September 1, 2025 • 56 mins
#drsquash #bearclair #prowrestling #gmbmpw
Welcome to Episode 14 of the Best Of jamesrockstreet Productions! Home to the Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling and Live and In Color with Wolfie D podcasts, Sheik's Shorts and more! So, sit back and enjoy as we bring you some of the very best stories, you'll never hear anywhere else! @GMBMPW @livewolfied @jamesrockstreet Everywhere!
Today we bring you the first half of episode 61 of Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling with Dr Squash aka Bear Clair! We talk his start in the business, his early days, Chet Atkins, Maxx Payne, the IWA and so much more! Enjoy!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
Hey, this is Michael Bear Claire, also known as Doctor
Squash. You're listening to Give Me Back
My Pro Wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling. Hello, Sir.
(00:45):
Don't know. Now you know.
Baby, this is Hot Rod Bigs, Jared, Jimmy St.
We're going to take them to the limit One more time, baby.
Right here. Oh, give me back my pro
wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
one more time to the Give Me Back my Pro Wrestling podcast.
And I'm here, as always with my brother from the same father and
mother, the Plastic sheet. Jared St.
(01:06):
What's up brother? How you doing?
Good brother, how about yourself?
Man, just hanging in there, brother.
Just got through with these TCW episodes with Wolfie D and we
got Doctor Squash on the show with us today, man.
It's been eventful, brother. It's been eventful.
Yeah, man, you've been busy, been busy out the the those
episodes with the Wolfie podcast, the TCW people.
(01:29):
That's good stuff. Yeah, man, I I hope people give
them a chance, you know, Seriously.
That's a juggling act too, man. All those people in one podcast,
man. Yeah, and, and I've got ideas
for us like this similar to thattoo.
I'll, I'll send you a message onthe side about.
But I definitely think it opens up the door because it kind of
gets it. It serves 2 masters, it gets
(01:49):
people on the show and it gets cool topics to talk about and
stuff like that. So yeah, I was, I was happy and
it was something I was concernedabout at first, but actually
ended up being smoother than I expected.
So you can't complain there. But yeah, man.
And you know, now we've got Doctor Squash coming on, I'm
(02:09):
excited to talk to him. I don't know him, but he had a
little run in the business in Nashville and he's also a world
travelled, world renowned musician.
So very excited to be able to talk to him because, you know,
he, he kind of did at a larger level what I had dreams for on
(02:30):
both, you know, so. Yeah, man, it's gonna be a it's
gonna be a good one. I just feel like he's.
I might have to ask you about how Ketchum.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Definitely got to talk about how
Ketchum, of course we had Steve Morton on the last episode.
Everybody seemed to enjoy that. Definitely always fun to have a
Morton on the podcast. You know, it's it's just good
(02:52):
times, so. Absolutely, that's good stuff.
Now we got to get Ricky, Cody, David, all of them.
You know there's. Plenty of them we could.
We could have the next year planned out with that.
Oh, we could easily, no problem.And we could do mixtures of both
because then there's Morton, youknow, the Morton tag team with
Steve and Shane and then Shane and Bubba and then three man
(03:16):
tags and Jade Lynn and everybody.
I mean, just so many people you could have on here, the Morton
family, but maybe that's one of those topics I was talking
about. Who knows?
We'll see. But, you know, very cool.
We definitely appreciate Steve coming on and and promoting it
and, you know, everybody listening, you know, great,
great response to it. So thank you so much for that.
(03:37):
You know, and honestly, you know, got some cool news.
By the way, Wolfie, Dee and Jamie are going into the Memphis
Hall of Fame. Man, that's a big yeah, yeah,
it's a big class, too. It's got Jimmy Valiant, Doctor
Tom, Danny Davis, man, who else?I mean, there's so many people
(03:57):
in it. That was like holy cow.
Rock'n'roll Express. Oh, man, Good stuff.
Yeah, man, Jimmy, you know, justjust some cool people to be in
that. So they're going to have a
little deal on September 21st inJackson, TN Definitely look up
those links to buy your tickets now.
But PG13's going in the Hall of Fame, man.
(04:17):
But definitely very cool, very cool to see that so.
Well deserved man. Well deserved and long overdue.
So Congrats fellas. You probably won't hear this,
but good job. Yeah, well other than that I
don't really have anything rightnow.
I know Powertown's wrapping up their second series with their
pre-orders, so that's kind of cool already.
(04:39):
Got mine in so it's yeah. Day one guy, are you a?
Day 1:00-ish A. Day 1:00-ish, not a day
1:00-ish. I didn't do it day one, I don't
think. Yeah, had they emailed us back
that last time, you might have day one them.
No, I'm just kidding. Might have, yeah.
Anyway, yeah, Powertown definitely support them.
(04:59):
Y'all. They probably put out I would
say the best figures out there and I'm not a figures guy, but
you know, in my opinion they looked like the best for sure.
So. Yeah, they got some seem high
quality ever since they kind of got torn apart for that first
batch that came out so. Leg popping, yeah.
(05:20):
Yeah, well, you know, one guy that ain't going to pop our legs
today is Doctor Squash, so let'stalk to him right now, all.
Right, let's get it going. All right, we'll be right back.
After these messages with DoctorSquash, I'll give me back my pro
wrestling. Are you a pro wrestling fan?
We'll stop by Captain's Corner, where you can get autographed
(05:40):
photos, cards, magazines, and figures from all of your
favorite wrestling superstars ofthe past, present, and future.
You'll also be able to participate in live signings in
the weeks and months to come. Make sure to stop by Captain's
Corner on Facebook and give us aholler.
Remember, cheers to the working man.
(06:01):
All right, we are back with GiveMe Back My Pro Wrestling and our
very special guest of the day. Been very excited since we
hooked this one up. Now is the time for the good
doctor and that is the Doctor Squash Bear.
Welcome to the show brother. Thank you for coming on.
It's pleasure to be here. Good.
(06:22):
Yeah. Yeah, good to have you buddy.
OK, so as we all know and all ofour listeners know, we always
start off every show with the plastic Sheiks.
Favorite question? Take it away, Sheik.
Alright Bear, so this is gonna let the listeners and us get to
know you a little bit when when it comes to wrestling.
Like if you had a Mount Rushmoreof like four or five people in
(06:43):
the wrestling business industry,whatever that can be, any walk
of life in the in the wrestling business that are your like top
four or five guys of influencer you like to watch whatever, who
would they be? Well, honestly, I really like.
I had great, great respect for Gypsy Joe.
He was one of my trainers. Oh, yeah.
And beat the hell out of us a lot.
(07:08):
He was. He was tough.
And I had Tojo as a trainer. And Tojo also beat Honest, which
was great. And Rocky Johnson.
Rocky was really my first trainer and I worked out with
Rocky a lot. Yeah, I miss him.
I really miss him. That that's a loss.
(07:29):
Ric Flair, of course. I think Rick, you know, come on.
You. Know and Ricky Morton, I got to
tell you I love Ricky Martin. We worked with Ricky in the IWA
and Ricky he talked about a promo king.
My God he can just kick out a promo like in his sleep.
Yeah. Such a baby face too.
(07:50):
I mean like. Yeah, it was great.
Yeah, I mean, he's my favorite wrestler of all time, no
question. I think, you know, I used to
even make people call me Ricky as a kid because I had, I was
such a fan. Yes, you had a Muller rat.
Yeah, I. Did.
Mick Foley. Mick Foley is one of he's a
really good friend of mine, known Mick forever, and we still
(08:11):
stay in touch and that's awesometalk a lot more.
Mick has to be in there too. I mean, Mick did stuff nobody
dreamed of doing. Yeah, no doubt.
Yeah, definitely got to be in there.
That Neste plunge move that he took every week or every day on
the ground, man, I mean, everybody talks about the 25
(08:32):
foot drop from this, but that that's one time, you know, your
body can kind of absorb that. The problem is, is Mick had been
doing that Neste plunge on the concrete because Bill Watts
pulled up all the mats. So yeah, anyway man, love you
Mick. Yeah, I do too.
And Mick's, Mick's getting around pretty good considering
(08:53):
the the damage that he he collected, you know?
I mean, yeah, he gets around pretty good still.
He's had some surgeries, I'm sure.
I know. But it's a yeah.
Yeah. But his body, his body's taking
a beating. And, you know, he's always had
that kind of almost like a wobble hitch in his step or
something like that. Ever since, yeah.
(09:13):
That's as Ben Jordan as Ben Jordan calls that.
That's the wrestler limp. That's how you can know if you
if you got a crowd of 100 people, you can always pick out
the wrestler because of the wrestler limp.
Terry Punk man walking to the ring.
Yeah. Oh, I know Desperado playing,
whipping that. I mean, man, I just Terry, you
(09:37):
know, I kind of go back and forth on this because, you know,
I have my Mount Rushmore and I'mnot going to go over that.
I don't bore the people. But you know, Rick and Terry,
you know, they're two on there. Ricky Morton is my all time.
But you know, Terry, there's a great argument that Terry is the
greatest wrestler of all time. I mean, I really feel like that
there's an opportunity to make that argument and you know.
(10:02):
Valid argument. Yeah, promos, you know, I mean,
I mean, I just think I mean Jerry Lawler, I could argue that
Lawler is the greatest of all time too.
So we don't have to get into that.
Maybe we'll bring you back for aGOAT episode later there.
But we'll we'll we'll go on withyour career today.
So to start things off with my questions, I always like to go
(10:25):
with this one here. So we're going to take it back
to the very beginning and tell us a little bit about your
younger days, like where you were born, where'd you go to
high school, that kind of stuff.Oh well, I was born in Iowa
City, IA, the university and grew up in Shellsburg, Iowa, a
town of about 300 people, so youhad to have a good imagination
(10:46):
because it has nothing to do. I got in a lot of trouble as a
kid, caused a few problems, but I tried to be creative without
hurting anyone you know but. Yeah, yeah.
It, it was just one of those little towns where you, a kid
could dream, you know, and, and wrestling in Iowa, as you know,
is like the biggest thing ever. Yeah, no doubt, you know.
(11:09):
Gable. Gable was big when I was a kid.
Chris Taylor was big. You know, we used to go to
McElroy Auditorium and watch theBulldog.
Bob Brown, Buzz Sawyer. Yeah, Avalanche, you know, I
mean, all all those guys were there.
Bob Geigel, Baron Von Raschke, you know, all all those guys.
(11:31):
I mean, so when I was a kid, that was I, I just loved it.
Yeah, but I was a musician and Iwas a musician.
I'm like, you know, Rd. Dog was on earlier and I saw
that and I laughed. Guys were talking to him, or I
don't know if that was your podcast or somebody else's, but
it was hilarious. Yeah, I love it.
I'm in that one too. There's there's a timing line
(11:52):
there. So yeah.
OK yeah I had to laugh cuz they go or I can't remember exactly
the question but it had to do with my working and he said well
he's the opposite of good. He's a little stiff, but.
I thought Brian and I, I had so much fun with Brian.
I mean, in that band, he's so talented.
(12:15):
Brian could have been a rock star.
He really could. Brad, too.
Brad sang with us for a short time as well, and I sure miss
Brad. Brad was a great guy.
Yeah, he's arguable as one of the greatest in ring for sure
too, you know, but I want. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I want to save that discussion for just a little bit
squash, if you don't mind, Doctor, We'll we'll get to that
(12:35):
in just a minute. But I I definitely want to talk
about that. So thank you for bringing that
up. But so yeah, let's let's keep
going with your starting wrestling.
So when? When do you remember like?
It was really kind of funny cuz I, I had played music my whole
life. That's all I've ever really
done, right. So I was down in Nashville and I
was working with Charlie Walker on the Grand Ole Opry and the
(12:59):
Road Warriors came backstage because I knew they were in town
because I worked at a gym duringthe day, Living Well Fitness
Center, and I worked in a gym upin Port Dodge, Iowa.
So it was a natural thing just to go to work for Living Well.
And of course, all the boys worked out there, all of them.
