The Complete Hulk Hogan | An Interview with Don 'The Dragon' Wilson

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.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
It is a fascinating point in Terry Bolay's life. He
makes ways to Cocoa Beach for a year and it's
just like he gives up wrestling for a little while
and all of this stuff happens in his life. He
has this fascinating sort of running hard bachelor period with
his buddy ed Leslie. It's at the Anchor Club. And
we just were so starved for color as to what

(00:47):
that whole time period was like because Terry Boley for
the first time falls out of the newspapers and you know,
he's just he's just pursuing this private glory.

Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's like this, it's like this, like this, this just
this this black hole of time where I need more information.
I need it all, I need it now.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
And it was truly a godsend as we went through
our research on this period in Terry Bullet's life to
realize that not only you know, was the Anchor Club
something that the papers would write about in and around Florida,
but that the announcement of a new manager around the
time that Terry was running hard over there was somebody
that the world knows and just amazing to think that
these two paths crossed at a certain period in time

(01:27):
in Cocoa Beach before they were famous, so to speak.
And we are thrilled here on the complete Hull COGD
on the Lapsed Fan to welcome now don the Dragon Wilson,
eleven time championing kickboxing star of stage and screen. Donn.
It is so great to have you on the show.
Thank you so much.

Speaker 4 (01:42):
Well, thank you for having me on. A little bit
sad of the subject matter that we're talking because Terry's
asked on, but still, you know, everything I know about
Terry is good and he was always a positive person.

Speaker 2 (01:58):
That's excellent. So I'd love for you to set us
up back then mid seventies seventy eight, I think in
Coco Beach. How did you come to work at the
Anchor Club and when do you first remember meeting Terry Belea.

Speaker 4 (02:09):
Well, it was I started working at the Anchor Club
in the early seventies. I don't know the exact year,
but I was attending college and it was the perfect
job because I could work on the weekends and didn't
go to school during the week And I also was
on a wrestling scholarship, so I'd have to go to
wrestling practice afterwards, and so I had a pretty busy schedule.
When I first worked at the Anchor Club, it was

(02:31):
as a bouncer. I was already a black belt in
kung fu so and I was a collegiate wrestler. So
I was in pretty good shape. Wow, and yeah, that
was my qualifications. Now, Terry I did not need at
the Anchor Club. He was just a bass player in
one of the bands that played there. Yes, it came
from Tampa. The band came from Tampa, and Terry came

(02:51):
and he got to know the owner of the club.
We just his name's Charles Bridges, but we just call
him Whitey yep. And they became friends, and so it
started off.

Speaker 2 (03:04):
Was there is there a reason why he was called Whitey?
I mean curious about that.

Speaker 4 (03:09):
He was. You know, sometimes people get what they call
the premature white I guess.

Speaker 2 (03:13):
Oh in the hair.

Speaker 4 (03:14):
Yeah yeah, yeah, his hair was, uh, well you call it.
I think he would call it blonde, but uh, I
think it was more the whitest blonde and it wasn't
a look that I think. There was not even no
dye or anything. It just I think his hair just
premature gray. I guess, as he was not an older guy,

(03:35):
he was probably in his I would guess he was
in his hu because nobody ever asked him his agent
that I knew, probably late thirties, thirty forties.

Speaker 2 (03:45):
Got it, got it okay. So that makes sense that
that rhyme's done with what we've heard about how Terry
knew Whitey Bridges before going to work for the Anchor Club.
Because what happens is Terry goes and trains a bit
in Tampa to become a wrestler and kind of gets
disillusioned with the whole thing. He's not making a lot
of money, he's not getting booked a lot, and so
he just quit. At some point he did. And what
he said in his book and stuff is that he

(04:06):
just sits down, what am I going to do next?
And he remembers that Whitey had said something to him,
if you ever need work, or if you ever need
you know, a new chapter in life, give me a call.
Is is that how you understood he came to work for
an Anchor Club.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
Yep, yep, that's that sound like a story and h
but I will say this he then I tell people
he's one of the life lessons that I teach. It
is Terry's life, I said. He went back the second time.
The first time, I believe he was called the.

Speaker 2 (04:32):
Destroyer, Super Destroyer. That's right.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
He was what they called a heel like he was
a bad guy. Yes, you know you're supposed to when
he comes out of the auditorium, they're supposed to be.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Booming, right.

Speaker 4 (04:43):
Uh. But then he went back in with with the
new image of a Hulk and and that the hulksters
the little kids. He'd rip his t shirt off and
throw it out to the kids. In other words, he
came back as a good guy. And that's when his
career took.

Speaker 2 (04:59):
A absolutely true. Yeah, that's where all hit hit the
ground running. And that's why this period of his life
is so fascinating because he hadn't quite yet figured out
Hulk Hogan. He wasn't Hulk Hogan yet. He was still
just this guy that was Super Destroyer for a handful
of matches in the fall of seventies.

Speaker 4 (05:14):
Yeah, he was not happy when we discussed his wrestling
when he was doing those shows. He was not happy,
and I believe. Look, I don't know the exactly how
it happened, but he got an injury. He has signed
a contract to do more than a multiple appearance thing.
He or he injuried himself the first day and he

(05:35):
couldn't do the next appearance, next show, and they the
way the contracts were they, I guess they don't have.

Speaker 2 (05:41):
A union for wrestlers, oh not at all.

Speaker 4 (05:43):
But they didn't have to pay him for the first
one because he didn't show up at the second one right,
and he got really upset and he came to work
as a bartender again. And then I don't know if
it was Eddie or he decided, you know, I'm gonna
try it one more time, and he went back. And
that's when he went back as became a star. Told

(06:10):
me how he got the stallone thing. I bumped into
him at a restaurant we had dinner together, and he goes,
don you know how I got on Rocky And I go, no,
how he goes, I wrestled, And I believe his Madison
Square gardens. I guess he was used to wrestle there,
but he wrestled. He went to this hotel room and
now his name is never listed in the hotel directory

(06:31):
when he's staying there for a wrestling match, otherwise can
get bothered by the fans. So he hit the phone
call and he's said he was sorry, we say that. Yeah,
I'm going to uh see if I turn this thing off.
I don't even know how.

Speaker 2 (06:50):
That's no problem. If you need to take it, go
ahead to you.

Speaker 4 (06:52):
But we're about to probably just nobody word nobody. But anyway,
so this is a story of Terry. Terry's telling me
the story of the Rocky thing, how he got the
Rocky because you know, that was a major break for
him as well as far across across there's people who

(07:12):
were not wrestling fans, all known because everybody saw Rocky
and uh, he said, he gets a phone call in
this hotel room and and the guy says, hello, this
is I'm sliced alone. I like when you come in
and read for a movie. And he thought it was
a crank call, and how'd you get my number? He goes, blank,
you and he hung up on him. And so then

(07:34):
rock stallone calls back and he said, you know, he
looked at me. Terry said, he said, you know, don
I recognize his voice because Stallone has a kind of
distinctive voice.

Speaker 2 (07:45):
Right, yeah, definitely to him.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
But he was so mad in the beginning because he
thought it was a crank call that he didn't pay.
The second time he called, he listened and he said,
I realized it was him, Yes, And that was his
big breakthrough, you know. The after that he just shot
the top, and I think Championship wrestling also, timing wise,
became much bigger. They had what they call WrestleManias.

Speaker 2 (08:09):
Of course, yeah, yeah, we we We're going to get
to all that for sure as we go through the
sort of chronicling of his life in time, I got to.

Speaker 4 (08:16):
Take a couple of coincidents with me and and hope
that you will not know. But it's it's kind of
hard to believe that I get a phone call. He
used to wrestle in Japan, Terry, and he wrestled for
a guy named Sima. So out of the clear Blue,
I get a phone call from Shima and he says
he's interested in promoting me as a kickboxer in Japan.

(08:37):
So so my first fight in Japan was the same
promoter that Terry years after we knew each other was
wrestling for in Japan. Sima was his name. And then
when I get to La to be an actor, I
was going to make a crossover from kickboxing to actor.
Chuck Norris said, don you need the right attorney, And
I got the guy. His name's Henry Holmes.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
Henry Holmes, Henry George Foreman.

Speaker 4 (09:02):
He handles a lot of athlete entertainers, so I signed
with him. As I'm leaving Henry's office, I look at
a painting on the wall and it's Terry Wow, And
I go, what's this doing here? And he goes, that's
one of my clients. Now that's a coincidence. We ended
up with the same attorney in La Me and Terry
after all those years.

Speaker 2 (09:22):
Now, did you recognize him on the painting dawn as
Terry Bolea from the Anchor Club or did you know
he was a wrestler or you didn't even know that.

Speaker 4 (09:28):
I know all about his rusting career.

Speaker 2 (09:30):
I mean, oh, for sure. So that's a point he's
already reached that yeah, because in Japan that was kind
of before he was a huge deal in America. So
it's kind of what.

