what a fucking bunch of.
Speaker 2: At WW logo still being off to the left of
Speaker 2: the peacock home screen was the last vestige to meet
Speaker 2: the network. It's like, we're gonna pretend we have the
Speaker 2: network by putting a WW button on our home page.
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, because they ain't fucking putting a WWE
Speaker 3: logo on Netflix, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: No, that's kind of way the kind of start the
Speaker 2: E is giving us. So we're gonna have to just
Speaker 2: bake and complete hull cog and goodness to feel right
Speaker 2: about pro wrestling in twenty twenty six, which is just
Speaker 2: fine by me and I'm sure fined by you. Yes,
Speaker 2: so lock it in, And of course, you know, for
Speaker 2: your Patreon dollar you get ad free verse of this
Speaker 2: show if you have to be listening on the public
Speaker 2: feed at a million other reasons to lock in. Folks
Speaker 2: at livet get it. This episode of the Lapsed Fan,
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Speaker 3: POSA, Right, are we getting any No one's giving a sample?
Speaker 3: Have we getting samples in those things? Yeah, we haven't
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Speaker 3: I think, uh, I think you're you're expressing interest. If
Speaker 3: I'm not here, I am, well, you know I've been
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Speaker 3: as they say in the business, and we'll be sure
Speaker 3: to tip our cap to you as well. So proud
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Speaker 3: checked out any other any other kind of beer. I
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Speaker 3: beer to begin with, but you know, I certainly had
Speaker 3: my favorites and stuff, and they're gone. Fucking garage beer
Speaker 3: is fucking money. They know what they're doing over there.
Speaker 2: They get it in terms of flavor, absolutely, in terms
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Speaker 3: Well. And also, you know, it also kind of blends
Speaker 3: both sides because you had Hogan always with a six
Speaker 3: pack in the back of the Golden Gym talking with
Speaker 3: Slavage or whoever. So it's a good you know, it
Speaker 3: blends both worlds. It's perfect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nobody appreciated a cold six pack like Terry No.
Speaker 2: And of course, Cameo dot com Slash the lapsed fan,
Speaker 2: get those messages out. Valentine's Days not too far.
Speaker 3: Away, right, Listen, listen. I'll tell you what. I'm sure
Speaker 3: that there are plenty of loved ones or people who
Speaker 3: have loved ones who are LAPS fans. But I'd say
Speaker 3: even get the loved ones who aren't LAPS fans, give them,
Speaker 3: you know, a cameo because there's there's you know there,
Speaker 3: there's plenty of fodder there to be had for Valentine's Day,
Speaker 3: no question, and.
Speaker 2: We're working hard to present opportunities in twenty twenty six. Yes,
Speaker 2: for you out there in the Solar System to be
Speaker 2: with us in person. Yeah, we've got a lot of ideas.
Speaker 2: We don't want to put any cards before any horses. No,
Speaker 2: the gears are turning at TLFHQ, so there's no shortage
Speaker 2: of ways to support us and no shortage of excuses.
Speaker 2: So let's fucking go and let's go to Memphis.
Speaker 3: Memshis boss. Let's let's sort of visit. I'm ready, I'm
Speaker 3: ready to s going. You mentioned the Restler, you mentioned
Speaker 3: the Hogan. I'm so glad you mentioned the Hogan Lawer tape.
Speaker 3: Yeah you have. Yeah, let's start there because I will
Speaker 3: point out that match was in nineteen eighty one. Wow,
Speaker 3: no shit, So it's not this Memphis run, not even then.
Speaker 3: It's after fuck, well after.
Speaker 2: Well after Hogan has gone to the a WA, well
Speaker 2: after Hogan has made his presence known in Japan. In fact,
Speaker 2: the gear he's wearing in that match is the black
Speaker 2: and silver Japan gear that he would wear. So it's
Speaker 2: not this brief cup of coffee that him and Ed
Speaker 2: Boulder had as the Bolder brothers in nineteen seventy nine
Speaker 2: with the aforementioned vignette and stuff that everyone talks about,
Speaker 2: but it is part of the Memphis story because it
Speaker 2: kind of brings us back to a lot of the
Speaker 2: things that we set the foundation for here on this
Speaker 2: leg of the journey. So we will actually, in the
Speaker 2: spirit of trying to deal with how unwieldy nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: nine was for Terry Bolea, we will kind of spin
Speaker 2: the clock forward a little bit on this Memphis installment
Speaker 2: of things to get to that nineteen eighty one time period,
Speaker 2: because he comes back to the Mid South Coliseum, the
Speaker 2: Staple Wrestling Arena in the Memphis circuit Monday nights at
Speaker 2: the Mid South Colisseum was wrestling for people in and
Speaker 2: around Memphis, and he wrestles Jerry Lawler one on one
Speaker 2: after becoming a substantial name in the industry and having
Speaker 2: already gone through the w WWWF and Wrestling Andre the
Speaker 2: Giant Shay Stadium, making an impact Japan, making an impact
Speaker 2: in the AWA. What do you remember about that match?
Speaker 2: How did you come into possession of it?
Speaker 3: Good question, you know, I'm trying to remember. It would
Speaker 3: have come from either a friend or a family member,
Speaker 3: because I know I got it fairly early on, and
Speaker 3: we had the Wrestling Gold release, yeah, with that creepy
Speaker 3: picture of Hogan on it. That creepy leader was released
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty eight. It is a it is a
Speaker 3: petrifying image of Actually it used to give me like
Speaker 3: nightmares for a good moment or two because like, what
Speaker 3: is this? Like why like he looks like he's going
Speaker 3: to kill somebody.
Speaker 2: We had a lot of fun talking to Kit Parker
Speaker 2: about the whole how to deal with calling Hi Hulk
Speaker 2: Hogan on a VHS that didn't have the WWFS pimission
Speaker 2: and how they sent him cease and assists and stuff
Speaker 2: fascinating And this is this is an exhibit a in
Speaker 2: so many ways what you're talking about.
Speaker 4: And I.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm trying to think because I mean it must
Speaker 3: have been a mind blowing thing for me to really understand.
Speaker 3: I mean part of me is wondering it all. It
Speaker 3: all just depends on when in my fandom I got it.
Speaker 3: And again, I know I got it early on. I
Speaker 3: can I can. I can picture watching it, you know
Speaker 3: in a certain setup in my parents' house. All right,
Speaker 3: blue blue rug. You know, I had the the old TV,
Speaker 3: you know, like the furniture piece TV that with the
Speaker 3: volume button that turned the fucking that turned the turn
Speaker 3: of the TV on. No clicker, Yes, I guess most importantly,
Speaker 3: but you took it in at a time where it
Speaker 3: was simply revolutionary to see Hulk Cogan do anything that
Speaker 3: wasn't in the red, white and blue ropes. Not only that,
Speaker 3: but it was revolutionary to see Hulk Cogan as a heel.
Speaker 3: Come on, now, that's the part that really concerned me,
Speaker 3: and I remember being nervous watching it. Nervous. It was
Speaker 3: one of the those tapes because I can't. I can't.
Speaker 3: I couldn't handle hul Cogan being a bad guy, right,
Speaker 3: I couldn't handle it. You know this is so that
Speaker 3: also puts it in obviously pre ninety six, so we're talking.
Speaker 3: It must have been ninety two ninety three. That's when
Speaker 3: I got this tape. I get ninety two ninety three,
Speaker 3: and it was you know it was. I remember putting
Speaker 3: it in being feeling very nervous because I number one,
Speaker 3: if I have this tip, I want Hulk Hogan to win.
Speaker 3: Number two. I don't know how I'm supposed to feel
Speaker 3: about Hulk Hogan being being a heel like this match
Speaker 3: that Hulk Hogan doesn't want you to see that whole thing.
Speaker 3: It's kind of funny, it's kind of funny. You know
Speaker 3: what match actually, I think he probably really doesn't want
Speaker 3: you to see is him facing Andrew the Giant fucking Alabama.
Speaker 3: That's the match he really doesn't want you to see,
Speaker 3: apparently because he doesn't want to talk about it ever.
Speaker 3: Having happened exactly, that would have been the fucking the
Speaker 3: real uh, the real gem is to have that fucking match.
Speaker 3: And uh but I remember, I remember putting in, I
Speaker 3: remember watching I remember how bad the quality, you know,
Speaker 3: like more or less the quality not compared to ww
Speaker 3: releases at the time, and we weekly television, And yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm sure I watched it with one of my friends
Speaker 3: who I forced to be wrestling fans. Yes, And you
Speaker 3: know I I because I also I hated Lawler at
Speaker 3: the time. I mean, I've always hated La Lawler. I
Speaker 3: don't ever liked Lawler, but I really you know he
Speaker 3: was he was I would have so again, this puts
Speaker 3: it in the in the place it would have been
Speaker 3: nineteen ninety three because I knew who Lawler was and
Speaker 3: The only reason I knew who Laler was was from
Speaker 3: really from his I first met Lawler so to speak,
Speaker 3: doing commentary on Superstars in ninety two, and then through
Speaker 3: the magazine, through the aftermags and learning about the USWA
Speaker 3: and whatnot, So I couldn't fathom a Lawler Hogan thing either,
Speaker 3: let alone the fact I had no idea about like
Speaker 3: Andy Coffin, and I didn't know what the fuck that was.
Speaker 3: I did no clue about that at this point, and
Speaker 3: I had no clue about any other territories. So it
Speaker 3: was all it was all mind blowing to really see this,
Speaker 3: And I wouldn't doubt that there's a part of me
Speaker 3: that probably thought this was WWE at some point. I
Speaker 3: wouldn't doubt that. I wouldn't doubt that there was a
Speaker 3: part of my mind that thought that this tape was
Speaker 3: a WW match that somehow somebody found and released on
Speaker 3: their own, despite having no you know, despite it not
Speaker 3: being a WW release. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Sure, I mean, if you watch some of those earliest
Speaker 2: Coliseum tapes and they're playing matches from the seventies early
Speaker 2: seventies in the Garden, they looked exactly pretty much exactly exactly,
Speaker 2: the nondescript rings with no logos or anything or really
Speaker 2: any color on them. A lot of the old Bruno
Speaker 2: matches we saw fit that bill. So I certainly I
Speaker 2: take your point. And yeah, it was just such an
Speaker 2: interesting time because everybody was releasing these VHS's because the
Speaker 2: WWF on Hogan's back had had so much success, as
Speaker 2: we've talked about on the the Scene collection in another
Speaker 2: forums with Kit Parker through eighty four, five, six, seven, eight,
Speaker 2: that everybody that could release anything that had anything to
Speaker 2: do with the hot ticket wrestling acts before they were
Speaker 2: in the WWF was figuring out ways to package it
Speaker 2: and sell it on vhs, even over and above the
Speaker 2: seasoned desist protestations of the WWF in many cases. And
Speaker 2: so this is definitely a holy grail because by this point,
Speaker 2: you know, this is around Super Clash eighty eight, This
Speaker 2: is around all the guys that Vince you know, took
Speaker 2: all their lunch money and pissed on them. We're all
Speaker 2: getting together pretending they could do something. Most prominently Jerry
Speaker 2: Jarrett Memphis. You know, we talked about all that during
Speaker 2: the life and death of the AWA, and you know,
Speaker 2: Nick Bockwinkle's coming in through Memphis quite a bit, and
Speaker 2: they're kind of framing the AWA World Champion as a
Speaker 2: bigger deal than even the NWA World Champion, even though
Speaker 2: the Memphis territory was part of the NBA circuit. And
Speaker 2: you know, Dusty and the Crockets feeling some kind of
Speaker 2: way about the dominance of Vince McMahon, and so this
Speaker 2: you can see a tape like this being part of
Speaker 2: the right part of the strategy, like, yes, we got
Speaker 2: we've got their guy, We've got their Golden Goose on
Speaker 2: tape getting a shit beat out of him by Jerry Lawler,
Speaker 2: and we can just you know, show the clips of
Speaker 2: him beating the shit out of Hogan with of course
Speaker 2: a match in totality. And in fact, it's interesting because
Speaker 2: in eighty one there was quite a fuss made on television,
Speaker 2: both in Florida where the match played, as well as
Speaker 2: in Memphis about the nature of this finish. Even before
Speaker 2: Hulk Hogan went on to bigger and better things. Hogan
Speaker 2: would go on television as well as we'll address and
Speaker 2: get to on on Champions pressing from Florida in eighty one,
Speaker 2: after we'd already been through AWA and WWF for a
Speaker 2: bit and talking about how Lawler's doctoring the footage up
Speaker 2: in Memphis. Lawler's doctoring footage this match to make it
Speaker 2: seem like he did a lot better against Halt than
Speaker 2: he actually did, and the finish being vita qualification as well.
Speaker 3: I find out that's wacky. That's so crazy, doctoring footage,
Speaker 3: that's what they claim. But if you are to believe
Speaker 3: Jimmy Hart, who's about to become part of our story
Speaker 3: and who actually runs in you recall at the end
Speaker 3: of that match, that must have weird for you too,
Speaker 3: to see Jimmy Hart for fear at the end. Yeah, yeah, Like,
Speaker 3: remind me of what happens.
Speaker 2: It's been a while, So Lawler is covering Hogan and
Speaker 2: Heart jumps in the ring with basically like a steel
Speaker 2: pipe and hits Lawla across the.
Speaker 3: Bat and he's right, and he's working on he's working
Speaker 3: with Hogan. So it's like managing Hogan in eighty one.
Speaker 3: Trying to remember when see this would have been a
Speaker 3: whole thing. If I watched in ninety two, this would
Speaker 3: have been horrifying. But if I'd watched in ninety three,
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be so bad because he had already joined
Speaker 3: forces with Jimmy Hart.
Speaker 2: But to it it might not have been very clear
Speaker 2: to you either, because there really isn't any commentary on
Speaker 2: this match, so it's not like they're explaining in great
Speaker 2: detail who's doing what on the Wrestling Gold version of this.
Speaker 2: But if you recognize Jimmy Hart, this is of course
Speaker 2: before the airbrust jacket and the megaphone, right before he
Speaker 2: developed the look that would be his signature. But he
Speaker 2: started in Memphis under Jerry Lawler, as we'll talk about it,
Speaker 2: became acquainted with Hulk Cogan for the first time during
Speaker 2: the run we're about to talk about, which is wow,
Speaker 2: massively significant for you know, the rest of Hulk Hogan's
Speaker 2: life and career. As we've talked about endlessly on the
Speaker 2: show over the years, Hulk and Jimmy till Hulk's dying
Speaker 2: day were locked at the hip in so many ways.
Speaker 2: Then that starts here in Memphis, So all of that
Speaker 2: is going on on the videotape, and there's volleying back
Speaker 2: and forth on television about Lawler doctoring the footage, and
Speaker 2: then they rematch do Hogan and Lawler on a show
Speaker 2: that was not videotaped later on in the summer of
Speaker 2: eighty one. But we're here in seventy nine and before
Speaker 2: it's Hogan versus Lawler. I think you'll be surprised to
Speaker 2: find boss. It's Hogan and Lawler as a tag team.
Speaker 6: Wo.
Speaker 5: What yes?
Speaker 3: Wow?
Speaker 2: Only are they interested in this Terry Boulet, who's becoming
Speaker 2: a bit of a sensation down in Alabama. The top
Speaker 2: guy in the territory, Jerry Lawler, is interested in getting
Speaker 2: some of that shine and bringing him up there and
Speaker 2: seeing what they do with him. Need to reset the
Speaker 2: table a bit and revisit some of the things we've
Speaker 2: already established, because you know, in describing how these two
Speaker 2: Hulk and Eddie ended up in the Pensacola Gulf Coo
Speaker 2: Southeastern Territory, we also had to say quite a bit
Speaker 2: about how Memphis was at the table at the beginning,
Speaker 2: according at least to Brutus Beefcake.
Speaker 3: I mean, we have talked so many.
Speaker 2: Times about who exactly got Hulk and Eddie out of
Speaker 2: Cocoa Beach into the wrestling business. Was it a Bob
Speaker 2: rup was Did Hulk called Bob Roop? Did Hulk call
Speaker 2: Superstar Billy Graham, like he says, did both of them
Speaker 2: call Jerry Jarrett first? Did they call Harley Race? That's
Speaker 2: another name that comes up. But Harley was interested in
Speaker 2: bringing them in Kansas City.
Speaker 3: Mikeling, Oh my god, who is that? Which one that
Speaker 3: was that? I should have marked him down? And this
Speaker 3: is my stick, this is my gimmick that can only
Speaker 3: be one. Professor Boris Malinga run the plan detail. Oh
Speaker 3: my god, that's just the greatest, the greatest fucking thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And that's what's one of the things I'm gonna love.
Speaker 2: I think about the complete hul Cogan is be at Alabama,
Speaker 2: Ron Fuller and Oxville and Plan B be it, Eddie
Speaker 2: Graham and the Briscoes and everybody running Florida and Mike
Speaker 2: Graham the way they did, U be it here Memphis,
Speaker 2: Jerry Lawler, Jerry Jerrett. We're going to get into so
Speaker 2: much history of so many territories Georgia Championship at Jimmy Barnett,
Speaker 2: that we really probably wouldn't you know. Of course, if
Speaker 2: TLF played out per traditional format, it would have been
Speaker 2: hard to ever take a time to say, all right,
Speaker 2: now's the time to start at the beginning for how
Speaker 2: Memphis came to be Memphis for instance. You know we're
Speaker 2: not going to go that deep, but we are going
Speaker 2: to go deeper than I think we ever had plans to,
Speaker 2: uh to properly contextualize how Terry Bollett comes up in
Speaker 2: this circuit. So as Bruce beef Cake said in his book,
Speaker 2: remember uh, Whitey up in Cocoa Beach, Okay, Whitey Bridges
Speaker 2: who own the Anchor Club and who opened up the gym,
Speaker 2: and Terry and Ed he gets married, and he closes
Speaker 2: the gym that they founded, and closes the Anchor Club
Speaker 2: and has Don the Dragon Wilson talked to us about
Speaker 2: for many reasons, not just that a business wasn't well
Speaker 2: had to get on fire, but federal agents may have
Speaker 2: been sniffing around too. So that that ends, and Terry
Speaker 2: and that are going to head back to Tampa, both
Speaker 2: being Tampa boys. And yeah, of course Ed ed Leslie
Speaker 2: in his book takes the credit for suggesting to Hulk
Speaker 2: that maybe we should give wrestling another try, and had
Speaker 2: shown interest in it. Hulk could already wrestle a few matches,
Speaker 2: has talked about in seventy seven in Florida Super Destroyer
Speaker 2: and Gordon ed. Hulk quickly admitted, yeah, you know, I'm
Speaker 2: getting the itch back myself. Let's try this, Harley had
Speaker 2: called them. Harley raised his book.
Speaker 3: In hand the city. Yes, and Harley clearly was I
Speaker 3: think that's probably what it sounded like. Actually, am what
Speaker 3: I'd like to do.
Speaker 2: I'd like to sit Harley Race down in nineteen seventy nine,
Speaker 2: play him the Plan B tape and then get his immediate.
Speaker 3: Ru Oh my god. Oh some ambitious modernfuckers I don't
Speaker 3: know about.
Speaker 2: I don't know about their matches, but I know mine
Speaker 2: are real damn right. No, he would have said something
Speaker 2: like oh fucking so Harley was interested. You know, as
Speaker 2: talked about, Hogan had some experience with Harley in Florida,
Speaker 2: and I think it was d Leslie. You said he
Speaker 2: kind of crushed a few beer cans on Hogan's head
Speaker 2: while he was forced to drive everybody around. Yes, definitely
Speaker 2: didn't get vibes from Harley that he was going to
Speaker 2: be very cooperative with him in terms of elevating him.
Speaker 2: But at the same time, you know, when Harley gets
Speaker 2: wind of what Hulks are doing in Alabama, he comes
Speaker 2: out and has no problem and not only putting him
Speaker 2: over that first time, but when Hogan showed up as
Speaker 2: the replacement to save Ron Fuller. But of course, you know,
Speaker 2: going against him for the world title just six months
Speaker 2: under the run. Seven months under the run, I wouldn't
Speaker 2: be seven months because he started in March and it
Speaker 2: was in July that the match was.
Speaker 3: It was even less than that.
Speaker 2: So Harley clearly knew who Terry Bolea was. Okay, whether
Speaker 2: he was actually the first or among the many to
Speaker 2: offer these guys a chance to get into the business
Speaker 2: after Cocoa Beach went bust, who's to say, But according
Speaker 2: to ed Leslie, Harley had called. They called him back
Speaker 2: before they ever even went to Dothan, and it was
Speaker 2: around this time. They obviously didn't take the offer to
Speaker 2: go to Kansas City a whole. I think felt it
Speaker 2: was kind of like Kicktown. We talked about that for
Speaker 2: the Florida episodes. It's here where they come up. They
Speaker 2: did to call themselves the Bolder Brothers. You know, this
Speaker 2: idea that people will fuck with us in the business
Speaker 2: like they used to if they have to fuck with
Speaker 2: both of us. And so ed Leslie Royd's hard he
Speaker 2: grows the handlebar mustache just like Terry.
Speaker 3: That's crazy.
Speaker 2: And they were considering the Harley offer, according to ed Leslie,
Speaker 2: but before they take it, they call up Jerry jarreted
Speaker 2: in Memphis. This is according to ed Leslie as well,
Speaker 2: and they try to play Harley and Jerry Jared off
Speaker 2: of each other for the kind of money they can get.
Speaker 2: One thing we've established all the way back to the
Speaker 2: Infinities end Days is Terry boleya is going to see
Speaker 2: if he can make just a few more bucks loving
Speaker 2: someone in the dust.
