From Smoky Mountain To Memphis: A Rookie’s Road Diary

One loud moment can teach you more than a year of training, especially when it ends with “we no longer need your services.” We’re back in 1994 for a stretch of territory hopping that takes us from Smoky Mountain Wrestling TV to the USWA loop through Memphis, Louisville, Evansville, and Nashville, where every town has its own crowd, its own rules, and its own version of what “good wrestling” looks like.

We tell road stories with receipts: working multiple times in a night, getting $30 to $50 payoffs, and chasing reps wherever we can get them. You’ll hear how Kendo the Samurai becomes a main-event spot almost overnight, why the Memphis style rewards a simple brawling formula, and how a flashy sequence that would fit in one territory can die in another. Along the way we talk Jerry Lawler, Eddie Marlin, Jim Cornette, Tracy Smothers, Well Dunn, and the mystery finish from Spellbinder that still has us asking how the scarf turns into a cane right in front of your eyes.

We also get honest about the cost of old-school finishes: chair shots before concussion awareness, the wear that adds up, and the split-second choices wrestlers make when an injury happens and the next booking is already down the road. Plus, we share the kind of legend-only-happens-in-wrestling tale that has to be heard to be believed: a promoter’s dog, a phone booth, and a very creative way to finally get paid.

If you enjoy real pro wrestling history, wrestling travel loops, and behind-the-scenes territory life, subscribe, share the show with a friend, and leave a review so more fans can find it.

Transcript

igar Lit And Story Time

SPEAKER_00 0:01

I am your champion. Oh man, that's classic. I love it. I'm gonna climb that ladder of success all the way to the top. Welcome back for another exciting week. This is gonna be a big week in this podcast. We're gonna cover a lot of ground today. A lot. A lot in this episode. But hope everybody's doing good out there. And before we get started here, I'm gonna I got me a nice cohiba cigar, a Cuban, and I'm gonna light this up. Excellent. Excellent. Excellent. And I got me a glass of sweet tea, and I'm sitting back and I got the book open and I'm getting ready to tell you guys a story. When we left off last time, we were in Harriman, Tennessee. It was May 2nd, 1994, and I was wrestling for Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and it was a TV taping. And I told you the Bruiser Bedlam story about how I was supposed to, or I was I got hit, I got hit. I was running in. I was supposed to run in, and Bruiser hit me and bruised my eye and told him that he wasn't going to do that anymore when we got in the back, and he he apologized. But later on that taping, I mean Anthony, Anthony Michaels, wrestled as a tag team for the first time as ourselves. And we wrestled well done. And well done had come down from the WWE, and they had left up there, and this is what I was told that one of them, I think Steve, had an issue with and got into an argument with one of the secretaries in the office, and they ended up demoting them, supposedly, and sending them down to Smoky Mountain. And then they came down as well done. It was Stephen Dunn and Timothy Well, also known as Steve Dahl and Rex King. Now I love these two guys. Now we had a great match with them. It was excellent. Of course, we put them over on TV, but I became lifelong friends with uh Steve and Rex, and uh they've both since passed on. Steve Dahl, Rex King, Stephen Dunn, Timothy Wells, if you will. But uh Well Dunn was a couple of great guys. Rex was the type of guy that you would call him, and he'd be in Puerto Rico, or he would be somewhere that was tropical and you know, just paradise. And you would ask him, hey man, you know, hey, how you doing when you get on the phone? And uh he would tell you, he would tell you, Well gosh, I've been sick today, and you know, I just I think I've got this disease, and and for 20 minutes he would tell you how terrible he is. And I mean, every phone conversation went like that. But I had I miss my phone calls with with him, and then Steve, he liked to play cards with his girlfriend or wife at the time, and we would talk at night while he was playing cards and talk about the business and talk about Burt Prentice, you know, and Bert's passed on, and you know, I miss Bert tremendously too. You know, I used to call Bert all the time. Now we'll get into Bert later on with all this, but yeah. Also on this TV taping, I wrestled as myself against Tracy Smothers, which I had been traveling with Tracy, but this was as myself, and it was it was a good chance for me to be seen. And it was I remember I got to wear the Hornet Trunks as just trunks. So that was big for me because it was the first time I put it on a pair of trunks just as my myself. And uh, of course, I put you know all three matches that night. I lost all three, putting everybody over, and I made a hundred bucks for it, so that was great. After that, we went to Ashland, Kentucky on May 12, 1994, and we were the main event at Bobby Blaze's spot show, the Infernos versus the Rock and Roll Express, and of course we lost but and made about 50 bucks. But that's the night that I met Bo James in the ring. I had officially met him in Nashville at the convention that