Speaker 4 (09:40):
When he was rustling Proshima. Maybe I don't know. Yeah,
I just know that I found out at some point,
and I did speak to Terry about we Our past
did cross a couple of times, and there was even
a white He asked me for Terry's number, so I
didn't have it on me, so I called my agent

(10:01):
and my agent Terry has representation out here. Well, he
did have representation of my agent called his agent and
we gave the number to Whitey for some something. I
don't know what. He just wanted to say hi to Terry.

Speaker 2 (10:12):
Or oh wow.

Speaker 4 (10:12):
Yeah, but that was the closest thing we got to
actually communicating. Now, I didn't talk through him, but but
I did arrange for Whitey to get Terry's phone number.

Speaker 2 (10:25):
That's amazing. So that that the Henry Holmes connection. Yeah,
we hear so much about Henry Holmes. In fact, one
of the things Terry always said in his life was
that he was going to get the George Foreman grill.
But he didn't. He couldn't take the call from Henry Holmes.
So Henry Holmes turned around and gave it to George.
Do you believe that.

Speaker 4 (10:42):
I have no reason to doubt it? Things happening you know,
Hollywood is an absolutely bizarre thing. Uh yeah, you know,
all kinds of crazy things happen here. And then that
doesn't sound any crazier than that I've come up with.
I mean, there's no way I never should have got

(11:02):
in my I had a Corvette, read Corvette. I got
in it, and I don't know if you know how
big Corvette is, but not very big. I mean, I'm
saying the interior. I put everything I could fit in
there and moved to LA to be an actor. And
I knew nothing about acting. So a lot of people said, well,
how did you find out about it? I said, well,
I enrolled in some acting schools and they told me

(11:23):
to go to this bookstore called Samuel French, and there's
books aren't acting. So I bought a book and I
read it by the swimming pool. It said how to
be an actor in LA And I followed everything the
book said, and but within three months I was on
General Hospital and then I I got cast in Blood
Fist started the movie. It was one of the top

(11:45):
one hundred independent films of all time. Roger Corman produced it.
Really a very great thing. Yeah, Roger Corman, he did
twelve movies I did more movies for Roger than any
other actor.

Speaker 3 (11:56):
That's like, I mean that, that's you know, legendary for
basically like uh, being the greatest film school of all
time just working with Roger Krmack I.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Started Jack Nicholson yep. Uh Scorsese transit for.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (12:14):
He gave a lot of people their breaks, and he
gave me mine. He passed me in a movie from
not being an actor as the lead in a movie
called Blood Fists.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yep. There's been so many movies when he was done.

Speaker 4 (12:24):
He made the movie really cheap in Philippines. He sold
it to MGM and he made a lot of money,
and MGM bought Blood This too and made a lot
of money. And so Rogers thought, you know what, I'm
going to keep the rights to Blood This three and
see if you you could still make money for me,
and ended up we end up doing eight Blood Fists.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
What a franchise, Rogers. That's so great. So so we
got an idea of where you and Terry are heading
in your respective careers, and it's great. Heights I wanted
to reset are a few movies as well. Oh yeah,
for sure, we'll talk about those. But to reset back
to the you know those earlier days before you quote
unquote famous at Anchor Club. One of the things we're
dying to get a sense of done is what Anchor

(13:04):
Club was like. It sounds like a pretty wild place
where people were partying.

Speaker 4 (13:10):
If there was a studio fifty four in Kogo Beach.
I mean, the Miami Dolphins would come up from Miami
and they got plenty of the good nightclubs in Port Laerdale,
South Florida. They came up and would hang out at
the Anchor Club. The Astronauts hung out there, I believe
it because they were called the Houston Astros. It was
his baseball team that had a summer camp in the

(13:33):
Perhaps just everybody would go to the Anchor Club. It
was the place to be. It had live music and
also it had a DJ. Let me tell you the
DJ was. Have you ever heard of the band called
Casey in a Sunshine Band?

Speaker 2 (13:45):
Of course?

Speaker 4 (13:46):
Yes, okay, Well one of their members, oh h, it
must have been a singer or something. But he sang
for a different band for a while. He saw the
Anchor Club and he quit Casey in a Sunshine Band
because he said he wanted to be His gold was
to become a DJ. Wow, because that disco was just
starting and the movie Saturday Night came out and I said,

(14:08):
you know what I told Whitey I was managing the club.
I said, Whitey, we should have Monday Night tever. He goes,
what do you mean? I said, we don't make any
money on Monday nights, right, He goes, yeah, it was empty.
I said, well, we're gonna have a dance contest and
it's gonna be just like Saturday Night Fever. We're gonna
get a dance light, a dance floor, and we're gonna
get a good like a celebrity DJ. So I got
this guy like I think his name might have been Charlie,

(14:29):
but anyway, he was the quick Casey the Sunshay Band
worked as my DJ, and we had a packed night
every Monday night. So I I so Friday and Saturday
was packed, Monday was packed.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
You know what that sounds like, don is Hulk opened
his own place on Clearwater Beach later in his life
and he had Monday Night karaoke. It sounds like that's
where we got the idea from.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
Yeah, yeah, he might have. He might have taken it
because because we were packed on a Monday night and
nobody's packed on Monday night in nightclub.

Speaker 2 (14:59):
So how how wild did it get? I mean weekends
when that place is jam and I mean we're talking sex, drugs,
and rock and roll. Can you get us closer to it?

Speaker 4 (15:09):
But in my mind, the sex or the it was
mainly sex, alcohol and rock and roll got it. The
drug thing for me, it didn't. I didn't see it.
And I guess people figure if Don doesn't do it,
we shouldn't be doing it around him, right saying there's

(15:35):
no there's no professional athletics you could do consistently and
be a winner doing drugs, any drugs, I don't care.
If it could be marrot pot. You know that was
very illegal back then. But people smoke pot and to
coach your lungs and it messes up your I don't
know that THC is a drug that does not lead
your blood instantly. You know it stays in your system

(15:56):
like weeks everything. I was science major. My father worked
at Candy Space Center, so I was an engineering major
in school. I'm a big believer in science, and the
science is anything that alters you is not in man
mad is ninety percent of the time is going to
be bad, right, I mean alcohol bad, pot bad, cigarettes bad.

Speaker 2 (16:19):
Needless to say. So, do you remember Terry, you know,
working the bar there? Would he drink?

Speaker 4 (16:26):
Yes, he did. He did drink, and I did drink
a sum but but not when I I had to
quit the Anchor Club to become a kickboxing champion. When
I really made my mind up that that's what I
wanted to do, I quit, and Terry quit to become
a wrestler. Become You can't be a wrestler in Coco Beach, Florida.

Speaker 2 (16:46):
Now tell us, tell us exactly what you remember Terry doing,
because some people say he was like a bouncer. Others
say he was a bar tender.

Speaker 4 (16:52):
If he's never a bouncer, never a bouncer. He never
fought anybody. First of all, nobody's gonna fight a guy.
You just take a one to look at Terry. He
was still big then, you know, he was tall, and
and I don't know if you were how old you are,
but there's a thing that we all wore them. I
wore them too.

Speaker 2 (17:06):
Platform shoes, sure, yes.

Speaker 4 (17:08):
And those shoes lift you up probably four inches. In
other words, if Terry was uh six six, he was
six ten what he puts his shoes on. Yeah, so, uh,
nobody's gonna mess with Terry. And he was behind the bar,
you know. Uh, and I'm sure he was doing I

(17:29):
did not keep up. Well, we don't, we don't. We
don't keep track of each other. But there was a
lot of a lot of promiscuity.

Speaker 2 (17:35):
Yes, if uh AIDS had not come out yet, yes,
that's important. Yet at that point it did.

Speaker 4 (17:45):
But they called it at the time, they called it
a gay disease, right and and and and heterosexuals never
worried about it. We figured, well, I'm not gay, so
I don't have to worry about it. Right later they
found out it's a virus and anybody can get it.
But but during the times the disco era now, and
I'm talking about specifically Saturday Night Feaver when it was released, Yep,

(18:06):
the peak of the disco era hit right after that.
Everybody watched that movie and said, that's what we want
to do on Friday and Saturday nights. Go have dance,
you know, go to dancings, you know, go to clubs
and dance. And yeah, Terry was there. So Terry did
drink and I did drink as well. I don't deny it,

(18:27):
but yeah, I never knew him did use any drugs.
And you know, people take steroids, but when you're as
big as Terry, I'm not thinking he was. Maybe you
know today they did have this stuff called HGH human
growth hormone. Yes, they have certain things that are not
as probably effectives. Is the hardcore steroids.

Speaker 2 (18:52):
Well, he was very open later in his life and
people around him about how he got hard on Diana
Ball and really really when he went to Cocoa Beach
and they opened that gym.

Speaker 4 (19:00):
With white he had with Whitey, Yeah, he had a gym.

Speaker 2 (19:03):
Do you remember that stuff going around and people getting
just huge on bodybuilding drugs?

Speaker 4 (19:07):
I do not, I do, I didn't. You know what,
I think there was a kind of an attitude among
athletes and if you're using drugs, it's kind of like
cheating a little bit. It's like you're kind of of course,
right yeah, and you don't they don't admit it. Like today,
we know for a fact there's not a bodybuilder that's
ever won that Mister Universe that didn't take some kind

(19:30):
of drug. Yeah, you know what I mean. I mean,
it's just the human body does not.

