Legends Roundtable Review: The Soul of Wrestling

My contribution to Black History Month as I, unlike Kurt Angle, am a very big fan of "the black people" and I even decided to marry one of them.

Anyway this panel is in the vault and has been for a long time. Not sure if they moved it to the Black History Month section but you can find it on the Network rather easily.

Originally Aired in February of 2009

JR is your moderator and your esteemed panelists are:

Teddy Long (Definitely black)
Dusty Rhodes (Considered to be close to black by some black wrestlers although he teamed up with an alleged Klansman in Dick Murdoch)
Tony Atlas (Definitely black and half of the first black tag champions with Rocky Johnson)
Bill Watts (Often considered a friend of blacks)

-- JR asks Teddy to tell his story. Teddy got into the business around 1984 or so as a hanger on and someone that could help the new guys coming into the Georgia territory. He met Abdullah the Butcher first and was a gopher for him. He would come with Abdullah and help the guys take their ring gear back from the ring to the dressing room. Ran errands for the guys. Didn’t make any money of course. Eventually he met Dusty and Dusty liked him and gave him his first paying job as part of the ring setup crew, which paid about $75/show. Dusty gave him a job as a referee when the ref didn’t show for an event at Marietta, Georgia. He tells a funny story about reffing a Black Bart-Ron Bass Texas death match and they were bleeding everywhere and he tossed the “foreign object” that Bart was using into the crowd. Bart was pissed but the timekeeper made a mistake and they got mad at him about that and forgot about Teddy.


-- JR talks about Teddy being a manager of Doom. Teddy said he rode with Kevin Sullivan and Eddie Gilbert and he would entertain them using his radio DJ’ing skills while they rode and Sullivan convinced Flair to let him manage. He thanks JR as well for his help in convincing Flair, who was against it. First guy he managed? Norman the Lunatic. Then it was the Skyscrapers and then Doom. That’s a pretty nice upgrade of talent actually.

-- On to Atlas, who was a state champion as an amateur wrestler, power lifter and bodybuilder. Atlas said he’s one of the luckiest people in the profession. Sandy Scott saw an article on Atlas in a newspaper and met him during a show at the YMCA. At the time he was trying to get to the Olympics in weight lifting or wrestling. He describes his career as too much too soon. He was in main events with Tommy Rich and Dusty within six months. He says he was his biggest problem in wrestling. He made $1,500 his first week and $75,000 his first year. He said most of his problems were with black wrestlers because when he came into the territory the other black star had to leave. Pistol Pez Whatley hated him as did Skip Young but they made amends. Tommy Rich told Atlas he wasn’t black or white, he was green -- as in he made money.

(They show a promo he cut with Gordon Solie and they are talking about Ric Flair and…holy shit Atlas is MASSIVE. I could see why everyone wanted him in their territory. He looks like big money and his babyface promo skills were solid. He didn’t come across as a badass but more of a loveable babyface that looked like a dude you did not want to mess with.)

(They show clips of a Flair-Atlas match, probably from the Georgia territory. Flair is bumping like a madman for Atlas and even takes a nasty piledriver.)

- Atlas tells a funny story of a promoter riding him around the black neighborhoods in Virginia with him covered in baby oil and posing while the promoter billed him as the strongest black man in wrestling. He hated it but went to the arena and saw the big crowd and starting buying his own baby oil for future promotions.

-- Dusty talks about growing up in neighborhood of mostly blacks and Hispanics. He said Sailor Art Thomas was one of the first black wrestlers that influenced him. He also mentioned Thunderbolt Patterson and how he crafted his promos. Dusty also got his style from listening to the black preachers that came through town each month for revivals.

(Clips of a Thunderbolt Patterson sit down promo with Missouri Mauler and Dale Lewis. You can easily see the similarities with him and Dusty and exactly where Dusty took some of his style)

-- JR asks Watts about his run with Bobo Brazil. He said he did some things to create a racial atmosphere mostly because he was dumb and ignorant. He talked about being drenched in urine going to the ring to face Bobo and causing a riot after he pinned him.

(Clips of a Bobo Brazil interview when he entered Florida. I kind of like his style.)

-- Watts said Bobo was a classy guy, as was Ernie Ladd. He talked about an incident in Baltimore when his tag partner called Ladd the n-word after Lyndon Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act. Watts expected Ladd to get up from playing cards and knock the guy out but he didn’t knowing that he would probably get fired. Watts said Thunderbolt Patterson’s problem was that he fought the culture because he dealt with so much and was filled with so much animosity. Watts said that when he was in charge of Mid-South he looked at the territory’s demographics and saw the black fans and saw how blacks were dominating other athletics but just token blacks in pro wrestling so he wanted to change that. He talks about Ernie Ladd and Ray Candy as the main event the first Superdome card. JR said he remembered when white bookers would call Watts and ask him if he lost his mind for promoting so many black wrestlers.

(Clips of a hilarious interview between JYD and Gene Okerlund with both of them gawking over Wendi Richter and JYD talking about making enough money to pay the IRS…shoot comments that aren’t meant to be shoot comments?)

-- Watts talks about JYD entering the territory. He said he learned of him from Jake Roberts (“only good thing he’s ever done”). Watts talks about Ladd booking JYD with Super Destroyer and ran him tired for 20 minutes. Watts told Ladd that he sent JYD to him to figure out what he could do, not what he couldn’t do…and fired Ladd and Super Destroyer. But hired them back the next day.