That's where everybody went. Scott Hall, everybody.
Scott and I were good friends and so they would come to the
(13:22):
gym and and we had a room in there set up to have some 3 inch
thick mats in it and they would come in there.
And so I was watching them and Hawk said to me and said, man,
you're big boy, where are you from?
And I said I'm from Iowa goes we're from Minnesota, you know,
being funny. And we just hit it off and
(13:42):
became good friends and and I said, why, what's it pay?
And he told me and, you know, music wasn't exactly, you know,
get rich scheme back then either.
So I thought, well, this, you know, it's like fun.
And I've always been very creative as far as, you know,
storylines and things. That was really what I did.
It wasn't, I just didn't have any budget, you know.
(14:05):
And Reno Riggins, who I deeply respect, that Reno was a good
kid. He wanted to start a wrestling
group, IWA International Wrestling Alliance, and I don't
remember exactly. We had some kind of falling out
and I don't even remember what it was.
But doesn't matter. I I really like Reno.
I think he's a great guy and I look back on all of this.
(14:29):
You got to understand this really kind of a cool time in my
life because I got to do ATV show.
Max Payne was a big factor in ittoo.
Max and I kind of came up with the storylines and the
characters. Yeah.
And anyway, I got, I got trainedby I started with Rocky.
(14:50):
Rocky Johnson was coming in the gym all the time.
So I started lifting with him and then he started my training.
And then Rocky, I think had to, he went to a different
territory. He was doing the Memphis
territory with Jarrett and he left because I think Fred Ottman
was there too. Fred was can't remember the
gimmick he had then, but he was working with Rocky in Memphis.
(15:13):
Yeah. And, and then they ended up
leaving and the Steiners came in.
So I knew Scotty when he first got in the business and well, he
was. He's always been huge, but he
looks way different now than he did then.
Yeah, yeah, he's always. Bored, but I'm trying to
condense this for you so apologize.
It's OK. And I ended up training with
(15:35):
Tojo. Tojo took me to a pretty good
level and then I ended up training with Gypsy Joe and
Gypsy took it neck level becausehe was like, you know, you're a
big guy. I'm 65 and at the time about 390
lbs. And he said, you know, you, you
got to do big guy stuff. And then he decided to show us
(15:58):
how to do some, you know, fairlyhigh falls, things like that.
And of course I was getting my bell rung constantly because I
would forget to tuck Mitch and that kind of stuff.
So I had a lot of confessions a lot.
And, you know, and then then we,we kind of progressed from doing
(16:18):
shots. We were going down to Dothan, AL
in an airplane hangar and wrestling down there.
I can't remember the guy's name,but you know, it was basically
you're going to fight somebody from the crowd crazy and Gypsy
love that, you know, Gypsy love that shit.
He would do, he would go in the ring and fight anybody he loved.
He loved to fight. And so he he took me down there
(16:41):
and he was like, OK, man, when this guy gets in the ring, you
tee off on him like a football because this big hillbilly got
up in the ring. He told me just kick it right in
the face. So I did, you know, and then I
had AI had a match with Willie the wrestling clown.
I don't know if you remember Willie or not.
I've heard of him, yes. I've heard of him, yes.
(17:03):
Oh my God, like we we have the clown gimmick long before Vince
did. Yeah, that's what I've heard
that some. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Think all the stuff we did here,yeah.
Yeah. So let me, let me ask you
something before we go further in wrestling.
So we did. We know you're a musician where
you're, you know, a world traveled awesome musician.
(17:23):
So that's what brought you to Nashville is the music, because
that's actually what brought me to Nashville as well.
There. Yeah, yeah.
So. So that was what led me there,
my chance at stardom, you know what I mean?
And I'm a bass player. I've been a bass player since my
late the early eighteens and, you know, came out to Nashville
(17:43):
with a band, thought we were going to rule the world and and
then we didn't. So but you.
Know that happens every day, right?
It happens. But yeah, I, I, I've lived in my
car. I was in Oklahoma City playing a
band called Pacific Highway, andI decided that, you know, Mike
Crosno from Toby Keith's band was the guitar player before I
(18:05):
was in it. And then I left, I got my
Impala, drove to Nashville and Ilived in my car for three months
and worked odd jobs. I worked as a houseman over at a
Holiday Inn on Murfreesboro Road.
And they, they just put me in a room that was blocked out that
they couldn't rent. And so I lived there as long as
(18:26):
I could. And then they let me go there
because they just didn't need the help.
And I worked at a Quincy steakhouse down there as a cook
and lived, lived in the parking lot.
And they have back in the showerthere so I could get cleaned up
and stuff. So I did that.
And then I, what really changed my life was I was reading the
(18:47):
newspaper and there was a job for a booking agent, right?
And it was Johnny Massey from Stars Incorporated down 16th
Ave. I got into my trunk.
Yeah, she handled there. She was with Buddy Lee for
years, and she broke off on her own.
And she had a real gravely voicebecause she smoked and drank
(19:10):
Bailey's every morning with her coffee.
Yeah, she started the day off right.
So she talked like this, you know, had that kind of voice,
real heel voice, you know. And so I, I dug into my trunk
and I, I, I had a suit in one ofthe garbage bags that I had in
the back, you know, because I didn't have suitcases.
(19:30):
And so I pulled this suit out, this crumpled up suit, put it on
just wrinkled ass, you know, it was terrible.
I looked like I looked homeless because I was.
And I went up to the door and I knocked on the door and she came
to the door and swung it open and she took a big drag on her
cigarette. And she says what?
(19:51):
She answered the door. I go, I'm here about the job for
a booking agent. And she looked me up and down
for a second. She goes, come on in, talk to
me. So I went in the office and she
said, oh, who have you booked? Well, I was, you know, just full
of shit. But oh, man, I've done this,
this thing I just made. I don't remember.
The bullshit was so deep that I made-up.
(20:12):
And she stopped and she looked at me and she goes, how long has
it been since you ate, kid? And it just shocked me.
And I said, what? She says, how long has it been
since you ate? And I said three days.
And says come on, I'll take you to Shoney's.
So there used to be a Shoney's down there on Demumbrian
Nashville. So we went to that one and I ate
like 5 plates of food because I didn't know what I was going to
(20:34):
eat again, right? Yeah, right, right.
She was looking at me this wholetime, just staring at me kind
of, you know, making me uncomfortable because I'm just
shoveling food. And she goes, you got big balls,
kid, coming to my office. She goes, I'll tell you what,
where do you live? And I pointed to the car, and
she is. Oh, my God.
You know, she goes. I have a hammock on the porch at
(20:59):
the agency, and there's a showerin the basement.
I suggest you use it. I'm going to teach you how to be
an agent. And she took me under a wing.
And had I not gotten that break,I I don't know what would have
happened because it leads to another story that I think
you'll find interesting. Yeah.
So I'd worked there about 3 months, right.
Living in the basement. I was vacuuming the whole place
(21:21):
after everybody would leave. And then I go to sleep in the
hammock. One day, she walks in the office
and me and Dick Beecham, he was a major agent in Nashville that
worked for it. We're in the office, and she
goes, all right, I've got Chet Atkins dossier right here.
Who wants Chet? I said I do.
No, you are not getting Chet Atkins.
(21:41):
And I said, John, you know, giveme a break because, you know,
he's my hero. Yeah.
He was the reason I wanted to move to Nashville because I love
Chet Atkins record. Oh, he's great.
She left. One day.
She went to Kentucky and I was there by myself at the agency,
and she told me don't do anything without getting hold of
me. Somebody calls, call me first
(22:03):
and then we'll decide. Well, call came through and it
was from Rivergate Mall. Do you remember that?
Out next to Rivergate? Yeah.
Oh, OK. Well, yeah, you know what I'm
talking about. So they called and said, hey, we
want to have Chet Atkins come out and do a record signing in
store. And I was like, oh, well, great.
I happened to book him, you know, And they, I said, what's
(22:27):
your budget? And they said, 650 bucks and I
go, great, we'll take it. And so I book him, right?
And I send the contract over to Chet's office.
I'm doing all this without Donnie's permission because I'm.
I'm thinking she's done and she's going to love this.
I booked him, you know, Yeah, that I could do the whole
process. I because we have power of
(22:47):
attorney. So we signed for it.
And I get a call about 10 minutes later, and it's Chet's
secretary. And she said, hey, can you come
over here? Chet would like to meet with
you. I'm thinking he's going to thank
me. How awesome is this?
I get to meet him. He's going to be great.
Thank me for this fantastic gig.I got him.
So I go over there and I'm sitting in his office, right?
(23:09):
And you know, when you're in theoffice, they're talking on the
phone. You just kind of listen and you
don't mean to, but you're right,right there.
And I heard her say, OK, yes. When Chet gets there, they'll be
60,000 and then the other 60,000after the show.
And it hits me like a ton of bricks.
I just booked this dude for $650.
(23:29):
Oh my God. He hitting 100?
Yeah. You where I'm going now, Right.
So now I'm sick. My eyes start sweating, I'm
turning. And.
And she, you know, she has no idea why Chet wants to see me.
And and finally she goes. Mr. Atkins will see you now.
And he came down the steps and he looked at me and he goes, hi,
(23:52):
I'm Chad Atkins. And I said, I know who you are,
Sir. And I shook his hand, and I
think my hand had a gallon of sweat in it because I was just
like, oh, my God. Because now I'm back and I'm
thinking, I'm back in the car. I'm fired.
This is over. I blew it, you know?
And he goes, we'll come up here and talk to me about this gig,
you know? And I said, OK, so we go in his
office and he says, where you from?
(24:14):
And I said, I'm from Iowa, Sir. And he goes, yeah, well, you
know, and he's telling me about,you know, you played with a
Symphony, I think in Des Moines or whatever, and I wouldn't even
listen because I was just terrifying.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And he goes, do you know Scotty Turner?
And I said, no, Sir, I do not. And he goes, did Scotty put you
up to this? And it was a friend of his.
(24:35):
And then I said no, no. And then he realized it was like
I had really screwed up. And he goes, I'll tell you what,
he goes, let's go do the gig, but you're going with me.
And then he invited John Knowles, one of the greatest
guitar players in the world, whodid his transcript and work.
And he said, bring it, bring a car around.
(24:58):
So I rented A limo and went and picked him up.
He drove us all over Nashville that day.
Me and John were in the car withhim showing us all the property
he owned, all this stuff. And then he looked at me and he
said, would you like to take a quantum leap?
And I said, I don't know what itis, but if you're offering it,
I'm taking it. I don't know what it is.
(25:20):
And you know what I didn't what I left out of that story was
when Johnny got back that night,Oh my God, I was down in the
basement and she's she's screaming.
So I get your ass in my office. Got in there, says what in the
hell have you done? And then she really freaked out
when I told her that Chet calledme and had me come over and she
(25:41):
was you went to Chet Atkins office and I said I did.
I went in and talked to him and he wants to do the gig and I got
to find a car and she was just, she's like you could fall into a
pile of shit and come out smelling like rose.
Wow, did you pull that off? You know, because he was
getting, you know, over 100K. And so anyway, we went and did
(26:05):
that gig and I sat at the table with him while we signed
autographs. Me and John, we just watched
him. And then we got back in the car,
went Wendy's through a drive through in the stretch
limousine. It was fun.
And we became best friends from that day forward until he passed
away. And he really took me under his
(26:26):
wing. He taught me the business,
taught me about publishing, he got me my gig with Charlie
Walker on the Grand Ole Opry andI started getting session work
with guys like him and Ray Flackthat have played for Ricky
Skaggs. Ray and I are still best friends
and we have a test. We've been playing chess online
(26:46):
for over 24 years. Wow, wow, wow.
I've been very, very lucky, you know, and I got to meet Waylon
and and Jerry Reed. I got to know Jerry very well.
Tom Brett was one of my best friends.
So my my background was very much music that as you know,
Steve Miller's a good friend anda mentor.
(27:09):
Kev MO list. I go through the whole list, but
it take a while. And I don't mean that to sound
like I'm bragging, it's just a fact.