Speaker 2 (19:35):
React like that it's grown like that to the point about.

Speaker 4 (19:40):
Nobody admitted it. I don't think Terry would have admitted it.
Never talk to me about it and never he just
you know, don, I'm taking some steroids and it never
came out. Never. And we have lifted weights together, I've
gone to the gym and we worked out together. Sure,
and yeah, but it never came up.

Speaker 2 (20:02):
What was that, Jim, Like, did you ever go in
there Terry and Whitey's Olympic gym?

Speaker 4 (20:06):
You know what?

Speaker 3 (20:06):
It was?

Speaker 4 (20:07):
Not a plush is that call? It was like, uh,
it was a barbell. It was like a dumb bells,
bar bells, you know those kind of things. Uh. Maybe
they had a few universals. They called it universals machines. No,
what was the name of it. I don't remember that.
But they had some machines back in the seventies, but

(20:29):
not like today today. You go into a gym and
there is an area for freeways, but it's small and
it's mostly just a bunch of machines. Right. Well, those
machines were not totally invented and not even probably fully
accepted when Terry's gym was there. I think Terry mainly
had a you know, bar Bell freeways, freeweight gym.

Speaker 2 (20:51):
Yes, just just just lifting and getting as much of
a pump as you could. And he described it as
a place him and ed Leslie put it together with
Whitey as a place where were they only wanted hardcore bodybuilders.
It wasn't like a place that the general public would
come to get fit. It was like, really for these
psycho weightlifters, right.

Speaker 4 (21:08):
Well, there's not a lot of those, you know, So
obviously Terry wasn't you know. Terry's probably was doing it
just to the means, to an end and the end
to his wrestler. Yes, and he needed to change his
body a little bit. He needed a little time. So
he worked for Whitey and he made a good living.
And you know, look when you're working in a nightclub
and it's all pretty girls and you're behind the bar,

(21:29):
I mean it just uh. I tell people, when I
left the Anchor Club, my life's been downhill ever since. Well,
my jah life just knows dive. And I'm telling you,
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt could not have it any
better than me and Terry had it back in the
aggera club packed with beautiful girls. By the way, you

(21:53):
guys don't probably remember this, but the drink and age
was eighteen. Yeah, Now, what a dumb thing we did.
Because I'm now seventy one and I can barely handle
my liquor. How could an eighteen year old kid drink
just to ride a map where he's not gonna kill
himself in the car crash and you know, and he's
gonna have a fun night and in a night club.

(22:14):
It was. It was stupid. And after a few years
they went back to twenty one.

Speaker 2 (22:18):
To twenty one. I remember reading some of the stuff about,
like some of the stuff in the papers from back
then about how you guys had a real youth focus
in the beginning, and then later on it was like
when you became manager, it was like, all right, we're
gonna go a little bit more, you know, a little older,
a little more mature.

Speaker 4 (22:32):
Yeah. Well I wanted to go dress up, like I
wore a three piece suit every night. Oh wow, manager,
And yeah, we dressed up. And uh, actually, unfortunately for us,
we're in a beach town and guys with holy jeans
and all that, bikers would come in and I had
the bouncers. No, they're not allowed in with those with
holes in their jeans and grease all over their shoes

(22:53):
and all that. And I've had to go outside myself
and fight a couple of guys and I end up
having to go before judge. And luckily, you know, I
made the right because I'm telling him they can't come
in and they want to fit, they want a strong
arm the way in I'm talking about bikers. Uh, there
was a certain biker club trying to think of the
name of them. Oh, they're called the Outlaws. There. You

(23:14):
got all the outlaws, and the FBI end up shutting
them down. But they were coming in the Anchor club,
and I had the bouncers not allowed them in anymore
because the clothes they were wearing did not fit our
dress code. And so I had to literally go out
there and help my bouncers, because it's rare when you
have a manager who's actually more experienced at fighting than

(23:37):
the bouncers.

Speaker 2 (23:37):
Absolutely. Yeah, man, that's.

Speaker 4 (23:40):
Pulled on me and one knife and two guns?

Speaker 2 (23:45):
How did how did the gun incidents resolve?

Speaker 4 (23:47):
Did you like thatn happen on the very first night
I worked at the night club? Are you eighteks ago?
I was eighteen working at the door and I'm standing
outside of the Anchor Club in the front of it
with two off duty police officers and white the owner
of the club, and we're talking and a guy pulls
up in his car in front of the club gets

(24:09):
out of the car. Now, I'm saying to us, he
was an old man. He's in his fifties probably I'm
seventy one now. He's a young kid to me now.
But he got out of his car and he starts
talking kind of crazy, like like like a garbled kind
of the English. We didn't know. We all laughed at him,
We literally laughed. And he said something and I didn't

(24:30):
hear it, and he turned around. He walked back to
his car, which was parked right in front of the club.
He parked right in front the club, and when he
both off duty police officers by the way, said not
a word to me and Whitey and they went into
the club. When he went into his car, they went
into the club. I think he's faded and admit this,
but I think he said something like, you won't be
laughing when I come back. Oh no, because he went

(24:53):
back and got a gun. I didn't see it. But
why isn't it a coincidence. Both off duty police officers
knew enough to go back in the club.

Speaker 1 (25:02):
Huh.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
So he must have said they must have got some
kind of win, unless it was just luck that they
weren't sitting out there when he can't have the gun,
but he had it pointed right at me, my mid section,
and he was probably he was still so far away
no martial art technique would get to him. So if
he pulled the trigger, I'm gone. And it was about

(25:23):
maybe twelve feet away from me. And then I realized
he was pointing a gun and I'm sitting on a
stool outside the nightclub, and I stood up. He looked
at me and he said, shut up and sit down.
And I've told this story to other martial artists. Andy
go don what did you do? What did you do?
I said, I shut up, and I sat back down
in his chair. He said something winning this car drove away.

(25:44):
Now we know everything about him because he picks up
the hitchhiker, and the hitch hiker could see something's wrong
with the guy. He's acting crazy, and he tells the guy,
you need to get a hotel room. Sleep this off.
So he convinces him to get a hotel room. While
they're checking into the hotel, he's standing at the reception.
The hitchhiker sucker bunches of them. And we know the

(26:07):
story because the police came right to the Anchor Club
and told us what happened. They came and they said,
he literally you know how there's a term, I knocked
the shit out of him.

Speaker 2 (26:16):
Yes, this guy shot his pants right.

Speaker 4 (26:20):
It's I've never seen I've seen one hundred knockouts in
boxing and kickboxing matches. I've never seen anybody go to
the bathroom like that. But I guess we're not hitting
each other as hard as this guy did. Because this guy,
the police were laughing. They said, yeah, don he just
shited his pants, man, he just he was out. We
took him to the hospital.

Speaker 2 (26:40):
I was reading about its seventy four a guy there
named uh Cotton Higgins was sued for throwing throwing someone
out and beating the shit out of white like whities.
Oh okay, Cotton there you Yeah, it looked like someone
actually turned around and and sued the club for roughing
him up. It sounds like sometimes they had to get
really hardcore to get people out of there.

Speaker 4 (27:00):
Yes, well, I doubt Cotton would sue the club because.

Speaker 2 (27:03):
No, no, no, someone sued the club because Cotton roughed
him up, thrown him out.

Speaker 4 (27:07):
Oh could have been? Could have been? And uh I
did get Okay, here here's what happens. One time, there's
three guys and they want to come in the club
and they they they got jeans, so we didn't allow jeans,
and especially jeans like theirs. They're there bikers and they
got holes in them. Right, they're the bad It's not
like Sergio Valente jeans. It's you know. Yeah, So I

(27:32):
hit the fountain, comes to me down cold, you talk
to him. They want to talk to the manager or whatever.
So I come outside. I go, hey, guys, I'm sorry,
this is a rule. This is not coming from me.
This comes from the owner of the club. He's changed
the image of the club. And he guy goes, hey,
I used to come in here with gens all the time.
And I said, yeah, but they're not allowed anymore. And okay,
I'm talking to one of them. Unbeknownst to me, one

(27:55):
of them goes over to the side of me, just
slowly moves away from in front of me, and he
throws a punch at me. Cold cott. He hits me,
but he hits me in the one place you cannot
knock the guy out. He hit me in the neck,
the side of my neck. Oh, by the way, back
in those days, I wait, two oh five, I'm walking

(28:16):
around now. Probably won eighty. I fought at one sixty
middleweight and light heavy. But I was bit and it
hit me in the side of the neck. And I
looked at him, and that scared the crap out of
hm because he hit me with I guess he considered
it his best shot. And I didn't budge, and I
grabbed him and I hit him. I don't know how
many times, but at least four times in the stomach.
Probably broke broke a rip or something. But I hit

(28:38):
him and they ran, jumped in the car, and unbeknownst
to me, they went right in the police department fouled
charges against me because their car was all dented up.
I see, because, as it turns out, you know, I
wanted to pay back. I got sucker punches.

