Show: Wrestling Epicenter
Guest: “Big Cheese” Sal Corrente
Date: 10/13/2026
Your Host: “Arizona” James Walsh
Sal Corrente co-wrote, or perhaps co-re-wrote, the book that is Bruno Sammartino’s autobiography. Along with the late great Bruno, Sal took a somewhat kayfabed book Bruno got hosed on in the 1990’s and re-wrote it before Bruno’s passing removing some of the held back details and sharing a more open story about the life and times of the “Living Legend”, as he was known.
Here to talk about the book, his relationship with Bruno, and Wrestle Reunion amongst other topics, Sal gives us some pretty cool stories about the legends of pro wrestling that we owe what we have today to.
You can pick up the new book on Amazon!
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On how the Bruno Sammartino book came about:
“Well, you know, this this story goes back decades. Um, Bruno had had a book deal originally with, um, some folks out of Pittsburgh and things did not really go well. Um, the book was, you know, they were like 10,000 of them printed and they all sold out and and they basically just were sold in the general Pittsburgh area and that was the end of it. Yeah, absolutely. But, you know, it’s so it was a bad deal. Bruno ended up getting the rights to the book. Now, you know, I used to manage a lot of Bruno’s personal appearances and stuff like that. Well, you know, he would do a lot of complaining because at these personal appearances, you would see people showing up with copies of the book. Well, you know, people that had previously bought the book, and who knows, they bought multiple copies, only had the one copy. They, um, you know, would see Bruno was making an appearance, throw it on eBay for four to five times the price, and if you wanted to get a signed copy of the book, you had to pay that and then go and, you know, I quite honestly used to have to listen to this all the time. I finally said, “You know what, this is crazy, enough’s enough.” I said, “Bruno, why don’t I try and buy a copy of the book?” Because Bruno didn’t have any copies, and, uh, and I certainly didn’t have any, but as, you know, as indicated, there were copies out there for $90 to $100. So I bought a couple of copies and, um, I told him, I said, “I’m going to find somebody could scan this book into a document and, uh, you know, we’ll pay for that, and then we’ll make some adjustments. First of all, the editing, whoever edited the first version of the book was a disaster. Um, the the wrestler’s names were all misspelled. It was clearly somebody who didn’t know anything about wrestling. Um, so we we, uh, had it scanned in. I got somebody, um, was a good friend of Bobby Eaton’s to do some initial editing on it, and, uh, we threw some extra pages in and some extra pictures, and we put the book out.” And, um, you know, as the wrestling business has changed and evolved, um, whether to my liking or not, or to Bruno’s liking, you know, I was listening to Bruno do some interviews and and I said, “You know, Bruno, I listened to the interview you did. I said, you know, you’re taking a different approach with these interviews.” He said, “Well, Sal, what do you what do you expect me to do?” And I said, “I don’t expect anything. I’m just acknowledging something, and, um, I said, but if this is the way you’re going to go about this, I said, why don’t we just, you know, redo the book, um, take out a lot of the, you know, the the bull, and, you know, let’s let’s, uh, tell the real stories, and we’ll expand it. We’ll, you know, we’ll, cuz the book ended around 1990.” So, so we decided to, um, to put that together, and, um, you know, put it out there. The book now has 568 pages in it. There’s a black and white and a color version. Um, the color version is obviously more expensive because as I found out, um, you know, like we had intended to have about, oh, I don’t know, 10 color pages or something, and, you know, Amazon made it clear that’s not the way it works, that if you have one color page, you’ve got 568 color pages. So, okay, so that’s what we did. Uh, the people that bought the color book were all very happy with it. They’re really true Bruno fans. Um, and and we brought it to the present day. Um, you you know, that was what we did, and then, uh, we were pretty much done with the book. It was just a matter of finding, getting it edited. And, uh, I was struggling, you know, I had some people that could edit it, but they didn’t really want to. They’re not wrestling people, and, you know, and a lot of the wrestler stuff is already had already been corrected, so I wasn’t worried about that. But then I found a guy named Colin Bowman. He used to have WCW Magazine. Um, he was I was introduced to Colin by Jimmy Hart, who’s, you know, closest friends. And, um, you know, I said, you know, it hit me that Colin could do this. And I even called Jimmy, I said, “Jimmy, I finally got the right person to, uh, you know, to edit the book.” And he said, “Really? Who’s that?” I said, “Jimmy, you can’t figure it out?” He said, “Oh, Colin.” I said, “Yeah, right.” And, uh, so Colin put the finishing touches on the book, and, um, you know, he finally had to slow me down. He said, “Sal, look, truth is this book could be a thousand pages long.” He said, “You know, it’s time for us to stop.” And I said, “Yeah, he’s he’s right.” Um, you know, so so we did, but, um, and that was really how the book came about. But the old original version is still for sale, um, and, um, and, and obviously the the new version still sold. “
On the original 90’s version of the book being available on Amazon also:
“People had said, “Take down the original version,” but the truth is people still want the original version. And, you know, in some cases, who knows, they’re probably comparing the one to the other, which is drastic, uh, you know, changes or if you have the old copy, you know, we just whatever’s whatever we have, you know, we, uh, we we have it up there, and, um, and that’s it. That’s the story of the book.”
