October 13, 2025 • 53 mins
#greggagne #powertown #awa #gmbmpw
Welcome to Episode 20 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 18 of Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling with Greg Gagne! This interview happened back in September of 2022, when talks of Powertown were just ramping up. We talk his start in the business, his early days, Verne, AWA, Hulk Hogan, Ribs, REMCO and so much more! Enjoy!
If you'd like to hear the rest of the episode, follow this link: https://youtu.be/3y7783Pqeko
Visit our Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling podcast page! https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/gmbmpw
FOLLOW & SUBSCRIBE:
https://facebook.com/gmbmpw
https://facebook.com/groups/gmbmpw/
https://instagram.com/gmbmpw
https://twitter.com/gmbmpw
https://www.youtube.com/@GMBMPW
Check out Sheik's Shorts: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0oL-yrnIHtlaVHamAApDquYBXeGaHS8v
Check out the Live and In Color with Wolfie D podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/wolfied
VISIT OUR AWESOME SPONSORS!
-Captain's Corner (Conventions, Virtual Signings and more!): https://www.facebook.com/captinscorner
-T's Westside Original Gourmet Sauces: https://www.westsidesauces.com
-MAGIC MIND: Get 45% off the Magic Mind bundle with our link:
https://www.magicmind.com/LIVEINCOJAN #magicmind #mentalwealth #mentalperformance
-MANSCAPED: 20% OFF with code WOLFIE at https://manscaped.com
ADVERTISE WITH US! For business and advertising inquiries contact us at gmbmpw@gmail.com
Very Special Thanks To:
-Sludge (@sludge_cast) for the "Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling" entrance theme!
-Tracy Byrd and A Gathering Of None for the "Sheik Fell Down A Rabbit Hole" & "Name Game" theme songs!
© 2025, jamesrockstreet Productions
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
This is Greg Ganya and give me back my pro wrestling.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome toGive Me Back My Pro wrestling.
(00:42):
Hello, Sir. 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, righthere on Give Me Back My Pro
Wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
back to Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling and today we have a
very special episode. So you know, we've reached a
(01:02):
little bit of a semi partnershipwith Powertown Wrestling.
We had our Steve Rosenthal episode.
It's definitely one of the biggest episodes we've ever had
as far as reach and stuff like that.
So being that, you know, we madethat partnership with them and
we've kind of developed a relationship with their company
and we received a message the other day that we could not turn
(01:22):
down. Obviously one of them is Magnum
TA episode, but this one today is absolutely huge, as you saw
on the welcome mat. Greg Gonya, jut What do you
think of this? This is nuts, man.
Yeah. It's crazy to know that we've
got somebody with the experienceand with the name of Greg Gonya
and you know, all the people he's been around, all the people
(01:44):
he's worked with. His father is an amazing
promoter, wrestler, all around athlete.
And to have that possibility, wecouldn't pass up that
opportunity, yeah. Absolutely.
And you know, our liaison to Powertown is a girl named Kayla.
Kayla, we greatly thank you as always for everything.
But with that being said, the episode with Steve really opened
(02:06):
new doors for us, not only with listenership, but also with, you
know, big name people, man. And I mean, you know, Steve is
is a legend to us because we collected Rimco figures.
But Greg Gonya is a legend to everyone, not only for his
wrestling career, but the company that he worked for with
his father, that his father created AWA.
They brought you Hogan, They brought you Flair, They brought
(02:28):
you the Iron Sheik. They brought you Mr. Perfect.
Sergeant Slaughter. Sergeant Slaughter, Larry's
Abisco, I mean, Aaron Von Raschke, Larry the Axe, Henning,
I mean, we could go on and on. AW Every Way will forever be one
of the most important promotionsin wrestling history.
(02:48):
And you know, to be able to speak to Greg is just absolutely
just a thrill for us. We're very happy to be able to
speak to people like Cousin Condrey and Hammer Jack and
Chris Michaels. We're thrilled to be able to
talk to everyone in the wrestling business.
I'm telling you man, I'm stoked for this one.
Yeah, I can't wait. You know, it's kind of like a
boyhood dream to talk to wrestlers like this.
(03:10):
And if you get that opportunity is one of those things, you
know, you just never know if you'll ever get.
And when we started this podcast, I didn't have the
aspirations of being able to talk to somebody this big, but
it's nice to know that we have that opportunity.
To know that this opportunity isarising from our little old
podcast. You know, dude, I mean, you and
(03:32):
I grew up fans. We had his action figure in our
hand. We may have you know.
I may have it right now in my hand.
You may have it right now. I was going to say that, but I
like your style. She.
So you know, with that being said, you know, we just want to
thank you all the listeners for allowing us to have this level
of listenership to where we can achieve things like this, our
(03:54):
childhood dreams, you know, and not to sound like Shawn Michaels
or or whatever, but at the same time, you know, this is a dream
of ours to be able to talk to professional wrestlers and to be
involved in professional wrestling.
But we could not do that with you all out there in listener
land. So thank you so much for
continuing to listen to our showand continuing to help our
numbers grow. Can't thank you enough.
(04:15):
You all make it worth it. We do have some cool things on
the horizon, some big fun plans that we're not going to talk
about right now. But right now, you know, as it
is, I think we should just talk to Greg Gonyo.
What do you say to that man? I'm ready for it.
All right, we'll be right back after these messages with Greg
Gonyo. Are you a pro wrestling fan?
(04:36):
We'll stop by Captain's Corner, where you can get autographed
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.
(04:57):
Remember, cheers to the working man.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Give Me Back My Pro
Wrestling. And today we have a very special
guest. He is the legendary Greg Gonya.
Mr. Gonya, it is so great to meet you and talk to you.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
(05:17):
Well, thank you very much. That was quite an intro.
I appreciate that and live up toit here.
Yeah. Well, we do our best now.
I do. So will I.
I want to clear one thing up now.
Is this the shortstop for the Minnesota Twins or is this the?
Quarterback, we're done. Right now we're done.
This is the quarterback from Wyoming.
(05:38):
The quarterback from Wyoming, that's what I thought.
Is that weird? I mean.
It's funny you should ask. I just opened up the mail and I
had 4 baseball cards of Greg Gagney and they wanted me to
sign them and I always have to send them back.
And he got the wrong Ganya here.Oh man.
When he was in Minnesota, we gotconfused all the time.
(05:59):
And he was adopted. His family was from
Massachusetts and they went by Gagney.
It's a French name. It's really Ganya is the way
it's pronounced. And so I'd get his mail and he'd
get mine. And I'm still getting his and
he's probably still getting mine.
But you got the right guy. You got the wrestling Ganya.
Yeah, that's what we wanted to know.
(06:19):
And it was always funny because,you know, during the twins big
heydays that during that time I was like, why is he gag me?
That's Ganya. That's you know.
We, we, we had to think, we had to go by that basic this, we
were, it was just too confusing for everybody here in Minnesota.
That makes. Sense that's the way they
pronounce it in Boston anyhow, but it was it's really it's
(06:41):
supposed to be a little accent goo after the E for the French
Ganya. I love it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaking of the legendary Gonyea, I mean, Vern, you know
the ledge. How is it having a legend for a
father? Well, it's hard to live up to,
but what's what I learned at a young age, you don't try to live
up to it. You just try to do your own
(07:01):
thing and be your own personality.
And that's what he used to tell all of us when he trained us.
You know, be yourself, you know,don't try to be somebody or not
and be yourself. And you'll either either make it
or you won't. But you know, fortunately
enough, you know, I, you know, when people always say, well,
you know, how hard is it to follow?
I'm not following his footsteps.I'm doing my own thing and
(07:24):
trying to make my own footsteps so.
Of course. Yeah, you're doing great.
That's why we always approached everything.
Greg, when when you were training under your dad, did did
you feel like that? He was.
Me and my dad have worked together for years and I always
feel like that he he's always was harder on me than he was
other people. Oh God Almighty, tell me about
it. So I can imagine with with
(07:46):
somebody like your father's stature that that is a legit
wrestler, the legit shoe fighterif you wanted to be and.
I go back to a grade school, went to a Catholic school.
We had the nuns and then the priest came in every six weeks
to give us our our, our cards, our car grades.
(08:07):
But all the nuns, they at that time back in the was in the mid
50s and early 60s, wrestling in Minneapolis was on Tuesday
nights and they would put the early matches on.
Then you wouldn't get the late ones.
They go off the air. So of course, every Wednesday
morning the nuns are all over me.
(08:29):
Hey, did did your dad win last night?
Did your dad win? And I said, well, you know, I
was in bed. He didn't get home till I don't
know. So the priest is getting is
giving out the report cards and he calls me on.
He said, Gee, hey, what happenedlast night with your dad?
And I said, well, you know what,father, I don't know.
I mean, you know, he got home late.
What do you mean you don't know,man?
(08:49):
He chewed my ass out in tears. That's only about the 4th grade.
And I'm going, you know, I don'tknow.
So yeah, but it was always, you know, things like that.
And but it was, you know, it wasa good life.
But he, he was very hard on us. In fact, I had tell people, I
(09:10):
said I've only, I got 3 compliments my whole life from
him. The first one was my senior year
playing football. Last game of the season I
completed 12 of 14 passes for 203 hundred yards and four
touchdowns and ran for two touchdowns.
That's amazing. And then after the game, he
(09:30):
said, man, you know what, Greg, I'm really proud of you.
Did a heck of a job out there. And then the next one was we
were wrestling in the Cow Palacein San Francisco.
We're defending the take you titled Brunsel and myself
against Tito Santana and Rick Martel.
(09:51):
Wow. And the Cobb Palace is a big
empty building. I mean, it's, you know, I mean,
people are way away from it. It's for the it's for the
rodeos. Yeah, but we had about 14,000
people in there. So I mean, they got a big card
and we're on 2nd to the last match.
They got a championship match coming after us.
(10:11):
We got our take team, then the singles championship and
Martellin and Tito walking out to the ring and the people are
going bullshit, bullshit. Oh my God, you know?
So then we come up and we get the same thing.
(10:32):
Boring bullshit, boring bullshit.
So we wrestled for about 18 minutes and Tito and Rick had
different holds on us, so we did.
These big spots would come out of them and they'd get us back
in it. At 18 minutes we had the people
standing. Oh wow, that's.
(10:54):
Amazing. We went 43 minutes then and we
just, we had them standing the entire time after that and that
cheering all went from that boring bullshit to they had no
idea what was going on and we just had and a lot of funds.
But we came back to the locker room.
