EDITOR *** CORBETT
'COUNTERFEIT HERO'
ID* Investigative Day
& Paperback Writer
Inc.
SAY IT AIN'T SO, HULK!
Direct examination
of Terry Gene Bollea
(Hulk Hogan)
by Assistant D.A. Sean
O'Shea
O'SHEA: Have you used steroids prior ... had you used steroids prior
to going to work for WWF?
HULK: Yes, sir.
O'SHEA: When
did you start using steroids, Mr. Bollea?
HULK: Probably
the middle of 1976.
O'SHEA:
And what ... over the years what sort of steroids had you used?
HULK:
Injectibles and orals.
O'SHEA: Okay.
Can you give us some of the names of the steroids you would have used?
HULK: Dianabol,
Anavar, Winstrol, testosterone, Deca Durabolin.
O'SHEA: A
steroid commonly known as Deca?
HULK: Yes, sir.
O'SHEA: And is
it fair to say that that was the steroid you used the most?
HULK: Yes, sir.
(Excerpt from official
court transcript, U.S. Courthouse, Uniondale, New York, Thursday, July
14, 1994)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: KAYE CORBETT
AS A CARNIVAL WRESTLER, who appeared as the villainous
Viking in the 1982 Walt Disney movie, Running
Brave, Kaye Corbett grew up around the wrestling game
during its heyday in the 1950s and 1960s in western Canada and
the U.S.
It was there he first became acquainted with such legendary
wrestling figures as Stu Hart, Killer Kowalski, Lou Thesz, Pat
O'Connor,
the Mills Brothers, and Timothy Geohagen.
Although his passions were wrestling and football, Corbett found
his talents were best suited to the newspaper game and as a "scribbler"
and editor he worked for the Hamilton Spectator and the now-defunct
Toronto Telegram, before joining the Toronto Sun as assistant sports
editor, where he had the privilege of "hanging around" promoter
Frank Tunney and a cast of colorful characters from Whipper Billy
Watson to Gene Kiniski to Chief Jay Strongbow to The Sheik (hiss! boo!)
Later, he helped start the Edmonton Sun as its first Sports
Editor, and as Executive Editor he renewed acquaintances with Stu Hart,
father of Bret (The Hit Man) Hart and his brother, Rocket Owen and,
especially, Mike Bulat, to whom this book/documentary, Counterfeit Hero, are gratefuly
dedicated. Before returning to the Toronto Sun in 1986, Corbett and
Bulat teamed up for a weekly TV wrestling show.
In 1995, Corbett moved to the mountains of British Columbia,
where he is working on several projects, including the second in this
series called The Early Years on The
Ankle Express.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
THE GREAT morality play of the 1990s didn't involve the
so-familiar features of O.J. Simpson, but of two musclemen -- Terry
Bollea, known throughout the universe as Hulk Hogan, and Vince McMahon.
They were mired in a bog of drugs and questionable behavior. Hogan was
a hero to millions of kids -- and then he fell. McMahon was the
mastermind behind the enormously successful rise of professional
wrestling. Then there dreams vanished in a cloud of bright hopes gone
gray. Good vs. Evil. A matter that was left to a Long Island court
during 1994 and still the haunting question remains: Was justice served?
Counterfeit Hero was
written by Kaye Corbett, but it would not have been possible without
the words and observations of Dave Meltzer, editor of Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
Other news and photographic sources include Penthouse, People, New York Post, New York Times, Toronto Sun, Toronto Star, Miami Herald, Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News, San Jose Mercury, San Diego Tribune-Union, The Associated Press, St. Paul Pioneer Press Dispatch, Los Angeles Times, The State of Columbia, South Carolina,
National Star, Charlotte Observer, Lexington Herald Leader, Tampa Tribune, Sports Illustrated, Wrestling Then & Now, Pro Wrestling Torch, Mat Marketplace, Cauliflower Alley Club, Harrisburg, Pa. Patriot, plus Joe
Jares, Harry Rapaport, Mike Bulat, Sean O'Shea and a cast of courageous
wrestlers, particularly Superstar Billy Graham, David Shults, Billy
Jack Haynes, Barry Orton, Tom Hankins, and friends, who put their
reputations on the line, in order to set the record straight.
Also a special thanks to Julie Kirsch and her efficient library
staff at the Toronto Sun.
FRONT COVER PHOTO CREDIT: Editor Corbett (Toronto Sun)
BACK COVER PHOTO CREDIT:
The Viking
(Running Brave, Walt Disney
Productions, 1982)
DEDICATION
For Mike Bulat
who believes in the business
through good and bad times
INTRODUCTION
By Max Haines of the Toronto Sun
THE VILLAINOUS VIKING has crafted a winner. Who but respected
journalist Kaye Corbett, once known as the Villainous One himself,
could bring the reader into the inner circle of wrestling. After
reading 'Counterfeit Hero' you will never view the grunt-and-groan boys
in the same light again.
Corbett reveals the inner workings of the World Wrestling
Federation with special emphasis on its kingpin, Vince McMahon. He
reviews the checkered history of McMahon and his wrestling heroes, who
have been portrayed with publicity expertise as either clean
living lily whites or lovable monsters. Corbett exposes the
chinks in the armour of the game itself, exposing the influence
that anabolic steroids have had on athletes. In addition, he documents
child sex abuse within the sport which precipitated the resignation of
several executives.
Not even the game's superhero, Hulk Hogan, is left unscathed.
Despite his public persona as a clean living wholesome giant, Hulk
Hogan (real name: Terry Bollea) has been linked to steroids and drugs.
Corbett reveals that the Hulkster's image is well protected, and with
good reason. He is the star of a merchandising empire which
grosses $1.7 billion annually. He also stars in movies and commercials.
To maintain his image, particularly with the Little Hulksters, he
visits as many as 30 children's hospitals in a week. It pays well for
Hogan to perpetuate his clean living, child-oriented image.
Not all things have been one hundred per cent kosher within the
WWF and Corbett reveals all.
There was a time Jake the Snake (real name: Aurelian Smith)
allowed his gimmick, a cobra named Damien, to bite fellow wrestler
Randy (Macho Man) Savage (real name: Randy Poffo). Sometimes a wrestler
will turn on the hand that feeds him.
Jesse (The Body) Ventura (real name: Jim Janos) once
successfully sued the WWF for defrauding him of royalties on videos
sold by the federation. The Body was awarded $809,958.
Tragically, Corbett recounts the sad life of Andre The Giant
(real name: Andre Rene Rousimoff), who suffered from a form of
giantism, known as acromegaly, until his death of natural causes on
Jan. 28, 1993 in Paris..
Even one of the WWF's former heroes was murdered. Dino Bravo
(real name: Adolfo Bresciano) was shot to death in his $850,000 home
near Montreal. To this day, the crime remains unsolved.
Tragedy also seems to follow Fritz Von Erich (real name: Jack
Adkisson). Five of Adkisson's sons have died of disease, accident or
suicide.
After walking through the dry rot that is the modern version of
the World Wrestling Federation, Corbett relates the details of Vince
McMahon's trial in which he was charged with conspiracy to distribute
anabolic steroids. The testimony and evidence is presented in a most
readable manner.
You need not be a follower of the wrestling game to enjoy
this most comprehensive narrative of a sport gone big-time
entertainment. It is told in the concise no-holds-barred style of Kaye
Corbett, an accomplished journalist and former editor.
It doesn't hurt that he was also once known as the Villainous
Viking.
(Max Haines, one of the world's most
famous and prolific crime writers, is the author of more than 14 books)
PROLOGUE:
The Rape of Rasslin'
i.
ONCE UPON A TIME the rasslin' dinosaurs
ruled the world. Now the majority's extinct. The rest of the once-great
herd journey to Studio City, California in March and to Issaquah,
Washington in late June.
They dub their herding instincts the
Cauliflower Alley Club and Reunion I, II, III, IV, and V, as it was in
1994.
All these
dinosaurs remember the past before the spring in their legs turned to
winter.
Old "enemies"
share "war stories" and in their mind's eye, they listen to the sights
and sounds of a more innocent time.
Blank screen.
Announcer's voice: Argentina
Rocca, sporting freshly clipped toenails teams up with Miguel Perez to
meet those two fearsome thespians of the mat game -- the Graham
Brothers. It's a tag-team match and anything goes. Rocca and the
Grahams have met before in one of the bloodiest spectacles in mat
history ... the Grahams waste no time in working over Perez, but they
still have to deal with the Barefoot Contessa ... Rocca feels left out,
so he crashes the party. You can be sure the Grahams didn't invite him
... Rocca offers Eddie Graham the Toe-Nail Special, and all Eddie gets
is a bad case of Athlete's Nose. The Shoeless One continues his
orthopaedic massage on the helpless Graham until Eddie feels as if his
face was a doormat in Macy's during a girdle sale.
Final scene: Rocca and Perez are
doing all the tagging. They wind up the action with a few tricks that
never got in the rule book. The Grahams have been foiled once again,
and although they gave a valiant effort, it wasn't in the books for
them. The fans are happy ... but the Grahams are upset, being the good
sports they are, the brothers manage a smile. On the way out, Perez
gives Eddie a love tap to show he still cares. Thus ends another
thrilling episode of the trials of a professional
wrestler ...
Blank screen.
ii.
