Weasel Tales: The Bobby Heenan Archives - Beyond the Ring: Bobby's Journey from Fame to Life Post-Final Bell
Feb 01, 2024
Steve Anderson
When the roar of the crowd fades and the spotlight dims, what remains for a professional wrestler once the dream has been lived? Our seasoned guest, a veteran of the squared circle, pulls back the curtain on the industry in a candid conversation that might just make you question everything you thought you knew about the world of professional wrestling. We venture into his life story, tracing the arc from the exhilarating rush of managing headline events to the somber confrontations with health battles and the harsh realities of job hunting with the scars of the ring.
Throughout our discussion, the stark contradictions of the wrestling business are laid bare. You'll hear about the camaraderie that's more facade than reality, the hidden struggles with pay disputes, and the sobering lack of solidarity amongst peers. Our guest doesn't shy away from the tough topics: the emotional toll of being a part of an entertainment juggernaut, the importance of planning for life after the final bell, and the quest for genuine connections. This is not just a tale of triumphs and body slams; it's a poignant reflection on finding joy and friendship in the unexpected corners of life after wrestling.
When the roar of the crowd fades and the spotlight dims, what remains for a professional wrestler once the dream has been lived? Our seasoned guest, a veteran of the squared circle, pulls back the curtain on the industry in a candid conversation that might just make you question everything you thought you knew about the world of professional wrestling. We venture into his life story, tracing the arc from the exhilarating rush of managing headline events to the somber confrontations with health battles and the harsh realities of job hunting with the scars of the ring.
Throughout our discussion, the stark contradictions of the wrestling business are laid bare. You'll hear about the camaraderie that's more facade than reality, the hidden struggles with pay disputes, and the sobering lack of solidarity amongst peers. Our guest doesn't shy away from the tough topics: the emotional toll of being a part of an entertainment juggernaut, the importance of planning for life after the final bell, and the quest for genuine connections. This is not just a tale of triumphs and body slams; it's a poignant reflection on finding joy and friendship in the unexpected corners of life after wrestling.
Speaker 1:
I got a right to a job so he played soccer and entertainment and movies and wrestling. That kind of stuff was a great life for him. Had there been no wrestling for me, had enough to get as educated as I am, I don't know if I would have finished school. I don't know if I would have gone and included it. Well, I had to coach his family, but I'm not sure what I would have done. I would have liked to know more about computers and what I would have liked to do with YouTube. I could take classes and what, but I'm too old to sit in my ways. I can't be educated anymore. I don't think.
Speaker 1:
It sounds silly and you can be educated. There were women who go to college when they were 70, I know that I still have a retention span anymore. I've been kicking the hitterman kind of bitches so but I don't have desire to be there. But I would like and I wish I would have learned that and been more educated, read more books and stuff like that. But hey, I traveled over to Wendell but I met um close to every kingdom. He was the president was Dan Coyle, who was the vice president of the time. He's from India. Now he's from Manhattan, indiana. I remember he told us he's a man in New York City, the mayor, that he was up a bank with Prudett Hamburg and um, phil Rosudo and just McMahon had a bunch of rich wrestlers there at the table and uh, I stayed a year as he was there in. The president was supposed to be there. This was there in the first Gulf War but the security reasons he couldn't make it, so they brought Coyle. So I introduced myself to Coyle.
Speaker 1:
I started wrestling in Indiana for you people that don't know that who just bummed in this book, um, I and he's from Indiana. I introduced myself. He's. Oh yeah, I remember you. I used to kick the person to kick your butt all the time. I see I'm over-publican this year, but I'm a vice president. I'm the vice president, uh, I'm the president of. George Steinbrenner owns the Yankees for you people that live in a cave, uh, president. I'm president of Evertsville, president of NBC Sports. I'm president of George Slaughter, who produced Laughin and uh Real People and worked with uh, muhammad Ali and Frank Sinatra and everything. I know soupy sale. I know a lot of people. I know a lot of mechanics, I know janitors. I know every form of life. I could have never got that if I had to worry about the Boston Tea Party. So this is, I've got more.
Speaker 1:
I was lucky enough to educate myself, to be educated. What was out there? And I thought I'd tell people nothing was wrong because you have to date. Uh, if I didn't have an education, I'd be in jail and there was no wrestling. I'd have been a bartender or I'd have been the guy that wore them down, the New Year's Girl, the bowler, or something. I said I don't know what I'd have done. I just took entertainment. I thought it would be a radio talk show guy or something. I wonder if you're just joking. One time I realized a long time ago. I couldn't talk and read at the same time. I guess I could have worn that. So I was fortunate.
