Part One: Vince McMahon, History's Greatest Monster

Robert Evans here and we'll get to the Vince McMahon episodes in a second. I wanted to let you all know that for the fourth year in a row, we are doing our fundraiser for the Portland Diaper Bank. Behind the Bastards supporters have been helping to fund the Portland Diaper Bank since twenty twenty and bought millions of diapers

Can I just say I told you so? First of all? You did? You did?

You tried to warn me, Sophie, and for like several years. Yeah, So we're doing this, and the old only people I thought could possibly help me wrestle this thing into a manageable form are two of the people I respect most when it comes to talking about.

Shit like this.

Sean Riley aka Sean Baby, who you will all well remember from the the legendary episodes that we did on Famous Karate Monster. Fucking yeah yeah, Sean. Hey, how are you doing.

Oh it's good to be back. I've missed you.

I have. I have missed you too, Sean. And this is this is going to be a special one. And I also want to introduce Tom Ryman to the program. Tom's been on a number of episodes. Tom, you're also a big wrestling fan.

Yeah, yeah, very excited to be talking about Vince sick Mann. I thought I knew everything there was to know about vincemick mahn. But the fact that you have such a volume prepared for us is making me think, like.

Did I not know how much of a ghoul he was? I thought I did? Well, figure technically a business goblin.

Yeah, he's a business gossling. Yeah, he's a business monster. There's a lot going for a business gool One of the problems with covering Vince McMahon. Weirdly enough, the thing that this episode is most similar to is writing about European royalty in the eighteen hundreds and nineteen hundreds, Because all of those like kings like Napoleon the Third or Leopold or Victoria, there was like somebody writing about every

Oh that's the king Leopold had like a Dave Meltzer and a wrestling observer and stuff just track in his every movie.

Yeah, so that's part of what's going on here. And the other part of what's going on is that, like, as I started learning about Vince, there are all these other wrestlers, Like wrestling probably has the highest density of like monsters of of any like entertainment industry sport out there, at least interesting monsters, right, Like, there's just so many fascinating weirdos.

Like a casual wrestling story is like, oh, yeah, my friend was cranky. Story tour guy's eyeball out backstage.

Yeah, it's because they're carnies. It's it's a carnival thing. And so there's this it's way more hardcore than I think the more casual person realizes. Yeah.

So every probably every episode, all of the first couple so far, we're going to be going on log aggressions where we just talk about other crazy ass stories from wrestling, because like I felt like I was doing a disservice if I didn't, I wanted.

To get and the Giant poop stories.

We are talking a lot about Andre. Yes, I love Andre. The Giants not a master to a hero. By the way, just so we're clear.

For sure, I wouldn't let an indecipherable Ultimate Warrior monologues.

Yeah, oh god, I have been watching quite a bit of wrestling. I wanted to start by asking, what is y'all's background, uh with with pro wrestling?

Oh?

Okay, uh, longtime fan since I was a kid, I grew up. I actually trained in pro wrestling for about half a year and did WOW three three live shows as a character named Captain Party. I was a superpowered frat boy. I did here in Portland at the Ash Street Saloon.

Oh shit.

Yeah, and let's see, I wrote three video games about wrestling, three w WE video games.

Gosh, I feel like that's enough. That's yeah, No, that's that's so much expertise. Yeah, I can live up to that.

Yeah, Tom, now you're on and now you're.

I mean, fucking I'll try so. I also grew up watching wrestling, loved it since I was a kid. I was always more at a w W F or w W E than WCW. I was a backyard wrestler for several years. Hell yeah, and I definitely filmed one of my friends throwing another one of my friends off the roof of their house, and then that friend doing a flying elbow drop off of the house onto that friend. I never went off the house, but I had some some some fun bumps in a backyard done to me

At a wrestling show. Yeah, and your wife for so long?

Okay, so so so my my buddy Jerry Stephanie's books. Independent wrestling promotion called Vanguard Championship Wrestling BCW in Virginia and many years ago they put on a show where they brought in Rick Flair. He was like a big mail bringing him for the show as a baby. By the way, I know, I remember that episode.

That's nuts. And so she was.

Marina was there set up because one of the wrestlers his mom ran this like new age sort of healing a store studio, and she had a massage parlor in there. Marina's a massage therapist. So Marina had a massage chair set up at this wrestling show, and that's how I met her. I met my wife at a Rick Flair appearance. Now, my friend put on that.

Is that is a happier Rick Flair story than we've gotten late. Yeah, I mean Rick Flair Press recently.

Flair spent the whole day drinking and then tried to stiff somebody else with the bill. That's that's what I heard from that specific appearance.

But I have so I will.

I will come in and say I have far less experience than all of you, and I think my experience kind of lines up broadly with like most kids in the nineties were like. I was never like a huge wrestling guy. I played a bunch of different wrestling video games in the late nineties early two thousands, when like frendshould come over for birthdays, Robert.

I also own AWF Superstars Stand Up Arcade Unit.

I should have included that that is AWERS.

Yeah, I definitely played a bunch of that. I was I kind of I had about a maybe two years where I watched wrestling semi regularly. This was kind of I think it's you'd call it the Attitude era, right when Stone Cold Steve Austin was just one of the big names and the yeah and I was brought in again. It was one of those things. It wasn't I didn't

Zombie, yeah, zombie and Vince McMahon.