It's legit. Yeah.
You, you the credentials are real.
That's. Yeah, promotional consideration
paid for by the following ladiesand gentlemen, welcome to Give
(27:31):
Me Back My Pro Wrestling, the podcast that's based on the old
school but can still help you find the good stuff from today.
Jimmy St. and the Plastic Sheet Jared are the undisputed tag
team champions of the wrestling podcast world.
From thought provoking topics tosuperstar interviews to action
figure expertise, this team doesit all.
(27:53):
And all they ask is give me backmy pro wrestling every other
Thursday, wherever you listen topodcasts.
So going into the wrestling business was really it was.
I'll tell you what happened was when I got trained, I went to,
(28:17):
we were in Fort Knox with Jarrett's.
They had a, they had a show there in Fort Knox and that's
where I met Max Payne and Max and I had such a background.
That was all just, you know, he had went to Iowa.
He, you know, it's all American in Iowa, three time, I believe,
three time all American and University of Iowa.
(28:38):
So we had that background. You know, we knew Iowa, we could
talk about that. And then his family background.
We were just like brothers. In fact, a lot of people thought
we were brothers. Gotcha, same same build and
similar height and. Yeah, I mean, we're we're
almost. He was.
He was about an inch taller thanme.
Yeah. And with the Mohawk I was a
(28:59):
little. Taller than him, yeah, right.
If I sprayed it up real good, I could be about an inch taller
than that. But Max and I were, you know,
Max was a musician also. Yeah, great.
And so we. Have that background together
and we'd always play guitars together and stuff and hang out.
And people could not understand in the wrestling business what
(29:23):
we were doing in the wrestling business because we both played
music. Like, why would you do this and
why would you bump if you could go play music?
But I got into wrestling becausemy dad loved wrestling, my
grandpa loved wrestling, and my dad had passed away in 85.
And I thought, you know, I'm going to show him that I could
do this. Yeah, because I've never.
(29:44):
I'll tell you straight up, Brianwas not wrong.
I sucked as a wrestler. Probably the worst wrestler in
the business. My work was shit, drizzling
shits, as they put it. And I never really cared because
I had fun with that character. Doctor Squash was like the
antithesis of everything that I was.
(30:04):
You know, I, I love kids. I'm very I tried to be friendly
to everybody and kind and DoctorSquash was an evil asshole.
So it was kind of fun to play that character.
And, you know, then Max and I, we we started developing
characters for the IWA and you know, of course Len Rossi and
Joey Rossi came in. Joey was a dear friend and they
(30:26):
were like, you know, this is this is really out there.
This is like the cartoon, you know, what are you doing?
And I said, well, we want to have fun with it.
We're you know, we kind of made fun.
We're inadvertently we're tryingto make fun of Vince in a way.
Totally rabbit. That's what the idea was.
And we made fun of everybody we made.
(30:49):
We had, I think at one point we had a guy that we dressed like
Dundee, who was, it was a Midgetand we had him, Russell, Jerry
the King, Lawler mid. And no disrespect, you know, I
love Dundee. And and Jerry, it wasn't even
about having heat with them. It was just making fun of the
business kind of, you know, and having fun with it.
(31:11):
And then we, we developed this character called Luscious Leslie
Love. He, he was a Shakespearean actor
from Nashville and we had him come out as a gay blade biker.
Nice. I'll never forget I was sitting
at the announcer's table the first night he came out like his
name was Dick Sherman, the guy that was doing the announcement.
(31:32):
And he covers the mic, he looks at me, he goes, what the hell is
this? Because he was carrying a cage
to the ring with a plastic tube.And I said that's, that's Butch,
the man eating gerbil. And he was carrying to the the
ring with. Straight.
Up, straight up, we did that. And so then, you know, of course
(31:54):
I got calls from, you know, the TV station was so hey, we're
getting a lot of heat over this character, you know?
And I said, well, just wait, because it's going to get worse.
And we put him up. We had to do a run.
Yeah, seriously. We had him do a run with Willie
the Wrestling Clown. And it was, Oh, my God, he drew
(32:15):
so much heat. Yeah, Lush and Leslie, because
we'd have Willie go out and givekids balloons and then Lush just
to go out and pop them, you know, that kind of just real
cheap heat. You know, it was a good heat.
And we knew that it was, it was crap, but we just had fun.
We had a character called Barry CUDA, and he wore a fish suit.
(32:38):
He had like a, you know, Paul Pegg.
He was a big bodybuilder, but hehad like fins on the arms and
stuff. I mean, we're, you know, we
hadn't, we had no budget. So there was literally no
budget. I was just going out and getting
sponsors like Jiffy Burger in Manchester, you know, that that
would just cover, cover the airing of the show.
(32:59):
We did all the filming, editing everything ourselves.
Because that was another thing Idid.
I got a background in, but you know, that's where we're working
with Bubba and Mike. You guys had Bubba on earlier.
I love Bubba. Bubba is like he will always be
brothers and I love Mike Ayers too.
I want to say that Mike, he was one of the toughest people I've
(33:23):
ever known. And you know, we had a lot of
fun with the interns and Dr. Squash because that gave us all
a chance to just go out and havefun.
But those guys were both jailersat the time, so they worked
under hoods. Yeah, right, right.
Yeah. And it was a hilarious gimmick,
it really. No, it was.
And the way they acted, Oh my God, it's so funny.
(33:46):
Well then, I don't know if you ever saw that bit we did with
the doctor's office. Yeah.
Recently, Yeah, where they, theyhit the homeless guy with the
ambulance and then they bring him to my office and, and hey,
we're going to get the docs and business, you know, that kind of
thing. And, and I look down at him and
go, hey, what day is it? And then I did the Three Stooges
(34:07):
slap on both of them. And I go, it's dental.
They fix it. So they pound on him in the
chair and then the nurse hits him in the back of the head and
he's spitting out teeth. And so when I sent that tape to
the TV station, which was Channel 2 in Nashville, I got a
call from our salesman, Ralph. And he was like, I, I don't know
(34:32):
if we can air this. It's really violent.
I said, is there any blood in it?
He goes, well, no. But the guy spitting teeth out,
I said, do you really think anybody believes that he's
really spitting his teeth out into a platter, you know, 1 by
1? And I said, just air it.
Just trust me air. You know, I think we were only
(34:52):
on the air. We are on less than a year.
Gotcha, okay. But we we had so much fun making
that show. We did insane, stupid skits
during the show and it was more like living color meets
wrestling. We just made fun of everything.
There was nothing sacred. Yeah, so we do have some
listener questions. A great friend of the show,
(35:15):
former guest of the show, Quentin Charisma.
I'm not sure if you know Quentin, but Quentin's
incredible. He's a great guy, but he loves
the IWA and love any. And so he's kind of our behind
the scenes question. Yeah, You know so it because
he's forgotten more about MiddleTennessee wrestling than we
remember so. So Jared, I'm going to let you
take the first Quentin question since it works so perfectly for
(35:37):
what we're talking about, so. All right, Barry, so he, he says
before you started the IWA, you were doing security on Saturday
nights at the fairgrounds. When did the when did the
Jarretts find out that you were going to start a promotion in
Nashville and did it there? Was there any heat from the
Jarretts and did they ever try to like stop you from running?
(35:59):
I don't, I don't think they tookus serious because they saw the
show and they saw the productionquality.
And I remember talking to Chris,I hope there was no heat,
because I remember talking to Christine and she was just
shaking her head like, you're anidiot, you know?
Yeah, Yeah, I am. I am.
I'm kind of, I'm kind of like Jackass in the wrestling
(36:20):
business. We're just doing stupid, stupid
bumps and, you know, getting hurt all the time.
And, you know, we tried. We weren't like ECW or anything,
you know, I mean, but yeah, I remember because Peaches, I
don't know if you remember Peaches.
Yeah, he was there, had a theoryof Peaches and had told me he
goes, man, if you're going to air this thing, I can't have you
(36:42):
working out in the fairgrounds. And I said, OK, that's fine, you
know, because we're going to airit.
Right. And I wrote the theme music, did
the voice over and got it to thestation 2 days before it aired.
You're doing it online. Yeah, exactly.
You know what I'm saying. Don't.
You kind? Of like, oh, we got to be on it
(37:04):
at 9:00, OK, we'll be there at 7:00 with the baby.
We'd be like trying to come up with stuff to fill it, you know,
So if we needed filler, Max was always around too.
So Max would do promos for anti drug promos and you know, just
anything that we could throw at it.
(37:24):
You know, we had soap opera laundry.
Yes. The interns went and did that.
The ass commercial we did for them and I did one for Howard
Cherry, the guy that had earned,you know, Ernest, the guy that.
Earned John. Cherry, Jim.
Jim Varney. Yeah.
(37:45):
John Cherry. Yeah.
Jim Varney. And we did a thing.
He had gotten hold of Terry. You know, Hogan and I was on the
other line. And so we did a split screen.
It was like, hey, you got to bust it down to this Subway
shop. Don't even remember the name of
the shop. And Terry, of course, you and
Terry did his thing and and he goes, what is it?
(38:07):
And I go, it's called the Hulk Hogie.
It was the worst commercial everin the history of commercials.
It had to be the I I've never seen it again.
I think he aired it once and that and one and done and pulled
it out. We did like car commercials that
were just insane. I had one where this guy wanted
(38:29):
me to sell boats for him on on the commercial.
So I had a guy stand in the boatand and I was spraying water on
the windshield out of a hose. Yeah, I was going, can you feel
the surf? Can you feel it?
It was, it was ridiculously bad.So I did, I did a bunch of stuff
like that. Me and Max just tried to create
(38:50):
stuff that were, was really funny.
And you know that Max and I had kind of a falling out later.
But, you know, I've always lovedhim and and he knows that, you
know, he, he basically ran off of my ex-wife.
Yeah, it was, it was cold. But he did me a great favor and
(39:12):
in the end, and it was a great, you know, it was like, thank
you, Max. And I've had a much better life
since. And, you know, but I, I, if he's
listening, hey, I miss you, brother.
No hard feelings. I have 0 hard feelings towards
him. But the band, I don't know.
(39:36):
That's a great. I have no idea.
Couldn't tell you. So obviously we talked about the
Jarrett's and stuff, so let me just put in this quip.
I think the listener would be surprised at how much I'm
working on a show up until the time that it drops.
I mean seriously, Like it's we drop it at 12 AM, 12 AM on
Thursday morning and I've been working on it at 11:58, so.
(40:00):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I know the feeling too.
It's like I got to get this lastedit done.
Yeah, look at it and go, oh, crap, I forgot something in the
credits or whatever and you got to, you know, drop all that in.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
So talking more about the Jarretts in the TV show here,
he's it says, yeah, Quentin alsoasked.
He's got like four or five questions, so just hang tight
with us. He says his TV show was on the
(40:22):
same station as the Jarrett show.
Did he try to get the time slot right before or right after
their show aired? Or also, did the Jarretts ever
go to the station to try to get it kicked off?
They, I believe they did, if I remember right.
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry was not happy with the station for
airing it and the station. I really had to talk Ralph into
(40:46):
taking the program because he was like, well, we've already
got, you know, we've got Memphiswrestling.
I said, which is a little different.
You know, I tried to pitch him Max and I went in there and
pitched them on. This is a different kind of
wrestling show. It's not like the others.
And, you know, and so Ralph rolled the dice with us and I
think we, we had signed on for 12 episodes of what we were
(41:09):
going to do. I can't remember how many we
did. I think we did 10.
I, I've got it on disk. I, I, I don't watch it, but
yeah. But yeah, it, it was, I think
there was some heat with Jeremy over that with not, not so much
with us because he thought we were a joke and we were compared
to what they were doing. But I think he was more pissed
(41:31):
at the TV station for actually airing us.
And I do believe that there was a couple times when it did air
either right before or right after and I can't remember.
There was 2 times I think that happened and then they stopped
doing that. And I think that was because
Jerry called them up. But yeah, I, you know, great
(41:52):
respect for Jeff and Jerry and Christine.
