The Complere Hulk Hogan | An Interview with Charlie Platt, Voice of Southeastern Wrestling

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:15):
It's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast special report. The Lapse
Fan presents the complete Hull Coogan, a real American story,
brought to you by Garage Pierre.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
You know Charlie Platt, Yes, sir, How are you, sir?

Speaker 3 (00:34):
Doing great? How are you?

Speaker 4 (00:36):
Oh?

Speaker 2 (00:36):
I'm so excited to talk to you. I want to
make sure Charlie you can hear my co host JP, JP.
Can you say hi to Charlie. Hey, Charlie, how are you?

Speaker 3 (00:44):
I got JP nice, I'm doing good. How are you, sir?

Speaker 2 (00:49):
Doing great? Excited to talk to you. We'll get right
right into it, Charlie. We'll do a quick introduction and then.

Speaker 3 (00:55):
How many hundred thousand dollars are not getting for this
to do?

Speaker 2 (00:58):
And you waited to the absolute last second to ask
that question, didn't you.

Speaker 3 (01:04):
My lawyer's here, you know, we're.

Speaker 2 (01:09):
Uh, well, well we'll see. Well we'll have to have
a dispute afterwards in the in the spirit of Southeastern
about how many people actually listened.

Speaker 3 (01:16):
All right, there you go?

Speaker 2 (01:18):
All right, here we go, you know, JP. We've we've
struggled as we go through Hulk Hogan's life and times
to really put ourselves in the seat of the fan
that saw him in his real first breakthrough role in Alabama,
in Southeastern, in Gulf Coast. It's it's like we'll never
get a first hand perspective. We we we came to terms.

Speaker 5 (01:37):
With that, right we We we did because it's it's
it's like, it's this mystery, it's this it's this incredible
mystery that I feel like we'll never get we'll never
get solved. Right, we just have lost because of lack
of documentation and surviving video the real glimpse of what
Terry Bolea was like when he became Terry the Hope
Boulder and within a matter of months is wrestling Andre

(01:57):
the Giant, World Champ, Hartley Race, and so much more.
But but what what if we could find somebody who
had the best seat in the house for essentially the
entirety of Terry Bullay as Southeastern run. What if we
could talk to the.

Speaker 2 (02:08):
Announcer himself, not only the voice of the promotion, but
in fact Ron Fuller's right hand man in so many
ways when it came to running Dothan and the important
cities on the territory. Mister Charlie Platt is here with
us on the complete Hulk Hogan here in the lapsed
Van Charlie, thank you so much for being here.

Speaker 3 (02:24):
It's an honor, it's my pleasure. And if I can
be of any assistance in filling in the blanks, I
kind of I wondered for a long time while we
were blank in some of the books and the documentaries
on Hogan. But whatever the reason, it happened that way.

(02:45):
But I was there from the very first day that
he had. Leslie pulled into a TV station on Highway
fifty two in Dothan, Alabama, wanting to be professional wrestlers.

Speaker 2 (02:58):
Unbelievable. So that is exactly where I wanted to start. Charlie,
remember everything you can for us and our listeners about
the first time you had the opportunity to lay eyes
on Terry Boleya and his friend ed Leslie.

Speaker 3 (03:10):
Well, to be quite honest, I mean, the looks of
the guy were something that was so opposite of what
this territory was used to. This territory was built by
the Welch family, and it was built on wrestlers. It
was built on wrestling. What's on the marquee In other words,

(03:34):
you had to get down the mat, you had to
hip toss, you had to arm drag. This was a
working territory. It was not one built on and I
don't want anybody to take this wrong. Freaks in other words,
people like the only what you would call a freak
of nature that drew money in this territory would have

(03:57):
been Terry Bolea and Andre Uh. People like and I'm
not throwing off again, people like ab Do the Butcher
and some of the gimmick guys didn't mean anything to
this this audience, and I was kind of wondering how
they would take too Terry Bolea. And the thing that

(04:18):
concerned me most I was in a meeting with he
and the booker Louis Tillay. The part this is unclear
to me, and I think I'm just guessing this is
the brisco Boys are someone in Florida call Louis because
they were friends, and said, we got this guy that
wants to wrestle and he's been trained by Matt Suda,
and uh, we were going to send him over your way.

(04:41):
And that was I think his introduction to to Louis
was from the Briscoes or someone in the Florida office.
I would I would guess the Briscoes because from what
I learned, Eddie Graham was not real happy with with
Terry and the few matches that he had had and
Sarah to way down there, but he just had he

(05:03):
had the look. He uh. He had no skills as
far as talking, as far as interviews were concerned, and
I questioned Mattizudah on how much he really gave him
and other guys in the Florida's territory on how to
work as a professional wrestler, because I remember Louis took
him into the studio and where the ring was set

(05:24):
up that day and we were about three hours away
from television production when all this took place. Back we
were doing some interviews and they got in the ring
and they had to show Terry how to throw his
arm over the top rope on countering on the ropes
or he'd go through the second and the third rope.
He was not really green is not the word for

(05:45):
what Terry Boleo was. And I had concerns that, you
know this, this guy's got to learn to work before
he can get over. Of course that proves that I
was wrong. It was the looks and the production we
put behind him that made him the superstar. It helped

(06:07):
make him a superstar he became. There's got to understand
within a few weeks he's working with Andre.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
The giant amazing, and.

Speaker 3 (06:15):
I think I'm not criticizing one who's passed on, like
I sometimes wonder. I've never read his whole book. I
always wondered if maybe he left out the part about
working down here with Andre, with Harley and with some stuff,
because it was a conflict of what they did in

(06:36):
Wressell Mayneith me, Yeah.

Speaker 2 (06:39):
We expect a bit about that too, Charlie. You know,
it's it changes the whole narrative. If he worked with
Andrea a few months into the business and already understood
how magical this was, and he's got all these myth
mythology stories about meeting Andrea in New York and working
with him. GP, I know you had a question right
along those lines. Well, yeah, I was curious because as
we've been going along here and looking at this at

(07:01):
at Hulk Hogan Terry Blea in Alabama, it's like so
much of what became what everyone saw as hul Cogan
really the the the key elements of Hulk Hogan were
developed and started in Alabama. I mean just literally blew

(07:21):
our mind, and I wanted I was curious what it
was like for someone like you who worked with him
back in those early days to kind of see what
was it like to see him when he became this
national figure, to know that a lot of the stuff
that he was doing was developed down there, and nobody
was given that, like you said, that kind of that recognition.

Speaker 3 (07:45):
You know, it was just to be perfectly honestly, I
did not pay that much attention to his career until
it got to the point of maybe Russell ninetia three,
and there again it was one of those deals where
you go back and see how he was built down
here and how Memphis probably helped him a good bit

(08:08):
with a lot of things the short period, short period
of time he was a Memphis But down here everybody,
Louis got everybody on one page, and they put all
their eggs in that basket, as the Southerners would say.
And Hogan couldn't do a whole lot except throw somebody
into the ropes, come off with the bear hug that

(08:31):
squeeze that he had, and get blood running out everybody's mouth.
And you see that on television three or four weeks
in a row. He's squeezing and causing internal bleeding to
a number of people, including some currant stars and some
legends of the business. I'll drop one named Lester Welch,

(08:55):
who helped create my modern day professional wrestling in the sixties.
You know, they would actually somebody and I can't remember,
and I'll be quite honest, somebody in the crew had
either a girlfriend or a wife that was a nurse,
and they would she would come out to the TV

(09:16):
station every Saturday and if they did the squeeze deal,
she would take the blood out of that person's.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
Vein with with with a needle. It's syringe.

Speaker 3 (09:28):
Oh yeah, yeah, of course, I mean, you know, everything
legit and put the blood into a condom tied up.
The person would then put it in the in the
mouth and we do the squeeze. They would take their
teeth and open it up, blood running out of their mouths.

(09:50):
How much more legit do you want to get in
the world of magic?

Speaker 2 (09:54):
I mean, talk about what's happening behavior.

Speaker 3 (09:59):
I I worked around the business for a number of
years and Ron Fuller worked a lot longer than I did,
and he didn't see his first blood capsule till a
cup three years ago at a legend show where some
of these independent guys were using blood capsules. It was
always the real theme, so they made it legit. They

(10:21):
made it legit. And another thing Hogan Terry when he
after the Andre thing, and people got to understand we're
talking nineteen seventy nine, four years prior to eighty three,
and a building. The stands were set for thirty five

(10:44):
hundred people. Now you had the ring side, and you
had a big arena area down on the floor. A
conservative estimate, the fire marshal would not allow more than
supposedly five thousand people in the building. The night Andre
met Terry in the Houston County farm Center does in Alabama,

(11:08):
there was at least six thousand people in the building.
There was another two thousand outside that wanted to get
in but couldn't, and they broke a front glass window
out of the farm Center trying to get in. The
Civitarian Club was in charge of the concessions. The concessions
were sold out before the second match goat in the ring.

Speaker 2 (11:31):
So you guys saw the electricity immediately, and that's what
I'm so excited to talk to you about. Charlie because
you know, as green as he was and as underprepared
as he was, how was he drawing all these people
if he can't match the fans expectations of a guy
who really knows how to go out there and wrestle.