I think for most of us who are kind of on the periphery of wrestling, who just sort of know it, you know, as a in broad terms, is one of those figures in American pop culture who's just kind of always been there. Like I couldn't tell you when I first heard his name, right, He's like Michael Jackson or Arnold Schwarzenegger in that he's just someone who's always been kind of part of the foundation of pop culture for

Do you remember when the mooch went on like a following spree and followed like everyone at cracked. Yeah, that was a fun day. That was a weird d what a wild presidency. We just all blew right past it.

But Vince is not just and kind of the reason why we're doing so much focus on Vince is not just like a guy who is influential in wrestling. He helped create the foundations in a lot of ways of not just modern right wing media, but like modern American culture. You know, there's a strong argument that we may not get Donald Trump as president without Vince McMahon, and specifically without Trump's time in wrestling, where a lot of people will argue he learned quite a bit.

The best book about the life.

Of Vince McMahon is the recently published Tome Ring Master by Abraham Josephine Riceman, again hereafter referred to as Josie Risman. Early on in the book, she makes the point that wrestling is more or less inextricable from human civilization. I didn't know this when I started researching, but the Biblical Jacob got the name Israel after a wrestling match, and the word Israel means wrestling with God, at least in one translation, So that we that's kind of sweet, Yeah,

Yeah.

So virtually every culture has some form of wrestling, and generally, you know, up until the modern era, these were like actual competitions right in which you know, athletes were, you know, the the end was in doubt. Obviously, like all sports people, you know, falling on matches for betting purposes has happened for forever. But generally speaking, it was supposed to be an actual competition. And while you know that was always a part of wrestling, it also relied heavily on spectacle, right,

Here.

It is said that during this time wrestlers were first given nicknames. Also, the tradition of an open challenge being issued to the general public was born. There was commonly a reward of five hundred francs to anyone who could knock a wrestler down to the ground. This is where Circus has got the idea from. I wish we still had that.

This happened organically on me Once. I was at a Mexican video game convention and there was a wrestling ring in this booth that I was near, just a weird little wrestling ring, don't know why it was there, and someone asked me to get up and say something, and within two minutes, I just sort of organically offered to

And then he.

Attacked me and I was like, Oh, this must be how shoot fighting got it start.

How did that go? Uh?

He tried to take me down and then we wrestled for a bit and I kind of gave him like half a body slam, which he did not want, so he didn't take it very well, and I realized, we got to stop doing this.

This is escalating too quickly. Yeah, this could go really badly.

I always there were back in the day kind of One of the seminal moments in early internet culture was the uh there was this director of horrible video game movies named Uva Bowl you. I think everyone is here is familiar with this story. Who got made fun of by comedy writers on the internet a lot, and so

I did.

It's gonna take like three or four minutes to tell this full story. I want to be said, you know, but like I used to host a show called Attack the Show back in the.

Day on G four. Yeah, yeah, and yeah recently came back but uh and then left again.

But uh we wanted to come on and fight Kevin Pereira, and Kevin pere Is like, dude, that's crazy.

But wait, wait, wait, I bet Sean Dabey'd fight you. And so they called me.

I'm like fuck yes today, tomorrow, I don't care when, and uh and.

Then zero, I don't need to prepare.

I've been preparing for this fight my whole life, my whole life.

When I got the call, I did jump some rope. I'm like, all right, all right, let's let's get drank some raw eggs.

Yeah.

I had a few eggs, and so us people like called me to get my stats, and I was like, I gave him my stats. I was, uh, six y three. I'm like two hundred ten pounds. This is not good news for UE Bowl. They're like, do you know how to fight? I'm like, yeah, I kind of know how to fight, like you know what, you know what, maybe we're not going to do this. And I found out later that he basically I don't think he was like scared, but he was like he's kind of a bully.

He just wants to beat up on little nerds.

He'd wear like film Rocky for So he's like, no, I don't I want to like just beat up your smallest toast. I don't want to like stand toe to toe with a real man.

I want to beat up Richard Kanka. Yeah, he beat the share that guy. And it's included as DVD extras on one of his movies. So I've watched all the fights and it's you know we we have since learned afterwards that low Tax had it coming.

Yes, yeah, he was uh uh you know that's will be here. So anyway, he did offer me a spot in that They're like, well, we'll fly to Canada and we'll do it there, and like suspiciously, they never followed up on that. But but anyway, that's the story of but we ball and then people say like, oh, he ducked me, and I guess he technically did, but uh I did go to the premiere postal and I was like, I think it's only fair that I give him the chance to kick my ass. So I went up because

Like, yeah, they're they're fucking jokes.

Like he did, I don't think he understood even a beginning of what I was trying to do there was making fun of you.

The movies are bad. What the heck are we doing here?

I think the way they framed it on the DVD extras that I saw was that, oh, he's he's fighting critics. So maybe he thought it was like all film criticism and not just like jokes. I yes, I mean I was criticizing his films. He was just like, you know, like like in Blood Rain there's a love scene. I was like, this is obviously directed by a man who's never fucked. And he's like, you know, I had this

No?

Wait, wait, wait, wait wait, I.

Have had six right, it doesn't translate into my work, but I have touched a Wilma.

I have.

I have seen the boobies.

I do like to think about him like getting in a cage with Ebert and then Ebert like pulling out like the baracco weapons from Mortal Kombat, just.

Kind of just sucking swords erupting from his risky Yeah, that's how I imagine him fighting. Never jump in got too much anti air face, So send you Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.