Speaker 3: You know, it's very simple, brother, Hon'm we gonna do.
Speaker 3: What if we play these guys off each other? Brothers
Speaker 3: them talking turkey about us? Dude, talk turkey, but talk turkey. Brother,
Speaker 3: this is the earliest talking turkey. You're right, it's all
Speaker 3: talking turkey. They're playing them off each other. Ed Leslie
Speaker 3: says that ultimately Jerry Jarrett gave them the better offer.
Speaker 3: Of course, for those who don't know, Jerry Jarrett the
Speaker 3: father of Jeff Jarrett. And there's one condition, according to
Speaker 3: ed Leslie, these two the bolder brothers, have to polish
Speaker 3: up the act that they're trying to sell Jerry on
Speaker 3: elsewhere in another territory before he'll bring them into Memphis.
Speaker 3: He doesn't say go to Ron Fuller and Pensacola specifically,
Speaker 3: but as we're going to get to it might stand
Speaker 3: to reason why it would make the most sense to
Speaker 3: go there if you're going to, you know, be somewhere
Speaker 3: that has connective tissue to Jerry Jarrett. So Ed claims
Speaker 3: that Terry was working a little here and there with
Speaker 3: him while they were running the bar in the gym
Speaker 3: as far as showing him the ropes and how to wrestle,
Speaker 3: and showed him pretty much everything he had learned. And
Speaker 3: he also claims that they got in touch as Ed
Speaker 3: Leslie with Bob Rup down in Florida. Of course we
Speaker 3: heard from Bob Rup in his podcast Last Time. He
Speaker 3: says he never heard another word from Terry Bully ever
Speaker 3: after being asked to stretch him in the gym in
Speaker 3: seventy seven when he was breaking in. So I don't
Speaker 3: know how he could then swing around and be part
Speaker 3: of trying to get Terry Bulea to come back to
Speaker 3: Florida afterwards, if that was true. But anyway, there was
Speaker 3: involvement with Bob Roop and Jim Barnett as well and
Speaker 3: the according to Ted Leslie, and they sent them to Pensacola.
Speaker 3: So the way Ed kind of tells it, it was
Speaker 3: sort of like Bob Roup and Jim Barnett liked the
Speaker 3: potential of these two and directed them to Ron Fuller
Speaker 3: in the Southeast Gulf Coast territory. So you take your
Speaker 3: pick as to who you believe. And if there was
Speaker 3: this sort of Memphis pre animal to the whole thing,
Speaker 3: we all know that there's you know, you could just
Speaker 3: just just close your eyes and point that's you're true.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean we can, we can say it
Speaker 2: having done all the work, we did all the diligence,
Speaker 2: like there's there's no clarity here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know.
Speaker 2: You hear so often, including Hulk himself, talk about really
Speaker 2: starting his career as the Hulk in Memphis and the
Speaker 2: Memphis territory created and Chris and the idea of him
Speaker 2: as the Hulk that is obviously not true based on
Speaker 2: the newspaper clips in recent episodes about him being called
Speaker 2: the Hulk from day one in Alabama. However, if they
Speaker 2: went to Alabama kind of at the direction of Jerry Jarrett,
Speaker 2: is it possible to say that that was also sort
Speaker 2: of part of the Memphis run, because it's just a
Speaker 2: matter of months before Hogan is taking these side quests
Speaker 2: off to Memphis, and we'll get into all of the
Speaker 2: Perhaps the duplicity of one Louis to lay how that
Speaker 2: Louis was not above serving two masters at the same
Speaker 2: time without bler masters necessarily not knowing about it or
Speaker 2: signing off on it, And so that might be a
Speaker 2: part of the puzzle here as well. It's curious considering
Speaker 2: Jim Barnett did end up calling Hulk Terry Boulder for
Speaker 2: someone who was so interested in him at the beginning,
Speaker 2: Jim Barnett or even use ed Bolea. It appears if he,
Speaker 2: as Ed Leslie says in his book, fell in love
Speaker 2: with the look of the Boulder brothers. He never used Dad,
Speaker 2: And when he got his hands on Terry, he called
Speaker 2: him Sterling Golden and call him at Boulder. But this
Speaker 2: is of course where Ed and Terry get the brown
Speaker 2: Winnebago with the custom air brushing from Whitey Bridges, and
Speaker 2: they installed the bed in there where the weightlifting equipment
Speaker 2: used to go that they would transport to the gym.
Speaker 3: It's too good, Oh my god, it's just a fucking
Speaker 3: just just a bunch of fucking phonies, and they hit
Speaker 3: the road.
Speaker 2: According to Hulk, they lived on the beach and used
Speaker 2: the public showers because they couldn't afford hotel room. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: Charlie Platt tells us that they had an apartment and
Speaker 2: there were vials all over the place inside the apartment.
Speaker 2: You tell me which of the two you believe. But
Speaker 2: notice how Louis Tilla doesn't factor into ed ed Leslie's
Speaker 2: version of how they were recruited into the wrestling business
Speaker 2: out of Cocoa Beach. Hulk says when Whitey closed, he called.
Speaker 2: Hulk says he called superstar Billy Graham, who referred him
Speaker 2: to Louis Tillett. But there's no mention of Memphis sending
Speaker 2: them there first to Louis toi Lett to find polish,
Speaker 2: no mention of Harley getting in touch first and playing
Speaker 2: Harley off Jeff Jarrett. There's no mention of all of
Speaker 2: that in Hult's versions of the story. Hulk says in
Speaker 2: his book that he wasn't exclusive to Louie Tillette, so
Speaker 2: he started wrestling for some other outfits, including the Memphis Territory.
Speaker 2: During the course of nineteen seventy nine, which which definitely
Speaker 2: tracks when you look at the you know, the public
Speaker 2: record of his matches like Wrestling data dot Com and
Speaker 2: in the other data basis of all of Hogan's matches,
Speaker 2: it's definitely very clear. As we'll talk about here when
Speaker 2: he sort of branches off and tests the waters in Memphis.
Speaker 2: The agree to which he did that with Ron Fuller's
Speaker 2: okay is I think kind of up up for debate.
Speaker 2: Even hearing Ron Fuller go through it on this podcast,
Speaker 2: I was still left wondering, like, did he did he
Speaker 2: okay it or not? You know, was this kind of
Speaker 2: like something that certainly a lot of his wrestlers were
Speaker 2: going to Memphis because his brother Rob, the future Colonel
Speaker 2: Robert Parker was booking up there. But you know, was
Speaker 2: he giving the okay for Terry Boleya to test those waters?
Speaker 2: I'm not really sure that was the case, considering how
Speaker 2: much effort he was putting into the Hulk at that
Speaker 2: particular point in time. This is what makes fucking wrestling
Speaker 2: so fucking hard sometimes true, because there's just no it's
Speaker 2: just there's just so much you know, bullshit, whether it's ego,
Speaker 2: whether it's it's everyone having a claim to be the
Speaker 2: one Ah that is owed to the credit for someone
Speaker 2: else's success.
Speaker 3: That's all it is. And when everyone has to contort
Speaker 3: the story in a way to benefit the people they like,
Speaker 3: stop for God's sake.
Speaker 2: Benefit the people they want to have the credit at
Speaker 2: the expense of the people they do not want to
Speaker 2: have the credit based on grudges that develop over forty
Speaker 2: years after all this happens. That's where you get such
Speaker 2: a complicated sup you know, you think with all these
Speaker 2: shoot interviews and this whole business that's arisen up of
Speaker 2: shoot books and stuff, that we would have clarity, But
Speaker 2: we actually have twelve versions of every story instead of
Speaker 2: putting all the versions together for one clean version of
Speaker 2: what happened. So it's like, you tell me, that's why
Speaker 2: tof exists because we just have the free format to
Speaker 2: tell you everything, and you make your choice because it's
Speaker 2: not going to do you any good to pretend that
Speaker 2: you can land on a truth here.
Speaker 3: It's just not. The wrestling business isn't set up that way.
Speaker 3: And if you ask me who's responsible for hul Coogan
Speaker 3: getting back into the wrestling business, it's everybody you've ever
Speaker 3: heard of in your life. Okay, everybody, everybody Hulk.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, if he's going to claim in his
Speaker 2: book he wasn't exclusive to Louis Tilltt. He also claims
Speaker 2: in his book that he worked briefly for Jim Barnett
Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy eight, which he hadn't even returned to
Speaker 2: the rest of the business.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Fuck, this is in seventy eight. He was in Coco
Speaker 2: Beach and expressly out of the wrestling business. But he
Speaker 2: claims he got the name Sterling Golden in nineteen seventy
Speaker 2: eight from Jim Barnett. And I'm still flummixed as to
Speaker 2: Ron Fuller's recollections that there was a whole, you know,
Speaker 2: dispute between Hogan's initial manager, Billy Spears and him over
Speaker 2: calling him Sterling Golden on Southeast Pensacola television shows. You know,
Speaker 2: you know, that whole thing, like he was getting right.
Speaker 2: It's like, there's no Charlie Platt said it to us
Speaker 2: when we talked to him. He was never called Sterling
Speaker 2: Golden in Southeast He does not remember that name at all.
Speaker 2: And he was the guy announcing all the television shows,
Speaker 2: booking a lot of the towns for Ron Fuller and
Speaker 2: really presiding over the immersions.
Speaker 3: Of the Hulk. Unless he was drunk the whole time,
Speaker 3: we don't know, I mean, just just amazing. Here we go.
Speaker 3: Now we're going to turn to uh to Hogan's Okay,
Speaker 3: this is the Hulk Cogan version of the World, The
Speaker 3: World according to Terry part one his initial book. That's
Speaker 3: what I should have been called. The World according to Terry.
Speaker 3: That'd be fantastic. It was in Tennessee that I became
Speaker 3: known as Terry the Hulk Boulder No it wasn't. No,
Speaker 3: and won my first heavyweight championship belt. Not really, well
Speaker 3: wait was Terry was he?
Speaker 6: Was he?
Speaker 4: Yeah? No?
Speaker 3: Wait what was he? Yeah? He was right? Okay, all right,
Speaker 3: trying to think I was trying to think that he was.
Speaker 3: He was Terry Boulder, right, But he wasn't just a hulk, yes, okay, right,
Speaker 3: he was the whole You know.
Speaker 2: There were plenty of newspaper ads where he was simply
Speaker 2: advertised as the Hulk, but as Charlie Platt told us,
Speaker 2: he remembers expressly being told to never refer to him
Speaker 2: as just the Hulk and always needs to be Terry
Speaker 2: the Hulpe Boulder so that Marvel Comics doesn't come after us.
Speaker 3: So funny.
Speaker 2: So it's very clear he was called Terry the Houlpe
Speaker 2: Boulder there, but yet he says it was in Tennessee
Speaker 2: he became known as Terry the Hope Boulder. Again, part
Speaker 2: of that very strange whitewashing of this hugely influential first
Speaker 2: seven months of his return wrestling in Alabama and the
Speaker 2: things he's doing with Van Fuller and Andre the Giant
Speaker 2: and Harley Race that he just never talked about once
Speaker 2: in any of his books, in any of his interviews.
Speaker 2: You think it's gonna be, You think it's something also,
Speaker 2: like I don't know, like you know how how Bischoff
Speaker 2: can't ever say that it was it was you know
Speaker 2: that the nWo was was at post toly we like
Speaker 2: because of the legal thing, Like so.
Speaker 3: He can't ever say that. I don't know, like I
Speaker 3: don't know that that Hogan's got a similar thing where
Speaker 3: that he can't actually ever say it because legally he'll
Speaker 3: you know, Marvel's like you fucking say this will fucking
Speaker 3: kill you, yeah type thing. You know, I don't know
Speaker 3: about that.
Speaker 2: I'd imagine at some point he became rather paranoid about
Speaker 2: how far back Marvel could claim they were violating his copyrights.
Speaker 2: And in Memphis, he's got a Jerry Jarrett who's willing
Speaker 2: to say I created the Hulk name. And so this
Speaker 2: is before Ron Fuller had a podcast or had a
Speaker 2: book anything like that. So it probably made sense to
Speaker 2: point to the other guy that could take the blame
Speaker 2: for calling him the Hulk in a cliance of copyright.
Speaker 2: That's just one thought that I had. But the thing is,
Speaker 2: it doesn't stretch that much further back. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: all in seventy nine. It's not like if he acknowledges
Speaker 2: Alabama happened all of a sudden, there's three four more
Speaker 2: years of IP violations that he's presiding over. But I mean,
Speaker 2: it's as clear as day when you look at the newspapers. Man,
Speaker 2: I mean, he's fucking he's called the Hulk from day
Speaker 2: one all over the place and advertised it such. You've
Speaker 2: established that beyond a reasonable doubt, and so beyond any doubt,
Speaker 2: fuck reasonable doubt, it's right there. He says, I wasn't
Speaker 2: Hulk Cogan quite yet, but I was getting there. It
Speaker 2: was also in Tennessee that I started using a boot
Speaker 2: in the face and a leg drop as a finish. This,
Speaker 2: of course is not true. He would drop the leg,
Speaker 2: but it was not his finish, as we're about to
Speaker 2: make very clear. Yes, if I'm not mistake, and if
Speaker 2: you remember Boston, that Wrestling Gold eighty one match with
Speaker 2: Lawler at the Mid South Coliseum, I think he drops
Speaker 2: the leg as well, and it's not the finish.
Speaker 3: I think so too. Yes, I think you're right. Nobody else,
Speaker 3: he writes, was using the leg drop at the time,
Speaker 3: so it set me apart a little from the other guys.
Speaker 3: It also protected I wasn't using the leg drop. For
Speaker 3: God's sake.
Speaker 2: I can find a million matches where people are doing
Speaker 2: leg drop. They weren't doing it with as much height,
Speaker 2: necessarily with as much as his ass.
Speaker 3: As he always says too, like, no one did it
Speaker 3: like he does it where he lands on his tailbone,
Speaker 3: and and I agree with that. I mean, he definitely
Speaker 3: does a lot of people like will More. You know,
Speaker 3: you end up on your back, like you don't end
Speaker 3: up in that perfect, you know, ninety degree angle like
Speaker 3: he did. I mean, that's it's crazy actually that he
Speaker 3: did that for so long.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there are some really wild action shots of him
Speaker 2: in full extension at his size with big time height
Speaker 2: off that mat. Yeah, it was kind of wild the
Speaker 2: way he did it. It really was, and it's even
Speaker 2: wilder that he did it for years and it wasn't finish.
Speaker 2: It was just a spot in his right. But as
Speaker 2: we'll get to the renular Memphis is one, Hulk really
Speaker 2: starts to get a little like ambitious about what he
Speaker 2: can and can't do in the ring. You know, you
Speaker 2: got a wrong fuller saying you just bear hug, that's it.
Speaker 2: You're too green to do much else. And he starts
Speaker 2: getting getting a little bit of an itch to try
Speaker 2: more as he starts to develop. Here in seventy nine,
Speaker 2: he writes, the leg drop also protected my left knee,
Speaker 2: which had been a nagging problem for me ever since
Speaker 2: junior high school. It would get a lot worse as
Speaker 2: time went on, So even before Matt Souder broke it.
Speaker 1: Okay, he's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack and
Speaker 1: carn Seo MJP Soro. It's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast.
Speaker 2: So this was nineteen seventy nine, right. According to Hogan,
Speaker 2: this is all seventy nine. One night in this I
Speaker 2: saw Jerry Lawler put a pile driver on comedian Andy Kaufman.
Speaker 2: What then lawa Andy Kaufman showed up on the David
Speaker 2: Letterman Show, Lawler slapp Kaufman and Kaufman through coffee and
Speaker 2: Lawler's face. All of a sudden, Andy Kaufman began showing
Speaker 2: up on wrestling cards on a constant basis. I didn't
Speaker 2: understand why they let a guy like Andy Kaufman get
Speaker 2: into the ring of right.
Speaker 3: Stop saying Kaufman Hogan, stop saying it said fucking like
Speaker 3: eight times in a matter of two sentences.
Speaker 2: Get ready, you take a swig of garage beer every time,
Speaker 2: especially after I worked so hard to pay my dues. Look,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying you didn't get tortured, and but you'd
Speaker 2: fucking quit the business in like four months, and then
Speaker 2: you walk into these main events.
Speaker 3: Not only that, not only that, Kaufman's a fucking megastar,
Speaker 3: Like he's not He's not a wrestler, he's a TV star, right,
Speaker 3: whole different thing. Like he's making you, as an unknown wrestler,
Speaker 3: have to work to fucking make money. He doesn't have
Speaker 3: to do that. He's gonna make money by showing up
Speaker 3: because people know who he is. Very basic.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just hit upon another one. Maybe Hulk doesn't want
Speaker 2: to acknowledge the Gulf Coast Run and the Andre and
Speaker 2: Harley matches because it would push against this idea that
Speaker 2: he spent all this time paying dues because he paid
Speaker 2: no dues. He paid no dues right after getting the
Speaker 2: shit end of the traveling circuit in seventy seven and
Speaker 2: having to drive all over the place and you know,
Speaker 2: basically getting you know, initiated and what's the word, you know, rasmataz.
Speaker 2: He he comes back in seventy nine and he's he's
Speaker 2: instantly getting all kinds of you know, all kinds of
Speaker 2: incredible feature feature roles and all kinds of incredible you
Speaker 2: know upside And he's immediately being positioned to somebody who
Speaker 2: has to do barely nothing, learned, barely anything about being
Speaker 2: in the ring and headlining a territory against some of
Speaker 2: the biggest names in the industry, including the NBA champion.
Speaker 2: So if he starts his life and his career only
Speaker 2: at Memphis, now he's the Boulder Brothers and while he
Speaker 2: he's close to the main events in Memphis, he's still
Speaker 2: kind of being introduced as you know, a tag team act.
Speaker 2: It still seems like he has yet to taste singles glory.
Speaker 2: It can feel like he's still paying his dues. But
Speaker 2: if you have the full sense as we do now
Speaker 2: of what he did in Alabama before he came to Memphis,
Speaker 2: you know, in a coincident with his very first brief
Speaker 2: trip to Memphis and the first seven months of seventy nine,
Speaker 2: you know that it's total bullshit that he's paying his dues.
Speaker 2: He's fucking getting the prince treatment. He is getting the
Speaker 2: best push I've ever heard of.
Speaker 3: In the wrestling business, considering his level of experience beside Goldberg.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's the same thing. It's amazing he's wrestling
Speaker 3: under the Giant in fucking March or whatever it was
Speaker 3: in May of seventy nine. So maybe maybe that's what
Speaker 3: it is. Maybe, Uh, it makes it seem like he
Speaker 3: didn't pay, he didn't pay his due so much if
Speaker 3: he acknowledges he did all this, I don't know who cares,
Speaker 3: Like I know, I'm sure to.
Speaker 2: Put myself in this guy's head. That's the whole mote,
Speaker 2: that's the whole thing here. What did Charlie Platt say, Lord,
Speaker 2: forgive me. We're playing an armbre psychologist with the dad here. Yes,
Speaker 2: and I'm okay with that. Yeah, that's kind of the idea.
Speaker 2: But I was young and green in those days. I
Speaker 2: thought wrestling was about having a good match, getting a
Speaker 2: six pack of beer, and picking up a girl. It
Speaker 2: didn't occur to me that they were trying to draw money.
Speaker 3: Yeah, bullshit, bullshit didn't occur to me. We're trying to
Speaker 3: draw money. Meanwhile, you're playing Jared off Ron Fuller for
Speaker 3: a couple exactly. You're fucking working at the bank, fucking
Speaker 3: find out how much these guys make. Jesus Christ. You
Speaker 3: know what it's about drawing money? Absolutely?
Speaker 2: You know, Hogan, if anything significant happened in the business
Speaker 2: while he was in it, he has to manufacture a
Speaker 2: story where he was party to it, if not responsible
Speaker 2: for it. And the whole coat pardon me. The Jerry
Speaker 2: Lawler Andy Kaufman signature feud that took place in Memphis
Speaker 2: in the early eighties is no exception.
Speaker 3: He writes.
Speaker 2: I remember a time in the old Chicago Amphitheater when
Speaker 2: I was working for Jerry Lawler and Jerry Jarrett that
Speaker 2: really throws one off. Why would they be running Verns building?
Speaker 3: But there was some.
Speaker 2: When I happened to walk in in a meeting in
Speaker 2: the dressing room, Waller was there, Jarrett was there, in
Speaker 2: any ca Offin was there. It was like walk into
Speaker 2: a Pentagon meeting. I knew I needed to back right
Speaker 2: out because I wasn't.
Speaker 3: Well walking in a Pentagon meeting. Oh Man.
Speaker 2: Later on, I passed Andy Kauffman in the hallway. I
Speaker 2: didn't know him, but I didn't think it would hurt
Speaker 2: to be friendly, so I said a load to him.
Speaker 2: His eyes opened real wide, and he looked at me
Speaker 2: like he was scared of death, scared to death, well
Speaker 2: of him to death, scared to death, fell for death death.
Speaker 3: I believe you. I believe he was scared of death.
Speaker 3: I believe that. Yeah, like you thought I was going
Speaker 3: to kill him on the spot. He was out of
Speaker 3: his element, I guess, and he didn't know what to expect. Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: what this happened in nineteen eighty two. The Jerry Lawler
Speaker 3: Andy Kaufman stuff was there in seventy nine, right, and
Speaker 3: then he did the Lawler match and a few other things.
Speaker 3: In the first half of eighty one. Unless I am mistaken,
Speaker 3: there was simply no way these two timelines crossover. I'm
Speaker 3: agreeing with you. I don't think it's happened.