On JJ Dillon being close with Bruno:
“Now the truth is the book didn’t get printed until after Bruno passed. And, um, this is, uh, when we got to, uh, you know, myself and JJ Dillon and Davey O’Hagan, we traveled, to, um, to Pittsburgh together for the wake, and, uh, you know, I don’t know if you’re aware, but Bruno and JJ go way back, um, into Yeah, it’s, uh, you know, look, I worked for JJ Dillon and I had no idea he knew Bruno, and, uh, you know, it was, um, it was, uh, you know, very surprising to me, and I even told Bruno, “JJ helped me, um, a good bit as a referee when he was in charge in, um, when he was in charge in, um, uh, Charlotte.” You know, Nikita Koloff brought me there, but JJ, you know, did a lot of the scheduling. So, you know, I told Bruno one day, because JJ Dillon was a referee, and I didn’t know that for the longest time, and he never really even told it to me, um, until much, much later. But he was a referee and, um, you know, he was working up in the Northeast, and he got to knew Bruno, and that got to know Bruno that way, and Bruno stuck up for him a few times and, you know, things like that. And, uh, you know, they just had a very good relationship. Uh, you know, there was a, you know, as an example, there was one time, I think Bruno was wrestling Kowalski in Boston, and, uh, I think JJ had to take a chair shot or something, and, you know, so forth, and, you know, Bruno asked him, “Was, you know, was he taken care of?” Because, you know, he felt he was going above and beyond. And, um, he said, “Well, I got my,” and in those days $100 is a good payoff because, you know, you think of $100 today, you’re going back into the mid-60s. I I mean that $100 today is probably a $500 payoff for a referee. Um, but, uh, he said, “Is that all you got?” Well, about, you know, a week or two later, Bruno said, “Say nothing to anybody.” But a week or two later, JJ was hanging out in Redding, I think, Pennsylvania, and Phil Zacko grabbed him and brought him around the corner, and, uh, and, uh, he handed him I think another $250. Um, yeah, and, uh, it is cool because most people in the business wouldn’t do that. You know, here’s JJ just a referee, and, um, when it’s all said and done, Bruno went out of his way, and, um, Bruno came in even followed up, “Did anybody speak with you yet?” He said, “Yeah, are you happy now?” “Yes, I’m happy, thank you.” And, um, you know, then just to take the, you know, these are the kind of things I think are interesting. “
On Bruno’s wife insisting he finish the book:
“So me, JJ, Davey O’Hagan were driving down to Pittsburgh and I got to hear a lot of these old stories, and, uh, but when I got there, you know, Bruno’s wife Carol said, “Sal, what about the book?” And I said, “Well, Carol, it was obvious to me things were not going well, so I hadn’t done anything.” She said, “Well, I think you need to finish the book, don’t you?” I said, “Well, yeah, but I just, you know, no, you need to finish the book.” So we got the book, um, you know, got Colin involved and, um, you know, he’s just he’s brilliant and, um, understands the wrestling business, and, you know, he was the right person to edit this book and without him, it probably wouldn’t be as good as it is. “
On Bruno insisting on the “Thinker” photo cover:
“Yeah, well, and insistence is a tough word with Bruno because he really didn’t insist on a lot, but he made it clear that was his wish. You know, and there’d be no reason not to, he just he he was a big fan of that of that picture.”