Vernon was the first one to grabus and he said, I'm so proud of
(11:18):
you guys. That was one of the greatest
match I've ever seen. You guys took control of that
crowd. And then Bock Winkle came up and
Jerry Blackwell and Ray Stevens and Baron Von Rashkin, everybody
on the card and just took the four of us and said unbelievable
guys. That's not the second one.
And then the third one, I was wrestling with him in a take
(11:38):
team match with Bach, Winkle andSaito and Saint Paul, and it was
18,000 people in there. And he was in his 60s about that
time. And so I was in the ring most of
the time. When we got out, he took me
aside and he said, you're betterthan I ever was.
(12:05):
Yeah. So I mean, those are the three
compliments. I got that.
You know, they were hard to earnfrom him.
You really needed to do something special to get a
compliment from him. Otherwise, rode you pretty hard.
Hard. But I'm through.
Yeah. If your dad was like that, you
know what that's like. That makes you better.
(12:26):
Yeah, yeah. Our dad didn't pass out too many
compliments either. I mean, it's when you really got
one, you're like, you're like, wow.
Yeah, I did something. Right.
Yeah, yeah. It's a great feeling, finally.
So it's about your father. I remember a few years back,
maybe 10 years plus the movie The Wrestler came out with
Mickey Mourke. Now I was asking everyone, is
(12:50):
this a remake of the Vern Gonya classic The Wrestler made in
1974 Co starring Ed Asner? Do you have anything that you
could share about the movie at all?
Well, you know, I mean, I remember when we made it and you
know, Vern, there was a lot of promoters around the country
that put money into it and it did really well in most of the
(13:15):
markets that, you know, really promoted at heart did really
well. And you know, when the Mickey
work one came out, they call it the rest or I thought, well, you
know what, they can't call it that.
Well, right, Central limitationshad ran out, but their version
of it was kind of the guys that never made it wrestling, you
know, and they're doing those little, little shows around.
(13:37):
And it was more like that where the theme of this one was the
build up to the big championshipmatch and that the new guy,
Billy Robinson from England and come over to take the title from
Vern. So and then they they they re
enacted some things that really happened in the ring.
Do you remember Ray Stevens cameoff the top rope and on to Joe
(13:58):
Scarpello And then actually it actually happened.
It was one of the tallest brothers, and I forget who came
off the top rope onto his throatand killed him right in the
ring. And then, of course, then
there's always, you know, when you went out in public and you
went to a went to a local establishment like Dusty Rhodes
(14:18):
and Dick Murdoch did, you know, everybody wants to try and give
you a shot. So they had good bar room scene
where they threw everybody around.
Yeah. Yeah.
So they try to, they try to makeit like, you know, and then they
had the training camp, a little bit of that.
Yeah. And we had just come out of the
training myself, Brunsel, Ric Flair, Ken Petura, the Iron
(14:39):
Sheik and Bob Bruggers. You just said the Mount Rushmore
right there. Well, it was.
It was pretty interesting because over the years Vern
trained 144 wrestlers and out ofthat only two didn't make it to
main event level. Wow, that's pretty impressive.
(15:01):
I think Michael Michael Hayes said it best one day in an
interview. He said anybody that came out of
when they came out of the Bergania camp, you knew they
were ready to rock'n'roll. Yeah, yeah.
Usually, usually it took five toseven years for a young person
coming into the business and starting to make it to the main
(15:22):
event. Yeah, our our group was 2 1/2 to
three years. Man.
So. That's a heck of a pedigree to
have to know that the level of talent that was produced from
being trained by your dad. And it's amazing that I've
looked, I've looked up some of the names in the in the last
week or so and it's and just blew my mind like it's, it's the
(15:45):
who's who of everybody. I know that I know I'm.
From the Carolinas, that's whereyou guys are at, right?
Yep. OK.
He trained Gene Olli and Lars Anderson.
Yeah, There you go. Yeah, I mean.
Ricky Steamboat, Ric Flair, Blackjack Mulligan.
There's so many, so many. But everywhere they went, you
(16:07):
know, everybody was successful. Yeah.
Yeah, I know you were around RicFlair some when when he was
coming up and being trained and everything like that.
Was there ever. Is there like a thing early on
where people could say, you know, he's got something?
I know, obviously. I've heard that your dad, like,
went after him when he left and gave up and like basically
slapped him and said, no, you'recoming back.
(16:27):
Oh. Yeah, you're not coming on his
ass three different times. Well, I knew Rick in high
school. He was at another high school
that played against us and his parents pulled him out of
school. He was getting in trouble so
much and sent him to Wisconsin school over.
And I would say the Bieber said something and he went to school
(16:48):
over there and he was always in trouble.
But he started when he came back, he started training.
He was supposed to go to the University of Minnesota.
He was a predicted All American football player and he was a non
predictor. So he he never made never made a
practice and Marie warm at the coach at that time.
And I played my first year at Minnesota as a freshman.
(17:10):
He said, Ganya, where's flair? And I said, jeez, coach, I don't
know. He says, well, you're supposed
to be in charge of myself. How can I be in charge of He
says, we got a we got a bill here for $1800 for long distance
phone calls to Michigan. Wow.
So Rick, because he wasn't on the team when we played
Michigan, he went to the game inMichigan and met abroad there, a
(17:34):
young lady, I should say, I'm sorry.
And he was traveling back and forth, but mostly over the
phone. And that's where all the phone
calls were coming from. Wow.
And he was, he was a character. He came to the camp.
He weighed 298 lbs. Right, right.
And Ave. he left his down to 260and then eventually got down to
(17:56):
the weight he needed to be at tocompete the way he did.
But Rick was a natural and we convinced him that this old barn
Vern had and we went from September to the end of January,
you know, end up in Minnesota. No windows in it.
The doors are open. One light bulb over the ring and
it's 20 below 0 and we're sweating her ass off.
(18:18):
And he had this one driller. One guy was in the middle and
the other other, the other four,the other five would be on the
apron and wanted to be in with them.
And it's like say Peter is starting, they'll call a
headlock and they'll call out things and you go hard for 3/3
to 4 minutes. And then the one guy that was in
the middle stays there and goes through the whole group.
(18:39):
So you're, you come out and you're sweating your butt off
and you're standing at the end of the line and now you get up
to the beginning of the line andyour sweatpants and sweatshirts
are froze to you. And then, you know, he liked to
call a body slam, right when youwalked in there and, or some
kind of a big bump where you, oh, man, felt like that cartoon
(19:00):
character and you were breaking into pieces.
All that's great. So it was, it was it was rough.
It was a it was a but it was very educational and it worked
for all of us. And he made everybody work hard
and learned the sport the way itneeded to be learned.
Yeah. How to present it to the public?
(19:27):
And now a word from our sponsor.Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
Give 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 Chic
(19:49):
Jared are the undisputed tag team champions of the wrestling
podcast world. From thought provoking topics to
superstar interviews to action figure expertise, this team does
it all. And all they ask is Give Me Back
My Pro Wrestling every other Thursday, wherever you listen to
(20:14):
podcasts. I don't want to stay on other
wrestlers. I actually want to talk about
you, Greg. So being as it may, the AWA tag
team situation where you and JimBrunzel were the high Flyers you
guys were, I mean, I think you should be considered, if not one
of the most revolutionary tag teams at that time because you
really were taking an element that wasn't necessarily known in
(20:38):
the AWA area. You took it to the top rope.
And I mean, you work teams such as Pat Patterson and Stevens,
which, you know, even though they're rated really high,
they're also very, very underrated as A tag team as far
as people you know. But you guys as well.
Talk about your time in the highFlyers with Jim.
Well, if Jim, you know, Jim leftand went to the WWE, if he just
stayed there, you know, maybe people would have recognized
(21:01):
this more, right? We did.
We we had two championship runs.One would beat Duncan and lands
up in Winnipeg and the other onewas with Adonis and Ventura.
But when you bring up Stevenson,Patterson, I mean Ray Stevenson,
Nick Bachman called held the AW Champ A-Team championships for
three years. Right, right.
And they wrestled all the big major teams.
(21:24):
Yeah, we were fortunate enough to really start with those two.
And then Pat came in later on and we were wrestling.
They called it a cold match. Jim and I were really played
football at Wyoming, so we had alot of extra publicity in
Denver. The Denver people just really
took to us. And the arena was seated about
14,000 and it was kind of round and when we'd come out you can
(21:47):
just feel the building or just vibrate.
So so Patterson had left for a while and they didn't have a
strong main event match. So they put Jim and I in there
with Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson.
Of course, Bobby Heenan was their manager.
Now Pat had been gone for about two years.
So we get there, the place is jam packed and I say we come out
(22:10):
and that building is just vibrating.
And I tell the story to kids I'mtraining because it's how it
really, it's not how much you doin the ring, it's what you do
and how you have to get those, the people, the public into your
personality and they're either going to like you or they're
(22:31):
going to dislike you. So we wrestled these two guys
and we had, they had a top wristlock on us and we would get out
of it and they would get us backin by their distracting the
referee and one would pull our tights down or pull us down by
the hair. Yeah, never a punch or a kick
thrown. In 8 minutes we had a
(22:52):
full-fledged riot. Wow, trying to get the ring to
help us. That's amazing.
So that's when you know you've done your job.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you get those people emotionally involved in you, you
know, and they just, they live and die by you.
Oh, yeah. It's such, it's just such a
wonderful feeling when you can have that, that with the public,
(23:16):
that feeling where you know, God, it's, it's so hard to
explain. You can't explain unless you've
been there and you feel it when you go in the ring.
And Hulk Hogan, we wrestled witha six man take team match in
Chicago against Blackwell Stevens and Bockwinkle and they
were in the ring. Rosemont Arena full of people
sold out. We get in the ring and the
(23:38):
people go bananas. We go in last one home, gets in
there, they bail out and he doeshis pose and I said to Jim, grab
his T-shirt, grab the side and tore it off real slow.
And those people exploded. Even today he'll tell people I
got I gave them back to you. That's awesome.
I mean that that's legendary forhim too, you know, so.
(24:01):
Oh, I know it. He knows it too.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, So you were talking about Bock Winkle and Patterson and
Stevens. Do you feel like it was a pretty
much an even swap with Pat and Nick as far as the tag team with
Stevens? It was, it was a little, little
different. Yeah.
They were all alike in some waysand different in little ways,
(24:24):
and Ray and Pat I would say had better timing in the ring than
Nick did. But Nick Overall was probably
what he was a great wrestler andhe was a great champion.
Yeah. Because of his style, Ray had
(24:45):
won championships all over. I mean, Ray was probably one of
the, if not the best performer ever in professional wrestling.
Yeah. And then they had Bobby Heenan
and you got to put him up in thetop five when he was.