I talked about in the first episode, but we didn't have much of a conversation if we had one at all, but technically I met him there. But that night in Ashland, he was the the referee, and we would meet for the first time and have conversations, and that's a friendship that's lasted 32 years. Can't seem to keep this cigar lit, but that's okay. So the on May 15th, 1994, we went to Lebanon, Kentucky at a house show, and me and Anthony wrestled as ourselves against Well Done and Lost and made about 50 bucks there. So we're making the loops and we're working with these tag teams. And then on 526-94, we went back to Shelbyville, Tennessee at the cab company. This time I am myself teaming with Tracy Smothers as a baby face versus the Wild Boys, which were Ben and Steve Jordan. And of course, we lost that match to them, and the pay was about 30 bucks, so it was it wasn't much at all. But at least on this road trip, we got to eat. On the 28th, two days later, the Hornet wrestled Tracy Smothers in Burgey, Kentucky. And that was the opening match in Burge. But I would later come back that night for the first time as Kendo the Samurai on a Smoky Mountain show. Tim Horner was the original samurai. He was on the outs at this point. Jake Roberts had come in and worked an angle on TV with White Boy, and he was doing Jake Robert type things and did not stay long. So he left the territory. And that filled a void. And it was something that I learned early on. When someone gets fired, be the guy standing right next to the booker. Because when he f when Cornette fired Jake the Snake, he turned and literally saw me standing there and said, You can be in the main event. And that's how I started working main events against the dirty white boy. And I was so excited about working with Tony. And I've spoken the past about our friendship and how everything went. And to this day, still good friends with him. And just making friends along the way in the industry, you know, with Well Done, The Thrill Seekers, Rock and Roll, and Dirty White Boy, you know, these guys that that I have had lifelong friendships with, this was just the beginning with them, you know, and sometimes we don't see each other for a long time, but it's like a family reunion when we do see them. All right. Well, what ended up happening next, we decided that we wanted to branch out, we being me and Anthony, and that we wanted to go to the USWA in Memphis. So for the first time, we're leaving Smoky Mountain Wrestling and going somewhere else on our own. You know, we had gone to Shelbyville, but Tracy was with us. So it was kind of like we had supervision. This time we were off on our own. So what we did was this dirty white boy ended up calling Jerry Lawler and putting in a good word for us. And we went to the USWA in Memphis, Tennessee on June 6, 1994. Now, June 6th was just after my June 2nd anniversary. So I had been in the business about a year at this point from the time that I moved from West Virginia to Morristown, and then ended up wrestling, learning my craft, traveling. So about a year later, here we are, and we're venturing out on our own. That night we were in Memphis at the Mid-South Coliseum, and I wrestled as myself, as a babyface, versus Mike Samples. And of course, I lost in that match and made about 40 bucks. So the pay was a little different, a little different pay scale in Memphis. 40 bucks was the standard back then. That's what they paid for starting talent. So we were starting back over with the pay. But later that night, we can't I came back as the Hornet with Anthony and Jerry Faith versus Reggie B. Fine, Leon Downs, and Mike Samples. And then after that, we did a blindfold Battle Royale. So we worked three times. So what happened is the opening three matches wrestled in a single, came back in a six-man. And that was really, really good. Getting experience, doing different things. I was probably at the point in my career where I wanted to get my shit in. You know, you hear you hear people say that all the time. Oh, they're just trying to get their shit in. Well, what I mean by that is that I came up with one new move every match at this point. This particular night I remember with Mike Samples that I wanted to do, he bends over for a backdrop, and I put I roll over, flip over top of him. Reason I wanted to do that was is I wanted to start doing thrill seeker stuff. And to me, a flip over was safe. I thought I could do it, and it was still a floppy move, and I was building towards the other moves. And I and I pulled it off. But we came back in the six man, and then after that, we had a blindfold battle royal. Wow. There was uh about 15 of us in there, and we all had blindfolds on by the name. They were these hooded black masks, and we had to feel our way around, find the opponent, throw people over the top rope before we got thrown over ourselves. And that was my first night in Memphis, USWA. Incidentally, that night was the night that OJ went on the run. We came back, we were staying at a friend's house there that Tracy knew and had hooked us up with a place to stay, which was really cool. Now, she had a little heat with the office, so we had to we had to c fable a little bit of where we were staying. We were told not to let Lawler know we were staying with Anita. And well, let me let me just tell