Speaker 2: Why Why does this guy have to feel like he
Speaker 2: was part of in talkin and Cherry Lawler's thing.
Speaker 3: I don't know. Can't he can't stand that he doesn't
Speaker 3: have something to do with it? Right now? I want to. Uh,
Speaker 3: It's like it's like, didn't he say something about the
Speaker 3: North Korea that show? Didn't he say something about that?
Speaker 3: Didn't he draw? Or did we make that up? Did
Speaker 3: he say he drew more people than that and something?
Speaker 3: Or he was going to be on that show or
Speaker 3: something like that. Yeah, Now what he says is, you know,
Speaker 3: he was talking on a video about how Brett Hart
Speaker 3: never drew one hundred fifty thousand of the Buddhacon Oh right,
Speaker 3: that's what yep, yep.
Speaker 2: And it's like people interpret that as him and I
Speaker 2: would not put a past Hulk trying to do this
Speaker 2: on the sly interpreted that as him trying to get
Speaker 2: across to the listener or the viewer of the documentary.
Speaker 2: I think it may have been a confident segment, kind
Speaker 2: of think of it that he was the one that
Speaker 2: did one hundred and fifty thousand at the Budacan, which,
Speaker 2: of course it's not the Budhkan. It's the fucking national
Speaker 2: arena in South and North Korea, right, it's not the
Speaker 2: fucking Boudakan Hall in Tokyo.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: And what he was I think trying to say. I
Speaker 2: think what he would say if confronted with that is
Speaker 2: I wasn't saying I drew a hundred and fifty thousand.
Speaker 2: I'm saying he never did. I'm saying he's not on
Speaker 2: the level of someone who did, which would be I
Speaker 2: guess you could say Antonio and Oki and Rick Flair,
Speaker 2: even though those stadiums would have been full if Antonio
Speaker 2: and Oki wrestled Coco.
Speaker 3: Beware Coco be wareing fucking Jim Powers may have vent
Speaker 3: it well, Andoki I think was key, but I don't
Speaker 3: think most of those people had any choice but to
Speaker 3: go to that fucking show.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 3: That's pretty well accepted by now. Uh So, Yeah, that's
Speaker 3: that's another.
Speaker 2: Put that one in the in the scrap book of
Speaker 2: Hogan Tall tales over the years. So he says all
Speaker 2: this about Lawler and Kaufman, but he also says later
Speaker 2: elsewhere in the books, and when I wrestled for Jim Barnett,
Speaker 2: I was Stirling Golden, and I wrestled for Lawler and Jared,
Speaker 2: I was Terry the Hulk Boulder. But no matter what
Speaker 2: name I used, one thing stayed the same. I wasn't
Speaker 2: making very much money. I was wrestling seven days a week,
Speaker 2: which translated into ten matches, two on Wednesday, two on Saturday,
Speaker 2: and two on Sunday. And the biggest check I ever
Speaker 2: got for a whole week was one hundred and twenty
Speaker 2: five dollars my mom's kitchen. I was Terry Bulea.
Speaker 3: If you're trying to keep track, I got tired in
Speaker 3: a hurry. Brother.
Speaker 2: After every one of my little rouns, i'd gone home
Speaker 2: in Tampa. I'd wait for one of the promoters to
Speaker 2: call me. Finally, one time I went home and stayed home.
Speaker 2: As far as I was concerned, I was done with
Speaker 2: professional wrestling. But in his second book, it's the money
Speaker 2: in Alabama that's too short and causes him to go
Speaker 2: to Memphis, or rather Louis to let sparks the idea.
Speaker 2: There's certainly no meeting with Jerry ahead of time to
Speaker 2: send him to work out the gimmick in Alabama.
Speaker 3: You think that that's also because it's a we book
Speaker 3: that there's like they're they're combing through to make sure
Speaker 3: that it fits their narrative as well.
Speaker 2: The first one, yeah, or Hulk is only trying to
Speaker 2: put forward things that would fit the narrative because he
Speaker 2: knows who he's doing the book for. And the second
Speaker 2: book is a little more of a fuck Vince book,
Speaker 2: you know for sure, right, And I'm gonna say a
Speaker 2: lot more about the steroid trial and a lot more
Speaker 2: about you know, pressure being put on me and all that.
Speaker 3: So, so what is it? Did you leave?
Speaker 2: Did you leave Memphis because you weren't happy with the
Speaker 2: money you were making? Or did you go to Memphis
Speaker 2: because you weren't happy with the money you were making?
Speaker 2: And that's why it gets so difficult when you don't
Speaker 2: want to talk about the Alabama run, because it's also
Speaker 2: why I get difficult when you don't fucking tell the truth.
Speaker 2: So in the second book, he says, a few months
Speaker 2: out of this routine, this is to say, this is
Speaker 2: part of what we've already talked about, the routine of
Speaker 2: going back and forth with Louis Toilette and Alabama about
Speaker 2: how strong he's going to be booked. Because, to make
Speaker 2: it abundantly clear, in his second book, he does talk
Speaker 2: about Alabama. He doesn't talk about ever wrestling. Andre does
Speaker 2: never talk about wrestling Harley or any of the m
Speaker 2: key stuff. But he does talk about it. He acknowledges
Speaker 2: it happened. And why do we just decide why he
Speaker 2: like or do we hypothesize rather why he would not
Speaker 2: talk about wrestling Harley? No, I'm just wonrying why that?
Speaker 2: You know, it's one thing Andre, I get the Andre story.
Speaker 2: You want to make it seem like, you know, they
Speaker 2: didn't wrestle until w W and that was the first
Speaker 2: time in But why Harley, why?
Speaker 7: Why?
Speaker 3: Why are you hiding Harley? He had no one hads
Speaker 3: Daddy hides the NWA title match you had with him
Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty three, right like the kil auditory in
Speaker 3: Saint Louis. I mean, I guess, I guess. I mean,
Speaker 3: the only thing I can think of is it?
Speaker 1: Is it? Is?
Speaker 8: It?
Speaker 1: It?
Speaker 3: Kind of it kind of hurts the narrative of him
Speaker 3: going to WWE because he couldn't win the AWA title.
Speaker 3: Interesting you know, like because if he's going for the
Speaker 3: NWA title, because they they you know, up until this,
Speaker 3: I always think of the first world title shots you
Speaker 3: ever got were AWA. But if he's getting world title
Speaker 3: shots in nineteen seventy nine against the NWA champion, it's like, well,
Speaker 3: why didn't he go to w VN Like why why
Speaker 3: is there all of a sudden? I mean, obviously the
Speaker 3: the Rocky you know movie is is a huge thing,
Speaker 3: but I don't know, I'm wondering why. That's the only
Speaker 3: thing I can think of. Why Why why Harley Race
Speaker 3: has never mentioned because you'd think that would be a
Speaker 3: big fucking deal to talk about, considering he never wrestled
Speaker 3: them ever, maybe as the King, maybe on a Sataennus
Speaker 3: madehim in or something like that, but not Harley in
Speaker 3: his prime, Like i'd fucking talk about that. Yeah, I think.
Speaker 2: I think Hogan has a clear idea of all the
Speaker 2: superstars he wrestled, of where he wants to introduce them
Speaker 2: in his story. Yeah, yeah, he you know, he has
Speaker 2: to wrestle Harley after Harley had threatened him and showed
Speaker 2: up at the WWF show backstage, after Vince had begun
Speaker 2: the National expansion, apparently with a gun saying you're not
Speaker 2: coming to Kansas City. That was one of Hogan's favorite
Speaker 2: stories to tell whenever Harley Race came up. And so
Speaker 2: the story continuing on that Harley had to come to
Speaker 2: work for WWF and wrestle Hulkan in WWF and and
Speaker 2: sort of come under the tent and under Hulk's thumb,
Speaker 2: I think is a much more satisfying way for help
Speaker 2: to talk about Harley then to acknowledge that Harley did
Speaker 2: a lot for him early on, and they were not
Speaker 2: chummy but certainly understood each other's drawing power, and that
Speaker 2: he had had plenty of cooperative, mutually beneficial arrangements with
Speaker 2: Harley Race before this this conflict and this confrontation in
Speaker 2: the WWF. So you can't, like, I think, to keep
Speaker 2: alive the electricity of the story that Harley showed up
Speaker 2: with the gun and was this outsider. He's got to
Speaker 2: make Harley kind of like this guy that hated him
Speaker 2: from the minute he got into the business, you know,
Speaker 2: because he would talk, he would he would allude to
Speaker 2: Harley being among the people that were kind of hard
Speaker 2: on him when he first got in the business. So
Speaker 2: it doesn't really compute then to go on and say, well,
Speaker 2: you know, he he gave you a title shot when
Speaker 2: you were three months into the business and has sold
Speaker 2: out football stadium. You know, he sold out Saint Louis
Speaker 2: with you for the NBA Championship. There was clearly a
Speaker 2: lot of apparently he was interested in booking you when
Speaker 2: you came off Coco Beach. According to ed Leslie, so
Speaker 2: how does this, you know, how does all this animosity
Speaker 2: that you're talking about and all this fear that you're
Speaker 2: talking about that he that he got across compute with
Speaker 2: the fact that you know, you knew each other extremely
Speaker 2: well by this point in time. That's just my guess.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So, as he says again in his second book,
Speaker 2: having acknowledged now that he was in Alabama at all,
Speaker 2: he's talking about how they were going back and forth
Speaker 2: about getting a payday, increasing his pay and he writes
Speaker 2: a few months into this routine, Louis to Lett made
Speaker 2: a big mistake. I'm booking you out this Monday night.
Speaker 2: He told me, I want you to go up to Memphis.
Speaker 2: So here's Hulk in the second book saying that while
Speaker 2: he was working for Louis to Let in Alabama. It
Speaker 2: was Louis to let himself boss. Okay, who says I
Speaker 2: want you to go to Memphis? Okay, wasn't Ron Fuller
Speaker 2: saying it was Louis Tillett. So that's Hogan's version of
Speaker 2: how he ended up going to Jerry Jarrett, none of
Speaker 2: this pretense of like Jerry sent us here to polish
Speaker 2: the gimmick up. By this time, I had started to
Speaker 2: understand the wrestling business a little more, Hulk writes. I
Speaker 2: had picked up on things. I didn't have those.
Speaker 3: Blinders on like I did when I first started in Florida,
Speaker 3: And I knew that Memphis could be a major stepping
Speaker 3: stone to wrestling in New York City. Which is it terry?
Speaker 3: Which is it terry? Well? What do you mean? Which
Speaker 3: is what? Did not making enough in Alabama make you
Speaker 3: throw your hands up and go back to Tampa? Like
Speaker 3: you said in your first book, you're not making it
Speaker 3: up in Memphis? Or did you know or did you
Speaker 3: know Memphis was a stepping stone in New York? I mean,
Speaker 3: did you go home and say fuck the business? Or
Speaker 3: were you thinking this is a way to get to
Speaker 3: New York? It can't be both? What why not who
Speaker 3: said it's both? Who who said it's not both? Who's
Speaker 3: who says brother? I mean, I'm just Bro, I'm just
Speaker 3: I'm just I'm just trying to make a living, dude,
Speaker 3: trying goodbye. Maybe John can help us.
Speaker 7: Maybe.
Speaker 2: Of course, Jerry Jared has done a series of shooting interviews.
Speaker 2: He did a book called The Best of Times where
Speaker 2: he kind of talks about, you know, kind of in
Speaker 2: snapshot for Matt a lot of the most important things
Speaker 2: he presided over. And there's a little section about dealing
Speaker 2: with Terry Bully and I think might provide some clarity
Speaker 2: or at least a different set of eyes on how
Speaker 2: this all came together. Surely, his book The Best of Times,
Speaker 2: he has very detailed recollections, and he's very detailed in
Speaker 2: his recollections of how he handled the biggest box office
Speaker 2: attraction out boss.
Speaker 3: I always think his but his, it's it's a it's
Speaker 3: JJ Dillon's book. That's got the weird fucking title, right, Oh,
Speaker 3: wrestlers are like seagulls. Christ that's an idiot. Read on
Speaker 3: to find out what he means by fucking moron? Yeah?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 8: Or not?
Speaker 3: How about that? All right? Harris want and convey what
Speaker 3: Jerry Jarrett recalls for us about bringing Terry Bulla in.
Speaker 3: Terry Boleya was never a great wrestler, but I doubt
Speaker 3: he will ever be surpassed as to fan appeal. When
Speaker 3: judging the box office appeal of wrestler, you must factor
Speaker 3: in more than the total dollar amount. Hulk Hogan was
Speaker 3: go The was was oh to the w W what
Speaker 3: Jerry Lawler was to Jarrett Promotions. If either was not
Speaker 3: on the top position they enjoyed, one could question if
Speaker 3: the results would have been the same. In spring nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy nine, Louis Tillette called me and said he had
Speaker 3: a giant of a man in Florida who wanted to
Speaker 3: become a professional wrestler. Louis said the man was currently
Speaker 3: playing bass in a band in Tampa. I asked, stop
Speaker 3: doing that. I mean, Jesus Christ like that. That's that's
Speaker 3: not even that's not even hard to figure out. For
Speaker 3: God's sakes, it stopped all that night running the Anchor Club. Oh,
Speaker 3: he was working the bar whatever I mean. I don't
Speaker 3: think he was doing any rock and roll with that. No,
Speaker 3: I don't think everyone seemed to think it was say
Speaker 3: it was over you know. I asked him how much
Speaker 3: experience the guy he's had, and Louis said none. That
Speaker 3: is why I'm calling you, I replied. I replied, thanks,
Speaker 3: but no thanks. Louis then got my attention. He said, Jerry,
Speaker 3: this guy has more potentially than anyone I've ever seen
Speaker 3: the business. You can make a millions after you teach
Speaker 3: him the fundamentals, just say I look at him. Terry
Speaker 3: is willing to drive to Hendersonville just to just for
Speaker 3: you to look at him. Well, what can I lose
Speaker 3: with this proposition? So we set a date in time.
Speaker 3: I was sitting in my home on the lake in Hendersonville,
Speaker 3: and Deborah was at the sink in the kitchen, not Deborah, Michael.
Speaker 3: Deborah was at the sink in the kitchen. Okay, from
Speaker 3: the window at the sink, one could see the driveway
Speaker 3: in front of our house. Deborah said, Jerry, a big
Speaker 3: blond headed guy that is bigger than Andre at the
Speaker 3: giant is standing in the front of our house. Brother.
Speaker 3: What Brother? I went out and was impressed beyond belief,
Speaker 3: was impressed beyond what Louis. I went out and was
Speaker 3: impressed beyond what Louis had expected. What that makes no sense.
Speaker 3: We walked into the house and sat down at the
Speaker 3: table and I began to get to know Terry. After
Speaker 3: about an hour of conversation, he said he had not
Speaker 3: eaten all day. Wow, where did you think this was going? Well?
Speaker 3: You got food, dude, food dude, the food dude, Terry Boley,
Speaker 3: Terry Bowlia they I mean, look, if I wouldn't do
Speaker 3: uh postumania, I would do like you know, bowle a
Speaker 3: like absolutely, yes, yes, yes, yes, Terry Terry and a
Speaker 3: bolia is what I would definitely call it a lotting
Speaker 3: all day dude.
Speaker 9: Uh.
Speaker 3: And if he if I would mind him going to
Speaker 3: get a bite to eat, I asked Debora if she
Speaker 3: would run and pick up some burgers. Terry ordered whoppers.
Speaker 3: I mean I also loved to Okay, so so they're
Speaker 3: not even like something going to a burger. They're just
Speaker 3: going to fucking burger getting fast food. Like they're not
Speaker 3: even getting like food, They're getting fast food. Terry ordered
Speaker 3: six whoppers, three large fries, and two large cokes. I laughed,
Speaker 3: and we went out to get a whopper or something.
Speaker 3: I think that's a key find. Yes, yes, Terry Boulder
Speaker 3: loved whoppers. Oh, absolutely, look, he would fall in love
Speaker 3: with whoppers for the rest of his life. Listen, listen,
Speaker 3: I mean that's honestly, that should have been his nickname.
Speaker 3: He ate him and he told him that's the damn
Speaker 3: right he he he ordered six whoppers. He also told
Speaker 3: six whoppers while they were waiting for the food. I
Speaker 3: love him over ordering. Oh my god, that's it. That's perfect.
Speaker 3: It's perfect. Just you just imagine like the flame broiled
Speaker 3: patty like and the onion seeping into his steroided body. Dude,
Speaker 3: get me hungry, for God's sakes, like a big fucking hulking,
Speaker 3: like muscled up like I mean, I mean, it's smelling
Speaker 3: like a whopper. Look, I can tell you right now. Okay,
Speaker 3: like I the I've never ordered two whoppers. Okay, I've
Speaker 3: had a double whopper and I have even had a
Speaker 3: triple whopper back in the day when they had it
Speaker 3: that this is a fucking thing that Omar and I
Speaker 3: would get, would get a fucking triple whopper something over
Speaker 3: Thanksgiving to kind of like expand our stomachs for the
Speaker 3: fucking for the big day. Would get a triple whopper
Speaker 3: the night before Thanksgiving. But like, I've never ordered you
Speaker 3: know I can at least I can at least rationalize
Speaker 3: the idea of a double whopper because you're getting at
Speaker 3: least two two beef patties. You're not getting two sandwiches.
Speaker 3: You know, you're getting the sand amunt of bread you will,
Speaker 3: but you're getting double the beef. He's ordering six, thank you,
Speaker 3: So basically twelve slices of bread, if you will, all
Speaker 3: right with six burghers. He didn't say if they were
Speaker 3: with cheese, though, so I'm very curious. I think they were.
Speaker 3: I'm sure they were. I always hated that whopper with cheese.
Speaker 3: Like they asked you, if you want cheese, of course
Speaker 3: you want fucking cheese. I know, what are you fucking?
Speaker 3: What are you fucking rates in a barn? Just have
Speaker 3: me say, without cheese, cheese, right exactly, assume assume you
Speaker 3: want the cheese, Like, no, no, fucking no, fucking you know,
Speaker 3: self respecting individual goes and gets a whopper without cheese.
Speaker 3: Fuck's sake? What is wrong with people? Six whoppers? Six whoppers?
Speaker 3: I laughed and told him that other than Andre Andrea,
Speaker 3: I'd never seen I've never eaten with a giant. I
Speaker 3: called Mike Shield, our cameraman, who ran up. I got
Speaker 3: a guy here was eating six whoppers for God's sake,
Speaker 3: got a goddamn camera over. We gonna film the shit.
Speaker 3: He said that, he said, called my child cameraman, who
Speaker 3: ran our production department and acts hip, to bring his
Speaker 3: equipment and come to the house. Yep. After dinner, Mike,
Speaker 3: Terry and I went downstairs, and flying off the cuff,
Speaker 3: produced one of the best videos I had made up
Speaker 3: up to that time. Later Lance Russell added audio, and
Speaker 3: that video alone sold out the Mid South Colisseum. The
Speaker 3: very first time Hulk Hogan appeared, we simply began the
Speaker 3: shot at his feet and slowly brought the camera up,
Speaker 3: and then a wider shot in which Terry did his poses,
Speaker 3: flexing his muscles. These poses later became the trademark when
Speaker 3: he entered the ring. I hired Terry that day at
Speaker 3: the house, and he returned to Florida to get his clothes.
Speaker 3: We took the fucking walk up there naked. He took
Speaker 3: the tape to me. We took the tape to Memphis,
Speaker 3: added music and the voiceover, and as they often say,
Speaker 3: the rest is history. After we felt that Hulk had
Speaker 3: his had run his course in Tennessee. I explained that
Speaker 3: because of his size, it would be difficult to stay
Speaker 3: forever in a territory that has small wrestlers. I explained
Speaker 3: that Vince mcmahonsior a WWE had big men, and I
Speaker 3: felt he would do great up there. I called Vince
Speaker 3: send in the video. After a short run for Vince
Speaker 3: Senior and a longer run with Verne Gagny's a Toba,
Speaker 3: Vince Junior brought Hulk back into the w W and
Speaker 3: as they say, the rest is history. So okay, So so.
Speaker 2: Another person who is to be credited with every hot
Speaker 2: after his first couple of territories apparently, well, I mean
Speaker 2: there's no time like now to listen to the video
Speaker 2: that he's talking about. So as we listen to this
Speaker 2: queue up, if you could on your son ready, h
Speaker 2: you need to picture I mean you really do? You
Speaker 2: have to picture this being in his basement after the whoppers. Okay,
Speaker 2: I think that the very important that's Keith. See if
Speaker 2: you can find like, uh, formations in his stomach of
Speaker 2: burgers or sesame seed buns or something like that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I think the sesame seed bun is kind of an
Speaker 2: important thing to think about when we picture the state
Speaker 2: of the man. So if you can just move, I'm
Speaker 2: going to make sure we have the same video here
Speaker 2: and that we're starting at the same point. Yeah we are, okay,
Speaker 2: so Wi you go ahead to six seconds. So this
Speaker 2: video premiered, as we'll get to in more detail later
Speaker 2: on this episode or in this installment of the complete
Speaker 2: Hulk Cogan during a Lance Russell interview at the WMC
Speaker 2: TV studios with Eddie Boulder, as we'll get to eventually,
Speaker 2: Eddie Boulder makes a television appearance here first before this
Speaker 2: Hulk Cogan vignette airs, And what's asked backwards about what
Speaker 2: Jerry Jared is saying is that this vignette premiered after
Speaker 2: after Hulk had already done his initial appearances and matches
Speaker 2: in Memphis.
Speaker 3: Wow, like a month and a half after.
Speaker 2: So the idea that this vignette was the first thing
Speaker 2: anyone had ever heard of as it regards Hulk is
Speaker 2: just wrong.