He gave the people what they wanted.
Yeah. So we were very fortunate in the
AWA because Vern attracted all this top talent because we only
(25:06):
worked about 250 to 270 days outof the year.
And we got the full month, the 1st of May, off in the first two
weeks of June. And then in the summer we'd only
wrestled 3, three times, sometimes four times a week.
And Vern, it was very, he wantedevery to be able to have time
with their families. It was very important to him.
(25:29):
And that's why the best talent always came in here.
I mean, you had opening matches with guys that were main event
people around the country. So it was it was it was it was
fun. It was a it was a great, great
time. And the Awai think was at that
time probably the number one promotion anywhere in the in the
(25:49):
world really. Oh yeah, for sure.
Yeah, yeah, me and Jimmy were talking beforehand, Greg, about
about how that the WWFWWE couldn't have existed, WCW
couldn't have really existed without the AWA creating all
these people. And you know, I've often
wondered, and you can give me your best answer on this.
(26:10):
It's, it's maybe not something you really thought about, but
had the AWA survived and had they been around today, what
could you envision that being like?
I mean would would have had a good more national.
We could have well, we were at we were at the verge of going
national and this story is probably maybe even told once or
(26:30):
twice, if that it was only two people and we were sworn to
secrecy. We had to sign a non compete,
you know non. What do you call it?
NDA. NDA, yeah.
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, with CBS.
Oh wow, yeah. And it was 1983 was when we were
(26:53):
having the big match and well, we'd had a match of battle
Royale in October. They ended up and then we had
Andre. And then we ran the whole month.
We ran battle Royals. And then the winner was to get
Bockwinkle. And Hogan had had a match with
Bockwinkle. He'd won the battle royal there
(27:14):
and didn't get the title. So we're we got Christmas week
coming up and we've got all our major cities, Saint Paul,
Chicago, Milwaukee, Winnipeg, Denver, San Francisco, Salt Lake
City, Las Vegas, we got them allcoming up.
And Hogan was going to Japan, sohe cut all his interviews before
he left and basically he was in six man tag team matches and the
(27:37):
buildings were all sold out. And we get it on December 21st
or 22nd, Vern gets a letter fromFlorida that says I'm not coming
back. And Vern looked at it from
Florida because him and Eddie Graham were good buddies and
they used to pull jokes on each other.
(27:57):
So for Vern for because he thought it was from Eddie, so he
threw it away. Well, Hogan doesn't show up in
Saint Paul. And I and I called him, I said,
Tim, what are you doing? He said, well, I'm, I'm, I'm
going to New York. And I said, well, that isn't the
way you do business. You know, fulfill your
commitments. You know, you did all this
(28:18):
stuff, we're all sold out. Fulfill your commitments and
then leave, right. And he said Vince is paying more
to stay home. Oh, wow.
So he didn't show up. And where I'm going with this
was from there in April, it was going to be a match between
(28:41):
Bockwinkel and Hogan. And we'd signed the deal with
CBS for that match, 2 hour primeprime time TV show.
And, and that was the match. And now all of a sudden we've
lost that match. Oh man.
(29:01):
So if if he would have hung in there with us, he'd have
probably won that title in Apriland CBS then after that one was
going to do A at least a monthlyshow with us on Saturday nights.
Wow, that's a totally different thing.
Hurt. Yeah, Yeah.
(29:23):
That would hurt, yeah, man. And then after that, McMahon
just hurt, you know, picking offour talent.
He hit us because we had the biggest area and he needed those
big markets for, for his TV. Yeah.
So, you know, that's, that's what went down.
Now we're just we're gearing back up.
(29:43):
We're coming out of retirement. Oh yeah.
Well, hey, that's the important part.
But before we get there, you know, just a little bit of
context here. The my brother Jared, he is our
action figure expert on the show, OK.
And part of the reason we spoke with Steve originally.
And then now we're speaking withyou.
Thankfully. With that being said, we call
(30:03):
him the plastic sheet because the he's like the, you know, he
knows about the action figure. So what's funny is you also have
one of the great legendary sheiks in one of my personal
favorite sheiks, Sheik Adnan, LKC.
And you know, you had an incredible feud with him.
You know, it led to a feud with Brody.
I mean, King Kong Brody, by the way, talk about that.
(30:26):
I mean, just talk about that feud.
God. Well, I'll tell you.
Here's first time I wrestled. Brody was in Japan.
We had to go over there for A tag team tournament, and we
wrestled in Salt Lake City the night before.
We just won the titles and we had been on the road for 14
straight nights, and we had to go from Salt Lake to Tokyo.
(30:48):
Yeah. And our match in Salt Lake was
against Blackwell and the Chic in a cage match.
And Blackwell had thrown me overthe top rope into the cage.
When I went out, my foot hit therope in a twisted my my right
leg and jeez, my knee started burning.
But you know, you just keep going.
And the next morning we wake up,we go to Salt Lake Airport and
(31:12):
my knee is swollen like crazy. So the flight attendants give me
some ice to put on it. We get to LA, got a layover
there and then to Tokyo. 19 hours total there in the plane.
Then we had to get jump on a plane to Sapporo.
Cab picked us up. We had to get dressed in the cab
and go right in the ring and my knee was unbelievable.
(31:35):
God, it was killing me. Yeah.
So we wrestled about 15 minutes that night.
The next night we had Territory Funk Senior in Giant Bubba.
We wrestled them for 48 minutes and won the match.
The next night we had Suruta andTeneru.
We wrestled them for 59 minutes and won that match.
(31:58):
Then we get Stan Hanson and KingKong Brody and they are like
legends in Japan, right? So we get out in the ring and I
got my back, I got my, I'm in the back to the turnbuckle and I
can see they're coming out and Jim's we're talking and you
know, Jesus, we're going to, we're in for a battle here.
(32:20):
We got to, you know, really fireup here.
Well, we were pretty fired up myknees killing me.
And all of a sudden I said, Jesus, look out.
Jim gets hit with the cowbell. I get hit with a chain.
The ring, we go, they run us. There's no rules in Japan.
They run us through the crowd ofpeople, hit us with a fire
extinguisher. We're both cut up.
(32:40):
We had matches, I guess. I guess it started, but we
doesn't feel like it started, you know, like we normally start
1. So we're trying to fight back to
the to the ring and I see this these Japanese, they jumped off
their chairs and one fell on thefloor right next to me was
folded up and Hansen's running at me and I threw it like a
frisbee and hit him right on thebridge of the nose.
(33:01):
Wow, his nose exploded and down he went.
We wrestled these guys for 33 minutes and the next thing our
arms were black and blue from reaching up and hitting them
from in the fist down to our elbow.
And I thought we had them. Jim had had drop kicked Hanson
(33:22):
out of the ring and Brody had had Jim and I came off the top
rope and hit him with a big elbow to drop him right to his
knees. And as I looked up, all of a
sudden I see Jim go flying over the top rope and Brody's on his
knees. His head's up to my chest and
he's bare, like both arms are pinned.
(33:44):
And here comes Hanson firing across the ring and gives me
that lariat. Wow.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
Oh, wow. But we met.
We had to meet him then in the finals in the Tokyo Dome.
And that was another just a brutal match.
And of course, then when he cameto Minneapolis, you know, right
away he wanted me. And I didn't really want to go
(34:09):
in there with him, but I did. And when I got back from Japan,
though, what I forgot to say with the knee, I went to the
doctor. They opened it up and the
cartilage fell out in five pieces.
Oh, wow. So I wrestled with torn
cartilage for two weeks straight.
Yeah, that. Yeah.
That's what you did back then. Right, right.
(34:30):
And, and I mean you, you did it with excellence.
Hey, my name is Tammy Reynolds. I am the wife of Forsaken Rick
Reynolds, that super cool guy that everybody knows and loves,
and I represent West Side Sauces.
I make sauces, I bottle them, I seal them, I sell them.
(34:53):
I have a hot honey sauce, I havea sweet sauce, I have a hot
sauce. I have a white sauce that's so
yummy you can use it on everything.
They are absolutely amazing and I'm so proud of them.
We make them from scratch. So go on our website
westsidesauces.com, check out our products, read about our
(35:16):
story and go online and order you some of these yummy sauces.
And Rick actually uses all of the sauces because he is a die
hard smoker and griller and so he likes really good sauces and
rubs and I make them. So how convenient is that for
him? Go on our website
(35:36):
westsidesauces.com. Order you some samples and I
think you'll thoroughly enjoy them.
Thank you guys, be blessed. During this time, you know, this
is kind of cool. Is that especially from what I
remember as a child, the Rimco action figure line came along
(36:00):
and, you know, Steve kind of downplayed it because I think he
felt like where he, you know, initially had Vince and then he
ended up with Vern and and I feel like he said he didn't get
to do all of the things with thetoys that he wanted.
And of course, I would expect that nonetheless.
But my brother and I especially hold those figures in such high
(36:21):
regard. They were actually our first
wrestling action figures and we had the road warriors.
And then of course, we get the high Flyers and we get other
teams and and other wrestlers. But tell me what it was like to
have your first action figure, Greg.
Well, I'll tell you, you know, it, it, it, it, it at that time,
you know, we didn't know what the action figures were.
(36:41):
But I don't know this that the Remco wrestling figures were the
biggest ones ever sold. Oh, yeah.
And, and they were the only onesout on the market.
And exactly. Ran that for seven or eight
years and retired. Yeah, but you know, in fact, I
told him I don't even have one of myself, but.
(37:02):
We can make that happen. Well, TK we had a guy send one
to he sent them to me. He had a he had one.
So I got the two of them and, and my wife, I don't know, you
know, she passed away four yearsago and a couple of my
daughter's up in the attic and she finds this bag just a couple
months ago, brings it to me and it's all the dolls.
(37:24):
Wow. All the action figures they had
the Road Warriors, we had Garvinand Regal, we had the Sheik,
Black Winkle and all of them. But they didn't have any of me.
And they had one of Vern, they had one of Vern and Vern never
wanted his maid. And Steve wanted to make it and
they didn't. And when they they went to make
(37:46):
it, they had messed up the nose and all I had was I had the
figure and it was missing one leg.
And so he says, you know what that's worth?
Who would want that? It's one-of-a-kind.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Yeah, so I've got it in my pocket.
Yeah, an unknown Holy Grail for sure, you know?
(38:08):
Yeah, yeah. All there are collectors out
there that would pay upwards of probably 25,000 probably for
that. So it's.
Oh well, I'm going to hang on toit then.
Maybe more, I'm just saying upwards.
I mean, it could be, could be way more.
They have deeper pockets than I do so.