LORD ATHOL LAYTON
GOOD EVENING, sports fans, Lord Athol Layton your commentator at
the ringside of the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium with wrestling at its
very best. Pedro Martinez has gone all out and has provided a contest
here: The Battle of the Giants. You see the the two giants taking their
instructions in the ring at the moment. Big Bobo Brazil, the colored
sensation from the West Coast, previously from East St. Louis,
Illinois, who has come here with a fine record and is displaying great
form, pitted against the Big Ozark giant tonight, Sky Hi Lee, who
weighs 290 pounds, 6 feet 7 in height ... Bobo Brazil , incidentally, 6
feet 6 in height, weighing 278 pounds. Bobo Brazil made a great debut
here last week, when in 13 seconds he subdued his opponent and tonight,
Sky Hi Lee, showing utter contempt for Bobo Brazil, but Bobo Brazil,
highly rated, regarded as probably the greatest colored man in the
business ATTACKS Sky Hi Lee from the outset and hits with a head butt
... and with a bulldogging hold and another headbutt by Bobo Brazil, as
he takes Sky Hi Lee ... and buries his head in the canvas. And the
referee is down ... ONE, TWO, THREE, and ... another fast win on the
part of Bobo Brazil as he compltely surprised the mighty Sky Lee, er,
seldom or never before have I ever seen Sky Hi Lee so completely
surprised by an opponent as he was here by this mighty colored boy.
Bobo Brazil rushed and before Sky Hi Lee could could collect himself in
the contest, he gave him a big headbutt , took him in a side headlock
and drove him into the canvas as he rushed across the ring, then he
repeated that, fans. He headbutted him once or twice, and then he drove
him again and got this quick win ... And there we have it, at 29
seconds this week, 29 seconds, Big Bobo Brazil from East St. Louis,
Illinois, with a surprise attack on Sky Hi Lee, made short work of him
and defeated him in suck quick time. That is a most impressive win, a
most impressive win on the part of Bobo Brazil, who shows he means
business in these parts, and will, undoubtedly, take on the best of
them, and that looks like a tough assignment for a lot of rougher
wrestlers in these parts. And there goes Sky Hi Lee, an unhappy man, a
surprised man, defeated so soon by Bobo Brazil ...
Fade to black.
Blank screen
Fists fly as a pudgy Bruno Sammartino and a balding Hans
Schmidt trade punches and near-misses in the middle of the ring.
TV announcer: That's
the bell? I think the bell rang! The bell may have rung, but these two
fellows are't willing to break it off ... Hans Schmidt isn't willing to
settle for that, he wants to keep going. They are. Look at those
punches! And Sammartino has a big grin on his face ... Look at Hans, he
wants to check the ballots before they're totalled up.
Hans Schmidt (deep
growl): Do me a favor ...
Ring announcer (backing
away from Schmidt: The official decision. A draw.
Fade to black.
iii.
WHEN THE 37th annual Cauliflower
Alley Club banquet settled in at Studio City, Ca., on March 19, 1994,
the familiarity of old faces still bred content. There was Dick Hutton,
Billy Robinson, Al (Kangaroo) Costello, Sherri Martel, Peggy Allen,
Penny Banner, Gene Kiniski, Verne Gagne, Danny Hodge, Tiger Conway,
Dick (Destroyer) Beyer, June Byers, Bette Clark, John Tolos, Hardboiled
Haggerty, Don Curtis, Toru Tanaka, Bruce Swayze, Red Bastien, Pepper
Martin ... and the Elder Statesman, Lou Thesz.
The 1,400-member-plus fraternity traded stories of early TV
wrestling of Bobo Brazil's Coco Butt; of Timothy Geohagen's Irish
Windmill; of Danny Hodge's Banana Split; of The Sheik's Camel Clutch;
of Thesz's Airplane Spin; and of the dear friends, who had departed
during the previous 12 months, including the flamboyant Buddy (Nature
Boy) Rogers, Bulldog Don Kent, Ronnie Etchison and Eddy Creatchman.
However, the convrsations mainly centered on Vince McMahon, the
48-year-old son of an old-time promoter by the same name, who was
facing up to 11 years in jail for distributing steroids in a court
case, which would begin in Uniondale, N.Y., on Tuesday, July 5, 1994.
The Old Guard would, perhaps, finally see justice done, for they
all, seemingly, echoed the words of their Elder Statesman, Lou Thesz,
when he, emphatically, stated: "He (McMahon) raped wrestling."
iv.
IF ANYONE was to the manor born,
it was Vincent K. McMahon, for his father, Vincent J., once ruled
wrestling in the northeastern United States, from New York City's old
Madison Square Garden, and his granddaddy, Jess, was a boxing
matchmaker for the legendary Tex Rickard and later worked as a
wrestling promoter in the Big Apple and Philadelphia.
Grim, smoke-filled arenas and brutes such as Skull Murphy and
Moose
Cholak were the order of the day with the promoters' sales pitch
targetting the working-class male, who wanted to vent his venom at his
lot in life on these seemingly out-of-control mastodons.
McMahon The Elder was just one of about 30 warlords across North
America, who controlled their territories, usually with an iron hand,
as well as their stable of wrestlers. However, McMahon was one
who
admantly believed in something called television, in the 1950s.
Vincent J. had a string of hits, and very few misses, jamming
Madison
Square with memorable matches, particularly from 1950 to 1971 with
power-packed names such as Argentina Rocca, Gene Stanlee, the Mighty
Atlas, Ricki Starr, Dick the Bruiser, Primo Carnera, Pedro Morales,
Stan Stasiak, and his premier performer, the Living Legend, Bruno
Sammartino.
There were other promoters scattered throughout the U.S. and
Canada,
who, were just as successful at the gate, from Frank Tunney in Toronto,
Sam Muchnick in St. Louis, Paul Boesch in Houston, Roy Shire in San
Francisco, and a compact wrestler-promoter, Stu Hart, out of Calgary,
Alberta, Canada, who had been one of McMahon's stablehands at MSG.
In the central U.S., Buddy Rogers, Pat O'Connor, Gagne, Baron
von
Rashchke, the Vachon Brothers, Crusher and Dick the Bruiser packed 'em
in at Chicago's Comiskey Park, while Thesz, Baron Michele Leone, Leo
Nomellini, Fred Blassie and John Tolos were drawing cards in Frisco's
Cow Palace.
Tunney, once called a splendid set of cauliflower ears, was an
articulate and shrewd businessman, pushed the Toronto terriotry to new
heights; first with clean-cut Whipper Billy Watson against the meanest
Gene of them all, Kiniski; then came the devilish and deceitful Sheik
and his treacherous accomplice, The Weasel Farouk. The Maple Leaf
Gardens' throngs would never be convinced that this pair was, in real life, two successful
businessmen, named Ed Farhat and Ernie Roth.
v.
OF COURSE, wrestling has always been a piece of work,
relying on the gullibility of its patrons, but never being able to
reach the mainstream. It seemed forever destined to be relegated to a
pseudosport, with limited followers, who would be forever lost in a
time warp of discussing whether the chicanery in the ring was fake or
not.
Even McMahon The Elder had a story to tell, one which would be
dubbed The No-Wrestlers-In-Jail
Defence in Joe Jares' brilliant book, Whatever Happened To Gorgeous George?
VINCE J. McMAHON:
They
used to ask Ed (Strangler) Lewis, the old champ, whether it was fake,
too. Once the question came up at a lawyers' convention in Chicago
where he was speaking. Well, Lewis was very interested in penology and
used to study the prison systems of various countries he wrestled in.
So he told them, 'Gentlemen, I've visited many prisons in my time, and
I've never met a wrestler in one. But I have met a lot of lawyers.'
Writer Jares, whose father was The Thing, noted in the '70s that
McMahon's story was another bit of illogic; first it wasn't illegal to
fake a wrestling match, with most athletic commissions, requiring that
they be billed as exhibitions anyway. Also Lewis wasn't looking very
hard, for Jares said he knew of two wrestlers who had served time for
passing bad checks.
A college man, who was once a hulking
heel-turned-babyface-turned promoter and announcer gave his version of
the We-Just-Add-A-Bit-Of-Color
Defence:
GORILLA (BOB MARELLA)
MONSOON: Every
man in this business is a professional, who knows the fundamentals and
refinements of wrestling. But we also deal in excitement, and the other
way to get excitement is to deviate from the rules. If we gave
people
collegiate wrestling, the arenas would be empty. We add color.
Then another old-time wrestler had his own spin on a professionm
which dates back to Greek mythology:
JACK ARMSTRONG: Let's
face
it, we could kill each other each night at any given time on any given
night. A blow to the right place, a foot to the heart too hard,
anything. But we all realize the other guy's got a family to support
and money to make so we don't go overboard.
vi.
FATHER VINCE was an innovator, the booker of the young Italian,
Bruno
Sammartino, and the Fabulous Moolah, known to her friends as Lillian
Ellison from South Carolina with her dipped-in-molasses accent, which
called up visions of Scarlett O'Hara twirling her parasol, according to
writer Jares.
However, it was McMahon and his chief Garden aide, Willie
Gilzenberg's manipulation of television, which was their forte.
Unlike other promoters in other territories, or fiefdoms, across
North America, McMahon The Elder didn't allow TV to swallow him.
In the 1940s when TV came along, promoters didn't really know
how to
handle it, and by the mid-'50s, wrestling became a classic case of
overexposure, saturating the small screen on a daily basis.
Then the novelty wore off.
McMahon and Gilzenberg weren't caught up in the dilemma because
they
found a way to use TV than, as Jares wrote: "(Being) drained by it and
discarded, like boxing or an old Brillo pad."