This, uh, this kind of evolution in wrestling where it starts to become something that like, yeah, people like you're doing it out in public. People are like drinking heavily. You've got random folks locally kind of like showing up to fight, try to knock these wrestlers down. It becomes this circus act. This is what marks kind of the first really clear permanent separation from the various forms of competitive wrestling that had obviously been around for forever to

Right.

By eighteen forty eight, Circus troops had adopted a new style of wrestling known as first hand wrestling all better known as Greco Roman wrestling, which is not the way that the ancient Greeks or Romans wrestled, right, It's just called that it pants on for one, Yeah, they had pants on for one, a lot less abusive in a number of ways. It banned a number of holds below the waist. It also banned a number of holds that had kept killing people, so they were trying to like

Unfortunately, Oh yeah, that's all a joke. It was just a sad reality.

Yeah, football is not wildly different. So one of the things that's kind of going on here is they transition to Greco Roman wrestling, is that a lot of things like leg hooks are restricted, which were some of the most effective holds, and so because they can't do a lot of the holes they used to be doing, wrestlers adopted the tactic of throwing each other around the room or around the the you know, the whatever the square, which is obviously like another link you know, in the

Right, right, this is before the internet. You can just say things.

This is before the internet and your giant you know, right, So this may sport.

I'm in favor of that.

Yeah, it's fine. This made him famous, and he opened a gym for wrestlers and for strongmen, right, And this is again all kind of very highly tied to the circus. Still, the reality of the situation is that a couple of different countries had wrestling tournaments and winning basically any one of them would qualify you to call yourself world champion if you wanted, because like there was no body that was sort of determining who was what was the real

How lucky is that name? Then, hacken Schmidt. Hackenschmidt it is.

And like, I'm gonna have Sophie show you a picture of this dude in the second here.

Pons I'm interesting, expecting a real granite faced son of a bitch.

He is actually kind of in a pre steroid era. He looks like he's on steroids. He's no, no, no, he is. He is smooth as a fucking waxed dolphin.

Oh no.

He's also he's interesting because he's kind of an old guy. When he becomes he's thirty four, which is like today even that's kind of like pushing it you know, by the standard of athletes in the late eighteen hundred, that's like hundred and three.

Yeah, back then he might as well have been ninety seven. Yeah.

Hackenschmidt is a one of the first really shredded guys, as I said, in the modern sense, to ever be photographed. And again it kind of says a lot that he still looks jacked by today's standards, even though there's there's no steroids in this period. There's not even like a great understanding of muscle building.

Why do you think they took his picture?

Yeah?

It's also he is credited as the inventor of the bench press and the hack Squad, at least according to a website called Barbend that repeatedly tried to sell me creatine.

I feel like somebody figured out the bench press before that. It's not exactly weird.

I found another website that says he definitely didn't create the bench press, although I will say that website also tried to sell me creatine.

So how much so how much creating you get?

Clearly not enough according to these two websites, did you did you buy enough creatine to invent the bench bench? Us? Uh?

Not not yet.

But I'm hoping I bought enough creatine to determine which website is more credible. Like whatever, whichever creatine pushes my bench up more and like a three week period, that's the website I'll choose to believe.

This is how we will measure, Sophie.

I want you to show them like hacken Schmidt looks like a crude discount discount action figure from a grocery store toy isle. Hell yeah, he looks awesome. Yeah, totally natty. You have to assume because it's nineteen oh eight. Nick, Yeah, absolutely, no neck his necklace. He cannot put his arms down at his side, put his arms down to his socks. He looks like a man. Yeah, like, look at those thighs. This motherfucker never skipped a leg day. We can say

This dude.

It's like reminding me of like the difference between like when like Christopher Reeve or like Michael Keaton played superheroes and then like what people who play superheroes look like nowadays, Like, this guy's definitely jacked, but like he's not Hugh Jackman and the Wolverine Jack. No, no, no, no no, Like it's huge X Men Jack.

Yeah. Yeah.

Although he is a wide shouldered man, he's so wide, he is a fascinating looking fellow. So again, basically, none of the creatine websites disagree that he invented the hack squat, so I guess we have to give him that. A different website that tried to sell me work out Powders did argue that he didn't invent the bench press, and that article was written by a guy named Roger rock Lockridge, So I do think we have to trust it because that's quite a name, sweet name.

Yeah.

So Hack and Schmidt racked up he invented something, Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. The rock is in quotes absolutely, I hope you do. Could hear them? So Hack and Schmidt rack up more than three thousand victories during his career. A lot of them were during He has a there's a forty day wrestling tournament that he wins in nineteen hundred. Yeah, so this guy, you have to assume pretty good endurrets. But he doesn't really earn a pace of a place of promise in the history books until nineteen oh five

Yeah, I'm just trying to picture the first poor son of a bitch that got put into like a figure four.

Yeah, you have no context for that.

Yeah, what is this a spell? No, it's like a medieval peasant eating cheetos. It just blows your mind. You would just you would just have a stroke and die, like.

You wouldn't be able to wrap your mind around whatever devilry was being done to absolute.

No, No, this was still a point.

Times I've gone back to my date after losing to a figure four leg lock.

Like, sorry, honey, I just I thought I had him that time.

That would have been my whole life back then, just going out on dates like oh, sorry, I'm gonna go to my ass kicked honey, Like, stop it, come back to our date.