Speaker 2 (28:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (28:52):
I kicked car door and I jumped up, and I
might have broke the windshield. I might have dent the
top of their hood. I didn't I couldn't hit them
because they were in the car, so I attacked their car,
I admitted. Now I get called before the judge, and
I bring a half a dozen witnesses that saw them
hit me first, you know, uh not employees. I'm saying,

(29:16):
tuck people, Yeah, good customers. Yeah, let's go down. They
were watching their their eyewitnesses. And so the judge goes, okay,
mister Wilson, I understand you got sucker brunch and they
hate you. First, you're defending yourself. He goes, but what
were you doing on top of the car. And I
looked at the judge, and you know, judges are like
light detectors. You can't light it, and they know they
smell a liah my. I looked at it and I said,

(29:37):
your honor, I thought he was trying to run over me,
so I thought it'd be safer on the car. Mister Wilson,
charge was dismissed against you whatever. You know, he reallyeved,
He said, but I don't want to see you in
front of me again, ever again for something like this.
And he released me. Yeah, he he knew. I was

(29:58):
not thinking they're trying to run me over, and I
was trying to smash their but you can't hit them.
I was trying to get in the car.

Speaker 2 (30:04):
Absolutely, what a job I would I can't believe you
remember this, don is the greatest years of your life.
It sounds very scary and stressful.

Speaker 4 (30:14):
Having guns pointed at you. Uh, that's the closest I
probably could come to dying because that guy, Oh, the
story of him was this. He was from the New
England area. He uh cut my cheating on him or something.
He took a bunch of drugs, got his car and
drove all the way to Florida. Wow, from New England.
I don't know. New England is Connecticut, New Hampshire of

(30:36):
course that area. And and the police told us this
after they rested and they got all his idea of it.
That's the closest came to because that guy was mentally
ill and he had not slept for like three days. Yeah,
and he's all got that gun. He was shaken and
uh yeah, he could have accidentally pulled the trigger and

(31:00):
just that my first night of the nightclub. Now I
think why he probably thought I was gonna quit that night.
You get a jump hold on you first night now. Now,
the only other time it happened was because the guy
was scared. Uh. Basically, I kicked his friend in the face,
knocked all his teeth out, his whole front mouth. And

(31:22):
I found that out because the police came and they
told me. They said, don what did you hit that
guy with? I said nothing. I said, I kicked him.
He goes. I said why and he said because he
knocked all his teeth out. And Jesus, people asked me
what kick was it and I said, well, it was
not a karate kid. I punted his head like a football.

Speaker 2 (31:43):
Oh my goodness, Well.

Speaker 4 (31:44):
Because it was this. He was a biker. He took
his shirt off and he wanted to fight me, and
he reached for me and I grabbed his hand. I
pulled him so when I pulled him, he went down
on all fours. When he looked up, he kind of
looked up barely got his hands off the ground. And
I kicked him with my right foot. I like, but

(32:06):
not like a karadi gig.

Speaker 2 (32:07):
It was like you know how you can pun a
football totally? I can picture it.

Speaker 4 (32:10):
Ye kick it like forty yards and I heard a
noise and the noise the noise was Jackie was like
hearing two two. I forced hit each other like a crack.
I thought I broke his neck. So what I thought was,
I'm going to be uh manslaughter, Yeah, which is accidental killing.

(32:35):
But you killed somebody, you gotta you gotta be punished,
of course. And uh luckily though I guess I didn't
break his neck. He must have been you know, I
had leather shoes on so much just smack the side
of his face and just made the noise that sounded.

Speaker 2 (32:47):
Like, yeah, the big smack, and it might be clear done.
So this is not the kind of thing that Terry
would have done. He wouldn't have been involved.

Speaker 4 (32:53):
Cherry never did this. Though Terry was behind the bar.
Oh you know, get back to Terry. And Terry was
a great barge at you know, you could see him
from my a way. He had his own section of
the nightclub. The whole front bar was Terry's. And yeah,
it was a long you know, countertop and always, as

(33:15):
I recall, lined with a bunch of girls. You know,
you had that long blonde hair back then. Yes, And
he was lean and he was tall, and you know,
girls like the guy's working in the clubs for some reason,
you know, our bouncers and bartenders, we all had.

Speaker 2 (33:33):
Luck lock. Yes, I'm glad you said it, because I
was reading like some Facebook things of people reflecting on
memories of the Anchor Club and memory what it was like.
And someone she didn't spare any words. She said, there
was quite a bit of hanky panky going on, and
so I think we.

Speaker 4 (33:46):
All Well, it was easy for me because I lived
on top of the club in a penthouse. Oh you did,
oh no viral staircase. Yes you you would go into
the back rooms in the Anchor Club. There's a spot
ral staircase. I take the girls up there. I opened
the door. Now, Whitey the owner made the place for himself.
He lived there, but his wife, he had a new wife.

(34:08):
She refused to let him go back in there because
she knew he had experienced with a lot, that it
was a penthouse on top of the nightclub. And he
walked to me and he goes, hey, by the way,
my nickname was not the Dragon. I was called chopped
chop like chop suey or chop you know, karate chop. Yeah,
he says, chop. Here are the keys of the penhouse.

(34:30):
It's all yours. Oh my god, yes, get a girl,
bring her up there it was, And I get into
Playboy Mansion and Hugh Heffner keeps that place pretty plush
and everything, but it's a dunk compared to Whitey's penhouse.

Speaker 1 (34:46):
It was.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
Yeah, describe it for me.

Speaker 4 (34:48):
Well, it had a bar. As soon as you walk in,
there's a big bar there, you know, and then big
push couches. They didn't have big screen TVs back then,
but if they did, they would. He had as big
as screen as you can get, and and he in
the front of it. And then you open up the
door there's a bathroom and a huge master bedroom. In
the bat master bedroom, that bed could tell stories.

Speaker 2 (35:14):
I gotta ask you, don uh did did you ever
hand the keys to Terry?

Speaker 4 (35:19):
Uh no, no, no, no Terry ever you know, I
we didn't know we were both going to become they
must say anything. Actually, you know we we did not.
Uh uh. There was no competition, like but we He

(35:42):
was like everybody else. I know as much about Terry
as I do the other bartenders or the other bouncers,
and the janitor and the waitresses. You know, there's a
lot of people working in that club, absolutely, and and
you know, Terry didn't work there for like like me
for like, you know, six seven straight years.

Speaker 2 (35:57):
He was there for you know a year maybe a year. Yeah,
But it's like this, like when you look at his
record of like all his wrestling matches, there's this like
whole of the year it stands out and it's because
he was doing this and that's why wrestling fans are
so fascinated by what he was up to.

Speaker 3 (36:14):
He had.

Speaker 2 (36:14):
Do you remember ed Leslie his buddy.

Speaker 4 (36:16):
Yes, Eddie, why all you know Eddie?

Speaker 2 (36:19):
Eddie?

Speaker 4 (36:20):
As I recall, he was a younger guy, but he
was big as well. He was you know what I
mean big, I mean big for a normal human. But
both of them got much bigger when you do the
wrestler yes, yeah, you know, on the weights and you
get on a little bit of what they're called performance enhancers. Yep,

(36:40):
you grow, you get bigger.

Speaker 2 (36:41):
And both of them did absolutely and uh you know
Edis told a story about how him and Terry kind
of did like a you know, there was a girl
that wanted both of them and there was like a
competition to see who could get it get it first,
because Terry had responsibility for cleaning up the bar and
closing down, whereas Eddie was just working the doors, and
he tells was a hilarious story of how he that
this apparently this girl was a screamer and by the

(37:04):
time Eddie came out doing his thing with her, Terry
uh checked out. He wasn't interested in competing on that level.
That's not right to you.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Well, listen, I did not, but I was not promiscuous
around Terry or Eddie, right you know. Uh, like I said,
they kind of came in and kind of left. It
was just a short stop for them. Now, the other bartender,
I still talk to him to this day. He lives.
I named George, and uh, you know he I knew

(37:39):
everybody in the club, but you know, I didn't know
in the future that Terry would become some famous.

Speaker 2 (37:46):
You're right, he didn't, right, So you were like watching
his every move knowing that this guy is a huge deal.
Now I understand, I understand.

Speaker 4 (37:51):
You do it to me. I mean I was just
good guy old at the time, managing the club, and
I got it by default because what happened was on
one night they caught the real manager stealing oh and
they fired it in the middle of the night. They
need somebody to take over. They just said, don you,
you just take over and we'll find a new manager. Well,

(38:14):
I started changing things, and they, like I said, we
had Monday Night Fever. Then we had a thing called
the Wet t Shirt Contest. And then as a lady,
so we had five nights a week. We're packed like
weekend nights. And Whitey saw no money coming in, and yeah,
I and they never got rid of me. I had
to quit and become a kickboxing champion. And white he said,

(38:36):
if it doesn't work out, he said, you come back
to Florida, we'll open up a club in Fort Loder.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Wrestling podcast Sick of the Ads? Sign up for ad
free shows and even more content at patreon dot com.