On Bruno working with the WWF at times when needed after full time retirement:
“New York’s a big place and, you know, it had its ups and downs and you know, sometimes of course Vince McMahon lost the TV at one point and of course the territory was, you know, way down. Eventually they were able to broker a deal to get on Channel 47, um, you know, but, uh, look, a lot of it to me was about Bruno saved the company several times in in in the old days. Um, you know, it’s just just plain and simple. That whole Ali Inoki, uh, mess was going to destroy the company. And, um, you know, if he didn’t get out of his hospital bed to come work with Stan Hansen, McMahon was going to probably go out of business. I mean, it’s just a plain fact. I mean, the, you know, nobody nobody cared about Ali Inoki, at least in the Northeast they didn’t. And, uh, you know, the close circuit card wasn’t doing much. So, you know, they were able to advertise San Martino and Hansen, and, it, uh, it went. And then of course, the original time when, you know, I mean Vince McMahon Senior was a big fan of Buddy Rogers, and of course he had his problems with Bruno, but it was clear that the Tunnys, you know, were doing very well with good business with Bruno. And, you know, McMahon wasn’t. I mean, just Buddy had a different way of going about things. Now, Buddy was a great showman and Bruno will tell you that, he was a tremendous performer. But, you know, Bruno had a perspective of what you have to what you have to do. And, uh, a lot of places go in and try to hotshot things, and Bruno’s looking for long-term health of the, uh, health of the territory, and he did things the best that he knew how. And look, when it comes to Bruno San Martino, in my opinion, you can say anything you want about any other performer. I don’t care. There is no other wrestler in this country that I’m aware of that forced the promoter to take the belt off of him. Now, there have been others that said, “I don’t want the belt,” but Bruno was the champion for years and would have continued to be the champion, if not for a few things. The McMahons pushed him too hard, had him wrestling every day, even in B clubs, made no sense. Um, you know, the rings in those days were very hard, they they were tough. So Bruno had to walk away. Now, the second time that he came back, they were a little bit smarter. Now they came to Pittsburgh to talk to him and said, “Look, you only have to work three or four days a week, we’ll do this, we’ll do that, if you just come back for a year, give us time to find somebody.” So, he comes back. After a year, he’s ready to leave, and they say, “Well, Bruno, what’s the problem? You’re making great money, we kept our word, you only work,” and he said to them, “You know what? They’re right.” So, he stayed. In other words, three and a half years, but eventually, he said, “You need to find somebody, because I’m I’m done.” Now, that doesn’t happen. You could say whatever you want about any champion you want. The bottom line is not one of those people said, “You got to take this belt off of me.” The only guy that might even come close is was the Tommy Rich, cuz ultimately, and I don’t even know if Tommy Rich said that. Now, I’m a huge Tommy Rich fan, I’ve been working with him lately on a project, and, you know, I’d worked with him before in various things, Blindfold Battle Royal, I’d managed him. I’m I’ve always been a huge fan of his. But when it’s all said and done, when they put the NWA title on it, on him, if he wanted to keep it for any length of time, he was going to have to travel outside of Georgia, outside of Tennessee. And and that wasn’t who Tommy was. You know, so that’s a whole different ball game. Um, but as a general rule of thumb, you know, you got a guy who the promoters would never have taken the belt off of, and, uh, and if you’d had the rings that they had, like when he came back in the 80s, the rings had changed drastically, and he he got in the back, he told these guys, he said, “You got to be kidding with these rings. This is like a trampoline.” He said, “If I had rings like this,” he said, “I would I would have been champion for 20 years.” You know, they were basically working in boxing rings. Yeah, so you can imagine the the toll that takes, and this is why Bruno had to walk away. But as far as as far as being a draw or whatever, he, you know, like there were times when there were talent brought in that Bruno did not think was were qualified. Okay, let me just put it that way. Not that they couldn’t work, but they weren’t qualified to be main event of Madison Square Garden, but maybe McMahon wanted to do a favor for this promoter or that promoter. But he said, “Sal, I went along with it for one simple reason. You know, you can’t always program everything. You know, you go there, you have a match, somebody gets DQ’d, you do this.” He said, “At some point, you’re the world champion. They need to see you just go out and beat somebody.” You know, or else eventually people start to figure that out. You know, and and he’s 100% right. I mean, you go there, okay, first time he’s going to meet this guy, well, somebody’s counted out, then somebody’s DQ’d, then they have another match. No, sometimes, you know, there were several guys that he worked with that he said, it I used them for strictly that purpose. Of course, McMahon wanted them to be used, but he used them for that purpose, to break things up. Somebody could just go through because he would say to them, “Okay, we could bring them in, but we’re going we’re going one time and that’s it.” You know, those are the things that make sense, and those are the things for the long-term health. You keep hot-shotting everything for a while, business is good, and then after that, it’s not.”