The formula was simple: Never show the TV watcher the match he
really wanted to see.
WILLIE GILZENBERG: He
has to come in person to see that. If you give it away for nothing, why
should anybody come to the arena to pay to see it?
Then came the insertion of hyping upcoming local wrestling on
these TV tapes.
These and other McMahon-Gilzenberg TV innovations were
forerunners of
today's glitz and bombastic behavior, pay-per-view (PPV) events and
blockbuster merchandising, which was to balloon into millions in
revenue and become perfected by McMahon's son, Vincent K.
vii.
INTENSE, EVEN as a youngster, Vince K. grew up in the
giant
shadows of his father and grandfather, watching their every move. He
was an extraordinary pupil.
McMahon The Younger was discontented with the status quo in
professional wrestling, at a young age, deploring the fact that
North
America was cut up into little pieces by promoters, such as his father.
"There must be a better way," he thought.
After attending East Carolina University, Junior worked for his
father as a wrestling commentator on cable TV and then he branched out
on his own in 1979 by buying the Cape Cod Coliseum in South Yarmouth,
Mass., with his wife, Linda, the marketing director.
The 7,200-seat facility, which had been built in 1973, had been
the
resort peninsula's summertime rock headquarters, drawing such major
names as the J. Geils Band, Dave Mason, Van Halen, Crosby Stills &
Nash, Boz Scaggs, Doobie Brothers, the Grateful Dead, Elvis Costello
and Tom Petty.
However, Linda McMahon wanted to turn it into a year-round
venue.
There were Atlantic Hockey League games in the winter, the occasional
pre-season games involving the nearby Boston Bruins and, of course,
Junior's promotional passion -- pro wrestling.
The experience of owning the Coliseum brought him closer to his
manifest destiny: that of meshing rock 'n' roll with rasslin'. In 1982,
he had bought out his father's stock in the WWWF (shortened to WWF --
World Wrestling Federation), which had been founded in 1963.
Two months before his father, Vincent J., died in July, 1984,
McMahon
The Younger and his wife, Linda, sold the Coliseum, It would be later
converted into a warehouse. The move appeared necessary, for the couple
had moved from the Cape to Greenwich, Conn., closer to the TV scene.
After the death of his father, whom he called "a fabulous human
being, warm and fair," Junior was able to launch a full-scale assault
in reaching wrestling's Nirvana.
viii. VINCE McMAHON
(People magazine, March 1992)
"MY MAJOR step was television on a local
basis. We already had out network in the Northeast and we started
selling those shows to stations in other fiefdoms," he told People magazine
in 1992. "In Chicago, in Los Angeles, the WWF brand of wrestling was
something new. We had better athletes -- more upscale and more
charisma. The local guys were lazy. They weren't listening to the
marketplace. We were so consumer-oriented. We never lifted our ears
from the ground. We gave the public what it wanted. We broke the mold."
Besides breaking the mold, he also broke numerous promoters with
his raiding parties.
"There were maybe 30 of these little kingdoms in the U.S., and
if I
hadn't bought out my dad, there would still be 30 of them, fragmented
and struggling, " he was quoted in the same People article. "I, of
course, had no allegiance to those little lords."
A ruthless wheeler-dealer, he threw around tons of money to
acquire
local TV rights for the WWF's brand of story lines and characters
accompanied by rock 'n' roll music.
Besides scattering the "little lords" of the American Wrestling
Association (AWA) in the South and Vern Gagne's National Wrestling
Alliance (NWA) out of Minneapolis, Junior began realizing his rock 'n'
roll and rasslin' marriage when pop singer Cyndi (Girls Just Want To
Have Fun) Lauper took Wendi Richter under her wing and managed her to
the WWF women's championship, beating the Fabulous Moolah in a packed
MSG, plus millions on PPV. Lillian Ellison, the "beat-up old broad" of
Joe Jares' days in the '70, and now managed by Captain Lou Albano, had
held the women's strap for 27 years as Moolah.
ix.
THE ASSIMILATION of rasslin' into the American mainstream,
nevertheless, wasn't completed until the introduction of a number of
"cartoon" superheroes.
The generations of smoke-filled, urine-laden arenas, where
livestock
usually roamed by day and hairy wrestlers by night, were banished
forever. So was the age-old "blading," causing "juicing" (bleeding from
the forehead), for bloodbaths weren't exactly family fare and neither
were Stone Age grunt'n'groaners, who had long been a staple of
wrestling.
McMahon, in his Manifest Destiny, insisted on muscular beach
boys,
preferably blond, who were leapers and gymnasts, not ring tacticians.
He knew he was in showbiz and had to have a level playing field to grab
his share of the entertainment dollar.
He needed a superhero, not just any superhero, but the ultimate
hero
of the universe. His choice became obvious: A tanned, blond 6-6,
290-pound muscleman named Terry Bollea. Under Vincent K's tutelage,
Bollea would become the world's most recognized hero -- Hulk Hogan.
Raised in Tampa, Florida, by father, Pete, a construction
foreman,
and mother, Ruth, a housewife and dance teacher, young Terry Bollea,
had a somewhat troubled childhood, being sent away for fighting to
Florida Sheriff's Boys Ranch, a training ground for reform school.
He emerged as a born-again Baptist, or so the story goes, to
study
business at Hillsborough Community College and the University of South
Florida; then later worked as a stevedore and a clerk in a Florida bank.
"I was responsible for cashing checks, and after a while I
caught on to something very interesting," he once told the Toronto Star's
Jim Proudfoot. "Some of the fattest checks were made out to these big
bruisers with funny hairstyles and cuts and scars on them. These guys
were wrestlers and this was the kind of money they were making. I was
earning about a tenth as much. I thought to myself: 'How long has this
been going on?'"
Getting in touch with a local promoter, Bollea, who had wrestled
in
college, had an auspicious debut, breaking his ankle, but he persevered
and three months later he was packing 230 pounds of muscle when he was
spotted by wrestlers Jack and Jerry Brisco.
Paying his dues at $125 a week, Bollea emerged into Terry
Boulder and
Sterling Golden before being recruited by McMahon The Elder as an Irish
villain, named Hogan, and then was given the Hulk Hogan "good guy"
persona in 1983.
The Hulk moved to the top rung of the WWF ladder in 1984, by
projecting the imagery McMahon The Younger wanted, and with it came his
first world title, by beating the Iron Sheik.
Even People named him
one of the year's outstanding personalities for "making scrap metal out
of the Iron Sheik."
The Party was just beginning.
His biggest break came when Sylvester Stallone wanted him to be
in Rocky III as Thunderlips,
who took on Balboa.
HULK HOGAN (as told to
the Toronto Star):
You've got to remember what a huge audience one of those Rocky pictures
would reach. I think Rocky III gave a lot of people their first
positive impression of wrestlers, sort of made us into a universal form
of entertainment. Shortly after that was when we began to see families
at ringside, replacing the element we used to attract. Wrestling became
respectable.
Although Hulkamania was taking off, Trry Bollea, not Hulk Hogan,
had
some legal troubles, with a minor gun violation in 1980, and in 1985,
he and TV's Hot Properties
host Richard Beltzer had a dustup, which resulted in a $5-million
lawsuit, one later settled out of court. It wasn't a piece of work when Hogan applied a chinlock
and Beltzer fell unconscious on the floor, requiring stitches to his
head.
The Beltzer incident was only a minor interruption on the
superhero
highway to world-wide acceptance for Hogan and the McMahon-produced
Wrestlemania, those Roman-numeralled carnival of sights and sounds.
x.
TERRY BOLLEA had, indeed, been transformed into Hulk Hogan, in and out
of the ring, however, there were whispers in the business, that he
wasn't as pure as the Caesar of professional wrestling had projected.
These cartoon characters, with their bulging muscles, were at
least
30 pounds heavier than their previous generation of wrestlers, and it
certainly wasn't from high-protein supplements.
Anabolic steroids appeared to be the key to their success. This
Breakfast of Champions was legal until the 1980s, when medical reports
started filtering in of its dangers.
And then athletes started dying.
Lyle Alzado was a prime example. The toughest hombre in the
National
Football League playpen was reduced to a frail, old man, with a massive
amount of hair loss. He blamed his destruction on steroid abuse.
With suddenness, the WWF, the wrestling arm of the
ever-expanding
Titan Sports of Stamford, Conn., was, indirectly, hauled on the carpet.
Or rather into court.
Dr. George Zahorian III, a Harrisburg, Pa. urologist, who
happened
to be a WWF ringside doctor, confessed in U.S. federal court in June
1991that he had supplied steroids, now illegal, to Vincent K. McMahon,
and wrestlers which included Roddy Piper, Brian Blair, Dan Spivey, Rick
Martel, and, shockingly, Terry Bollea, er, Hulk Hogan.
The dramatic trial, which ended in a three-year jail sentence
for
Zahorian, was made all the more intriguing since the judge in the case,
William Caldwell, exempted Hogan from testifying, citing "private and
personal matters that should be protected."
Instead of evoking sympathy, Hulk Hogan actually drew heat, for fellow wrestlers had
contempt for his denials and for his stand when he appeared on the Arsenio Show.
Then came a hurricane of accusations, not only citing Hogan's
steroid abuse, but his other alleged drug habits.
With the opening into his secret world, previously hidden by
story
lines and hype, the entire realm of the WWF was laid bare. Vincent K.