Speaker 3 (11:46):
It was the look, Yes, it was the look and
the fact that the guys worked so hard to get
him over on TV. And I mean the squeeze, the blood.
The Andre Max was on Friday nights. We went into
television on Saturday. There was a spot show we ran

(12:09):
on Saturday nights that was less than thirty miles away.
What was about thirty miles away from Dothan. It was
a little town in Coffee County called you Brockton, Alabama.
And the reason we went there is because they had
a building, a farm center. It would seat about, you know,
in the stands, maybe two thousand. That's the day we

(12:30):
did the which is so readily available on YouTube. Anybody
that can google and watch millions out you can watch
the arm wrestling competition with Andre and Kerry in the ring,
Billy Spears the manager, and I had I had a
pretty good, pretty good to commentator color man that day

(12:51):
by the name of Dickie Steinborn, who's history in the
business goes back to his father quite a few years
did the arm wrestling deal hit him over the head
with the table he got the blood talking about Andre.
We went in and sold that building out that night.
So in two days, in a thirty mile radius, we

(13:12):
did close to ten thousand people to see Andre the
Giant go against a very very green Terry Bowley.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Well, I want to talk to you about the look, Charlie,
because you know that was sort of the elephant in
the room for Hulk his whole life and career. I mean,
you know, he ended up in all of this tumult
and scandal around steroid use and things, and later after
his all the smoke had cleared, he was very honest
about all that, or at least as far as we
can tell in his books and stuff about the usage,
So that whole cat is out of the bag. But

(13:42):
it's very clear that he really discovered things like Diana
Ball and things like that right in the year before
or maybe a year or two before he came to
the territory and he was hanging out with Ed Leslie
working at a bar in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and just
comparing notes with the other guys he would meet in
the gym about what you need to do to get
you know, gargantuan like he was, can you take us

(14:03):
into that element of things, because it sounds like that was,
like you said, a key reason to.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
Look it was and had I had a first hand
look at it, and you know, there was there was
always There's always been some wild things around the wrestling business.
That's the cat's been out of the bag on that
longer than Vince. Yes, he killed Sanapauls, you know when
he said, we're just we're just entertainment. But yeah, there

(14:32):
was partying that went on and things like that. But
I had the job one day of delivering he and
Edge Leslie's checks to them. The checks were to go
out on like a Sunday night in Pensacola. I was
hanging out in Pensacola on vacation. Roy Wells asked me,
would I run that check by? And Ed and Terry

(14:52):
lived in a nice apartment. I mean, it wasn't fancy
anything on a scenic Highway ninety eight right off Pensacola
Bay in pennscol And I went in the invite of
the inn, and there was a little down that sets
and a third to one half of that table was
covered with syringes and vals, and I just you know, brother,

(15:19):
that was in vitamins he was taking I don't think
by the.

Speaker 2 (15:22):
Needle right right, of course, yeah, this is And you.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
Know, I knew what you had to know what it was.
I didn't ask or anything like that. But it threw
flags up in my mind as to where any hell
is this business going, you know, because going back to
what we were used to here was a working or
wrestling territory. It wasn't about how big can you get,

(15:47):
how much muscle can you build, what was your body
mass or anything like that. Some of the smallest guys
you'll ever see got in the ring and could tear
the house down with somebody one hundred pounds heavier than them.

Speaker 4 (16:02):
Yes, he didn't fit any of that description of being
able to actively work wrestling holes in the ring.

Speaker 3 (16:14):
That was the whole mystery. That was a mystery to me,
mister why he got over so big. But then again,
TV we were pulling at that time. Probably I'm just
going from memory and Rod and I've talked about this
between the Knoxville Territory and the Pensacola Territory on Saturdays.

(16:36):
We're talking seventy eight through nineteen eighty time period. All
those towns and there were probably seventeen of them from
Knoxville and Kingsport. All the different TV stations up there
and the ones we had here, we were probably pulling
close to a million viewers a week in a small Alabama, Tennessee,

(17:00):
North Florida, parts of Mississippi, or wherever the television signals
would go. We were pulling close to a million viewers
a week. Now can you imagine wow today or a
few years ago, I saw where if raw pulled two
million people, they had a party, you know, and that's worldwide. Right,

(17:23):
We're just a little regional territory pulling almost a million people.
In fact, off of the little station in Dothan, Alabama,
which writt in a little station, we were pulling eighty
one thousand homes.

Speaker 2 (17:34):
Yeah, when you think about the population size of cities
like Delta, that's just absolutely remarkable. And that's one of
the it's done unsung, but it's an undappreciated part of
the territorial area of ara of wrestling. I mean, some
of the shares in Memphis and stuff. It's just like
the whole city was watching this thing. It was, you know,
for lack of a professional sports franchise in the area,
this was the key sports attraction, right.

Speaker 3 (17:54):
And I'll give you an example that goes back further
than Hogan. Nineteen sixty eight, Bloody Fuller, Ron's father was
running the territory. He and Mario Galino went outdoors Ladd
Stadium Mobile, Alabama. Thirty thousand people came to see the
big blowoff between Mario Galento and Buddy Pullap nineteen fifty eight.

(18:21):
It was phenomenal what wrestling was. It was part of
the lifestyle down here. You know, you stopped on Saturday
afternoon and you watched wrestling. And the key to it
is in that time period where Terry was here, we
went from Friday night Dothan to Saturday night Dothan and

(18:42):
by that we would go from TV with air from
five until six. We would go into the arena at
eight o'clock belltime so we could shoot a hot angle
off of a two minute interview and Dothan filled the
building up every well.

Speaker 2 (19:01):
So that said, with that backdrop, you know that this
is starting to change before your eyes, sort of what
the idea of what moves people into the building. And
you know, I got to say, Charlie, you know, we
talked just before about how speculating as to reasons why
Terry might have underplayed this part of his career and
said so little about it, and yeah, you know, kind

(19:23):
of disrupting the whole mythology around the Andre thing is
one thing. I got to tell you. Another thing I
kind of landed on as a theory is that all
that steroids stuff. I mean, it's not it's kind of
a weird. Look. I'm sure I'm sure a lot of
people in the territory remember him for that. Dave Schultz
has talked about how, essentially, you know, he traded a
spot on his couch for Terry to sleep on in
exchange for Terry showing him how to use this stuff,

(19:44):
and and he went on, you know, for years to
talk about how he and Terry used to do this
stuff together. I wonder if maybe he didn't want to
draw too much attention to this part of his life
because that was so prominent in it and so sort
of out in the open.

Speaker 3 (19:55):
Could very well be now. But the part that best
I remember was, and David's a friend of mine. I
believe the time he slept on the couch and would
do things was right when he first came into New York.
That was in a period of David was in Connecticut,

(20:16):
living in Connecticut, and that's when that period of you know, shooting,
helping shoot him up and stuff like that was going on.
David's talk to me about that years ago. That has
to be part of it that you know, he didn't
want he didn't want that exposed. And by the time
he wrote his book, he couldn't very well say after

(20:39):
they had you know, I've taken up for him here,
he couldn't very well say after the first time ever
Andreva Giant versus Hulk Hogan nineteen eighty three, well, bull,
it was four years earlier down here, and working with
a world champion when you're just about three months into
the business is unheard of us. He did that with

(21:03):
Harley Race, big outdoor show and we're gonna talk.

Speaker 2 (21:07):
Oh my god, we're gonna get there. Because that is
such a thing that is redherring to me, because you
would celebrate that I'm six months into the business essentially,
and I'm already challenging Harley and filling a football stadium,
high school football stadium, Dothan, I mean exactly. The fact
that he doesn't tout that for the rest of his
life is just it just leads one to wonder about
a million different things. And you know, as time went
and this is just the last one on the steroid point,

(21:28):
but I think it's important because of how central it
was to why he got pushed right away and got
such a good look. You know, as the years went on,
he would talk about, you know, when he testified against
Vince in the steroid trial, that the prosecutors had leverage
on him based on stuff he had done in the
past around around drugs and maybe trying to pin him
with some of the rap they were pinning on Vince
and stuff. And we watched the Holes of Horrion trial

(21:48):
play out and learned the whole network of how the
doctors would get the stuff to the guys under prescriptions
that maybe they didn't need stuff like that. But this
is seventy nine, so it's a lot of the federal
laws hadn't changed yet around steroids as far as making
it this super sensitive thing. Did you get a sense
that that's how it was working around these guys that
they they had doctors that were getting them the stuff

(22:09):
or was it just in the gems in the bodybuilding community.
Did that kind of cross your awareness at all?

Speaker 3 (22:15):
It became my knowledge of it became kind of really
kind of a scary tap thing when I found out
and heard this from reliable sources that were maybe part
of that that group that did the steroids. They were

(22:36):
not getting the doctor, there was no doctor involved. They
were buying They were buying steroids that were meant for
farm animals, in this case horses.

Speaker 2 (22:48):
Yeah, we heard this in this Hornan trial that he
was actually worried that the Broys were taking stuff remember
this jp that they were taking stuff that wasn't intended
for humans.

