The True Cost Of A 21-Year-Old Wrestling Grind

WCW is paying you, you are barely getting used, and the only way to stay sharp is to keep taking bumps wherever a ring exists. That is the headspace we live in on this Ride Home, as Brian tells the stories behind his 1997 grind, from repeated old school TV matches to the moment he realizes the company does not even notice when he is gone.

We get into the real nuts and bolts of a WCW contract, the politics that decide who gets booked, and the kind of frustration that makes a wrestler say, “Fine, I’ll bet on myself.” Brian also explains how West Virginia wrestling starts to feel like his own territory project, built town by town without TV, and how that work quietly connects to generations of local indie wrestling talent. Along the way there is a reminder that the road can hurt you anywhere, including a freak accident that leaves him with broken ribs in a movie theater bathroom.

Then the swing for the fences: Brian cold-calls WWF, reaches GJ Strongbow, and turns a voicemail into a Shotgun Saturday Night booking, including a full circle match with Al Snow. We also talk gimmick match craft like street fights, Texas death matches, getting color, and why classic feud booking used to be a ladder of escalating stipulations. If you love pro wrestling history, WCW behind the scenes, WWF tryout stories, and the lost logic of the territory system, this one is packed.

Subscribe for more, share this with a wrestling fan who loves road stories, and leave a review with the moment that hit you the hardest. What would you have done in Brian’s spot?

Transcript

Morning People And Show Premise

SPEAKER_04 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. Hello, everybody. Welcome back. I am your host, Brian Logan, and this is the Ride Home with my co-host and best friend, Dallas Danger. Dallas, how you doing?

SPEAKER_01 0:41

I'm doing great. Just uh happy to be here as always. And uh I I got um, you know, we we went a little shorter than normal on episode eight, ride home, but but I feel like I got a lot to get into today. We're we're kind of all over the map again. There's some interesting stuff to get into. But the first thing I've got to say about episode nine, uh, WCW retakes all the way to a WWF tryout, is look at us being mourning people now.

SPEAKER_04 1:15

Yeah, yeah. Who would have thought that?

SPEAKER_01 1:18

What the hell happened to us?

SPEAKER_04 1:20

I don't know. I spent so many decades on the entertainment uh time schedule where I would go to bed at 6 a.m. and get up at 4 or 5 and do stuff. And if I sleep past 5.30, I feel bad.

SPEAKER_03 1:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:38

I mean, I normally get up between 3:30 and 4.30, closer to 4.30. And uh, you know, sleeping in for me now is 5.30 because I gotta get to my puppies.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Yeah, man. I I'm I I'm never the latest I will ever sleep these days is eight o'clock. And that's rare. I mean, I might get that once a week if I'm lucky.

SPEAKER_05 2:02

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 2:03

Most most days I'm up six or seven.

SPEAKER_04 2:07

Um some people might say we're adulting. Kate the adulting.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

Yeah, I don't know what to say to that. I don't either. It doesn't feel right.

SPEAKER_04 2:20

I mean it doesn't feel like I'm really adulting. I'm just getting up to do more asinine shit.

SPEAKER_01 2:27

All right. Well, before I take over, uh you got you got stuff to get to? Do you need to do some plugs?

SPEAKER_04 2:34

Yeah, well, I just want let me explain what we're doing here. I have been in the professional wrestling business for over 30 years, and I kept journals of all the dates, the times, the the opponents, the money, the bumps, and I have a show called Making the Towns where we go through those journals one by one. This is the ride home, and that's kind of that show's kind of like making the the town to get to the wrestling show. Typically, when you make the ride home, you get back in, you toot you with your buddy, you talk, you you rebook the territory, you expand on the night's events, and that's what we do here in a QA format. Dallas listens to the show and he comes up with questions, things that I might should have talked more about, or stuff that I have left

Arn Anderson And Repeated Matches

SPEAKER_04 3:20

out. And that's where we're at now. And Dallas, let's roll.

SPEAKER_01 3:25

All right. So we're starting things off with a bang, episode nine, because it's one of my absolute favorite Brian Logan stories. I don't make it a habit of sort of serving stories up for you when we're in mixed company, but I have made you tell this story to people before. Um it's the Warren Anderson agent story in the high voltage matches you had to do three times.

SPEAKER_05 3:54

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 3:55

Um just what a it's one of those things that you almost had to be there to really understand it and to believe it. You know what I mean? Because I think there's a lot of people that just don't. I mean, not everybody has been to an old school TV taping where they would do that in the first place. Most people nowadays have gone to wrestling shows, and it's every show is like a pay-per-view, whether it's televised or not. It's not every show's a pay-per-view, and you know, most guys only come out once, maybe twice if they're doing a promo and a match in different segments. Um, you know, and and it's it's very it's very regimented like a pay-per-view. But this is this is a this is a a different time we're talking about, and uh just I just love that story so much. Um I I just love it. I I just it it it tickles me every time I hear it. And um, you know, it's cool to hear you talk so highly of high voltage because I don't know that I've heard you talk about them outside of the context of this story. That because the only real opinions of them that are given in the context of the story is Arn's opinion of that that match, right? So it kind of doesn't paint them in the best light. So it was cool to hear you talk about, you know, they were good athletes and they were good guys, and you know, kind of putting them over a little bit.