McMahon was desperate as he tried to plug the leaks in his ship, The Titan. There were others being
accused of steroid and cocaine use, and even sexual improprieties,
involving WWF ringboys.
The talk shows, from Donahue
to Geraldo,
had lineups of the accusers vs. accused and the brash McMahon was
battered from all sides. The Liege of Titan Towers, his $9-million
headquarters in Stamford, and multi-million-dollar merchandising and TV
empire, was crumbling before his very eyes.
The growl had turned into a snarl and his massive wrestling
company
had turned into a litigation business of suits and countersuits.
xi.
ON TUESDAY, November 23, 1993, Junior had a smile of poured
concrete as he left the federal courthouse in Uniondale, N.Y.
He had been bodyslammed by U.S. District Court Judge Jacob
Mishler,
after pleading innocent to federal charges accusing him of peddling
muscle-building steroids to his WWF wrestlers.
The three-count indictment handed down cited McMahon with
conspiracy
and distribution of gas, as it was known in the business, from
1985
through 1991.
Some of the drug deals allegedly took place at Nassau Veterans
Coliseum in Uniondale where McMahon booked matches.
Assistant U.S. attorney for the Eastern District, 37-year-old
Sean
O'Shea, would handle the case and, at the time of the indictment,
confirmed the government was seeking to seize Titan's corporate
headquarters -- The House That McMahon Built. It was alleged he had
used Titan funds to buy the steroids.
"The law provides for the seizure of property in drug offenses,"
reiterated O'Shea.
McMahon had acknowledged using steroids and sharing them with a
wrestler friend. He denied he was a dealer.
The original trial date was set for Monday, May 2, 1994.
VINCE McMAHON (walking
to his
car with his lawyer, Laura Brevetti): I'd like to say that sometimes
life isn't fair. I believe this is one of those instances ... I'll
have, er, more to say at the trial.
There was little sympathy for Junior, particularly from one of
his wrestlers.
"George Zahorian went to jail for the crimes of Vince McMahon,"
grumbled burly and bearded Billy Jack Haynes.
The references to the Zahorian trial became more prominent as
McMahon's date with destiny loomed. It appeared as if it was Part II of
the 1991 trial.
While Zahorian had been hauled into the judicial net, would the
government finally "nail" Junior, or would he escape again?
And there was the world's most recognizable hero, Hulk Hogan.
Would he finally admit, in open court, to using steroids,
after years of denial?
The setting for a sensational trial , involving those big
bruisers
with the funny hairstyles and cuts and scars on them, as Bollea had
once described them, would, undoubtedly, occupy the attention of court
"junkies" during the summer of 1994.
However, that was before another superhero, O.J. Simpson,
decided to
go on his infamous Ford Bronco ride across the freeways of southern
California.
Suddenly, the TV cameras and newspaper reporters forgot about
the Long Island case.
Most of them missed a trial, which only McMahon could have
produced,
and it revealed a world of manipulators and also liars, who have as the
great champion from the past, Lou Thesz, stated, "raped wrestling."
ONE
The Case of
the Missing Hulk
1.
IN THE
convoluted world of pins and needles, the name George Zahorian became
almost a generic word, as if you could go into your corner drugstore
and order a "Zahorian" off the shelf.
Dr. George Zahorian III was a familiar figure in
the World Wrestling Federation-based arenas. He was a regular Doc
Feelgood, to all.
However, McMahon's WWF and its parent
organization, Titan Sports, tried to disassociate itself from the
medic, particularly in late June 1991.
A WWF senior vice-president bleated they were being victimized
by reports that a suburban Harrisburg, Pa. urologist supplied steroids
to five professional wrestlers, including Hulk Hogan.
BASIL DeVITO: Neither
the WWF, nor any of its wrestlers or associates, has been charged with
any illegality ... We stand by our philosophy of wholesome family
entertainment and the positive example we set for the youth of America.
The Doc had been indicted in February, 1991 on 10 counts of
distributing or intending to distribute steroids, five counts of
distributing other controlled substances and two counts of using his
offices to distribute the drugs.
The indictment alleged that between November 18, 1988 and March
27, 1990, Zahorian supplied anabolic steroids to the wrestlers on
"diverse occasions."
Court documents referred to the wrestlers as John M. Doe, John
B. Doe, John S. Doe, John P. Doe, and John H. Doe.
The spculation on whom these John Does might be spread
throughout the previously-insulated world of babyfaces and heels akin
to a wildfire on a flinty Kansas plain.
It was quickly extinguished when Zahorian's lawyer, Bill
Costopouls, identified them as Hulk (Terry Bollea) Hogan, Rowdy Roddy
(Roderick Toombs) Piper, Rick (Richard Vigneault) Martel, Brian Blair
and Dan Spivey along with powerlifter, Bill Dunn, who would be the
government's informant in the case.
The middle initials in the John Doe references matched the first
letter of the wrestlers' first names.
BASIL DeVITO: The WWF
feels victimized by the tactics and libelous statements the defense
attrney, William C. Costopoulos, in utlizing the media in a
bait-and-switch defense.
In taking a slap at the media, Basil and the WWF were taking on
a heavyweight, for it was the New York Times which had reported the
real names of the five John Does. The Associated
Press quickly spread the names out for their member newspapers.
Then it appeared as if Costopoulos became scared after the names
were trumpeted, for he wouldn't confirm the names of the wrestlers, and
neither would U.S. assistant attorney Theodore Smith III.
Although the names were put in a deep freeze by the legal
beagles, three sources close to the case, who asked not to be
identified because the grand jury proceedings were supposed to be
secret, spilled the beans and singled out Hogan, Martel, Piper, Blair
and Spivey.
It was a tempest in a pee pot, for Smith and none of the Does
would be charged because steroid use wasn't a federal crime during much
of the period covered by the indictment.
Rudhing into the fray came DeVito, stating that the WWF had
adopted a drug policy in 1987, prohibiting the use of controlled
substances in connection with any if its professional activities.
Actually, the smoking gun hidden in all the Zahorian mess was
when Hogan's lawyer, Jerry McDevitt, who also represented McMahon sent
Judge William Caldwell a sealed request, asking that Hulk be kept out
of the proceedings.
The reasoning, undoubtedly, in McDevitt's and Hulkster's mind,
was a desperate attempt to salvage Hogan's "good guy" image.
There was speculation the only way the WWF's superstar could be
excluded from the trial was if the charge involving Zahorian's alleged
distribution to him was dropped from the indictment.
2.
ON TUESDAY, June 25, 1991, Richard Vigneault appeared nervous
and unsure of himself on the witness stand.
It surprised those crowded into the federal courthouse in
Harrisburg, Pa., for Rick (The Model) Martel, a.k.a. Vigneault, usually
exuded confidence, if not downright arrogance. However, this was the real world of trial lawyers, judges
and no-nonsense federal juries.
TED SMITH (federal
prosecutor): Did you buy steroids from Dr. Zahorian?
RICK MARTEL (a reluctant
witness, who admitted knowing Zahorian for 10 years, paused a few
seconds before answering): Yes, I probably did.
SMITH: Probably?
MARTEL (staring at the
table in front of him): Yes, I did.
Piper, 37, Spivey, 38, and Blair, who didn't give his age, also
faced the court and admitted they used muscle-building drugs, and
admitted they bought steroids and painkillers from Zahorian, who was
the Pennsylvania Athletic Commision physician at wrestling matches in
Allentown and Hershey, and supposedly examined each wrestler before
matches in the region.
Prosecutor Smith showed the court subpoenaed records that the
four -- Piper, Spivey, Blair and Martel -- ordered steroids over the
phone and Zahorian shipped the packages to them via Federal Express.
Costopoulos, in his cross-examination, centered in on the
evidence that all four had bought steroids for their own use. It seemed
to most that Zahorian's lawyer was leaning towards an entrapment
defense over alleged sales to the government's key witness, powerlifter
Bill Dunn, who had on the trial's first day -- Monday, June 24 --
claimed he had bought large quantities of steroids and painkillers from
Zahorian while wearing a "wrire" that allowed the FBI to record the
conversations.
On the third day -- Wednesday, June 26 -- he attempted to paint
the 43-year-old Zahorian as a compassionate doctor.
BILL COSTOPOULOS: The
evidence is going to show Dr. Zahorian had a weakness. His weakness was
compassion and caring for the men he idolized since childhood,
professional wrestlers.
He maintained Zahorian wasn't aware the law had changed
concerning anabolic steroids; that the law had changed concerning
anabolic steroids; that the law itself was unconstitutional; and that
the medic was intimidated into providing Dunn with "gas," who, in turn,
secretly spied for the FBI.
Then Costopoulos put his client on the stand.
DR. GEORGE ZAHORIAN
(sobbing openly): Over these years, these individuals were more than my
patients. I consider these men part of my family. These were so
misunderstood. People would look at them as freaks. I loved ... these
men, and to this day, I love those men.
Throughout his testimony, which was mingled with tears and sobs,
Zahorian claimed he gave steroids to Hogan and the other five, which
included Dunn, and that they were for performance enhancement and not
for medical purposes.
The Doc said he carefully monitored their physical conditions as
a ringside physician, and emphasized he wasn't aware that supplying the
steroids for non-medical purposes had become a federal crime.
Judge Caldwell had earlier, of course, ruled Hogan disn't have
to appear after McDevitt agreed that testifying would be an invasion of
privacy.