you real quick about Anita. Anita was a sponsor for the boys, and if you know, you know. And Tracy stayed there when he was in town. She had a little trailer and a trailer park, had two bedrooms, very small. But her claim in the business was she was a nurse, and she basically befriended and took care of Carrie Von Erich. She had his robes from the WWE in her closet, and I got to see them, and that was really cool. But as the legend goes, now I don't know this to be 100% sure, but as the legend goes, she was the one that he stole the prescription pad from that he got busted with, which led to the possible going to jail for 10 years and him ultimately killing himself. So it's very, very a good situation. Well, OJ. So we got back, we got back from the Mid South Coliseum all excited, everything was great. We got to work on the same show with Jerry Lawler. I got to work with Lawler in the Battle Royale a little bit, and OJ is making his run, uh, the famous Bronco. And it's on the TV, it's on the news everywhere. And he just like, OJ killed somebody and it was on the run and all this. And I was like, man, it don't matter. I just worked the Coliseum with Lawler. That was all I cared about was working the Coliseum with Lawler. And I thought that, you know, I really was doing something. And looking back, I was because we were branching out on our own with no supervision and taking our craft and saying, okay, we we're green, we know we're green, but we've been working Smoky Mountain, and then we would, you know, work for a new company, a new set of guys, a new set of booker, booking decisions, everything. So we were very excited about that. The next night we were in Louisville, Kentucky, June 7th, 1994, and the Hornet wrestled Spellbinder, and I lost, and I got paid around 40 bucks. But Burt Prentice was Spellbinder's manager. Now, Spellbinder is Del Rios and Phantasm that did the magician gimmick that was the first developmental guy. So he does this deal in the finish. He's a shoot magician. And Bird had this scarf the whole time waving it around. Spellbinder gets the scarf, turns it into a cane, and hits me with the cane. And the cane was hard, it was rigid. The blow was a good blow. I didn't get hurt, but I'm explaining that the cane was, to my knowledge, a real cane. And then he made it disappear, turned back into the scarf, and gave it back to Bert Prentice. To this day I have no idea how how he did it. I have no clue whatsoever. But it amazes me that I got hit with a cane that was as real as I can could be, as it could be. And him in front of my eyes, I mean it goes back into a scarf. It's amazing. It was a great trick, and I and I enjoyed that match, and that was one of my favorite matches. It was very, very fun. The next night, the 8th, we went to Evansville, Indiana. So I'm making the loop for USWA, the Memphis, the Louisville, Evansville famous loop. And in Evansville, I was the Hornet, and I wrestled for the first time Burt Prentice's protege, the Colorado kid. And of course, I lost, made the minimum 40 bucks. But I met Kid and me and him became instant friends. Now this was Bert's protege. There were rumors about, you know, what was going on behind closed doors, but that's none of my business, and I don't care about that. And I didn't care about it then. I liked Bert and I accepted Bert from moment one. And Colorado Kid, whatever his deal was, didn't matter to me, but we became really good friends. Now that friendship would last well, forever, pretty much. I don't talk to him much that, but it's one of those, if we saw each other, we give each other a big hug. And uh shout out to Colorado kid out there, Mike Rapotta. So, you know, hey, if anybody knows him, tell him Brian Logan said hi. All right. The next night from Evansville, Indiana, we drove all the way back to Shelbyville, Tennessee at the cab company one more time, making 30 bucks. And then the Hornet wrestled Anthony Michaels, and he got a win. I got a win at the cab company, believe it or not. The Hornet over Anthony Michaels, and it was great. And then later on that night, the Hornet, Tracy, and Gypsy Joe wrestled the Wild Boys and Anthony bringing it back from the past two weeks or two, from the tag match that me and Tracy had, and the match I had just had with Anthony. And we did a six-man, and of course, we put them over in that as well. So that was pretty cool. On the 11th, I'm back in Morristown for Smoky Mountain Wrestling, and I'm wrestling Steve Dunn, me and Steve Dunn, because Timothy Wells wasn't there, are wrestling the Thrill Seekers in a house show where they were do we did a deal where they said that Timothy wasn't there. And so Steve's like, I'm gonna audition this new this new kid to be part of Well Done. And he might be the third member of Well Done. Well, we go out there and I wrestle most of the match and I take all the bumps for the Thrill Seekers. And when it comes time for the heat, we get the heat on them, and it's mostly him giving the heat to Lance or Chris, whichever one, I'm pretty sure it was Lance. Then we'd make the tag, they'd come in and they'd beat me, and then afterwards, Steve would clothesline me, turn on me, stomp me, give me the boots, and tell him I and tell me on the microphone that I could I didn't make the the tag team. Didn't become one of well done. And we