(39:05):
Slash the Lapsed Fan. He's the Lapsed Fan Wrestling podcast
with Jack and Jpisarro.

Speaker 2 (39:25):
That manager you took over for, Don? Was he like
just skimming off the top or was he like making
off with the money never to be seen again? What
was that whole thing?

Speaker 4 (39:33):
It was his banker was the mother of one of
the bartenders.

Speaker 2 (39:42):
Okay, and he didn't know that.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
He's coming in every week jumping thousands of dollars into
his personal checking account.

Speaker 2 (39:51):
Oh there it is, And yeah, and he he didn't.

Speaker 4 (39:55):
Realize it, but he started buying properties up around Cocoa Beach,
like big, beautiful homes, and in his mind he was saying,
oh h there. He didn't tell anybody there were his properties.
He said, Oh, I'm taking a side job because I
take extra money and I'm taking care of the yards.
So he would I guess he would go and either

(40:16):
pretend or he would actually mow the lawns and take
care of the gard I don't know, but he he
claimed that all these houses he had to do this
were extra work. Now that makes you sound like a
pretty honest bartender, because if you're doing yard work to
supplement your income and you're actually managing one of the
most successful clubs in Central Florida, you're not a thief, right.

(40:41):
I wouldn't steal one penny. There's no difference in my
mind to steal a penny or steal a million dollars
for somebody. Yes, yeah, it's the same thing. Show goes,
not like, oh well I only took it. It was
just right. I'm not that guilty. No, it's the whole
it's the concept of it. Yeah, you know, that's that's

(41:01):
the best job I ever had working for Whitey and
I'm gone from him. No, No, I did just the opposite.
Everything I did was to increase the income. And from
what I could see, Terry was the same way. He
had the same assu as me. We appreciated Whitey highering us,
and that's why Terry became instantly became good friends with Whitey.
As a matter of fact, I think I'm not one

(41:22):
hundred percent sure, right, I think Whitey was his best
man at his Weddy.

Speaker 2 (41:25):
I've heard that.

Speaker 4 (41:27):
I think he was. I think he was. Now you
know what's not just a boss when you get to
that level, right, and when when he's in your family like.

Speaker 2 (41:35):
That, absolutely, well, white He's fascinating because you know I
was looking through like when he would show up and
after Anchor Club closed, he got into the strip business.
He had I think treasure around.

Speaker 4 (41:45):
I visit him in Miami.

Speaker 2 (41:46):
He had a strip club, that strip club, and then
he opened other places I think along the years in
other states. And at one point even I was reading
don that there was some the FBI was looking at
mafia ties and like the mid nineties, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:58):
Yeah, yeah, I've actual see some agents undercover guys came
and talked to me when I worked at the Anger Club.
You know, I don't even know why they did it,
but but they came and they said, look, we're not
looking at you. We know you're not involved, the guy saying,
and I don't, thinking to myself, well, the agents aren't
supposed to tell anybody that they're investigating the club. And

(42:20):
it could could have been tax fraud because you know,
every dime that comes in almost back in those days
was cash, yes, you know, and how can you find
out you can estimate what they're making by the amount
of whiskey scotch rom they're ordering. You can kind of
extract I'm saying, if they want to do, because but

(42:40):
nobody's going to go in there and count every drink
somebody's got. They're doing so the I R S. Maybe
it was an I r S investigation, or it could
have been they might have thought Whitey was laundering drug
money because there's a lot of going on in Florida
in the seventies. But but I I never was involved
in anything. And you know, I know, being innocent does

(43:05):
it always protect you, right.

Speaker 2 (43:08):
Fortunately, it's ancient enough history because one of the things
you know, they said was that you know, in like
the late eighties when White he got involved with with
the treasure run. Then he ended up getting like physically
assaulted by some some mafia related guys. So it seems he.

Speaker 4 (43:21):
Actually there's a guy named Frank. Yeah, and Frank and
White he became good friends. And Frank is an old
Italian Chicago guy. And and through a complete coincidence, I
met an actor out here who's related to Frank, and
he knew Whitey and we knew all the same people.

(43:43):
And the guy now he does he out here, he
acted for a while, but he went back to Chicago,
but he's part of the same Chicago. Uh. Listen, this
is the way a mob works with legitimate businessman you
don't have, let's say, but you know how to run
a nightclub or whatever. They give you the cash to
open up your club, and then you give them x

(44:03):
amount every week under the table yep. Catch of course,
you know, you don't send them checks. But and then
they they they basically just say, hey, you know, we
we want we want everything on it.

Speaker 2 (44:20):
And now I'm not saying why he did that, No, no,
of course I know, but that's that was the scene.

Speaker 4 (44:25):
Yeah, the type of thing they would do with a
nightclub like that.

Speaker 2 (44:28):
Yeah, that's some that that's kind of what topless cub
the same thing, topless clubs. Yes, specially you know you
hear about it even more in the strip club business.

Speaker 4 (44:35):
You know that you don't need as big as a
crowd because if you're laundering your money, right, you don't
care how much profit comes in, really, right, you you're
you're what you're actually doing is.

Speaker 2 (44:48):
Is hiding the source of the illegal funds. Yeah right, yeah,
that that's you know, there's a reason Tony Soprano has
the strip club, right, it's it's.

Speaker 4 (44:56):
My brother served three years for counterfeit help prison and
one he had twenty five yeercent, so he served eighty
five percent. So he was in for over twenty years
for cocaine smuggling. And it was only one plane load
that they caught him with. And according to the DEA,
the plane was holding fifty million dollars of cocaine.

Speaker 2 (45:18):
Holy shit, Now if and my brother said he.

Speaker 4 (45:22):
Hit it for eight years, he was bringing it in.
He had three three airplanes, one helicopter. He had boats,
you know, ships and stuff. So he's bringing out his
cocaine for eight years and one of them had fifty
million dollars. Now, how much coke would you bring if
you had two airplanes, boats and all that. You bring
it as much as you could, right, And he did

(45:44):
that and he got caught and he fought the case
and everything, and I helped him. I get as much
money as I could first lawyers and detectives and all
that stuffy and he served his time.

Speaker 2 (45:56):
Though there you go, and yeah, so you know, you
know you're talking about in other words, you've seen.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
This well, Florida. It was those days. You know, there's
a lot of legal stuff going on. And my brother
served his time and he's out now, he's free, produced
two movies.

Speaker 2 (46:09):
Good for him, that's awesome. Yeah, because you know, the
part of the reason I went this way and my
head don was because when Terry one time is in
twenty sixteen, he posted on Facebook because someone had put
a picture up of him shortly after this time in
his life when he got back into wrestling, and he
had said, you know, I just bought I just bought
this wrestling gear because I quit wrestling for a year
to run a bar, the Anchor Club in Coco Beach, Florida,

(46:29):
and also had a gym called white Terry and then
he said the cops. The cops gracefully asked me to
leave town as the reason that that he stopped working
at the Anchor Club. And so obviously my mind and
our mind and wrestling fan's mind is like, what, why
were the cops involved? Does that make any sense to you?

Speaker 4 (46:47):
Well, that's kind of what they did to me. Though.
Some guy came to the Anchor Club and he tried
to talk with him, and he said, hey, listen, we're
investigating this place, and we know you have nothing to
do with it and whatever, but I'm just letting you
know right now that we are. So I maybe at
some point, uh you know, since Whitey did have some
connections with with people that which they call they call

(47:10):
it organized crime. It's not like they're going to go
bob somebody grandmother, no understood. They have businesses where money
is being made not in a legal way, and then
they're using legitimate businesses to launder the money. Correct, And
then that's organized crime. And they and they pay their taxes,
you know, they're tax paying criminal. Yes, And I don't

(47:32):
know I never saw anything like that. Why's club any
of them? Uh? But I was A guy came to
me one night and said that to me, warned me
that they're they're they're getting ready to bust the Anchor Club,
and they know that I'm not involved with it.

Speaker 2 (47:45):
I see.

Speaker 4 (47:47):
Even told me that.

Speaker 2 (47:48):
So one of the we we are to understand that
the Anchor Club pretty much closed because Whitey's wife was
sick of him being on that scene. It sounds to
me like the Anchor Club closed because agents were coming
around asking questions.

Speaker 4 (47:58):
Good, good day, Right, that it was under investigation.

Speaker 2 (48:03):
And and now so you were gone by the time
the club, the club still existed when you left, right,
It didn't close while you were there.

Speaker 4 (48:10):
No, No, it was. It was, yeah, it was. It was.
It was actively making money. And you know, everything was
the same except I was gone. I left because I
wanted to be a kickboxer, yes, And with Terry, he
left because he wanted to be a wrestler.

Speaker 2 (48:27):
I don't and I don't think anything ever came of
the kind of investigations you're talking toout. It's not like
there was like some big raid that.

Speaker 4 (48:32):
No, no, no, why do He never got busted as
far as I know. And he had a partner named Ed.

Speaker 2 (48:37):
Yes, he did, and uh.