Because of that, Zahorian's so-called bombshell that Hulk once had a
serious problem with steroids, but with his help, had been clean for a
number of years, was such a dud.
3.
WITH THE AID of a cane, Wayne Coleman hobbled into the Harrisburg
courtroom and testified that he bought steroids from Zahorian, but he
didn't get any medical advice from him.
Coleman, then 48, was a shadow of his alter-ego, Superstar Billy
Graham, blaming his 20 years of reliance on performance-enhancing drugs
had left him with a avascular bone disease -- the disintegration of the
body's joints because of limited blood supply.
The Zahorian trial heard Graham claim besides the degenerative
bone disease, steroid use had left him sterile and with liver problems.
He had received a complete left-hip replacement and, incredibly,
returned to the ring 10 months later, and plied his trade in the WWF
until February 1988.
SUPERSTAR BILLY GRAHAM:
The doctor said not to wrestle again after the hip replacement or they
would see me back in the hospital after four or five years ... They hit
it right on the money. If I had known what steroids would do, I would
have never taken them.
4.
ON THURSDAY, June 27, 1991, after three hours, the Harrisburg
court found Zahorian guilty of 12 of 14 counts: eight counts of
distributing steroids and four counts of illegally distributing
prescription painkillers.
He was found not guilty of one count of possessing steroids with
the intent to deliver.
Dunn, the massive snitch, squealed as part of a plea agreement
to setroid-related charges in Virginia. He, of course, had worn a
"wire" in gaining evidence against the urologist.
Undoubtedly, the tapes were the most damaging, and even
Costopoulos called them "overwhelming."
The FBI had recorded Zahorian telling Dunn how to smuggle
drugs into other countries and warning him to be on the look out for
the feds.
GEORGE ZAHORIAN (taped
conversation with Dunn as he filled out an order): I see you. I
take care of four or five wrestlers and that's it. I don't need
the aggravation, because it's too dangerous ... it's like I told you,
cash and carry ... I want you to know they're watching. These guys
(Food and Drug Administration investigators) are bastards.
Dunn was told to put the drugs in his suitcase and wear a jacket
and tie in order to get into other countries, without being frisked.
On Tuesday, March 27, 1990 -- Dunn's last visit to Zahorian's
office -- the lifter bought $7,000 worth of drugs while the feds
listened in; then the FBI and the FDA got a warrant and swooped down on
the medical office.
Finally, Dunn, who would become the strength coach at Windgate
College in North Carolina, claimed the doctor never examined him or
asked questions about his past medical history. "He sold me anabolic
steroids and I paid for them ... that was it."
Costopoulos, perhaps, put it all in perspective during his
opening statement before the jury of nine women and three men: "If
anybody has any illusions about professional wrestling being a pure
sport ... we may burst your bubble. The issue won't be the integrity or
lack of integrity of professional wrestlers or professional wrestling.
The issue is the integrity or lack of integrity of a doctor, this
doctor."
TED SMITH: For
bodybuilders and weightlifters, he (Zahorian) was like a drug farm.
BILL COSTOPOULOS: The
use of steroids isn't limited to these wrestlers. They are used
throughout the WWF. They either use them or they don't participate.
BASIL DeVITO: Dr.
George Zahorian III is on trial, not the WWF or any WWF wrestlers or
associates is charged with any wrongdoing.
5. JACK SHERZER (the U.S. federal
court reporter, Harrisburg, Pa., Patriot, April 14, 1994):
ZAHORIAN WAS sentenced by Judge Caldwell on December 27,
1991 to basically three years in prison and he reported on February 3,
1992. He was fined $12,700 and ordered to undergo two years of
supervised release, which is like their thing of parole.
They (the U.S. government) did take his office in Lower Paxton
Township, but what the deal was ... he was smart and some of it was
under his wife's name. I don't know how much they sold it for, but the
deal of it was, the wife was going to get 55 percent of the
proceeds and the government got 45 percent.
A lot of people were expecting Hulk Hogan to come, but I don't
think there was any kind of resentment because he was a no-show and as
far as the impact on the area, if you will, I think a lot more people
were sympathetic with Zahorian. As a matter of fact, in our
paper, the Patriot, there was a letter from a Ray Carter. The headline
over it read:
GIVE ZAHORIAN A SECOND
CHANCE
I think Zahorian's out now.
On the same day, Sherzer was explaining Zahorian's situation,
Judge Jacob Mishler was announcing McMahon's trial had been adjourned
until Tuesday, July 5, 1994.
6.
HULK HOGAN's exclusion from the Zahorian trial opened up a
Pandora's Box of accusations , and his so-called controller Vince
McMahon tried to close the lid.
Resentment swelled against the one-time drummer, Terry Bollea,
particularly since Piper, Martel. Spivey and Blair, along with
Superstar Billy Graham had to take the witness stand with WWF announcer
Lord Alfred Hayes and Mike Rotunda, who now wrestles under the handle
of Irwin R. Shyster (IRS), also named in testimony as having bought
steroids from Zahorian.
But there was no Hogan, who during the trial, holed up in
McMahon's palatial digs.
As soon as Zahorian was convicted, damage control went on red
alert in the WWF and Hulk was booked on the Arsenio Show.
HULK HOGAN: I've
trained for 20 years, two hours a day, to look like I do. But the thing
I am not is, I am not a steroid abuser. And I do not take steroids.
Armed with the insight that talk show hosts such as Arsenio
Hall, Davif Letterman, Conan O'Brien, and Jay Leno, rarely explore the
obvious, credibility took another slap across the side of the head.
Hogan was lying as to his drug problems and Graham and David
(Dr. D) Shults, among a cast of others within and outside the WWF's
stable of wrestlers, tried to make noises and tell the world that
McMahon had run a dirty operation for years.
The mainstream media, with few exceptions, chose to ignore the
mounting evidence against Hulk, McMahon and the WWF, wrestling's
premier body of work.
There were voices crying in the wilderness such as Phil
Mushnick of the New York Post,
Barry Meisel of the New York Daily
News, Jeff Savage of the San
Diego Tribune-Union, John Cherwa and Houston Mitchell of the Los Angeles Times, and, in
particular, Dave Meltzer of the insiders' Wrestling Observer Newsletter.
However, on the whole, there was a perception that good ol' boys were
just having fun. McMahon wanted to keep it that way.
Hide the underbelly of the beast, at all costs, and adhere to
the "mythology" of professional wrestling as espoused by a French
philosopher in 1954.
ROLAND BARTHES: The
virtue of wrestling is that it is the spectacle of excess. Here we find
a grandiloquence which must have been that of ancient theaters ... Even
hidden in the most squalid Parisian halls, wrestling partakes of the
nature of the great solar spectacles, Greek drama and bullfights. In
both, a light without shadow generates an emotion without reserve.
7.
EVEN SUCH influential newspapers as the Toronto Sun turned its back on the
scandals, which had become glaring since court evidence, in the from of
Federal Express receipts (Zahorian's means of delivery) allegedly
showed that McMahon got 34 shipments of "gas" and Hogan eight.
In proven demographics, the Sun's
circulation increased dramatically when the WWF was on the verge of
another Wrestlemania or major event in Toronto, due to the addition of
color posters of the Hulk and the Ultimate Warrior -- Jim Hellwig.
"Don't rock the boat," would be the jest of the response to my
plans to write an expose' on wrestling's steroid abuse. I had
first-hand knowledge of it as far back as the 1970s when the use of
steroids certainly wasn't illegal.
Rather than expose this world to the newspaper-buying public, The Sun suggested I track down Hulk
Hogan and set up a phony (a.k.a. staged) photo of the WWF star and
myself "tangling."
Because of Hogan's hectic schedule and the WWF president Jack
Tunney's unwillingness, such a photo op never came about.
Meanwhile, the weak-kneed media continued to gush about the
giants of the ring, particularly Hogan, who kept spouting, "Remember,
Little Hulksters, to say your prayers, take your vitamins, and believe
in yourselves."
8.
HOWEVER, THOSE stories, involving the Superhero, just wouldn't go away,
particularly from Graham, Billy Jack Haynes and Shults.
From the pages of Penthouse, Superstar Billy Graham reported
after a 1987 Pontiac, Michigan Silverdome show, he and Hulk went into a
shower stall where he injected Hogan with 600 milligrams of
testosterone in the right buttock. Superstar claimed that scar tissue
covered his right butt from so many injections over the years that it
was difficult to get the needle in.
Haynes remembers seeing a more violent Hogan when he was driving
Billy Jack and two others to Hogan's Connecticut home during a
snowstorm and Hulk was reportedly was popping pills, smoking pot and
boozing while speeding at 80 plus.
After Haynes told him to slow down, he said, Hulk answered:
"F... you, man. You only live once."
Later he apologized for threatening "to kick Billy Jack's ass."
David (Dr. D) Shults was more than offended by Hogan's
appearance on Arsenio and his
wimpish statements.
Shults, a tough hombre who was fired by the WWF in 1985 and is a
"bounty hunter," couldn't control himself and started opening up to Penthouse about a reckless,
drug-crazed Hulkster during the days they shared a place in Pensacola,
Florida.
Shults insists Hogan was a dealer in the 1980s and was
known in wrestling circles as "the Tampa Pipeline." Dr. D related a
story in which he complained to Hogan that a syringe was filled to a
dangerous level, to which Hulk, supposedly, replied: "Just shoot it in
there (his massive arms). When I die, they're gonna have these guns
hanging out of the casket."