On if Bruno would have taken Andre the Giant’s spot if Andre couldn’t go against Hulk Hgoan at WrestleMania III:
“I would say probably not. I don’t think it was even considered or discussed.”
On the WWF and Vince McMahon:
“Right, you know, years ago I saw Bob Costa interview Vince McMahon, I mean many years ago. And he said, so professional wrestling is very popular. And Vince cut him off and said, no, the WWF is very popular. And you know what? You couldn’t argue with him.Because that’s what it was. You could take two guys that were in the main event of Madison Square Garden on Monday night and bring them to an independent show and I don’t care whether it was the following Friday or weekend day or the next day or whatever it was, and you would not get the same crowd that the same two guys—now look, if it was Hulk Hogan, okay, maybe you would. Um but other than that, there’s no way in the world. They’re not turning out. You know, I mean, we put Hogan on a card just as a referee back, oh around 2008 or so in Charlotte. And you know, the thing was not doing very well at all and then they made a deal to bring Hogan in to referee and um you know, I’d called Jimmy. I said, “Hey, you and Hulk are coming to Charlotte, huh?”So I, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” And I told him the whole deal and then he said, “You better let me go. Hulk’s calling.” So he called me back and he said, and he was calling to tell me just what you told me, we were going to Charlotte. And I told him I already knew all about it.You know, and of course the place at that point now we were turning people away. So, you know, I’m not saying you couldn’t get Hogan to go fill up a high school. But keep in mind, these same guys that were wrestling in the Spectrum, the Cap Centre, the Baltimore Civic Center, the next day these guys were in some spot show somewhere.You know what I mean?”
On how WWE’s turnouts today are more for the spectacle than the individual stars:
“It is just a whole different uh a whole different ball game.Today, it really around, you know, it’s like the Super Bowl. Does it really matter who’s in the Super Bowl? WrestleMania is, you know, just the same thing. And then you’ve got these other events, the Survivor Series and the Royal Rumble. You know, sure there’s things that are nice to have there and you got to put together a good card. But, you know, people aren’t leaving there to say, “Hey man, I went to I went to wrestling to see Cody Rhodes wrestle Randy Orton.”I went to the I went to the Survivor Series. That’s what they’re saying. You know, I went to the Super Bowl. Who was in it? I don’t know, I was at the Super Bowl. You know, I mean, a lot of people could not tell you who won last year’s Super Bowl. I know I certainly couldn’t. But uh, fair fair enough.But a lot of people could not could not do that.Well, I wasn’t involved in the promotional process except for my own event, but what we had was um we had a card, I go well, I did graduated from Saunders Trades and Technical High School in Yonkers, New York. And um, we have an alumni association there. I just actually got back from Yonkers, uh, inducting my father onto the wall of fame for the school for people who’ve accomplished quite a bit after after they left the school.”