SPEAKER_04 5:33

Yeah, they they were football guys and bodybuilder guys, and there's nothing wrong with that, but that's one mentality, and that's not necessarily a wrestling mentality, even though there's a lot of football bodybuilder guys in wrestling. And honestly, the only thing that saved them was how good of guys they were. They they they tried. You know, when you told them things, they tried to do it, they just couldn't mentally get it sometimes. But they were so gifted athletes, other times they would nail things. They had a great look. I thought their tights were awesome. Um I was actually a little jealous of their tights. I thought, man, why didn't I think of that? And um they were just they were good guys, but they just they they needed more they needed the territory system. They needed to go to Memphis for about three years. If they would have gone to Memphis for three years, they'd have come back and been world beaters. Um but you know, they didn't have Memphis. I mean, Memphis was still going, but they they didn't do that, they were already there. But you know, you I I know how much money they made, and you're not gonna believe it. They signed as a tag team for thirty-five thousand dollars for both of them combined. That is not a lot I was making twice that um with my WCW money. So, I mean they they had a bad deal to begin with. They just WCW got them coming and going. And, you know, it's just a miracle that they made it as far as they did, and I don't even know what happened to them after that. But and they were they were a little short, Robbie was a little shorter. Um I think they had hopes that they were gonna develop them later on down the line into the new Steiners, which I could see that. But there just wasn't time and and a spot for them. There just wasn't enough TV time, enough matches, and that's something that would develop, you know, over the years because the Steiners stayed there the whole time. You know, Scott Steiner was on the last episode, I believe. Um, I think he was like world champion at that point or something, something him and Booker T had just dropped the bell or something. Anyway, I'm I digress. But the point being is that uh they just didn't have the time and the opportunity.

WCW Deal And Working Indys

SPEAKER_01 8:10

Yeah. So that that's a nice segue into my next bullet point here. Let's talk about your WCW deal.

SPEAKER_04 8:18

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 8:18

Um the the biggest thing I had here, and you you started to go into this on the last ride home, and I'm glad that you you stopped before you got too in the weeds with it because I knew that I was gonna be asking it here. Um were you supposed to be making as many indie shots as you were? Um, was that just something you were like, I'm not gonna sit here and get ringrest, I'm just gonna go do it, and what are they gonna do? Fire me. I I want out of here anyway. Um just tell me anything and everything you want to talk about that you remember about your actual deal, like the the nuts and bolts of the of the of the contract.

SPEAKER_04 9:00

Okay, well, they they paid me a base contract, and then they paid me nightly to work. So I had money, but I wasn't like I said, I wasn't getting the ring time and I wasn't making the the in-ring uh money. And my grandmother had passed away, and I needed to take uh a couple weeks leave um to help my mom and help her with the house and stuff like that. And I got up there and it took it took about a month to get everything sorted. So I was gone for a month, and I noticed they didn't care. They didn't check on me. The money kept coming, and they had they they had no they they didn't give a shit about me at all. So that's when I decided, well, I'm gonna go out and work. I'm gonna go to the power plant, I'm gonna collect this money, and I don't care if they fire me, if they catch me and fire me, um, because I want out of here anyway, because they're not doing anything with me. And this was after Buddy Lee Parker came and gave the you're gonna be nothing but uh beat meat speech, where he told all of us that all we were ever gonna be was meet to be jobbers. And I cried, I was so mad. I didn't cry like a baby. I tears came out of my eyes because I was so mad I was gonna kill him. I mean, kill him. I was gonna pick up a weight, hit him in the head, and kill him dead. And that's when I realized I gotta get out of here. I gotta, I gotta do something. They have no concept of what they're doing here. And that was the same day that they announced that Scott Hall and Diesel were coming and we were gonna get Thunder. And Thunder was gonna be the C show. I'm sorry, it was gonna be the B show. Nitro was A, Thunder was B, and then Saturday night was gonna be the C show. So Saturday night was gonna be for all the rest of us to get over. So it was gonna be a bunch of new talent and new gimmicks, and then he gives that speech. Well, don't get too excited because you're all just gonna be jobbers for those guys. Because you're the shit. So I knew, I was like, this is this is terrible. I gotta get out of here. So I just went out and started getting myself booked again, and they never knew. They never knew whatsoever. Which also included me calling the WWF and saying, hey, I work for WCW, I sure would like to come up there.

SPEAKER_01 11:43

Yeah, and we'll we'll get to that. We'll get to that later in this episode for sure. I've got I've got some thoughts and

Freak Fall And Broken Ribs

SPEAKER_01 11:50

notes on that. But uh for now, let's talk about how you're you're you're you're you're driving all over Tarnation, you're taking bumps all over the map, and you break your ribs in a movie theater bathroom.

SPEAKER_04 12:07

Yeah, man. What luck.

SPEAKER_01 12:10

It's it's it's that old adage that you can travel, like you know, like there's this there's a statistic that who knows if it was ever true or how how you would even calculate this, that that a majority of car accidents people are happened to people within a mile of their home.

SPEAKER_04 12:30

Yeah, yeah, I've heard that.

SPEAKER_01 12:32

You know, it's you're more likely close to home, you know. And I had a I had a friend growing up whose dad traveled for work, went all over the globe, and literally a mile from home, he he got t-boned and you know, got messed up pretty bad. And he laughed for years about that. Right. I just I just flew to Seattle and was on a on a fishing boat in the Pacific Ocean, and I come home and some idiot T-bones me a mile from my house, you know, right down the road. So just one of those weird things.

SPEAKER_04 13:05

And um well, and you know, if it had been any other night, I probably would have drank a case of beer and been shit faced and fell. You know, this was one night that I had literally a couple of beers because we were going to the club and I'd had a steak and we were gonna watch this movie real quick, and then um then go to the club. And I wasn't drunk. I don't know if I got an alcohol rush, I don't know if it was the heat or both or what. I don't know. Maybe I stood up too quick. I don't know what happened, but I know I'm sitting there or standing there, and I get dizzy, and next thing I know, I'm like, I remember this. I was like, I was looking at my arm stretched out, my left arm, and I was like, am I in the floor? And then I was like, oh God, I'm in this nasty floor. I've got to get up. And I sat up and the whole room was spinning. And I was like, oh my God, I gotta get out of this. And I called for help and nobody could hear me. And I was like, I gotta get up. So I grabbed the urinal and pulled myself back up and then got my faculties to myself and went back in and was like, I gotta go to the hospital. Something bad just happened.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Yeah, yeah, that's just weird. I mean, I you're I'm listening to this episode and you're telling the story, and I'm just sitting there going, Did he just pass out from exhaustion?