Speaker 3 (22:55):
Yeah, exactly. And there is a there is a big
it was at the time, big distributor of veterinary supplies
right here in Dothan, Alabama. You could go down there
and off the shelf get the stuff that was intended
for animals, and that is what I heard a lot
of them were using. And that was very alarming to me, Like,

(23:17):
I mean, what the hell can you think about shooting
up something in your body that should be in a
horse or a towel, and just but there again looked
at the lure of the money. Yes, look at the
temptation of the money. And when you're Hogan is one
year was one year older than me. We were one

(23:40):
year and a few days apart age wise, his birthday
in August nine, in August, and he was a year
older than meat. And I got to thinking, well, you know,
go back when I was, you know, twenty five years
old and somebody dangled a carrot in front of me
and told me that if I did this and did
that that I could possibly make in those days five

(24:05):
thousand dollars a week. You know, when we're young, we're dumb.
And the temptation and the lure of the stardom part
of it, and the money part of it. I think
it's what affected lot of these guys. And not thinking

(24:25):
ahead is to hey, when I turned forty, how is
this going to have affected my heart? Or when I
turned fifty, how are my bones going to be you know,
brittle and having to have this replacement, that replacement because
of damage done by the stuff I did when I
was twenty to twenty five years old. Yeah, that's a

(24:48):
lot of the problem.

Speaker 2 (24:49):
I believe the wave is cresting here, you know, right
before your eyes. So yeah, one thing that I just
want to ask. I was curious because just while we're
on talking about size now, I was with wondering if
you had any insight into the origin of the nickname
the Hulk, because there's this one of the stories is
that you know, he went on a local, uh talk

(25:15):
show in Mobile about uh, you know, some talk show
and and that lu Forigno was there and the host
compared Forigno to Hogan, you know, their size, and you know,
called Hulk Hogan the real Hulk or something like that.
Do you do you have any, like, any insight into
how he earned that nickname.

Speaker 3 (25:35):
I have no knowledge of what you just said. Not
to say that, not to say it did not happen.
You know, I did all the TV on the this
end of the territory. Uh, that's where we did TV production.
I'm not saying it did not happen, but I would
think if it did happen, I would have heard about it.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Sure, I remember Louis to lay the booker h French Canadian.
I remember the day. Let's let's go back to the
day he walked into the studio and he said, uh,
mister Delay, I really want to be a professional wrestler.
Louis is a little short and statue guy, kind of
like a fireplug, heck of a worker in his day
and the heck of a booker. He looked at he said,

(26:20):
I want you to be a wrestler. I remember that
like it was yes, wow, And I'm thinking, dang, I
don't know this guy's gonna work out it now. But anyway,
going back, I remember the first time I heard the
word Hulk mentioned was from Louis. Uh wow. And I'm
not saying the mobile thing did not happen. I have

(26:42):
just never heard that story.

Speaker 2 (26:44):
Yeah, and it's interesting, Charlie because as we went through,
you know, the newspaper archives that exist from the time,
he was being called Hulk from day one in the territory,
so that's yeah, there wasn't like an interview where he
was called something else. And then after a few months
in Alabama he's there with Luf for Rigno and gets
the nickname.

Speaker 3 (27:00):
That just doesn't that up, it doesn't, I mean, And
like I say, it could have happened. I'm not saying
you know that I have never heard the story until today. Yeah,
I mean, and.

Speaker 2 (27:14):
Yo, so you can finish up, go ahead, no please,
god boss.

Speaker 5 (27:17):
Oh, I was just gonna say, I mean, and you
is it? I mean, it seems very obvious, but uh,
just curious for from your knowledge? Is it? Is it
completely based on the incredible Hulk character and TV show?

Speaker 3 (27:34):
I would think so, because he looked a lot like
you know, the looks were there. Look, definitely, the looks
were there. But as far as I guess, I don't
know who came up with Louis, I guess came up
with it, But I've never heard the story about the
mobile interview. That kind of startling because I don't know

(27:59):
of any TV shows that were They might have been
a show that had him owning mobile, but he we
did most of them.

Speaker 2 (28:09):
Yeah, yeah, you don't have to convince us, Charlie that
it didn't happen. I mean, yeah, yeah, no, no, no,
I'm I'm a million of you one stories like that,
as you know, a million sort of apocryphal tales because
that don't add up.

Speaker 5 (28:20):
But depending on depending on the h on, on who
he's talking to, it's in it's in mobile, it's in Memphis,
it's in wherever, some somewhere, he says it's happened. So
I'm willing to bet that what what you say is
more accurate.

Speaker 3 (28:35):
I mean, Louly hadn't been LOI Louly lived a very
old age. You passed away a couple of years ago.
I wish you were here because he would say, he
would tell you where it came from, because he was
the mastermind of all those early, early things that took
place in Terry's career.

Speaker 2 (28:50):
Well, you know Ron has said on his podcast, Yeah,
you know, the Incredible television show was really hot at
the time that Terry came in, and that was pretty
much where it came from.

Speaker 3 (28:58):
So it is I agree.

Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, Now on that point, I did wonder if over
the years, as you guys are on television drawing significant
money with this guy calling him the Hulk. We were
looking at a lot of the print ads in the newspaper.
Sometimes it doesn't even say Terry Boulder, just as the Hulk.
Other places he went he was called the Incredible Hulk.
When he went to Georgia, they started calling him the
wrestling Hulk, which to me is sort of like we
better make sure we don't get sued by Marvel Comics.

(29:22):
Here are calling this guy the Hulk everywhere we go.
Do you remember that being a conversation at all in
Southeastern like, hey, we're we got to be careful advertising
this guy as the Hulk when the incredible Hulk is
such a big deal on TV.

Speaker 3 (29:34):
We would That was mentioned to me one time to
always say Terry the Hulk Boulder, to use the whole
just not to shoot here's Hulk. No. I remember us
having a conversation that I had to be careful I
presented him and it had to be. It couldn't be

(29:55):
like here's the Hulk. It was Terry the Hulk Boulder.
He had to use his home whole name. And let
you know what, in the Hulk does that make sense?

Speaker 2 (30:03):
It sure does. Thank you for that. While we're on
the name, I did wonder because when Ron reflects on
those times on this podcast, he talked about a period
of time where Hulk and his manager Billy Spears were
having a bit of a dispute over how to introduce him.
Ron remembers that Billy Spears would would insist on television
and on the on the live mic that this is
Sterling the Hulk Golden and Hulk would pipe up and say,

(30:23):
that's not my name. My name's Terry the Hulk Boulder.
But but to me, he wasn't called Sterling Golden until
he went to Atlanta after being with you guys, do
you remember.

Speaker 3 (30:31):
Having called Jim Barnett. Jim Barnett gave him the Sterling
Golden name.

Speaker 2 (30:35):
Right, So he wasn't Sterling when you announced for that territory.

Speaker 3 (30:38):
No, no, no, no, no no no. Never lost Sterling Golden
down here. Very interesting. Uh, And I couldn't figure out
why how he came up with the name the guy.
The guy is already drawing money, getting over all the
Southeastern where our our television signals went into, and Barnett
goes with a whole new name. It just didn't make it.

(31:01):
Of course, a lot of things the wrestling goods don't
make any sense. It always moves itself out. But it
did not make any sense why he would change the
name like that.

Speaker 2 (31:10):
Yeah, I agree, I'm looking at it. He can't exactly exactly,
so I'm looking at the hair as golden. Maybe that's it.
But then I also think, like Jimmy Golden, you know,
Billy Graham, what was talked about as being part of
the Graham family in some territories. Was Hulk ever framed
to your recollection as part of like the Jimmy Golden
clan or is the Golden name just a coincidence?

Speaker 3 (31:30):
Just coincidence?

Speaker 2 (31:31):
Okay, got that I mentioned Billy Spears. I want to
know more about this guy, because you talk about a
guy who's lost to history. It sounds to me like
he was like the Bobby Heenan, the Jimmy Hart of
your territory, the guy that would you know, corral all
the heels and a big marauding group that would you know,
take take over. It's the blueprint for a lot of
what Hulk did in WWF with the Heenan family and

(31:51):
all these other you know, million dollar corporation kind of
stables that would come after him as a group. Can
you tell us about Billy Spears. There's almost no tape
of the guy, but it sounds like he was so
important to getting heels like Hulk over in the beginning.

Speaker 3 (32:04):
Two words instant heat.

Speaker 2 (32:06):
Yes, instant heat.

Speaker 3 (32:09):
Billy Spears was heat. He could walk into a building,
into a restaurant and folks hated him. Wow, he had
that ability to build heat. He had the heat, and
he could he could convey the heat to say a
Terry bolea. He could help convey the heat to the

(32:30):
Assassins and down here we had a group of the
original Assassins that came in Southeastern in the nineteen seventy
eight time period, and part of seventy nine was Roger
Smith and Randy College. Of course Roger worked with the
original for time period. But those guys, they were heavyweights,

(32:54):
but they could float in the air and work, and
Billy Spears was their mouth piece and he could delivery.
Even back into the nineteen sixties when I was a
kid growing up, I would watch Billy Spears on TV,
and you hated it when he walked out into the ring,
whether he was wrestling or whether he was managing. He

(33:15):
was just the easiest guy to hate you have ever
seen in your life.

Speaker 2 (33:20):
What was it, Charlie? What was his essence? Was it
just the words he'd picked? The look on his face
was did he have like a backstory that drove people nuts?