Speaker 3: Now.
Speaker 2: The agree to which his presence was played up and
Speaker 2: framed as this supernatural thing and that very first abbreviated
Speaker 2: run in Memphis is another question entirely. You know, they
Speaker 2: didn't set him up on television as coming in the
Speaker 2: same way because he was still essentially in Southeast and
Speaker 2: was just coming for a couple of weeks. Here, this
Speaker 2: is the vignette they play when they know they have
Speaker 2: Terry Boulder and Ed Boulder for a more prolonged period
Speaker 2: of time, for more of a run, as you would say.
Speaker 2: But this idea, they had already talked about Terry the
Speaker 2: Hulk Boulder in Memphis television. He had already tagged team
Speaker 2: with Jerry Lawler, for Christ's sakes, So it's not like
Speaker 2: people hadn't heard of this guy before. But here we
Speaker 2: go at the six second mark, and you can find
Speaker 2: this very easily on YouTube. Sure, this is the vignette
Speaker 2: that Jerry Jarrett was describing, and we can hit play
Speaker 2: in three two one.
Speaker 3: Play.
Speaker 6: Is not a television illusion. He is not an artist conception.
Speaker 6: He is not a figment of the imagination.
Speaker 10: Is real.
Speaker 6: He stands an amazing six foot seven inches tall. He
Speaker 6: weighs an incredible three hundred and twenty four pounds. He
Speaker 6: is the Hulk, the Wow, the Hulk, without a doubt,
Speaker 6: is the most awesome figure in professional wrestling today. His
Speaker 6: measurements are almost unbelievable. His neck measures twenty four and
Speaker 6: three quarter inches, His chest expands to an incredible fifty
Speaker 6: nine inches, his biceps are twenty six inches, and at
Speaker 6: the end of these powerful arms are two to twelve
Speaker 6: inch fists. This magnificent body tapers off to only a
Speaker 6: thirty four inch waste. The Hulk is supported by treelike
Speaker 6: legs that can leg press over nineteen hundred pounds. Combine
Speaker 6: these amazing measurements with more brute strength than you can imagine,
Speaker 6: and you have the.
Speaker 3: And the Hulk is coming here. Pause there. Okay, So
Speaker 3: for those who don't have the benefit of watching the video, Boss,
Speaker 3: explain to the people what you just saw. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's a I mean, it's very much what Jared describes
Speaker 3: in his book. It's a very dimly lit set, obviously
Speaker 3: his basement, and you see, you know, you've got these
Speaker 3: these very very almost noirsh like lighting where there's a
Speaker 3: lot of heavy shadows and stuff you don't really see.
Speaker 3: You can't even see a clear shot of Hogan's face.
Speaker 3: You just his his eyes are heavily shadowed and whatever.
Speaker 3: And he's just posing. He's doing the Hull Cogan. I mean,
Speaker 3: he's doing a mix of Hogan posing but also doing
Speaker 3: the your your your typical body building competition posing, right,
Speaker 3: He's not doing the stuff he do in WWF. Would
Speaker 3: like the hand out stretched with the cuffed hand next
Speaker 3: to that he did Oh no, well no, he kind
Speaker 3: of did that. He kind of did that that kind
Speaker 3: of It's not the posing, it's not the baby face
Speaker 3: posing routine. It's the look at this monster.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: It is exactly like you're saying, it's like the pumping
Speaker 3: iron routine, right, exactly exactly, but.
Speaker 2: It is definitely highlighting the musculature and that lighting does
Speaker 2: serve to enhance it. And the shock of blonde hair
Speaker 2: really stands out because they silhouette essentially like you were saying,
Speaker 2: his face, yeah, and I mean he's got his full
Speaker 2: you know, he's still got he's still got hair on
Speaker 2: the top of his head. He's not yet the hull
Speaker 2: Cogan bald, right.
Speaker 3: And I don't know.
Speaker 2: We covered the whole under the cinemat for a reason.
Speaker 2: Music there, that kind of funky little sci fi music.
Speaker 2: I think I know what they're going for.
Speaker 3: They're going exactly for that, and they're you know, when
Speaker 3: you call them the Hulk, you are trying to you
Speaker 3: are trying to get people to think of Luf for Riigno,
Speaker 3: thank you hands down, and that apparently was accomplished. And
Speaker 3: if you have any doubt about that. As we get
Speaker 3: into some of the materials we've gathered for this installment
Speaker 3: of the complete Hulk Hogan, particularly some of the artwork
Speaker 3: that would appear on some of the Memphis programs, the
Speaker 3: Hulk was appearing on the typeface that they would use
Speaker 3: for Hulk leaves absolutely no doubt that they were just like,
Speaker 3: let's do a television version of the Hulk. At Ron
Speaker 3: Fuller and Charlie Platt said they did the same thing.
Speaker 3: So it's not like Memphis was the first, despite the
Speaker 3: representations that we've conveyed already on this episode, to really
Speaker 3: lean into presenting this guy is essentially the Hulk from television.
Speaker 3: Memphis was famous for this. They were famous for using
Speaker 3: copyrighted music and music videos without any semblance of permission
Speaker 3: or licensing. You got to remember, I mean it's it's
Speaker 3: operating in one television market in one part of the
Speaker 3: country relative to the major media markets. It's a small market,
Speaker 3: though very powerful when it came to influencing the local populace,
Speaker 3: and the share ratings were out of this world in
Speaker 3: terms of how much of the city of Memphis was
Speaker 3: watching a lot of this Saturday Morning wrestling on WMCTV,
Speaker 3: and you know, you just have a situation where they
Speaker 3: can get away with it.
Speaker 2: Paul Ham into the exact same thing in ECW when
Speaker 2: they were under the radar using copyrighted music without permission
Speaker 2: all the time and producing some of the stuff that's
Speaker 2: most well remembered now that is necessarily copyrighted music. We
Speaker 2: heard there, but it's certainly a copyrighted concept that they
Speaker 2: are not shying away from presenting. So Jerry Jarrett says
Speaker 2: in his book that that was a voiceover from Lance
Speaker 2: Russell that very clearly was not Lance Russell by any
Speaker 2: stretch of the imagination. That was a local radio voice
Speaker 2: it's still active in the area in Alabama, called Michael
Speaker 2: Saint John Really Yeah. Upon the passing of hul Hogan,
Speaker 2: he was interviewed by one of the local stations out
Speaker 2: there recollecting what it was like to put this famous
Speaker 2: video together.
Speaker 11: It started out with it's not an optical illusion.
Speaker 6: This man is not a television illusion.
Speaker 11: It's not a TV trick.
Speaker 6: He is not an artist conception.
Speaker 12: I mean this is this is this guy?
Speaker 3: He is the Hulk.
Speaker 12: Before Hulk Hogan became one of the WWE's most iconic stars,
Speaker 12: Holmesville native Michael Saint John helped introduce him to the
Speaker 12: wrestling world.
Speaker 11: In reality, it was his first debut on television as
Speaker 11: the Hulk.
Speaker 12: Hogan made an immediate impression on Saint John when he
Speaker 12: arrived for his debut at Memphis Wrestling in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 11: And he starts getting out of the car, and he
Speaker 11: keeps getting out of the car, and he keeps getting
Speaker 11: out of the car, and Debora Jarrett turned to me
Speaker 11: and she said, Oh my god, this is the biggest
Speaker 11: guy I've ever seen in my life.
Speaker 12: As an on air personality. For the promotion, it was
Speaker 12: Saint John's job to help HiPE up Hogan's first appearance and.
Speaker 6: The Hulk is coming here.
Speaker 3: Boy.
Speaker 11: Within about twenty five minutes, I went into the production
Speaker 11: room at the radio station and produced the audio on
Speaker 11: the video that you now see.
Speaker 12: Saint John was paid twenty five dollars to write, narrate,
Speaker 12: and pick music for a video segment. It's become a
Speaker 12: piece of wrestling history.
Speaker 11: When I did it, I didn't think it was, you know,
Speaker 11: I thought it was going to be shown in our
Speaker 11: territory and that was about it, and didn't think anything
Speaker 11: of it.
Speaker 6: His measurements are almost unbelievable.
Speaker 12: It's been seen around the world, and especially this week.
Speaker 12: After Hogan passed away on Thursday at age seventy one.
Speaker 11: I was sad because I think we lost the biggest
Speaker 11: figure in the history of professional wrestling. Nobody else in
Speaker 11: the business I don't think ever achieved or got to
Speaker 11: the plane that hul Cogan did.
Speaker 9: There's all kind of hull Comania's running a Whild's.
Speaker 12: But Saint John met him before Holkomania ran wild or
Speaker 12: he went Hollywood.
Speaker 11: They played the video and he shook his head, smiled,
Speaker 11: liked it. I mean, but he's very quiet. I mean that,
Speaker 11: if anything, the persona that he ended up being was
Speaker 11: the antithesis of what I meant him.
Speaker 12: It was the beginning of creating a larger than life
Speaker 12: character who now stands the test of time.
Speaker 11: And I guess someday I'll sit back and say that
Speaker 11: was a pretty cool era.
Speaker 12: With coverage you could count on. I'm Trevor denton Way
Speaker 12: thirty one.
Speaker 2: Sports Michael Saint John Today owns a radio station, Huntsville's
Speaker 2: fifteen to fifty W A a Y and is something
Speaker 2: of an Alabama broadcasting legend. Twenty five bucks boss to
Speaker 2: voice that one over.
Speaker 13: Wow, I fucking nipped off. I don't yeah, seriously, you
Speaker 13: talk about residuals. And that was the first time he
Speaker 13: was ever called a Hulk on national on television. He said, right, yeah, okay,
Speaker 13: thank you. I'm glad you noticed that. So there's a
Speaker 13: big fucking lie there every time, every time somebody claims
Speaker 13: to have called Hulk Hog and the Hulk for the
Speaker 13: first time. Take a shot as well. Take a swig
Speaker 13: of garage beer down in Memphis.
Speaker 3: I will make it fifteen minutes. I'll be out.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 2: In Memphis, they were actually making that kind of a
Speaker 2: little personality vignette a staple of how they would present
Speaker 2: wrestling and how they would introduce new acts, and Michael
Speaker 2: Saint John would provide the voice for a lot of it,
Speaker 2: no matter how alarming. So we're gonna hit just a
Speaker 2: few more to get a sample of how what we
Speaker 2: just heard relative to Hulk Hogan is is not just
Speaker 2: some innovation they came up with just to spotlight Terry Boulder,
Speaker 2: but it was part of a kind of a theme
Speaker 2: of how they would introduce new acts. I don't know
Speaker 2: if you've ever seen this before, boss, but one of
Speaker 2: them think so. One of the other acts that the
Speaker 2: Jerry Jarrett Jerry Lawler Memphis promotion is credited with bringing
Speaker 2: to the four is Kamala, which, of course that would
Speaker 2: go on to be one of Hulk Cogan's best drawing
Speaker 2: opponents in the WWF in the earliest stages of his
Speaker 2: nineteen eighty four campaign. And it started here in terms
Speaker 2: of cross pollinating in the same territory and area as Kamala.
Speaker 2: And here is the video that they produced in Jerry
Speaker 2: Jared's backyard, I believe, as opposed to his basement or Kamala,
Speaker 2: voiced over as well by Michael Saint John. It's on
Speaker 2: YouTube and so if you have it, I have it.
Speaker 3: I have it. I'm ready to go three two one play?
Speaker 7: Look at this?
Speaker 10: Got it?
Speaker 3: Michael Saint John?
Speaker 6: What say you here?
Speaker 3: Moves the mask? Look at him.
Speaker 4: Nine in his tall yes, eight hundred and eighty five pounds,
Speaker 4: the fates Man known to professional rough play.
Speaker 10: Today, I'm from the legs, aren't you tree?
Speaker 7: How strong?
Speaker 3: With some of the largest animals known to man.
Speaker 10: Nine inches.
Speaker 3: Come on, come on, you Gundan giant. I love the
Speaker 3: idea that you show a black man in the woods
Speaker 3: and obviously he's in Africa. Oh they went big on that. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so no no hesitance there at all. And this is
Speaker 3: a guy James Harris from Mississippi, you know, of course, right.
Speaker 3: But so that's how the world got to know Kamala
Speaker 3: as well with the the dulcet tones of Michael Saint
Speaker 3: John laying down the track. There's one more I want
Speaker 3: to look at it, and it's not because he became
Speaker 3: any kind of big opponent to Hultkoguner became famous, but
Speaker 3: just because I think you're really going to enjoy the
Speaker 3: visage of a character that was briefly introduced called Apocalypse.
Speaker 3: Similar vignette. So if you've pulled up that video, I
Speaker 3: have it, we'll play it, and I want you to
Speaker 3: pay close attention to what you're about to see, Okay,
Speaker 3: for the visuals and extact what you're about to see
Speaker 3: three two one play Apocalypse. Yes that's on YouTube as one. Okay, Apocalypse. Wow,
Speaker 3: that's what they're going to be saying. I want you
Speaker 3: to take a look at this guy jar Yard's backyard again. Yep,
Speaker 3: no permission is this music at all? Exactly? Oh no,
Speaker 3: it's like a guy in the camera.
Speaker 7: And the books. But get ready, the face what aspurcha
Speaker 7: for the brush faws out of a tree?
Speaker 3: Look at this face that the fun I mean it.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 7: Should have gone in with a knife and his mouth running.
Speaker 6: Webster's Dictionary defines apocalypse as me and uncovering a revelation
Speaker 6: that happens why this athelete has chosen that name to enter.
Speaker 3: The ring back collapse.
Speaker 6: He was trained by the Special Tactics Force at the
Speaker 6: US Marine Corps, and later he too trained others.
Speaker 3: Then to his profession.
Speaker 6: A black collapse, A true master of hand to hand
Speaker 6: combat one experts feel a martial artists.
Speaker 3: It's as memrine court.
Speaker 6: Champion in Kawai Judo another martial arts combat collapse, and
Speaker 6: so does services to several third.
Speaker 10: World names.
Speaker 8: Disaster his services for whoever pays his feet collapse. Now
Speaker 8: he's returned to the home country to offer him mercenary
Speaker 8: services to whoever wants them.
Speaker 10: To sell his services to the highest bidder. Apock collapse.
Speaker 6: A mercenary Apocalypse collapse.
Speaker 3: Thoughts, well, Apocalypse Now coming soon under the cinemat number one,
Speaker 3: I think that qualified. Holy shit.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you don't know, they have these flashes
Speaker 2: where they just show his red face and his big
Speaker 2: eyes and he looks he's like a characterrifying.
Speaker 3: Yeah, horror movie. Yeah, he looks. I mean, he looks
Speaker 3: kind of like they the the the beast outside the
Speaker 3: window in the Terror at thirty thousand feet or whatever
Speaker 3: they the Twilight Zone episode we talked about with the goonies,
Speaker 3: like that's what he kind of looks like. It's I mean,
Speaker 3: that is I mean, I mean, I mean he's obviously
Speaker 3: he's obviously the whole thing is Apocalypse now. The whole
Speaker 3: fucking thing is Apocalypse now, because I mean it's essentially
Speaker 3: the whole the you know, he's crazy, like like Marlon
Speaker 3: Brando is in the movie and the whole Jesus Christ
Speaker 3: I got. I'm I'm I'm at a loss at that.
Speaker 3: I see that face and they whispered Apocalypse and they
Speaker 3: show his face. It's all I can think of, is you,
Speaker 3: it's something else, It's something you would not be able
Speaker 3: to go to sleep after scene. No, I mean, honestly,
Speaker 3: like how the I don't know what like that is.
Speaker 3: That is disturbing. It is disturbing. I mean because the
Speaker 3: whole you know, I mean again, it's it's all like
Speaker 3: the end of the movie. That's all like the end
Speaker 3: of end of h Apocalypse now, like it's a mix
Speaker 3: of of everything. But I mean, obviously the the the
Speaker 3: Wagner music, plus you got the marine thing like that.
Speaker 3: Not to mention, I imagine that it is somebody who
Speaker 3: who you know, when they created that character, someone was
Speaker 3: was obviously on drugs, yeah, which also a a you know,
Speaker 3: another fucking you know theme of them of the movie.
Speaker 3: Jesus fucking that is disturbing. So you know, if you
Speaker 3: think Vince created cartoons and wrestling, like I know, obviously
Speaker 3: weren't wrestling then in Memphis, And funny, isn't that funny?
Speaker 3: How like enough that I'm you know, Vince made his
Speaker 3: fair share of cartoons, but like, you know, it's kind
Speaker 3: of funny when you really really think about it, like
Speaker 3: there's there you know, there there was some there was
Speaker 3: some pretty fucking goofy shit going on. You didn't create Kamala.
Speaker 3: Jerry Jarrett did, right, And I think it makes all
Speaker 3: the sense in the world in ninety four and Vince
Speaker 3: was going down that he handed the reins to Jerry Jarrett. Yep.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But a lot of the promotional style that he
Speaker 2: had in kind of like this, this cinematic way of
Speaker 2: introducing over the top characters was mom first by Jerry
Speaker 2: Jarrett Memphis, and you know, Vince went ninety four there
Speaker 2: to you know, play heel for the first time. You know,
Speaker 2: that's something that became much more appreciated as footage of
Speaker 2: that got on YouTube over the years that Vince first
Speaker 2: played heel just for the Memphis territory, he clearly had
Speaker 2: an affinity and a working relationship. The us WA was
Speaker 2: what you might consider the first territorial pardon me, the
Speaker 2: first developmental territory the ww have had with Rock and
Speaker 2: so many others coming through there. Sure, and you know
Speaker 2: when Jerry Lawler comes in ninety two, that's huge. I
Speaker 2: mean the way that they worked hand in glove with
Speaker 2: them and Smoking Mountain Wrestling, it was like those were
Speaker 2: the sort of the preferred promotional and developmental partners of
Speaker 2: the WWF in the nineteen nineties for Vince, So you
Speaker 2: can definitely see him, you know, he had those Jerry,
Speaker 2: Jerry stuck about those hours long conversations. They would have
Speaker 2: Vince and Jerry Jared on the phone on Sunday nights
Speaker 2: talking about the business and how to go about it
Speaker 2: and how to approach it. And he calls him in
Speaker 2: when he needs someone perhaps run the show if he
Speaker 2: goes to jail. So I think a lot of the
Speaker 2: things that you can paint the WWF with. When Vince
Speaker 2: finally gets his hands on the controls and gets Hulk
Speaker 2: in there, Jerry Jarrett had already run a ton of
Speaker 2: dry runs that procrrectly this is how it looks and feels.
Speaker 2: Jerry Jarrett was essentially one of the first innovators with
Speaker 2: the aforementioned Mike Shield of music videos set to highlights
Speaker 2: of wrestlers to introduce them. Wonderful way to introduce he
Speaker 2: set them to a popular pop song, which again he
Speaker 2: had absolutely no permission to use, and it made these
Speaker 2: guys sensations before they even came into the territory because
Speaker 2: people saw them not just wrestling, but you know, sort
Speaker 2: of living in the world, driving a car, you know,
Speaker 2: getting attention from girls. World Class picked it up as
Speaker 2: well and did quite a few very successful music videos
Speaker 2: with the free Birds and the von Erics and.
Speaker 3: Stuff as well.
Speaker 2: But in a lot of ways it was innovated up
Speaker 2: there by Jerry Jarrett and Terry Bullay himself was one
Speaker 2: of the beneficiaries, one of the earliest beneficiaries of it,
Speaker 2: as you see. But they would do crazy shit it
Speaker 2: like like a robot and a monster come to life.
Speaker 2: They would do the fucking do you ever see that
Speaker 2: that clip of the wrestling Ninja Turtles on a WWF
Speaker 2: dark match, Yes, that Memphis did that first. Just fucking
Speaker 2: no permission, Just We're to put the Ninja Turtles in
Speaker 2: the ring and see what happened.
Speaker 3: I mean, it's so different than fucking you know, than
Speaker 3: Jim Hurd and Irakna Man, right, for God's sake. So
Speaker 3: this is the.
Speaker 2: This is the first promotional approach to get their hands
Speaker 2: on Terry Bullay, if you don't count Ron Fuller down
Speaker 2: in Southeast. And I think that's very important because he
Speaker 2: was a cartoon from the beginning. He wasn't just a
Speaker 2: cartoon when he went to New York.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, as Hulk tells the story about
Speaker 3: Louis Tullay reaching out to Jerry Jarrett saying I've got
Speaker 3: this guy. You know, that's perhaps confirmation that Hulk and
Speaker 3: Ed Boulder did in fact go to Jerry Jarrett first
Speaker 3: and then was sent to Tulay. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: Here in Jerry's book, you get the intimation that perhaps
Speaker 2: Louis Tulay was in on on funneling Hulk to Memphis. Eventually,
Speaker 2: you know, Harry is after an offering Hulk to Jerry
Speaker 2: on the phone. I could also see such as the
Speaker 2: Memphis territory was constituted with all these cartoonish and ludicrous gimmicks,
Speaker 2: them coming up with the Hulk concept before shipping.
Speaker 3: Terry Bolea to Alabama.
Speaker 2: If if indeed said Leslie says, the concept was presented
Speaker 2: to Jerry before they came into Memphis, and Jerry said,
Speaker 2: do it somewhere else to polish the gimmick up. Knowing
Speaker 2: how hot Luke for Rigno was on television and in
Speaker 2: pop culture at the time, as we talked about Boss,
Speaker 2: I can see in some ways, you know, there being
Speaker 2: an idea to have a wrestling Hulk before they even
Speaker 2: know who would fit the bill. Sure sure comes to
Speaker 2: this guy, and he did do something similar with Jerry
Speaker 2: Lawler way back when Jerry Lawler first became a superstar
Speaker 2: in Memphis as a babyface. Lawler had been introduced to
Speaker 2: Jerry Jarrett by Jackie Fargo, who was of course the
Speaker 2: big territorial suit superstar in Memphis and innovator of the
Speaker 2: Fargo strut which would lead to the Rick Flair strutt
Speaker 2: and many other struts. And Jackie Fargo was an idol
Speaker 2: of Jerry Lawler's growing up watching wrestling on television in Memphis.