Oh, Shady Hale and all those guys that work there.
And Lance Russell was one of my favorite human beings.
Oh greatest. Announcer.
Yeah, he was a true Yeah. Yeah, He went to the well one
too many times, man, he had. He had great lines.
(42:13):
Oh, he did. Fantastic.
And now a word from our sponsor.This is Kroll.
And you're listening to Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling with Jimmy
(42:34):
St. and Jared the Plastic sheet.Be sure to like, subscribe and
view all of our USWO and Saw wrestling content at Nashville
Wrestling Network exclusively onYouTube.
(42:56):
Other promotions in the 80s thatran opposition in Nashville
didn't use the Armory. Luthez ran it in 76 but wasn't
successful in that building. So what?
What made you decide to run the Armory?
Because we're idiots. And when we ran the Armory, we
we basically were bucking every everybody that told us don't run
(43:18):
the Armory, including Nick Dulas.
Nick Dulas told me the same thing.
Don't do the Armory. So of course we did the Armory
like idiot, you know, like, OK, we'll make it work.
Because me and Max, do we believe that we could, we could
do anything, you know? And when you're young and dumb
like that, you think, OK, well, they didn't make it.
Well, I will well and three people showed up and I owed
(43:41):
Orville. I can't remember what it was for
the ring back and couple 100 bucks and I didn't have the
money to pay him. You know, it was it was tense.
That's when we really started toto feel that the heat of OK, I
got to do this show every week and I can't afford it.
I got no money basically, basically out of funds out of we
(44:07):
were starting to run out of ideas at that point because we'd
already done it by that point. We've done Luscious Leslie,
Willie the Wrestling Clown, which still I laugh every time I
think about. We had Cool Breeze Williams,
Robert Scorpio we brought in. I called Terry Gordy to come in
and do He did our first for her first show.
(44:29):
I love Terry. I sure missed.
That man. Wow, Terry said.
Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do a brother, you know, I
mean, he worked with Saul Weingrath and.
I'm big friends with George. George is a buddy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, George. Yeah, the Winegrass.
Well, their dad is kind of the one that got me in the business,
(44:49):
hooked me up with with Tojo. Nice, because I.
Went Buddy Lee. I knew Buddy Lee really well,
Nature Boy Buddy Lee that ran Buddy Lee Entertainment down on
Music Row. And I went and talked to Buddy
and I said, Buddy, I want to getin the wrestling business and,
and he said, well, I'll have youtalk to Mr. Weingrock and he'll
get you hooked up. And actually it wasn't Saul that
(45:12):
was Saul was the dad. It was what was it?
He was the brother that was blind.
So that was George was blind. George was blind, and then he
had a brother. Herbert.
Herbie Herbie was his brother. No, it was had to have been
George. Very cool.
Love George Perry. Yeah, I've interviewed George
about 3 or 4 times. Yeah, man, no doubt.
(45:34):
Yeah. Yeah, you knew it was crazy
good. Yeah.
OK. Well, we've talked about this
question a little bit, but I'm going to ask it because
Quentin's our buddy and you've kind of answered this, but I
just want to clear some things up here.
So he says Max Payne was obviously your biggest star,
right? Of course, there's no question.
And it says Payne had just recently left the Jared
promotions. Now, did you contact Payne or
(45:56):
did Payne contact you? And what was the selling point
for Max Payne to work for him asthe company's top babyface?
Well, it really wasn't even a negotiation.
He was kind of burned out on, you know, doing that run to Indy
and, and, or up in it was in Indy, Indiana.
(46:16):
I can't remember all the IT was in Evansville.
We've been doing that whole circuit, you know, Evansville
and then we'd go to Memphis and do TV and then come back to
Nashville and, and he was just kind of burned out on it.
He wasn't really making any money.
Yeah. And, you know, jump right out of
the fire and into the frying panwith talking about no money,
(46:40):
man. We're our big thing was, you
know, we'd buy ramen and throw an egg in the ramen and call it
a Chinese buffet because, you know, it was like having a
Chinese buffet if you had an eggin there, right?
Yeah, OK. Yeah.
And so and yeah, so have a Max come in.
(47:00):
It was great because we felt like we had at least one star on
the show. Then we created all the others.
But we did have guest shots. We had Ricky Morton in, which
was great. Ricky did a great job for us.
Had a great. Match.
With Bubba, you know had a greatmatch with.
Ball. Yeah, man.
Fantastic. And you know Steve Sawyer.
(47:22):
I miss Steve, too. Steve was a hell of a worker.
We had him when he started, so that was kind of, that was a
cool thing we had. Oh man, I'm trying to think of
all the guys. I mean, we had Paul Pig, it's
Barry CUDA, Gentleman Jim Corbett.
We had, there's a, you know, a lot of guys that would not have
gotten a chance to work otherwise, you know, because
(47:46):
they weren't, you know, Jarrett's weren't taking on
anybody. And if they were there, they
were pulling out of AWA, you know, I think went down there
work and. It sounds to me like IWA and ECW
kind of come from the same idea and place.
Basically the the Island of Misfit toys.
It sounds like you know what I mean, yes?
(48:06):
But Paul pulled it off. Yeah, but you tried.
You tried. Yeah, but, well, the thing was
we did, we didn't realize what it was going to really cost.
You know, we thought we could just do it and then get the
sponsors. Well, you know, that's not how
life works. And then, you know, it doesn't
work like that. I know that.
Trust me, don't. Work at all?
(48:27):
Like that, if you build it, theymay not come actually.
Right, you know, you share a canof beans and and you go, yeah,
that's great TV. Look at each other.
We, we went, I remember we went to a pizza place to watch it on
TV because we were all excited about pay our shows on, you
(48:48):
know, and I think Joan Santoro, who is one of the announcers,
had to pay for the pizza becausenone of us, none of us had any
money. It's.
Like they were on TV look, but we need to pay for.
This now is when Ty and Papu hadcome up to work for Jarrett.
Yeah, OK. And they were living with me
because they had nowhere to go. So Ty and Tapu were living with
(49:09):
me and scaring the hell out of my neighbors because they go out
in the backyard and chip golf balls into a box, you know?
That's funny. You know, Thai was huge.
He was massive. And then Taboo looked like
somebody that was under the bridge, you know, collecting
tolls when he crossed. So here let me tell you a.
Funny story about the neighborhood.
(49:30):
Let me tell you a funny story about Thai.
OK, so we were, my brother and I, we used to go to local
wrestling, OK. And the one night, you know,
Nelson Royals promotion was running in a small town near us.
And I remember Jimmy Valiant wasin the in the main event in
Rock'n'roll Express. And you know, it was just like
a, a smaller indie outlaw kind of deal running outside of
(49:54):
Crockett, but with a lot of Crockett stars, right?
And so what's funny is we'd always thought it was a Haku,
right? We thought this was Haku and and
Jared. We're down.
We rushed the bottom because we want to go give Jimmy Valiant
high 5 after his match. Well, it turns out that Ty comes
out into the crowd a little bit because everybody's rushed
around Jimmy and and my brother walks directly into like his arm
(50:19):
or side and slimes sweat his entire face.
For years we had thought that was Haku, right?
For decades, we thought it was. I think we had heard people say
that. We had heard people tell us it
was Haku and stuff and you know,we were dumb enough just to
leave it as kids cuz we were like Oh my God, Haku's here you
know? And sure enough it was Ty and I
just found out cuz we had Tommy Angel recently on the podcast
(50:42):
about a year ago and Tommy was in that Nelson Royals promotion.
So I started doing a lot of research and I said Jared, I bet
that's this dude and I bet it was Nelson Royals promotion cuz
we never knew the promotion or anything.
Well anyway, Long story short, you were talking about Ty and
that just brought up that memoryin my mind.
Sorry to. Take up those two guys.
(51:03):
I took them to a Godfather's allyou could eat buffet and they
they had just landed in the country, right?
They were they had nothing and so they were living with me.
So we went to Godfather's and that poor lady at the counter is
Ty Ate. He took the whole bowl of
(51:24):
Peaches out of the buffet line, took it over the table, ate the
entire bowl, and he goes, I wantmore Peaches, more Peaches.
I said go up there and ask him. So he took it up there.
She opened the whole can of Peaches and dumped the whole
great big can into the bowl. Oh.
My. God, thank you.
You know, and then we, we'd be in Kroger and they would be
(51:49):
eating on the raw fish. They would pick up a raw fish.
They eat it while we're walking around the store.
And they were, I love those guys.
They, you know, here's the thing.
A lot of times people get on these podcasts and you know
they'll they'll have heat with somebody or something and
they'll say something terrible about them or.
Or you. Know they did this or that for
(52:12):
for me, I want to say to everybody that's ever been in
the ring, everybody that's got in there and did their best and
sometimes it wasn't good enough or just wasn't, you know, who
cares? We got to do something that most
people will never ever experienced in their lifetime
and the thrill of being out in front of a crowd and it's just
(52:34):
you and your body. You got to go out there and make
it happen. It's not like music for me and
you, right? Because music, you have a band
and you can cover each other. You got one of the guy in the
ring and and a referee and you got to you got to tell a story
and you got to build a storyline.
And then that ain't easy. People that think this is easy
(52:56):
are insane. No.
And, And isn't it crazy when I'msure you noticed it too when you
first got into the wrestling business?
You know, I was telling all the guys like Jeremiah Plunkett, I
used to ride with him a lot. You know, a lot of the guys, I'm
like, guys, you don't realize how close wrestling and
rock'n'roll are. It's crazy.
You. Starve to death until you get a
good contract and then that contract you starve to death for
(53:17):
a while. I mean, seriously, I, I was
explaining to people because we would do these long car trips to
like Illinois for Bert Prentice or whatever.
And I'm like, as you don't realize how close rock'n'roll
and wrestling are, it's crazy. I mean, it's it, it is somewhat
of an ego driven business because you're, you're trying to
push yourself, you know, whetheror not you're in a band or not,
(53:39):
you're still trying to stand outas a performer, you know, And
it's crazy how close they are, you know.
Oh, it's, it's exactly the same.Because, you know, I, I toured
for about 38 years all over the world, played music everywhere.
And I can tell you without hesitation that it is absolutely
(54:00):
no different than crawling into the car with the boys and going
down the highway. You know you're eating the same
crappy food, you're running downthe same Rd., you're playing the
same arenas. And.
It's exactly the same. It's, you know, everybody
starves. That's right.
It's the talk of Middle Tennessee, the channel you love
(54:22):
to hate and the channel you hateto love.
It's Brian Turner from Brian Turner's VHS Rehab.
And if you're looking for matches from Wolfie D to Jerry
Lawler to Dusty Rhodes and the team that put a pimp before your
eyes and a goatee put 2 in your thighs, Booty KO and Athena go
to lostwrestling.com. See, I made it easy.
For you, Brian Turner's VHS Rehab Booyah.
(54:45):
Hey everybody, Jean Jackson hereinviting you to check out the
Retro Wrestling review where each week I'm joined by some
great Co host to help me review classic episodes of USWA
Championship Wrestling. And right now we are doing week
by week reviews of 1993. But we don't just do reviews.
Sometimes we get a chance to interview some of the people who
were there and lived it. Plus do watch alongs.
(55:08):
It's a lot of fun. So check out new episodes that
drop every Wednesday at wrestlecopia.com and define
links to everything being associated to the podcast.
You can go to uswapodcast.com. Ladies and gentlemen, this is
(55:36):
Jimmy St. and that was episode 14 of the Best of James Rock St.
Productions with the first half of episode 67 of Doctor Squash
on Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling.
Bayer's a great guy, and whetheryou love music or wrestling, I'm
sure you enjoyed that episode. You can hear the full episode
and more over on at G MB, MPW orGive Me Back My Pro Wrestling
(55:56):
wherever you listen to podcasts or simply click the link in the
notes below. We hope you've enjoyed a look
back in the archives of James Rock St.