Speaker 3 (33:27):
He had the looks of a heel. I mean he
just he had the long blonde hair. He had just
the way he put bleached blonde long hair slipped back
in the early days and then long stringing on the side,
and he had he just had a a presence that

(33:53):
that's that drew heat. And then yeah, he could talk,
he could he could he could talk. But the main
thing about Billy's heat was just his looks got it.
It's crazy to say that that was it.

Speaker 2 (34:06):
Well, we need this kind of perspective because there's not
a lot of footage of him doing the classic promo.
You know, it's certainly not with Terry. And I got
to ask you about this before we move off Billy,
because as we went through a lot of the clippings
from the Tide period the summer of seventy nine, here's
a headline in a paper in Northwest Florida wrestler charged
in case Billy Spears arrested by the sheriff for essentially

(34:26):
putting out one hundred and fifty dollars bounty. I think
on Austin Idol. This makes the papers like William Spearman
himself was actually arrested. His addresses in here, his age
is in here, his real name is in here. Sounds
like an angle to me. Can you set the record
straight on this one? This is fascinating.

Speaker 3 (34:45):
I don't think it was an angle.

Speaker 2 (34:47):
What whoa?

Speaker 3 (34:51):
I didn't If it was an angle, I was not
too let in all the deal.

Speaker 2 (34:57):
I mean, this is like this article that lays out
a circumstance.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
There was serious Look here again, you know, come after
me if you want to. Dennis from the Cord or
not said, but didn't too many folks think a whole
lot of him to start with, and we're talking about
Austin Iel. He had heat with a lot of the boys.

Speaker 2 (35:18):
So this article lends with you, Charlie, is potentially true
that this guy that Billy Spear has got so mad
at us Nigel in real life, that he had someone
try to mess him up.

Speaker 3 (35:28):
As far as I know, and I never I never
heard anything through anybody else that led me to believe
it was a work that is fascinating.

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Do you remember the story hearing about it for the
first time.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
I didn't hear about it for the first time until
hell almost nineteen ninety.

Speaker 2 (35:48):
Oh I see, okay, wow, So.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
If it was an angle, I would have known.

Speaker 2 (35:55):
That is what a fascinating place. I mean, you turn
over these stones, man, it is unbelieved. So that's Billy
Spears and Andre comes in, we've already touched on it
and we have the luxury of having seen the footage.
For reasons we'll talk about that. For some reason survived
of all the stuff that was lost from from Terry
Bullay's work in Southeastern So why did Andre come into
the territory to your recollection?

Speaker 3 (36:17):
Uh? Andre was? You know? That was back of the
days when Andre would go from territory to territory and
h he was scheduled to come in or either they
made special arrangements for him to come in and try
to help get Terry over and uh man, did it

(36:37):
just blow up? That was? That was just like a
stick of dynamite. The when that when that took place,
it was magic, it was. And I was. I remember
sitting in the back, staying towards the back of the building.
Roy Welchon I best, I remember tattoo de limitations run

(36:57):
out on that. Now. Yeah, we were dodging the fire
marshall who was trying to find one of us to
get folks, some folks out of the building. Wow, because
we're a thousand over occupancy and a building you know, Uh,
I was, I was really worried about because here again

(37:18):
Andrea one of the kindest people you'd ever meet, but
there again, limitations on what he could do as far
as wrestling. Remember I talked to the beginning of this conversation.
To be over in this market, you had to be
a good wrestler worker, you had to be able to
perform and the rink. Uh, well, we all know Andrea

(37:41):
was limited, and we all know from our conversation and
history that Kerry was as green as green could be.
So I had concerns about, oh, hell, are they gonna
go out there and lay the big egg. Uh. It
did not happen. They some out pulled theirselves through it

(38:03):
a lot better than the match between Terry and Ox Baker.
That was a I thought that would kill everybody's career.
That right, Yeah, it was. But there again, you're you're
You've got a green guy and ox Baker there again,
one of the nicest guys you'll ever meet, But he
wasn't a wrestler. So you got two big guys, one

(38:26):
that don't know anything and one that might be a
little bit clumsy. Wouldn't that if you were the promoter
or you were the the guy that announced that did
the TV commentary and everybody looked to you, wouldn't you
kind of be a little skeptical about this taking place?

Speaker 2 (38:41):
Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (38:42):
It was. It was. It was kind of tough.

Speaker 2 (38:45):
But as time goes, you know, we talk about Andre
and Hogan and WWF. There's always a story that Hogan
told about how it took so long for Andred one
to him, and there was always this kind of like
distance and and sort of friction with them. But then
you hear about this and it's like, no, Andre was
warm to Terry from the beginning.

Speaker 3 (39:02):
Right, Look, the giant went on TV arm wrestling, let
Terry hit him over the head with the table, got
blood there on TV. That don't sound like a guy
that's got a grudge against somebody made as you.

Speaker 2 (39:22):
Oh, and they took it around the horn. They wrestled
each other in Atlanta and Montreal, and I think even
like Saint Louis not to mention Tokyo after this. From
the very beginning, it seemed like Andre loved Terry or
at least saw money working with him.

Speaker 3 (39:34):
I think Andre saw money working with him, and Andre
knew his career was going to be short lived. You know,
a lot of the stories that I know about Andrea
They told Andre he wouldn't live to be thirty five
years old, right. He lived to be forty two, So
Andre knew he wasn't going to be around a whole

(39:57):
long time. There had to be someone took pack to
pass the torch too, and I think by his looks,
Andre saw that potential in Terry Bolea. That's just my opinion.
I mean, of course, do you think I have not
had a conversation with Andre that led me to believe
that Andre and I were friends. We went out together

(40:18):
when he was here in the territory. Hogan was never
mentioned in any of our conversations. But I just always
thought that Andre had to pass the torch and he
took a liking to Terry Bolea and thought that was
the man at the job.

Speaker 2 (40:35):
Do you think maybe there was an element of him
wanting to do a solid for Louis to let because
you know, they were both French Canadians and knew each
other forever. Do you think it was maybe trying to
help Louis as much as it was trying to find
a money opponent he could work with, and then once
he found out it worked and packed out the Houston
County Farm Center. It was off to the races for
the rest of Andre's career working with Hogan.

Speaker 3 (40:55):
You've got a point there that I never thought that.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, the French Canadian in mafia is very strong in
the business.

Speaker 3 (41:03):
Exactly, the French Canadian association. I never thought about that.
You have a great point there. You have a great,
great great Uh. That's not that's not a bad theory
right there.

Speaker 2 (41:20):
You can hear the phone call from Louis Andre. I
got this guy. I want to make him a big deal.
Can you come and help the kind of thing. It's
a small it's a small territory and no one's going
to see it kind of thing, you know.

Speaker 3 (41:29):
Side note, real quick, sure quick, sure, Uh, just a
little side note. Uh. Later in life, Louis opened more
than one restaurant. Louis was a great cook. So on
Saturday mornings to play in TV. Louis lived here in Dose.
He had a nice house here in Dost and I

(41:49):
would go to Louis house on Saturday morning, bright and early,
and Louis and I would put TV together while he
cooked my omelet every Saturday morning. He was a heck
of a cook. Best omelet I ever had in my
life was Lewis to the period.

Speaker 2 (42:09):
What was what was the best omelet? What? What would
tell me? What would he put in an omelet?

Speaker 3 (42:14):
Hey, hey, knew I like the western olmlet with chipped
up ham a little bit of chipped up bacon, green pepper,
onions and cheese.

Speaker 2 (42:24):
We're off to the racist. What a great story. I
love that, Jiffy, You're gonna add something now we're talking.
Before I asked about that, well, I was curious. Uh
you know you said you mentioned, you know, hanging out
with Andre the Giant. Any uh, any any drinking stories
with Andre that you might have.

Speaker 3 (42:38):
I refuse to answer. Under the ground.

Speaker 2 (42:42):
We will accept that answer. We will definitely.

Speaker 3 (42:46):
Up to it. Uh. There was a guy that is
still around, short and statue, real real short. Dear friend
Dicky Merritt had a band called Bama Jam. They played
at the local Ramada. And when Andre first time I
think he came to Dothan, he stayed at the Ramada
and he saw Dicky Merrick. Well, he loved his music.

(43:11):
And I remember Andre calling me before he came on
one of the trips to Dothan and somebody gave him
my numbery He said, boss.

Speaker 6 (43:19):
N Andre, come through Dothan. You Andre, go drink beer,
listen to the little man, mused it, and we went
to hear a little Man's music and Andre was ordering beer.
There was no draft beer in Alabama at the time,
and Dothan, Alabama, so he would order it a six

(43:40):
pack at the time and take a water picture and
pour five beers into the water picture and give me
the other beer. Well, needless to say, Andre carried me.

Speaker 3 (43:55):
Out of the Rock Garden lounge at the Ramada End
in his arm that night.

Speaker 2 (44:01):
That's what I'm looking for.

Speaker 3 (44:03):
There was a seventy something beers and he drank and
he was just as sober as any judge you've ever seen.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
That's right, that's right. That's a great and that goes
up there. And story, you've got a good one. That's
a top ten one if you have. Oh man, Hey,
when you're sitting.