ended up doing this a couple of times. The the next day we're in Beckley. So, I mean, what a what a week. We go to Memphis, Louisville, Evansville, Shelbyville, Morristown, Tennessee, and back to Beckley, West Virginia, and then we ended up doing the same match, me and Steve Dunn versus the Thrill Seekers, which was really cool because my parents were there, and I sold my first gimmick picture. The very first picture of me as a baby face, I sold to a friend of mine and made my first$5 in gimmicks, which is really, really cool. And of course, we lost that. I lost that match, same fashion with Steve Dunn getting on me and giving me the boots, and I made 50 bucks there. About this time, you know, the mag the after mags were coming out, and the Hornet appeared ranked in Smoky Mountain Wrestling for the first time. The Hornet was ranked number nine out of ten, really 11 when you count the champion. So that was pretty cool that my name, or at least my gimmick, was in Pro Wrestling illustrated and in the rankings. So that was something. As a kid, that I used to read constantly, and here it was, I was in it. All right. On 613, 1994, I'm back in Memphis, Tennessee. The Hornet versus Anthony Michaels at the Coliseum, lost, and I made about 40 bucks again. So at this point, I'm working Memphis and Smoky Mountain at the same time. I'm working Memphis Monday through Wednesday, the cab company at Thursday, and then the spot shows Friday, Saturday, Sunday for Smoky Mountain. What a deal. And it was incredible and it was tiring and it was so much fun to drive that long way from Morristown or Beckley to Memphis. And then wrestle and drive that long road to Louisville. And you know, by that time, we ended up going, we loved Louisville, me and Anthony. We would go out and we stayed at exit eight, right across the Indiana border, which was not very far from Louisville. We stayed at the Days Inn, and at the Days Inn, they had a KFC in the parking lot. So the boys would stay there because it was heading towards the next day, but it was still close enough to run back down to Louisville. So we would go to the Toy Tiger. If anybody in Louisville remembers, the Toy Tiger was just a bumping bar. It was a three-story bar, had rock and roll, country, uh dancing stuff. But they had a gimmick where you bought a giant mug for like five or ten bucks, and you would get quarter beers, quarter draft beers. So as long as you had that cup, you would get in free, you didn't have to pay any more cover charge, and you could get like quarter beers. So we loved it. It was cheap. We could get a good buzz and we could relax. Then we would go back to the hotel that would change over in the time zone because we would went into Indiana and we'd stay at the day's end. Now, the boys have stayed there at the day's end for a long, long time, decades. So they asked us at the at the desk, what time do you want us to turn the phone on? And we said, What do you mean? Well, people will start calling you, and you we keep the phones off until you tell us so you won't be disturbed. So we said, Well, I've known. And we're we went off thinking, nobody knows we're here, nobody's gonna call us. Now, this is before cell phones. This is when pay phones were still around. You used calling cards, you know, so it wasn't easy to just call somebody long distance. So everybody we knew was on the other side of the state. So nobody was gonna call us. But lo and behold, the next morning at noon, that phone started ringing, and we would answer it, and it would be girls, because they knew that the boys stayed at the day's end, and they knew they could just call random rooms and find out who was staying there. And it just so happened they got our room. And I thought that was super cool that the girls were just calling and we didn't have to do anything. We just we at this point, we literally go out and and blow off some steam by having a few drinks, and then we come back and we rest, and then the girls start pursuing us. And that was that was incredible, and that was awesome. In Louisville, Kentucky on the 14th. I wrestled as myself against Mike Samples and then came back in the blind pole battle royal as myself. Of course, I lost both of those, made the 40 bucks. We went on to Evansville, Indiana, and I wrestled Mike Samples again, lost 40 bucks, blind pole battle royal, the same match, and that's the deal. You worked the loop. You you you did a gimmick on TV, and then you would tour it around the loop. Remember, we talked about that. So we were having the same match, but the matches were getting better because I was working the same people. We were just changing the town. And where I would add one new thing every match, not 10, not crazy, but one new thing every match, my repertoire was building, and my moves were building, and my matches were becoming much, much better. So the following Saturday, we were in Nashville, Tennessee. That was the 18th of 1994. The Hornet versus Anthony Michaels. I lost, made 40 bucks. But here's the big thing about this night. This is the story that sums up my Memphis experience. So people had been coming to the fairgrounds since, gosh, the 60s, 70s, and they all they had seasoned tickets, and they would sit in the same seats as you would have in most places, but the fairgrounds was something special. So you