I don't know if I could sell it or not.
(38:28):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
You know, one thing that was in that line that I can't find much
trace of. I know you had a great feud with
him, but they had you as A tag team in Ganya's Raiders with you
and Kurt Hennig. Tell me about Ganya's Raiders.
Well, you know, Sergeant Slaughter came here and then
they, he, he had this thing he did in Charlotte and he had a
(38:51):
kind of a flunky guy that was his sidekick.
Jim Nelson, yeah. Yeah, and I ended up in the, you
know, with him, right Then they thought it'd be a better, a
stronger team. You know, they wanted a stronger
team. And I don't think Slaughter was
too happy with me being in that role with him, but we did it.
(39:14):
And then, I don't know, they threw Kurt Henning an eye in and
that's what they just did it forthe dolls.
We never wrestled that way. I was going to say I don't.
Yeah, never did that's but they they threw it in there.
I mean, was that all going to happen?
Not that I remember right, Kurt Wrestle is a Tate team a couple
times, but you know, his dad andmy dad had such a few.
(39:37):
I mean, they they just didn't like each other and they they
came from the same high school and the same wrestling coach
back there. And Kurt always we got along
well, but he had a little chip and a little arrogant sometimes,
you know, especially when we were on the road and and
learning and we had a good match.
(39:57):
You get a little little arrogant.
I said, hey, you know what? That'll catch up to you, man.
There's too many guys in this business that can take you down
really quick. Right.
And they're all in AWA, essentially.
Yeah, yeah, they were at that time, yeah.
But Kurt turned out to be a unbelievable performer in the
ring and great. He was a great guy.
(40:19):
We just, we had a lot of fun together.
That now? OK, you know he's legendary
ribs. Did that start in the AWA?
Did his ribbing start then or was that much later?
Christ almighty, no. It started there.
We had a guy, Rick Renslow, the Alaskan.
Yeah. I don't know if I can even tell
this on the air, this story. If it gets too bad, tell me.
(40:44):
Sure. Anyhow, Rick is underneath on
the card and we're wrestling in Winnipeg and he goes on the
second match and he's got to hurry up and and get but he
drive back home to Minneapolis because he had another job.
So Kurt and him were always ribbing each other or teasing
each other. And that what happened was
(41:08):
renslaw Rick grabbed his bag after threw his wrestling gear
in there to grab the bag and I got in the car and drove back to
Minneapolis and his wife took the wrestling bag downstairs
should take the take the the allhis gear out and wash it.
And all of a sudden she goes Oh my God.
(41:29):
And Rick hairs are screaming down there.
He goes down there and thank GodKurt had put a big turd in the
wrestling bag. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. Oh.
Apparently what what they did isit came from Kurt, but it was
(41:56):
put on the on the window sill outside in Winnipeg.
It was in the IT was in January and it froze.
He was able to put it in the bag, but by the time he got it
home and it, you know, got out. Imagine.
So now. So now Rick is livid.
Yeah. So we're doing interviews one
(42:17):
day and we had, we had an event here in Minneapolis.
I used to use this car dealership I used to do
commercials for. They wanted to do a big one, one
of those big tractor trucks, youknow, and this was a Chevy and
they had the big wheels on it, some kind of a Chevy, I forget
(42:39):
what they called it. There was a SUV of some kind up
on the big wheels and they painted.
It was called the Wrestle the Russell Rock or something like
that. OK.
And somebody in the battle Royale was going to win it and
Kurt won it. So Kurt comes in, he does.
Dude, we're doing our interviewsone day.
It's an all day deal. And he's got the wrestle truck
(43:00):
out there parked and he's driving home and he's late for
dinner and he's, he's on Hwy. this Hwy. 55.
He's going about 6570 miles an hour.
And all of a sudden the front wheels come flying off of it.
Oh, completely off of it. And he goes sliding down into a
ditch like he didn't roll it over.
But Rick, Rick had cut the cut the brackets that kept the tires
(43:25):
on. So after that one, they they
both got called in the office and no more.
Somebody gets killed. Yeah, he said.
It's just the wheels came flyingoff the thing.
Yeah, because, I mean, not only was that a rib on Rick, that was
a rib on his wife and you know, yeah.
(43:50):
Horrible. Yeah.
Yeah. That's that's I can't imagine.
That. Yeah, yeah, he sure did.
And from what I've heard, that'snot common.
No, no. I'll tell you one more quick
one. Jim and I had won these team
titles and we're carrying the belts and we got, we got these
(44:13):
14 days we've been on the road and then we got it again.
We're going from our last matches in Toronto.
We had to come back, wrestled inChicago, flew back to
Minneapolis for TV the next morning, had to fly back through
Chicago to Toronto. And we did our we did the
(44:33):
wrestling show in Minneapolis and we're walking through the
airport and O'Hare airport. We got to go over about 3
different gates from where we'reat.
Jim is going. Jesus Christ, this bag is so
damn heavy. What are you bitching about?
We just want to tag team titles.Christ, I'm carrying mine too.
Yeah, you're bigger than me. You're lifting.
(44:54):
Come on. Oh, God, This is just a pain in
the ass. So now we get to Toronto and,
well, I get off the plane and we're off early.
And then Bach, Winkle, Stevens, Heenan and Patterson and the
rest of them on the card are behind us.
And we get up to the customs andthey look at Jim and they said
(45:16):
we're going to have to open yourbag.
Now, Jim was known as Doctor Brunzell by a lot of people.
Yeah. So we weren't sure what he had
in his bag. And he's panicking, He's in a
panic. And they open his suitcase and
sand comes out of it. Patterson and Stevens had taken,
you know, those ashtrays that have the white sand in it.
(45:38):
Yes, yes. The old ones, we had them at the
TV station. They unloaded it into his
suitcase. So there was cigarette butts,
there was sand in his boots, in his trunks, in the bag.
And the, and you can see the theeyes of the, the guys at Custom,
(45:58):
they look up at him and he's so scared shitless.
He's red. He thinks, Oh my God, what else
did I find in there? Where did that come from?
I don't know anything about that.
He's telling them. Yeah, yeah.
And they look up and they see all the guys in the back
laughing. So they figured that somebody
got him pretty good, so they letus go hauling around about 3540
(46:20):
lbs of hand in that bag that day, kind of the things that
they did. I know that, you know, the UFC
obviously is a big thing these days and you know a lot of
people like your dad who were legit wrestlers, legit tough
guys. How do you think, how do you
(46:41):
think your dad could have done in something like the UFC?
Oh, he'd have done well. He was mean.
Yeah. I mean, he was.
He was tough. I I saw a couple incidents that
they ended really quick, even hammered Billy Robinson one
(47:02):
night in the in the hotel room, picked the bruiser.
But this particular evening thisguy in the bar telling him an
old man this and that and he says well go out and kick this
shit out of an old man. Come on, give it a try.
If they walked out and the guy went to sucker punch him, Vernon
(47:22):
gone down the stairs and as he turned around the guys just
sucker punch him. He took the arm and what we call
an arm bar type and put the pressure above the elbow, threw
his feet up and drove the guy's head right into the sidewalk.
Thing was over in about, you know, 3 seconds.
Yeah. Then we're then the other night
(47:44):
we're out in Vail, Co and we're at a place called Peppy Peppy's.
And he was a friend of my dad's and he had a big restaurant in
Vail and my brother-in-law and myself were there, just Peppy
and his bodyguard who was this big boxer who was about 6 foot
4, maybe 260, and guess he'd done pretty good in boxing.
(48:05):
He was his bodyguard. So Pepe and my dad are talking
and Bobby and I, my brother leftat a table and then this boxer
comes over and sits down to us. That old man, I could beat the
shit out of him. And my brother-in-law spoke up
first. He said I wouldn't mess with
him, right? I mean, Vernon was probably in
the late 50s or early 60s at thetime.
(48:27):
So I wouldn't you're out of yourmind.
And I said, you know, you'd havea better chance against the two,
either one of us, and we'd knockthe crap out of you.
Yeah, yeah, he says. But that old man, he thinks
she's pretty good. He got louder and louder.
And I can, we can see Vern kept looking over and we're going,
oh, shit. So finally we said, well, you
know, if you thinking, if you think you can handle them, give
(48:49):
it a shot. Dumb shit gets up.
He walks over the table and he went to swing at Vern and he
hooked them and he blocked one arm.
He tied it to his side, picked him up in kind of a side suplex
and drove the guy's nose right on the edge of this table.
Busted his nose and went but right over.
(49:09):
Now he's got him on the ground and he's whacking him in the
nose now. What do you think about the old
man? You just kept hitting him.
He must have hit him 810 times. We finally pulled him off.
He's got me back at him. He was.
He was nobody to mess with. No, Yeah, yeah.
And you know, he was a good looking clean cut guy too.
(49:32):
He wasn't, you know, he wasn't like a a Haku or a Tongan or a
Samoan. I mean, he wasn't out of the
ordinary guy. I mean, I could see where some
people would be more onic enoughto try him again, not knowing
anything about him. But at the same time, I, you
know, I think I've seen Clint Eastwood movies recently and
stuff like that, and I can just imagine the same scenario, you
(49:54):
know? That's what it was like, yeah.
But he never I we never saw him lose 1.
He was a great guy. Listen up you bunch of slack
jawed flea market freeloaders. If you think you know Memphis
wrestling, you don't know nothing till you've heard the
Retro Wrestling Review podcast. Brother.
Every week they're talking the real stuff.
(50:16):
Lawler, Jarrett, PG13, Yeah, andeven my Moon Dogs.
Watch long stories from Rd. interviews and folks who were in
the thick of it. Brother, the blood, the beer,
and the bail money. It's all on the Rascal Copia
podcast network. Go to uswapodcast.com or I'll
come down there and I'll slap your taste out of your mouth.
(51:05):
Hi, this is Mike Needham, host of the Reckless Abandoned
podcast with Mike Needham. We invite you to jump on your
favorite podcast platform and search for the Reckless
Abandoned podcast and give us a listen.
I'm sometimes joined by a part time podcaster, part time Co
host and full time wife Kitney Nicole.
We talk wrestling, we talk pop culture, we talk local events,
(51:28):
local happenings in West Tennessee and a ton of other
stuff. But be sure to check out the
Reckless Abandoned Podcast, findus on Facebook.
Also look up the micro group Podcasting Family on Facebook
and see some of our other podcasts we have out there.
Until next time, make good choices and always remember, No
Dollar, No dice. Ladies and gentlemen, this is
(52:01):
Jimmy St. and that was episode 20 of The Best of James Rock St.