You promised me you wouldn't do this anymore, my whole life. The evil you know, he's just gonna wrap your legs up again. I turn them over if I can slip them, so we're on our bellies. You never listened to me. You think my ideas are stupid.

I'm imagining like early oss men, watching like a wrestling match and going, we have to we have to figure this out.

We have to put money into this. This is how we beat the crowds. We gotta crack this nut.

Yeah, they've got like a stone cold stunner locked up underneath the pentagon, like we can't let this out, and it's like the plague in the stand. This gets out, anything could happen.

I've always thought you could measure how good a lover a man is by how well he takes a stunner, like how giving he is is a lover by how much he gets obliterated by the stone cold stunner, which means that the Rock does like a full backflip. I'm saying on record, I think the Rock is a fairy giving level. It's yeah, I mean, honestly, Sean, it's the Rock or Vince. Yeah, So that does like how weird Like Quiver, he used to do it better. He used to do it better before he blew his knees up.

So hacken Schmidt's style and size made him pretty unstopped pppable in the US for a time.

He very quickly.

Defeated the American Champion of the Day guy named Tom Jenkins and what was not a particularly hard match. Hackenschmidt was so dominant that a wrestling promoter named Charles Cochran took him aside and was like, hey man, you make a lot more money if you like fuck around with your opponents a little like tauntum toy with them. Give people a show instead of just like beating the absolute

Energy for now.

It's an incredible match. Yeah, they are doing they are going. It is insane.

Shit.

It was one of the may matches that went ninety minutes. Yeah, the year two thousand. That was because soccer Roba versus Hoyst Grace. Yeah, so, oh, I love soccer.

It's the best. Yeah, the freaking Gracie Hunter.

I think the point I'm making is that Hackenschmidt and Gotch must have been something to see. Two hours is still a significant fucking mesch.

If Gotcha's finishing move wasn't called the Gotcha, I don't know what he's doing in the carnie business.

Yeah.

Yeah, I feel like I don't know what we're doing as a culture if that wasn't the case. But I haven't found evidence of it. Tom So I apologize on behalf of America. No, yeah, so wrestling's chairman right along, early nineteen hundreds. But then you get that whole World War thing. It disrupts the industry. Obviously, the kind of wrestling you know, age men eventually do come back afterwards, but the age that follows World War One is a

Like it is.

It's probable no one on earth could drink with this guy today.

I'm really excited to Yeah, you gotta show. You got to show, Toots. I can't wait to see this. I can't wait to see this hero.

Yeah, you're ready ready, This guy who other mobsters were like, God damn, this man holy looks like a giant baby.

Yeah, this is an unfinished clone. Yeah he's dummy. Yeah.

They paint those nipples on him every morning so people don't get suspicious.

He looks, he looks.

Yeah to sixty yeah, six from He.

Is a slab of meat.

Look, this dude a profoundly unsettling man. And I'm only saying that because he's been dead for decades, because I would be frightened to make these comments if he were alive.

You know, he looks like in the face, not so much as build but in the face he looks like Brian Urlocker. Oh yeah, like a cabbage patch kid.

But yeah, looks like he does have yeah, resting cabbage patch energy.

So Toots is in adition to me, let me call him because of his train conductor hat.

Yeah, Toots is also a wrestler, and so he acted Ed Lewis's sparring partner, trainer and security man. Together the two worked out a series of new holds and innovative wrestling tactics. They also would wrestle each other in the ring sometime during matches these were you know, obviously they had set these matches ahead of time. Both of these

If you can't trust Toots, you can't trust Toots. Who can't trust who wants to stay in this world? If you can't trust the hard drink and gambling, out of control mobster wrestler.

So Toots and Lewis overtime develop a new style of wrestling, and it's a hybrid of Greco Roman catches, catch can and kind of circus shit which they call slam bang Western style wrestling. And this is kind of the most direct precursor to modern pro wrestling. In a different article for e Wrestling News, Kyle Don rights the newly formed Trio used their connections to persuade wrestlers from around the country to join their new promotions, so they no longer

Sounds like making love, lumber camp brawls. Excuse me, lumber Camp brawls.

Yeah, this is a major book, specifically up in the Pacific Northwest, a major form of entertainment where like you just go out and watch lumber camp guys beat the piss out of each other there. They are very jacked and they have no money. They are all alcoholics. They will fight for hard liquor. Maybe they'll fight a bear, maybe a tree.

I don't know. They don't care.

They don't even know the deck out and you know, danger will fight for your amusement to the death. If you want, you know, you slip them a twenty Products and services that support this content. Huge fans of blood sports, Yeah, they don't give a shit. Ah, we're back. So you know, lumber camp fighting, all this kind of stuff fuses together to make a slam bang western style wrestling with which Toots and Ed create.

Just I love that somebody saw lumber camp fighting and was like, this is close.

America needs this. But it would not just it's just said shiny panties, a.

Couple of cas and really throwing each other, weird, wild distances, surprising air. That's what we need here. And I got a fancy guy with a monocle.

Yeah. More guys in suits.

Yeah, there's not nearly enough racist caricatures. No one's dressed as a shake. So for one thing, we're gonna have to fix that. We got to fix that quoit right now. It is worth noting that around the same time, the late nineteen twenties and early thirties, other people were innovating wrestling too, obviously, like this is not a two person thing.