Speaker 2: Of course, he was an artist and once got on
Speaker 2: Memphis television to present some of his art at a
Speaker 2: very young age. I think he was like seventeen or something,
Speaker 2: and they said, we've got Jerry Lawler here, Lance Russell
Speaker 2: in studio to show us some of his drawings of
Speaker 2: some of the great Memphis wrestling lenonds. And that was
Speaker 2: kind of his foot in the door for Jerry Lawler,
Speaker 2: and eventually, you know, he got started. Lawler just like
Speaker 2: Hogan went to Alabama first. You believe, wow, I did
Speaker 2: not know that their career has mirrored each other in
Speaker 2: a lot of ways. And Fine Tune did a bit
Speaker 2: before he came and truly set down roots and as
Speaker 2: we'll get to, you know, buying into the Memphis office
Speaker 2: to the point where it never made any sense for
Speaker 2: Lawler to go full time anywhere else besides Memphis because
Speaker 2: he was winning on the back end profits. He was
Speaker 2: going to make more money there than anywhere else. And
Speaker 2: Jerry Jared has said that there was a riff over
Speaker 2: Jerry Lawler not wanting to work a far away town,
Speaker 2: that Jerry had sent him to Montgomery, Alabama actually and
Speaker 2: bringing him back. So it's just all these cross currents
Speaker 2: with how Holt came up as it regards Alabama, and
Speaker 2: you know, further to the point, it's not like there
Speaker 2: was an arm's length difference as we've talked about between
Speaker 2: the Memphis and Alabama offices. Anyway, this also from Jerry
Speaker 2: Jarrett's book. He says from his actions Nick Golis did
Speaker 2: Do you know who Nick Goulis is?
Speaker 3: By any chance? Boss? Do you remember that name is
Speaker 3: very familiar?
Speaker 2: Yes, he was a rather notorious promoter from Memphis before
Speaker 2: Jerry Jarrett consolidated power in the area. And he was
Speaker 2: he was notorious because everyone in the business would talk
Speaker 2: about how shitty his payoffs were and how much of
Speaker 2: an asshole he was. But in a lot of ways
Speaker 2: did Jerry Jarrett tell it, and he was in that
Speaker 2: office from a young, precocious age because his mother, Jerry
Speaker 2: Jared's mother, Christine Jarrett, used to take tickets and run
Speaker 2: the office for Nick Goulis. So that was Jerry Jarrett's
Speaker 2: intro into the wrestling business. His mother basically took a
Speaker 2: part time job working for the wrestling company running the
Speaker 2: ticket sales. And yeah, as a young boy, Jerry Jarrett
Speaker 2: would be in the office kind of observing and eavesdropping
Speaker 2: on how the wrestling business worked. But to hear Jerry
Speaker 2: Jarrett tell it, Nick gulas For as notorious as he
Speaker 2: was and hated as he was, was part of a
Speaker 2: good cop bad cop dynamic in the Memphis wrestling office
Speaker 2: at the time. And do you know who the good
Speaker 2: cop side of the Nick Goulas bad cop side was?
Speaker 3: Roy Welch. Oh, boy, does the Welch name mean anything
Speaker 3: to you? Yes, okay, I do know that name. That
Speaker 3: is indeed Ron Fuller's real last name. Yes, they are
Speaker 3: the Welches, and they descend from Roy Welch, whose son
Speaker 3: Buddy Fuller. He would know, he knows Buddy Fuller and
Speaker 3: wrestling is the father of Ron Fuller. And Rob Fuller.
Speaker 2: So the Welsh family owned Memphis before the Jarretts did.
Speaker 2: That's for sure, before Jerry Jarrett did. And so to
Speaker 2: the point, it's not so far away territory with no
Speaker 2: connective tissue. No, Roy and the Welch family had lived
Speaker 2: around Dire, Tennessee for decades, which is about one hundred
Speaker 2: miles north of Memphis. And Roy was the guy who
Speaker 2: kind of deputized Nick Goulis to.
Speaker 8: Be the.
Speaker 2: You know, the guy who drove a hard bargain and
Speaker 2: ran the territory that way, dealt with the talent, screened
Speaker 2: the talent. But it's really Roy Welch who had his
Speaker 2: hands on the controls and was doing Everything's kind of
Speaker 2: like how it's tried and true in the business. Years later,
Speaker 2: God damn it that Jr. Never gave me a shot.
Speaker 2: It's like, no, it's Vince that didn't give you the shot.
Speaker 2: But he's not going to bother with you. You know,
Speaker 2: he's not going to tell you what he thinks of you.
Speaker 3: He's going to have JR. Pretend that JR. Thinks that
Speaker 3: way of you. The same thing with John Lorianidis. You know,
Speaker 3: you create that degree of separation between the talent and
Speaker 3: the real boss, right, so that you don't have to
Speaker 3: ever be the bad guy to them. In case you
Speaker 3: ever want to do business with them again, you can
Speaker 3: just claim your deputy was the bad guy and it
Speaker 3: was all a misunderstanding, so that that really, at least
Speaker 3: according to Jerry Jarrett's description, is really what Nick Goulas was,
Speaker 3: And eventually Jerry Jarrett boss is going to close in
Speaker 3: on it. Of course's action or fucking believe it. Of course,
Speaker 3: of course, a lot in past episodes of The Complete
Speaker 3: How there was a clear Southeastern Memphis talent exchange. In fact,
Speaker 3: Ron Fuller sent a lot of guys up there that
Speaker 3: he considered pretty important in the beginning stages of his
Speaker 3: brother booking that territory, Rob Fuller booking Memphis until there
Speaker 3: was the falling out we talked about the according Ron Fuller,
Speaker 3: at least the dispute over how much of a percentage
Speaker 3: goes to the boys. Of course, you have to take
Speaker 3: that with a grain of salt. That uh right, He
Speaker 3: left the He left the territory because he didn't think
Speaker 3: the boys were getting paid enough. That would doesn't sound
Speaker 3: like a wrestling promoter to me, But let's not forget
Speaker 3: Roy Welch, his grandfather essentially was involved over there forever
Speaker 3: and was basically running the territory. We talked about how
Speaker 3: Roy Lee Welch, he was the grandson I think, and
Speaker 3: Ester Welch had also helped out getting Hulk Hogan over
Speaker 3: in Alabama. I remember by coming to the TV and
Speaker 3: taking a bear hug leading from the mouth. To say
Speaker 3: nothing of Wayne Ferris, Jerry Lawler's cousin. He was also
Speaker 3: in Alabama in the very earliest days of Hulk Hogan
Speaker 3: arriving there in nineteen seventy nine as Punk Rock Wayne Ferris,
Speaker 3: and eventually Jerry Jarrett opens what would be known with
Speaker 3: c WA instead of just Memphis Wrestling. Is how to
Speaker 3: think about the delineation in seventy seven, when it starts
Speaker 3: to be called c w A, that's when you know
Speaker 3: that Jerry Jarrett has eventually taken the territory essentially, I
Speaker 3: should say, taken the territory and is now running it
Speaker 3: with Jerry Lawler. But there had to be a split
Speaker 3: between Nickolas and Jerry Jarrett and a bit of a
Speaker 3: promotional war before that fully took place. Let's go back
Speaker 3: to nineteen sixty just get a sense of how far
Speaker 3: back this all goes. This is a clipping from the
Speaker 3: Memphis Press Scimitar, which is newspaper out there from nineteen sixty,
Speaker 3: and this is where Fuller is getting some pressure around
Speaker 3: his license. Because we're already we're already starting the gamesmanship
Speaker 3: in this territory. Fuller has had his I think this
Speaker 3: is Buddy Fuller. Let me make sure I get the right.
Speaker 3: I'm sure I'm talking about the right Fuller. Yeah, Buddy Fuller.
Speaker 3: So that is Ron Fuller's dad. Okay, he's promoting in
Speaker 3: the area, but he gets his license pulled by the
Speaker 3: state Athletic Commission. In nineteen sixty.
Speaker 2: He's being told at checks that he had issued, stating
Speaker 2: he had ten days to pay them. We're we're never received,
Speaker 2: even though he claimed in the newspaper that he immediately
Speaker 2: deposited enough money to cover those checks. He said, quote,
Speaker 2: I'm not the best bookkeeper in the world. But then
Speaker 2: the next day I get a letter stating my license
Speaker 2: has been revoked. I think Fuller says there is something
Speaker 2: personal involved in this case. It seems to me that
Speaker 2: someone on the commission is more interested in getting my
Speaker 2: license than my money.
Speaker 5: Wow.
Speaker 3: The second thing that seems strange to me is that
Speaker 3: when a license is revoked there is no hearing. I
Speaker 3: understand that he hearing is usually allowed before the license
Speaker 3: is actually taken up. I had no hearing, no nothing.
Speaker 3: There also seems to be some misunderstanding within the commission.
Speaker 3: So this history of.
Speaker 2: Gulis and Welch taking over from the Fullers, and it's
Speaker 2: kind of weird because it's like it's the same family,
Speaker 2: but in the newspapers Welch and Fuller being used interchangeably
Speaker 2: without renaming Fuller a Welsh. It's very fucking hard to understand.
Speaker 2: But we've talked about how important it was to the
Speaker 2: Fullers that the public not know that they're also the owners, right,
Speaker 2: as it could be seen as self dealing and stuff
Speaker 2: God forbid. Right, But after all, this happens in nineteen
Speaker 2: sixty where Buddy Fuller, the father of Ron Fuller, has
Speaker 2: his license revoked to promote in the area. All of
Speaker 2: a sudden, this hits the papers. The promotion of professional
Speaker 2: wrestling in Memphis last night was passed on to Nick
Speaker 2: Goulis and Roy Welch, veteran Nashville promoters. They will be
Speaker 2: in charge of the shows staged under the sponsorship of
Speaker 2: Memphis Post number one of the American Legion. Wiss and
Speaker 2: Welsh succeed Buddy Fuller, who had his license revoked by
Speaker 2: the Tennessee Athletic Commission last week. Fuller had been wrestling
Speaker 2: promoter here the past two years. Fuller is Welsh's son, Okay, so.
Speaker 3: Okay, so they're not even fucking hiding it anymore. They're
Speaker 3: just fucking okay. He had his license revoked and his
Speaker 3: dad gets it. But this is again, this is this.
Speaker 2: Buddy Fuller is Ron Fuller's dad and running Memphis and well,
Speaker 2: and they handed to his grandfather running Memphis. So to
Speaker 2: pretend that Hult going back and forth between Alabama and
Speaker 2: Memphis is some huge deal is kind of to lose
Speaker 2: sight of the fact that there's a forty well at
Speaker 2: that time, almost a twenty year history of the Welch's,
Speaker 2: you know, basically having their hands on the controls of
Speaker 2: Memphis as well. But Jerry Jarrett is about to change
Speaker 2: that to a pretty significant degree. The article concludes. The
Speaker 2: announcement of the change was made by Fred Lassiter of Nashville,
Speaker 2: chairman of the Tennessee Athletic Commission, who met here with
Speaker 2: Malcolm Forrester of Yorktown Commissioned Secretary, along with Goulis Welch
Speaker 2: and Tony Laiwoe, Memphis commission Member. The first show for
Speaker 2: the new group at Ellis Auditorium will be December nineteenth.
Speaker 2: It will be staged for the Press, Scimitar, Goodfellows and
Speaker 2: Commercial Appeal American Legion Christmas Funds.
Speaker 3: So how about that. We're gonna do wrestling shows so
Speaker 3: the tickets can go to the American Legion Christmas Fund.
Speaker 3: It's one of the old ways they used to sell wrestling.
Speaker 3: It's kind of like charity fundraising. It's still still happens sometimes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and then this hits the December thirtieth of that year,
Speaker 3: right around the time we're operating in now. Buddy Fuller
Speaker 3: on suspended list. Buddy Fuller, former Memphis wrestling promoter, will
Speaker 3: not appear on the Ellis Auditorium program Monday. He is
Speaker 3: under suspension by the Tennessee Athletic Commission and it is
Speaker 3: not allowed to participate in matches. About that.
Speaker 2: You get your license revoked and then you're under suspension.
Speaker 2: It's just it's the gamesmanship is unbelievable. This is guy,
Speaker 2: Tony Lawo, I I.
Speaker 3: I don't know, I don't know. I'm just I got nothing. Actually,
Speaker 3: continue head spinning, head spinning, Yeah, exactly, that's exactly what
Speaker 3: it is.
Speaker 2: Ron Fuller's dad ran Memphis, right, and then he got
Speaker 2: his license revoked, only for Ron Fuller's granddad to get
Speaker 2: it in concert with Nicholas. So the Welch's are still
Speaker 2: running Memphis. But the papers make it seem like the
Speaker 2: grandfather and the father are competing with each other for
Speaker 2: the license. But it's the same family, just sometimes they're
Speaker 2: called Welch and sometimes they're called Fuller. I mean, can
Speaker 2: you imagine reading the.
Speaker 3: Paper It's it says Fuller is Welch's son. Then why
Speaker 3: the fuck is his last name Fuller? Right? Is no
Speaker 3: one going to talk about this? Should his last name
Speaker 3: be Welch if he's his son? Or you're exposing the business? Right?
Speaker 3: Well you are anyway. So this is my stick, This
Speaker 3: is my gimmick.
Speaker 2: This Police Inspectoris Memphis rep on the five Man Commission.
Speaker 2: This Tony Laiwoe is the guy that's they're kind of
Speaker 2: suspecting of playing games to get Buddy Fuller kicked out
Speaker 2: of owning the territory. So they ask him, like, what happened?
Speaker 2: He says, I have nothing to say except that Fuller's
Speaker 2: license was revoked because of action detrimental to the best
Speaker 2: interest of wrestling. Excuse me, excuse me, now what action
Speaker 2: detrimental to the best interest of wrestling? Love to know
Speaker 2: what the fuck that's supposed to mean.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I mean, it's not like Welch and Gulis went on
Speaker 2: to run a clean shop. In nineteen sixty, they were
Speaker 2: charged with conspiring to stop an investigation of their business practices,
Speaker 2: and even accused, in some sworn depositions delivered in a
Speaker 2: future lawsuit, of making bribes to a US senator to
Speaker 2: try to bring scrutiny of their business practices. Yes, these
Speaker 2: things are stated matter of factly in public reports and
Speaker 2: Wikipedia and elsewhere. There was complaints, apparently to the United
Speaker 2: States Department of Justice over these attempts to buy a
Speaker 2: lack of scrutiny of what they were doing. You can't
Speaker 2: forget the NWA was investigated as essentially a racket, essentially,
Speaker 2: you know, something where people were blackballed if they didn't
Speaker 2: participate in this monopolistic activity. You know, the NWA. It
Speaker 2: didn't just exist to benefit the members. That existed to
Speaker 2: make sure nobody else ran in the cities that NWA
Speaker 2: members operated in, and if you did try to run opposition,
Speaker 2: they would flood the market with some of the top
Speaker 2: talent the NBA had to offer so that the wrestling
Speaker 2: fans would, you know, eventually just not patronize your shows
Speaker 2: and shut you down. And these practices over time pissed
Speaker 2: off enough people that they went to the FBI and
Speaker 2: a federal investigation was launched and they basically, you know,
Speaker 2: found enough to put pressure on the NWA to sign
Speaker 2: a consent decree, which is essentially like I'm going to
Speaker 2: do all these things and I'm going to keep all
Speaker 2: these business practices in line, and if I don't, I
Speaker 2: agree that the Department of Justice is going to charge
Speaker 2: me with a crime. Essentially, it's almost like a list
Speaker 2: of things you must do to not get charged. Okay,
Speaker 2: that's like one step away from actually being charged. Because
Speaker 2: you know, the NBA was a monopoly. It's very simple,
Speaker 2: and so it's not like he got shut down or dismantled,
Speaker 2: but they did have to have kind of a little
Speaker 2: dalliance with the Department of Justice about what they could
Speaker 2: and couldn't do. That's why there's so much boss that's
Speaker 2: public record about, you know, the interoffice memos and stuff.
Speaker 2: That's why we have like all these memos from Sam
Speaker 2: Muchnick's office to all the promoters and everything over the
Speaker 2: years because it was all collected as part of this
Speaker 2: dj antitrust investigation in the fifties.
Speaker 3: It's fucking nuts. If you knew the NWA was a racket, yes, yeah,
Speaker 3: I mean, listen, we knew it was a racket to
Speaker 3: begin with, but this is this is just a whole
Speaker 3: other fucking level.
Speaker 1: He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast with Jack n Carneo
Speaker 1: and JP Soros fan wrestling pods.
Speaker 2: So apparently investigators were looking into the Welsh business practices
Speaker 2: in Memphis along with Nick Gulis, and some attempts were
Speaker 2: to keep that scrutiny off of their back. We'll get
Speaker 2: more into that in just a second, but you know
Speaker 2: who's circling You know who's circling as all of these
Speaker 2: territories are being upended and powers being shifted around Jim Barnett.
Speaker 2: Of course, we turned to Chokehold Pro Wrestling's real mayhem
Speaker 2: out the book from Weldon Johnson and former wrestler Jim Wilson,
Speaker 2: who was one of the guys who really tried to
Speaker 2: take on the NWA stranglehold on the territory because he
Speaker 2: basically blamed that dominance from a former football player. Was
Speaker 2: Jim Wilson from becoming a wrestling star and basically devoted
Speaker 2: the rest of his life to fighting all these promoters
Speaker 2: in court and wrote an incredible book that has a
Speaker 2: ton of detail about how the NWA came to be
Speaker 2: the NWA, and how they exerted control and influence and
Speaker 2: how they kept basically an iron grip on how pro
Speaker 2: wrestling was to work and who was to succeed as
Speaker 2: pro wrestling promoters and owners for decades and decades. The
Speaker 2: book reads in between skirmishes in the Battle Atlanta, Okay,
Speaker 2: So Jim Barnett went up against Anne Gunkle for control
Speaker 2: of Atlanta Wrestling in the early seventies and they battled
Speaker 2: it out like crazy.
Speaker 3: Come on, leaving Gunkle alone, Barnett found time, the book reads,
Speaker 3: to pick a fight with the nwas Memphis promoter Nick
Speaker 3: Goulis trying to muscle Gouliss out of the territory Goulis
Speaker 3: thought he owned So look at this. Barnett tried to
Speaker 3: close in on Memphis in the seventies. I didn't. I didn't.
Speaker 3: That's just an unfair characteristic.
Speaker 7: Look.
Speaker 3: Look there, there's just things going on. I'm not doing
Speaker 3: anything bad. There's just things going on. I must say,
Speaker 3: I'm not being naughty. I'm not a naughty boy. I'm
Speaker 3: a good old country boy. Don't you forget it. I'm
Speaker 3: not naughty now now, if you want to get naughty,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying I have nothing fail you. It doesn't
Speaker 3: think I don't get naughty. I'm just not naughty by nature.
Speaker 4: M hm.
Speaker 3: The midjule.
Speaker 9: For you?
Speaker 3: How about a y? It was yes.
Speaker 2: In spring nineteen seventy four, the book reads, Jim Barnett's
Speaker 2: nWay Partners launched an all out attack on Anne Gunkle's
Speaker 2: promotion by bringing its big name attractions from around the
Speaker 2: country to the Georgia Circuit, where they showcased at Atlanta's
Speaker 2: new Omni Arena. So this is also a battle for
Speaker 2: control of the Omni and Boss. It's Barnett winning this
Speaker 2: battle that puts him in prime position to develop the
Speaker 2: relationship with Ted Turner, thus leading to Georgia Championship, becoming,
Speaker 2: you know, the dominant promotion on what was the earliest
Speaker 2: days of cable and WTBS and eventually becoming WCW with
Speaker 2: Jim Barnett involved the whole way. Well, if you don't
Speaker 2: count the temporary ouster that Oliott Anderson was able to
Speaker 2: engineer leading to Black Saturday. But that's all we do
Speaker 2: to ramp up Georgia Championship's booking clout. Barnett had replaced
Speaker 2: Bill Watts. Bill Watts was booking Georgia at the time
Speaker 2: as booker with who who did Barnett install as booker
Speaker 2: for Georgia Championship in this war?
Speaker 3: Olie Anderson? Jerry Jarrett, Oh, Jerry Jarrett? Wow? All right?
Speaker 3: Who was running Louisville at the time. He started, not
Speaker 3: with Memphis, but just running little I can't even make
Speaker 3: keep track. I can't keep dragging of all these fucking clients.
Speaker 3: What the fuck is going on here?
Speaker 2: Because Jarrett's mom worked for the office, they gave him
Speaker 2: a town. They said, why don't you want you know,
Speaker 2: you want to try your hand at prooding. Do Louisville,
Speaker 2: do Evansville, Indiana. See if you can get these these
Speaker 2: areas going for us, and Jerry did well enough that
Speaker 2: eventually he's like, I'll take the whole fucking thing. You know,
Speaker 2: it's the whole story.
Speaker 11: You know.
Speaker 3: You let someone in so that you know, you can
Speaker 3: sort of outsource the hard work to open up new areas,
Speaker 3: and pretty soon they figure out the playbook and they're like,
Speaker 3: you're just a bitch, Like I can just take this
Speaker 3: from you. You don't do anything the secrets out so yes.