Speaker 1:
The boy got an education. He had head, proper treatment. He had to have insurance and health and sickness. Christmas I was a young kid, with piss and vinegar and cake and bombs. I was flying all over the place. I'm in the front of you, you're hurt. All of a sudden I'm in the back with some of it.
Speaker 1:
Why you give it to your neck? You can't. Your wife gets cancer twice. I was telling all these bills that come in, you better have insurance, you better have some dang good stuff and you better think ahead about that. But there's times when you can't get it now. I don't want to get a job right now. I didn't get a job. I'm 59 years old. In December in a record, see, I didn't know my big thing, sure how old I am. And who's gonna hire a 59 year old guy with cancer who has? I can't even drive a car. That will turn my head to the right to see traffic because of my neck. The surgery I can tell from the right, not bad. The right, not bad. The right is gonna stiff. I have to treat it in my right hand and I'm gonna bring it in my arm for my owner to know. I can't do physical and pickup work. My knees are bad. My ankle is a check there's nothing I can do to do.
Speaker 1:
I'm kind of like a peck at home. I can't like a 180 pound peck. I like to turn my right hand household. I still spray the curtains every now and then I don't know how to get to the horse and chair.
Speaker 1:
I like to go outside. I like to breeze, not the daytime, though the schools are up, I know what they like. So if I want to look at your pants, like I don't make you run, no, I might go into the bathroom. No, last time when I was seeing you, I don't know, I don't know, and that's why I do. I enjoy the sun, I enjoy Florida. I don't really have any hobbies. I enjoy my friends, I enjoy the laughing, but to get myself to have a job today, I couldn't. There's nothing I could do.
Speaker 2:
Name. Who's not hiring me anyway?
Speaker 1:
No, it's me. I'm the health insurance of 58, my car is from 59. Because of that, I can't do nothing. I have a 7-3 education. I can't do computers. What do I do? I keep checking the cell phone. I'm not working. I can't do it. I don't really know who works with me. Okay, I do. I don't know what's up with you. I don't really know what's up with you. I don't know who's working.
Speaker 2:
I don't know about them. What about, you know, pursuing your dream of wrestling and maybe the first time you realized that it wasn't all as cracked up to be, that suddenly it was real. It wasn't just you know, like you didn't expect this to happen.
Speaker 1:
Well, you know, I was doing wrestling and I knew it and I wanted to get into wrestling but no one knew it. But at the time I was, I got into wrestling. I didn't want to get into wrestling. I would drag you. I was working and I'm a four-dealer in Indianapolis. I wouldn't have sailed on an over-the-cab jacket. I would bring the carriage up from the little hatch, the mechanics and he would get ready for somewhere by a new car. First I'd go wash rack all day, smoke-shake a wreck with a green wheelie and listen to the four chops. So I did, I loved it. I thought I'd never had. I don't know if it was really a good dance and I was working for the championship wrestling in Indianapolis who was promoted by Dick the Bruiser and Wilbur Snyder. I also was a second out-carry jacket student from the ring. I was set the ring up. I originally sold programs at the matches. I would sell coats and air-mission. I had everything in this business you could, except for multi. I did have 10% of a fortune one time with burning on Indianapolis, but it never wrecked the ground, so it never made you mine. It wasn't his fault, it was our fault. It was just we didn't have him on TV. Everything except wrestling a woman. My personal story I wouldn't be sure about, but I did a wrestling woman.
Speaker 1:
So I was working at this place and there were assassins that were wrestling in Indianapolis. At the time they had a manager named Captain Willey. He was a good boss and Rosie didn't like him so he fired him. He called me one day and I was there. He said phone call for you. I answered it. He said I want you to be a channel 4 at 1 o'clock. We did this. Oh, basically, yeah, we did this. Yeah, so I wasn't really begging to get into business. He told me that he was the manager of the assassins. I was dragged in.
Speaker 1:
So I go into a re-vote and everything happens and all that. And it was so exciting because I was working in Indianapolis area, in Williamville, 110 miles. Chicago, 200 miles, hamming, 150 miles, kilo, 75 miles, monacee, 25 miles, fort Wayne 160 miles. My biggest ship was 200 miles and I was making more money than I was making a big car place.