I know I can deal with both see and give both legs. Can you imagine seeing that for the first it's like for the.

First oh my god, oh shit, yeah is hes Yeah yeah. I think the next thing that will be like that is when they finally clone a mammoth.

Like, my god, look at it, right, the timeline of human history is split at the drop.

Drop kick it mammoth right now, fucking snail washing drop pick.

Now I have become death destroyer of worlds.

That's all that's all. That's all the bomb is. It's all fission is. It's it's Adams drop kicking each other. Yeah, it's a it's a it's an evolution of the drop kick. So Billy Sandow would test new recruits for kind of this wrestling business that they're building in his own private ring. Well, Toots would work with them on their finishing sequences. This kind of period is when they invent the concept of wrestling having a go home sequence, which is a commonplace today,

Now.

Toots is the enforcer. In addition to training people and stuff. He and another guy, John Pisseck, would beat the shit out of any wrestlers who tried to go into business for themselves. This earned them the nickname hookers. That's what they're called for doing this. I'm not really certain why, but but yeah, that's that's the old, that old hooker Toots.

I love that.

I love that Toots just applied his mob training to this. It's like somebody else trying to mustle in air territory fucking break his legs.

There's not a problem that Toots cannot solve with a fucking dropkick yees.

So that's the glomber brawl double threat. When you can get a guy in a ring and beat a guy out of the ring. That's that's the total package.

Just Toots walking into work. He's got like a briefcase and inside of it is just like a stump. So the trio eventually broke apart due to a power struggle, but wrestling was here to stay, and for a time, its shady reputation kept it down. Madison Square Garden initially refused to host wrestling events through the nineteen forties. What finally changes this is that Toots teams up with Bastard's Pod alumni Bernard McFadden, who kind of invented physical culture

Dentist.

We must be missing something metric. I feel like most people could, but maybe grain was different than brain.

Sixty sixty percent of those guys have killed somebody with the wrench.

Oh yeah, absolutely, but only of them remember it, right.

I love how like some of them are like, Oh, this guy's the toughest guy in the world, and then one guy's like, I guess he can kind of you can tell he's been sitting on grain.

Yeah he does grain. Real brain city, real dubious honors in the crew, is what I'm saying.

So the dude who calls all these guys together in nineteen forty eight to talk is a man, a forty two year old guy. He's a former sports writer named Sam Muchnik. Sam had lost his job as a sports writer covering baseball because his newspaper collapsed, a thing none of us can identify with.

What is that? Like, I can't picture that.

Yeah, he decided to deal with this trauma by starting to work for a wrestling baron and then becoming one himself. He rises to prominence fairly quickly, and you know, he a little break to do some World War two stuff. But when he gets back, he finds himself frustrated by the fact that Rustling is kind of being held back by this vicious pack of promoters who are They're always fighting and bribing each other to like steal each other's wrestlers, and this is getting in the way of both their

This is mobshit. This is classic mobs shita. This is very classic mob shit.

And these guys all have a shitload of money, so they figure they can bribe whoever they need to bribe. He gets all these guys at the President Hotel to agree to his idea, which amounts to something like the only union pro wrestling whatever. See and of course it is a union of owners. This goes on to come the National Wrestling Alliance. Interesting fact, there's another NWA that's like a wrestling kind of alliance that predates this NWA. But yeah, it's not a kind of big deal in

So yeah, I think later on, a similar thing happens to Rick Flarey's in a plane crash with a guy he's feuding with, and they had to pretend like they weren't traveling together.

Yeah.

I want to actually talk about this a little bit because, like it's now fairly well known that within the wrestling world, this kind of mix of lies in theater to create this illusion of a contest is known.

As k fabe.

Right, there's a debate over where the term comes from. Sex lies in headlocks kind of credits it to Turn of the century carnivals where these you know, these wrestlers who would take on random challengers which they called marks from the crowd and like would wrestle them and stuff. You know, they can't you know, in that case, they generally know what they're doing because they have a lot

Right.

Meanwhile, a face, which stands for baby face, is like a good guy.

Right.

There's generally the people who were supposed to win in this period. That's going to change a lot over time. Eventually you get to the point where like heels and faces kind of move up and down, and there's also becomes this kind of third category, and a lot of times the heels win because of the people that like the fans like the most, but in this period of time, it's a lot simpler, right, Well.

There was a Hul Cogan's kind of a notorious liar, but like in his book he had a story about like he had a gun that belonged to one of the Savage Samoans and then they all had to go to jail because the Savage Samoans wouldn't talk in front of the police, because the wrestlers supposed to be like these caveman monsters that didn't speak English, so they could

But like this is what I don't know. I've heard that story from other sources than Hulk Cogan.

I don't know that. Like you are, Sean, you are very correct. Hulk Cogan is a famous liar. There are stories that crazy that we're about to talk about stuff on that level, and even wilder does occur.

I remember reading about how Rick Flair's wife didn't know it was fake until like deep into the nineties.

No, no, and there's a lot of that going on.

I do want to note before we get into some of these stories, not all wrestling fans are marks. Overtime professionals split them up into smarts and marks. A smart is somebody who gets that, like, this is not real, right, These giant men throwing each other across the room are engaged in a performance. This is not really fighting. Receman and other historians of wrestling like kind of traditionally the assumption was there's only a few smarts, most people are marks.

I'd be so embarrassed to tell that story.

Yeah, I might believe it because he's not a smart man.