Speaker 3: At the time, Jarrett was just promoting small in Louisville
Speaker 3: and Kentucky small towns and Jim Barnett tapped him and said,
Speaker 3: you're gonna book Georgia Championship Wrestling, and Jarrett brought heel
Speaker 3: manager Gary Hart, the three Garvins, Jerry Lawler, and Dick
Speaker 3: the Bruiser to the OMNI for matches with the n
Speaker 3: WA Georgia standbys like Tim Woods, Mister Wrestling Too, and
Speaker 3: Ron Fuller. Ron Fuller was we talked about this.
Speaker 2: He was in Georgia before he got his own territory
Speaker 2: down on the Gulf Coast, before he bought into Southeastern
Speaker 2: or bought out the prior owner of Southeastern. Ron Fuller
Speaker 2: was a star in WTBS before and then a few
Speaker 2: months later Jarrett left Georgia championship. So Jerry Jarrett didn't
Speaker 2: book Georgia for very long, but he booked it at
Speaker 2: a very important time in terms of establishing credibility connections
Speaker 2: with the NWA, the kind of cloud it would take
Speaker 2: to unseat someone like a Nick Goulis who had been
Speaker 2: owning the territory via Bloodbath since the sixties, since nineteen sixty,
Speaker 2: So Jerry Jarrett is really establishing himself with the power
Speaker 2: structure of the NWA, as evidenced by Jim Barnett picking
Speaker 2: him to book Georgia. And so Jarrett left Georgia when
Speaker 2: he was offered half ownership in the Gulis Welsh promotion
Speaker 2: that did the Tennessee shows Kentucky, parts of Indiana, Mississippi
Speaker 2: and Arkansas as well. And who replaced Jerry Jarrett in
Speaker 2: Georgia when he went to take over half of ten
Speaker 2: See Louis Toillette.
Speaker 3: Oh, Mike, are you fucking serious? All these guys knew
Speaker 3: each other ahead of time? This is like fucking this
Speaker 3: is like, this is like incestuous community theater very much
Speaker 3: is what this is, and it's all important to understanding
Speaker 3: who had their fingers on the controls of Terry Bully's
Speaker 3: career pro wrestling. Yeah, yeah, it's all. It's all vital.
Speaker 2: I mean Jerry by virtue of getting involved with the
Speaker 2: Georgia War and getting the endorsement so to speak of
Speaker 2: Jim Barnett also had a great connection to Eddie Graham.
Speaker 2: You know, they do these nw Way meetings and eventually
Speaker 2: in the power struggle that is to ensue between Nick
Speaker 2: Goulis and Jerry Jarrett, Eddie Graham would vote for the kid,
Speaker 2: would vote for Jerry Jarrett to run Memphis over the
Speaker 2: incumbent Nick gool Wow. Jerry's mother, Christine, as I mentioned,
Speaker 2: was really the first Jarrett entree into the wrestling business.
Speaker 2: Used to sell tickets for the Goulis Welsh operation and
Speaker 2: that's where is mentioned. Glis eventually gives young teenaged Jerry
Speaker 2: jarreted a job, first selling programs and then eventually promoting
Speaker 2: some towns. And as you write in his book, Jerry
Speaker 2: Jarrett does one day and I don't remember why, I
Speaker 2: took the money and report to the wrestling office myself,
Speaker 2: that is to say, you know, the gate receipts. Roy
Speaker 2: Welch was there in the office with Nick. This is
Speaker 2: the day I realized that Nick had a partner. Roy
Speaker 2: asked if I would mind calling him each time I
Speaker 2: went to check up and give him a report on
Speaker 2: how I liked the matches. I enjoyed watching the matches,
Speaker 2: so I told Roy that it would be a pleasure.
Speaker 2: But now bear in mind, boss, this is according to
Speaker 2: Jerry Jarrett, before he knew wrestling was fake. Okay, so
Speaker 2: a teenager selling programs and working doing work for the office, still.
Speaker 3: Thinking it's real, right, Well, what's wrong with that? Roy
Speaker 3: asked if I would mind calling him each time I
Speaker 3: went to check up and give him a report and
Speaker 3: how I liked the matches. I enjoyed watching the matches,
Speaker 3: so I told Roy that it would be a pleasure.
Speaker 3: I went to the matches that night and called Roy
Speaker 3: the next day to give him my report. I advised Roy,
Speaker 3: all the matches were very good except the first one,
Speaker 3: and I'm quite sure they faked the match. Wow. Roy
Speaker 3: asked me to explain, Well, mister Welch, they just acted
Speaker 3: like they punched each other and they would fall down
Speaker 3: and fake getting hurt. All the wrestlers had to dress
Speaker 3: in the same big room and I'm guessing they made
Speaker 3: a deal to not hurt each other. Roy advised that
Speaker 3: he would look into the matter. That's fucking funny. Can
Speaker 3: you imagine that. It's like, I think I think it's fake. Well,
Speaker 3: i'll tell you, young man, if that's what you think,
Speaker 3: I gotta do something about it. And what happens is
Speaker 3: a real consequence. I imagine Roy Welch picks up the
Speaker 3: phone and goes, you motherfuckers are mailing it into the
Speaker 3: point that this kid can tell it's not real. This
Speaker 3: this idiot says it's fucking fake. Now I know it's fake.
Speaker 3: You know it's fake, but they can't know it's fucking fake.
Speaker 3: That's not how the Welches run a wrestling business. Boss,
Speaker 3: you better get real, right boys. So funny, I like
Speaker 3: this kid, like the consequences for these guys are real
Speaker 3: for making it look fake.
Speaker 2: Not that not fake, just making it look fake. And
Speaker 2: he's using young Jerry Jarrett. It's kind of like the
Speaker 2: litmus test for that. Years later, after I became Roy's partner,
Speaker 2: Jarrett continues, he never mentioned our conversation directly. On one occasion,
Speaker 2: as I was leaving the office to go to Memphis,
Speaker 2: Roy said, Jerry, be sure to watch all the matches.
Speaker 2: If any of those bastards have a fake match, it
Speaker 2: will I just replied, okay, Roy, I'll keep an eye
Speaker 2: on them. It got it got serious though, as Jerry began,
Speaker 2: you know, trying to take over more and more in
Speaker 2: the territory and become the the the made man. He's
Speaker 2: a guy named Mario Galento who was on kind of
Speaker 2: the goolest Welsh side of things, who attacks Jerry Jarrett
Speaker 2: during jer.
Speaker 3: Mario Mario Galento. Do you remember when we did a
Speaker 3: show a while ago about like when's the first time
Speaker 3: people would be on TV saying wrestling was fake? When
Speaker 3: we did the whole I'm told the secrets of progress
Speaker 3: revealed special and we went all the way back to
Speaker 3: that Memphis call in show wrestling fans have been tripped again. Yes,
Speaker 3: where there was a Memphis wrestler and studio taking questions
Speaker 3: about it being fake. That was Mario Glento. Wow, and
Speaker 3: this guy was a maniac. I mean just he was
Speaker 3: definitely somebody that had run into the law. At one point,
Speaker 3: Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawla are wrestling each other and
Speaker 3: Mario Glento hits the ring and attacks Jerry Jarrett for
Speaker 3: real and later shows up with a gun at one
Speaker 3: of their matches. This, according to Jerry Jarrett, is just
Speaker 3: part of a campaign to intimidate them out of taking
Speaker 3: too much of the territory. Yes, gun, that's correct. Okay, listen,
Speaker 3: you get it.
Speaker 2: You do what you gotta do, you know, Jared I
Speaker 2: called a friend I had the FBI and explained that
Speaker 2: someone would get killed unless they did something about Galento.
Speaker 2: I returned from Florida and was interviewed by the FBI.
Speaker 2: They then went to Mario and advised him that they
Speaker 2: would find out who had paid him, and all of them,
Speaker 2: Mario included, would be charged with attempted murder.
Speaker 3: Mario disappeared. I later heard they had moved to Florida.
Speaker 3: Did we ever find out for certain, Jerry writes in
Speaker 3: his book if Roy Welch was behind the Mario Galento incidents, No,
Speaker 3: we did not. In fact, we never determined why Mario
Speaker 3: did it at all. The reason we all suspected Roy
Speaker 3: was behind it was many little things he had done
Speaker 3: leading up to the incident. He had asked several wrestlers
Speaker 3: if they thought I might try to steal the business
Speaker 3: by going into business myself. Roy had come from a
Speaker 3: background in the wrestling business in which it was not
Speaker 3: uncommon for a booker to break away and start a promotion.
Speaker 3: Sound like a plan b boss, It sounds like a
Speaker 3: plan A to me. I mean that is no wonder.
Speaker 3: Ron Fuller was so paramoised about this something. Yeah, his
Speaker 3: whole family's history in the business was bereft with stories
Speaker 3: of talent trying to open up an office to run
Speaker 3: opposition to them and take the territory. And in some cases, like.
Speaker 2: Jerry Jarrett, it fucking worked, and Bob Rup tried to
Speaker 2: do one, it didn't work. He tried to do one
Speaker 2: in San Francisco and it didn't work. Was getting forgetful.
Speaker 2: Jerry Wrights and many suspected it had gone past sentinility
Speaker 2: and was Alzheimer's. Roy died without us ever knowing for sure. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: he talks a lot more about this. But Roy Welch
Speaker 2: at this point had started to kind of slip mentally
Speaker 2: and so but in wrestling, it that's always a that's
Speaker 2: always an ailment of convenience, right right, he was always
Speaker 2: mind heart attack.
Speaker 3: Exactly.
Speaker 2: It's to me that sounds more like Jerry Jarrett, who's
Speaker 2: passed on saying, I don't I don't want to believe
Speaker 2: that Roy Welch would send Mario Glento to kill me.
Speaker 2: I would much rather just believe he was slipping mentally,
Speaker 2: and if he did do anything in that direction, it
Speaker 2: was just because he was kind of losing his marbles.
Speaker 2: It's not unlike Hulk citing lou for Rigno having the
Speaker 2: speech impediment and the deafness in an ear as to
Speaker 2: why he wouldn't have necessarily picked up on that infamous
Speaker 2: studio host saying that Terry Bolea was bigger than Lufa.
Speaker 2: Rigno was the real Hulk. Whenever he told that story,
Speaker 2: he'd always Hulkwood fold in the fact that Figna had
Speaker 2: the hearing issue in my mind, so that if anyone
Speaker 2: ever questioned it in the future, I could say, well,
Speaker 2: of course, that brother, God forbid, he didn't fucking remember
Speaker 2: he was actually there. Mark James co authored the book
Speaker 2: with Jerry Jarrett and did a lot of great books
Speaker 2: with Memphis wrestlers, and he fixes an editor's note to
Speaker 2: the end of this chapter about what we just read
Speaker 2: with Mario Galento. He writes, as a fan watching wrestling.
Speaker 2: This was an extremely weird time. The promotion always tried
Speaker 2: to make wrestling as real as possible and make it
Speaker 2: easy for the fans to believe it was real. This
Speaker 2: incident with Mario Gleno crossed that line, and it was real.
Speaker 2: There's no telling what would have happened on the show
Speaker 2: that Saturday morning if Jerry jareded had not gained quick
Speaker 2: control of the situation. That is to say, Mario Glento
Speaker 2: hitting the ring and trying to rip his face off,
Speaker 2: basically without being invited to do so and not being
Speaker 2: part of the show. This happened, and when Jerry Jared
Speaker 2: told the story on Tales from the Territories on Vice TV,
Speaker 2: he had to think about how he basically ripped Galento's
Speaker 2: eye out of his fucking head because he just went
Speaker 2: prime on him trying to stop this guy. Christ their
Speaker 2: fans were treated to a real situation and thought it
Speaker 2: was nothing out of the normal. Again, and then the
Speaker 2: studio audience thinks it's normal, you know, they just think
Speaker 2: it's a run in. Well, yeah, although they don't know
Speaker 2: who this Mario Glento is.
Speaker 3: Necessarily is that the best part is that fucking the
Speaker 3: wrestling audience is like, okay, this is part of the
Speaker 3: fucking action, but any other normal human beings like, no,
Speaker 3: this is not okay. Rights, that's the wrestling fan versus
Speaker 3: the normal human being.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly, and the wrestlers, even though it's real as fuck,
Speaker 2: can't let that on. They can't like, actly, oh, this
Speaker 2: is actually real, and everything elseide was phony. So it's
Speaker 2: not like the fan would detect really a change in anything. Right,
Speaker 2: it must have felt like the Twilight Zone. Mark James
Speaker 2: Wrights for Jerry when he learned Roy Welch was behind
Speaker 2: the attacks. I don't know how else to describe it.
Speaker 2: Roy was the one who had given Jerry his start
Speaker 2: in the business. Roy was also the one who had
Speaker 2: made Jerry the Memphis booker. That's what makes this whole
Speaker 2: situation so strange. I know that Alzheimer's is an awful disease,
Speaker 2: but I still wonder what Roy was thinking in his
Speaker 2: whole state. But no, Jerry is a He's gaining more
Speaker 2: and more control, he's getting more and more credibility to
Speaker 2: the NWA, and he's buying. He's going to buy out
Speaker 2: Roy Welch's shares and go fifty to fifty within the
Speaker 2: Gulist or.
Speaker 3: So things or so things. Yeah, Jerry writes, I returned
Speaker 3: home to Tennessee and now had a recognized ownership in
Speaker 3: one of the twenty two National Wrestling Alliance territories. The
Speaker 3: fact that I already owned one half of Louisville and Lexington, Kentucky,
Speaker 3: and Evansville, Indiana, along with one hundred percent of Tupelo,
Speaker 3: Mississippi and Jonesboro, Arkansas, meant nothing to the NWA membership
Speaker 3: with these towns. I was just a local promoter. However,
Speaker 3: having a ten percent ownership in Gooulish Welts in the
Speaker 3: Gouleist Welsh territories, that's he starts with just ten percent. Okay,
Speaker 3: just know that meant I had a member of the men.
Speaker 3: I was a member of the fraternity. I had attended
Speaker 3: NWA meetings, but had no standing prior to this ten
Speaker 3: percent ownership. Roy Welch's health continued to deteriorate to the
Speaker 3: point where after having an operation, he never really recovered.
Speaker 3: Does Verne get ninety per to ownership? Earns got one
Speaker 3: hundred percent ownership of And while he's kind of like
Speaker 3: you know, he goes to the NBA conventions and the
Speaker 3: NBA promoters are in the Wrestler movie. I remember that
Speaker 3: pool Side. He doesn't really no fuck with this whole
Speaker 3: NWA thing. He's got his own situation there with the
Speaker 3: AWA the incident. Okay, At Roy's death, I this is Jerry.
Speaker 3: Jarrett gave Nick Goulas fifty grand and became a fifty
Speaker 3: percent owner in the business. A company attorney, Cecil Brandstetter,
Speaker 3: drew up the ownership papers, so he gets ten percent
Speaker 3: while Roy Welch is still alive and apparently sicking Mario
Speaker 3: Galento on him. And then Roy Welch dies and Jerry
Speaker 3: gets the rest of Welch. So now it's it's Jarrett
Speaker 3: Goulis instead of Welch Goulss okay, which as we mentioned,
Speaker 3: started in nineteen sixty taking over from taking Buddy Fuller
Speaker 3: Sears away. So it's like it didn't didn't really leave
Speaker 3: the family that much. Now Jarrett is truly outside the
Speaker 3: Welsh family running the show. This is this is back
Speaker 3: to the Jim Wilson book. So you know I mentioned
Speaker 3: the bribery thing. Yes, amazing, all right, So a guy
Speaker 3: named Don Prewitt, who worked for Goulish and Welsh for
Speaker 3: fifteen years as a wrestler and later referee and local
Speaker 3: promoter ends up suing Goulss in Welsh over basically the
Speaker 3: com Wilson Welsh that sounds like a fucking uh I know,
Speaker 3: I got like a law firm and prewit. That also
Speaker 3: sounds like a fucking lawyer. Doesn't sound like yeah right,
Speaker 3: It doesn't sound like the guys they sued. It sounds
Speaker 3: like the firm they used to suit exactly.
Speaker 2: But this gets fascinating, so they write in the book
Speaker 2: to Johnson and Wilson. Yet another controversy alleging Athletic Commission
Speaker 2: corruption and illegal payoffs to United States senator came to light.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty The NWA's Nashville promoters, Roy Welch and
Speaker 2: Nickolas were charged with conspiring to stop an investigation of
Speaker 2: their business practices. Wels and Goulis control wrestling in Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama,
Speaker 2: and parts of Mississippi, and they had a lot to
Speaker 2: lose from an investigation of their business tactics. One of
Speaker 2: their conversations overheard by a third party. Uh oh, hey,
Speaker 2: I heard third party here? I come, is there a
Speaker 2: third party involved?
Speaker 8: Here?
Speaker 3: Hey? You know what I can. I'm glad to be
Speaker 3: a third party. I can be a mediator get things done.
Speaker 3: That's how I do it on the big stage. I
Speaker 3: get it done. What were Goulis and Welch overheard saying
Speaker 3: by this third party, as later revealed in legal proceedings,
Speaker 3: something to the effect of, quote, don't you think we
Speaker 3: better get that money up there? To that guy, Goulish
Speaker 3: said to Welch one day in nineteen sixty it's according
Speaker 3: to sworn testimony or something. And to that Wells replied,
Speaker 3: he is leaving to catch an airplane right away. We
Speaker 3: better get that money up there. Do you want to
Speaker 3: give him a cash or check? Gulis asked, hell, no,
Speaker 3: give him cash. Weld replied, oh my god.
Speaker 2: At this point, Goulis asked his secretary, Christine Jarrett, which
Speaker 2: office safe contained as much as five grand. She told
Speaker 2: him he counted out five grand into a brown paper bag,
Speaker 2: gave it to Uncle Billy, and he lost it at
Speaker 2: the bank.
Speaker 3: She, which is under scured, pulls out a fucking water cash,
Speaker 3: brown paper bag bag in hand. Googleiss walks across the
Speaker 3: room to their booker, Don Pruitt. That's the guy who
Speaker 3: sued them. Eventually Jesus.
Speaker 2: Asking where Prewit had parked his car, Pruitt said his
Speaker 2: car was outside the office at the Maxwell House Hotel.
Speaker 2: Would you drop Roy and I over at the Andrew
Speaker 2: Jackson Hotel. We got to get this money to Estes
Speaker 2: caver Estes Cafaverre, if you want to.
Speaker 3: Google use me.
Speaker 2: Was the US senator from Tennessee at the time, or
Speaker 2: one of them, and he was somebody that was well
Speaker 2: known and remembered for trust busting, for basically bringing congressional
Speaker 2: investigations against monopolies and rackets. Wow, you know industries that
Speaker 2: were sort of using a lee means to maintain their
Speaker 2: grip on power and prices and whatnot. And so here
Speaker 2: we have a guy saying in his lawsuit against Gougliss
Speaker 2: and Welch, the Gougless and Welsh were arranging for a
Speaker 2: payoff to this senator so that he wouldn't scrutinize their
Speaker 2: business practices in his own backyard at Tennessee. I mean,
Speaker 2: this goes up to some pretty high levels. This wrestling
Speaker 2: business bullshit.
Speaker 3: This is so fucking bizarre. Over in Atlanta, you got
Speaker 3: a Jimmy Barnett who's eventually going to be part of
Speaker 3: fucking President Jimmy Carter's cabinet for Christ's sake, or at
Speaker 3: least be his leading appointment for the arts in terms
Speaker 3: of commission for the arts. But they're going back and
Speaker 3: forth according to this Don Pruitt about getting a bribe
Speaker 3: over to this senator and Don Prewitt, the book continues,
Speaker 3: drove Nick Goulass and Roy Welch to the Jackson Hotel
Speaker 3: where the drop to United States Senator Estescafavre was made.
Speaker 3: It should be noted here the book notes that Tennessee's
Speaker 3: US Senator Carrie Estescaffavre was a powerful figure in Washington,
Speaker 3: d C. In the nation from nineteen forty nine to
Speaker 3: the time of his death. The nineteen sixty three Caafavre
Speaker 3: ran unsuccessfully for the Democratic presidential nomination twice. I didn't
Speaker 3: know that he ran for president in nineteen fifty two
Speaker 3: and nineteen fifty six after gaining national attention in nineteen
Speaker 3: fifty as chairman of the Nationally Yeah These hearings were
Speaker 3: nationally televised. Boss that he had against monopolies, so a
Speaker 3: huge deal for the Special Committee on Organized Crime and
Speaker 3: Interstate Commerce, better known as the Kafavre Committee. When Prewitt
Speaker 3: recounted the above conversation under oath, he added the purpose
Speaker 3: for this there was an investigation of the National Wrestling Alliance.
Speaker 3: That was their part that they kicked in to get
Speaker 3: the investigations stopped. So not only according to Don Pruitt
Speaker 3: and sworn testimony, did Nick Gulis and Roy Welch facilitated
Speaker 3: payment to this senator to keep scrutiny off their business practices.
Speaker 3: It was actually just a small part of the money.
Speaker 3: All the promoters in the NWA were asked to chip
Speaker 3: in to deflect scrutiny from their business practices. So fucking
Speaker 3: thumbs up in terms of a history that Terry Boulder
Speaker 3: is walking into. I I mean, it's amazing how the
Speaker 3: wrestling business just never ceases to amaze in terms of
Speaker 3: how like bald faced but inventive right their schemes can
Speaker 3: get just unbelievable.