Then with both guns blazing, Shults snarled: "Steroids (within
the WWF) are the tip of the iceberg. There's cocaine, marijuana.
heroin, crack cocaine ... It's a walking drugstore."
9. BILLY JACK HAYNES
VALIUMS, PLACIDYLS, acid, pot. steroids, cocaine, alcohol are all a
major part of professional wrestling. It's all brought on by the
promoter because he asks too much out of you. You're only a human
being, but you're just a number to him.
Back in 1987, I was in severe pain with two broken fingers, but
McMahon wouldn't let me have any time off since Hercules and me were
working a major program at the time.
I was using Codeine and Tylenol III, supplied by Zahorian,
because of the pain. The codeine made the pain bearable. I took two on
an empty stomach.
Let me say, I was on steroids at the time, and I saw my heart
beat irregularly.
I was on a plane from Detroit to Miami and they made an
emergency landing in Charlotte and I was rushed to hospital. The
doctors told me I needed either shock treatment or a pacemaker. I
picked the shock treatment. I kept away from steroids after that,
although I really blame the heart problem on the pain killers.
But back to the steroids, I think Superstar Billy Graham was
very generous to the WWF by saying 90 percent of the guys in the WWF
used steroids. I think it was 100 percent at the time. Everyone was on.
I can't think of one guy that wasn't. There was too much of a
supply and too much of a demand.
Vince made sure there was both a supply and a demand.
If it wasn't Zahorian, it was another doctor who came into the
building with suitcases full of the stuff.
The smaller guys were under the most pressure. If you didn't get
big, you couldn't get a job.
I didn't like steroids because they made me light-headed, but I
can't lie and say I didn't use them ...
I've shot up, er, Hogan. I've injected himself on more than one
occasion. And he's injected me.
Hulk's an innocent victim up to a point.
When you're using your name to sell vitamins to children; when
you got big by using drugs you're not very innocent.
Even though this business is a work,
you have to draw the line somewhere. I know Hulk will hate my guts for
saying this, but it's the truth ...
10.
VINCE McMAHON tried to drive a slight wedge between himself and
Hogan after the Arsenio
appearance by saying, "I think Hulk told the truth, but, maybe, not the
whole truth."
It was all part of the damage control.
The WWF and Titan Sports attempted a metamorphosis of sorts.
However, most realized it was nothing more than cosmetic surgery.
McMahon even tried to create a "babyface" out of himself and
played the role of the victim to the hilt, particularly, two
years after the Zahorian conviction when he muttered that the feds had
turned his "personal life into a crime," adding he was being lumped
with the Harrisburg urologist's guilt. "The rap was an attempt to make
me responsible for what the doctor did."
Although he admitted he wasn't always clean, he suddenly became
an anti-steroid crusader, by hiring University of Toronto professor,
Dr. Mauro DiPasquale, to upgrade the testing.
Another prime example of Junior's new stand came in late January
1992 during a TV taping in Amarillo, Texas, when he ordered his boys
into a private room, slamming the door in the process.
Then the yelling began.
Overheard was Vince bellowing, something to the effect, that
"you mother ....... all tested black again. That's it. I'm not
covering for you anymore."
A former pro wrestler-turned-reporter, Don Denton, put it
succinctly: "If the public is just figuring out now that there is a
problem with steroid use in wrestling, then the public is just plain
stupid. Do you actually think that people look that naturally?"
11.
ANABOLIC STEROIDS, a quick fix for athletes, who wanted to bulge up and
out, had been the buzzword long before Zahorian and McMahon became
household names.
While some popped pills, often prescribed by "friendly"
physicians, by the handful to boost their aggressiveness on the track,
on the field and in the ring in the 1970s, others turned to orals
and injectibles, which packed muscles and confidence, but few
were aware of their devastating effect.
Zahorian's name had even popped up, with great regularity, in
the 1970s.
The Living Legend, Bruno Sammartino, a two-time WWF champ who
claimed he'd never taken steroids, has always been a straightshooter,
recalled seeing Zahorian wandering around the dressing rooms as far
back as 1975, and said he had to smile, sadly, when he learned the
doctor was being tried for the years, 1988 through 1990.
After his exile from the WWF, he said it was scary to return as
an announcer in 1984 and see, literally, hundreds of hypodermic needles
lying around th men's room, realizing that, at the time, the bottom
line of 95 percent were on the 'gas.'
Veteran wrestler and former NFL linebacker, Ed (Wahoo) McDaniel,
another one who resisted the steroid temptation, stated Zahorian was
famous among wrestlers. He was quoted as saying, "We heard you go by
his office and get a thousand tablets of whatever you wanted."
It seemed almost incongrous that Hulk was still spouting his
message to kids. Graham sneered that Hogan's sermon was for them to say
their prayers and take their vitamins, "oral or injectibles."
12.
STORIES OF flagrant abuse of steroids and other performance-enhancing
substances didn't start nor end with the Zahorian-McMahon-Hogan
connection.
The most notorious steroid abuser was a rather naive Jamaican,
who came to Canada in 1976 at the impressionable age of 15.
Ben Johnson discovered a way to become an overnight sensation,
believing religiously in "Better Living Through Chemistry." He had
performed indifferently in track until 1977-78 when he spurted in
height and weight, boasting a supermuscular upper torso, unusual
strength and an unorthodox stance of starting races with his elbows
bent, which allowed him to break out of the block with extraordinary
acceleration.
On August 30, 1987, Johnson ran the 100 meters in 9.83 seconds.
Then smashed his own world record with a 9.79 in the 1988 Seoul, South
Korea Olympics. Then came the shattering news, Big Ben had tested for
steroids, a complete no-no in the supposedly pristine world of the
Olympians, although the East Germans and Russians had been linked to
performance-enhancing substances for years. Two countries -- Canada and
Jamaica -- went into mourning, and there followed nearly five years of
soul-searching among track and field athletes, including the Dubin
Inquiry in Toronto, which swept "steroid stars" into its net.
On Friday, March 5, 1993, Johnson was banned for life because he
tested positive for steroids twice in five years. After the Seoul
Olympics, he tried to hide from the spotlight, but by early 1993, he
wanted to hear the roar of the crowd once again. He was a miserable
failure without the assistance of steroids, which had been prescribed
by Dr. Jamie Astaphan and his coaching guru, Charlie Francis.
Even with the overwhelming evidence of a positive steroid test
during a Montreal track meet on January 18, 1993, Johnson, in a
statement released by his lawyer, denied any wrong-doing.
Carl Lewis, the U.S. flash and Johnson's chief rival on the
track, who some hinted wasn't as clean as he espoused, offered no
sympathy. "I'm not going to take my foot and drop-kick him while he's
down," said Lewis. "What I will say is this: If he used drugs, I'm glad
he got caught."
13.
THEN THERE was Lyle Alzado, who once
lived in RowdyLand, and died at age 43 from brain cancer. He blamed
anabolic steroids, those high-yield, high-risk junk bonds for the
biceps, for his illness.
In the San Jose Mercury,
sportswriter Mark Purdy once wrote that "no one had more fun being
rowdy that Alzado. He grew up rowdy in Brookly. He played rowdy
football at Yankton College in South Dakota. He played rowdier football
in the NFL. Alzado created a character that was almost theatrical in
nature. He ripped off the helmets of opponents, then laughed to
reporters about it afterward. bulging out his eyes and growling."
Alzado plied his trade at a high level, but when he died in
1992, he was literally a frail, old man with a bandanna on his nearly
hairless head.
"I had my mind set, and I did what I wanted to do," Alzado said
about his steroid abuse. "So many people tried to take me out of what I
was doing, and I wouldn't listen."
He was diagnosed with a rare form of brain lymphoma in April
1991 -- less than a year after his ill-fated comeback with the L.A.
Raiders.
Even after he stopped playing in RowdyLand, Alzado, who claimed
he spent $20,000 to $30,000 on 'gas,' continued taking them.
Forest Tennant, the NFL's drug adviser from 1986 to 1990, has
said steroids can cause two kinds of cancer: those in the sex organs,
such as prostate cancer; and those in the immune system, such as
lymphoma, leukemia and Hodgkin's Disease.
The Lyle Alzado National Steroid Education Program, part of the
non-profit Athletes and Entertainers for Kids organization, was
developed to educate young people about th damaging and
life-threatening effects of anabolic steroids and human growth hormones.
Alzado also had his "Doctor Zahorian." His name was Dr. John
David Perzik and RowdyLand Lyle was one of his best customers.
In February 1991, the California-based medic pleaded guilty in
federal court in San Jose to one count of conspiring to illegally
distribute a prescribed drug, which put him behind bars at a
minimum-security prison at Lompoc, California.
Cops confirmed Perzik belonged to a multi-million-dollar steroid
ring that included another Alzado supplier, Steve Coons, a Santa Clara
trainer accused of being one of the largest illegal distributor of
steroids. By September 1992, Perzik agreed to help the feds prosecute
Coons.
Even while Perzik was in jail, he continued illegally
prescribing steroids. "He really didn't miss a beat," said California
state prosecutor Russell W. Lee. "He kept on going."
Perzik cleared more than $210,000 in profits from the illegal
sale of steroids in 1990, acording to documents from the California
Board of Medical Quality.
TWO
Welcome to
Billy's Neighborhood
1.
IN THE winters
of his discontent, Vince McMahon, the Liege of
Titan Towers, certainly came under siege from all sides with the
genesis being Hulk Hogan's self-serving appearance on the Arsenio show.