On promoting events around the time of WWF WrestleMania 1 in the New York Area:
“At the time we were looking to raise money for the alumni association. So, uh through Howard Finkel I was introduced to a gentleman named Cohen who actually is not a guy that is celebrated much, but was a huge um assist in getting Vince McMahon to even be able to buy the company from his father. Um and Ed was in charge of um charity events. Well, we put a little card together uh you know, wasn’t the card I wanted, but it was still a great card and I was happy to have it. Was uh Roddy Piper, Paul Orndorff, and David Schultz against Rocky Johnson, Tony Atlas, and S.D. Jones. And then we’re supposed to have backlin against the Mad Superstar that ended up being pulled. But to be honest with you, we literally turned people away, you know, the first blast, you know, as, you know, Finkel used to come on there and you know, talk about the upcoming spot shows and you know, the next day after he said Saunders Trades and Technical High School see Rocky Johnson and Roddy Pi, you know, forget it. It was nuts. So, and uh we literally had to turn people away. The fire marshal said, “Enough’s enough.” Well, since we did so well with our first show, you know, they said we would have a second show. So when I called them, they said, “Look, I can’t do it.” And I said, “What do you mean? We sold out our first show. You said we can well, I know what we told you, but uh we can’t do it.” He said, “Now what what I can do is this. Um and believe me, he told me very little. But he said there’s a big thing coming up um and all I can tell you is it involves Hulk Hogan and Mr. T. And uh that was it. That was what we were told, can be on closed-circuit television. If you want that, we’ll sign you up for that.”And of course, that was Bedlam. Now, I will tell you that it started off very slow. Um when I called Ticketmaster, now keep in mind, I’m, you know, a guy who was told basically tickets were almost sold out of his first event in 48 hours. Um, so now I call Ticketmaster and they heard only been one ticket sold. I was like, and I said, “You mean one today?” They said, “No, one period.” I I started to panic.Well, what had happened is, as all the closed-circuit events sold out in New York City, now everybody started trending north. And this was going to be in Valhalla, New York at the Westchester Community College because that was part of our first problem is the school was not big enough to house WrestleMania. We had to have at least 2,500 seats, I believe it was.So, um as time went by and all the other venues were sold out, of course, you know, people only wanted to go as far as they had to. So we had a ton of seats sold and then eventually the thing—I mean, people were still calling at 3:00 in the morning begging for tickets. And you know, my friend Anthony Atanasio, I told you about, who eventually ended up uh being a big financier for WrestleReunion. Um you know, he told them, he said, “Look man, we’re out of tickets. I’m sorry, we don’t have anything to sell you.” Because his business that at the time A&A Refrigeration, which became the appliance doctor, they were one of the ticket venues because they actually had a storefront. You know, in those days, you know, you went around town and you bought tickets from local vendors.You know, sure you could, you know, they sent us up with Ticketmaster too, but you know, we had already had all the local vendors. So, we pulled tickets from Ticketmaster and said, “Well, this place is going to sell these.” But first Ticketmaster was sold out and they’re calling the vendors and you know, the show I don’t know if you remember started at 1:00. We got there at 8:00 a.m. People were already online because our seats were general admission. Right? So basically, if you got there first, you got up in the front row. Not that you couldn’t see the screen because you could. But you know how people are. They want to be in the front.So that that was my part of the promotion for it, you know, we did turn away business there, and that was it.Well, certainly it was a different thing and the Samoans had warned me about it. So I was kind of kind of prepared, but still not enough.”
On working Puerto Rico shortly after Bruiser Brody’s murder:
“I didn’t know Bruiser Brody and the guy Rob Russin who I worked for for many years at IWA Championship Wrestling, he knew Frank very well. I did not. It’s only this year I met his wife Barbara um and I did some stuff with her uh business-wise.But as far as my time there, you know, one year I was World Wrestling Council Referee of the Year. Um you know, the events the anniversary shows were most of what I was brought in for. Um as kind of a troubleshooting referee. And um I did one or two spot shows. But generally be anniversary weekend and you know, I think I was in Ponce once at a little spot show before the things really got brutal. Now as far as the Zeus stuff, you know, people wanted Zeus. I mean, it’s just plain and simple. Now these guys booked Abdullah with him and uh you know, Abdullah did every Look, I like Zeus, he was a nice guy. But, you know,Yeah. No. No. He really wasn’t. And, you know, but he also didn’t know how to wrestle.”