Speaker 3 (44:19):
Hey, it was a lesson for a last time, I'll
tell you that great mother.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
I can picture it now. So when you're sitting with
Louis to lay at his breakfast table planning TV the
morning you did the arm wrestling deal, are you kind
of surprised that Louis is booking an angle where Andre
looks so vulnerable. It was so rare, but you had
just sold out the farm center of the night before.
Do you remember that being like, Wow, they really want
to lean into this thing, even though you only had
Andre for a weekend. The fact that they, you know,

(44:45):
felt confident enough to do this for for Terry, I
think is very important to his story.

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Yeah, it kind of so good. Gosh, where are you?
And I did not know. I knew you were going
to the arm wrestling thing, but I did not know
that we were planning the TV. I didn't know that
we got the studio, what the what the finish? How
they were going to do the finish on the thing.
But it was I said, they're they're They're putting all

(45:10):
their eggs in this basket for sure. And I was
really concerned about this kid is not going We already
saw what he was capable of doing with the night
before and and the week before. I forgot who had
worked with it. Drew a pretty good house then, and
I thought, what are we going to do when he's gone?
Who's gone? Who is going to step up now? Idol

(45:32):
was in the territory at that time, and he was
like Louie's main men. Louis Louis. Louis and id loved
each other. They got along pretty good, uh talking about yeah, yeah, yeah,
but you know Idol there again was a hell of
a talker. But Idol was kind of limited to as

(45:57):
far as working that wrestling stuff in the ring in
a long night.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (46:04):
I mean we were used to world champions coming in here.
And I'll go back into uh, Jack Briscoe when he
was world champions, he would come in and work with
the number one babyface, which was a guy named Ken
Lucas you ever hear him?

Speaker 2 (46:17):
Absolutely, yes, Okay, Jack.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
And Ken did a program where they did one hour.
Time did the hour, came back, did ninety minutes a
month later. That's what that's what this territory was about.

Speaker 2 (46:35):
Oh yeah, Ron had gone an hour with Harley before
the Terry thing. In fact, Ron set it up to where,
you know, helped put Ron and the Bear hug and
squeeze the life out of him to set up the
whole Harley thing.

Speaker 3 (46:45):
So exactly exactly this was there's a lot of crap
that took place down here. I was thinking about it.

Speaker 2 (46:57):
That's that's why we're so grateful to have the chance
to talk to you, because exactly as we went through it,
there were, you know, so many more questions than we thought.
What was Terry an exception in that regard Charlie as
far as like getting that bear hug finish and squeezing
the life out of people to set himself up as
this monster? Or is that something you guys had done
with others down there? Did that strike you as kind
of like a formula or something crafted uniquely to get

(47:18):
Terry bowlay over?

Speaker 3 (47:20):
That was crafted uniquely to get Terry bowla over. I mean, yeah,
you've had heels that came in and had a devastating
finishing move or something like that that got them over.
But to go to the extreme that they did with
the blood, the condom in the mouth, the whole nine yards.

(47:41):
And then when you get to the stadium, we're about
the stadium point now in Harley Race, wouldn't you think?

Speaker 2 (47:49):
Yeah, yeah, but that would be in July.

Speaker 3 (47:50):
Yeah, Okay, the build up for that, I don't know
history on a lot of things, but then we're talking
nineteen seventy nine. The production we did on that, we
went to the Riphew Stadium where match took place, took
the camera over there and I interviewed him and we
had by this time Kerry had turned babysace Yes, and

(48:15):
we had him running up all the way to the
top of the stadium stairs and this stadium you'd have
to see it to understand. It was almost like climbing
the ladder. The steps were just straight up. We had
him running up and down those stairs with the theme
music of Rocky playing in the background.

Speaker 2 (48:36):
Brilliant. I mean, when you think about his connection with
Rockby in the future, yeah, you guys foresaw that pretty well.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
Huh oh no, no, no, we had no idea. Nobody had
an idea that one day he would be Thunderlips at
that point. Yeah, but that music, that music was used
in that promotion and it was unreal. I mean, it

(49:05):
got over.

Speaker 2 (49:06):
Well, we'll definitely get to that.

Speaker 1 (49:07):
That Match's Wrestling podcast, He's a lapsed fan wrestling podcast

(49:33):
with Jack and can Jpro.

Speaker 2 (49:37):
We talked about Ed ed Leslie a bit, and the
one thing that kind of threw us for a loop,
Ron pardon me, Charlie, was and listen to Ron talk
about the time period. Was he never mentions d Leslie
being there or wrestling. When you look at Ed Leslie's record,
so to speak, that survives online, it looks like he
really starts wrestling for Ron after Terry leaves in nineteen eighty.
But certainly, you know, you read Ed's book and you

(49:57):
read Holgan's book. He was there with him when he
came to Gulf Coast in seventy nine, There's no question
about that. But maybe the matches, I mean, did they
wrestle as the Boulders in Gulf Coast? But we just
don't have any records of those matches because it seems
like everything Terry Bolea did for you guys was by himself.

Speaker 3 (50:14):
It was all a single deal down here. I do
believe in Nowbert, there was a time right before Terry
left that they might have had the Boulder brothers. It
might have been you know, Ed Boulder. I can remember
introducing him on TV as Ed Bolt.

Speaker 2 (50:29):
Okay, there you go.

Speaker 3 (50:30):
For some reason, I remember Ed Boulder, not Ed Leslie,
And of course Brutus wasn't even thought of that particular time.

Speaker 2 (50:38):
But do you remember that being him alone, Charlie, or
was he there with next to Terry on the TV
like like they did in Memphis?

Speaker 3 (50:46):
Now, I won't be honest, with you. I can't remember,
that's fine, but I remember I remember doing commentary on
matches with Ed Boulder.

Speaker 2 (50:55):
Yes, yeah, not definitely would have been the case in
nineteen eighty. But we just wonder there that ed Leslie
ever teamed with Terry, or if he only really showed
up on Gulf Coast TV after Terry had left.

Speaker 3 (51:09):
I'm thinking he was there the whole time, and maybe
maybe he used another name.

Speaker 2 (51:17):
Yeah, I thought you might have been Eddie Sullivan, but
definitely not know. Eddie Sullivan was one I came to
learn and appreciate that. But Eddie both ed Leslie was
living with Hulk, right, I mean we had this funny
vision in our heads of them living in a trailer
on the beach with the wild Samoans and being mad men.
What do you remember about how they shocked up together

(51:38):
a Hulk and.

Speaker 3 (51:39):
Ed at the time that I told you I carried
the chicks to them, Yes, and it was plural chicks,
so that means that Ed was doing something to get
a chick.

Speaker 2 (51:51):
Yes, good point.

Speaker 3 (51:53):
They lived in an apartment on Scenic Away ninety eight
in Pencecola, Florida, on Pitts Colbay.

Speaker 2 (52:00):
They didn't live in a motor home.

Speaker 3 (52:01):
I don't remember anything about a trailer or anywhile some
Moans now now Sika and Athol were here and they
were part of the some of our and they were
part of the crew back in those days.

Speaker 2 (52:12):
Absolutely they were.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
They were part of Gulf Coast Southeast or Southeastern Wrestling.
We changed the name to Southeastern. Yeah, they were part
of the part of the deal. But now, as far
as then, they may have lived in a traider somewhere,
but I don't think they really lived in a trailer.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
Yeah, maybe not even a word. I mean, they pulled
up to TV and that beat up van, but you
didn't get the sense they lived in the van and
just hung around the beach all day.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
I heard that they had stayed in the van okay,
prior to coming to TV and.

Speaker 2 (52:47):
Eventually got the apartment. Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 3 (52:49):
Yeah, yeah, But as far as the trailer or anything
like that. The Samoans actually married girls from that town
and you brought to and I talked.

Speaker 2 (53:00):
About Is that right. I never knew that.

Speaker 3 (53:02):
Yes. Yes, In fact, one of the x Ys still
lives here in.

Speaker 2 (53:08):
He grew up in Pensacola. For that reason.

Speaker 3 (53:10):
I bet exactly exactly.

Speaker 2 (53:13):
That's incredible. This all started down there, man.

Speaker 3 (53:18):
Yeah, you can ground you know this. This is where
the earthquake took place for a lot of people, if
you want to call it that.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
That's so good. Was Terry's too green in the business
at the time to offer any suggestions as to how
he would be portrayed on television? Or was he just
basically doing whatever Louis Tillett told him to do? How
did that work?

Speaker 3 (53:41):
He was doing anything Louis Tillt told him do? Mhmm.
I can't remember how long it went? Was the best
I remember? It was a pretty good time period before
he even did any talking on TV.

Speaker 2 (53:57):
We talked about the Hulk Andre arm wrestling angle. That
the most fascinating part of that to me is not
just the history of it, but that we can see it,
but we can't see anything else that Terry really does.
There's that one match with the Outlaw where he squeezes
him to death, and you're on comment Arry talking about
Terry as the uncrowned champion, so clearly you'd already done
the angle where Terry runs in for a Ron Fuller
who can't wrestle Harley is expected and beats Harley. Remember

(54:19):
that night, but where Terry does the surprise run in?
Does he bear hug Harley or does he beat him
via pinfall to set up the future title.

Speaker 3 (54:27):
I believe that took place in Montgomery, and I was
not there at the match.