Productions. Check us out next week to see
what else we have in store. Until then, follow at G, MB, MPW
and at James Rock St. Everywhere Peace with a tear in
my eye. This is the greatest moment in
(56:19):
my life. We'll see you later.
(56:49):
This has been a James Rock St. production.
Hey, this is Michael Bear Claire, also known as Doctor
Squash. You're listening to Give Me Back
My Pro Wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling. Hello, Sir.
(00:45):
Don't know. Now you know.
Baby, this is Hot Rod Bigs, Jared, Jimmy St.
We're going to take them to the limit One more time, baby.
Right here. Oh, give me back my pro
wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
one more time to the Give Me Back my Pro Wrestling podcast.
And I'm here, as always with my brother from the same father and
mother, the Plastic sheet. Jared St.
(01:06):
What's up brother? How you doing?
Good brother, how about yourself?
Man, just hanging in there, brother.
Just got through with these TCW episodes with Wolfie D and we
got Doctor Squash on the show with us today, man.
It's been eventful, brother. It's been eventful.
Yeah, man, you've been busy, been busy out the the those
episodes with the Wolfie podcast, the TCW people.
(01:29):
That's good stuff. Yeah, man, I I hope people give
them a chance, you know, Seriously.
That's a juggling act too, man. All those people in one podcast,
man. Yeah, and, and I've got ideas
for us like this similar to thattoo.
I'll, I'll send you a message onthe side about.
But I definitely think it opens up the door because it kind of
gets it. It serves 2 masters, it gets
(01:49):
people on the show and it gets cool topics to talk about and
stuff like that. So yeah, I was, I was happy and
it was something I was concernedabout at first, but actually
ended up being smoother than I expected.
So you can't complain there. But yeah, man.
And you know, now we've got Doctor Squash coming on, I'm
(02:09):
excited to talk to him. I don't know him, but he had a
little run in the business in Nashville and he's also a world
travelled, world renowned musician.
So very excited to be able to talk to him because, you know,
he, he kind of did at a larger level what I had dreams for on
(02:30):
both, you know, so. Yeah, man, it's gonna be a it's
gonna be a good one. I just feel like he's.
I might have to ask you about how Ketchum.
Yeah, yeah, for sure. Definitely got to talk about how
Ketchum, of course we had Steve Morton on the last episode.
Everybody seemed to enjoy that. Definitely always fun to have a
Morton on the podcast. You know, it's it's just good
(02:52):
times, so. Absolutely, that's good stuff.
Now we got to get Ricky, Cody, David, all of them.
You know there's. Plenty of them we could.
We could have the next year planned out with that.
Oh, we could easily, no problem.And we could do mixtures of both
because then there's Morton, youknow, the Morton tag team with
Steve and Shane and then Shane and Bubba and then three man
(03:16):
tags and Jade Lynn and everybody.
I mean, just so many people you could have on here, the Morton
family, but maybe that's one of those topics I was talking
about. Who knows?
We'll see. But, you know, very cool.
We definitely appreciate Steve coming on and and promoting it
and, you know, everybody listening, you know, great,
great response to it. So thank you so much for that.
(03:37):
You know, and honestly, you know, got some cool news.
By the way, Wolfie, Dee and Jamie are going into the Memphis
Hall of Fame. Man, that's a big yeah, yeah,
it's a big class, too. It's got Jimmy Valiant, Doctor
Tom, Danny Davis, man, who else?I mean, there's so many people
(03:57):
in it. That was like holy cow.
Rock'n'roll Express. Oh, man, Good stuff.
Yeah, man, Jimmy, you know, justjust some cool people to be in
that. So they're going to have a
little deal on September 21st inJackson, TN Definitely look up
those links to buy your tickets now.
But PG13's going in the Hall of Fame, man.
(04:17):
But definitely very cool, very cool to see that so.
Well deserved man. Well deserved and long overdue.
So Congrats fellas. You probably won't hear this,
but good job. Yeah, well other than that I
don't really have anything rightnow.
I know Powertown's wrapping up their second series with their
pre-orders, so that's kind of cool already.
(04:39):
Got mine in so it's yeah. Day one guy, are you a?
Day 1:00-ish A. Day 1:00-ish, not a day
1:00-ish. I didn't do it day one, I don't
think. Yeah, had they emailed us back
that last time, you might have day one them.
No, I'm just kidding. Might have, yeah.
Anyway, yeah, Powertown definitely support them.
(04:59):
Y'all. They probably put out I would
say the best figures out there and I'm not a figures guy, but
you know, in my opinion they looked like the best for sure.
So. Yeah, they got some seem high
quality ever since they kind of got torn apart for that first
batch that came out so. Leg popping, yeah.
(05:20):
Yeah, well, you know, one guy that ain't going to pop our legs
today is Doctor Squash, so let'stalk to him right now, all.
Right, let's get it going. All right, we'll be right back.
After these messages with DoctorSquash, I'll give me back my pro
wrestling. Are you a pro wrestling fan?
We'll stop by Captain's Corner, where you can get autographed
(05:40):
photos, cards, magazines, and figures from all of your
favorite wrestling superstars ofthe past, present, and future.
You'll also be able to participate in live signings in
the weeks and months to come. Make sure to stop by Captain's
Corner on Facebook and give us aholler.
Remember, cheers to the working man.
(06:01):
All right, we are back with GiveMe Back My Pro Wrestling and our
very special guest of the day. Been very excited since we
hooked this one up. Now is the time for the good
doctor and that is the Doctor Squash Bear.
Welcome to the show brother. Thank you for coming on.
It's pleasure to be here. Good.
(06:22):
Yeah. Yeah, good to have you buddy.
OK, so as we all know and all ofour listeners know, we always
start off every show with the plastic Sheiks.
Favorite question? Take it away, Sheik.
Alright Bear, so this is gonna let the listeners and us get to
know you a little bit when when it comes to wrestling.
Like if you had a Mount Rushmoreof like four or five people in
(06:43):
the wrestling business industry,whatever that can be, any walk
of life in the in the wrestling business that are your like top
four or five guys of influencer you like to watch whatever, who
would they be? Well, honestly, I really like.
I had great, great respect for Gypsy Joe.
He was one of my trainers. Oh, yeah.
And beat the hell out of us a lot.
(07:08):
He was. He was tough.
And I had Tojo as a trainer. And Tojo also beat Honest, which
was great. And Rocky Johnson.
Rocky was really my first trainer and I worked out with
Rocky a lot. Yeah, I miss him.
I really miss him. That that's a loss.
(07:29):
Ric Flair, of course. I think Rick, you know, come on.
You. Know and Ricky Morton, I got to
tell you I love Ricky Martin. We worked with Ricky in the IWA
and Ricky he talked about a promo king.
My God he can just kick out a promo like in his sleep.
Yeah. Such a baby face too.
(07:50):
I mean like. Yeah, it was great.
Yeah, I mean, he's my favorite wrestler of all time, no
question. I think, you know, I used to
even make people call me Ricky as a kid because I had, I was
such a fan. Yes, you had a Muller rat.
Yeah, I. Did.
Mick Foley. Mick Foley is one of he's a
really good friend of mine, known Mick forever, and we still
(08:11):
stay in touch and that's awesometalk a lot more.
Mick has to be in there too. I mean, Mick did stuff nobody
dreamed of doing. Yeah, no doubt.
Yeah, definitely got to be in there.
That Neste plunge move that he took every week or every day on
the ground, man, I mean, everybody talks about the 25
(08:32):
foot drop from this, but that that's one time, you know, your
body can kind of absorb that. The problem is, is Mick had been
doing that Neste plunge on the concrete because Bill Watts
pulled up all the mats. So yeah, anyway man, love you
Mick. Yeah, I do too.
And Mick's, Mick's getting around pretty good considering
(08:53):
the the damage that he he collected, you know?
I mean, yeah, he gets around pretty good still.
He's had some surgeries, I'm sure.
I know. But it's a yeah.
Yeah. But his body, his body's taking
a beating. And, you know, he's always had
that kind of almost like a wobble hitch in his step or
something like that. Ever since, yeah.
(09:13):
That's as Ben Jordan as Ben Jordan calls that.
That's the wrestler limp. That's how you can know if you
if you got a crowd of 100 people, you can always pick out
the wrestler because of the wrestler limp.
Terry Punk man walking to the ring.
Yeah. Oh, I know Desperado playing,
whipping that. I mean, man, I just Terry, you
(09:37):
know, I kind of go back and forth on this because, you know,
I have my Mount Rushmore and I'mnot going to go over that.
I don't bore the people. But you know, Rick and Terry,
you know, they're two on there. Ricky Morton is my all time.
But you know, Terry, there's a great argument that Terry is the
greatest wrestler of all time. I mean, I really feel like that
there's an opportunity to make that argument and you know.
(10:02):
Valid argument. Yeah, promos, you know, I mean,
I mean, I just think I mean Jerry Lawler, I could argue that
Lawler is the greatest of all time too.
So we don't have to get into that.
Maybe we'll bring you back for aGOAT episode later there.
But we'll we'll we'll go on withyour career today.
So to start things off with my questions, I always like to go
(10:25):
with this one here. So we're going to take it back
to the very beginning and tell us a little bit about your
younger days, like where you were born, where'd you go to
high school, that kind of stuff.Oh well, I was born in Iowa
City, IA, the university and grew up in Shellsburg, Iowa, a
town of about 300 people, so youhad to have a good imagination
(10:46):
because it has nothing to do. I got in a lot of trouble as a
kid, caused a few problems, but I tried to be creative without
hurting anyone you know but. Yeah, yeah.
It, it was just one of those little towns where you, a kid
could dream, you know, and, and wrestling in Iowa, as you know,
is like the biggest thing ever. Yeah, no doubt, you know.
(11:09):
Gable. Gable was big when I was a kid.
Chris Taylor was big. You know, we used to go to
McElroy Auditorium and watch theBulldog.
Bob Brown, Buzz Sawyer. Yeah, Avalanche, you know, I
mean, all all those guys were there.
Bob Geigel, Baron Von Raschke, you know, all all those guys.
(11:31):
I mean, so when I was a kid, that was I, I just loved it.
Yeah, but I was a musician and Iwas a musician.
I'm like, you know, Rd. Dog was on earlier and I saw
that and I laughed. Guys were talking to him, or I
don't know if that was your podcast or somebody else's, but
it was hilarious. Yeah, I love it.
I'm in that one too. There's there's a timing line
(11:52):
there. So yeah.
OK yeah I had to laugh cuz they go or I can't remember exactly
the question but it had to do with my working and he said well
he's the opposite of good. He's a little stiff, but.
I thought Brian and I, I had so much fun with Brian.
I mean, in that band, he's so talented.
(12:15):
Brian could have been a rock star.
He really could. Brad, too.
Brad sang with us for a short time as well, and I sure miss
Brad. Brad was a great guy.
Yeah, he's arguable as one of the greatest in ring for sure
too, you know, but I want. Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, I want to save that discussion for just a little bit
squash, if you don't mind, Doctor, We'll we'll get to that
(12:35):
in just a minute. But I I definitely want to talk
about that. So thank you for bringing that
up. But so yeah, let's let's keep
going with your starting wrestling.
So when? When do you remember like?
It was really kind of funny cuz I, I had played music my whole
life. That's all I've ever really
done, right. So I was down in Nashville and I
was working with Charlie Walker on the Grand Ole Opry and the
(12:59):
Road Warriors came backstage because I knew they were in town
because I worked at a gym duringthe day, Living Well Fitness
Center, and I worked in a gym upin Port Dodge, Iowa.
So it was a natural thing just to go to work for Living Well.
And of course, all the boys worked out there, all of them.
That's where everybody went. Scott Hall, everybody.
Scott and I were good friends and so they would come to the
(13:22):
gym and and we had a room in there set up to have some 3 inch
thick mats in it and they would come in there.
And so I was watching them and Hawk said to me and said, man,
you're big boy, where are you from?
And I said I'm from Iowa goes we're from Minnesota, you know,
being funny. And we just hit it off and
(13:42):
became good friends and and I said, why, what's it pay?