On working with Zeus and Abdullah the Butcher in Puerto Rico:
I’ve got another story that’s kind of interesting, but uh maybe we’ll get to that. But, you know, Zeus is working with um with Abdullah and, you know, I mean, look he was doing his best, but the crowd there is interesting. First, the crowd died on the match. They were all sitting on their hands. Next thing you know, they’re on their feet screaming. Then they died again. Then they were back on I mean, it’s just like it was back and forth, back and forth. Um, now this match happened three times. Um, twice in Puerto Rico and I was the referee for both of those.And then in California, in Imperial, California, Rob Russin’s IWA and he said, “Look, these guys want Zeus on the show. It’s a soul show and they want Zeus.” He said, “What am I supposed to do with this?”And I said, “All I can” And Rob got along not only with Bruiser Brody very well, but with Abdullah the Butcher very well. So I said, I said, “Call Abdullah.” I said, “You know, just tell him what you got and tell him I’ll be there too and, you know, see what he says.” And of course, as soon as he heard it, he said, “Rob, you know how hard I got to work with this guy?” And he said, “Yeah, I I’ve been told. I understand.” He said, “But this is what we need.” And he did it. And you know, we went to California. When I got there in the dressing room, Zeus, you know, again, he’s a guy who’s trying to be productive, but he just kind of looked at me and said, “Now, look, I’ve wrestled this guy twice in Puerto Rico.” And I said, “I know, I was there with you.” And he looked up and he saw me and I think he was relieved because he saw that you knew a familiar face was going to be in the ring with him. Um, you know, the funniest part of the of the whole thing is at one point, you know, let’s face it, Zeus a big strong guy. And um, I looked at Abdullah, he had him on the ropes and he’s swinging at him and I said, “Abby, that’s that’s that looks like it hurts.” He just turned his head at me and said, “It does.” You know, but, you know, that was it. It’s just I’ve got the designation of being the only person to ever referee that match three times. You know, once overseas and the other way and that was that.Well, look, could he have done stuff? There’s plenty of people that you can do plenty of things in wrestling if they want to do them. You know, necessarily, you know, the best wrestler isn’t the guy who who draws the pme who draws the most money.”
On discovering Tyrus before he even considered wrestling:
“You have to have somebody who’s willing to do it. So, so you, I assume you know who Tyrus is from the Fox News Network?Right? Well, well, I’m going to give you a 100% accurate true story. Um, I would assume Tyrus might remember this, but he also might not, but this is a factual story. So, I used to go uh he used to bodyguard for the guy that owned the Saddle Ranch Chop House in West Hollywood on Sunset. I used to eat there quite often.So, I got invited to a party that they were throwing. Now, I didn’t know Tyrus at the time, but when I got to the party, he’s standing outside against the building and he’s this monster of a guy. So I said, “Look, man, you ever want to get in the pro wrestling business?” I said, “You know, let me know.” I said, “Cause I’m sure I could probably do something for you.” Well, he just kind of laughed it off. He certainly didn’t take it seriously, but I was serious and I certainly had enough contacts to to get him with somebody. I would have probably brought him to the Samoans or something like that. Well, a while later, Jimmy calls me, Hart, and he says, “Saul, look, you, you know, you got any big people out here? Me and Hulk are out in LA, I need some monster size guy. He doesn’t have to know how to wrestle, we don’t do nothing. I just want to throw a sheet over him.” And you know, announce the the next big thing or whatever.” I said, “Jimmy, go to the Saddle Ranch.” Me and Jimmy had been there before and I said, “Go to the Saddle Ranch and tell them you want the boss’s bodyguard.”So, you know, I talked to him later. I said, “You go down there?” He said, “Yeah, but they said the guy left.” The guy the guy quit to go work for Snoop Dogg. Well, a few days later, what do you think happens? Snoop Dogg calls Hulk and says, “Hulk, I got this huge guy I want to try and get him in wrestling business.” And uh, I said, “You got to be kidding, Jay.” He said, “No, I’m not kidding.” He said, “But Hulk explained to them and he said point blank, listen, you know, it’s not like it was when I got Zeus in. It’s it’s a whole different thing. You got to really know what you’re doing.” Well, at the time, Tyrus didn’t know what he was doing. He hadn’t been trained there or anything. You know, so so Hulk didn’t really pursue that. But, I mean, the irony of Jimmy calling me at just that time, me sending him to find this guy, the guy go first thing he Snoop first thing he thought is first thing I thought, “What the hell are you doing here holding up this building?” You you know, you can you could be in you could be in a wrestling business. But that’s just the way things go. Um, you know, I would think he might remember that story, but my time with him, you know, when a guy’s laughing you off, not that there was anything wrong, it was all fine, but you know, you spent 30 seconds or a minute with a guy and he may not even know the rest of this story. You you know, but, but that’s exactly the way it happened.Yeah.And I’m going to tell you, he didn’t say to me, “Yeah, a lot of people say that to me.” Nothing. He just kind of laughed it off. And uh, but I was serious as a heart attack. I mean, look, you don’t walk upon that many people that are that that big, you know, and Jimmy of course trusted my word enough that, you know, if I told him there was a guy down there that fit what they wanted to do, of course he went running down there to try to find the guy. But, you know, everything’s timing and things have all worked out great for Tyrus and I’m glad.”