Speaker 4 (48:41):
I got to know Ed a little bit. I don't
think they were actually part friends as partners, I did.
They were not friendly to each other. Isn't that a
hard way to do business? You're in business with a guy,
but he's not actually your.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Friend, right, Not a lot of trust there, you know,
that's you know, I mean there is, there can be trust,
but it's different when you're you're a miser of a friend.

Speaker 4 (49:08):
I think.

Speaker 2 (49:10):
Ed was.

Speaker 4 (49:10):
Ed was there at the club, and instantly when they
fired this guy Dell, he put me in charge. Why
he wasn't even at the club then, I don't know
where he was. He was he was partying, maybe in
Miami or something, but he wasn't physically there. It was
like a Friday night, Saturday night. And I became manager,
and so they're gonna they're looking for a new manager.
And a week goes by. In another week and I'm

(49:33):
having ideas about you know, ladies night. Uh oh, we
had a what they call a wet T shirt night.

Speaker 2 (49:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (49:41):
Anyway, I'm planning on things to make money with the club,
which these two guys never did. Ed and White never
came up with one idea. And that guy Dell, the
other manager. He didn't have one idea to increase their
cash flow. So I thought, these I'm coming up with
ideas and they're all successful. And so Ed I think

(50:03):
Ed would have complained and White he would have complained
about me taken over the club because I had no
experience running a nightclub and you know, I was barely
a bartender. And but they saw that there's only two
things I can do well, kickbox and run a nightclub.
It just happened that that I.

Speaker 2 (50:21):
Was got the chance to do both. Yeah, yeah, that's
really terrific.

Speaker 4 (50:26):
And as first Terry, it was great bartender, always had
a great attitude. You know, in a club like that,
you can't come in in a bad mood, you know
what I mean, everybody's going there to have fun. You
gotta smile, and you gotta talk and make conversation and
and Terry did that stuff. It's the added thing. You
don't just serve the drink and go and then go

(50:47):
to the end of the bar and stay away from
all the company customers. They're socializing going on. And he
was really good at that. He was good. Everybody like
talking to him and everybody and he was friendly with everybody.

Speaker 2 (50:57):
So as we were talking about kind of that scene,
you know, Florida in the seventies done, And one thing
that came to mind is later on is Terry gunn
into wrestling? You know, he had a lot of friends
and he made some enemies too. Of course it's the
wrestling business.

Speaker 4 (51:08):
Yo.

Speaker 2 (51:08):
Jesse Ventura didn't like him very much. Think this guy
David the movie with Rowdy Riddy Piper. Oh, we know
that we were going to ask you about made you
want to you want to tell us that story?

Speaker 4 (51:18):
He was great, Yeah, yeah, well, okay, I'm gonna tell
something now. Roddy's passed away now, but he knows I
hold nough Rodgers. The very first fight scene we did,
the very first one. We do the choreography that's been
planned for that part. You know that goes to a

(51:39):
certain level, and then we we only have a certain
number of moves, like I throw six punches, he throws
six punches, something like that.

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Yep.

Speaker 4 (51:47):
Well, the director didn't know he's seen it for the
first time. He didn't know when to say cut. So
when we did the last technique, he rocked. Now, this
is the first fight scene we do for the movie.
He is all amped up like as a Drillon's going
and he's like, he must have flashed back that we're
we've got a live audience. He can't stop. He grabs

(52:10):
a PVC pipe on the wall, a real one, pulls
it off and hits me right in the face with it.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Oh my god, Oh my god, hits me out my.

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Chin, blood spurts out everywhere. He throws the PC he
piped down on the ground. This is not Corey Graph,
by the way, and he grabs he goes down down.
I'm so sorry.

Speaker 2 (52:30):
I don't know how. I don't know what I was thinking.

Speaker 4 (52:32):
In other words, he just something. He flipped out because
he didn't say here the director didn't say cut because
he didn't know we were to have finished the fight scene.
But he's he's used to going line where there is
no stopping in the middle of a fight scene, right,
but you gotta keep making things look real. So he

(52:54):
I don't know, I don't know what happened. He flashed back. Now,
that was the first fight scene in the movie. This
is in Toronto. I'm thinking to myself, this is gonna
be a hard movie because that the very first fight
scene we're doing. And I get hit in the face
with a pipe and blood's coming out, you know, but

(53:15):
it didn't need to be stitched. Oh thank goodness. But
they covered it with makeup afterwards. I think sometimes you
might be able to see it, but you know, this
is early in the movie First Fight Team. We did
so from then on though, Rowdy Roddy Piper, of all
the stuntman actors that I worked with, was the most gentle,

(53:36):
safest one I worked with. That he was great because
he goes you know what I think, he felt so guilty.
He went above and beyond the call of duty, if
you know what I mean, Yes, I really care about
the other person. Look, then, this is a small world
Hollywood martial art action guys. We work with the same
stunt guys. Van Dam knocks people's feet out, he breaks

(53:58):
their noses. He broke one guy. He broke his neck.
A guy's a small fracture in one of his bones
in his neck by hitting m in the side of
the head with a kick. And Segal he grabs guys
by the wrist and he he hurts guys as well.
And I saw a guy came into my set once

(54:19):
I was doing a movie for HBO called Red sun
Rising and he takes his shirt off and he's got
bruises on his arms and I go one of those
and he goes, oh, well, yeah, last week I did
a fight scene with Steven Skall and he likes to
go full contact with his blocks, like throwing a fake
punch right and Segals just slamming his arm with a

(54:40):
hammer fist in the same spot over and over and
over for the movie. And that guy it was all
bruised up. That's ridiculous. Yes, that's you know what. He's
not going to hit me with one of those shots,
because gapidated say with Van Dam you know, I mean,

(55:04):
we don't, we don't. I don't speak negatively about Nanda,
but people ask me about him. They say, done, how
good of a kickboxing champion was? I said, to my knowledge,
he never had one pro fight. He had about eighteen
amateur fight three round fights as an amateur kickboxer, and
that's it. He's not a world champion kickboxer.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
He's not even the top ten I've seen. I've seen.
You know, people ask you questions about him, and you know,
you lay that case out JP. Are you going to
ask something there?

Speaker 4 (55:32):
Well?

Speaker 3 (55:32):
I was just curious like what you know, I mean speculating,
like why what is the mentality of like of them?

Speaker 4 (55:40):
Just in the very beginning he thought he needed to
lie to get his foot in the door. But here's
what is. When Sean my best friend was Chris Pam,
so I hung out as well. You know, I was
going to talk to Chris rest in peace. But but
Sean has celebrity guys. They ask him, they find out

(56:01):
that he knows me. They asked him if they could
take me out to dinner because they want to meet
me because being a retired not because I do low
budget B movie acting, because I'm a world champion kickboxer.
They respect them, like like there's a wedding and Dustin
Hoffman asked his wife if he could sit next to
me because his wife knew my wife. And so I go, yeah, yeah, yeah,

(56:24):
he can sit next to him down and so Justin
Hoffmann goes JHN. He goes, oh, you don't think I'm
bothering you. He said, I've never met a kickboxer or
really a pro fighter. He said, I asked some questions,
can I will you give me answers to some questions?
And he asked me things like what does it feel
like to knock somebody out whether or do you have
second thought? Do you feel sorry for them? Or do
you are you worried about their health? In other words,

(56:45):
he was asking, he's never gonna get in the ring
to fight anybody, right, but he's going to get from
the horse's mouth what I my honest opinion, how I
felt about what I did for a living, and so yeah.
But but like Robert du Ball, he took me out
to dinner. Guys that you consider that I would consider
famous and prestigious are interested in none my background and

(57:11):
what it's like to be a pro fighter, and.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Oh yeah, thats a lot.

Speaker 4 (57:15):
You know. We just saw called up Chris and asked
him if because he felt that I get through somebody.
We're best friends. We lived together and Brad pitt'son fans
of the UFC. Well, I was the original and one
of the original announcers for the UFC. He sees me
on that and Brad Pitt asked if I'll be his
personal trainer and teaching him fight moves, and I said no,

(57:36):
I said, I'm trying to do a movie career myself.
I said, I, you don't have time, and anybody can
teach you the basics of martial arts. You know, Brad
Pitt doesn't need Don the Dragon Wilson for that. Turns
out he was doing a movie called Fight Club and
he wanted to earn some kickbox and stuff like if
I sidekick, maybe a spin kick, or he wanted to
add some kickbox, and of course I would have been

(57:57):
easily able to and then I would have on the
relationship with Right right now, has Bratt done a couple
of successful action movies? I think so, like, what could
they have an Asian guy doing martial arts and Troy.

Speaker 2 (58:14):
Don. You know, it's funny because I was talking about
you mentioned Piper, and you know that was another guy
that Hogan made a lot of money with. But you know,
until the very you know, up until they reconciled later,
they had some tension. I brought up Jesse Ventura, and
I brought up another guy, David Schultz, because things that
they've said, you know, in the past about Hulk was
that you know, it wasn't it wasn't necessarily a secret
according to them. According to them, that you know, if

(58:36):
you needed to get stuff be at drugs. I suppose steroids,
they're not really very specific, but that you know there
was Terry had a reputation of someone that could get
you connected to.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
Think anybody in LA can do that. You know what
I free for fitness guy I got. He's fitness guy
for stars. Now one of the stars, Angela Bassett. Have
you ever heard of her?