would have older people that have literally watched for maybe their whole life, 30 years or something, and seen all this wrestling. Now remember that I had been working the Thrill Seekers, I had been learning to catch all of these floppy moves. I was learning and getting more in my repertoire. I was wanting to do what Chris Jericho was doing on the East Tennessee side on the West Tennessee side. So we did a big spot, something like tackle drop down, duck a clothesline, do the backflip over the guy, hip toss, arm drag, drop kick. We did that big spot in Nashville. And one guy, it was crickets, beyond crickets. It was you could hear you could hear a hair drop. And one guy, old man, stood up and said, What the hell was that? And I looked over at him with the crowd being silent and screamed, Talent, not like you've ever seen it here before. We got done with the match. I'm going back to the dressing room. I get one toe over the threshold of the door going into the locker room. Eddie Marlin comes up to me. Son, we will no longer need your services. I had been fired from the USWA. Because I didn't realize because I was green, there's different styles. The Memphis style is much different. And what it is is the Memphis style is a is a fighting battling territory. So the babyfaces usually punch, kick, fight like a heel, but they're over. Like a Jerry Lawler, like Jeff Jarrett. And then the baby uh the heels would then wrestle and try to cheat the babyfaces who would fight them back, and then they would have these big bras. So it was very, very simple, the Memphis formula. And I learned quickly that to do that, that style, and to forget what I was doing in East Tennessee, because it was completely different in West Tennessee. So we ended up the next time basically they hired us back. I had went to I'd went to Eddie Marlowe. I said, I'm so sorry, I'm green. I didn't know what I was doing. I thought I was getting heat, but I realized I was not getting heat. And that, you know, basically I buried us, and please don't fire us, and they hired us back, which was great. So on the 29th, we go to Evansville, Indiana. I am Brian Logan as myself, and I'm wrestling a Japanese wrestler by the name of Onita. And it's that Onita. And it was very cool. And I had no idea who he was, but I was starstruck that I got to work with a Japanese talent who didn't speak any English. This was the first time that I had to go over something and not knowing if the guy could communicate. So we had to wrestle by feel. And we went out there and we had a tremendous match, and we fought back and forth. And this was something as an undercard guy that I really hadn't got a chance to do. And we battled. And then, of course, he he ends up cheating and going over and getting the best of me. So after that, we're back for Smoky Mountain at a TV taping on 7594 in Warren'sville, North Carolina. I was fire of the infernos, and we wrestled rock and roll again. And of course, we put rock and roll over. Then I wrestled with Sean Skyfire that you guys might know as Easy Money from ECW. Easy, give you a big shout out. Hey, be nice if you would get those clothes, the tights that you are on back order. Get them out sometime. Love you, brother. Anyway, we wrestled the Thrill Seekers, and we lost, of course, but we were getting more seasoned, so we got more on TV. We could do more, so it got a lot more competitive. Then finally, I got a title Smoky Mountain title match as myself versus the Dirty White Boy on TV. Now, of course, I had to put over Dirty White Boy, and I loved every second of it. And I made$100 for working TV, working three matches. The next night on July 7th, we went in to Harlan, Kentucky, Bloody Harlan. And that place I had heard about my whole life because my father was in the coal business and the coal mining wars and Bloody Harlan and how rough and tough it was. And you know, there could be a riot. And that was the first time that the crowd could have been so hot that I would have been in danger. That night I worked as Kendo the Samurai in the main event versus the Dirty White Boy. Of course, I put over Dirty White Boy because he was the champion, made it 50 bucks, and we wrestled a great little match where I got a lot of heat on him as Kendo. And that was the thing. Dirty White Boy every time was not giving me squash matches where he would just eat me up. He was showing me how to be a main event wrestler. By working these main events, I had to be a dastardly foe as Kendo the samurai, and get some heat on him. And he was showing me how to do that on a main event level. The next night, July 8th, I was back in Beckley, West Virginia, and my entire family was there. My aunts, my mom, my dad, my grandmother, my cousins, everybody attended this show in Beckley. I was the main event, Kendo the Samurai versus Dirty White Boy. And that was incredible that I got to main event, Beckley, West Virginia, and my entire family saw it, and it was a really good match, and they said it was a good match. And I felt very proud of that moment that I had worked for something. So at this point, as of July 8th, 1994, I had had a total of 61 matches, and it was just rolling on. And that was a lot of matches then, you know. So in little over a year, I had 64 matches. So that's me wrestling at least once a week, even though these