SPEAKER_04 14:34

Well, that might have been it.

SPEAKER_01 14:37

I mean, you're just you know, I mean, you're you're you're you're right in the thick of this, this thing you always joke about, your first road trip was eight years.

SPEAKER_05 14:46

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:47

And you're right, you're right in the middle of it. And it just it could have been that simple. It could have been as simple as you finally stopped for a night.

SPEAKER_04 14:56

And it almost killed me.

SPEAKER_01 14:58

And and and you and you hit the floor.

SPEAKER_04 15:01

Yeah, yeah. Do you see now why I say my first road trip was eight years? I was everywhere.

SPEAKER_01 15:07

You really were. I mean, it just all over the place, anywhere that would have you. And um, you know, we talked um, I don't know, a couple episodes ago about, you know, we were talking about Stan and Eddie, and you were just like, you know, they were just as good as me, maybe better. The difference was I was willing to do these trips, and they weren't as interested. They could make they could do just fine staying close to home and doing it that way. And you were, I mean, you were you were spending every Monday going through the the the little black book and calling everybody.

SPEAKER_04 15:42

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 15:43

Trying to get booked everywhere you could.

SPEAKER_04 15:44

So yeah, just trying to trying to find anybody. You you got a ring and you're in the middle of nowhere? Great. What time? Okay, I'll be there.

SPEAKER_01 15:53

Yeah, yeah. Um, so as we've gone through, you know, a few years now, there's there's some names that are coming

Who Was The War Machine

SPEAKER_01 16:05

up a lot. Obviously, Bo James comes up a lot. We'll talk about him in a minute. Um you know, Ricky Morton is coming up a lot, and and just you know, certain guys, you know, Dirty White Boy for a while was it seemed like every show you were on, you were there with Dirty White Boy.

SPEAKER_02 16:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Um there's one guy that's come up a lot, and I don't know that I've ever heard you talk about this person. So I just want to know who was the war machine.

SPEAKER_04 16:35

Oh, okay. The war machine was Bo's tag team partner, and he uh was one of the million-dollar babies with uh um Mike Sampson. That might be where everybody knows him from. Well, he had they did a tag, they were up in New Jersey for IWWA, and they did jobs on New York TV, they did some WCW, and they had a uh, well, a million dollar baby gimmick, and they had these nice rubs and all these boots and tights, and uh his name was Kenny. I'm trying to remember his last name, but I can't remember his last name. But Kenny's house burnt down, and all that gear got destroyed, and he wasn't gonna go out and buy it anymore. So he came up with this character that wore Zubai pants and a Tarzan singlet, and he had paint on his face like a like Sting sorta. I mean, not exactly like he had his own thing on, but I'm to give you a visual, it was kind of like Sting. And uh long hair, and uh they caught himself the war machine and came out to Kiss's war machine, and that was Bo's tag team partner for the longest time. Great worker, very good worker, very good big man. He uh he worked a lot like Vader, even though he wasn't as big as Vader, but uh you could tell that Vader had an influence on him. But we worked a lot of matches together over the years.

SPEAKER_01 18:09

Yeah, I mean he is he's come up a ton already since you since you started with Southern Stitch Wrestling. And and I just was like, man, who is that? Like and I knew it was somebody I would have some sort of knowledge of. So as soon as you said he was in the million dollar babies with uh Mike Sampson, it was like, oh yeah, okay, I know I know who you're talking about.

SPEAKER_04 18:33

Yeah, they had blonde hair at the time, long blonde hair, and all that, and it was just such a shame. They had I mean they had all these boots that were every color of the rainbow and a robe to match, and it all burnt up. And it's just yeah, it's just it was terrible. It was one of those fluke wiring things, and the house burnt down.

unknown 18:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 18:55

Shout out to the war machine.

SPEAKER_04 18:57

Yeah, man. I don't know where he's at or what he's doing. I haven't seen him in years, but we we got a lot of miles, a lot of blood, and a lot of love between us.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

So you talk about another, here we are, we got another new territory popping up. Somebody else is trying to pull this whole thing off. You though get involved in a way that I don't know that to this point you had been involved with the territory, and I'm talking about the new West Virginia territory with Troy Strap. I want to know, was this an endeavor that you were putting a lot into, or is this just another place for you to make some money while you're out trying to get a big job?

SPEAKER_04 19:49

No, this was my fallback. West Virginia had never had a territory, and the closest they had was WAY, and that was just a TV show. It wasn't a real territory. I mean, they ran house shows, but it wasn't, it was a TV show. And there was never a full-fledged territory, it was always part of Mid-Atlantic or some other, you know, ICW, some other outskirt part. And I wanted to make it my Memphis. I wanted to be the Jerry Lawler of West Virginia. And I wrote in the book The The Worker that I'm I'm the godfather of West Virginia. There was no wrestling on a regular basis before me. Like I said, there was in the 70s, but it was a TV show. And I wanted to build these towns and build a territory and build wrestling exclusively to West Virginia. And I worked extremely hard, and it started with Troy. There were others after him to try to get this

Building West Virginia Wrestling

SPEAKER_04 20:55

going. And we were doing all this without TV. We were doing it the right way, and we were running shows left and right, and had it not been for his wife, it would have it would have succeeded because they were drawing, they were good shows, they were drawing the business made money. Troy was a lot cheap, but that's okay. You kind of want that in the promoter. And uh we we ran a lot a lot of stuff, and you know, I don't want to brag, I don't want to be that guy, but a lot of people today forget that it there wouldn't be West Virginia wrestling had we not done that. That that everything stems from that promotion. Every guy wrestling today has some link, if you go back to their trainer, to their trainer, to their trainer, to that promotion.

SPEAKER_01 21:43

Yeah. Well, and that's something I learned very quickly in going to what shows in West Virginia with you was the amount of guys in West Virginia working those towns and those promotions that are there today, that you had a hand in.