Speaker 2 (58:58):
She of course, okay, she needed to get in shape.

Speaker 4 (59:02):
She hired this guy. And so anyway, when I got him,
the very first thing he said to me is he goes, Okay,
I can get you anything, what kind of things? And
he just went down like a laundry list of drugs
that he's got access to that he can give me
and I'll just my body will reshape within three weeks,
four weeks. And because that's what actors do, they hire

(59:23):
a guy who's got access to all the drugs. Obviously
they've got a doctor given it to him. Because it's
not stuff that you it's prescription. It's not just protein
tablets that you get at Costco. It's high grade enhancers

(59:45):
that will make your body look great. But I didn't
want to do any of that stuff. I didn't do
that in my career. What I do is this, I
diet before a movie and I dropped, you know, ten
or fifteen extra path and then I look a little
bit cut. But my characters are not bodybuilders in the movies.

(01:00:09):
If you see any of them, like one of them,
I'm a father and I've got a daughter. I'm a
repo man, another one, I'm a uh, the male man.
I'm in the Air Force and I'm in them delivering
the mail. In other words, I'm not supposed to look
like a bodybuilder in my movies.

Speaker 2 (01:00:27):
Absolutely, And that's that's kind of what ends up happening.
Is as Terry gets back into wrestling, all of a sudden,
the business is full of these bodybuilders who have these
cartoonists and you know.

Speaker 4 (01:00:35):
The guys like the Rock.

Speaker 2 (01:00:37):
Now that guy is talented, sure, absolutely.

Speaker 4 (01:00:41):
He can do all that. He's got the look and
then he could do all the wrestling stuff. He's also
he could do comedy for gosh sakes, yes, yes, and
any and he can do drama and he's just all
around talented entertainer. And you know, I think me and
Terry probably should have at some point work together in

(01:01:02):
a movie. We should have done some movies together, absolutely
bad guys and good guys. And yeah, but you know what,
he wasn't to my knowledge, he wasn't living anywhere where
I would run into him.

Speaker 2 (01:01:14):
Or oh he stayed in Tampa. He was in Tampa
pretty much his whole life.

Speaker 4 (01:01:19):
Okay, he wasn't in l A. Then.

Speaker 2 (01:01:21):
Now, well, you know his wife is from LA and
he I think he had a house in La as
he became a bigger deal and stuff, and he was
known in LA. But I was going to ask, you know,
does it make sense to you that even you know,
running a gym and stuff, that's where all the steroids
were traffic through was the gyms. Would it surprised you
if maybe part of what those agents were looking into was,
you know, sales of steroids because those were huge in Florida.

Speaker 4 (01:01:43):
Yeah. Well, you know what, I'm old school. You know
what is You take your vitamins, protein, towns maybe, yeah, prayers,
AIG diet and train hard. I'm not into the drugs.
I just I just there's a lot of science that's

(01:02:05):
come out. It says it does if it enlarges your muscle,
your heart is a and damages your heart.

Speaker 2 (01:02:15):
Yeah. I think that's having a lot of.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
People and I think Dan dam has even had some
heart trouble and I think Stallone may have had some
heart trouble, maybe even Schwarzenegger, but I think, uh yeah,
I damage the illegal drug, well very illegal, but even
if you get the legal if some doctor prescribes it
or whatever, it's damages your heart. And you know what

(01:02:39):
I I I tell people, there's no there's no drug
I can take that'll protect my chin.

Speaker 2 (01:02:45):
That's right.

Speaker 4 (01:02:48):
So I'm just gonna get my card, you up, and
my defense, my reflexes sharp, and yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:02:55):
Yeah, nobody knows better than that a wrestling fan, the
kind of heart effects that steroid use can have on somebody.
So many wrestlers have died so young. And I just
wondered because the steroids were so replete back then, Like
you said, it wasn't quite you know, from a federal
lot perspective, it wasn't illegal like to have them. I
mean you probably needed a prescription and stuff, and there
were state laws, but it wasn't doctors can prescribe them,

(01:03:15):
of course, and they did. And that's why the WWF
had such trouble with the indictments and stuff, was because
they had a doctor that was given the guy stuff.

Speaker 4 (01:03:23):
Look, I had a friend of mine that was I
think he had cancer at some point, but they gave
him some steroids because he needed to gain weight. And
I don't know steroids do help you.

Speaker 2 (01:03:34):
Oh yeah, there's legitimate useless for them.

Speaker 4 (01:03:36):
Yeah, you know, it gives you a little bit more metabolism,
speeds or metabolism or something. So there are reasons why
they create that drug, and doctors have access to it.
But you got to get somebody kind of a little
on the side, and that's why they got trainers. That's
what I found out because the trainer came to me
immediately said he's got access to all the stuff that

(01:03:59):
I would need should change my body. And I said,
I'm not using any of it. I said, just helped
me with a weight training and with my diet. And
then because you know I fought for years, that won
my walk around waight was two o five when I
was young, and I thought it won sixty five. So
and I wasn't fat at two o five. I mean

(01:04:20):
I played basketball. I mean I was just big and
strong and muscular, and I played football as well, and
I played I did three clatand sports wow football in wrestling. Yeah,
well I played basketball and football for the Coast Guard. Okay,
then when I went to Brevard Community College. It when
when the draft ended after one year. I went to

(01:04:42):
college in seventy three, and the after I went through
a year. So I got out of the Coast Guard
and went to a junior college and wrestled for two
years of the junior college. And what we did was, Man,
they used to like roll my windows up. I'd put
a rubber suit on and drive around in my car
and be like one hundred and thirty degrees. If I
wasn't eighteen years old, I would have been dead because

(01:05:02):
I would just dehydrate myself. That's how I get Nate Waite.

Speaker 2 (01:05:05):
Oh, man, that's dangerous stuff. So did do you? Did
you have a sense done of why the the gym
closed that Whitey opened with Terry.

Speaker 4 (01:05:14):
No, I did not, other than the fact that Terry's
interest the gym was a means to an end, I believe,
and the ending true for him. He got accepted for tryouts,
and he got accepted as a wrestler, and he had
a career as a pro wrestler. Why does he want
to come up to Congo Beach and run Jim?

Speaker 2 (01:05:31):
Did did you ever go see him him wrestle?

Speaker 4 (01:05:34):
Ever?

Speaker 2 (01:05:34):
In Florida.

Speaker 4 (01:05:35):
No, I never did. I never saw Terry wrestle. I
did go to that story he had in Orlando once.

Speaker 2 (01:05:43):
M store of memorabilia yea or something.

Speaker 4 (01:05:50):
Products from his UH wrestling background. But but I've never
I've never been to a live wrestling match any any
of them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:58):
Did any of the companies ever try to recruit you
into doing a match?

Speaker 4 (01:06:04):
No, because you know what I think. My period of
athleticism professional although I fought until two thousand and two,
so I from nineteen seventy four twenty eight years of
kickboxing fighting. My real career was in the eighties. I
was Fighter of the Year in eighty four, and I
was the first fighter to fight on ESPN. I've got

(01:06:24):
a lot of first because you know, I started a
sport in this country. My first fight was in seventy
four and it was a second kickboxing promotion in America.
They had one in la and then my brother promoted
one in Orlando, Florida, and I fought in the one
in Orlando, Florida, and that was, yeah, the beginning of

(01:06:44):
kickboxing for America. And then in seventy nine, I fought
the first fight televised on ESPN. Really and they liked
it so much they bought a show. They signed a
contract for a show every week.

Speaker 2 (01:06:57):
Yeah, a lot. There were a lot of first generation
American kick boxing fans that grew up on those ESPN
two fights as you're as you're recalling. Yeah, back then
they called it full contact karate, full contact karate, right.

Speaker 4 (01:07:09):
Yeah, full contact art. But it's really not. It's kickboxing,
you know. That's that's the sport it is. You have
phone pads on your feet.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Fascinating. Eighty four was eighty four was your year? And
for Terry, eighty four is when he won the title
in Madison Square Garden and launched his WWF the run
of the Big, Huge Run. So both of you guys
that year had a huge, huge year.

Speaker 4 (01:07:29):
That's strange. I'll admit it's a But my life, like
I said, is one series of odd, unbelievable coincidences. Yeah,
like things that things that actually cannot happen but happened
to me. I'm gonna give you just one example. This
is not even for the end.

Speaker 2 (01:07:47):
Just to go ahead, please.