-- Watts continues on how it was tough to book black wrestlers against white wrestlers and how many of the houses in Louisiana still had segregated seating (this is in the late 70s, early 80s BTW). Watts partner, Leroy McGuirk, wasn’t happy about all the color in the crowds and the card but Grizzly Smith reminded him that it’s all about the green. And they made a lot of money.

-- Long talks about Ole Anderson being a big racist jackass (you’re shocked I know) and how Thunderbolt Patterson would side with Ole because he wanted to be the only black on the card. Dusty said Patterson’s biggest problem was himself and he blamed everyone else. The panel agrees. No love for Thunderbolt here (Long really hated him).

-- Watts talks about how far we’ve come but how far we need to go and mentions the lack of black college football head coaches compared to the black players in college football. He tells another funny story about Ladd.

(After a break we return with a clip of Dusty cutting a promo about having soul. He was born with soul and so was Tony Atlas daddy!)

-- JR talks about Butch Reed and Koko B. Ware wrestling at Wrestlemania III with Slick as Reed’s manager and having two black wrestlers against each other on the card was more history.

(Clips of the Reed-Ware match, Reed won with a rollover and a handful of tights.)

-- JR asks Tony about winning the tag championship with Rocky Johnson. Atlas said S.D. Jones said they were the only two guys that held the belt and made no money with it. They hated each other and mostly because they didn’t want to share the spotlight. Atlas said he beat up Rocky after Rocky promised to give him a ride to a show and didn’t do it so he would get heat. They lost the belts the next day and Atlas was fired. Atlas puts over Tommy Rich as his best tag partner and his brother. Atlas tells a funny story about trying to do a 500-lb bench press in the ring with Dusty supposed to spot him but Dusty starts jumping around to get the crowd going and the ring is shaking while he’s trying to lift this large amount of weight.

-- Dusty talks about how proud he is of Teddy Long because he wasn’t necessary going to draw money but he was a good guy and he loved the business and never became part of the problem despite all the shit he took. Long said he had many opportunities to sue based on racial discrimination but he just wanted to do his job and not deal with it.

-- Atlas talked about being protected by the promoter George Scott, who was a father figure to him. He told him to always be on time, do what you are asked and stay away from white girls. Of course Tony married a white lady.

-- Watts said he loved Ron Simmons and he had the pedigree of an All-American athlete. He decided to pull the trigger on Simmons winning the title in Baltimore and the people are crying. Dusty said when you go to the FSU football locker room and see Simmons’ locker enclosed in glass you know he’s the real deal.

(Clips of Simmons beating Vader and it’s a beautiful moment seeing that kid rush to the front of the crowd and almost jump over the railing. Looking around the crowd closely there were lots of pockets of people going apeshit. Very cool)

-- Atlas said he’s rode with guys that have showed him their Klan card (they have cards??) but those same guys would stand by him and fight with him if he needed it. He said if you are looking for racism you are looking in the wrong business. Watts slows him down a bit and tells him he was a different guy and everyone loved him because he was just so dog gone friendly. So he was lucky and well protected (probably because he made everyone a lot of money).

-- Watts said he didn’t care about any backlash to Simmons winning the title. JR said he broke from tradition with the NWA lineage and all the white champions. Teddy Long said that seeing Simmons as the champion during their celebration in Atlanta was great because they were friends and he used to manage him. Watts said that at the end of the day it was too big of a burden for him and he tried too hard to please everyone. Long and JR agree that Simmons struggled with the pressure (I wish Simmons could have been part of the panel to talk about this. Hell the WWE should track him down now to talk about it).

-- Atlas said Harley Race tried to convince the promoters to give him the NWA belt several times, naturally Ole Anderson was against it because god knows if it will make money, Ole is against it. Harley fought Atlas in Florida and when the fans thought Atlas won they rushed the ring and Harley left the ring unnoticed, which told him that this guy was a larger-than-life figure. Harley’s favorite color was money green.

-- JR brings up the Nation of Domination, at least later version with Farooq, D-Lo Brown, The Godfather and The Rock. Teddy said it was good for the black fans of wrestling and Ross says it might have been the first black-based faction on wrestling TV. Teddy said there were a lot of black fans of wrestling but they didn’t come to the events because there weren’t many black stars to support. He talks about Doom having the support of the few black fans that were at live WCW events.

-- Dusty said The Rock was going to be a megastar, maybe he was bigger than Austin, maybe not. Dusty goes back to the Nation of Domination and how they took it to the edge.

(Clips of Farooq cutting an in-ring promo with Vince in 1997. I’m a mark for Ron Simmons’ heel promos.)

-- Atlas compared the Rock to Elvis with his unique look and said a guy with that look come along once in a generation. Watts said the Rock had a humbleness about him and always took time to talk to the older guys. He was never too busy to have a conversation with someone like Watts, even though he was no longer a factor in the business.

(Clips of the Rock doing Rock things and making fun of everyone he can find.)

-- They talk about the current black stars (as of 2009) like Shelton Benjamin, MVP, Mark Henry, etc. He said that Pat Patterson introduced JR to the Rock as “Rocky Johnson’s kid”. Ross said he thought he was seeing a mirage, he couldn’t believe this guy was real and the rest is history. Watts says the Rock doesn’t see color and that’s where we all need to evolve.

-- Teddy closes by saying that he’s had a chance to work for everyone on the panel. He wasn’t “the color green” but to sit here with the guys that gave him the opportunity it’s history for him and it’s not just black history, it’s history. Teddy comes across so well in this panel, a super likeable guy.

Bottom Line: Lot of good stuff there. Lot of great stories and definitely worth the hour and 15 minutes of your time if you are interested in such a thing.