SPEAKER_05 22:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:00

Whether it was through Apex or what have you, um just the magnitude of the number of guys that I was like, oh yeah, okay, well, yeah, I guess Brian trained it, you know. Um it it shows if you're really if you're paying attention. And and um sadly I don't know that lots of people are.

SPEAKER_04 22:21

No, they're not. They they could care less. And I and that's okay, they don't have to care, but but for the record, you know, I don't want to be that guy. Hey, I'm the greatest thing there. No, I'm not. But for the record, that's where it all began. And uh, you know, we we worked hard and put a lot of effort into all of that and did things the right way, and we had to do everything from scratch. We had to go out and find every building at every town and promote them and build them up. We had to find wrestlers, we had to train wrestlers, we had to make stars. And we did that over the years. Um, you know, depending on it might be different promotions, but there's, you know, team gorgeous and young. Two guys that we'll talk about later that came to me and said, We're terrible. And I said, I know you're terrible. And they said, but we got this idea for a tag team. And the idea was pretty good. And now they're legends that have held every single title, tag team title from their their generation uh in in wrestling in West Virginia. You know, um there were guys that went on that did that. And there's a lot of guys that were terrible that didn't go anywhere and didn't do anything. But there are a lot of guys that put in the hard work and got the job done who are considered leg West Virginia legends now.

SPEAKER_01 23:46

Absolutely. And speaking of West Virginia legends, you in back-to-back matches in the book, from the book, from your career, you worked your first time against the Cuban assassin and Scotty McKee back to back.

SPEAKER_05 24:06

Yep.

SPEAKER_01 24:07

And that just I love where that fell here because following what you were just talking about with Detroit Shrimmel territory and how everything now kind of connects in some way back to that. It's so fitting because these are I mean, this is two people that would have a huge impact on your career over the years.

SPEAKER_05 24:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 24:31

And here we are. Well I was just gonna say, and and here we are, back-to-back matches is your first encounter in the ring with both of them. I know you and Cuban have went way further back than that, but as far as when was the first time that these two great opponents that you have, when was the first time and it was right there, back to back. Unbelievable.

SPEAKER_04 24:56

And if you go to the wrestling circle, now you have to go to the wrestling people. If you go to non-wrestling people, this ain't gonna make any sense. But if you go to the wrestling people today, Cuban Assassin and Scotty McKeever are household names. And I'm not talking about the old people that are in their 70s. People today, right now, they are legends to them and household names. And and it started right there.

SPEAKER_01 25:28

Absolutely. And these are names that are gonna come up over and over again as we go through the through the journals and through your career. But it was just I mean, you're really just I mean, you're all over the place, man. I mean, in 1997, you are all over the damn place. You are everywhere doing I mean I I joke all the time you're wrestling for a scope. Yeah, because you know, it it's yeah, we've we've encountered the Jerry Lawlers and the Dory King Jr. and the Ahmed Johnsons and D Lo Browns before they were big stars, and um you know, everybody that we talked about in your Smoky Mountain days when you were first getting started and um but but now you're now you're you're you're working for WCW, you're about to do a WWF trial, you're starting a promotion in your home state where that has never been a thing before. Um I mean you're just all over the place at this point, man. But you had gotta be loving every minute.

SPEAKER_04 26:37

Oh, yeah, that was the best time of my life, wrestling-wise. I mean, I just I was confident in my ability, not overconfident, but confident in my ability. I had good connections, I was having great matches, I was meeting new people, I was working constantly, I was exhausted, I was drinking a lot of beer, I was meeting a lot of women, I was single, and you know, I was having the time of my life, and I'm 21 years old. I mean, that's the thing. I that that's why I was able to do it. It would have killed me if I if I was any older. RN Enders said it said that in one of the documentaries, if I wouldn't have been 25, it would have killed me. Well, that's the same here. I mean, a 21-year-old can drive all over the place, and uh I couldn't do it now. I can't drive to the grocery store now. And uh, but it was just the time of my life, and it was all about wrestling. From the time I got up to the time I went to bed, I was lucky enough to where that was my career. And it was a career, not a job. Because I've not worked a day in my life. I've always had jobs that I've enjoyed. And mostly wrestling, from the time I was 17 until you know a few years ago. And it just I if I could redo those times, I wouldn't change anything about it at all. I'd like to relive them over and over and over. Some nights more than others.

SPEAKER_01 28:12

Oh man. Yeah, it's just it's great. It's great to, it's great to, you know. I mean, I've heard so many of your stories and some of them over and over. And and there's just so much here. You've done so much that I mean, I feel like it's every episode now. I'm going, well, who's this guy?

SPEAKER_05 28:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:33

He's he's in here, you know, all the time, and you've never talked about it.

SPEAKER_05 28:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:40

There's just and you and you talked about that um a little bit. I think in this episode, it might have been episode eight, but uh, about how you know there was a there was an entry in the journal that was all you know is you had a tag match. You don't know who your partner was, you don't know who your opponents were.

SPEAKER_05 28:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:57

All you know is you had a tag match, and there's just so much going on, and you're all over the map, and you're encountering so many different people and different experiences, and um it's just wild that that there's so much here that I'm just like, man, I want to know more about that. You know, we've never talked about that.

SPEAKER_04 29:19

Well, and I mean, just keeping the journals up for that many years, you know, keeping track of the mat diligently coming at because before I come to the hotel or wherever I was staying, paperwork came first. Always. Get well, gear in the washer, take a shower, paperwork, then play. That's how the night ended. Every single night. It wasn't over

Bo James And Living Legends Heat

SPEAKER_04 29:45

till I did those three things. And it just it was a lot. It was it was a whole lot, but man, it was so much fun.

SPEAKER_03 29:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:55

But yeah, I I had no idea who was in that match because I was only there for ten minutes. You know, I was there, I was probably there an hour before the show, met the guys, talked to them a minute, in the ring ten minutes, got out, took a shower if there was a shower, which there probably wasn't, took my gear off, got paid, and left. Went to the next town, or went to the bar. And um, you know, so I didn't know I didn't know who they were.