Speaker 4 (01:07:49):
I had four HBO world premieres. So what they did
was they paid five hundred thousand dollars to the producer
of one of my four of my movies, and they
could show up one time, and the producers love that.
That's like an extra bonus. I half a million dollars each,
So I got four of those. So HBO invites me
every year to go to New York Timee Square and
go to the big party. They have a big party.
It's called Urban Action Showcase. And so I go there

(01:08:13):
and I do everything for HBO. I sign, I take pictures,
and you know, I kind of I was tired. I
wanted to get back to my hotel room. And it's
like a one block away. It was called the what's
the name of thet I can't even remember the name
of it, but it's in Tinmee Square and it's just
walking distance from the event. And so I'm walking really fast,

(01:08:34):
and I thought to myself, it's night now. I don't
know if you've been in New York City Timee Square
Saturday night. A's like nine o'clock, ten o'clock prime time.
It's packed. It's just I'm saying, thousands of people on
the sidewalks, and I think, oh, I might have passed
my hotel. I was walking so fast, I might have

(01:08:55):
passed it. So the first woman, the young woman, is
walking past me. I go, excuse me this, do you
know where the oh it was called the Margaritaville Hotel?
I said, you know where the Margaritaville Hotel is? And
she looks at in her mouth opens up. She goes,
are you Aubreanna Wilson's father? And I said, yeah, that's
my daughter. She goes, I'm road me. Your best friend
used to drive.

Speaker 2 (01:09:15):
Me to school every day in law.

Speaker 4 (01:09:17):
And I looked at her, my daughter's best friend in
high school, who I had not you know, I didn't
recognize her because four years a high school girl changes? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (01:09:28):
Did did it kind of freak you out? Like maybe
she was coming up behind you, like maybe she was
like stopping you in front of me, coming in my
direction in front And I.

Speaker 4 (01:09:36):
Just looked at it and said, do you know where
the Margaritaville hote And she was. She was in shock.
She couldn't believe she's so I said, let's take a
picture for both of us so we could tell people.
So I take the picture and I posted on Facebook.
That's the only social media I do is Facebook. I
posted and I said, I ran into my daughter's best friend.
What of the eyes, I'm going to run into my
daughter's best friend? And Times Square Saturday night, yeah, in

(01:09:57):
New York. And and one after another, they go, you
gotta play the lottery, You gotta play the lottery. You
got to go to Vegas. All of a sudden, they
think I can beat all the odds because there are
no odds. Right, you're you're you're not gonna bump into
your daughter's bed. And then and think about this, it's
just the first person I asked walking past me. It's

(01:10:20):
not like we agreed to you know.

Speaker 2 (01:10:22):
It's funny because we were talking down about how you
and and Terry's respective careers developed on a similar timeline.
But I'll tell you if he if he ran into
someone he knew in the middle of Times Square like that,
he would he would be paranoid that that person was
following him. There's no coincidences to him.

Speaker 4 (01:10:39):
Well, listen, there are there. It's called syncreticity. Yes, And
we live in an infinite universe. And I'm a science major.
My dad, like I said, my dad work at the
Kenny Space Center. My interest is kickboxing. But late at
night I stay up and I just watched documentaries. After
the document it's all my wife s a, you're obsessor,
I said, well, I I interested in these subjects. But

(01:11:04):
we live in an infinite universe. That means everything that
can happen, will happen, and will happen again. I'm saying
the most unbelievable things at a certain point. It's justly
as you're rolling dice and you said, well, I'll never
roll snake eyes ten times in a.

Speaker 2 (01:11:22):
Row, yeah, roll them up.

Speaker 4 (01:11:23):
Well, if you roll it infinitely, there'll be a time
where it's gonna hit. That's just odd. That's just a
natural law. That's like the nature's laws. It's like, yes,
you know gravity or something. You know, we can't control it.
It's just if when it's infinite, everything can happen, does happen,

(01:11:46):
and happens over and over and over.

Speaker 2 (01:11:48):
Wow. Insights from Donald, the dragon Wills and tremendous down.
I'd ask in that vein just to close out here,
how are you how do you remember the ank? How
are you gonna remember the Anchor Club?

Speaker 4 (01:11:57):
What is it? Uh?

Speaker 2 (01:11:58):
What does it go down in your memory? And Terry
being there too, it's just such a fascinating little pit
stop for both of you guys.

Speaker 4 (01:12:07):
I think I remember mainly all the different women. Yes,
I I didn't think it was going to be a
big thing at the time. But now I look back
and I thought, you know, it was a different era.
It was at a different time, and I was in

(01:12:27):
my ear, you know, eighteen years old, I mean, and
I got to learn things about women. I got to
know them because as an athlete playing football, basketball, running track,
wrestling and all the sports I did, there's no women around, right,
But working at the Anchor Club, I well, first of all,
I hired all the waitresses, so I got waitresses. He

(01:12:50):
had one woman we used as a bartender, but that
was in what they call the harpoon room. But I
was surrounded by women all the time, you know, for
my first time in my life. I got to know
them and uh the kind of women I like. And uh,
although I did make a lot of mistakes in my life,
I don't know why, because now I think back, I
should have. I know, I have a certain body type

(01:13:11):
that I like. And why would you if you know
that's your type? Why they any other time?

Speaker 2 (01:13:17):
But you did, well, you know, if you if you're
going to point to that down I got to ask you,
can you tell us just one particular wild story from
in the sex category from Anchor club days.

Speaker 4 (01:13:27):
A wild story would be there was a night correct,
and I tell you other people because it's there was
a night, yes, where it's I tell people it's either
my best night or it's some It depends on how
you look at it. It's the worst night, it's the
only Oh, that's a horrible night for you. You're terrible
for having done those things. I had a knight where

(01:13:52):
I met three girls at different dark girl women women
but they're eighteen, and took them up to my penhouse.
We got to know each other there really quickly, and
I brought them back down in one night, three different

(01:14:12):
ones and one. Now now that's pretty greedy anyway, but
they were beautiful, and I guess enough time. I guess
I was twenty one because I was manager. Then you
know it's twenty one. Wow, and yeah, I to me, well,
I wasn't overly. I nobody said done. These three girls

(01:14:34):
are going to offer themselves. You can pick one which one.
It was like three girls or women that were very attractive,
very smart, very because what happened was we would get
groups of girls coming in who are on college vacations.

Speaker 2 (01:14:48):
Oh boy, here we go.

Speaker 4 (01:14:50):
And when I see a table of beautiful young eighteen
year old girls, I always bottles of champagne there you
have need for all the girls. They all get one drink.
And they were so impressed by that.

Speaker 2 (01:15:01):
Yeah, that's a great You learned quite a bit about
how to get in that front door, didn't you that.

Speaker 4 (01:15:09):
That sheep bottle of champagne? Then now white he made
you know, I told you I went to Playboy mansion.
I know what Hugh Heffner's place looks like. It's plush
and it's fun. Whitey's was, uh not a level above,
but it was. It was like that. It's like if
the Elvis. I used Pressley's room one time in Caesar's

(01:15:29):
Palace where I had a fight. They said, you know,
I always used this for his uh dressing room. You know,
so I know plush. When I got gaudy plush like
Trump likes it. You know, gold gold, it's gold played
it either it's all fake, but it's gold colored.

Speaker 2 (01:15:44):
Yeah, and white he kept it.

Speaker 4 (01:15:47):
That was Some girls would come up and just you
didn't have to say anything important or smart or fun.
The work, Yeah, they go up and they feel there's
something special. You know, maybe I would have another bottle
of champagne.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Baby.

Speaker 4 (01:16:04):
Anyway, I did that three different girls in one night, and.

Speaker 2 (01:16:09):
Uh, person a personal a personal record, A good good night.

Speaker 3 (01:16:13):
For Dawn or how disgusted, So someone list every as
long as everybody was satisfied, that's all the counts.

Speaker 4 (01:16:22):
Well, you know what, I hope they girls, But I
was mad mind everything.

Speaker 2 (01:16:33):
This is exactly what I hoped for. Non as far
as like putting us into that place and time and
what what a what a time it must have been
for you, for Terry, for for everyone on that scene.

Speaker 4 (01:16:45):
Yeah it was. And I'm sure there's a lot of
New Yorkers who talk about Studio fifty four because from
what I understand, it's the same kind of surreal place
where everybody had to go and it was the place
to be and whatever. Well in the those days in
the seventies, like I don't know when Saturday Anteaver came out,
but it was right around okay, well right around that time.

(01:17:09):
It was the place. It was the club. When when
it comes to Central Florida, it was the club.

Speaker 2 (01:17:15):
It was the club. It was the club. Indeed, and
we want to thank don the Dragon Wilson, star of
stage and screen, kickboxing legend and a legend now in
our minds because what a great uh, what a great
window into what it was like. Donnie. We can't thank
you enough for all of your recollections here. It's so great.

Speaker 4 (01:17:31):
Oh well, thank you for inviting me. I honored to
be part of Terry's legacy. And as you know, his
life and his is I know nothing but good things
about him. And yeah, we we went off in different

(01:17:52):
directions but in some ways, and then we ended up
with the same lawyer.

Speaker 2 (01:17:59):
Oh man, that's quite a story. So don thanks again, man.

Speaker 4 (01:18:02):
Yeah, thank you guys.

Speaker 2 (01:18:04):
Preous is a city preceding announcement as a t.

Speaker 1 (01:18:06):
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