Backlund Bob - Backlund : from all-American boy to professional wrestlings world champion

Copyright 2015 by Bob Backlund and Rob Miller

Foreword copyright 2015 by Rowdy Roddy Piper

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Jacket photos courtesy of the author

Print ISBN: 978-1-61321-695-8

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-61321-696-5

To Corki, for standing by me all these years.

To Vincent J. McMahon, for giving me the chance of a lifetime.

Table of Contents

FOREWORD BY ROWDY RODDY PIPER

I was barely twenty years old.

Bob Backlund was the world champion from New York. He had come in to the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles, where he always drew a lot of money. On this night, however, he had just arrived from Tokyo, where he had just completed a tour with Antonio Inokis New Japan promotion the night before. Promoter Mike LaBell had asked Vince McMahon Sr. if his champion could stop over in Los Angeles on his way back from Japan and defend the World Wide Wrestling Federations Heavyweight Championship at the Olympic against his Americas Champion.

Vince Sr. agreed.

I was the Americas Champion.

The hype for this match had been terrific, and the building was completely sold out. In fact, I think because of fire code issues they had to turn people away from the box office that night.

At the appointed time for the main event, we climbed into the ring, went through the pre-match introductions, and then started tussling back and forth and back and forth. The time limit was sixty minutes, and Bobby took me with him for fifty-nine minutes that night. I know I got some frequent flyer miles from that match.

Bobby and I had never met before in the ring anywhere, in any promotion, so it was a real testament to his skill in the ring that he could come in there cold, against a guy he had never been in the ring with before, having just gotten off a long and grueling Japanese tour and a long plane flight from Tokyo to Los Angeles, and to then go fifty-nine minutes with me and make me look good. And you know, for Bobby to be going around like that, not just around the WWWF territory at the time with the same few guys, but to Japan and wrestle guys who dont speak English, and to Toronto, or Florida, or St. Louis, or to the West Coast where we wereand to wrestle guys he had not worked with beforethats not easy to do. And unlike a lot of champions before and after him, Bobby would not come into a territory and give you a cheap fifteen minutes where he did a few signature moves, took most of the match, and then got the hell out of there. To the contraryBobby would give you whatever the fans wantedand if that meant he was out there for forty-five minutes or an hour, then thats the way it was. And hed make you look like a million bucks doing it.

The night I got to wrestle him, and I remember the night like it was just the other day because it was that memorable a night for me, I learned a lot. To be able to keep the people on the edge of their seats for fifty-nine minutes, now thats saying something. And you know given Bobbys stylethere werent a lot of rest holds or running away and stalling outside the ring and killing time. You were working hard all the time, chain wrestling from high spot to high spot. We were throwing arm drags and dropkicks and leapfrogs and monkey flips and body slams and hip tosses and vertical suplexes. Bobby was so pure in there and so quick and could string moves together so quickly and with such precisiontrust me when I tell youyou had to be on your toes to keep up with Bobby Backlund.

And the people were screaming. They were digging it!

To be honest, that night in the ring with Bobby was probably one of my better pieces of work from an artistic and technical point of view that I ever hadbecause later on, as the business started to change, that old-school honest style became dwarfed and eventually totally eclipsed by show business and standard set pieces night after night after night. But that night, wrestling Bob Backlund at the Olympic taught me not just how to get over with the people, but to stay over with the people. And Bobby did that, seemingly with ease.

The night that I got to go wrestle Bobby Backlund was, for me, a showcase for promoters all around the country. It advanced me in my career, because LaBell raved about it, and the promoters understood, okay, this kid Piper can go. You know, a lot of wonderful things happened for me after that. For Bobby to be that generous with me, stopping over on his way back from Japan and giving me as much of the match as he did, that left me on top of the world. I was more over with the fans after that matcheven though he pinned methan I had been before he came. And it takes a lot of psychology, a great wrestler, and a great storyteller to do that. It was such an honor for me, especially then as such a young kid, to have had that opportunity to learn from him and to have had that kind of experience with him in a one-off match that he totally could have mailed in.

Sometime after that match, he sent me a wheelyou know, the Bob Backlund workout wheel that youve seen him use on television. I tease my son, Colt Toombs, who is an MMA fighter, because to this day, he still uses that wheel that Bobby gave me thirty years ago. I used to tell Colt stories about Bobby and our joke was always that the wheel Bobby gave me could have been used as the front wheel of an airplane. It was built so solidly that it was impossible to wear out. And you know what? That is kind of a metaphor for Bob Backlund.

When I was asked to do something for this book, Bob approached me in such a polite and humble way, that I had to remind him that the honor was mine. The honor in being able to give something back to this man is mine.

Back in the day when Bob Backlund was the world champion, there were many talented guys that had been brought up in the old territory system. Back then, you would stand on the shoulders of the guys that had come before you, and who taught you how to wrestle, and how to understand ring psychology and crowd psychology and pacing. The competition in those days was heavy, man. And Bob Backlund managed to cut through all of that, and to work his way up, the honest way, to become the world champion, and then to stay there for almost six years. Six years was like a lifetime in our sport.

And even in our sport, where the outcomes may have been predetermined, the competition for who got to occupy that spot was as fierce as it was in any sport or any profession. You know, with pro wrestling, people tend to think that it is a team sportthat you rely on everyone, but indeed its not. To become truly successful, you have to be able to cut the line. Everyone wants to kind of try and do business and get along, but everybody also wants to be on top. So the question is: how do you get to the top?