Productions with the first half of episode 18 of Greg Gonya on
Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling. Greg came on at a very early
point in the show. It was back when we were working
with Powertown to help them get the word out about their new
action figure line. Obviously a lot changes in the
action figure world and Powertown Town is now struggling
(52:24):
to keep a reputable name. All I'll say on the matter is do
right by all the folks that havepaid you guys their hard earned
money. The only correct option, Steve
and Greg, is to fix it. You can hear the full episode
and moreover on at G MB, MPW or Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling.
Wherever you listen to podcasts,simply click the link in the
(52:45):
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 GMB, MPW
and at James Rock St. everywhere.
Peace with a tear in my eye. This is the greatest moment in
(53:06):
my life. This has been a James Rock St.
(53:37):
production.
This is Greg Ganya and give me back my pro wrestling.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome toGive Me Back My Pro wrestling.
(00:42):
Hello, Sir. 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, righthere on Give Me Back My Pro
Wrestling. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome
back to Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling and today we have a
very special episode. So you know, we've reached a
(01:02):
little bit of a semi partnershipwith Powertown Wrestling.
We had our Steve Rosenthal episode.
It's definitely one of the biggest episodes we've ever had
as far as reach and stuff like that.
So being that, you know, we madethat partnership with them and
we've kind of developed a relationship with their company
and we received a message the other day that we could not turn
(01:22):
down. Obviously one of them is Magnum
TA episode, but this one today is absolutely huge, as you saw
on the welcome mat. Greg Gonya, jut What do you
think of this? This is nuts, man.
Yeah. It's crazy to know that we've
got somebody with the experienceand with the name of Greg Gonya
and you know, all the people he's been around, all the people
(01:44):
he's worked with. His father is an amazing
promoter, wrestler, all around athlete.
And to have that possibility, wecouldn't pass up that
opportunity, yeah. Absolutely.
And you know, our liaison to Powertown is a girl named Kayla.
Kayla, we greatly thank you as always for everything.
But with that being said, the episode with Steve really opened
(02:06):
new doors for us, not only with listenership, but also with, you
know, big name people, man. And I mean, you know, Steve is
is a legend to us because we collected Rimco figures.
But Greg Gonya is a legend to everyone, not only for his
wrestling career, but the company that he worked for with
his father, that his father created AWA.
They brought you Hogan, They brought you Flair, They brought
(02:28):
you the Iron Sheik. They brought you Mr. Perfect.
Sergeant Slaughter. Sergeant Slaughter, Larry's
Abisco, I mean, Aaron Von Raschke, Larry the Axe, Henning,
I mean, we could go on and on. AW Every Way will forever be one
of the most important promotionsin wrestling history.
(02:48):
And you know, to be able to speak to Greg is just absolutely
just a thrill for us. We're very happy to be able to
speak to people like Cousin Condrey and Hammer Jack and
Chris Michaels. We're thrilled to be able to
talk to everyone in the wrestling business.
I'm telling you man, I'm stoked for this one.
Yeah, I can't wait. You know, it's kind of like a
boyhood dream to talk to wrestlers like this.
(03:10):
And if you get that opportunity is one of those things, you
know, you just never know if you'll ever get.
And when we started this podcast, I didn't have the
aspirations of being able to talk to somebody this big, but
it's nice to know that we have that opportunity.
To know that this opportunity isarising from our little old
podcast. You know, dude, I mean, you and
(03:32):
I grew up fans. We had his action figure in our
hand. We may have you know.
I may have it right now in my hand.
You may have it right now. I was going to say that, but I
like your style. She.
So you know, with that being said, you know, we just want to
thank you all the listeners for allowing us to have this level
of listenership to where we can achieve things like this, our
(03:54):
childhood dreams, you know, and not to sound like Shawn Michaels
or or whatever, but at the same time, you know, this is a dream
of ours to be able to talk to professional wrestlers and to be
involved in professional wrestling.
But we could not do that with you all out there in listener
land. So thank you so much for
continuing to listen to our showand continuing to help our
numbers grow. Can't thank you enough.
(04:15):
You all make it worth it. We do have some cool things on
the horizon, some big fun plans that we're not going to talk
about right now. But right now, you know, as it
is, I think we should just talk to Greg Gonyo.
What do you say to that man? I'm ready for it.
All right, we'll be right back after these messages with Greg
Gonyo. Are you a pro wrestling fan?
(04:36):
We'll stop by Captain's Corner, where you can get autographed
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.
(04:57):
Remember, cheers to the working man.
Ladies and gentlemen, welcome back to Give Me Back My Pro
Wrestling. And today we have a very special
guest. He is the legendary Greg Gonya.
Mr. Gonya, it is so great to meet you and talk to you.
Thank you so much for coming on the show.
(05:17):
Well, thank you very much. That was quite an intro.
I appreciate that and live up toit here.
Yeah. Well, we do our best now.
I do. So will I.
I want to clear one thing up now.
Is this the shortstop for the Minnesota Twins or is this the?
Quarterback, we're done. Right now we're done.
This is the quarterback from Wyoming.
(05:38):
The quarterback from Wyoming, that's what I thought.
Is that weird? I mean.
It's funny you should ask. I just opened up the mail and I
had 4 baseball cards of Greg Gagney and they wanted me to
sign them and I always have to send them back.
And he got the wrong Ganya here.Oh man.
When he was in Minnesota, we gotconfused all the time.
(05:59):
And he was adopted. His family was from
Massachusetts and they went by Gagney.
It's a French name. It's really Ganya is the way
it's pronounced. And so I'd get his mail and he'd
get mine. And I'm still getting his and
he's probably still getting mine.
But you got the right guy. You got the wrestling Ganya.
Yeah, that's what we wanted to know.
(06:19):
And it was always funny because,you know, during the twins big
heydays that during that time I was like, why is he gag me?
That's Ganya. That's you know.
We, we, we had to think, we had to go by that basic this, we
were, it was just too confusing for everybody here in Minnesota.
That makes. Sense that's the way they
pronounce it in Boston anyhow, but it was it's really it's
(06:41):
supposed to be a little accent goo after the E for the French
Ganya. I love it.
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaking of the legendary Gonyea, I mean, Vern, you know
the ledge. How is it having a legend for a
father? Well, it's hard to live up to,
but what's what I learned at a young age, you don't try to live
up to it. You just try to do your own
(07:01):
thing and be your own personality.
And that's what he used to tell all of us when he trained us.
You know, be yourself, you know,don't try to be somebody or not
and be yourself. And you'll either either make it
or you won't. But you know, fortunately
enough, you know, I, you know, when people always say, well,
you know, how hard is it to follow?
I'm not following his footsteps.I'm doing my own thing and
(07:24):
trying to make my own footsteps so.
Of course. Yeah, you're doing great.
That's why we always approached everything.
Greg, when when you were training under your dad, did did
you feel like that? He was.
Me and my dad have worked together for years and I always
feel like that he he's always was harder on me than he was
other people. Oh God Almighty, tell me about
it. So I can imagine with with
(07:46):
somebody like your father's stature that that is a legit
wrestler, the legit shoe fighterif you wanted to be and.
I go back to a grade school, went to a Catholic school.
We had the nuns and then the priest came in every six weeks
to give us our our, our cards, our car grades.
(08:07):
But all the nuns, they at that time back in the was in the mid
50s and early 60s, wrestling in Minneapolis was on Tuesday
nights and they would put the early matches on.
Then you wouldn't get the late ones.
They go off the air. So of course, every Wednesday
morning the nuns are all over me.
(08:29):
Hey, did did your dad win last night?
Did your dad win? And I said, well, you know, I
was in bed. He didn't get home till I don't
know. So the priest is getting is
giving out the report cards and he calls me on.
He said, Gee, hey, what happenedlast night with your dad?
And I said, well, you know what,father, I don't know.
I mean, you know, he got home late.
What do you mean you don't know,man?
(08:49):
He chewed my ass out in tears. That's only about the 4th grade.
And I'm going, you know, I don'tknow.
So yeah, but it was always, you know, things like that.
And but it was, you know, it wasa good life.
But he, he was very hard on us. In fact, I had tell people, I
(09:10):
said I've only, I got 3 compliments my whole life from
him. The first one was my senior year
playing football. Last game of the season I
completed 12 of 14 passes for 203 hundred yards and four
touchdowns and ran for two touchdowns.
That's amazing. And then after the game, he
(09:30):
said, man, you know what, Greg, I'm really proud of you.
Did a heck of a job out there. And then the next one was we
were wrestling in the Cow Palacein San Francisco.
We're defending the take you titled Brunsel and myself
against Tito Santana and Rick Martel.
(09:51):
Wow. And the Cobb Palace is a big
empty building. I mean, it's, you know, I mean,
people are way away from it. It's for the it's for the
rodeos. Yeah, but we had about 14,000
people in there. So I mean, they got a big card
and we're on 2nd to the last match.
They got a championship match coming after us.
(10:11):
We got our take team, then the singles championship and
Martellin and Tito walking out to the ring and the people are
going bullshit, bullshit. Oh my God, you know?
So then we come up and we get the same thing.
(10:32):
Boring bullshit, boring bullshit.
So we wrestled for about 18 minutes and Tito and Rick had
different holds on us, so we did.
These big spots would come out of them and they'd get us back
in it. At 18 minutes we had the people
standing. Oh wow, that's.
(10:54):
Amazing. We went 43 minutes then and we
just, we had them standing the entire time after that and that
cheering all went from that boring bullshit to they had no
idea what was going on and we just had and a lot of funds.
But we came back to the locker room.
Vernon was the first one to grabus and he said, I'm so proud of
(11:18):
you guys. That was one of the greatest
match I've ever seen. You guys took control of that
crowd. And then Bock Winkle came up and
Jerry Blackwell and Ray Stevens and Baron Von Rashkin, everybody
on the card and just took the four of us and said unbelievable
guys. That's not the second one.
And then the third one, I was wrestling with him in a take
(11:38):
team match with Bach, Winkle andSaito and Saint Paul, and it was
18,000 people in there. And he was in his 60s about that
time. And so I was in the ring most of
the time. When we got out, he took me
aside and he said, you're betterthan I ever was.
(12:05):
Yeah. So I mean, those are the three
compliments. I got that.
You know, they were hard to earnfrom him.
You really needed to do something special to get a
compliment from him. Otherwise, rode you pretty hard.
Hard. But I'm through.
Yeah. If your dad was like that, you
know what that's like. That makes you better.
(12:26):
Yeah, yeah. Our dad didn't pass out too many
compliments either. I mean, it's when you really got
one, you're like, you're like, wow.
Yeah, I did something. Right.