Speaker 2:
Not a whole lot more, all of my money was there for 5, 10, 20 dollars.
Speaker 1:
They didn't work every day of the week, so I was probably making 80 bucks a week to 100, because I was making 60 bucks at the full price after being a Northman. We had to judge the power and they got a piece of paper in the back of our heads that confirmed the man</p><p begin Carson�� Big Ul, unable to see even a bit of his speech, which shows he was on the air, the mussled Various. I was excited and I think when I went to Tennessee the first time with the assassins and we went to hustle Alabama and Nashville and Memphis and did TV and George Blur and blah, blah, blah and they shut the ring the wakes of my head one night and they ringed George Blur and the police had black chips. They weren't even cops, they were American Legion police. They were about 70 years old. Those boys got their heads up. They were about 1700 badges on them. But what they didn't have badges for they had no teeth.
Speaker 1:
And then you know, we were in Memphis in the 60s. I'm managing two guys with white hoods and I can solve anything.
Speaker 2:
I'm in trouble.
Speaker 1:
I got plastic robes in my hotel, rented a tuxedo and white sunglasses. You know, did I win with white meat? They wanted me. And then when I got home they gave me a chip for $40. And I said I couldn't go back, I couldn't afford that. And they said, well, you suspended me. I said, well, I'm going to get this out. And I think when I get that chip for $40, even though they were shooting the lights up over my head in the ring, they said I'm sorry and drink your whiskey. They have shotguns. I think they had Agent Hartley drink the bell. So people came in and told them the bottle was against the wall. Then I went in and sat. Now I'm going to go to the ramp at the home town. So I think that was my first time. Whoa, this thing was cracked up.
Speaker 1:
And then I worked in India and then I worked in Chicago. I was here for a couple years. They never paid me more than $50. The pressure stuck up for me once. How can you get me kid that People were making up that if he was lost, but they never really cared about you. So that shattered my dream a lot.
Speaker 1:
I never had a problem in a ring where a guy of it purposely wanted to hurt me. I don't think I was going to ring the guys that were clumsy and up to that, but that was the most discouraging thing and plus the fact they never respected a manager in business, they respected the wrestling Sure guys. They respected me. But you know what I mean. They always say are you working? In that working major wrestling Managing means I'm sitting in the corner. Are you working and managing? Well, if I'm out there sitting in the corner, I'm working.
Speaker 1:
And at the end of the match I was fortunate to be able to take bumps. I would take probably one bump and a lot of my men took me in the other match and they would get $500. In the middle of it I get two and that's just the way he paid. Well, who made it? He wrestled, he took the bumps. Yeah, he was under for half an hour to four. I was in the ring two minutes or eight, but that's the way they handled it. So I'm a favorite skier for a long time already. I'm still discouraged about that. I also stepped up for more for myself and said I know what my wrestling money was.
Speaker 2:
And.
Speaker 1:
I know what I was and 100 meters not a lot more than me, 100 meters I was in the main event. I wasn't working.
Speaker 1:
I think why would they have me up to half? And those things discouraged me. In two years I always got less than the guys I managed and that's why I wanted to manage different ways of wrestling. So they had to put me in main events so I could make that money. I don't know what the guys that I wrestled, because they never tell you, because I never wanted to know what they'd make, but I found out he made 50 bucks and I made 40 and I made 10. And if I found out I made 60 and he made 50, he'd go big about it. Do you think they're going to give him 50?
Speaker 2:
No, they'll give me 50 and 50.
Speaker 1:
So they were doing just that. So I never said nothing. So that was a big disappointment for me when I found out what they really thought about me.
Speaker 2:
What kept them?
Speaker 1:
up. I was lazy. I didn't want to get up in the morning and go back to getting a beltman and fighting in the morning.
Speaker 1:
I didn't want to go back to working in the spring factory, carry a weak spring. I didn't want to go back to the coliseum and put hockey boards up in a basketball floor. I didn't want to go back to a hardware store and work with a bunch of people that know I can think of. The biggest thing in the money was the big wrench. I didn't want to go back to the Ford dealership and the signal washer. I've seen a really big dance as much as I can possibly. It was a good job for the money and it was exciting. There was a lot of women there and you were somebody for once.