And he told me and, you know, music wasn't exactly, you know,
get rich scheme back then either.
So I thought, well, this, you know, it's like fun.
And I've always been very creative as far as, you know,
storylines and things. That was really what I did.
It wasn't, I just didn't have any budget, you know.
(14:05):
And Reno Riggins, who I deeply respect, that Reno was a good
kid. He wanted to start a wrestling
group, IWA International Wrestling Alliance, and I don't
remember exactly. We had some kind of falling out
and I don't even remember what it was.
But doesn't matter. I I really like Reno.
I think he's a great guy and I look back on all of this.
(14:29):
You got to understand this really kind of a cool time in my
life because I got to do ATV show.
Max Payne was a big factor in ittoo.
Max and I kind of came up with the storylines and the
characters. Yeah.
And anyway, I got, I got trainedby I started with Rocky.
(14:50):
Rocky Johnson was coming in the gym all the time.
So I started lifting with him and then he started my training.
And then Rocky, I think had to, he went to a different
territory. He was doing the Memphis
territory with Jarrett and he left because I think Fred Ottman
was there too. Fred was can't remember the
gimmick he had then, but he was working with Rocky in Memphis.
(15:13):
Yeah. And, and then they ended up
leaving and the Steiners came in.
So I knew Scotty when he first got in the business and well, he
was. He's always been huge, but he
looks way different now than he did then.
Yeah, yeah, he's always. Bored, but I'm trying to
condense this for you so apologize.
It's OK. And I ended up training with
(15:35):
Tojo. Tojo took me to a pretty good
level and then I ended up training with Gypsy Joe and
Gypsy took it neck level becausehe was like, you know, you're a
big guy. I'm 65 and at the time about 390
lbs. And he said, you know, you, you
got to do big guy stuff. And then he decided to show us
(15:58):
how to do some, you know, fairlyhigh falls, things like that.
And of course I was getting my bell rung constantly because I
would forget to tuck Mitch and that kind of stuff.
So I had a lot of confessions a lot.
And, you know, and then then we,we kind of progressed from doing
(16:18):
shots. We were going down to Dothan, AL
in an airplane hangar and wrestling down there.
I can't remember the guy's name,but you know, it was basically
you're going to fight somebody from the crowd crazy and Gypsy
love that, you know, Gypsy love that shit.
He would do, he would go in the ring and fight anybody he loved.
He loved to fight. And so he he took me down there
(16:41):
and he was like, OK, man, when this guy gets in the ring, you
tee off on him like a football because this big hillbilly got
up in the ring. He told me just kick it right in
the face. So I did, you know, and then I
had AI had a match with Willie the wrestling clown.
I don't know if you remember Willie or not.
I've heard of him, yes. I've heard of him, yes.
(17:03):
Oh my God, like we we have the clown gimmick long before Vince
did. Yeah, that's what I've heard
that some. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
Think all the stuff we did here,yeah.
Yeah. So let me, let me ask you
something before we go further in wrestling.
So we did. We know you're a musician where
you're, you know, a world traveled awesome musician.
(17:23):
So that's what brought you to Nashville is the music, because
that's actually what brought me to Nashville as well.
There. Yeah, yeah.
So. So that was what led me there,
my chance at stardom, you know what I mean?
And I'm a bass player. I've been a bass player since my
late the early eighteens and, you know, came out to Nashville
(17:43):
with a band, thought we were going to rule the world and and
then we didn't. So but you.
Know that happens every day, right?
It happens. But yeah, I, I, I've lived in my
car. I was in Oklahoma City playing a
band called Pacific Highway, andI decided that, you know, Mike
Crosno from Toby Keith's band was the guitar player before I
(18:05):
was in it. And then I left, I got my
Impala, drove to Nashville and Ilived in my car for three months
and worked odd jobs. I worked as a houseman over at a
Holiday Inn on Murfreesboro Road.
And they, they just put me in a room that was blocked out that
they couldn't rent. And so I lived there as long as
(18:26):
I could. And then they let me go there
because they just didn't need the help.
And I worked at a Quincy steakhouse down there as a cook
and lived, lived in the parking lot.
And they have back in the showerthere so I could get cleaned up
and stuff. So I did that.
And then I, what really changed my life was I was reading the
(18:47):
newspaper and there was a job for a booking agent, right?
And it was Johnny Massey from Stars Incorporated down 16th
Ave. I got into my trunk.
Yeah, she handled there. She was with Buddy Lee for
years, and she broke off on her own.
And she had a real gravely voicebecause she smoked and drank
(19:10):
Bailey's every morning with her coffee.
Yeah, she started the day off right.
So she talked like this, you know, had that kind of voice,
real heel voice, you know. And so I, I dug into my trunk
and I, I, I had a suit in one ofthe garbage bags that I had in
the back, you know, because I didn't have suitcases.
(19:30):
And so I pulled this suit out, this crumpled up suit, put it on
just wrinkled ass, you know, it was terrible.
I looked like I looked homeless because I was.
And I went up to the door and I knocked on the door and she came
to the door and swung it open and she took a big drag on her
cigarette. And she says what?
(19:51):
She answered the door. I go, I'm here about the job for
a booking agent. And she looked me up and down
for a second. She goes, come on in, talk to
me. So I went in the office and she
said, oh, who have you booked? Well, I was, you know, just full
of shit. But oh, man, I've done this,
this thing I just made. I don't remember.
The bullshit was so deep that I made-up.
(20:12):
And she stopped and she looked at me and she goes, how long has
it been since you ate, kid? And it just shocked me.
And I said, what? She says, how long has it been
since you ate? And I said three days.
And says come on, I'll take you to Shoney's.
So there used to be a Shoney's down there on Demumbrian
Nashville. So we went to that one and I ate
like 5 plates of food because I didn't know what I was going to
(20:34):
eat again, right? Yeah, right, right.
She was looking at me this wholetime, just staring at me kind
of, you know, making me uncomfortable because I'm just
shoveling food. And she goes, you got big balls,
kid, coming to my office. She goes, I'll tell you what,
where do you live? And I pointed to the car, and
she is. Oh, my God.
You know, she goes. I have a hammock on the porch at
(20:59):
the agency, and there's a showerin the basement.
I suggest you use it. I'm going to teach you how to be
an agent. And she took me under a wing.
And had I not gotten that break,I I don't know what would have
happened because it leads to another story that I think
you'll find interesting. Yeah.
So I'd worked there about 3 months, right.
Living in the basement. I was vacuuming the whole place
(21:21):
after everybody would leave. And then I go to sleep in the
hammock. One day, she walks in the office
and me and Dick Beecham, he was a major agent in Nashville that
worked for it. We're in the office, and she
goes, all right, I've got Chet Atkins dossier right here.
Who wants Chet? I said I do.
No, you are not getting Chet Atkins.
(21:41):
And I said, John, you know, giveme a break because, you know,
he's my hero. Yeah.
He was the reason I wanted to move to Nashville because I love
Chet Atkins record. Oh, he's great.
She left. One day.
She went to Kentucky and I was there by myself at the agency,
and she told me don't do anything without getting hold of
me. Somebody calls, call me first
(22:03):
and then we'll decide. Well, call came through and it
was from Rivergate Mall. Do you remember that?
Out next to Rivergate? Yeah.
Oh, OK. Well, yeah, you know what I'm
talking about. So they called and said, hey, we
want to have Chet Atkins come out and do a record signing in
store. And I was like, oh, well, great.
I happened to book him, you know, And they, I said, what's
(22:27):
your budget? And they said, 650 bucks and I
go, great, we'll take it. And so I book him, right?
And I send the contract over to Chet's office.
I'm doing all this without Donnie's permission because I'm.
I'm thinking she's done and she's going to love this.
I booked him, you know, Yeah, that I could do the whole
process. I because we have power of
(22:47):
attorney. So we signed for it.
And I get a call about 10 minutes later, and it's Chet's
secretary. And she said, hey, can you come
over here? Chet would like to meet with
you. I'm thinking he's going to thank
me. How awesome is this?
I get to meet him. He's going to be great.
Thank me for this fantastic gig.I got him.
So I go over there and I'm sitting in his office, right?
(23:09):
And you know, when you're in theoffice, they're talking on the
phone. You just kind of listen and you
don't mean to, but you're right,right there.
And I heard her say, OK, yes. When Chet gets there, they'll be
60,000 and then the other 60,000after the show.
And it hits me like a ton of bricks.
I just booked this dude for $650.
(23:29):
Oh my God. He hitting 100?
Yeah. You where I'm going now, Right.
So now I'm sick. My eyes start sweating, I'm
turning. And.
And she, you know, she has no idea why Chet wants to see me.
And and finally she goes. Mr. Atkins will see you now.
And he came down the steps and he looked at me and he goes, hi,
(23:52):
I'm Chad Atkins. And I said, I know who you are,
Sir. And I shook his hand, and I
think my hand had a gallon of sweat in it because I was just
like, oh, my God. Because now I'm back and I'm
thinking, I'm back in the car. I'm fired.
This is over. I blew it, you know?
And he goes, we'll come up here and talk to me about this gig,
you know? And I said, OK, so we go in his
office and he says, where you from?
(24:14):
And I said, I'm from Iowa, Sir. And he goes, yeah, well, you
know, and he's telling me about,you know, you played with a
Symphony, I think in Des Moines or whatever, and I wouldn't even
listen because I was just terrifying.
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
And he goes, do you know Scotty Turner?
And I said, no, Sir, I do not. And he goes, did Scotty put you
up to this? And it was a friend of his.
(24:35):
And then I said no, no. And then he realized it was like
I had really screwed up. And he goes, I'll tell you what,
he goes, let's go do the gig, but you're going with me.
And then he invited John Knowles, one of the greatest
guitar players in the world, whodid his transcript and work.
And he said, bring it, bring a car around.
(24:58):
So I rented A limo and went and picked him up.
He drove us all over Nashville that day.
Me and John were in the car withhim showing us all the property
he owned, all this stuff. And then he looked at me and he
said, would you like to take a quantum leap?
And I said, I don't know what itis, but if you're offering it,
I'm taking it. I don't know what it is.
(25:20):
And you know what I didn't what I left out of that story was
when Johnny got back that night,Oh my God, I was down in the
basement and she's she's screaming.
So I get your ass in my office. Got in there, says what in the
hell have you done? And then she really freaked out
when I told her that Chet calledme and had me come over and she
(25:41):
was you went to Chet Atkins office and I said I did.
I went in and talked to him and he wants to do the gig and I got
to find a car and she was just, she's like you could fall into a
pile of shit and come out smelling like rose.
Wow, did you pull that off? You know, because he was
getting, you know, over 100K. And so anyway, we went and did
(26:05):
that gig and I sat at the table with him while we signed
autographs. Me and John, we just watched
him. And then we got back in the car,
went Wendy's through a drive through in the stretch
limousine. It was fun.
And we became best friends from that day forward until he passed
away. And he really took me under his
(26:26):
wing. He taught me the business,
taught me about publishing, he got me my gig with Charlie
Walker on the Grand Ole Opry andI started getting session work
with guys like him and Ray Flackthat have played for Ricky
Skaggs. Ray and I are still best friends
and we have a test. We've been playing chess online
(26:46):
for over 24 years. Wow, wow, wow.
I've been very, very lucky, you know, and I got to meet Waylon
and and Jerry Reed. I got to know Jerry very well.
Tom Brett was one of my best friends.
So my my background was very much music that as you know,
Steve Miller's a good friend anda mentor.
(27:09):
Kev MO list. I go through the whole list, but
it take a while. And I don't mean that to sound
like I'm bragging, it's just a fact.
It's legit. Yeah.
You, you the credentials are real.
That's. Yeah, promotional consideration
paid for by the following ladiesand gentlemen, welcome to Give
(27:31):
Me Back My Pro Wrestling, the podcast that's based on the old
school but can still help you find the good stuff from today.