Speaker 2 (54:32):
Okay, got it. There are conflicting accounts that Ron remembers
it being a bear hug in Harley's arm drops three times,
non title because Harley says, yea, I'll wrestle him, but
I'm not going to put the belt on the line.
And then there are some fan accounts that suggest that
Harley actually suplexed Hulk after some run ins and pinned him.
That's a very small point, just in case you were there,
and if you're not, we'll move right to you know,
the question of why this video exists and nothing else.

(54:54):
I mean, we need to know what we need the video,
as you know, Charlie, I mean, this is just it
kills us to hear you described the Rocky segment, all
these great promos that the rip Use match, which you
guys were played on TV. We can't see any of it.
Why is this.

Speaker 3 (55:09):
Because back in those days we didn't know what we
were doing and tape. We didn't have thumb drives and
things like that. Videotape in those days at television stations
was two different formats you used. One was a two
inch tape which the big machines that was where your

(55:31):
masters were done. And the ones that we would mail
out to some stations or I was in charge of
going to the bus station with. When we put all
the proper interviews to the different towns, a lot of
it was on three quarter some of them were two
inch tapes. Those tapes back then were so expensive it

(55:51):
didn't make any sense on us. And storage of that
kind of stuff was kind of hard to You couldn't
put it on like I couldn't put it on computer,
couldn't put it on thumb drive because none of that existed.
We're talking nineteen seventy nine. So we reused those tapes
over and over and over again. Those tapes. What we

(56:14):
did this week, went to Montgomery, next week, came back it,
got another show on it, and went back to another town.
You know, it was all bicycling around and we were
recording all those tapes all the time until they got
to where they were you know, not taking not not

(56:35):
holding good and we would even just throw them in
storage or throw them away. And a lot of that
stuff was oxidized and sitting in rooms, but a lot
of it was recorded over so many times. And when
I say we didn't know what we were doing, we
did not know that in twenty twenty five, I would

(56:57):
be here in those in Alabama talking to a couple
of guys. I don't know where the hell are about
stuff you have been down here? I mean seriously, because
we didn't keep records. I mean, it's an amazing story.
And Ron and I thought about this. We didn't make

(57:17):
pictures like they do now. Of you know, if Ron
and I have worked together for years, we don't have
a bunch of pictures of us posing together. Ron's got
one picture of he and Andre. Ron not only was
a great worker, he was a great promoter that used
Andre time and time and time again. But yet there's

(57:39):
only one picture of he and Andre. We just didn't
We were week to week doing a soap opera, doing
a continuous story that we didn't think about saving for
forty fifty years down line.

Speaker 2 (57:57):
And that makes a ton It makes a ton of sense,
and it's exactly what I would expect, what I don't
get though, is why we do have some Why if
that is all the case, why do we have Hulk
versus Andrea in the arm wrestling match. Why is that
not missing?

Speaker 3 (58:10):
I would if you find out the answer to that question,
I'll go I'll cut my seat today by ten thousand
dollars if you can find the threat. But the reason
I say that, the quality of that is so good
on YouTube, and yet some of the other things that
we did that was seventy nine, and some of the

(58:32):
things we did up through eighty five that were in
the TV studio, the quality of them is so poor.
It's washed out from you know, from different people's home videos,
is what it amounts to.

Speaker 2 (58:50):
That's what someone got the masters from seventy nine of
Hulk against Andrea in their arm wrestling and against the outlaw.

Speaker 3 (58:56):
Well, here's the problem with that. I had the master
of that. Oh, I had the two inch master of that,
and it was being loaded. I'm telling the story here
that is true, and nobody can just tell the story.

(59:17):
It was being loaded on the van to move Louis
to Lay when he was leaving Dothan as booker. Okay,
and there was some other Southeastern tapes, and I said, Louis,
that belongs to Southeastern and I took the tapes off
of the moving van and there was there was no

(59:41):
argument or anything, and that tape set at the TV
station in Dothan for a number of years. And in
nineteen eighty nine, I believe it was someone contacted me
in South Florida warning a copy of that very thing,

(01:00:03):
and I did not The guy sounded a little.

Speaker 2 (01:00:07):
Bit sketchy, okay.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
And I did. I didn't back, but not too long
answer that we put that tape on a machine and
it hit oxidized, so it did not come off of it.
It was it was not the master I assure you
it was not the master tape, because if it had
been the master tape, there were other things on that

(01:00:33):
tape that we would have seen popping up. Yes, on
YouTube as well.

Speaker 2 (01:00:40):
Yeah, maybe one day, but at least we did our diligence.
We asked the question, and I appreciate those answers. We
just we it. Lets the mind raise the possibility that
might be.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
I would really like to know how it got to
be preserved as well as it did, because it was.
It's amazing to me the quality of not only the video,
but the audio does not break up at all. Everything
is perfect on that for nineteen seventy nine to be somebody,

(01:01:11):
somebody had that thing put away in a very good,
good atmosphere, because you know, you could put a tape
in somewhere that's got high humidity and it's gonna.

Speaker 2 (01:01:24):
Go away forget about it. That's right.

Speaker 3 (01:01:25):
Yeah, you have to have good story somebody, and I
think it was. I agree with you. It's too sharp
to be. You got to understand around that nineteen seventy
nine time period some of those seventy eight seventy nine
Beta was the best I remember was the format that

(01:01:46):
was being made that you could buy in your home,
and it was very expensive. And then when you got
to the early nineteen eighties, vhs came into play.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
And that's where we start to get all this stuff
that survives in fan collections. But that's just a little
too late for Terry and.

Speaker 3 (01:02:03):
By there you go, you got it, you got it.

Speaker 2 (01:02:05):
Can we talk about the Ripeuse show here in the
time we have left in a little bit more hopefully,
but the the Harley matches, obviously we're fascinated by it.
But to the point there's not even a photo that
exists of Hulk wrestling on Harley Race for the first
time for the world title. Sold out Ripu's Dothan Stadium.
How did we get there? I saw the Briscos are

(01:02:26):
on the card, which is fascinating to me. So I'm
trying to get an idea of how much of a
monster this show became. And while you guys were in
Bolden to try a stadium like this for Hulk verus Harley.

Speaker 3 (01:02:37):
Well, when you go back a few weeks before that
and you put six thousand people in a building for
Andre versus.

Speaker 2 (01:02:48):
Hulk, Yeah, the Farm Center one yep.

Speaker 3 (01:02:50):
Yeah. You go to the production that we did building
up to this match, and that was going to the
and by this time Terry was talking. Of course, it
was limited on what his ability was to do interviews,
but he did enough and did good enough to make

(01:03:13):
people believe that he really wanted that world anyweight championship.
And up the stairs, down the stairs, all the workout
stuff we did, the rocky music in the background, it
just it just turned into a huge, huge show. The
Samoans were on the show halfa seca and believe it

(01:03:35):
or not, if you'll look at the card. Those guys
were wrestling, and they could They could work in the ring,
as you well know, Alfa and Cicca could could go.
It wasn't just headbut they could actually wrestle when they
needed to. And the two guys they were up against
maybe weighed two hundred pounds each. Ricky Fields and Kerry Latham,

(01:03:59):
two of the small US guys to ever work in
this territory. And Ricky was a member of the Welsh family.
His father was Lee Fields, whose mother was a sister.
Here we go with that family tree. Sure, the one
and only Roy.

Speaker 2 (01:04:17):
Well, oh my goodness, really?

Speaker 7 (01:04:20):
Oh hell yeah, Well, there's a fascinating Florida on this card,
because I couldn't believe that after you know, he left
Florida Terry in seventy seven, that he's back headlining this
show and the Briscoes are on his undercard just two
years later.

Speaker 3 (01:04:36):
But now the brisk Goes. Have you got a copy
of the actual card that advertises the Briscoes, Yes, the
best I remember the Briscoes that that did not take
place because Jack had to take the place of Dusty.

(01:04:57):
What would who would advertised? Originally on the.

Speaker 2 (01:05:02):
Car Dusty was going to be on this refuse Stadium show. Yes,
what happened.

Speaker 3 (01:05:08):
I don't know if he was ever booked or not,
but he did. He was not there, and Jack worked
with Idol. Yes, it wasn't a tag deal with the Bristoes.

Speaker 2 (01:05:24):
I didn't mean to apply they tag. Yeah, they worked separate.

Speaker 3 (01:05:26):
Yeah, yah, that's what happened. And here here again. God
forgive me for talking about people who have passed on.
But Dusty didn't have the best reputation in this territory.

Speaker 2 (01:05:39):
Okay.

Speaker 3 (01:05:41):
He was when I first started in nineteen seventy six
doing ring announcing things like that. And even in seventy
seven he was booked on three different occasions, he only
showed up on one.

Speaker 2 (01:05:53):
Oh I see, okay for not showing up, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:55):
Wow, exactly exactly. So you know, he had a reputation
of an no show. And that was back in his
wilder days. Sure, we're talking in seventies, latter part of
seventy six seventy seven.

Speaker 2 (01:06:08):
And he had the reputation for not really being a
big fan of Terry's when he started in Florida in
seventy seven.