Speaker 2: There were still a lot of powerful people in the
Speaker 2: NBA that weren't, you know, pieces of shit, like local
Speaker 2: idiots like Sam Muchnick, highly respected guy in Saint Louis,
Speaker 2: like his name was not scoffed at, even though he
Speaker 2: was primarily known as the president of the National Wrestling Alliance.
Speaker 2: He built a substantial respect in Saint Louis sports and
Speaker 2: media and media the biggest fake alliance in history apparently.
Speaker 2: But eventually Jerry Jarrett splits with Nick Gulis, as you
Speaker 2: found out he owned none of Welch's shares. Goulis says,
Speaker 2: you know what you thought you bought fifty percent. You
Speaker 2: thought you obtained all fifty percent of Roy Welts's shares
Speaker 2: when he died. Jerry, Well, guess what if you read
Speaker 2: the contract, all you ever had was an option. If
Speaker 2: you read the fine print, all you ever had was
Speaker 2: an option to buy those shares. Yes, and the date
Speaker 2: by which you had to exercise that option has passed,
Speaker 2: my friend.
Speaker 3: The only if you if you read the fine print,
Speaker 3: you'll realize all you had was an option, an option
Speaker 3: to blow me.
Speaker 2: That's perfectly but so obviously Jerry Jarrett's that's going to
Speaker 2: burn his ass because he thinks he owns fifty percent.
Speaker 2: When push comes to shove, he doesn't own shit because
Speaker 2: the same lawyer represented Jerry Jarrett and Nick Gouliss, according
Speaker 2: to Jerry Jared in the transaction, and there comes a
Speaker 2: time when Nick Goulis wants to get is nothing happened
Speaker 2: in son George Goulis involved at the top of the card,
Speaker 2: and Jerry Jared says, no, I don't. I don't see
Speaker 2: a lot in this guy. I don't think it's good
Speaker 2: for our business to spotlight him just because he's your son. Well, well,
Speaker 2: obviously Nick Goulass is going to would burn the world
Speaker 2: to the ground before he's told now on something.
Speaker 9: Like that, I do.
Speaker 3: I believe I've got something to my son. So once
Speaker 3: you fucking shut up and and I'm going to do
Speaker 3: what I want, Jerry says, fuck this, okay, I'm withdrawing right.
Speaker 3: Not only do I not care that I don't own
Speaker 3: fifty percent, I don't even want it anymore. I'm withdrawing
Speaker 3: entirely from this thing. Because the fact of the matter
Speaker 3: is is, Jerry says in his book, even if he
Speaker 3: goes to court and fights and proves that actually he
Speaker 3: does own fifty percent, he's still stuck with Nick Goulas
Speaker 3: as a fucking business partner. So it's like, forget it,
Speaker 3: Like I don't even want to fight this battle. I'm
Speaker 3: just going to withdraw entirely. Now you can have whatever.
Speaker 3: Roy Welch left behind, and I'm going to start my
Speaker 3: own company. Jerry Jared is going to start the CWA,
Speaker 3: and not only is he going to start it, he's
Speaker 3: going to pull Jerry Lawler, who's quickly becoming the hottest
Speaker 3: attraction away from Nick Goulis to his side of the fence.
Speaker 3: He starts rounding up talent. He calls Eddie Graham down
Speaker 3: in Florida, and there they are again, the Fullers. Okay,
Speaker 3: Jerry Jared Fuller shits. I then contacted the wrestlers and
Speaker 3: told them that I would open a business in a
Speaker 3: few weeks and anyone who wanted to work for me
Speaker 3: was welcome, and I would understand if someone did not
Speaker 3: want to take the risk with a new promotion and
Speaker 3: instead wanted to stay with Nick Goulis. Every single wrestler
Speaker 3: told me to just tell them what to do and
Speaker 3: they would do it. I advise them to take directions
Speaker 3: from Eddie Marlin, who is Jerry Jared's business partner, and
Speaker 3: work as hard as possible to keep the business good.
Speaker 3: I then called my friend Eddie Graham to see if
Speaker 3: he would support me. Eddie said he was offended that
Speaker 3: I would even ask. He suggested that I make some
Speaker 3: kind of a deal with Buddy Fuller. It comes all
Speaker 3: the way back around from getting his license revoked in
Speaker 3: nineteen sixty so his dad can get the promotion along
Speaker 3: with So would he have gone? Would he have gone?
Speaker 3: Hold on? So back up, he refused to help because
Speaker 3: he was asked who refused to add? Oh, no, Eddie
Speaker 3: said that you would even ask I'm offended. Of course
Speaker 3: I'm with you. Oh yeah, like I thought he likes, well,
Speaker 3: I would have helped you. But then you have offended
Speaker 3: that you even asked me. Yeah, but you felt how
Speaker 3: to do that, So fuck you. I definitely see how
Speaker 3: you get interreted that way. So in artful phrasing there
Speaker 3: in the book, for sure. But no, yeah, that's what
Speaker 3: he means, like, of course I'm with you, because you
Speaker 3: know they had no love loss for Nick Goolas either,
Speaker 3: and if Welch was dead, apparently that was the only
Speaker 3: reason anybody respected Nick Goulas anyway, was because they had
Speaker 3: respect for the Welches, and one's Welch's out of the equation.
Speaker 3: Fuck this so so yes, Jerry Jarrett certainly round up
Speaker 3: political support and hilarious that Eddie Graham's got just the
Speaker 3: guy for you, Jerry, get back into business with the
Speaker 3: guy that Goulis took the license from in the first
Speaker 3: place in nineteen sixty Buddy Fuller, of course, fucking just
Speaker 3: a I mean yeah, of course is the father of
Speaker 3: Ron Fuller. With Buddy Fuller because that would help with
Speaker 3: the NWA politics, Jarrett wrote, because of Roy's previous ownership,
Speaker 3: I called Buddy and made a deal with him for
Speaker 3: ownership and my new promotion. This is the editor's note
Speaker 3: here from Mark James on this chapter. Buddy Fuller had
Speaker 3: been in Memphis on and off since the late nineteen fifties,
Speaker 3: when Nick Gulas and Roy Welch bought the city's promotion
Speaker 3: from less Wolf. Buddy's real name was Edward Welch, and
Speaker 3: he was the son of Roy Welch. That family name
Speaker 3: carried a lot of weight in the South during the
Speaker 3: nineteen sixties. Buddy had been a major player back in
Speaker 3: those days. Fast forward to the late nineteen seventies, and
Speaker 3: the playing field had changed. Roy Welch passed away in
Speaker 3: late nineteen seventy seven and Nick Gulis was all but
Speaker 3: out of the business. By the same time, the old
Speaker 3: guard was changing and Buddy's living off the past finally
Speaker 3: caught up with him. So now the Fullers and Terry's
Speaker 3: old friend Eddie Graham Boss and that crew were tied
Speaker 3: in once again as well. And the key thing, one
Speaker 3: of the key things that Jerry Jarrett is able to
Speaker 3: do is Channel five in Memphis WMCTV. This is the
Speaker 3: time slot and this is the channel that drew those
Speaker 3: incredible shares. This is the channel where the stuff like
Speaker 3: the Kamala stuff we just looked at all premiere and
Speaker 3: this is the station that everyone who grew up in
Speaker 3: Memphis loving wrestling in the seventies and eighties remembers being
Speaker 3: where you had to be parked on Saturday mornings, your
Speaker 3: absolutely classic signature studio wrestling show that drove ticket sales,
Speaker 3: particularly Monday night at the Mid South Colosseum. It was
Speaker 3: on a different station than at Gulas and Roy welch Ran,
Speaker 3: but it was Jerry Jarrett who brought it to w MC.
Speaker 3: Just soak this, soak this in.
Speaker 6: Here, this Channel five in Memphis on the Mississippi, the
Speaker 6: showplace of the Sun.
Speaker 3: The showplace of the South. Eventually, this new Jerry Jarrett
Speaker 3: promotion with Jerry Lawler as one of the top stars
Speaker 3: gets so hot that they've got to compensate Jerry Lawler
Speaker 3: kind of over and above the typical talent fee to
Speaker 3: keep him around. So Jerry Lawler ended up getting five
Speaker 3: percent of the territory and now Jerry Lawler is not
Speaker 3: only wrestling for Jerry Jarrett and he's now in business
Speaker 3: with Jerry Jarrett. They also bring over Lance Russ and
Speaker 3: Dave Brown, who were well known to Memphis folks because
Speaker 3: they were news anchors and weathermen on the same w
Speaker 3: MC Channel five that aired the wrestling. We've seen this
Speaker 3: in other markets where you know the local wrestling announcer.
Speaker 3: It's not unlike Charlie Platt, who is known down there
Speaker 3: as well from his TV exploits. You bring in someone
Speaker 3: that's known to the market. It would be like, I
Speaker 3: don't know, Boss Mike Lynch doing the studio wrestling every
Speaker 3: Saturday in Boston, right, Oh my god, think about that.
Speaker 3: Or the weatherman Dick Albert also wrestling on Saturday mornings.
Speaker 3: Shot Love Him Studio that they did the local news
Speaker 3: every every night. I mean, talk about the place to
Speaker 3: be as a wrestling fan. The era you want to
Speaker 3: cook in in Cimmarren instead of the w CVB Channel
Speaker 3: five coverage. You can count on cover covers, you can
Speaker 3: count out covers. You can count out, yeah, coverage, you
Speaker 3: can count two and a half two. Bob Coddle was
Speaker 3: the same thing, you know he was. He was a
Speaker 3: Charlotte area news personality, and Lance Russell and Dave Brown
Speaker 3: certainly in that category, as well ed Whalen Up in
Speaker 3: Calgary I think was much the same. So now Jerry
Speaker 3: Lawler's in business and also owning part of the promotion.
Speaker 3: Was Jared's mother, but she didn't own the Memphis part.
Speaker 3: She owned twenty five percent of Louisville, Evansville and Lexington.
Speaker 3: And so now Jerry, Jared's in business with Buddy Fuller.
Speaker 3: Let me make no mistake about it. Okay, he splits
Speaker 3: ownership now with Buddy Fuller in this new operation, and
Speaker 3: the income was huge. The income was big. He says
Speaker 3: in his book Jerry Jarrett that his share soon reached
Speaker 3: an excess of a million dollars per year in nineteen
Speaker 3: seventy seven. That's big fucking money, especially for one little market. Yeah, seriously,
Speaker 3: that's crazy. Of course, this being wrestling. Eventually, Jerry Lawler
Speaker 3: threatens to break off and go off on his own
Speaker 3: with Lance Russell because Jerry Jarrett didn't boost his ownership
Speaker 3: percentage as originally agreed, past the five percent. So Jerry
Speaker 3: Jarrett says he forgot, okay, he forgot that he had
Speaker 3: made that deal with Jerry Lawler, and fine, I thought
Speaker 3: you were making so much money Jerry, that I didn't
Speaker 3: think money was an issue between us. But fine, I'll
Speaker 3: up your stake from five percent to twenty five percent. Jared,
Speaker 3: let me teach you something here, Okay, money is always
Speaker 3: an issue, always an issue, exactly. Always pay someone more,
Speaker 3: it becomes even more of an issue. Yep. Now, I mean,
Speaker 3: did Jerry Jarrett confront Jerry Lawler in company with a
Speaker 3: gun over this dispute?
Speaker 8: You know?
Speaker 2: It may be suggested in some places that that happened,
Speaker 2: but I'll leave it at that. As for Nick Goulis
Speaker 2: versus Jerry Jarrett, there's a war in the papers because
Speaker 2: Nick Goulas is still trying to run after Jerry opens
Speaker 2: his own promotion and leaves Nick holding the bag. How
Speaker 2: about this clipping which Jerry Jarrett is more than happy
Speaker 2: to include in his book headline Wrestling Draws four hundred
Speaker 2: eighty four people. This is from seventy seven when they're
Speaker 2: warring against each other. A crowd of only four hundred
Speaker 2: and eighty four attended wrestling last night at the Mid
Speaker 2: South Colosseum, where Jackie Fargo won the NWA Central State
Speaker 2: Crown from the Russian Stomper and other matches. Don Kent
Speaker 2: at George defeated William Stone and Mark Roberts Tojo Yamamoto
Speaker 2: beat Doctor x Pez Whatley and Hank James defeated John
Speaker 2: and Rick Davidson and Crazy Luke Graham and Ripper King
Speaker 2: Collins defeated Don Green and Wayne Petty. The attendance was
Speaker 2: the worst for the Nashville based company run by promoter
Speaker 2: Nicholas since it began encountering competition from a new company
Speaker 2: run by Jerry Jarrett two months ago. Jared Hog will
Speaker 2: be held at the Colisseum tomorrow night at eight and
Speaker 2: then Lawler working for Jerry Jarrett's drawing Big. Here's a headline,
Speaker 2: Lawler draws big against two Well. He retained his National
Speaker 2: Wrestling Alliance out the Southern Heavyweight Belt by defeating Robert
Speaker 2: Fuller before a crowd of four thousand and eight eighty
Speaker 2: seven as opposed to four.
Speaker 3: Hundred and eighty four. That's better. That's better, Alsie. I'm
Speaker 3: also working for Jerry Jarrett. Jim Garvin who defeats Jake Smith,
Speaker 3: Junior Igor defeats Tommy Gilbert, Bill Dundee, and Tommy Rich
Speaker 3: the future Tommy Rich defeated the invaders Rocky Johnson. That's right,
Speaker 3: the Rock's father working for Jerry Jarrett in the very
Speaker 3: beginning here. Wow if he did.
Speaker 2: Pat McGinnis, David Schultz, Doctor Dee, who of course is
Speaker 2: about to become well known to Terry Buleigh defeated Paul Orndorf,
Speaker 2: who goes to work for Jerry Jarrett.
Speaker 3: Wow. And Rick and Robert Gibson the future rock and
Speaker 3: Roll Express who got their starret in Memphis and who
Speaker 3: were packaged with the music video by Jerry Jarrett in
Speaker 3: Memphis in terms of explaining what it meant to be
Speaker 3: rock and Roll Express at the time. They retained their
Speaker 3: Southern tag titles by defeating Phil Hackerson and Dennis Condrey
Speaker 3: future a minute Express member right there. Dennis Condrey, so
Speaker 3: big talent for Jerry Jarrett at this point in time. Now,
Speaker 3: Buddy Fuller, Yes, after having been smarted out of the
Speaker 3: territory in nineteen sixty, finding his way back in in
Speaker 3: seventy seven when Jerry Jarrett won the Power Struggle. Do
Speaker 3: you think he's content to just sit back and collect
Speaker 3: a percentage of Jerry Jarrett's success? Absolutely? What I mean,
Speaker 3: why why wouldn't you.
Speaker 2: Be Suddenly he starts, according to Jerry Jared in his book,
Speaker 2: making noise about wanting to open up Ohio.
Speaker 3: Brother with who you ask with who? Well, we turned
Speaker 3: to Jerry Jeard's book again. Oh boy.
Speaker 2: He went on to explain, Fuller came to the house
Speaker 2: one day and told me that he had the itch
Speaker 2: to be involved in the wrestling business again. He went
Speaker 2: on to explain, now he's involved in the business and
Speaker 2: that he collects this passive, passive income right, but he's
Speaker 2: not promoting actively. He's just Jerry Jeork's business partner. Jerry's
Speaker 2: running all of Memphis. But suddenly Buddy Fuller wants to
Speaker 2: do something more hands on. He went on to explain
Speaker 2: that our business was so good here in Tennessee that
Speaker 2: sometimes he felt guilty when he got.
Speaker 3: The big checks for doing eppisode. Bullshit, bullshit. I assured
Speaker 3: Buddy that I was not unhappy with our situation, and
Speaker 3: a deal was a deal. I told him that he
Speaker 3: had stood by me when it counted, so I was happy.
Speaker 3: Buddy then told me his plan. He said that if
Speaker 3: I would help get television in Ohio, he and Louis
Speaker 3: Tillette would move there and run the business Jesus Christ.
Speaker 3: His plan was to used some of the Tennessee talent
Speaker 3: to get started, but he and Louie would start producing
Speaker 3: television and generate income so he could send me a
Speaker 3: check the other way. Said it sounded good to me.
Speaker 3: I began making calls. I not only made calls, but
Speaker 3: by networking with my existing station managers and a couple
Speaker 3: of trips to Ohio, I had television time in Cincinnati, Columbus,
Speaker 3: and one small market I can't recall. I also booked
Speaker 3: three buildings in the television markets, Yeah, three buildings in
Speaker 3: the television market markets, and reported to Buddy my success
Speaker 3: and told him to prepare to move. We ran our
Speaker 3: shows about eight weeks and booked the first tour of towns.
Speaker 3: Buddy and Louis moved to Ohio and found a couple
Speaker 3: of spot shows so the crew had a full week.
Speaker 3: And imagine that Boss Louis Tillette. He's just moving all around.
Speaker 3: He's in Atlanta, he's in Ohio, and then he comes
Speaker 3: to Alabama. That's insane. Buddy and Louis moved to Ohio,
Speaker 3: found a couple of spot shows, so the crew had
Speaker 3: a full week. At the time, we were drawing huge
Speaker 3: gates in Tennessee, so I had no trouble booking a
Speaker 3: good card and still left more than enough talent to
Speaker 3: keep the houses good in Tennessee. I sent superstar Bill
Speaker 3: Dundee to handle the matches and to the cards. Bill
Speaker 3: had served as my assistant booker, so he was very capable.
Speaker 3: After the first event in Ohio, Dundee called me and said, Boss,
Speaker 3: I don't know exactly what's going on here. I don't
Speaker 3: know full of well enough to know if he's joking
Speaker 3: or not. But if he is not joking, we're in trouble.
Speaker 3: I asked the source of his concern. Bill advised that
Speaker 3: the house was ninety percent full and Buddy had come
Speaker 3: to the dressing room looking very concerned. So Bill asked him,
Speaker 3: what's the trouble mate. Bill said Buddy had told him
Speaker 3: that he and Louie had not hired enough security, and
Speaker 3: he found a door in a hall and hundreds of
Speaker 3: people were streaming in before he could get the door
Speaker 3: closed and a guard stationed on the door. Bill laughed
Speaker 3: and advised, I've not heard this one since my early
Speaker 3: days in Australia. Wow. I told Bill, thanks for the
Speaker 3: heads up and keep me posted. Bill would call me
Speaker 3: after each event and give me his estimate of the gates.
Speaker 3: At the end of the tour, I had still not
Speaker 3: heard from Buddy. At the beginning of the next week,
Speaker 3: Buddy called to say that he and Louie were not
Speaker 3: coming home for a couple of weeks because they had
Speaker 3: a lot of work to do in preparation for the
Speaker 3: next week's show and to begin lining up future towns.
Speaker 3: I asked Buddy how the towns had done, and he
Speaker 3: said not very well.
Speaker 4: Mmm.
Speaker 2: He said he was not concerned because he knew it
Speaker 2: would take a lot of work to build the towns
Speaker 2: where they would be profitable. I told Buddy that the
Speaker 2: guys would have to be paid, so I had to
Speaker 2: have the money before Friday. Buddy asked if I would
Speaker 2: front the payroll this week because he really needed to
Speaker 2: stay in Ohio. I told him we could, but I
Speaker 2: had to know the exact amount of the gates. Before
Speaker 2: I could figure out the payroll, Buddy gave some excuse
Speaker 2: about Louis having the reports and that he would call
Speaker 2: me the next day. I began to get concerned about
Speaker 2: Bill Dundee's warnings. The next morning, Buddy called and gave
Speaker 2: me the amounts of the gates. The amounts Buddy gave
Speaker 2: me were less than half of Bill's guests Bill Dundee's guests,
Speaker 2: and this threw up a very red flag. Wrestlers are
Speaker 2: amazing at their ability to guess the gates in wrestling. Yes,
Speaker 2: of course, they got paid in those days based on
Speaker 2: the gate, and most had worked for dishonest promoters. I
Speaker 2: could understand if Bill was off by ten percent, even
Speaker 2: twenty percent, but I was sure he was not off
Speaker 2: by fifty percent. I got on the phone began calling
Speaker 2: each building manager myself. I told him to please not
Speaker 2: report my call to Buddy Fuller, a Louis Tilley, simply
Speaker 2: because I was trying to determine if they were honest people.
Speaker 2: Louis Toillette, Buddy Fuller, honest people.
Speaker 3: He's wondering. I mean, come on, you should know better.
Speaker 3: The guy who took Hulk from Ron Fuller and Louis
Speaker 3: Tillett is wondering if Ron's daddy and Louis are honest people. No,
Speaker 3: the managers felt they were dealing with me because I
Speaker 3: had signed the contract rental agreements. Each one faxed me
Speaker 3: their box office report. Sure enough, Build and d was
Speaker 3: almost dead on for all except two of the gates,
Speaker 3: and he was off by about ten percent high on
Speaker 3: that one and ten percent low on the other. Buddy's
Speaker 3: numbers were about half the box office reports. I was
Speaker 3: much more hurt than I was mad. So you understand here,
Speaker 3: You understand this. What's happening here is they're making all
Speaker 3: kinds of money, and Buddy's saying we're not making a
Speaker 3: lot and putting write the rest in his pocket. That's
Speaker 3: what Jerry is in insinuating here. I had sent Buddy
Speaker 3: Fuller tens of thousands of dollars each month since we
Speaker 3: went in business. His share of the month we were
Speaker 3: in was almost eighty grand. I drew up our divorce
Speaker 3: papers and waited for him to call me. He said
Speaker 3: he wanted me to meet him at Shoney's Restaurant in Hendersonville.