Wayne Coleman, the now-ailing Superstar Billy
Graham, broke his
long public silence in regards to steroid use, first on a November 1991
Entertainment Tonight clip,
and then a lengthy Inside Edition TV
interview, which aired in early 1992.
Graham compared Hogan with former Washington,
D.C. mayor, Marion
Barry, in that he preached one thing and did exactly the opposite in
his personal life.
Jesse (The Body) Ventura, who had been a major
WWF draw before
defecting to World Championship Wrestling (WCW) as a broadcaster, also
had Hogan in his gunsight, and demanded he come clean.
The respected Ventura had shown his integrity,
by never denying
his own involvement with steroids.
JESSE VENTURA:
I
stoppsed using them way back in 1981. I used them off-and-on from
1978 to 1981. I'd use them for about a month and then I'd get off them
for six months. I didn't take anywhere near what people are taking
today. I never experienced ill side effects, probably because I never
abused them. I took only the recommended dosages and put four to six
months between using them. I never did what they call stacking, going
on two or three kinds at once. I feel I got away licky ...
He and Graham are close friends and he feels
pain for his
condition, but he gave a verbal swipe at Hogan's head and said Hulk
should never called Superstar Billy a drug abuser.
VENTURA:
I mean, come
on. The thing people must remember is that steroids up until 1988 were
legal. You could go to any doctor and get them. It wasn't until 1988
that they became illegal. It's very hard if you've got a steroid-using
athlete taking something for five or six years that were legal and all
of a sudden the government says it's a controlled substance and it's
illegal. Well, you've got people psychologically addicted. Believe me,
the steroid problem than just wrestling.
2.
JEFF SAVAGE of
the San Diego
Tribune-Union, in a devastating indictment in Penthouse, exposed
Hogan, the cherished hero of the children of the '90s, as more than
just a steroid abuser and a liar.
Savage quoted Graham as saying, "we're flying to
Minnesota and
Hulk Hogan, who is sitting across from me, pours out a pile of cocaine
onto a mirror. He offers me some, but I decline. 'Yeah, that's smart,'
he says, 'Coke is a tough habit to break. ' Then he proceeds to shove
three lines up his nose."
It was inside speculation that one jobber had
been peeing in
test cups for Hogan since the WWF began cocaine testing in 1987. The
results -- clean or dirty -- were sent directly to McMahon, and, he,
supposedly, maintained their confidentiality in a locked desk drawer.
Savage, Mushnick of the New
York Post, Meltzer of the Wrestling
Observer Newsletter, and John Arezi on radio's Pro Wrestling Spotlight had
continued to be the most aggressive journalists in a wallow of media
mush, and it was Mushnick who uncovered more of Graham's riveting tale
of woe, who, obviously, defied his lawyer's advice.
Mushnick's feature story entitled Rasslin' and Steroids came after
Superstar Billy and Shults' appearance on the January 3, 1992 Inside Edition TV show and the
January 5 Pro Wrestling Spotlight
radio program.
In startling revelations, besides anabolic
steroids, which had
savaged Graham's life, Billy brought up phone calls he claimed he had
with Ted Smith, the prosecutor in Zahorian's 1991 trial, and also the
FBI in which Smith wanted him to be like Bill Dunn (the powerlifter
used as a government informant in the Zahorian case). He was urged to
make contact with McMahon, using a wire, to get information for the
on-going probe into the WWF and Titan Sports.
SUPERSTAR
BILLY GRAHAM:
The FBI told me the reason they're concerned and interested in McMahon
is they felt the man might be connected with the Mafia. So I'm just
going on the record now, if anything happens to me, or any member of my
family, I want the FBI to start their investigations with Vince McMahon
and the WWF.
Billy's wife, Valerie Coleman, confirmed that
her husband had,
indeed, had calls from Smith and the FBI.
After the Inside Edition piece, Dr. D was
worried, claiming he
had received six threatening phone calls.
DAVID SHULTS:
If
they want to harm me, they know where I live, where I walk the street.
And if they don't know, they can get in touch with me, and I'll meet
'em, not like the (WWF TV) gun show Vince McMahon put me on to make me
look stupid. I'm an expert shot. I carry a MAC fully automatic. I carry
about 150 rounds on me at all times.
Mushnick in his wide-ranging Post
column delved into the angle where Jake Roberts' cobra bit Randy
(Macho Man) Savage, in reference to McMahon's wholesome family
entertainment claim; Shults' contention to have injected Hulk Hogan
with steroids on hundreds of occasions and that Hogan "gave steroids to
me and sold steroids to me and other wrestlers;" talked about Hogan's
statements on Arsenio Hall;
Graham's alleged injections of Hogan; Federal Express shipments from
Zahorian to both Hogan and McMahon; Shults' claim that McMahon told him
to see the doctor to get his arms bigger before he was to start a
program with the much-larger Hogan; and brought up a segment of the
WWF's syndicated show in which they were pushing the new WBF (World
Bodybuilding Federation) magazine with the cover story being Why Big Guys Get All The Girls to
an audence made up of children and teenagers; and citing that of the
estimated one million steroid users in the U.S., nearly half are high
school age or younger.
A cantankerous and arrogant Titan
official, Steve
Planamenta, immediately went into action, by belitting Mushnick's
article, saying: "The Post is
the Post. They're akin to Inside Edition."
STEVE
PLANAMENTA (four
days after the Mushnick story and eight days after the Pro Wrestling
Spotlight radio show): I haven't had a chance to talk to Vince (on the
subject). I finally listened to Arezi's show a couple of days ago. I
find myself laughing at parts, surprised at parts, appalled at parts. I
thought the funniest part was Graham fearing for his life. To make the
matters more comical, Arezi said the same thing, that he feared for his
life. Neither of them is that important.
The WWF spokesman wondered if Graham would have
said anything
had he and Titan Sports reached an out-of-court settlement, and noted
Shults had gone public about plans to write a book on the subject.
He also believed Hogan would eventually address
the situation,
and then went into a tirade about Graham waiting six months (after the Arsenio piece aired) before coming
out with both guns blazing.
PLANAMENTA: I'm
not
Hulk. I can't speak for him. I didn't tell him what to say. I don't
know that anyone here told him what to say no matter what Billy Graham
claims.
3.
ON FEBRUARY 5,
1992, the ABC-TV's 20/20
trucks moved into Superstar
Billy's neighborhood in Burbank, Ca.
Again
Graham sounded off ; this time to interviewer Tom
Jariel, talking about his own history with steroids. He went into
detail on just how indoctrinated the drugs were within pro wrestling,
and other aspects of the business.
During the 20/20
taping, Graham estimated 98 percent of WWF wrestlers as having used
steroids in 1987-8 when he made his comeback, and estimated the figure
had settled into about 90 percent, judging from the videotapes.
Jariel wanted the personable Graham to
specifically comment
about movie superstar Arnold Schwarzengger and Hogan, but Billy seemed
to shy away from expanding on Arnie, except to say that he was his
bodybuilding training partner in the early 1970s when Graham was
wrestling out of California, and Schwarzenegger was in the middle of
his run of six consecutive Mr. Olympia titles.
It was obvious Billy's wife, Valerie Coleman,
was coaching him
not to say too much; even though it was common knowledge that both he
and Arnie used the same supplier, ringside physician, Dr. Bernhardt
Schwartz, at the old Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles.
Schwarzenegger has never denied being on the
"gas," but his
people indicated he won contests with them, and won contests without
them.
Jariel and ABC made it clear that his story
wasn't about
deception, in regards to steroids within the wrestling business, but
about the anabolic steroids epidemic, particularly, as a warning for
teens.
Before interviewing Graham, Jariel spent the
earlier part of the
afternoon in Bakersfield, Ca., where he talked with the parents of a
bodybuilder, who hung himself from a tree on his front lawn.
Others interviewed were Mary Lou Gantner, the
mother of a former
pro wrestler-football player, who had committed suicide at the age of
30. She blamed steroid abuse for her son's death; and also Steve
Michalik, a former pro bodybuilder, who nearly died of liver cancer
after years on-and-off steroids.
As for interviewing Shults, ABC was a little
apprehensive,
considering the fact he slugged 20/20
reporter John Stossell twice back in 1984 when he was doing a story on
whether pro wrestling was real or fake.
4.
THE PHILOSOPHY espoused by those who continued abusing
steroids,
despite legal and suspected health problems, could probably be summed
up in one sentence from Robert DeNiro's starstruck character in King of
Comedy: "It's better to be king for a day than a schmuck for a
lifetime."
VINCE
McMAHON: We
will be the standardbearer to all sports, pro or amateur, to follow in
terms of their type of procedure.
McMahon then hauled out the figures that his
wrestlers' steroid
use had dropped 35 percent from November 1991 to April 1992, according
to his statistics.
And also Dr. Mauro DiPasquale, the University of
Toronto prof
whom Junior had hired to upgrade the testing, promised "the level of
sophistication to beat this drug test is not there: I can't even beat
the test. The WWF will be clean in May, beyond IOC (International
Olympic Committee) standards."
In order to bandage the wound caused by the
steroids furor,
Titan even sponsored a symposium in New York City with DiPasquale the
main speaker.
The wrestling media, with few exceptions,
weren't invited and
the gathering drew the ire of the New York Post columnist, who had
become one of the WWF's leading antagonist.