Yeah, yeah. It's a great feeling, finally.
So it's about your father. I remember a few years back,
maybe 10 years plus the movie The Wrestler came out with
Mickey Mourke. Now I was asking everyone, is
(12:50):
this a remake of the Vern Gonya classic The Wrestler made in
1974 Co starring Ed Asner? Do you have anything that you
could share about the movie at all?
Well, you know, I mean, I remember when we made it and you
know, Vern, there was a lot of promoters around the country
that put money into it and it did really well in most of the
(13:15):
markets that, you know, really promoted at heart did really
well. And you know, when the Mickey
work one came out, they call it the rest or I thought, well, you
know what, they can't call it that.
Well, right, Central limitationshad ran out, but their version
of it was kind of the guys that never made it wrestling, you
know, and they're doing those little, little shows around.
(13:37):
And it was more like that where the theme of this one was the
build up to the big championshipmatch and that the new guy,
Billy Robinson from England and come over to take the title from
Vern. So and then they they they re
enacted some things that really happened in the ring.
Do you remember Ray Stevens cameoff the top rope and on to Joe
(13:58):
Scarpello And then actually it actually happened.
It was one of the tallest brothers, and I forget who came
off the top rope onto his throatand killed him right in the
ring. And then, of course, then
there's always, you know, when you went out in public and you
went to a went to a local establishment like Dusty Rhodes
(14:18):
and Dick Murdoch did, you know, everybody wants to try and give
you a shot. So they had good bar room scene
where they threw everybody around.
Yeah. Yeah.
So they try to, they try to makeit like, you know, and then they
had the training camp, a little bit of that.
Yeah. And we had just come out of the
training myself, Brunsel, Ric Flair, Ken Petura, the Iron
(14:39):
Sheik and Bob Bruggers. You just said the Mount Rushmore
right there. Well, it was.
It was pretty interesting because over the years Vern
trained 144 wrestlers and out ofthat only two didn't make it to
main event level. Wow, that's pretty impressive.
(15:01):
I think Michael Michael Hayes said it best one day in an
interview. He said anybody that came out of
when they came out of the Bergania camp, you knew they
were ready to rock'n'roll. Yeah, yeah.
Usually, usually it took five toseven years for a young person
coming into the business and starting to make it to the main
(15:22):
event. Yeah, our our group was 2 1/2 to
three years. Man.
So. That's a heck of a pedigree to
have to know that the level of talent that was produced from
being trained by your dad. And it's amazing that I've
looked, I've looked up some of the names in the in the last
week or so and it's and just blew my mind like it's, it's the
(15:45):
who's who of everybody. I know that I know I'm.
From the Carolinas, that's whereyou guys are at, right?
Yep. OK.
He trained Gene Olli and Lars Anderson.
Yeah, There you go. Yeah, I mean.
Ricky Steamboat, Ric Flair, Blackjack Mulligan.
There's so many, so many. But everywhere they went, you
(16:07):
know, everybody was successful. Yeah.
Yeah, I know you were around RicFlair some when when he was
coming up and being trained and everything like that.
Was there ever. Is there like a thing early on
where people could say, you know, he's got something?
I know, obviously. I've heard that your dad, like,
went after him when he left and gave up and like basically
slapped him and said, no, you'recoming back.
(16:27):
Oh. Yeah, you're not coming on his
ass three different times. Well, I knew Rick in high
school. He was at another high school
that played against us and his parents pulled him out of
school. He was getting in trouble so
much and sent him to Wisconsin school over.
And I would say the Bieber said something and he went to school
(16:48):
over there and he was always in trouble.
But he started when he came back, he started training.
He was supposed to go to the University of Minnesota.
He was a predicted All American football player and he was a non
predictor. So he he never made never made a
practice and Marie warm at the coach at that time.
And I played my first year at Minnesota as a freshman.
(17:10):
He said, Ganya, where's flair? And I said, jeez, coach, I don't
know. He says, well, you're supposed
to be in charge of myself. How can I be in charge of He
says, we got a we got a bill here for $1800 for long distance
phone calls to Michigan. Wow.
So Rick, because he wasn't on the team when we played
Michigan, he went to the game inMichigan and met abroad there, a
(17:34):
young lady, I should say, I'm sorry.
And he was traveling back and forth, but mostly over the
phone. And that's where all the phone
calls were coming from. Wow.
And he was, he was a character. He came to the camp.
He weighed 298 lbs. Right, right.
And Ave. he left his down to 260and then eventually got down to
(17:56):
the weight he needed to be at tocompete the way he did.
But Rick was a natural and we convinced him that this old barn
Vern had and we went from September to the end of January,
you know, end up in Minnesota. No windows in it.
The doors are open. One light bulb over the ring and
it's 20 below 0 and we're sweating her ass off.
(18:18):
And he had this one driller. One guy was in the middle and
the other other, the other four,the other five would be on the
apron and wanted to be in with them.
And it's like say Peter is starting, they'll call a
headlock and they'll call out things and you go hard for 3/3
to 4 minutes. And then the one guy that was in
the middle stays there and goes through the whole group.
(18:39):
So you're, you come out and you're sweating your butt off
and you're standing at the end of the line and now you get up
to the beginning of the line andyour sweatpants and sweatshirts
are froze to you. And then, you know, he liked to
call a body slam, right when youwalked in there and, or some
kind of a big bump where you, oh, man, felt like that cartoon
(19:00):
character and you were breaking into pieces.
All that's great. So it was, it was it was rough.
It was a it was a but it was very educational and it worked
for all of us. And he made everybody work hard
and learned the sport the way itneeded to be learned.
Yeah. How to present it to the public?
(19:27):
And now a word from our sponsor.Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to
Give 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 Chic
(19:49):
Jared are the undisputed tag team champions of the wrestling
podcast world. From thought provoking topics to
superstar interviews to action figure expertise, this team does
it all. And all they ask is Give Me Back
My Pro Wrestling every other Thursday, wherever you listen to
(20:14):
podcasts. I don't want to stay on other
wrestlers. I actually want to talk about
you, Greg. So being as it may, the AWA tag
team situation where you and JimBrunzel were the high Flyers you
guys were, I mean, I think you should be considered, if not one
of the most revolutionary tag teams at that time because you
really were taking an element that wasn't necessarily known in
(20:38):
the AWA area. You took it to the top rope.
And I mean, you work teams such as Pat Patterson and Stevens,
which, you know, even though they're rated really high,
they're also very, very underrated as A tag team as far
as people you know. But you guys as well.
Talk about your time in the highFlyers with Jim.
Well, if Jim, you know, Jim leftand went to the WWE, if he just
stayed there, you know, maybe people would have recognized
(21:01):
this more, right? We did.
We we had two championship runs.One would beat Duncan and lands
up in Winnipeg and the other onewas with Adonis and Ventura.
But when you bring up Stevenson,Patterson, I mean Ray Stevenson,
Nick Bachman called held the AW Champ A-Team championships for
three years. Right, right.
And they wrestled all the big major teams.
(21:24):
Yeah, we were fortunate enough to really start with those two.
And then Pat came in later on and we were wrestling.
They called it a cold match. Jim and I were really played
football at Wyoming, so we had alot of extra publicity in
Denver. The Denver people just really
took to us. And the arena was seated about
14,000 and it was kind of round and when we'd come out you can
(21:47):
just feel the building or just vibrate.
So so Patterson had left for a while and they didn't have a
strong main event match. So they put Jim and I in there
with Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson.
Of course, Bobby Heenan was their manager.
Now Pat had been gone for about two years.
So we get there, the place is jam packed and I say we come out
(22:10):
and that building is just vibrating.
And I tell the story to kids I'mtraining because it's how it
really, it's not how much you doin the ring, it's what you do
and how you have to get those, the people, the public into your
personality and they're either going to like you or they're
(22:31):
going to dislike you. So we wrestled these two guys
and we had, they had a top wristlock on us and we would get out
of it and they would get us backin by their distracting the
referee and one would pull our tights down or pull us down by
the hair. Yeah, never a punch or a kick
thrown. In 8 minutes we had a
(22:52):
full-fledged riot. Wow, trying to get the ring to
help us. That's amazing.
So that's when you know you've done your job.
Yeah. Yeah.
Well, you get those people emotionally involved in you, you
know, and they just, they live and die by you.
Oh, yeah. It's such, it's just such a
wonderful feeling when you can have that, that with the public,
(23:16):
that feeling where you know, God, it's, it's so hard to
explain. You can't explain unless you've
been there and you feel it when you go in the ring.
And Hulk Hogan, we wrestled witha six man take team match in
Chicago against Blackwell Stevens and Bockwinkle and they
were in the ring. Rosemont Arena full of people
sold out. We get in the ring and the
(23:38):
people go bananas. We go in last one home, gets in
there, they bail out and he doeshis pose and I said to Jim, grab
his T-shirt, grab the side and tore it off real slow.
And those people exploded. Even today he'll tell people I
got I gave them back to you. That's awesome.
I mean that that's legendary forhim too, you know, so.
(24:01):
Oh, I know it. He knows it too.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah, So you were talking about Bock Winkle and Patterson and
Stevens. Do you feel like it was a pretty
much an even swap with Pat and Nick as far as the tag team with
Stevens? It was, it was a little, little
different. Yeah.
They were all alike in some waysand different in little ways,
(24:24):
and Ray and Pat I would say had better timing in the ring than
Nick did. But Nick Overall was probably
what he was a great wrestler andhe was a great champion.
Yeah. Because of his style, Ray had
(24:45):
won championships all over. I mean, Ray was probably one of
the, if not the best performer ever in professional wrestling.
Yeah. And then they had Bobby Heenan
and you got to put him up in thetop five when he was.
He gave the people what they wanted.
Yeah. So we were very fortunate in the
AWA because Vern attracted all this top talent because we only
(25:06):
worked about 250 to 270 days outof the year.
And we got the full month, the 1st of May, off in the first two
weeks of June. And then in the summer we'd only
wrestled 3, three times, sometimes four times a week.
And Vern, it was very, he wantedevery to be able to have time
with their families. It was very important to him.
(25:29):
And that's why the best talent always came in here.
I mean, you had opening matches with guys that were main event
people around the country. So it was it was it was it was
fun. It was a it was a great, great
time. And the Awai think was at that
time probably the number one promotion anywhere in the in the
(25:49):
world really. Oh yeah, for sure.
Yeah, yeah, me and Jimmy were talking beforehand, Greg, about
about how that the WWFWWE couldn't have existed, WCW
couldn't have really existed without the AWA creating all
these people. And you know, I've often
wondered, and you can give me your best answer on this.