Speaker 3 (01:06:15):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (01:06:15):
You know, people have said that he really was like
very dismissive of the guy and throughout his career. He
even in his book, Dusty kind of brags about how
Helk never worked the Fort Hesterley Armory in Tampa, that
Dusty was the legend in I wonder if, uh could
his ego take the head of showing up under a
Hogan's undercard watching him sell out the building two years
after Dusty showed him away as useless in seventy seven.

Speaker 3 (01:06:36):
Maybe, Well, you guys bring up some interesting points I
never talked about.

Speaker 2 (01:06:43):
I appreciate that. At the same time I was hoping
for the confirmation. But it's all right.

Speaker 3 (01:06:47):
This is like a group of psychologists getting together picking
brains of the DA in this case, Lord forgive me,
But I mean, seriously, that could have very well been
because you know, you know that Louie had been talking
to Eddie and some of the Florida crew Missus seventh done.

(01:07:12):
You know, we sold at the we sold that six
thousand deep in into beauty. She's just hearing now, and
Dusty's sitting down there in the office. Oh hell, huh, huh.
I'm not going up there. No, no, no, no, I
can see all that happening so clear now, And people
that are listening to this. We're not saying it happened
that way. We're speculating it. We'll we'll say you when

(01:07:34):
it actually happened that way. This is speculation. It's great.

Speaker 2 (01:07:38):
A small detail on the rep Use show Charlie wanted
to ask you about because when we're looking at the newspapers,
it looks like Harley is advertised is coming in on
June twenty second, but the show, according to Ron doesn't
actually happen until July twenty second. Maybe that's just a
confusion of how I'm reading the articles. But was there
a thing where the Harley match was supposed to happen
and maybe it got rained out or postponed by a month?
Do you remember anything like that?

Speaker 3 (01:07:59):
No, went on the schedule. Okay, I do remember this.
It was hot as hot could be.

Speaker 2 (01:08:05):
Oh I can't imagine.

Speaker 3 (01:08:08):
Humid, humid temperatures in the eighties outside with humidity and
more bugs that you could shake a sticky.

Speaker 2 (01:08:18):
Oh man, I didn't think of that. What was do
you remember the finish to the Hogan Harley match?

Speaker 3 (01:08:23):
The Hogan Harley match was a finished idol came down
with a polaroid camera.

Speaker 2 (01:08:29):
Yes, yes, who came up with that. They redid that
at King of the Ring ninety three Hogan versus Okazuna,
and we all thought it was like the stroke of
creative brilliance happened in seventy nine right there in the stadium.
Do you remember who came.

Speaker 3 (01:08:40):
Up happened in seventy nine, Yes, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
He came up with that, do you know.

Speaker 3 (01:08:45):
Yeah? And here's another thing there was there was talk about,
you know, somebody not turning the right amount of money
on that show that rons.

Speaker 2 (01:08:56):
Talked about this. Yeah, that there were more people in
there than the office reported to the boys.

Speaker 3 (01:09:01):
Right exactly, Uh, there were. Actually here's what something that
happened that's in my book that I never did. You know,
I'm not accusing, right right, But a big, big crowd
showed up. There was line, long lines just on one
side of the stadium where you could buy tickets to
get in, because I don't think anybody, including Louis, thought

(01:09:22):
there was gonna be the crowd that we had I see.
And all of a sudden they opened up some new
ticket boxes on the other side of the building, and
it was ticket sellers that had never sold tickets before
at the shows. You're gonna tell who they were, sure,
Austin Isle's wife, Louise's wife, Dottie Curtis, because Don and

(01:09:47):
Dottie were at the day and there was three or
four ticket sellers that ain't never sold tickets before.

Speaker 2 (01:09:57):
I see which, I see where you're going, I see where,
I see where the.

Speaker 3 (01:09:59):
Min No, I'm not going anywhere.

Speaker 2 (01:10:01):
I'm just saying I see the mind.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
There were the regularities that took place that night that
I had never seen take place before.

Speaker 2 (01:10:09):
Well, it blew my mind, Charlie, because I'm listening to
Ron's podcast, and this sounds like such a crowning achievement
to fill this building out like this, and Hulk, six years,
six months in the business, is headlining against Harley, and
you guys are doing an outdoor stadium show and all
he it sounds to Ron like the most stressful time
of his life because everyone was unhappy with the payoff,
it sounded like, and they were like burning up his phone.
He's in Knoxville trying to put out this fire with

(01:10:30):
Bob Rupin Company in the Knoxville five. He's not even there.
It's amazing that this what should have been like this
banner night seems like the biggest headache and nightmare in
the territory.

Speaker 3 (01:10:40):
Let me tell you it ended up in a room
at the Sheraton end Ah. In that room was Louly
mister slim Green. He was the commissioner for the Alabama
bullcrap Boxing Commission. Percent off the top of everything.

Speaker 2 (01:11:01):
Yeah, he made sure everything was counted.

Speaker 3 (01:11:04):
Oh yeah. And then you had you had Roy Welch,
You had the Bristoe brothers sitting at the back of
the room on the sink at the bathroom. You had
Don Curtis acting and not be very disrespectful. But Don

(01:11:25):
was acting like he owned the territory. I see jumping
up and down on the bed. I demand this, I
demand that. And he was saying some threatening things to
Roy Roy Lee and I remember leaning over there and
telling Jack or Jerry Wannason that guy can get shot

(01:11:46):
in this town for thirty five dollars. Better is ass down. Now.
It got out of it, got it got stupid. But
the stupid part about it was it was the outsiders
from Florida coming in raising the.

Speaker 2 (01:12:03):
Hells I love it. This is do you think they
got in Terry's ear? Was Terry raising a stink about
his payoff? Was he getting paranormal?

Speaker 3 (01:12:09):
Arry didn't know, Terry didn't know what was going on.
Kerry wasn't a part of this. I mean, this was
just this was just Don Curtis with Louis, and Don
was kind of louis cheerleader, and Louis was Don's cheerleader.
And you got to understand, those guys work in Florida
for years and years and years to get and what

(01:12:31):
I always they're getting. Anybody listening to this, this is
Charlie's speculation when I looked at the closeness of a
Bob Roop, a Malinko, an Orton Junior, a Garvin, A Curtis,

(01:12:58):
a Tolay to name some others title and their Florida
connection and two territories being threatened. We know Knoxville was
in a war. I always wondered if it wasn't trying

(01:13:19):
to be a start of the other half of the
territory in a war.

Speaker 2 (01:13:24):
That's the fact, is just me. Well, that's the first
sign of it is everyone starts crying that they're being
underpaid and people are skimming money, and that that's what
Bob Rupe did for Knoxville.

Speaker 3 (01:13:35):
Age that thank you, thank you, thank you, very much,
and that's all I'm gonna say about that. But I
always wondered that, and I wouldn't trust a Bob Rup
out of that group. The one I was disappointed in
the most was Ron Right.

Speaker 2 (01:13:52):
Yeah he was there.

Speaker 3 (01:13:54):
Ron knew better than that because Ron Fuller always took
care of Ron Right. And until that Knoxville crew took place,
I never heard anybody talk bad about the payoff from
Ron Fuller. I never heard Listen, I worked with hundreds
of people in this territory, and I never, other than

(01:14:14):
that one show, heard anybody complain about the payoffs from
the Fullers.

Speaker 2 (01:14:22):
Understood. Fascinating. No wonder if so little is remembered about
Terry what he did over there, because my god, there's
so much much greater things going on, you know, sort
of existential things. Do you think Terry Boleya was caught
up in this at all? Because I'm thinking Bob Rup.
I mean, he was around when Terry broke in in
seventy seven. Bob Rup has a story where really he
kind of what was called upon by Eddie Graham to

(01:14:43):
initiate Hulk for lack of a better word, into the business,
and someone he came to know, do you think Terry
Boley ended up being asked to take sides in the
Knoxville War.

Speaker 3 (01:14:52):
I could have been, but you know, I don't think
Terry was trusted that much back anybody to do that, understood,
I mean, uh, go back to what Dusty thought of him.
You know, I've never I have never met Bob Ruth,
and I don't care to meet Bob Brup be honest

(01:15:12):
with you, because I know too many things that people
had told me that experienced being around Bob Ruth. He
would not be one of my favorite people. I can
list on one hand five people in the wrestling business
that I did not like and did not care to
be around. But by the hundreds, if I got just

(01:15:34):
five that stick out in my mind that I wouldn't
trust or be around, that's pretty good, pretty good idea
of how good people got along in the business back
in those days. But there was about five of them
that had egos and ways of doing business that I

(01:15:55):
did not approve of.

Speaker 2 (01:15:57):
I understand that.

Speaker 3 (01:15:59):
Bob Bob. Had I ever worked with Bob, he would
have been at the top of the list. I think what.

Speaker 2 (01:16:05):
Did What was the reaction of the territory when Terry
announced he was leaving. There's a lot of different stories.
Ed Leslie says in his book that they had britically
worked it out with Jerry Jared head of going down
to Gulf Coast, that they would under establish the Boulder
characters and then come over there. It's pretty clear that
Hulk was going back and forth from Memphis to Ron
for a little while there, and then he leaves the
territory right around the time of the Harley match. He
does come back towards the end of the year, around

(01:16:27):
the time Ron sells to Jim Barnett and company. But
what do you remember being the reason and the reaction
to Terry announcing that he was leaving Southeastern.