SPEAKER_01 30:26

Yeah. Well, somebody you know who they are, for sure. He's already come up in this episode. Uh we're talking about Bo James.

SPEAKER_04 30:36

Oh, yeah, I know all about some Bo James.

SPEAKER_01 30:39

And you guys were attached to the hip during this time period. Yeah. Because if it wasn't you versus Bo, which I laugh because it seemed like this was an earlier Southern version of Punk and Hero or Punkin' Cabana. The match that everybody on the indies won.

unknown 31:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 31:03

So you guys were booking together because that match was making y'all money.

SPEAKER_04 31:09

Right.

SPEAKER_01 31:09

Well, if it wasn't that, go ahead. Sorry.

SPEAKER_04 31:12

Well, no, one just not sorry to interrupt, but uh, you know, they call them super indies now. They didn't call them super indies because the indies were just being created. So there wasn't nothing super about it. It was just independent shows. They and they were trying to be territories. They just ended up being in independent shows. And you're right that we were like a you know, a hero and all those guys um that had those great rivalries, and the promoters loved loved us on the show, um, loved us against each other because we went out there and and did it. We beat the hell out of each other for 10 to 20 minutes.

SPEAKER_01 31:56

Yeah, and and if and if it wasn't you versus Bo, you guys have this great new tag gimmick, the living legends. Yeah. The youngest old guys in the business.

SPEAKER_04 32:07

And we live by that every every syllable, every bit of that. We really thought we were the oldest or the youngest old old guys in the business. And it's because we had worked so much.

SPEAKER_01 32:24

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 32:24

You know, we lived that gimmick, and it was it was pretty true. I mean, compared to some of these guys. I mean, not all of them, but you know, some of them. You know, we got a lot of heat with that gimmick. Not from the crowd.

SPEAKER_00 32:38

I'd say so. I'd say so.

SPEAKER_04 32:40

The boys didn't they didn't like them interviews. They didn't like that at all. You know, we do the Ric Flair naming the towns where we were going to be at that week, or had just come from, and you could just see them seething. Yeah. You know, because their their wives wouldn't let them go, or their girlfriends, or they couldn't get booked, or whatever reason it was that they couldn't go.

SPEAKER_01 33:03

Yeah. Man, just I just love hearing about that. You know what I mean? Because there's just I don't know, man. It's it's it's easy as we go through your career to start seeing, like I don't know, man. It just feels like at this point there is a path to you being a huge star on national TV. And you're only 21.

SPEAKER_05 33:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:36

And already this hot angle and hot tag gimmick on the end. You've got, you know, you you you've you you've been working with WCW. Um and now you so before I get into what I've got, let's talk about the phone call. Hey, I'm working for WCW. I'd really like to come up there. Um who did you call? How did you get their number? Walk me through the the process and the just the thought process and then the actual physical process of that phone call and getting books for shotgun Saturday night.

SPEAKER_04 34:23

Well, I had found out that Strongbow booked the enhancement talent. And I had been sending all those tapes to think. And really, I should have been calling Strongbow because Strongbow likes to go fishing. So whatever he could do to get his work done quicker to get him to the fishing hole, he would do. That's why you see all the same guys on New York TV getting beat every week. Because he had just booked the same guys because it was quicker and easier. That's how the Hardy Boys got up there. So I don't know who gave me his office number, but somebody, one of the boys gave me the office number. And I was in Atlanta, and I called, and I didn't even have my house yet. I lived in an apartment, an overpriced apartment across from Dobbins Air Force Base, right up from the Taj Mahal Strip Club. Anyway, I left the uh a message on his office voicemail saying, This is Brian Logan. I was trained by Tim Horner and Jim Cornett and Tom Pritchard, and that um I'm currently at WCW and I'm miserable, and I would like to come up there and get a shot. Well, I go off on the road doing my shots and everything, and I come home maybe once every couple weeks or whatever, and you know, this is there's no emails. I mean, there's email, but nobody in the industry used them. Um, it was all answering machines. So I get home one night and it's uh this is GJ Strongbow, this is my home number. Please call me. We are interested in bringing you up. Well, I I couldn't dial the phone fast enough. And uh he said, uh, we want to bring you into Alabama because it's it's mobile and and for a taping, and uh is do you have any friends that you can bring with you? And I said, This is terrible because I bury everybody. But I was trying to be honest, I was trying to get a job. I said, honestly, I don't have any friends that I would be comfortable with bringing. I would rather just come by myself. He's like, You don't have anybody that you can just bring for trans? I said, I'd rather eat the trans just to get a shot and do it right. And he said, Okay, alright, well, then Mobile, Alabama, Monday, whatever day it was. And that's how I got booked on Shotgun Saturday night. I got there and found out that I was gonna be wrestling Al Snow, which if you remember is the first guy I ever got in a ring with. And uh it was one of his for early shows where he had just got the job squad gimmick and they were giving him a push, and he needed a real good showing, and he wanted to do a bunch of fancy things in the ring, and he felt confident enough to do them with me, and we nailed it. We nailed everything, especially that reverse powerbomb, which I've never seen anybody do since. It's a dangerous move. But I I I actually flip and come down in a powerbomb position without him really touching me. And uh like when we got back to the curtain, it was sold out. The boys were there and they gave us a standing ovation. Now that was for him, but I, you know, I was part of it, so I enjoyed it, you know. But the he had done uh a great job, and they were applauding him, and and I was just tickled to death that I got to be seen and and wrestled in a WWF ring, man. That was my dream.

SPEAKER_01 38:11

Yeah. And and just a full circle moment to be in there with Hal Snow.

SPEAKER_02 38:17

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_01 38:18

Um Yeah, just great. Just did he remember you at all? There's no way.

SPEAKER_04 38:26

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. He remembered me. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 38:29

Yeah. Well, because did you guys cross paths in Smoky Mountain?