(26:10):
It's, it's maybe not something you really thought about, but
had the AWA survived and had they been around today, what
could you envision that being like?
I mean would would have had a good more national.
We could have well, we were at we were at the verge of going
national and this story is probably maybe even told once or
(26:30):
twice, if that it was only two people and we were sworn to
secrecy. We had to sign a non compete,
you know non. What do you call it?
NDA. NDA, yeah.
Yeah, there you go. Yeah, with CBS.
Oh wow, yeah. And it was 1983 was when we were
(26:53):
having the big match and well, we'd had a match of battle
Royale in October. They ended up and then we had
Andre. And then we ran the whole month.
We ran battle Royals. And then the winner was to get
Bockwinkle. And Hogan had had a match with
Bockwinkle. He'd won the battle royal there
(27:14):
and didn't get the title. So we're we got Christmas week
coming up and we've got all our major cities, Saint Paul,
Chicago, Milwaukee, Winnipeg, Denver, San Francisco, Salt Lake
City, Las Vegas, we got them allcoming up.
And Hogan was going to Japan, sohe cut all his interviews before
he left and basically he was in six man tag team matches and the
(27:37):
buildings were all sold out. And we get it on December 21st
or 22nd, Vern gets a letter fromFlorida that says I'm not coming
back. And Vern looked at it from
Florida because him and Eddie Graham were good buddies and
they used to pull jokes on each other.
(27:57):
So for Vern for because he thought it was from Eddie, so he
threw it away. Well, Hogan doesn't show up in
Saint Paul. And I and I called him, I said,
Tim, what are you doing? He said, well, I'm, I'm, I'm
going to New York. And I said, well, that isn't the
way you do business. You know, fulfill your
commitments. You know, you did all this
(28:18):
stuff, we're all sold out. Fulfill your commitments and
then leave, right. And he said Vince is paying more
to stay home. Oh, wow.
So he didn't show up. And where I'm going with this
was from there in April, it was going to be a match between
(28:41):
Bockwinkel and Hogan. And we'd signed the deal with
CBS for that match, 2 hour primeprime time TV show.
And, and that was the match. And now all of a sudden we've
lost that match. Oh man.
(29:01):
So if if he would have hung in there with us, he'd have
probably won that title in Apriland CBS then after that one was
going to do A at least a monthlyshow with us on Saturday nights.
Wow, that's a totally different thing.
Hurt. Yeah, Yeah.
(29:23):
That would hurt, yeah, man. And then after that, McMahon
just hurt, you know, picking offour talent.
He hit us because we had the biggest area and he needed those
big markets for, for his TV. Yeah.
So, you know, that's, that's what went down.
Now we're just we're gearing back up.
(29:43):
We're coming out of retirement. Oh yeah.
Well, hey, that's the important part.
But before we get there, you know, just a little bit of
context here. The my brother Jared, he is our
action figure expert on the show, OK.
And part of the reason we spoke with Steve originally.
And then now we're speaking withyou.
Thankfully. With that being said, we call
(30:03):
him the plastic sheet because the he's like the, you know, he
knows about the action figure. So what's funny is you also have
one of the great legendary sheiks in one of my personal
favorite sheiks, Sheik Adnan, LKC.
And you know, you had an incredible feud with him.
You know, it led to a feud with Brody.
I mean, King Kong Brody, by the way, talk about that.
(30:26):
I mean, just talk about that feud.
God. Well, I'll tell you.
Here's first time I wrestled. Brody was in Japan.
We had to go over there for A tag team tournament, and we
wrestled in Salt Lake City the night before.
We just won the titles and we had been on the road for 14
straight nights, and we had to go from Salt Lake to Tokyo.
(30:48):
Yeah. And our match in Salt Lake was
against Blackwell and the Chic in a cage match.
And Blackwell had thrown me overthe top rope into the cage.
When I went out, my foot hit therope in a twisted my my right
leg and jeez, my knee started burning.
But you know, you just keep going.
And the next morning we wake up,we go to Salt Lake Airport and
(31:12):
my knee is swollen like crazy. So the flight attendants give me
some ice to put on it. We get to LA, got a layover
there and then to Tokyo. 19 hours total there in the plane.
Then we had to get jump on a plane to Sapporo.
Cab picked us up. We had to get dressed in the cab
and go right in the ring and my knee was unbelievable.
(31:35):
God, it was killing me. Yeah.
So we wrestled about 15 minutes that night.
The next night we had Territory Funk Senior in Giant Bubba.
We wrestled them for 48 minutes and won the match.
The next night we had Suruta andTeneru.
We wrestled them for 59 minutes and won that match.
(31:58):
Then we get Stan Hanson and KingKong Brody and they are like
legends in Japan, right? So we get out in the ring and I
got my back, I got my, I'm in the back to the turnbuckle and I
can see they're coming out and Jim's we're talking and you
know, Jesus, we're going to, we're in for a battle here.
(32:20):
We got to, you know, really fireup here.
Well, we were pretty fired up myknees killing me.
And all of a sudden I said, Jesus, look out.
Jim gets hit with the cowbell. I get hit with a chain.
The ring, we go, they run us. There's no rules in Japan.
They run us through the crowd ofpeople, hit us with a fire
extinguisher. We're both cut up.
(32:40):
We had matches, I guess. I guess it started, but we
doesn't feel like it started, you know, like we normally start
1. So we're trying to fight back to
the to the ring and I see this these Japanese, they jumped off
their chairs and one fell on thefloor right next to me was
folded up and Hansen's running at me and I threw it like a
frisbee and hit him right on thebridge of the nose.
(33:01):
Wow, his nose exploded and down he went.
We wrestled these guys for 33 minutes and the next thing our
arms were black and blue from reaching up and hitting them
from in the fist down to our elbow.
And I thought we had them. Jim had had drop kicked Hanson
(33:22):
out of the ring and Brody had had Jim and I came off the top
rope and hit him with a big elbow to drop him right to his
knees. And as I looked up, all of a
sudden I see Jim go flying over the top rope and Brody's on his
knees. His head's up to my chest and
he's bare, like both arms are pinned.
(33:44):
And here comes Hanson firing across the ring and gives me
that lariat. Wow.
And that was the last thing I remembered.
Oh, wow. But we met.
We had to meet him then in the finals in the Tokyo Dome.
And that was another just a brutal match.
And of course, then when he cameto Minneapolis, you know, right
away he wanted me. And I didn't really want to go
(34:09):
in there with him, but I did. And when I got back from Japan,
though, what I forgot to say with the knee, I went to the
doctor. They opened it up and the
cartilage fell out in five pieces.
Oh, wow. So I wrestled with torn
cartilage for two weeks straight.
Yeah, that. Yeah.
That's what you did back then. Right, right.
(34:30):
And, and I mean you, you did it with excellence.
Hey, my name is Tammy Reynolds. I am the wife of Forsaken Rick
Reynolds, that super cool guy that everybody knows and loves,
and I represent West Side Sauces.
I make sauces, I bottle them, I seal them, I sell them.
(34:53):
I have a hot honey sauce, I havea sweet sauce, I have a hot
sauce. I have a white sauce that's so
yummy you can use it on everything.
They are absolutely amazing and I'm so proud of them.
We make them from scratch. So go on our website
westsidesauces.com, check out our products, read about our
(35:16):
story and go online and order you some of these yummy sauces.
And Rick actually uses all of the sauces because he is a die
hard smoker and griller and so he likes really good sauces and
rubs and I make them. So how convenient is that for
him? Go on our website
(35:36):
westsidesauces.com. Order you some samples and I
think you'll thoroughly enjoy them.
Thank you guys, be blessed. During this time, you know, this
is kind of cool. Is that especially from what I
remember as a child, the Rimco action figure line came along
(36:00):
and, you know, Steve kind of downplayed it because I think he
felt like where he, you know, initially had Vince and then he
ended up with Vern and and I feel like he said he didn't get
to do all of the things with thetoys that he wanted.
And of course, I would expect that nonetheless.
But my brother and I especially hold those figures in such high
(36:21):
regard. They were actually our first
wrestling action figures and we had the road warriors.
And then of course, we get the high Flyers and we get other
teams and and other wrestlers. But tell me what it was like to
have your first action figure, Greg.
Well, I'll tell you, you know, it, it, it, it, it at that time,
you know, we didn't know what the action figures were.
(36:41):
But I don't know this that the Remco wrestling figures were the
biggest ones ever sold. Oh, yeah.
And, and they were the only onesout on the market.
And exactly. Ran that for seven or eight
years and retired. Yeah, but you know, in fact, I
told him I don't even have one of myself, but.
(37:02):
We can make that happen. Well, TK we had a guy send one
to he sent them to me. He had a he had one.
So I got the two of them and, and my wife, I don't know, you
know, she passed away four yearsago and a couple of my
daughter's up in the attic and she finds this bag just a couple
months ago, brings it to me and it's all the dolls.
(37:24):
Wow. All the action figures they had
the Road Warriors, we had Garvinand Regal, we had the Sheik,
Black Winkle and all of them. But they didn't have any of me.
And they had one of Vern, they had one of Vern and Vern never
wanted his maid. And Steve wanted to make it and
they didn't. And when they they went to make
(37:46):
it, they had messed up the nose and all I had was I had the
figure and it was missing one leg.
And so he says, you know what that's worth?
Who would want that? It's one-of-a-kind.
Yeah. Yeah, it is.
Yeah, so I've got it in my pocket.
Yeah, an unknown Holy Grail for sure, you know?
(38:08):
Yeah, yeah. All there are collectors out
there that would pay upwards of probably 25,000 probably for
that. So it's.
Oh well, I'm going to hang on toit then.
Maybe more, I'm just saying upwards.
I mean, it could be, could be way more.
They have deeper pockets than I do so.
I don't know if I could sell it or not.
(38:28):
Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
You know, one thing that was in that line that I can't find much
trace of. I know you had a great feud with
him, but they had you as A tag team in Ganya's Raiders with you
and Kurt Hennig. Tell me about Ganya's Raiders.
Well, you know, Sergeant Slaughter came here and then
they, he, he had this thing he did in Charlotte and he had a
(38:51):
kind of a flunky guy that was his sidekick.
Jim Nelson, yeah. Yeah, and I ended up in the, you
know, with him, right Then they thought it'd be a better, a
stronger team. You know, they wanted a stronger
team. And I don't think Slaughter was
too happy with me being in that role with him, but we did it.
(39:14):
And then, I don't know, they threw Kurt Henning an eye in and
that's what they just did it forthe dolls.
We never wrestled that way. I was going to say I don't.