Let's be very clear about the Hulkster. Oh what you mean, dude.

Reisman also notes that while most fans were probably savvy enough to parse out the truth eventually, wrestlers for decades lived in mortal fear of breaking k fape because managers and promoters fuel into their crews that this lie is the only thing keeping the interest in wrestling and thus their jobs alive. Right, this is deadly serious to the industry. Right, Wrestlers are kind of divided into again. You know, you've

Michael?

Oh shit, I forget his name, the guy from never Mind. It doesn't matter.

So Michael Bolton. You think of Michael Bolton? Yes, I'm thinking of Michael Bolton, aren't we all? Always? I am?

So wrestlers didn't just kind of keep the fans, you know, try to keep this shit up for the fans. Then Michael help their own family in the dark, maintaining the lie that the matches they were in were real competitions and that their fights with other wrestlers were real. This

Don't need to stop marrying six year olds. She was last Paul Bearer some shit, right, do him on fucking thirty eight already?

She didn't when he tells her to the truth. Allegedly, she doesn't speak to him for three days. Oh my god, just destroys there.

That's because he's humiliating, but also he's infuriating, like you like.

Me, you like me? Oh stupid about wrestling?

Well, I mean she was in such fear for him that she was carrying a loaded gun to his matches, and he was letting her continue to do this.

He was like, yeah, honey, I get it. You're doing a reasonable thing. The boss. Yeah, yeah, Maybe.

Communication wasn't their strong suit as a couple. You know that's possible, it is, to be fair to her. It was super common for wrestlers to get assaulted and injured by fans. Women in particular habit had a habit of jabbing heels with hatpins on like their way up to the ring and stuff. Men meanwhile, tended to throw rocks and bottles at them. In one set South Carolina match, a seventy eight year old man with a knife stabbed al Rogowski so bad that he needed more than one

If he doesn't get any sick time either. So if he doesn't wrestle the next day, he doesn't make money. So it's like fucking glue me up. I'm going out there.

I should note it is generally agreed upon by the historians. I'm reading the money's better back then than it is now by comparison, like these guys are making better livings than like modern wrestlers often tend to, which is kind of interesting to me. Obviously, that does you know. It's it's different around the country. That's not everywhere, But broadly speaking, it's easier to make an okay living then as a wrestler than it is today. A lot of people will argue, YEA.

You got stabbed more often.

You did get stabbed more often. For an example of that, Sean Rowdy Roddy Piper claims to have been stabbed three times by fans who thought he was an actual bat guy.

I don't doubt it.

Man, he used to drive people crazy. No, they were he was because he's he was.

He's a genius.

He's an incredible actors, very very very talented at what he did. But also, like just looking at Rowdy Roddy Piper, you have to be either ready to die or the drunkest eye anyone has ever been to be willing to attempt to stab that man, because he was a fucking monster.

Also, his whole gimmick was that he was insane.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, God, I love Roddy Piper, you know enough to stab him.

Yeah, I would. I would.

I would stab him if he was back again, if we got one more episode of Always Sunny in Philadelphia with him playing the mania. What an absolutely hero. You know what, during this next ad break, go watch the movie They Live starring Rowdy Roddy Piper, just a champion.

We're back the entire They Live. We did. We did Always Sunny episode and.

Then Always Sunny Episode, both works of incredible art. So given all of this. It probably won't surprise you to hear that even in the pre steroid days, wrestlers often lived difficult lives. One of the first great modern wrestlers was a guy named Gorgeous George. He was the son of a house painter. He played a narcissistic healer heel who was one of the first big popular TV wrestlers. He would prance around the ring in a fur robe. He was kind of a little light, queer coded kind

That's a bummer. That yeah dark.

I mean, not that his girlfriend is a stripper, that's whatever, But just like this is like, his story is not uncommon.

No, I mean it's dark that they had to pass around a hat to pay for his cast and he collapsed bump begging for drinks in the bar he used to own.

That's dark.

It is dark. It is And again, a lot of these promoters are just straight up monsters. There are more of them who are kind of decent guys in this period. There are a number of like regional promoters who will do shit like when their wrestlers have health problems after retirement, divert funds from their business to pay for their healthcare.

There's a lot of story.

It's really tragic. It is a nightmare. Yeah. So Fritz slash Jack and we're just gonna call him Fritz from now on had been trained by the founder of one of the first great wrestling dynasties, Stu Hart, a Canadian from Edmonton whose dungeon, that's what it's called the dungeon, was the most celebrated training center for wrestlers of its day and for like generations to come. This is like

But Fritz is like, yeah, man, for sure, that sounds great. He would wrestle me how much? Yeah? Yeah, fifty dollars a night? For sure, Bro.

Fritz would wrestle wearing Nazi regalia. His trademark move was the iron claw. And he has the distinction of having been wrestling Lou Theez. We've talked about before. He's kind of one of the big great, big early champions. He and Theez are wrestling the day that JFK gets assassinated. There's not as much great footage of him in the ring as I like, Yeah, yeah, yes, definitely a causal relation. There's not as much great footage of him as I'd like but I found a clip of his brother Waldov

I should note, boy, he sure is, Yeah he is.

He is wearing a Nazi helmet and a sleepless shirt. He's got a writing crop in his hands, and he's got in the front of his shirt.

Is there's a Nazi logo like.

Here comes the Italian man in the native Headdress's the Italian man dress.