SPEAKER_04 38:33

No, he I left before he got there. Well, I mean, we were there for a taping together, but that was my last taping

Calling WWF And Shotgun Match

SPEAKER_04 38:40

and his first taping.

SPEAKER_01 38:42

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 38:43

I was thinking it was that was the timeline that he kind of got there after you were out of the picture, but that was the Eddie Gilbert uh debut of Unibom and the day and the big fan uh famous match with uh Eddie Gilbert and Ricky Morton on TV.

SPEAKER_01 38:58

Yeah, yeah. That unfortunately Al had to get repositioned very quickly after that.

SPEAKER_04 39:08

Yeah, and then poor Eddie goes to Puerto Rico and doesn't come back. Which is very, very sad because Eddie was a special person.

SPEAKER_01 39:17

Yeah. So here's what I want to talk about. Shotgun Saturday night represents this whole huge change that I alluded to earlier, not just in the business, but in the country. And in all forms of massive media. You talked earlier in this episode about here here it was, another new TV show. Getting on the pilot. And you mentioned that you got over with the promo. Maybe it was for the Manny Fernandez.

SPEAKER_04 39:56

It was this it was the second Manny Fernandez deal. He was there. It was for the Oates brothers, it was NWF.

SPEAKER_01 40:03

That's right. The Oates Brothers, yeah. So you're calling Manny out, you're calling all the Greg Valentine and all these legends out, and you got over with the promoters on your promo. Was the new quote-unquote attitude of the business a better fit for you? I mean, was that something that you felt like at the time was going to benefit you and your your career?

SPEAKER_04 40:30

Yeah, I didn't quite realize what was going on then until a little bit later. And uh I want to go ahead and tell this part, even though that comes down the road. We had a bad show one time, and the promoter gave me permission to tell the crowd off. And I went out there and cut the my first shoot promo. And I realized, whoa, wait a minute. I got something here. That's me. Don't quite bury everybody, but take something that's real and expand on it crazily. And this was the first time this NWF, they were just like, everybody does a promo. You remember how we used to do that? Everybody does a promo just for the sake of doing it. And you know, Greg Valentine and uh Manny's there and a bunch of other people that are megastars, and here's this kid, and they hand him a microphone, and I just start naming people in the room. And it's like, I want to throw these names are in the hat, and you may not know me, but I want to be one of those guys, and I want to I want a shot. Give me a shot. And that was the first time that I had done a promo like that. Now, I like I said, I developed it later and realized I had some. I didn't know what I had at the time, but the the promoters did. And uh Jerry Oates did, and he was like, you know, okay, we're gonna give you a shot. And he stuck me out there and they put me over, and it was it was very good, and I won a spot, and I knew if this promotion would have continued that I had a spot because he told me. Because we talked a lot though in those couple days, and um, yeah, he and it was it would just come out of nowhere, and I got lucky. And see, I remember Anthony was there and he didn't do a good promo. He he he has a great promo, but that night he didn't do a good promo. He did a wrestling promo. And he didn't get picked, and they didn't team us together. So uh he was a little upset about that, which led him to leaving finally the South. That was probably the beginning of him getting soured on being in the South.

SPEAKER_01 42:58

Yeah. So I got I I got so at what point are you done with WCW?

SPEAKER_04 43:12

Right about this time, um, and I just leave. You know, I um I just walked out. I mean, I they they didn't care. They didn't even notice, you know?

SPEAKER_03 43:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:29

So once I worked for the other company, that was it. There wasn't no going back. Um they would have noticed that. Somebody would have said something there. So I I just leave. Um, but I think I did, because we haven't got to the Vader stuff yet, have we?

SPEAKER_01 43:47

No, no, you haven't mentioned Vader once. So there's still some stuff that's gonna be a good thing.

SPEAKER_04 43:51

Yeah, so so maybe maybe I didn't leave at that point. Maybe I I I stuck around and did some some more because I worked Harlem He. I worked Vader, and there was a couple more shots. So it was it was right around this time that I was getting ready to go. And when I left, I left. I just that's it, I'm done. Well, actually, I it's coming back to me now. I had that argument with the assassin over whether I worked there or not. And he said I didn't work there, and he made me drive three hours to get my pay stubs, and I came back and threw them on his desk and he looks at him and he goes, That's right, I got fired. That's how I left. He looked It's been so long ago, I'm so sorry. He he he says I don't work for the company. I said I did. He's I said, Would you like to see the pay stubs? And he says yes, and he makes me drive all the way through traffic, which took three hours because of downtown traffic in the middle of rush hour. He wasn't that far, but it took that long because of rush hour. So it took me three hours to get to my house, get the pay stubs, and get back. So it was about an hour and a half either way. And I came in and I was so fucking pissed, and I threw them on his desk, slammed them down, and he picks them up and he looks at him and he goes, Well, I guess you work here because you've got pay stubs. You don't work here any longer. Your services will no longer be needed. And I was gone, I was free.

SPEAKER_01 45:27

What what led to that argument?

SPEAKER_04 45:30

I had basically said I want work, and DDP had came down, and um I had worked out with DDP, and he said, Why aren't we using you? And I said, Can I be honest? And he said, Yeah. And he I said, I have no idea. I don't know what's going on in this fucking company. And I said that, like that. And he said, Well, let me call. And he called Bischoff and Terry Taylor and got me booked on some uh tapings. That's what happened. Yeah, yeah. And um Mike Winters and Sarge got pissed because it I didn't go through them. And they went whining to Jody. And that's when Jody called me into his office uh after I got back from that taping, and I wanted more bookings, and he's like, You don't even work here. You know, what are you doing? Who are you? And I'm like, I've been here like a year, man. You know, like you know who I am. You've seen me. We have talked, we've had lunch together, you know. That's just how they were, slime balls. And they ended up getting rid of me.

SPEAKER_01 46:43

Wow. I don't know about you, but I hate stuff like that.