Jimmy St. and the Plastic Sheet Jared are the undisputed tag
team champions of the wrestling podcast world.
From thought provoking topics tosuperstar interviews to action
figure expertise, this team doesit all.
(27:53):
And all they ask is give me backmy pro wrestling every other
Thursday, wherever you listen topodcasts.
So going into the wrestling business was really it was.
I'll tell you what happened was when I got trained, I went to,
(28:17):
we were in Fort Knox with Jarrett's.
They had a, they had a show there in Fort Knox and that's
where I met Max Payne and Max and I had such a background.
That was all just, you know, he had went to Iowa.
He, you know, it's all American in Iowa, three time, I believe,
three time all American and University of Iowa.
(28:38):
So we had that background. You know, we knew Iowa, we could
talk about that. And then his family background.
We were just like brothers. In fact, a lot of people thought
we were brothers. Gotcha, same same build and
similar height and. Yeah, I mean, we're we're
almost. He was.
He was about an inch taller thanme.
Yeah. And with the Mohawk I was a
(28:59):
little. Taller than him, yeah, right.
If I sprayed it up real good, I could be about an inch taller
than that. But Max and I were, you know,
Max was a musician also. Yeah, great.
And so we. Have that background together
and we'd always play guitars together and stuff and hang out.
And people could not understand in the wrestling business what
(29:23):
we were doing in the wrestling business because we both played
music. Like, why would you do this and
why would you bump if you could go play music?
But I got into wrestling becausemy dad loved wrestling, my
grandpa loved wrestling, and my dad had passed away in 85.
And I thought, you know, I'm going to show him that I could
do this. Yeah, because I've never.
(29:44):
I'll tell you straight up, Brianwas not wrong.
I sucked as a wrestler. Probably the worst wrestler in
the business. My work was shit, drizzling
shits, as they put it. And I never really cared because
I had fun with that character. Doctor Squash was like the
antithesis of everything that I was.
(30:04):
You know, I, I love kids. I'm very I tried to be friendly
to everybody and kind and DoctorSquash was an evil asshole.
So it was kind of fun to play that character.
And, you know, then Max and I, we we started developing
characters for the IWA and you know, of course Len Rossi and
Joey Rossi came in. Joey was a dear friend and they
(30:26):
were like, you know, this is this is really out there.
This is like the cartoon, you know, what are you doing?
And I said, well, we want to have fun with it.
We're you know, we kind of made fun.
We're inadvertently we're tryingto make fun of Vince in a way.
Totally rabbit. That's what the idea was.
And we made fun of everybody we made.
(30:49):
We had, I think at one point we had a guy that we dressed like
Dundee, who was, it was a Midgetand we had him, Russell, Jerry
the King, Lawler mid. And no disrespect, you know, I
love Dundee. And and Jerry, it wasn't even
about having heat with them. It was just making fun of the
business kind of, you know, and having fun with it.
(31:11):
And then we, we developed this character called Luscious Leslie
Love. He, he was a Shakespearean actor
from Nashville and we had him come out as a gay blade biker.
Nice. I'll never forget I was sitting
at the announcer's table the first night he came out like his
name was Dick Sherman, the guy that was doing the announcement.
(31:32):
And he covers the mic, he looks at me, he goes, what the hell is
this? Because he was carrying a cage
to the ring with a plastic tube.And I said that's, that's Butch,
the man eating gerbil. And he was carrying to the the
ring with. Straight.
Up, straight up, we did that. And so then, you know, of course
(31:54):
I got calls from, you know, the TV station was so hey, we're
getting a lot of heat over this character, you know?
And I said, well, just wait, because it's going to get worse.
And we put him up. We had to do a run.
Yeah, seriously. We had him do a run with Willie
the Wrestling Clown. And it was, Oh, my God, he drew
(32:15):
so much heat. Yeah, Lush and Leslie, because
we'd have Willie go out and givekids balloons and then Lush just
to go out and pop them, you know, that kind of just real
cheap heat. You know, it was a good heat.
And we knew that it was, it was crap, but we just had fun.
We had a character called Barry CUDA, and he wore a fish suit.
(32:38):
He had like a, you know, Paul Pegg.
He was a big bodybuilder, but hehad like fins on the arms and
stuff. I mean, we're, you know, we
hadn't, we had no budget. So there was literally no
budget. I was just going out and getting
sponsors like Jiffy Burger in Manchester, you know, that that
would just cover, cover the airing of the show.
(32:59):
We did all the filming, editing everything ourselves.
Because that was another thing Idid.
I got a background in, but you know, that's where we're working
with Bubba and Mike. You guys had Bubba on earlier.
I love Bubba. Bubba is like he will always be
brothers and I love Mike Ayers too.
I want to say that Mike, he was one of the toughest people I've
(33:23):
ever known. And you know, we had a lot of
fun with the interns and Dr. Squash because that gave us all
a chance to just go out and havefun.
But those guys were both jailersat the time, so they worked
under hoods. Yeah, right, right.
Yeah. And it was a hilarious gimmick,
it really. No, it was.
And the way they acted, Oh my God, it's so funny.
(33:46):
Well then, I don't know if you ever saw that bit we did with
the doctor's office. Yeah.
Recently, Yeah, where they, theyhit the homeless guy with the
ambulance and then they bring him to my office and, and hey,
we're going to get the docs and business, you know, that kind of
thing. And, and I look down at him and
go, hey, what day is it? And then I did the Three Stooges
(34:07):
slap on both of them. And I go, it's dental.
They fix it. So they pound on him in the
chair and then the nurse hits him in the back of the head and
he's spitting out teeth. And so when I sent that tape to
the TV station, which was Channel 2 in Nashville, I got a
call from our salesman, Ralph. And he was like, I, I don't know
(34:32):
if we can air this. It's really violent.
I said, is there any blood in it?
He goes, well, no. But the guy spitting teeth out,
I said, do you really think anybody believes that he's
really spitting his teeth out into a platter, you know, 1 by
1? And I said, just air it.
Just trust me air. You know, I think we were only
(34:52):
on the air. We are on less than a year.
Gotcha, okay. But we we had so much fun making
that show. We did insane, stupid skits
during the show and it was more like living color meets
wrestling. We just made fun of everything.
There was nothing sacred. Yeah, so we do have some
listener questions. A great friend of the show,
(35:15):
former guest of the show, Quentin Charisma.
I'm not sure if you know Quentin, but Quentin's
incredible. He's a great guy, but he loves
the IWA and love any. And so he's kind of our behind
the scenes question. Yeah, You know so it because
he's forgotten more about MiddleTennessee wrestling than we
remember so. So Jared, I'm going to let you
take the first Quentin question since it works so perfectly for
(35:37):
what we're talking about, so. All right, Barry, so he, he says
before you started the IWA, you were doing security on Saturday
nights at the fairgrounds. When did the when did the
Jarretts find out that you were going to start a promotion in
Nashville and did it there? Was there any heat from the
Jarretts and did they ever try to like stop you from running?
(35:59):
I don't, I don't think they tookus serious because they saw the
show and they saw the productionquality.
And I remember talking to Chris,I hope there was no heat,
because I remember talking to Christine and she was just
shaking her head like, you're anidiot, you know?
Yeah, Yeah, I am. I am.
I'm kind of, I'm kind of like Jackass in the wrestling
(36:20):
business. We're just doing stupid, stupid
bumps and, you know, getting hurt all the time.
And, you know, we tried. We weren't like ECW or anything,
you know, I mean, but yeah, I remember because Peaches, I
don't know if you remember Peaches.
Yeah, he was there, had a theoryof Peaches and had told me he
goes, man, if you're going to air this thing, I can't have you
(36:42):
working out in the fairgrounds. And I said, OK, that's fine, you
know, because we're going to airit.
Right. And I wrote the theme music, did
the voice over and got it to thestation 2 days before it aired.
You're doing it online. Yeah, exactly.
You know what I'm saying. Don't.
You kind? Of like, oh, we got to be on it
(37:04):
at 9:00, OK, we'll be there at 7:00 with the baby.
We'd be like trying to come up with stuff to fill it, you know,
So if we needed filler, Max was always around too.
So Max would do promos for anti drug promos and you know, just
anything that we could throw at it.
(37:24):
You know, we had soap opera laundry.
Yes. The interns went and did that.
The ass commercial we did for them and I did one for Howard
Cherry, the guy that had earned,you know, Ernest, the guy that.
Earned John. Cherry, Jim.
Jim Varney. Yeah.
(37:45):
John Cherry. Yeah.
Jim Varney. And we did a thing.
He had gotten hold of Terry. You know, Hogan and I was on the
other line. And so we did a split screen.
It was like, hey, you got to bust it down to this Subway
shop. Don't even remember the name of
the shop. And Terry, of course, you and
Terry did his thing and and he goes, what is it?
(38:07):
And I go, it's called the Hulk Hogie.
It was the worst commercial everin the history of commercials.
It had to be the I I've never seen it again.
I think he aired it once and that and one and done and pulled
it out. We did like car commercials that
were just insane. I had one where this guy wanted
(38:29):
me to sell boats for him on on the commercial.
So I had a guy stand in the boatand and I was spraying water on
the windshield out of a hose. Yeah, I was going, can you feel
the surf? Can you feel it?
It was, it was ridiculously bad.So I did, I did a bunch of stuff
like that. Me and Max just tried to create
(38:50):
stuff that were, was really funny.
And you know that Max and I had kind of a falling out later.
But, you know, I've always lovedhim and and he knows that, you
know, he, he basically ran off of my ex-wife.
Yeah, it was, it was cold. But he did me a great favor and
(39:12):
in the end, and it was a great, you know, it was like, thank
you, Max. And I've had a much better life
since. And, you know, but I, I, if he's
listening, hey, I miss you, brother.
No hard feelings. I have 0 hard feelings towards
him. But the band, I don't know.
(39:36):
That's a great. I have no idea.
Couldn't tell you. So obviously we talked about the
Jarrett's and stuff, so let me just put in this quip.
I think the listener would be surprised at how much I'm
working on a show up until the time that it drops.
I mean seriously, Like it's we drop it at 12 AM, 12 AM on
Thursday morning and I've been working on it at 11:58, so.
(40:00):
Yeah, yeah, I know. I know the feeling too.
It's like I got to get this lastedit done.
Yeah, look at it and go, oh, crap, I forgot something in the
credits or whatever and you got to, you know, drop all that in.
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.
So talking more about the Jarretts in the TV show here,
he's it says, yeah, Quentin alsoasked.
He's got like four or five questions, so just hang tight
with us. He says his TV show was on the
(40:22):
same station as the Jarrett show.
Did he try to get the time slot right before or right after
their show aired? Or also, did the Jarretts ever
go to the station to try to get it kicked off?
They, I believe they did, if I remember right.
Jerry, Jerry, Jerry was not happy with the station for
airing it and the station. I really had to talk Ralph into
(40:46):
taking the program because he was like, well, we've already
got, you know, we've got Memphiswrestling.
I said, which is a little different.
You know, I tried to pitch him Max and I went in there and
pitched them on. This is a different kind of
wrestling show. It's not like the others.
And, you know, and so Ralph rolled the dice with us and I
think we, we had signed on for 12 episodes of what we were
(41:09):
going to do. I can't remember how many we
did. I think we did 10.
I, I've got it on disk. I, I, I don't watch it, but
yeah. But yeah, it, it was, I think
there was some heat with Jeremy over that with not, not so much
with us because he thought we were a joke and we were compared
to what they were doing. But I think he was more pissed
(41:31):
at the TV station for actually airing us.
And I do believe that there was a couple times when it did air
either right before or right after and I can't remember.
There was 2 times I think that happened and then they stopped
doing that. And I think that was because
Jerry called them up. But yeah, I, you know, great
(41:52):
respect for Jeff and Jerry and Christine.
Oh, Shady Hale and all those guys that work there.
And Lance Russell was one of my favorite human beings.
Oh greatest. Announcer.
Yeah, he was a true Yeah. Yeah, He went to the well one
too many times, man, he had. He had great lines.