Chief Ja strong Bow from from Tuscany.

Old timey wrestlers.

I do love the gay coated fancy man and the Indian chief are like my two favorite like problematic.

Oh yeah, oh yeah, you get some I love I love that Waldo's swastika.

You can tell they weren't into drawing it.

I also love you.

Steroids are starting to be a thing in the seventies, but they haven't figured him out. Great, So these guys are just huge dudes with beer bellies. Oh he's doing Nazi Nazi.

There was the iron claw.

If the audience doesn't know, is kind of like a Nazi salute on the human face. You just grab the front of their head and you just squeeze it glory. Impossible to escape. I mean, yeah, palming someone on the face.

Yeah, just get out of that. Just rough you because backwards to the side, no thanks to that, No, no whatever.

When you get sighyled right in the forehead, you sort of like get knocks all thoughts out of your brain.

What do I do?

That's why Hitler adopted it famous, famously great technical wrestler eight all Hitler.

Everything he knows.

It's actually now he took himself out. He just did the iron claude to himself.

The match between j Strongbow and Waldo problematic not even close to the most racist wrestling match. That that you can find, Like.

It's not even the most it's not even the most racist wrestling match I've seen recently.

No, that bounced straight off my brain.

If you hadn't held me, hey we're we're looking at this and for racism, I would have been like, this is totally normal, old timey.

Yeah, they're supposed to be a bad guy. I'm not seeing an Indian ship. Honestly, they're doing pretty good.

So Fritz himself has a as we've discussed as we're yeah, just just a nightmare of a life. But because he's a terrible person, so his you know, his first son, this is not his fault. Probably Jack Junior dies in nineteen fifty nine from accidental electrocution that leads to drowning. Obviously, this has an impact on Fritz and he decides to

Spoilers.

When you said three of whom, I thought you were going to say something else. Yeah, that's where we're going terribly.

Then electric he drowns the boy so far right, he's got one out of fives already out of the match.

Did you do a show on Pat Robertson.

Uh, we've covered him before. We've covered a lot of aspects of him. Yeah.

Uh.

His dream was to create a wrestling dynasty and imitation of Stu Hart, right. Uh, And as Robertson's no no, no, no, no, maybe, but definitely definitely Fritz and as wrestling nerd Nicholas all Helm Rights. By the time Kevin, David and Carrie, his three large adult sons entered their teens, they were put into grueling workout sessions by their father. Despite time playing a variety of junior high and high school sports. He would work them out for another three hours after school

Cool.

Yeah, so you know, he's kind of like the Mic Jackson of wrestling or Michael Jackson's dad of wrestling. I always forget that guy Jojoe Jackson, right, Joe Jackson, but maybe like, honestly, Joe Jackson's a better dad. Which like that that's a heads up as to where this is going.

His kids are dead.

Yeah, it's in a really dark like two thousands a joke punchline.

Jo a better dad.

I mean, he's got a better fucking record. So for a time, the van Eriks are very successful in the early nineteen eighties, his boys are all actively in the ring. They are hugely popular in Texas. By this point in k Fabe, Fritz has been revealed by his nemesis Gary Hart to have been a normal Texas boy, not a Nazi, allowing him to turn baby face. This made k Fabe a little easier for his boys because they didn't have to wear swastikas. But since their dad is the booker

He sure does.

We don't get a lot of detailed confirmation either way.

Is there a reasonable like counter explanation. It's like a bunch of drugs really okay?

Yeah, I mean it's the kind of thing where like, uh, today, like any leading man and stuff who's doing big action roles is on something that we can call steroids pretty much.

You know, it's a combination of things too, you know, the road, it's all the hard drinking and popping painkillers you take the counter. You just have to keep going, like I think they tour something like I don't know, three hundred days a year.

Yeah, so it's a it's a combination of all that shit.

Yeah, yeah, it's it's just it's a different time and it's even again don't don't do steroids, folks, but it's even much worse for you at this point in time even And yeah, they're also Coke is as common as royds are, because I mean, part of what a lot of wrestlers you say is that like, yeah, you know, in order to get into the ring and get amped up, you got to get fucking coked up, and then to calm down and to deal with the pain, you take pain killers and then often to get to bed you

I mean it's I mentioned Ultimate Warrior earlier, but never has you need cocaine to get hyped up been more obvious than an Ultimate Warrior entrance.

No, there are there are like cartel warehouses and fucking Sinala that have less cocaine than was in his bloodstream.

And he given a night like he was gliding out there on a board of cocaine like ice man.

Just an incredible man. So very tragic death of he's fucking twenty five. He'd barely you know, had a life, very sad. The yellow rows of Texts, as David was known, was mourned by a crowd of three thousand people at his memorial service. Fritz, though, made sure to profit from this, selling color photos of his dead son that had once gone for three dollars for ten dollars at the memorial service.

You know, I'm surprised, Like Fritz didn't open up the casket and let people take pictures with David for.

Like twenty So let me see your money. Let me see your money. It's barely better than that. It's thumb.

Im get the extra ten bucks.

The next year, in nineteen eighty five, Mike Vaughan Erik was charged with two counts of misdemeanor assault against an er doctor he got into a fistfight with during a trip to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, he goes to Tel Aviv to wrestle, and he takes a bad bump to his shoulder that dislocates it bad and badly enough that it requires surgery due to either poor hygiene or bad luck. After surgery, he contracts toxic shock syndrome, which is very

If anybody wants a bag of bloody stool, seventy bucks.