SPEAKER_04 46:48

I do too.

SPEAKER_01 46:48

I I don't you you know you know this as well as anybody. I don't like introducing myself to somebody more than me either.

SPEAKER_04 46:56

Me either.

SPEAKER_01 46:57

Not a fan, not a fan. And sometimes I get it and I suck it up, but you know, if it's somebody that should

WCW Politics And Getting Fired

SPEAKER_01 47:05

absolutely know who I am, uh I I feel I I always feel very disrespected if I have to introduce myself to him.

SPEAKER_04 47:13

Mm-hmm. Well, DDP had come down and he had uh pulled me out of class to work with him. Because he the word was I was the guy to work out with. And and then I worked with Ernest Miller and and Goldberg and all these guys. I was I was the tackle dummy when you came down to the school to work out. And I loved it because I got to get in the ring and work. And then Terry Taylor came down same week or week within the vicinity of the of the DDP workout. And he just worked a 15-minute match with me. And at the end he said, uh, what do you want to do now? I said, hit me with your finish. As he's whipping me off, he goes, What's what's my finish? And I said, The five arm, because it's one star better than a four arm. Because I remembered it from a wrestling magazine. And he was like, That's cool, kid. I'm gonna get you booked. So, and then they all got mad at me. But Terry Taylor popped when I said the five arm.

SPEAKER_01 48:18

Yeah, yeah. That's WCW politics for you.

SPEAKER_04 48:23

Yeah, it was just that's the way it was. Is it was, you know, one guy likes you and 40 people hate you. And those 40 voices just wear down the other person. You know, Arn had told me at least 10 times, and I mean 10 times, oh, you look just like Barry Wyndham. We're gonna do a cowboy gimmick with you. And they ended up giving it, do you remember the guy, his name was Chad, and he did California Love, the country version, and was on Nitro, and he got a he had a the number one single because of that.

SPEAKER_00 48:58

Yeah, he was the he was the country singer. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we were right at the very end, right?

SPEAKER_04 49:03

Yeah, so the way that went down is we're at the power plant one day, and Hard Body Harrison, who literally had women kidnapped in his house and was sexually abusing them and is in prison now because of it, said, Hey, Tupac's got the number one song You Ought to Do California Love, a cow uh uh uh country version, and he goes and does it. And they've been telling me ten times, oh we're gonna make you into a cowboy like Barry Wyndham, and they made him into one and gave him the nitro spot. That's how they did things like that. Then at one point they were gonna put me and Joey Mags together as the new Midnight Express, and they ended up replacing me with Todd Morton, who I love Todd Morton. It wasn't Todd's fault. Uh worked with Todd, uh tagged with Todd, but they weren't the right fit. Me and Joey knew each other. We worked out together. It was the right fit. It went from you're gonna be the new Midnight Express to nope, you're out, and this guy's in. And that's just how they did things, on the spur of the moment.

SPEAKER_01 50:12

Uh so I'm noticing I I I was jumping around earlier and I missed something.

SPEAKER_04 50:17

Okay. I'm sorry, it's probably my fault.

SPEAKER_01 50:20

No, no, it's it's it's it's just it's nobody's fault. I just I I wanna I want to touch on this before we wrap up.

SPEAKER_05 50:27

Okay.

SPEAKER_01 50:27

Um so in all in episode nine, you mentioned your first street fight, your first hour Broadway in that three-way taxi match, right, and your first Texas tax match. So you are now at a point where you're high enough up the card that you're working these gimmick matches, and you you talked briefly about you don't get trained for these things. I mean, you really kind of have to learn this stuff on the fly.

SPEAKER_05 50:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 51:00

Um so what have we talked about the first time you you got color?

SPEAKER_04 51:08

No, I don't think we have. Now, there's the first time I got color, and there's the first time I attempted to get color. The first time I attempted to get color was with Eddie Golden, and I had put it in my hand, in my tape, and I don't think we're exposing anything. I think this has all been let out. Um and we locked up and and it g I sweated through the tape, and the gimmick got through, and it sliced his head. And I couldn't get it out of the tape to get mine. It was stuck because when tape gets wetted, it becomes like gummy, and you can't, you can't, you gotta cut it out. And so me and Eddie always laugh that the first time I got color, he got it. And he was hot too. I mean he wasn't hot, hot, but he was like, Did you just gig me? And I said, I think I did. Then the actual first time was in this Texas deathmatch, I think, or Okay. Yeah. And that's when I didn't I I leaned over and it all fell on the the mat. I forg I didn't I didn't know you have to stay on your back with your head slightly tilted up. And then it runs all over you. Once it runs all over you and and congeals a little bit, you can then look down and do other things. But when it first comes, you gotta let it you gotta let it drip down you and you gotta let it dry. And that's when I said, Hey, how's it looking? Bo just rammed my face in this puddle of blood. And it was a lot of blood. And he's like, There it is, it's all on the mat.

SPEAKER_03 52:52

And I was like, Well, hell.

SPEAKER_01 53:02

So yeah, so you're you're you're working all these given matches. Talk a little bit about your your first experiences doing some of this stuff and any any any funny things you remember about you know, about other stuff like that where you just didn't know because you know, you you you don't they don't cover this in training.

SPEAKER_04 53:22

Well, the street fight was pretty easy. Um, you know, it it's a street fight, you wear clothes, and you're just basically brawling and brawling all over the building. Um that was I learned that pretty quickly, and he called the match, and I had, you know, I I had done fights where I was on the floor, so this was just uh uh an exaggeration of that. Um the one hour Broadway in the three-way, we had gent 45 minutes and Bo says, screw it, let's just go the whole hour. And we were dying. I mean, who who books a three-way tag? Bright Hildebrandt, that's who does it, books a three-way that goes an hour Broadway. It goes all the way through. Um, and and it was great. That match was we we did everything in it, but did it the right way. We did every move we knew twice, but we did it the right way. And and I was dying afterwards, but I was so proud because I had went the hour.