On working for Nelson Royal’s promotion:
“It was a lot of fun. At the time, I was working with the NWA, but I wanted to work more full-time and Tommy Young was in full gear and Teddy Long is still a referee at the time and Peewee Anderson was still around before he got sick. So there really wasn’t room for another full-time referee, but when they went north, you know, like to Boston and uh Nassau Coliseum and uh some of that stuff, then, you know, I could do it. And then, um, and I’ll I’ll tell you how Philadelphia, I worked Philadelphia a lot. Well, Nikita said, “Look, I might have a full-time opportunity for you. You’d have to come to North Carolina, Nelson Royal is starting a promotion.” So I show up down there and they’ve got a loaded card, Mozreel High School, which is Nelson’s town, and still Nelson Royal’s Western Store, still there. Um, packed packed packed. They got the Rock and Roll Express and everybody else under the sun that wasn’t working for the Crocketts. And uh, some of the underneath the enhancement talent, Tommy Angel, David Isley, uh, Lawrence Stephens, Colt Steel, many of these guys that you would see on the TV every week, Ricky Nelson, and, you know, um, these guys, you know, if there was any mistake made, it was probably trying to push all of those guys at the same time. Now, they all were worthy, but, you know, how many guys that are you’re watching get their head kicked in on TV every week can you come out in the following week now all of a sudden there’s superstars? You know, if you took in, you know, one or two and then eventually work the others in, maybe that would have been better. But working for Nelson was great. But the thing that happened is I was supposed to go down there and do one match, just to see if I could if I could accomplish anything. Well, no referee showed up. Now, a guy who um a guy named Gene Ligon who eventually became a business partner with me and is still still a friend, I’ll be seeing him and David Isley both at Thanksgiving. Um, they uh Gene Ligon had been a referee for the Crocketts when he was injured from wrestling. He was one of the Thunderfoots um and then wrestled as himself, you know, for years as well. Well, he could have put on the referee shirt, but he was there to wrestle. He was not he was not there to um, you know, to uh to referee, but he would have had to probably because nobody else in the building was a referee, but Nelson Royal just said, “Look, if you can do the whole do if you can do the whole show, just do the whole show.” So, I did that and uh a few weeks later, I, you know, they thanked me. They paid me a lot extra, probably gave me the whole referee budget for the night. And uh, you know, which was fine. I felt like I earned it anyway. And a few weeks later they called and said, “You know, you’ve got the full-time job being thing and I went and Nikita Koloff moved me in as his roommate. I lived with him for a while. And we did various things and, you know, look, it wasn’t funded well enough. Um, you know, that was part of the problem. And I think that and I mean he had money behind it, but, you know, but not enough to to try to do what they were trying to do.”