Speaker 1:
I had reached from here. I had a nice clothes. It seemed my mother and my grandmother. That was amazing. I'm a ham. I like to entertain. That was easy. I never became a world champion because I never had the body for it. I would have become bigger, I would have been with Jess and that's what's working out. I'm lazy, I just don't like to do other things. I was a little timid, a little growing up because my best friend is me and my wife and kids and I did trains Basically before I had a wife or child. It was me.
Speaker 1:
So I know me, I know whatever I can, or don't like, I can always find the best things for me. I will never rub from anybody or steal from anybody. Hey, give me that eye. Tell me one time Haley was up there and didn't say hey that was a great foreign salad.
Speaker 1:
When you hear it, it's hated. It was energy, mom told you. Tell me a hyster, her dress looks nice. When you hear it, it teaches you a lie. But we all lie. First thing comes to mind when someone asks you something no, you don't want to look wrong, so you lie. I don't lie about things that will hurt people. I will lie about you have a reservation and I have a reservation to give it to you. Yes, we don't see you here like that. I don't lie about that.
Speaker 1:
I won't lie about anything that will cost you money or position in life or harm anyone, and I won't steal from anybody. But there are just things in life I know I have to do to make it easier for me. So if I don't, I know those people out there aren't going to do it for me. They may like me, they may really like me. They come by every month and pay my mortgage and they don't. So that's where I go by.
Speaker 2:
So at every level of the business, you know there was disappointment for you, Every level of that dream.
Speaker 1:
In managing it was a disappointment. In wrestling it was a disappointment because sometimes I'd be in a match with a guy who made as much as a man of him. I mean I've had, I was working with the Royal Lines and this was me. It was not hard to work with the Ritchie brothers, but then there were some people at WCW that just made going to work. I mean I'll say that we were uncowlable. He wasn't fun anymore. I don't like doing things less than fun. I really don't. That's why I'm lazy. So if you've been working at work 12, 14 hours a day, it's commendable. As a bricklayer I saw movies, movie and other homie times around this country. You know movies, those guys are work hard and they all got long arms.
Speaker 1:
They carry boxes on their backs and heads and everything there. They never stopped working. I could never do that and there are some people that really work hard for the rest of the money that I ever made. But I'm so glad I got into this and get it. But there were so many things that disappointed me about it. Sometimes you wouldn't get a check for months. Then you'd promote your manager because you called me after where my money was. I remember St Louis. I got poor money all the time. So I went to the bruiser one and I said how come I get poor money in St Louis and I'm managing the main event? I'm getting 100, a quarter to a hundred and a half to 200. You got a manager who's making 12 to 1500. He said but Bobby, you're the first manager in the history of the ante and the end button to manage St Louis. I said well, thank you, dick, because next time I go to the club I'm losing $50 worth of groceries and he asks me for the money.
Speaker 1:
I'm going to say whoa, I'm the first manager in the ante and St.
Speaker 2:
Louis, they're going to open the door for me and show me the way home.
Speaker 1:
I still have to pay for the room. So, and you know, you're new to getting into business 20 years of age on that, whether it's 16 or 17 when I really got started You're a great friend. You're like everybody because you idolize everybody. But when you see a man walking on a dress and he's going to have to walk, it takes the edge off and you find out that they really don't like the other guy. Nobody really likes anybody. They don't like each other. They don't like each other. There are a lot of close friends in the business. I have a lot of close friends Mike Tanae, mitt Bastian, jack Lanz, angela Mosker, holly Rage, and if I meet you, I'm sorry, but so many of them John Tolstoy was calling me the other day People have never called me.
Speaker 1:
People have thought we're friends that have never called me, but that's okay. It's just like there's disappointment in life and there's rewards in life. If it was all rewards, everybody would be in it, so that was a disappointment. Instead, it wasn't respect and treating fairly and the pay scale was there was no reason for pay. There was no chart. Everybody had minimum pay for the first couple of matches and the third and fourth or the fifth was better than the main event was better, but they never told you what it was. There was no chart, there was no manual, no book, there was no union. We had no agents.
Speaker 1:
If I saw it from where I had an agent, I thought to myself hey, we're looking. Oh yeah, who talked to him? It just wouldn't work. And because they kept it that way and they kept everybody broke. Because if I wasn't making money in Florida, if I'm living here, I'm going to LA. Well, I mean, you'd make the same money in LA. So why move your family across country? You still don't have to pay for it. You get resins and apartments. Kids are in school. They kept it pretty much loaded. They gave you a grand a week. I said you're very near. I'm going to pick up a movie for you, won't you?