(42:13):
Oh, he did. Fantastic.
And now a word from our sponsor.This is Kroll.
And you're listening to Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling with Jimmy
(42:34):
St. and Jared the Plastic sheet.Be sure to like, subscribe and
view all of our USWO and Saw wrestling content at Nashville
Wrestling Network exclusively onYouTube.
(42:56):
Other promotions in the 80s thatran opposition in Nashville
didn't use the Armory. Luthez ran it in 76 but wasn't
successful in that building. So what?
What made you decide to run the Armory?
Because we're idiots. And when we ran the Armory, we
we basically were bucking every everybody that told us don't run
(43:18):
the Armory, including Nick Dulas.
Nick Dulas told me the same thing.
Don't do the Armory. So of course we did the Armory
like idiot, you know, like, OK, we'll make it work.
Because me and Max, do we believe that we could, we could
do anything, you know? And when you're young and dumb
like that, you think, OK, well, they didn't make it.
Well, I will well and three people showed up and I owed
(43:41):
Orville. I can't remember what it was for
the ring back and couple 100 bucks and I didn't have the
money to pay him. You know, it was it was tense.
That's when we really started toto feel that the heat of OK, I
got to do this show every week and I can't afford it.
I got no money basically, basically out of funds out of we
(44:07):
were starting to run out of ideas at that point because we'd
already done it by that point. We've done Luscious Leslie,
Willie the Wrestling Clown, which still I laugh every time I
think about. We had Cool Breeze Williams,
Robert Scorpio we brought in. I called Terry Gordy to come in
and do He did our first for her first show.
(44:29):
I love Terry. I sure missed.
That man. Wow, Terry said.
Yeah, I'll do it. I'll do a brother, you know, I
mean, he worked with Saul Weingrath and.
I'm big friends with George. George is a buddy.
Oh, yeah, yeah, George. Yeah, the Winegrass.
Well, their dad is kind of the one that got me in the business,
(44:49):
hooked me up with with Tojo. Nice, because I.
Went Buddy Lee. I knew Buddy Lee really well,
Nature Boy Buddy Lee that ran Buddy Lee Entertainment down on
Music Row. And I went and talked to Buddy
and I said, Buddy, I want to getin the wrestling business and,
and he said, well, I'll have youtalk to Mr. Weingrock and he'll
get you hooked up. And actually it wasn't Saul that
(45:12):
was Saul was the dad. It was what was it?
He was the brother that was blind.
So that was George was blind. George was blind, and then he
had a brother. Herbert.
Herbie Herbie was his brother. No, it was had to have been
George. Very cool.
Love George Perry. Yeah, I've interviewed George
about 3 or 4 times. Yeah, man, no doubt.
(45:34):
Yeah. Yeah, you knew it was crazy
good. Yeah.
OK. Well, we've talked about this
question a little bit, but I'm going to ask it because
Quentin's our buddy and you've kind of answered this, but I
just want to clear some things up here.
So he says Max Payne was obviously your biggest star,
right? Of course, there's no question.
And it says Payne had just recently left the Jared
promotions. Now, did you contact Payne or
(45:56):
did Payne contact you? And what was the selling point
for Max Payne to work for him asthe company's top babyface?
Well, it really wasn't even a negotiation.
He was kind of burned out on, you know, doing that run to Indy
and, and, or up in it was in Indy, Indiana.
(46:16):
I can't remember all the IT was in Evansville.
We've been doing that whole circuit, you know, Evansville
and then we'd go to Memphis and do TV and then come back to
Nashville and, and he was just kind of burned out on it.
He wasn't really making any money.
Yeah. And, you know, jump right out of
the fire and into the frying panwith talking about no money,
(46:40):
man. We're our big thing was, you
know, we'd buy ramen and throw an egg in the ramen and call it
a Chinese buffet because, you know, it was like having a
Chinese buffet if you had an eggin there, right?
Yeah, OK. Yeah.
And so and yeah, so have a Max come in.
(47:00):
It was great because we felt like we had at least one star on
the show. Then we created all the others.
But we did have guest shots. We had Ricky Morton in, which
was great. Ricky did a great job for us.
Had a great. Match.
With Bubba, you know had a greatmatch with.
Ball. Yeah, man.
Fantastic. And you know Steve Sawyer.
(47:22):
I miss Steve, too. Steve was a hell of a worker.
We had him when he started, so that was kind of, that was a
cool thing we had. Oh man, I'm trying to think of
all the guys. I mean, we had Paul Pig, it's
Barry CUDA, Gentleman Jim Corbett.
We had, there's a, you know, a lot of guys that would not have
gotten a chance to work otherwise, you know, because
(47:46):
they weren't, you know, Jarrett's weren't taking on
anybody. And if they were there, they
were pulling out of AWA, you know, I think went down there
work and. It sounds to me like IWA and ECW
kind of come from the same idea and place.
Basically the the Island of Misfit toys.
It sounds like you know what I mean, yes?
(48:06):
But Paul pulled it off. Yeah, but you tried.
You tried. Yeah, but, well, the thing was
we did, we didn't realize what it was going to really cost.
You know, we thought we could just do it and then get the
sponsors. Well, you know, that's not how
life works. And then, you know, it doesn't
work like that. I know that.
Trust me, don't. Work at all?
(48:27):
Like that, if you build it, theymay not come actually.
Right, you know, you share a canof beans and and you go, yeah,
that's great TV. Look at each other.
We, we went, I remember we went to a pizza place to watch it on
TV because we were all excited about pay our shows on, you
(48:48):
know, and I think Joan Santoro, who is one of the announcers,
had to pay for the pizza becausenone of us, none of us had any
money. It's.
Like they were on TV look, but we need to pay for.
This now is when Ty and Papu hadcome up to work for Jarrett.
Yeah, OK. And they were living with me
because they had nowhere to go. So Ty and Tapu were living with
(49:09):
me and scaring the hell out of my neighbors because they go out
in the backyard and chip golf balls into a box, you know?
That's funny. You know, Thai was huge.
He was massive. And then Taboo looked like
somebody that was under the bridge, you know, collecting
tolls when he crossed. So here let me tell you a.
Funny story about the neighborhood.
(49:30):
Let me tell you a funny story about Thai.
OK, so we were, my brother and I, we used to go to local
wrestling, OK. And the one night, you know,
Nelson Royals promotion was running in a small town near us.
And I remember Jimmy Valiant wasin the in the main event in
Rock'n'roll Express. And you know, it was just like
a, a smaller indie outlaw kind of deal running outside of
(49:54):
Crockett, but with a lot of Crockett stars, right?
And so what's funny is we'd always thought it was a Haku,
right? We thought this was Haku and and
Jared. We're down.
We rushed the bottom because we want to go give Jimmy Valiant
high 5 after his match. Well, it turns out that Ty comes
out into the crowd a little bit because everybody's rushed
around Jimmy and and my brother walks directly into like his arm
(50:19):
or side and slimes sweat his entire face.
For years we had thought that was Haku, right?
For decades, we thought it was. I think we had heard people say
that. We had heard people tell us it
was Haku and stuff and you know,we were dumb enough just to
leave it as kids cuz we were like Oh my God, Haku's here you
know? And sure enough it was Ty and I
just found out cuz we had Tommy Angel recently on the podcast
(50:42):
about a year ago and Tommy was in that Nelson Royals promotion.
So I started doing a lot of research and I said Jared, I bet
that's this dude and I bet it was Nelson Royals promotion cuz
we never knew the promotion or anything.
Well anyway, Long story short, you were talking about Ty and
that just brought up that memoryin my mind.
Sorry to. Take up those two guys.
(51:03):
I took them to a Godfather's allyou could eat buffet and they
they had just landed in the country, right?
They were they had nothing and so they were living with me.
So we went to Godfather's and that poor lady at the counter is
Ty Ate. He took the whole bowl of
(51:24):
Peaches out of the buffet line, took it over the table, ate the
entire bowl, and he goes, I wantmore Peaches, more Peaches.
I said go up there and ask him. So he took it up there.
She opened the whole can of Peaches and dumped the whole
great big can into the bowl. Oh.
My. God, thank you.
You know, and then we, we'd be in Kroger and they would be
(51:49):
eating on the raw fish. They would pick up a raw fish.
They eat it while we're walking around the store.
And they were, I love those guys.
They, you know, here's the thing.
A lot of times people get on these podcasts and you know
they'll they'll have heat with somebody or something and
they'll say something terrible about them or.
Or you. Know they did this or that for
(52:12):
for me, I want to say to everybody that's ever been in
the ring, everybody that's got in there and did their best and
sometimes it wasn't good enough or just wasn't, you know, who
cares? We got to do something that most
people will never ever experienced in their lifetime
and the thrill of being out in front of a crowd and it's just
(52:34):
you and your body. You got to go out there and make
it happen. It's not like music for me and
you, right? Because music, you have a band
and you can cover each other. You got one of the guy in the
ring and and a referee and you got to you got to tell a story
and you got to build a storyline.
And then that ain't easy. People that think this is easy
(52:56):
are insane. No.
And, And isn't it crazy when I'msure you noticed it too when you
first got into the wrestling business?
You know, I was telling all the guys like Jeremiah Plunkett, I
used to ride with him a lot. You know, a lot of the guys, I'm
like, guys, you don't realize how close wrestling and
rock'n'roll are. It's crazy.
You. Starve to death until you get a
good contract and then that contract you starve to death for
(53:17):
a while. I mean, seriously, I, I was
explaining to people because we would do these long car trips to
like Illinois for Bert Prentice or whatever.
And I'm like, as you don't realize how close rock'n'roll
and wrestling are, it's crazy. I mean, it's it, it is somewhat
of an ego driven business because you're, you're trying to
push yourself, you know, whetheror not you're in a band or not,
(53:39):
you're still trying to stand outas a performer, you know, And
it's crazy how close they are, you know.
Oh, it's, it's exactly the same.Because, you know, I, I toured
for about 38 years all over the world, played music everywhere.
And I can tell you without hesitation that it is absolutely
(54:00):
no different than crawling into the car with the boys and going
down the highway. You know you're eating the same
crappy food, you're running downthe same Rd., you're playing the
same arenas. And.
It's exactly the same. It's, you know, everybody
starves. That's right.
It's the talk of Middle Tennessee, the channel you love
(54:22):
to hate and the channel you hateto love.
It's Brian Turner from Brian Turner's VHS Rehab.
And if you're looking for matches from Wolfie D to Jerry
Lawler to Dusty Rhodes and the team that put a pimp before your
eyes and a goatee put 2 in your thighs, Booty KO and Athena go
to lostwrestling.com. See, I made it easy.
For you, Brian Turner's VHS Rehab Booyah.
(54:45):
Hey everybody, Jean Jackson hereinviting you to check out the
Retro Wrestling review where each week I'm joined by some
great Co host to help me review classic episodes of USWA
Championship Wrestling. And right now we are doing week
by week reviews of 1993. But we don't just do reviews.
Sometimes we get a chance to interview some of the people who
were there and lived it. Plus do watch alongs.
(55:08):
It's a lot of fun. So check out new episodes that
drop every Wednesday at wrestlecopia.com and define
links to everything being associated to the podcast.
You can go to uswapodcast.com. Ladies and gentlemen, this is
(55:36):
Jimmy St. and that was episode 14 of the Best of James Rock St.
Productions with the first half of episode 67 of Doctor Squash
on Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling.
Bayer's a great guy, and whetheryou love music or wrestling, I'm
sure you enjoyed that episode. You can hear the full episode
and more over on at G MB, MPW orGive Me Back My Pro Wrestling
(55:56):
wherever you listen to podcasts or simply click the link in the
notes below. We hope you've enjoyed a look
back in the archives of James Rock St.
Productions. Check us out next week to see
what else we have in store. Until then, follow at G, MB, MPW
and at James Rock St. Everywhere Peace with a tear in
my eye. This is the greatest moment in
(56:19):
my life. We'll see you later.
(56:49):
This has been a James Rock St. production.
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