Speaker 3: This seems strange because my house was only ten minutes
Speaker 3: from Shoney's. I put the fat box office report and
Speaker 3: a folder along with the papers I had drawn up
Speaker 3: to separate our partnership. I met Buddy and acted as
Speaker 3: if all was well. He began to pull his reports
Speaker 3: out and go over each one. I asked why there
Speaker 3: was no backup documentation with the reports. He claimed he
Speaker 3: did not know they were necessary. I calmly explained that
Speaker 3: our uncle Sam did not want to have to take
Speaker 3: our word, and that we would have to have a
Speaker 3: box office report attached. He went to reach town report
Speaker 3: and then began pulling out a bunch of wadded papers
Speaker 3: that he claimed were receipts for expenses for himself and Louis.
Speaker 3: He then tried to hand me a check for twelve
Speaker 3: hundred dollars in change. I didn't take the check. I
Speaker 3: stared at Buddy and told him how hurt I was
Speaker 3: that he would steal from me at the first chance.
Speaker 3: I'd expected him to at least to pull a macho
Speaker 3: bluff and raise hell about me calling him a thief.
Speaker 3: But there was nothing, not a word. He just looked
Speaker 3: down at the table. I then folded opened my folder
Speaker 3: and pushed the box office reports across the table and
Speaker 3: told him that the managers had faxed them to me.
Speaker 3: Still nothing, not a word. I then pushed the contract
Speaker 3: in front of him and said he had two choices.
Speaker 3: He could accept my offer to settle our partnership, or
Speaker 3: we could just have a winner takes all for the territory.
Speaker 3: Not a single word but he picked up the pin.
Speaker 3: A winner take all for the territory. Yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 3: guess he means I'll run an opposition to you, and
Speaker 3: I went all the fans over and you'll have to close.
Speaker 3: Not a single word, but he picked up the pin
Speaker 3: and turned to the last page and signed his name
Speaker 3: on the line. I told him that I would make
Speaker 3: new reports based on the box office reports, and I
Speaker 3: would deduct the wrestler's pay, insurance and my half from
Speaker 3: his money due from today back to the start of
Speaker 3: the month. I slid out of the booth and stood
Speaker 3: by the table for a moment. I asked, buddy, did
Speaker 3: he not have anything to say? Finally looked up from
Speaker 3: the table and simply said, I'm sorry. My partnership ended.
Speaker 3: The only person I called to report the situation was
Speaker 3: Eddie Graham, who of course had suggested that he worked
Speaker 3: with Buddy Fuller in the first place. Oh, maybe that's
Speaker 3: what that commissioner member was talking about, boss when he
Speaker 3: said things that were not in the best interest of
Speaker 3: wrestling were happening under Buddy Fuller's launch. Oh maybe did
Speaker 3: that description of the discrepancy and ticket counting and these
Speaker 3: floods of people who got in without paying sound familiar
Speaker 3: at all to you? Yeah, sounds like kind of what
Speaker 3: Bob rup was alleging Ron Fuller was doing. And yes, yes,
Speaker 3: turned back to Bob's podcast quickly, just to close that
Speaker 3: loop as he describes. And you tell me if this
Speaker 3: doesn't sound like the exact same playbook that Jerry Jared
Speaker 3: alleges Buddy Fuller was running.
Speaker 5: Mom was sitting at a table.
Speaker 3: He's describing the ticket takers in Knoxville, a mother and
Speaker 3: daughter combination. Think you have for lunch that day?
Speaker 2: I know, I didn't realize how I played it, that
Speaker 2: I had to set this up. So remember, his whole
Speaker 2: allegation is that he personally observed people who were collecting
Speaker 2: the ticket money for Ron Fuller in Knoxville putting some
Speaker 2: in their pocket and not reporting it as having been
Speaker 2: tickets sold. And then there's this big blow up with Ron,
Speaker 2: who claims that not only did these people, did he
Speaker 2: know these people well and they were incapable of doing
Speaker 2: such a thing. But Ron also claims that in fact,
Speaker 2: he wasn't even involved in deciding who collected tickets and
Speaker 2: took tickets and took ticket money at this particular building
Speaker 2: in Knoxville anyway, that the coliseum handling them, we went
Speaker 2: through all that shit. I'm reaching the limits of my
Speaker 2: interest in this thing. But if we're going to talk
Speaker 2: about out the history with Jarrett and Fuller and going
Speaker 2: back and forth and exchanging Hull cog and it might
Speaker 2: be important to understand. So back to Bob Roup describing
Speaker 2: what he observed in seventy nine in Knoxville while Hogan
Speaker 2: was working over on the Gulf Coast side.
Speaker 5: Mom was sitting at a table. There was a mother daughter,
Speaker 5: ticket taker, ticket seller. Mom sold tickets sitting down. She
Speaker 5: was an older woman, made sense. The daughter stood up
Speaker 5: about ten feet behind her, and there was a like
Speaker 5: a container beside her, one of those things you can
Speaker 5: stick tickets into that's supposed to count the tickets. So
Speaker 5: Mom would sell the tickets and the daughter would take them.
Speaker 5: She would tear the tickets, hand it to the guests,
Speaker 5: to the spectator, and then put the torn half in
Speaker 5: the machine.
Speaker 3: So I'm watching and.
Speaker 12: She does that.
Speaker 5: She takes she takes the tears. Party I think of
Speaker 5: three came in. She took all three tickets and tore them,
Speaker 5: and then a couple of people went by. She took
Speaker 5: the tickets and just told them to go on in.
Speaker 5: She didn't tear them, and she got one her right hand.
Speaker 5: She's holding something in her right hand, you can see it.
Speaker 5: She tears a couple more tickets, and then another two
Speaker 5: or three come by, and she doesn't well. I went
Speaker 5: on for about oh no, I watched for about five minutes,
Speaker 5: and she tore her stay. She tore fifteen tickets, well,
Speaker 5: seven or eight. She didn't tear single tickets. So after
Speaker 5: there was a lull in people coming in. She walked
Speaker 5: up to the desk or her mom was selling. She
Speaker 5: laid down on the desk on the side of her that.
Speaker 5: Uh boy, she could put her hand right hand right
Speaker 5: in front of her mom. But she put her hand
Speaker 5: on the table and her mother reached out almost. I thought,
Speaker 5: my boy, she want to hold hands with her, And
Speaker 5: the daughter opened her hand. As soon as she pulled
Speaker 5: her hand away, Mom's hand was there and Mom all
Speaker 5: of a sudden has something in her hand. So I'm
Speaker 5: watching now. What happened was that it looked like were
Speaker 5: double selling ticket. So or two weeks later we had
Speaker 5: a show and the other one't azard. We had one
Speaker 5: in Orland. I was the area of the building where
Speaker 5: I could see it, and the same thing.
Speaker 3: So I went to Ron.
Speaker 5: I went to Ron four, so.
Speaker 3: Get you get the who's going to do? It's not
Speaker 3: like it's going to continue like he does.
Speaker 2: But that gets a the whole thing of like, you know,
Speaker 2: he confronts him and Ron Fuller would look him in
Speaker 2: the eyes and then he does this whole thing about
Speaker 2: you know, I know body language. And Ron was given
Speaker 2: all the red flags of no one what I was
Speaker 2: talking about and wouldn't look at me and all that.
Speaker 2: But so it's the similar method, right, It's like the
Speaker 2: whole significance is when you tear a ticket and put
Speaker 2: it in the thing, that's that's a sold ticket that
Speaker 2: they have evidence of. But if you never put one
Speaker 2: half of the ticket in there, you can take the
Speaker 2: money for that ticket put in your pocket and there's
Speaker 2: no proof because that ticket wasn't torn, so it doesn't
Speaker 2: look like it was sold right, and that was the scam.
Speaker 2: And it's both sides, it's every side that alleges something
Speaker 2: similar happens. So I just thought that was unbelievable that
Speaker 2: like that, that Jarrett essentially alleges the Fuller is a
Speaker 2: different Fuller did the same thing to him, or at
Speaker 2: least presided over the same thing.
Speaker 3: Happening to him. I don't know, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 7: So that's Uh.
Speaker 3: Those are the people that Hull Hogan is working with
Speaker 3: in the earliest days of his precocious career. This is
Speaker 3: these are the characters that are all around on all sides.
Speaker 3: Makes you think, oh, maybe you know, like who is
Speaker 3: he makes you wonder why he's getting a little nervous right,
Speaker 3: makes you want to way he thinks the wrestling business
Speaker 3: is primarily, you know, populated by people that are looking
Speaker 3: to skim money off of you and fuck you every
Speaker 3: way they can. So let's hear it from Jerry Jarrett's
Speaker 3: lips directly. Yeah, he did a shoot interview along extended
Speaker 3: one that I'd highly recommend with Hannibal before his passing
Speaker 3: at his home in Tennessee, talking about a lot of
Speaker 3: this stuff, and of course in particular the arrival of Hulk.
Speaker 3: Some of this will kind of retread that the passage
Speaker 3: we read from the book when Hulk comes to visit
Speaker 3: has the whoppers and stuff, but there's a bit more
Speaker 3: to to chew on and it's always great to hear
Speaker 3: the voices come to life. So here from the Hannibal
Speaker 3: shooting interview, Jerry Jarrett talking about Louis till that's involvement
Speaker 3: in Hulk coming in.
Speaker 10: Louis to limb or on a book. Are down in
Speaker 10: Florida and Louie called me and said, Jerry, I've got
Speaker 10: this kid down here that is big and looks like
Speaker 10: Charles Atlas and but he can't wrestle. But I think
Speaker 10: if you would spend some time with him, you turn
Speaker 10: him into a talent. So I told Louis send him up,
Speaker 10: and when he got there, when he arrived at my house,
Speaker 10: I thought, Holy cal didn't describe this guy. I mean,
Speaker 10: he was the most impressive person I'd ever seen. So
Speaker 10: we did that. I call my production people and we
Speaker 10: did that first video where we started at his feed pan,
Speaker 10: the camera had him pose and.
Speaker 4: He just.
Speaker 10: You know, there's a funny thing about a wrestler, and
Speaker 10: you've probably experienced this. Most people when they start out
Speaker 10: in the business are pretending to be a wrestler and
Speaker 10: then something snaps in their head and they go, I
Speaker 10: am a wrestler. Hogan, that didn't snap in his head,
Speaker 10: Oh my god, until he left here here he was
Speaker 10: pretending to be arrest and of course he was learning.
Speaker 10: I think he might have been when Vince Senior first,
Speaker 10: when I sent him from here up there haven't snapped yet,
Speaker 10: and I think that's what Senior noticed. You know, he
Speaker 10: don't really think of himself as a wrestler. I think
Speaker 10: it happened when he was overworking for Verncarna. I think
Speaker 10: it dawn know him I am a wrestler.
Speaker 3: So it does not dawn on Terry Bulay that he's
Speaker 3: a wrestler until like nineteen eighty one. Well, brother, exactly,
Speaker 3: talk about a concerning remark a wrestler, dude, we don't
Speaker 3: vout what he's enough of a wrestler to play people
Speaker 3: off each other for a better payday, that's for sure.
Speaker 3: How about the name the Hulk, So who came up
Speaker 3: with that? Jerry?
Speaker 13: Is it you?
Speaker 9: And when he came here, he was known as Terry Boulder.
Speaker 9: And I think you gave him the name of the Hulk.
Speaker 3: Is that true? Yes, he was.
Speaker 10: His room name is Terry Bullay and he introduced himself
Speaker 10: as Terry Boulder. And then when we did that interview,
Speaker 10: I said, I think we're going to call you at
Speaker 10: the Hope. And he said, well, I don't want to
Speaker 10: get in trouble with comic book comic book character. And
Speaker 10: I said, now, as long as you don't call it
Speaker 10: yourself the incredible hup. Hull is a descriptive attitude, he said, okay,
Speaker 10: so we just called him the.
Speaker 3: Houp an adjective. Okay, you don't. You don't have a
Speaker 3: hulk muscle, or a Hulk car or a hulk house.
Speaker 3: It's not an adjective. Check check the adjective. It's Kevin
Speaker 3: Nash's definition. Maybe, but okay.
Speaker 2: So to hear Jerry tell it, he gave him the
Speaker 2: name Hulk when they came up with the fucking vignette
Speaker 2: in the basement or even though he's being advertised as
Speaker 2: Hulk in Alabama for months and newspapers before this. And
Speaker 2: he also says that Hulk himself voiced concern about the
Speaker 2: copyright implications of using the name. So again, maybe Hulk
Speaker 2: gives Jared the nod here of coming up with it
Speaker 2: because he's the one willing to accept the blame for
Speaker 2: violetting copyright. What did you know we talked about the whoppers?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: Yes, I'm left wondering what did Terry Boley leave behind
Speaker 2: after consuming all that burger king in Jerry Jarrett's kitchen.
Speaker 3: You know, Oh, I think is toilet toilet, something in
Speaker 3: the category of essence left behind? Jerry?
Speaker 4: What? What?
Speaker 3: What did he leave behind? After they did leave and
Speaker 3: he was went, it was wet, it was wet already
Speaker 3: and he was went. This is before he.
Speaker 10: Got ready for the shoe, and my wife went and
Speaker 10: brought him a towel. And then after it was all
Speaker 10: over and they left, she said, I've never seen anybody
Speaker 10: sweat like that chair he was sitting in was win. Well.
Speaker 10: I don't know what that condition is. I don't know
Speaker 10: if it's steroids caused the shoe to sweat nerves or
Speaker 10: I don't know what it was for. He hes sweated
Speaker 10: a lot.
Speaker 3: I mean, he had six fucking whoppers. It's making meat sweat,
Speaker 3: meat sweats. What what was he Jerry, And he was wet.
Speaker 10: He was wet and he was webb.
Speaker 3: I saw he was wet, and Pussy was wet good
Speaker 3: in the cream all and my watch, Pussy was wet
Speaker 3: when she saw him wet he was, he was weat.
Speaker 3: Oh my god, he was waging. Even then he got
Speaker 3: that detail out of it. Oh oh he was wad.
Speaker 3: But look he was writing so hard that he know
Speaker 3: how my he would sweat. It was course, of course
Speaker 3: when he was in the ring, he'd be like two
Speaker 3: minutes into the match and his hair is stringy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 3: those yes, come on, those were the fucking days that
Speaker 3: it was fucking crazy. But I mean for doing nothing though,
Speaker 3: that's the thing. He did nothing. He did nothing, and
Speaker 3: he was waant. I love also heard that. I don't
Speaker 3: know if I ever heard the word wet with two
Speaker 3: syllables waat and he was wimped wm h fucking Jared's Jarrett.
Speaker 3: I'm I'm left and awe just I just picture him
Speaker 3: leaving this puddle. Oh yeah, I mean I listen, like
Speaker 3: every step he takes like just a little couple of droplets.
Speaker 3: Oh he was waat. They're on their way to wrestle
Speaker 3: Oh my god, Terry and Eddie are on their way
Speaker 3: up to Memphis to give this thing a shot. And uh,
Speaker 3: before we leave, Jerry, or at least uh these clips,
Speaker 3: we got to get to a couple of things. Okay, First,
Speaker 3: I would ask you to read this passage. This is
Speaker 3: from Hogan's second book. They're on the road bus and
Speaker 3: they're headed to Memphis. Heading to Memphis, way we get wet.
Speaker 3: So Bruce and I drove to Memphis with this one
Speaker 3: night to wrestle as the Boulder Brothers, and we put
Speaker 3: on a hell of a show. I know because Jared,
Speaker 3: Because Jared and Lawler pulled me aside immediately after the
Speaker 3: Mattress City. Terry, we wanted to come up work work here.
Speaker 3: I told him I couldn't. I was committed to the
Speaker 3: Alabama territory, you know. Louis to Ledgid giving me a
Speaker 3: break when I really needed it, and I couldn't let
Speaker 3: him down. Then they asked me how much money I
Speaker 3: was making one five a week. I said, well, we'll
Speaker 3: give you eight hundred dollars or a week guarantee. Oh
Speaker 3: I was shocker. So I wasn't as much of a
Speaker 3: mark as I used to be. But I wasn't totally
Speaker 3: disloyal either, So I played real cool and I told
Speaker 3: him I needed to get back and talk to Tilled
Speaker 3: about it. I'm not exactly what I did. I went
Speaker 3: back to Alabama and confronted to let you know, I'm
Speaker 3: rustled seven days a week for you and bolder brothers
Speaker 3: were making a name and drawing audiences. How come I
Speaker 3: only making one to seventy five tops. His response that
Speaker 3: all the year worth and all you desire. So I
Speaker 3: hit him with the eight hundred a week guarantee. I've
Speaker 3: just been offered Memphis and said, Ed and I were
Speaker 3: leaving and just about shit a brick, and he called
Speaker 3: Jared Lawler Memphis Screening. How come you ste your talent?
Speaker 3: I did you a fair for one night, and this
Speaker 3: is what happens. How can you do this? So I
Speaker 3: thought he was in on funneling these guys. You know,
Speaker 3: he was pissed, dude. It didn't matter. You know, Bruce
Speaker 3: and I already had one foot in the van at
Speaker 3: that point. We were on our way to the big
Speaker 3: time and we knew it. You know, the offer came
Speaker 3: at the perfect moment because just as we were rolling
Speaker 3: to Memphis, the motor blew out of the gold van.
Speaker 3: You know, not only was that was that van our home,
Speaker 3: but it was it was the only transportation we had
Speaker 3: to get to wrestling gigs. No one flew in those days,
Speaker 3: and the matches were all over the place. Boss. I'm
Speaker 3: left to wonder, did Jerry just grab Hulk just to
Speaker 3: fuck Louis Toilette for being involved that? I would love that.
Speaker 3: I would love that. We have to consider the possibility,
Speaker 3: you know, like it was Splitsville because he was like,
Speaker 3: fuck these two you know me in Ohio totally and
Speaker 3: they're they're doing well with this Hulk guy down there.
Speaker 3: Let me see what I can do about doubling his money. Yep,
Speaker 3: I believe that quadrupling his money actually more like it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 3: Memphis Territory. You know, it'll be a two hundred mile
Speaker 3: drive to Nashville and one night than two hundred and
Speaker 3: fifty miles to two below Mississippi the fix, you know,
Speaker 3: the next followed by Evans, Indiana, nine hours away. The venues.
Speaker 3: You were never lined up up in a road to
Speaker 3: make it easy. Nobody planned like that, so you were
Speaker 3: literally all over the map. You imagine if the van
Speaker 3: had broken down. While we were broken living in the beach,
Speaker 3: what would he had done? As soon as we rolled
Speaker 3: into Memphis, Jared took me straight out and bought me
Speaker 3: a big green Lincoln Continental. I'll pay him back for it,
Speaker 3: but he was more than happy to front me the money.
Speaker 3: He treated me like his like one of his own
Speaker 3: right away, and since he was paying me eight hundred
Speaker 3: dollars a week, I didn't need a van of sleeping anymore.
Speaker 3: As I started rising to Memphis, Jared asked me to
Speaker 3: go to go on TV now and then to promote matches.
Speaker 3: And I go certainly talk the talk. You know, all
Speaker 3: after all those years listening to Dusty Rhoads and interacting
Speaker 3: with audiences and all those bands, I was a natural.
Speaker 3: I also said, hey, brother in that real Hulk Cogan
Speaker 3: style stuff quite yet, but I could say, Hey, this
Speaker 3: is Terry Boulder, and I wanted you to come down
Speaker 3: to the Mobile Civic Center where you'll see the greatest
Speaker 3: wrestlers in the world. One day, I went on a
Speaker 3: local talk show and wound up sitting on air right
Speaker 3: next to Loof for Rigno. That's right, the guy who's
Speaker 3: who played the incredible Hulk, who was all over people's
Speaker 3: TV with his green body makeup. At the time, he
Speaker 3: was a real nice guy and everyone was so impressed
Speaker 3: by how huge he looked with those big, bulging muscles.
Speaker 3: The thing was sitting next to me at that point
Speaker 3: in my life. The guy looked kind of small, and
Speaker 3: that blew Jerry jard away. I got back to the
Speaker 3: dressing room after the show and Jerry was like, no,
Speaker 3: good God, Terry, you were sitting on TV and you
Speaker 3: were bigger than the Hulk that moment on Jerry Jared
Speaker 3: started billing me as Terry the Hulk Boulder wherever I wrestled.
Speaker 3: I would like to know if anyone had the opportunity
Speaker 3: to confront Hulk Hogan about with news articles. I'm sure
Speaker 3: no one did, but the news articles clearly calling him
Speaker 3: the Hulk way before he was there. Fuck that. How
Speaker 3: about confronting him with what Jerry Jared himself said to
Speaker 3: the Hannibal.
Speaker 9: And I've heard you say this isn't true, But the
Speaker 9: way he tells it in his book is you saw
Speaker 9: him on TV. Wa you know who was the real
Speaker 9: hold and you thought you looked bigger than the whole.
Speaker 3: It was that Jerry en it happened. It didn't happen.
Speaker 3: It happened him, that didn't happen. The Terry ba story
Speaker 3: there it is. That's right.
Speaker 2: Well, the Vans loaded up, the deal is made, the
Speaker 2: terms are agreed to. Control of Memphis is now solidified
Speaker 2: under Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler. The Fullers be damned,
Speaker 2: the welch Is be damned, Louis toi Lett be damned.
Speaker 2: Even it seems like and it's time for the Hulk
Speaker 2: of Alabama to become Terry the Hulk, Boulder, brother to
Speaker 2: Ed Boulder, and foil to none other than Jerry the
Speaker 2: King Lawler, and the Shrine of Memphis Wrestling the Mid
Speaker 2: South Coliseum. As we get into what it looked and
Speaker 2: felt like as Terry Bolea takes to Memphis Television next
Speaker 2: time on the Complete Hulk Hogan.
Speaker 3: The plays a production of the Lapsed Entertainment Group. Its
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