were loops. But that was the equivalent of that. Next, we move on on the 14th to Lenore, North Carolina. Same thing. Kendo versus Dirty White Boy, a title match. Lost, and it was a no DQ. And in the match, I the first thing, the first night that we started doing these finishes, we got a chair, and he would take the chair away from me, hit me in the head, and pinned me. This was before we knew about CTE and concussions and anything. And he swung for the fences, and I did not put my hands up. And I took it and saw stars every night, every time we we did this. So it took a toll on my head over the years. Not to get too serious or anything, but you know, there are some issues that go on, medical issues, and I wholeheartedly feel that it was my run with Dirty White Boy in '94 that started all of that with all the chair shots. So I'm glad that the business has changed now, and we don't do that. We don't hit people in the head with chairs because of concussion and because of CTE, because it's a very, very serious situation. On the 16th of 1994, we were back in Morristown, Tennessee, and I was Kendo the Samurai Wrestling Lance Storm. And I lost the match, put him over, made 50 bucks. And that was the night that he decided to do a new finish. He was going to do over the head, belly-to-belly, release suplex from both of us standing on the top rope. And I said, sure, let's try it. And we did it. We worked our way up there. He grabs me, throws me over his head. I'm about 20, 25 feet in the air. Come crashing down and land on my left pointer finger on my left hand side. All of it and bent it back and broke my finger. It was so painful. But it was a finger. So it didn't show. But I my hand, my finger was stuck and it was hurting so bad. And I managed to get back to the dressing room. And I was like, I gotta go to the hospital. My fingers broke. And Cornette came over to me and looked me right in the eye, and he said, Look, if you go to the hospital, which you're welcome to do, you're gonna have a hospital bill to start with. Next thing is they put a cast on your finger. You can't wrestle anymore until that's off. He said, Your decision. You decide what to do. And I decided at that moment that I was just gonna tape it up, rub some dirt on it, and get back in the game. Now later on, I ended up having surgery on that finger to remove gout that I believe was started from that night. It's always crooked and mangled, and there's scars all over it. But that was the first major injury that I had in the business, and it was a broken finger. All right. Next on the 22nd of July, Kendo the Samurai in the main event versus Dirty White Boy, Fairley, West Virginia. And it was a no-dQ match, so we could get the chair in. I lost, made 50 bucks. And here's the deal: it was the same thing, taking it around the loop, getting it going. And the next night, we were in Chilhoe, Virginia on the 23rd. Same thing. Kind of the samurai, dirty white boy, putting him over with the chair, making 50 bucks, just doing the repetitions, just really getting it going. And that was the thing. And that's mostly the way it was. Was we had moved on and we had started making the towns and making them all over the place. And it was great. It was great working USWA during the week and Smoky Mountain on the weekends. I was wrestling seven days a week. And the I had checks from Memphis and didn't have time to cash them. I had checks from Smoky Mountain, didn't have time to cash them because back then there was no electronics banking at all. What you did was is you went to you signed the check in a deposit slip and you took it to the bank. You know, there wasn't any taking a picture or anything like that. And I just didn't have time to cash the checks. So eventually, weeks later, and I had an apartment at this point by myself in the middle of Morristown, and I think we've talked about the apartment, but I was not there. Very seldom was I even there. It just had my stuff in it and these checks. I remember I had a bowl of checks sitting in my kitchen that was just, I mean, if somebody would have broken in, they could have stole those checks. But yeah, I didn't have time to do it. And eventually I got them cashed and put it in my in my bank account. I mean, this was before debit cards. You know, this was when you had to write checks. So I'd take my checkbook with me on the road or cash or get cash out of the uh bank for the trip. And you know, a lot of times we would run out of money because things happen on the road. You get a flat tire, or you overeat one night, or you know, you$30 just ain't gonna cut it and you're starving. Or, you know, you need a hotel room and you can't find one that's cheap. You you so you have to pay a little extra. So we would rely on the help of sponsors, these girls who were generous enough to take care of us on the road, and they would feed us, give us gas, you know, give us money sometimes, and help us get to the next town. And we were starting to make a list of the towns, the girls' first name, and their phone number. And I carried it around in my fanny pack, and we were starting to make a contact list of wherever we went. So we would call, get on the payphone and call, and be like, hey, we're coming to Memphis. I'll see you such and such, or we're coming to Louisville or Evansville or Morristown