On the AWA higher ups thinking he was a drug dealer:
“So, Sherri Martel, when I moved to it, we were very close. And when I moved to Denver, she said she would get me booked on on shows out there with the local promoter Gene Reed. Well, when I got in the dressing room, Greg Gagne basically said, you know, “We can’t use you here.” So I’m like, “Holy shit.” So, um, I went to talk to Snuka. And um, he said, I told him the problem and he said, “Sal, go talk to Nick Bockwinkel.” He said, “Nick’ll fix it for you.” So, I went to Bockwinkel and I told him, you know, what happened and he went to Greg and he said, “Look, I’m telling you you got the wrong guy. Period.” So, Nick came back and talked to me and said, “Look, they’re going to let you work the first match uh just to see what you can do.” So, I went out there, and I don’t remember exactly who was who was in the match at the time, might have been Barazu Koff and Earthquake Ferris, but I’m not I’m not sure. But uh, when I got in the back, you know, I’m looking to hear that I was I okay? And they said, “Look, can you stay around and do the main event for us?” And uh, I was like, “Wow.” So, I went to Colonel DeBeers and I said, “Ed, they they they want me to do your match.” And he said, “Sal, we went to him and told him way too complicated for these referees out here. There’s no way in the world they can handle this that we need you in there.” So, and I said, “Okay, great.” Which was it was a coal miner’s glove match and um, you know, I still knew. I mean, keep in mind, while I had been around, but I really wasn’t in in the business. I was certainly on the fringes and got along with everybody, but there’s a difference between working and just knowing everybody and hanging out and going, you know, shooting the shit or going to get guys coffee and carrying bags and all of this. So, we had the coal miner’s glove match and Snuka’s not cold. Well, yeah, and and the Beers the Beers wins the match. Now, he had pulled out a second glove, which of course I’m not supposed to see and I didn’t see. But um, you know, I went in the back with uh when it was over and I said, “Hey Nick, I said, did you watch the match?” I said, “You could hear a pin drop out there.” He said, he said, “Nobody said anything.” And he said, “Sal, you were only seconds away from a riot.” He said, “What are you talking about?” He said, “Sal, when a crowd goes dead like that, you know, it was basically the only other crowd I’ve really heard of that, and I’m sure there’s others, but I’m telling you what I’ve heard of, was when Koloff beat Bruno.” And they were so afraid of a riot there that they really didn’t even announce till later that Koloff had won the title. Well, the same kind of thing here and Greg actually stuck his head in the in the shower and said, “Colonel, I think we need to change things around.” He said, “You know, that reaction out there was not good.” He said, “They’re losing faith in Snuka,” which of course, in theory was crazy, but, you know, the bottom line is maybe that was what was happening because, I mean, you literally could hear a pin drop. So, you know, now, after that, once everything was straightened out there, now Greg is on my side. And uh they needed a referee for Las Vegas and uh Sherry put me on the phone with Ray Stevens. They brought me out there. We have a meeting and the night that I started with them doing TV was uh I was there that night for the first time, Paul Heyman was there that night for the first time, and the uh original Midnight Express, you know, uh uh Condrey and Randy Rose. So, we all and and Tommy Rich, we all started the same night. And uh, you know, I don’t know if you ever saw the infamous arm wrestling deal with Sherry Martel, Kevin Kelly and Tommy Rich. Um, okay, well I’m going to referee for that one. And and I had uh Heyman and them’s first first match um you know, there and um and then they also did that other crazy match with um Zbysko and Bachwinkel, Scott Leduc was supposedly barred from refereeing their matches. So, I was supposed to referee it, but they knocked me out of the ring and no other referees in the building, so, you know, Leduc was assigned and then, you know, they did what I thought was kind of crazy and Zbysko wasn’t in favor of it, Bachwinkel, nobody was in favor of it, but Verne wanted it that way where, um, you know, the referee Leduc comes in, you know, and and he does the match. Well, at the end, Zbysko is complaining that, you know, Bachwinkel hit him with a roll of quarter. Well, the quarters are or nickels or whatever it was, were all spread all over the ring. And and Zbysko’s saying, “He hit me with a roll of nickels!” And Leduc’s saying, “He’s saying you hit him with a roll of nickels!” And Bachwinkel says, “Yeah, I did!” And he said, “No, no, you don’t He said you hit Yes, I did hit him!” You know, and so because it was such blatancy between Leduc and Zbysko, Leduc says, “Well, um Larry is I mean, Nick Bachwinkel says he hits Zbysko with a roll of nickels, but I didn’t see it so the winner is Nick Bachwinkel.” Nobody was really in favor of that, but we did it and, you know, and I look, I did whatever they whatever they wanted me to do and then, you know, quite honestly, Bruno was who reconnected me and Greg Gagne. He was talking to me. He was told I was the person to speak to about trying to get in touch with the family and and I after a couple of minutes, I said, “Greg, let me ask you something. Do you know who you’re talking to?” And he said, “Man, your name sounds very familiar.” And I told him, “Oh, okay.” You know, it had been 20 years, maybe more. “
