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.
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 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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 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 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.
Was there is there a reason why he was called Whitey? I mean curious about that.
He was. You know, sometimes people get what they call the premature white I guess.
Oh in the hair.
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, 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.
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 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.
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.
Destroyer, Super Destroyer. That's right.
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.
Booming, right.
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.
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.
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 couldn't do the next appearance, next show, and they the way the contracts were they, I guess they don't have.
A union for wrestlers, oh not at all.
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
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 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.
That's no problem. If you need to take it, go ahead to you.
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 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 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.
Right, yeah, definitely to him.
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.
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.
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. 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.
Henry Holmes, Henry George Foreman.
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.
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.
I know all about his rusting career.
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.
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 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.
Or oh wow.
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.
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.
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 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 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
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.
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.
Started Jack Nicholson yep. Uh Scorsese transit for.
Yeah.
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.
Yep. There's been so many movies when he was done.
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.
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 Club was like. It sounds like a pretty wild place where people were partying.
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 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?
Of course?
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, 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, 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.
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.
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.
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?
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 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 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.
Needless to say. So, do you remember Terry, you know, working the bar there? Would he drink?
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.
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.
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.
Platform shoes, sure, yes.
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 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.
Yes, if uh AIDS had not come out yet, yes, that's important. Yet at that point it did.
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, 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, 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.
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.
With white he had with Whitey, Yeah, he had a gym.
Do you remember that stuff going around and people getting just huge on bodybuilding drugs?
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 of drug. Yeah, you know what I mean. I mean, it's just the human body does not.
React like that it's grown like that to the point about.
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.
What was that, Jim, Like, did you ever go in there Terry and Whitey's Olympic gym?
You know what?
It was?
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 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.
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.
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, 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 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. It was. It was stupid. And after a few years they went back to twenty one.
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.
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 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 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 the bouncers.
Absolutely. Yeah, man, that's.
Pulled on me and one knife and two guns?
How did how did the gun incidents resolve?
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 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 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 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.
Huh.
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 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. 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 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.
Yes, this guy shot his pants right.
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.
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.
Yes, well, I doubt Cotton would sue the club because.
No, no, no, someone sued the club because Cotton roughed him up, thrown him out.
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 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 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 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 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.
Yeah.
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, 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, 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 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.
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.
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 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 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 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.
Oh my goodness, Well.
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 not like a karadi gig.
It was like you know how you can pun a football totally? I can picture it.
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. 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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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. 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. 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.
It was.
Yeah, describe it for me.
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.
I gotta ask you, don uh did did you ever hand the keys to Terry?
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 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.
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.
He had.
Do you remember ed Leslie his buddy.
Yes, Eddie, why all you know Eddie?
Eddie?
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, you grow, you get bigger.
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
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.
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 everybody in the club, but you know, I didn't know in the future that Terry would become some famous.
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.
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, 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, if it doesn't work out, he said, you come back to Florida, we'll open up a club in Fort Loder.
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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?
It was his banker was the mother of one of the bartenders.
Okay, and he didn't know that.
He's coming in every week jumping thousands of dollars into his personal checking account.
Oh there it is, And yeah, and he he didn't.
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 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. 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 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 hundred percent sure, right, I think Whitey was his best man at his Weddy.
I've heard that.
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.
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.
I visit him in Miami.
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.
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 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 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 it always protect you, right.
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.
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. 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 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.
And now I'm not saying why he did that, No, no, of course I know, but that's that was the scene.
Yeah, the type of thing they would do with a nightclub like that.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Holy shit, Now if and my brother said he.
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 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.
Though there you go, and yeah, so you know, you know you're talking about in other words, you've seen.
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.
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,
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?
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 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 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.
I see.
Even told me that.
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.
Good, good day, Right, that it was under investigation.
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.
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.
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.
No, no, no, why do He never got busted as far as I know. And he had a partner named Ed.
Yes, he did, and uh.
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.
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.
I think.
Ed was.
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
having ideas about you know, ladies night. Uh oh, we had a what they call a wet T shirt night.
Yeah.
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 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.
Was got the chance to do both. Yeah, yeah, that's really terrific.
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 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.
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.
Yo.
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?
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 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.
Yep.
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 a PVC pipe on the wall, a real one, pulls it off and hits me right in the face with it.
Oh my god, Oh my god, hits me out my.
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.
I don't know how. I don't know what I was thinking.
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 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 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, 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 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 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 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, 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.
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?
Well?
I was just curious like what you know, I mean speculating, like why what is the mentality of like of them?
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 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, 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, 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 what it's like to be a pro fighter, and.
Oh yeah, thats a lot.
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, 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 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.
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
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.
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?
She of course, okay, she needed to get in shape.
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 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 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. 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.
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.
The guys like the Rock.
Now that guy is talented, sure, absolutely.
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 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.
Or oh he stayed in Tampa. He was in Tampa pretty much his whole life.
Okay, he wasn't in l A. Then.
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.
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 come out. It says it does if it enlarges your muscle, your heart is a and damages your heart.
Yeah. I think that's having a lot of.
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 I I I tell people, there's no there's no drug I can take that'll protect my chin.
That's right.
So I'm just gonna get my card, you up, and my defense, my reflexes sharp, and yeah.
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,
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.
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.
Oh yeah, there's legitimate useless for them.
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 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 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 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
I would just dehydrate myself. That's how I get Nate Waite.
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.
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?
Did did you ever go see him him wrestle?
Ever?
In Florida.
No, I never did. I never saw Terry wrestle. I did go to that story he had in Orlando once.
M store of memorabilia yea or something.
Products from his UH wrestling background. But but I've never I've never been to a live wrestling match any any of them.
Did any of the companies ever try to recruit you into doing a match?
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Just to go ahead, please.
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 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, 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 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.
Me to school every day in law.
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?
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.
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
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 not like we agreed to you know.
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.
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 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.
Row, yeah, roll them up.
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, and happens over and over and over.
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?
What is it? Uh?
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.
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 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 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 that I like. And why would you if you know that's your type? Why they any other time?
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.
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 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 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 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.
Oh boy, here we go.
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.
Yeah, that's a great You learned quite a bit about how to get in that front door, didn't you that.
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 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.
Yeah, and white he kept it.
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.
Baby.
Anyway, I did that three different girls in one night, and.
Uh, person a personal a personal record, A good good night.
For Dawn or how disgusted, So someone list every as long as everybody was satisfied, that's all the counts.
Well, you know what, I hope they girls, But I was mad mind everything.
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.
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. It was the place. It was the club. When when it comes to Central Florida, it was the club.
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.
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 directions but in some ways, and then we ended up with the same lawyer.
Oh man, that's quite a story. So don thanks again, man.
Yeah, thank you guys.
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