or Paintsville, Pikeville, whatever. We call whoever. And they would help us. And there's been sponsors out there. I'm gonna go ahead and say her name because I think she's proud of who she is. And Jerry Lynn took care of me, sending me money on the road, which was done by Wells Fargo. You would actually go to a grocery store that had a Wells Fargo, and the person would have to put the money in the system. And you get it out of the other end. But yeah, we were we were stuck in town sometimes, and Jerry Lynn would help me, or she would help me with tights, and she was just a good person and a good friend, and I love her to death to this day. And I'm not gonna mention anybody else's name, but I think she would be cool with that. So I love you, babe. If you're listening to this or you know her, be sure to tell her that I gave her a shout out. So let's back up a little bit. We had talked about Burt Prentice, and we had talked about Timothy Dunn or Timothy Wells Rex King. Well, this is a story that I wasn't there, but it was a it was a very popular story that Rex told me himself. They were in Kansas City, and Bird had this TV show, and the TV wasn't pulling in the crowd that they thought that it should. So they ended up making cutbacks. And I I don't know if they lost the TV or the TV changed stations or something went wrong with the TV, and Bert stopped paying the boys. And Rex wanted to leave the territory, and he didn't have enough money to leave the territory. So he tells Bert. He's like, I need my money, I gotta have my money. Bert says, I'll get it to you by such and such. Such and such date comes, no money. Rex is really telling Bert now, I gotta, I gotta get some money, I'm leaving the territory. Bert's like, well, I'll do the best I can, but I'll have your money on this date now. That came and went. No money. Now Bert had this dog. I don't know what kind of dog it was. It was told to me it was a little white lap dog. Well, Rex decides that he's going to kidnap the dog. So he does. He takes the dog. And he didn't, he was nice to it. He wasn't mean to it at all. And he calls up Bert and he says, I've got your dog. I want all my money. So now he's kidnapped the dog and he has stated there is a ransom. So Bert is just flipping out. Oh, please don't. Oh, oh, that's my baby. Please, please don't, Rex. I love you. I'll give you anything you want. Anything you want. You just name it. And I'll do it. And just I'll get you your money. I swear, just don't hurt that baby. Rex says, I want you to go to the corner of such and such street. There's a phone booth there. The phone will ring, and I'll let you know that I'm in the area. I want you to leave my money in a bag in the phone booth. And I will return the dog. So it happens just like that. Bert goes to the phone booth. He has an envelope of money. The phone rings. Rex King's on the other line. You got the money? Bert. Oh, you got my baby? Do you got my baby? Rex goes, leave the money. So Bert leaves the money in the phone booth and walks out of the phone booth, but doesn't walk too far away. At this point, there's traffic coming. Now I don't know how much traffic. I don't know if it was a lot of traffic or whatever. Rex decides to let this little dog out, and he runs out in the street. Don't worry, he didn't get hit by a car. The dog wasn't in danger. It didn't even come close. But the little dog runs across the street, sees Bert, jumps into his arms, causing Bert to walk away from the phone booth. And then Rex runs over to the phone booth, grabs his money, leaves the territory. So I love that story. I absolutely love it. Rex told me that. Now I don't know if that's true. I never asked Bert about that for various reasons. But Rex did tell me that, you know, firsthand account of how he did it and all that. So it's just an incredible story. The ransom, everything. You know, you got the money. You got my baby. Oh, it's just so funny, you know. But those guys were great guys and they loved each other. You know, Bert told me one time, and we'll get into this later on when I when I go to Ozark Mountain. He said every seven years is a cleanser in the wrestling business. And that every seven years the heat goes away. So you can have nuclear heat, but if you go away for seven years, people will forget about it and the promoters will still use you. So they they spent time away from each other and then would end up working again. I loved Bert. And I used to call Bert on Saturday nights, and I'd tell him, this was much, this was years, years later. I know I'm getting ahead of myself, but I'd call Bert and I would say, I'm coming. He was running Jackson, Tennessee. So this was this was in the 2000s. I know I'm skipping way ahead, but we got some time here. So I'd call Bert and I would be like, I'm coming to Jackson, Tennessee, and then I want to work. I'm coming there and I want to work. Oh, honey, are you really coming? You know, you're welcome. You're welcome anytime. Do you, you know, are you really, are you messing with me? I'd swear up and down. I'll be there. Never showed. Week later, call Bert. Same deal. This goes on for years. And I just kept playing that joke on him. And of course he played along and knew I wasn't coming. But you know, me and Bert had that kind of relationship. And, you know, we first met there in the