Right, yeah, yeah, it's real, it's real, it's real. Trump saying, now I have the tallest building in New York City. Yeah, it's it's wild stuff.

Mike.

Mike does pull through. He survives this, and his brother Kevin gives a press conference, calling his arrival a miracle. Alas he takes he's permanently injured from this.

Right.

His weight drops down to just one hundred and forty five pounds. He is now no longer able to speak without slurring his voice. He just like he doesn't recover from this Muchnik writes quote. Fritz lost no time in repackaging him for the wrestling marks. Mike was nicknamed the Living Miracle. Fans were promised that he would defeat the odds wrestle Alyn and claim a championship for God and Family.

By then, he was just killing sixty bucks.

So when he comes back to the ring, he's also contracted hepatitis, and his dad's just like, get him out there, get him out there. Yeah, it's so bad.

Yeah.

So the next year, nineteen eighty six, another prominent wrestler,

And these are e qui tragedy.

Yeah, thanks to k Fabe, they're the same thing. So the next year, Carrie van Eric wasted as hell, rams into the back of a police car on his motorcycle. His foot is like part of his foot. It winds up eventually getting amputated. It is a nasty wreck. Doctors spend thirteen hours putting his limb back together, and then he is immediately whisked away to perform in the fucking ring.

Come. Yeah, it's a nightmare. I'm gonna do.

He wrestles with a fake foot for a while, doesn't he? Yeah, he sure does, Tom, he sure fucking does. I'm gonna quote again from Murnik here. Sorry, Fritz is just smashing these kids.

Like again, Joe Jackson might be the better dad.

I'm quote his opponent. This evening was carefully instructed to sell for Carrie, for it was clear in advance that the man who was once among the most agile two hundred fifty pounders in wrestling would be virtually immobile. Still, they had to make a good show of it, so Carrie changed into his trunks. A doctor filled a syringe with enough novacane to numb Secretariat's hoof. Thus fortified, Carrie discarded his crutches, gritted his teeth, and hobbled into the ring.

Like bad day.

Don't think of the chronic pain that you must have had, like his cath must just cramp up twenty times a day.

Now.

Look, I'm not a big giving people parenting advice, but uh, free parenting advice from Robert here. Don't do this to your kid. Don't do this. Not good, not good, not good being a dad.

Yeah, her foot, her first foot torn off. I was like, we're gonna wait two weeks, be pre you get back.

In that ring, two solid weeks, because you're a good father, absolutely best. So despite Fritz's cocaine. Yeah, well yeah, of course kids love cocaine.

You know.

You just tell him it's one of those fun fun bat what do they call that shit?

Fun dip. You know they love that shit.

That'd be good fun dip bag of cocaine that.

This fun dip has my mouth numb. I can't taste it anymore. That means it's working. Keep taking it good, fund getting it ring.

That's probably how it got the name. That probably was originally cocaine product.

So, despite Fritz's pushing, Mike never recovers his ability to perform. Obviously interviews with him were deeply uncomfortable affairs. Again, he is probably takes some damage to his brain from all this too. He rants a lot on air about obscure

Yeah, that man carved just a path of ruin through his son's.

And if I'm understanding right, this is all just a frame. Vince McMahon, here's the guy who's much worse than this.

Yeah, Vince, Vince's overall worse than this. But you do need to know it's not like he's not rising out of a crowd of angels.

God.

Yeah, tragedies. Yeah, that's a nightmare when you are responsible for four of your son's deaths all before the age of forty. Yeah, not a great dad.

And three of them kill themselves. Yeah. Yeah, that's that's dark. Yeah, it's pretty bleak. You guys got anything to plug you first?

Oh well, for.

Seventy five dollars, you can take some of his hair. For eighty bucks, I'll let you hold the gun. God like, how I like how you pause?

You like?

Am I really gonna say this? Yes? Yeah? Absolutely? You know what Fritz would have done it? Yeah? Done it?

Yeah, you know you can catch me. We're at game Fly Unemployed. It's a podcast and streaming network I do with our former crack coworker and great buddy, David Bell. So check it out patron dot com slash game flun Employed. You can find us also on anywhere you look for podcasts and on the social media. So that's that's pretty much it.

Hell yeah, it is absolutely beautiful.

I'm at one hot dog dot com, featuring monthly columnist Tom Ryman, who's great and an all star cast to comedy writers. We do daily jokes, text and pictures like the old days, and it's fantastic. I work with Robert Brockway, who's also our dear friend from Cracked and Patreon dot com, Slash one nine hundred hot Dog excellent.

Definitely check out game fully Unemployed and one nine hundred hot Dog. I have one other thing to plug. This is not a product a project of mine, but we will be talking, you know, Sean. In our In our episode on steven Sagall, we chat a little bit about Judo Jean LaBelle, who, according to some versions of the story, choked Stephen out so badly he pooped his pants. Now this is debated, but there is a fellow on YouTube

It's genius. I love it. Yeah, I'm writing this down.

Yeah that's the fucking episode. Everybody get vinced, not, I mean a little bit.

Yeah, it's such a it's such a already such a long rown roads drune with bodies before we even get.

So many men have died, and we've we've only just begun.

Behind the Bastards is a production of cool Zone Media. For more from cool Zone Media, visit our website Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.