SPEAKER_03 54:24

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 54:25

And then the Texas deat match, I didn't know anything about how to do it. I knew what it was, but Bo really took the time to show me. And that's one of the matches over the years that I have had that I love. I love doing the Texas deat match. I have the psychology of it, and that's all because Bo has taught me how to do the falls, how to build the falls, and go either way with the finishes on whoever's gonna go over. So Bo's the one that taught me how to do the Texas deat match. But uh now the pole match was, I mean, I could climb to the top rope, but I wasn't climbing that pole. And Bo sure wasn't climbing that pole. So I'm I'm sure somebody ran down there and got the the whatever it was and threw it to Bo. Um I don't know that to be sure, but I I got a sneaking suspicion it was somebody who did that. Probably Brian Hildebrandt tried to throw it to me, and Bo ended up getting it, would be my guess.

SPEAKER_01 55:30

Right.

SPEAKER_04 55:30

Because he was nimble enough to climb up the pole.

SPEAKER_01 55:34

I was

Blood Gimmicks And Feud Booking

SPEAKER_01 55:35

gonna say probably was nothing for him to get up there.

SPEAKER_04 55:37

Yeah, because he was tiny, so he could just shimmy up that pole like it was nothing. But you know, Bo wasn't going up too high, and I could go to the top rope, and I the pole was little too. I mean, it wasn't like the WCW pole. This thing was like a pe not a PVC pipe, it was metal, but it was it was tiny. It probably wouldn't have held me very very long.

SPEAKER_03 56:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 56:02

But I love working gimmick matches, and they're so important. Um when we get to uh working up with Mike Howard and we really perfected doing the gimmick matches and doing them one after another. Um one of the I know that I'm jumping ahead, but a tape fist match. I love a tape fist match. They're so much fun, and I can do so much goofy stuff that counts, that is gets a laugh, but then gets serious. Um and those will come as we tell the stories. But uh, you know, giving matches are so important, it seems like nowadays it's just last man standing, and that's you know, that's the the the lazy booking to to end a feud where you know it used to be that you would build up and you'd do a series of these matches, and that's what we were doing back then.

SPEAKER_01 56:53

Yeah, I was gonna make a joke about a tape fist match when I got the opportunity, so I'm glad you brought that up because uh you you you between tape fist and lumberjack matches uh you you you love you love again.

SPEAKER_04 57:07

I do. I love a lumberjack match. They're so important to get to the Texas death match because you have to build. You do the Broadway, then you do the the DQ, and then you do the count out, and you do the lumberjack match, and then you come back with the no DQ, and then you come back with the Texas death match. And unfortunately, people don't wrestle that much anymore. So you can't, you know, that's that's half a year in a town that you're wrestling somebody.

SPEAKER_03 57:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 57:36

And that's how we looked at it. Yeah, that's how that's how we looked at it back then was how do you get the most out of the same match without it getting stale and people still paying money to see it.

SPEAKER_01 57:52

Yeah, so uh just yeah, what what a great episode uh covered a lot of really important stuff you know from from the WCW, you know, you're continuing with WCW, um establishing wrestling in West Virginia, your first matches with Hugo and Scotty really got into the meat and potato with you and Bo. Um your first time in a WWF ring and the full circle moment of that being outside. No, I mean there's just so much going on, and like I said earlier, you're just all over the place at this point. And uh man am I enjoying going through and talking about all this stuff and hearing you tell the stories and bring up uh bring up all the all the you know the the the money and the miles and the matches and just you know everything that's in those journals that um is more than just a few words on paper.

SPEAKER_04 58:51

Well, and and there real quick, I mean, you know, we we can take as much time as we need, but I know we've been at this a while. But uh there was a lot of nights there on these indie shows I wasn't getting paid. You know, there was a lot, a lot of shots, and and I I cared, but at that point I didn't care. You know, I I was just in the wrestling business, and this was part of it. Now, years later, I really cared. You know, that was where I got in a lot of trouble was when promoters wouldn't pay. But uh, you know, or making 60 bucks for doing, you know, the weekend loop before I made the WWF Town. You know, so the WF Town swooped in there right at the right time to save the payday for the weekend.

SPEAKER_01 59:35

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:37

So it was just an interesting fun time, and you know, I can't iterate this enough. I was twenty-one. I can't I can't get over that. I'm just mind blown that that I was twenty-one.

SPEAKER_01 59:49

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 59:49

Well, I mean, what are most people doing at twenty-one?

SPEAKER_01 59:55

Not this.

SPEAKER_04 59:59

Well, and one other thing I want to say, gas was eighty-six cents a gallon back then.

SPEAKER_03 1:00:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:06

So that helped a lot. You know, later on when I was world champion, gas was the highest it had ever been in the nation's history, and I was the world champion. So, you know, eighty-six cents a gallon helped a whole lot.

Sponsor Plugs And Sign-Off

SPEAKER_01 1:00:25

For sure. Well, that's all I've got on this episode. Um I just I'm enjoying this so much, and I'm looking forward to hearing the next one.

SPEAKER_04 1:00:33

Well, thank you. I'm I'm enjoying doing them, and we're gonna keep on doing them. Uh, this show has been brought to you by W Energy Drinks. Go to W.gg. Use promo code YOURCHAPING. W Energy Drinks uh are great. They're made in the USA, they're good for uh sharper mental focus, clean, smooth energy, no added sugar, no artificial flavors, no secret formulas, no hidden ingredients. Uh built for anyone, about 150 milligrams of caffeine per serving, and a lot of great flavors. I cannot tell you how much I'm becoming dependent on these things. They are excellent. W.gg promo code Your Champion for 10% off at checkout. Also go to IamYourChion.com for all the social media links are right there on the homepage as well as our shop, and subscribe to our YouTube channel, I am your champion exclamation point. Uh, we're putting up a lot of great stuff, and that was the short version of that, but we got it in there. So, all right, until next week. Remember, I am your champion. 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.