Yeah, never did that's but they they threw it in there.
I mean, was that all going to happen?
Not that I remember right, Kurt Wrestle is a Tate team a couple
times, but you know, his dad andmy dad had such a few.
(39:37):
I mean, they they just didn't like each other and they they
came from the same high school and the same wrestling coach
back there. And Kurt always we got along
well, but he had a little chip and a little arrogant sometimes,
you know, especially when we were on the road and and
learning and we had a good match.
(39:57):
You get a little little arrogant.
I said, hey, you know what? That'll catch up to you, man.
There's too many guys in this business that can take you down
really quick. Right.
And they're all in AWA, essentially.
Yeah, yeah, they were at that time, yeah.
But Kurt turned out to be a unbelievable performer in the
ring and great. He was a great guy.
(40:19):
We just, we had a lot of fun together.
That now? OK, you know he's legendary
ribs. Did that start in the AWA?
Did his ribbing start then or was that much later?
Christ almighty, no. It started there.
We had a guy, Rick Renslow, the Alaskan.
Yeah. I don't know if I can even tell
this on the air, this story. If it gets too bad, tell me.
(40:44):
Sure. Anyhow, Rick is underneath on
the card and we're wrestling in Winnipeg and he goes on the
second match and he's got to hurry up and and get but he
drive back home to Minneapolis because he had another job.
So Kurt and him were always ribbing each other or teasing
each other. And that what happened was
(41:08):
renslaw Rick grabbed his bag after threw his wrestling gear
in there to grab the bag and I got in the car and drove back to
Minneapolis and his wife took the wrestling bag downstairs
should take the take the the allhis gear out and wash it.
And all of a sudden she goes Oh my God.
(41:29):
And Rick hairs are screaming down there.
He goes down there and thank GodKurt had put a big turd in the
wrestling bag. Oh my gosh.
Oh my gosh. Oh.
Apparently what what they did isit came from Kurt, but it was
(41:56):
put on the on the window sill outside in Winnipeg.
It was in the IT was in January and it froze.
He was able to put it in the bag, but by the time he got it
home and it, you know, got out. Imagine.
So now. So now Rick is livid.
Yeah. So we're doing interviews one
(42:17):
day and we had, we had an event here in Minneapolis.
I used to use this car dealership I used to do
commercials for. They wanted to do a big one, one
of those big tractor trucks, youknow, and this was a Chevy and
they had the big wheels on it, some kind of a Chevy, I forget
(42:39):
what they called it. There was a SUV of some kind up
on the big wheels and they painted.
It was called the Wrestle the Russell Rock or something like
that. OK.
And somebody in the battle Royale was going to win it and
Kurt won it. So Kurt comes in, he does.
Dude, we're doing our interviewsone day.
It's an all day deal. And he's got the wrestle truck
(43:00):
out there parked and he's driving home and he's late for
dinner and he's, he's on Hwy. this Hwy. 55.
He's going about 6570 miles an hour.
And all of a sudden the front wheels come flying off of it.
Oh, completely off of it. And he goes sliding down into a
ditch like he didn't roll it over.
But Rick, Rick had cut the cut the brackets that kept the tires
(43:25):
on. So after that one, they they
both got called in the office and no more.
Somebody gets killed. Yeah, he said.
It's just the wheels came flyingoff the thing.
Yeah, because, I mean, not only was that a rib on Rick, that was
a rib on his wife and you know, yeah.
(43:50):
Horrible. Yeah.
Yeah. That's that's I can't imagine.
That. Yeah, yeah, he sure did.
And from what I've heard, that'snot common.
No, no. I'll tell you one more quick
one. Jim and I had won these team
titles and we're carrying the belts and we got, we got these
(44:13):
14 days we've been on the road and then we got it again.
We're going from our last matches in Toronto.
We had to come back, wrestled inChicago, flew back to
Minneapolis for TV the next morning, had to fly back through
Chicago to Toronto. And we did our we did the
(44:33):
wrestling show in Minneapolis and we're walking through the
airport and O'Hare airport. We got to go over about 3
different gates from where we'reat.
Jim is going. Jesus Christ, this bag is so
damn heavy. What are you bitching about?
We just want to tag team titles.Christ, I'm carrying mine too.
Yeah, you're bigger than me. You're lifting.
(44:54):
Come on. Oh, God, This is just a pain in
the ass. So now we get to Toronto and,
well, I get off the plane and we're off early.
And then Bach, Winkle, Stevens, Heenan and Patterson and the
rest of them on the card are behind us.
And we get up to the customs andthey look at Jim and they said
(45:16):
we're going to have to open yourbag.
Now, Jim was known as Doctor Brunzell by a lot of people.
Yeah. So we weren't sure what he had
in his bag. And he's panicking, He's in a
panic. And they open his suitcase and
sand comes out of it. Patterson and Stevens had taken,
you know, those ashtrays that have the white sand in it.
(45:38):
Yes, yes. The old ones, we had them at the
TV station. They unloaded it into his
suitcase. So there was cigarette butts,
there was sand in his boots, in his trunks, in the bag.
And the, and you can see the theeyes of the, the guys at Custom,
(45:58):
they look up at him and he's so scared shitless.
He's red. He thinks, Oh my God, what else
did I find in there? Where did that come from?
I don't know anything about that.
He's telling them. Yeah, yeah.
And they look up and they see all the guys in the back
laughing. So they figured that somebody
got him pretty good, so they letus go hauling around about 3540
(46:20):
lbs of hand in that bag that day, kind of the things that
they did. I know that, you know, the UFC
obviously is a big thing these days and you know a lot of
people like your dad who were legit wrestlers, legit tough
guys. How do you think, how do you
(46:41):
think your dad could have done in something like the UFC?
Oh, he'd have done well. He was mean.
Yeah. I mean, he was.
He was tough. I I saw a couple incidents that
they ended really quick, even hammered Billy Robinson one
(47:02):
night in the in the hotel room, picked the bruiser.
But this particular evening thisguy in the bar telling him an
old man this and that and he says well go out and kick this
shit out of an old man. Come on, give it a try.
If they walked out and the guy went to sucker punch him, Vernon
(47:22):
gone down the stairs and as he turned around the guys just
sucker punch him. He took the arm and what we call
an arm bar type and put the pressure above the elbow, threw
his feet up and drove the guy's head right into the sidewalk.
Thing was over in about, you know, 3 seconds.
Yeah. Then we're then the other night
(47:44):
we're out in Vail, Co and we're at a place called Peppy Peppy's.
And he was a friend of my dad's and he had a big restaurant in
Vail and my brother-in-law and myself were there, just Peppy
and his bodyguard who was this big boxer who was about 6 foot
4, maybe 260, and guess he'd done pretty good in boxing.
(48:05):
He was his bodyguard. So Pepe and my dad are talking
and Bobby and I, my brother leftat a table and then this boxer
comes over and sits down to us. That old man, I could beat the
shit out of him. And my brother-in-law spoke up
first. He said I wouldn't mess with
him, right? I mean, Vernon was probably in
the late 50s or early 60s at thetime.
(48:27):
So I wouldn't you're out of yourmind.
And I said, you know, you'd havea better chance against the two,
either one of us, and we'd knockthe crap out of you.
Yeah, yeah, he says. But that old man, he thinks
she's pretty good. He got louder and louder.
And I can, we can see Vern kept looking over and we're going,
oh, shit. So finally we said, well, you
know, if you thinking, if you think you can handle them, give
(48:49):
it a shot. Dumb shit gets up.
He walks over the table and he went to swing at Vern and he
hooked them and he blocked one arm.
He tied it to his side, picked him up in kind of a side suplex
and drove the guy's nose right on the edge of this table.
Busted his nose and went but right over.
(49:09):
Now he's got him on the ground and he's whacking him in the
nose now. What do you think about the old
man? You just kept hitting him.
He must have hit him 810 times. We finally pulled him off.
He's got me back at him. He was.
He was nobody to mess with. No, Yeah, yeah.
And you know, he was a good looking clean cut guy too.
(49:32):
He wasn't, you know, he wasn't like a a Haku or a Tongan or a
Samoan. I mean, he wasn't out of the
ordinary guy. I mean, I could see where some
people would be more onic enoughto try him again, not knowing
anything about him. But at the same time, I, you
know, I think I've seen Clint Eastwood movies recently and
stuff like that, and I can just imagine the same scenario, you
(49:54):
know? That's what it was like, yeah.
But he never I we never saw him lose 1.
He was a great guy. Listen up you bunch of slack
jawed flea market freeloaders. If you think you know Memphis
wrestling, you don't know nothing till you've heard the
Retro Wrestling Review podcast. Brother.
Every week they're talking the real stuff.
(50:16):
Lawler, Jarrett, PG13, Yeah, andeven my Moon Dogs.
Watch long stories from Rd. interviews and folks who were in
the thick of it. Brother, the blood, the beer,
and the bail money. It's all on the Rascal Copia
podcast network. Go to uswapodcast.com or I'll
come down there and I'll slap your taste out of your mouth.
(51:05):
Hi, this is Mike Needham, host of the Reckless Abandoned
podcast with Mike Needham. We invite you to jump on your
favorite podcast platform and search for the Reckless
Abandoned podcast and give us a listen.
I'm sometimes joined by a part time podcaster, part time Co
host and full time wife Kitney Nicole.
We talk wrestling, we talk pop culture, we talk local events,
(51:28):
local happenings in West Tennessee and a ton of other
stuff. But be sure to check out the
Reckless Abandoned Podcast, findus on Facebook.
Also look up the micro group Podcasting Family on Facebook
and see some of our other podcasts we have out there.
Until next time, make good choices and always remember, No
Dollar, No dice. Ladies and gentlemen, this is
(52:01):
Jimmy St. and that was episode 20 of The Best of James Rock St.
Productions with the first half of episode 18 of Greg Gonya on
Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling. Greg came on at a very early
point in the show. It was back when we were working
with Powertown to help them get the word out about their new
action figure line. Obviously a lot changes in the
action figure world and Powertown Town is now struggling
(52:24):
to keep a reputable name. All I'll say on the matter is do
right by all the folks that havepaid you guys their hard earned
money. The only correct option, Steve
and Greg, is to fix it. You can hear the full episode
and moreover on at G MB, MPW or Give Me Back My Pro Wrestling.
Wherever you listen to podcasts,simply click the link in the
(52:45):
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 GMB, MPW
and at James Rock St. everywhere.
Peace with a tear in my eye. This is the greatest moment in
(53:06):
my life. This has been a James Rock St.
(53:37):
production.
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy, Jess Hilarious, And Charlamagne Tha God!