Memphis territory and working with Spellbinder and doing that wonderful finish. If anybody out there knows Spellbinder, ask him how he did the scarf to the cane trick. And then message me. You can go to wherever you find your podcast, wherever you're listening right now, unless you're on YouTube, and there's the first thing you see in the description is send me a message. Send me a message and let me know if you know how to do the trick, the scarf to the cane. I'd love to know. But also message me if you have anything you want to say, good, bad, or indifferent. We might read them here on the show. But we are coming close to the end here. We got a few minutes left. But be sure to go in and wherever, send me a message if you want to. Let me know what you think. Whether you like the show, don't like the show, you're bored to death, it's not interesting, or you know, whatever. You don't like me smoking a cigar because it takes too long in between sets. We'll see. We'll see what happens there. But let me pull this up on the old Facebook here. And we will be in Kingsport for the summer sizzler on Friday, June 20th at the Armed Forces Reserve Center, 399 Highway 11W, Mount Carmel, Tennessee. The doors open at 6:30. Now, unfortunately, I read the card of the last event that we had were going to have, but unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control, someone had an illness uh in the company, and we ended up having to postpone that show. So the live event, the Summer Sizzler, Southern States Wrestling, June 20th, Mount Carmel, Tennessee. And you're gonna see that the Marty Clay versus Chase Emery, title versus title match. That's gonna be great. Champion versus champion. You're also gonna see the faction, and you're gonna see all the superstars, Mike Mann from Southern States Wrestling. And that again, one more time. That's June 20th at Mount Carmel at the Armed Forces Center. So that's where I'll be on that day, and doing a little production there and helping out with anything that needs done office-wise. Also, look it up on Facebook. Follow me on Facebook at Making the Towns with Brian Logan. And go over to YouTube. If you watch it on, if you listen to us on YouTube, then be sure to click give us a follow. Very important. And we we need as many followers as we can get. Even if you turn the notifications off, because we're trying to get to the point where I can do some live streaming. You know, we're going to Cauliflower Alley this year and big reunion out in Las Vegas. And I would love to do some stuff for Patreon on the on the live stream on the YouTube also, and then put some clips on Patreon. But yeah, go ahead and I got ahead of myself, but click that button. If you need to turn the notifications off, then you can do so. But if you leave it on, it will tell you every single time that we have a podcast. So be ready for that notification and stay in touch. Also, on the Patreon, we have the ride home with me and Dallas Danger. Dallas listens to this program, and then he has questions, and we answer the questions as if we were in the car. We made the towns on this shot, and on the ride home, we rebooked the territory by talking about what we were what went on in this podcast. And it's a little more loose, it's a little funnier, and his questions are pretty good. Just like the ride home from any town asking questions in the car. That's where you really, really learn. And those come out on Patreon. If you sign up for the Patreon, you get them early. You get them first before anybody else. But don't worry. If you don't want to pay, it's cool. I get it. I understand. I would like for you to support the show. But we're not we're not about that. We're not doing this for money necessary. I'm doing this to share my career. And so go to the Patreon. You can still listen. The early subscribers get it early. Three days later, you get everybody for free. And you can listen to the ride home. Also, there are pictures. I'm going to be putting some more pictures up. And one of the things, real quick, that I'm going to put on the Patreon and probably Instagram, Ashley, my wife mentioned it to me last night. We were watching actually TNT on the Peacock. And they had the segment with the bear and Nikolai Volkov. And we were talking about bears. And I had reminded her that when I was in college before I came, I had already signed my contract, but I had to do that semester. I ended up going to the local bar and wrestling a bear. And there's a picture of it. Me locked up with the bear. And so we're going to put that on the Patreon and probably the Instagram. So check that out and check out the bear. Check out any of the other pictures there. And we'll be doing more and more with that as the time comes. So we are at the end. We are at the end of this making the towns. We have made a lot of towns in this episode. And uh we covered a lot of territory. But next episode, we are going to talk about Jim Crockett promotions. When Jimmy Crockett came back and tried to restart the NWA in the 90s, we're going to talk about me getting booked on that TV and everything that was going on about it. And we're going to talk about working for the Crockets. So I hope you enjoyed this podcast. I have enjoyed this week tremendously. And thank you for listening. And remember, I am your champion.