Speaker 3 (01:16:36):
I don't I do not remember a whole lot of
anything about that. It wasn't like, I don't think it's
a major deal. Of course, the houses went down, because
who's going to carry the torch? That was not I
don't think properly taken care of. And you know this

(01:16:57):
is no reflection negative about Louis, but Louie's talent that
he brought in was a good bit different from what
the territory was used to. I'll give you an example,
Os baker Os nicest guy I've ever won nice together,
we've been around, but he didn't get over in his territory.

(01:17:21):
It's like when Barnett tried to buy it from Lee
Fields before Ron and the rest of the crew bought
into the territory and bought it. Barnett ran tapes for
six weeks Georgia tapes on Channel four and on all
of the stations in the area of the territory. Cards

(01:17:42):
that were heavy weighted, like the Anderson Brothers, Dick Slater
wrestling to Abdullah, the Butcher, Bob Backland, Steve Kern, and
the list goes on and on. We're talking about sixteen
guys that were eighty players. It didn't draw three hundred

(01:18:04):
and fifty people.

Speaker 2 (01:18:05):
Wow, huh, it's crazy.

Speaker 3 (01:18:08):
One of the things with Abdullah Abdullah bless his heart,
you know, Larry Abby whatever, you know, he's in bad shape.
Pray for him.

Speaker 2 (01:18:18):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (01:18:19):
But he didn't mean anything in this territory because he
was not a wrestler.

Speaker 2 (01:18:26):
Fascinating.

Speaker 3 (01:18:26):
I keep going back to that because that was what
built this territory, and that's what made this territory.

Speaker 2 (01:18:34):
Do you remember anything Charlie Rod has talked about this
on his podcast, he called it a mistake Louis Tillette
made that at a certain point, Terry Boulea wanted a championship.
He thought that getting a belt would be a symbol
of kind of like an investment in him. And when
he didn't get the belt, or he had it for
a day and lost it back to Austin Idel or
whatever the case may be, that that was a big
part of why Terry lost enthusiasm for Southeastern and started,

(01:18:56):
you know, actively courting Memphis. Do you remember a time
period like that where it was like some decision around
a belt made Terry Bolea a little disenchanted.

Speaker 3 (01:19:06):
That that would have been something in the booking end
that they discussed among themselves. Got it. I never, I
never had information.

Speaker 2 (01:19:14):
He comes back though. It's so strange because we want
to just kind of write off, you know, him in
Southeastern right after the Harley match. But he comes back
around and he wins the I'm pretty sure he wins
the Southeastern title, uh, and then loses it to Toro Tanaka.
Do you remember Terry going away and then suddenly coming
back around the fall, maybe around the time of that
that big hurricane down there.

Speaker 3 (01:19:33):
Yeah, he came back I think a couple of different times,
and both of the times he came back in there
was the belt changes were in Knoxfield. If I'm not.

Speaker 2 (01:19:44):
Mistaken, understood, okay, yeah, yeah, there's no records of this.
There's the newspaper clippings that say he's defending and he's
going for the belt, but there's nothing really that makes
it abundantly clear like when and who he beat to
win the belt or lose the belt.

Speaker 3 (01:19:58):
I don't It was a he had a deal with Idols.
I mean they had a run and there again that
was limited as to what could be done because Idol
wasn't that great of a ring technician. An he's okay,
but not He wasn't a hearty race He wasn't a

(01:20:19):
he wasn't somebody trained by somebody in the Welch family
that could really go. He had limitations on what he
could do, and he takes limitations from Terry, limitations from
Idol and what you got. But you put Harley in
that stadium show and I think I think Terry, if
if he could come back and talk to us and

(01:20:41):
you know, have a light detective thing, because he embellished
so much in his books and things like that in
the early years. And then let me let me say this,
My proudest thing about Terry is that even later in
life he was able to accept Jesus Christ and get
his life in order. That's his biggest, biggest accomplishment in

(01:21:08):
my book. But he I just don't he was not
capable of doing a lot of things. If he could
come back and we could say who did you fear
most of the distance, I believe without a doubt and
without a blink of his eye, he'd say, Hardy Race
Was he paranoid?

Speaker 2 (01:21:29):
Was Terry paranoid?

Speaker 3 (01:21:31):
Well, I mean Harley had a reputation. I mean Harley was. Hey,
if I ever write a book, it'll be Hardy was
the man, because I worked with a ton of them,
and that son of a gun was the best that
ever was as far as being able to back up

(01:21:54):
what was on the marquee and getting in a bar fight.
He could beat the hell out of five people and
still not spill any of his beer. He was the regal.
He was the real deal, guys, I mean, point blank.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Is established as he wasn't respected, as he wasn't tough,
and legit as he was why do you think he
was willing to work with someone as green at Terry.

Speaker 3 (01:22:19):
There Again, I'll go back to the philosophy of Harley
was on end of his career, you know, been in it,
what twelve years or more or longer at that time,
and no, he's been about twenty years in seventy nine,
because he started in the early sixties. Well, you know,

(01:22:43):
these guys that do it every night like that, three
hundred nights a year, know that they're not going to
be here forever. And Harley was about He had a
mind for the business. He knew that there had to
be people to come behind him and draw money. And

(01:23:03):
I believe Louis probably talked to and said, Hey, this guy,
he's green, he's rough around the edges, but he's got
charisma that can draw yes. And I believe that had
a lot to do with it, because you know, as
far as as far as Terry's ability to work, Harley
would probably give him a zero, yeah, at that particular time,

(01:23:26):
and I think Luthus said he had an ability of
one to ten. He had a two. As far as
wrestling concerns. The charisma, I think Lutherus said ken plus
that was the case with Terry BOLEA.

Speaker 2 (01:23:40):
Final question for Charlie, final question exactly on this point
you're sitting there, Life moves on. Ron you know, has
several starts and stops, opens up, the office, closes it
down again. Eighty five Southeastern comes back Continental Actually, and
here's halk. Here's the guy you remember Terry from seventy nine,
the guy who showed up in the beat up van.
And he's on national television NBC ranting and raven MT

(01:24:00):
screaming over the top cartoon character promos, just the biggest
force of personality you've ever seen. And because we don't
have footage of his promos down in Southeastern in seventy nine,
because we don't have a good sense of what he
sounded like when he presented, how is Charlie Platt reacting
when he's sitting on his couch, presumably watching television and
seeing that Terry Boulet, who didn't know like he knew

(01:24:21):
a damn thing about anything? Is do you see signs
of who you saw in seventy nine when he's in
New York or do you see a completely different person?

Speaker 3 (01:24:31):
I see a completely different person. I see a cartoon character.
I see exposing over sale of the business. I see
think and there again it drew. We know what it did.
But to me growing up down here watching hardcore Southern

(01:24:55):
pro wrestling, having the honor of work with Bob Armstrong,
Ron Robert Fuller, Jimmy Golden, the owners of the territory,
being friends with the Fields, being friends with a Welsh family,
and knowing what they created, and then looking at the
cartoon character I was seeing on national TV over selling

(01:25:18):
everything he said. And I'm not being critical, I'm just
it's the truth. It is.

Speaker 2 (01:25:23):
The truth was that down there he wasn't overstating and
ranting and rating. Now we don't know this, we have
no idea.

Speaker 3 (01:25:30):
He was very reserved, he was very green, and he
depended on Billy's fears, and he depended on people like me,
who wasn't the best in the world, to help lead
him through what few interviews he did, and it was
just a totally difference. It was like, all, as Vince said,

(01:25:52):
this is entertainment, this is not wrestling. That's where it
all started going downhill. In my mind. I know it's strong,
big money, I understand things like that, But to me,
that era is when the business took a turn for

(01:26:13):
the worse for a while, and it took some people
later on to bring it back out of that. Now,
to the average person, to the team that was buying
the dolls, that was buying the take my vitamins, do this, that,
and the other, hey, that's what they wanted to see.
But to purists like me, who liked to see two

(01:26:34):
guys go out there and work the audience and use
psychology to put that audience from their butts in the
seats to standing up and screaming the match, it just
it was not real anymore, even though it was a work,

(01:26:56):
and I knew it was a work. There wasn't many
nice out Eastern wrestling and Dothan, Alabama, or Mobile or
Pensacola or Birmingham or not so anywhere you saw that
sign that at the end of the night the biggest
skeptic would come out of the building and say, well,
you know, Jack, I think he knocked the hell out

(01:27:21):
because they worked, They worked the audience, they worked snug,
and they made people believe. And when you come out
with a cartoon character like that, to me, who had
watched all these people ahead of him making you believe,

(01:27:42):
it was like the curtain has been pulled back, and
Vince really didn't have to say we're entertainment. It went
to entertainment in that era. And if you know, I do,
I know those people who disagree with that's sign, but
you know, I hate he's gone. He did a lot
to promote the business, but to me, it wasn't the

(01:28:05):
best thing that ever happened to professional wrestling.

Speaker 2 (01:28:08):
Absolutely fascinating, Charlie Blatt. It has been an honor to
get your recollections on a part of history that we
wouldn't know anything near about or be able to color
in without Summer. So we want to thank you very
much for deeming us worthy of the time and all
the absolute best to you.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
Enjoyed every moment of it. You guys have a great
show and I look forward to listening to you