PHIL MUSHNICK:
The
twisted men of the World Wrestling Federation know no limits. With many
of its stars (as well as owner Vince McMahon) named in a federal trial
(June 1991) as recipients of steroids, and with ex-WWFers coming out of
the woodwork to tell of steroid abuse encouraged and rewarded by the
WWF, and with the introduction of McMahon's made-for-TV World
Bodybuilding Federation, McMahon conducted a steroid symposium for
naive, unsuspecting and credibility-free members of the media. The
press release/invite to the symposium contained all the spin-doctored
baloney that those familiar with the WWF's practised evils have come to
expect. "The main presenter, " read the release, "will be Dr. Mauro
DiPasquale, one of the world's foremost experts on steroids" ...
Village Voice identified the Canadian doctor as celebrated by
steroid abusers throughout North America as an expert in beating
drug tests. DiPasquale's periodicals read like a tip sheet for steroid
junkies. Indeed, their clear target readership is neither physicians
nor legitimate steroid patients. Instead, they're aimed at athletes. In
the same press release, the following question is asked, "What research
is being done to show the therapeutic treatment of steroids in muscle
degenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis?" Oh, so that's it --
the WWF's steroid use was merely an experiment to aid in the research
of muscle disease. What in the world does treatment of multiple
sclerosis have to do with steroid abuse by pro wrestlers and
bodybuilders? ... The WWF and WBF are desperate to maintain the
outrageous physiques of their stars under a cloak of legitimacy. Just
another McMahon con. And the targets of these cons, as usual, is
America's TV-trained children and adolescents.
LARRY KING
(asking
McMahon a question on his CNN show): You're saying there's no
steroid use in the WWF?
VINCE McMAHON
(now
using his dictatorial voice): Yes, that's exactly what I'm saying.
According to Titan Towers, WWF wrestlers faced a
six-week
suspension without pay for a first offense, followed by a three-month
suspension. A third positive test would result in dismissal.
Lost in the shuffle of the WWF's posturing in
early 1992 was
news that Superstar Billy Graham had undergone a second hip operation
in southern California to replace the artificial hip that was put
in in the late 1980s.
Shortly after the surgery, Graham suffered a
partially collapsed
lung and lost a lot of blood during the operation and post-operation
periods.
The Grand Old Warrior refused a transfusion.
THREE
Vicious Vince
meets Hannibal Lecter
1.
THE ME decade
of the Eighties had created a lengthy lineup of
Machiavellian characters from Michael Millken to Charles Keating,
but none epitomized the period like McMahon The Younger.
While many of the other miscreants of the age
were shredded of
their arrogance and greed by jail time or had been ostracized by
society, Vicious Vince merely thumbed his nose.
He was the ultimate paradox.
The bombastic and volatile announcer on his
brilliantly
orchestrated television spectacles coupled with a secretive and
manipulative personality, the mere mention of his name could send
waves of fear throughout his vast empire.
There was a vast horde, who admired his business
acumen, which
had made him a multi-millionaire, but there was a singular view that as
a human being he had fallen off the scale.
While the gullible TV public saw a supposedly
controlled
McMahon, he would often rant and rave in the Titan Towers on East
Main in Stamford, Connecticut. "F... the press," he was overheard
to say, and, in milder tirades, he called most writers, "dirt bags."
McMahon only consented to interviews when he and
his protective
staff were certain that the piece would be favorable and promote his
productions as catering to "family values."
However, by the time the Nineties arrived, tales
of drugs and
even sexual improprieties, along with the exposed foibles of his
cartoon characters, including his special creation known as Hulk Hogan,
tore a gaping hole in the febric of his World Wrestling Federation and
his umbrella organization, Titan Sports.
More and more voices were being heard, who
articulately tore
back layers of McMahon's veneer of respectability.
PHIL MUSHNICK
( New York Post, March 18,
1992):
Never will you ever encounter a human being more cold-blooded, more
devoid of humor and propriety than Vince McMahon, America's foremost
babysitter. In your wildest, most twisted dreams, you won't meet up
with the likes of McMahon, a miscreant so practised in the art of
deception, the half-truth and the bald-faced lie as to make the Artful
Dodger appear clumsy. A George Steinbrenner or a Don King pale by
comparison. So help us. Indeed Hannibal Lecter (the cannibalistic
doctor in the movie, The Silence of the Lambs) is the only fictional
character who comes close.
The standard joke on New York radio was the
estate of Hannibal
Lecter was going to sue the Post
for defamation of character because they compared him with McMahon.
In what had become a familiar scenario, Vince
did sue through
his legal beagle, Jerry McDevitt, and in the suit claimed Mushnick had
"written or orally states that Mr. McMahon is a child abuser, a child
molester, homosexual, a charged hetrosexual rapist, a miscreant, a
homosexual criminal sexual offender, a liar in general, and in specific
respects a man practised in the art of deception, devoid of honor and
proprietary (sic), a member of organized crime, and worse than the
fictional character Hannibal Lecter, who killed and ate his victims."
Then McMahon went to a "friendly" reporter for
the Fairfield County Advocate,
located
near Titan's headquarters, and far removed from the "dirt bag" kind
found in the Big Apple.
VINCE McMAHON:
I
just think it's extremely unfortunate ... To coin a phrase, it's
tabloid terrorism, the worst aspect of the media these days. To see
your name written in such a light as 'worse than the fictional
flesh-eating character Hannibal Lecter' is demeaning to say the least.
And it makes you feel very bad that someone who doesn't know you, would
write these dastardly things that are totally untrue. It hurts big
time. It hurts me, every member of my organization, and it hurts my
family. You say to yourself, maybe that's it, maybe this will be the
last one, the last outlandish thing (Mushnick's) going to say. You try
to make dialogue, try to make contact, but that doesn't go anywhere. It
just keeps going on and on. Finally you have to do something about it
because it's so unfair. You seek whatever redress you have, and,
unfortunately, in this case, it's the courts. People keep asking me,
'Vince, what did you do to this guy (Mushnick) to make him the way he
is? I have no idea. I've never met him, although I've tried. When does
it end?"
Mushnick retorted: "The suit is full of shit,
and I'm waiting
for my chance to prove it in court."
In a familiar scenario, McMahon dropped the suit
against
Mushnick in March 1994 after attempting and failing to get a ruling
from the presiding judge to put the suit on hold until after the
completion of his trial on steroid distribution and conspiracy.
When the judge rejected the ruling in the
Mushnick case, McMahon
dropped the suit, meaning the Post
or Mushnick didn't have
to pay a cent to Titan.
2.
VINCE McMAHON
was supposed to be the Ideal Family Man, with a
devoted wife, Linda, and even an heir apparent to the Titan empire, in
son, Shane.
However, a former WWF referee, Rita Marie (real
name: Rita
Chatterton) accused McMahon of rape during an interview on Geraldo
Rivera's Now It Can Be Told program
on April 3, 1992.
She claimed the incident occurred on July 16,
1986, and began
with Chatterton asking Vince for more bookings and, in turn, he wanted
to discuss it further in the backseat of his limousine.
RITA CHATTERTON:
The
next thing I know, Vince unzipped his pants and took my hand, and he
kept putting my hand on his penis. He started telling me that he could
either make or break me -- the choice was mine. And he made me
have oral sex with him. He started to get really excited and I pulled
away, and he got really angry ... and when I said no, he said that I
had better satisfy him. He started pulling my pants off, and he pulled
me on top of him and satisfied himelf throught intercourse.
Fearing for her safety, Chatterton said she
waited until the
'90s to tell her story, when other people were speaking out against
McMahn's litany of "unconscionable acts," and when the public were
ready to believe her claim.
In going beyond the Rivera revelations, she told
Jeff Savage in
the now-infamous Penthouse interview that she had been warned by
McMahon, at her hiring in 1975, not to have sex with any company
employees.
RITA
CHATTERTON: After
he finished raping m,e, he looks at me and I'm crying and he says,
'Remember, I told you never to have sex with someone from the company?
Well, you just did.' And he starts laughing hysterically. What a sick
man he is.
Of course, Vince and Linda McMahon were
immediately in contact
with their lawyer, McDevitt, who besides launching a major lawsuit
against Rivera and the Now It Can Be
Told show, spouted: "The larger issue is the use of tabloid
television programs to make stories where none exist. They have nothing
to do with journalism."
The suit, filed in U.S. Superior Court in
Stamford, claimed
Rivera, along with David (Dr. D) Shults, were involved in a scheme to
extort $5 million from McMahon, in order to keep the charges made by
Chatterton from going public. The ex-WWF ref's rape claims were also
called fraudulent, and she was named in the suit as well.
The aggressive Rivera, who had tangled with
unsavory characters
on his shows before, snapped: "It's a mark of honor to be sued by the
WWF. I will bodyslam them in court." A Geraldo publicist, Jeff Erdel,
was also quick to say: "We stand by the story. We repeatedly asked Mr.
McMahon to appear on the program to counter the allegations. He
repeatedly refused."
As for Shults, his lawyer, Eileen McGann, said,
"David looks
forward to finally forcing McMahon to testify under oath about these
absurd claims as well as other serious outrageous acts which will be
the subject of counter-claims."
Dr. D had been known to call McMahon "a
well-known bully,"
and he indicated he would likely counter-sue over the McMahon suit,
which he and McCann called "bizarre and hysterical."'
McMahon's lawyer would later expand on his
journalistic theories
about the Now It Can Be Told
show to the Fairfield County Advocate.
JERRY
McDEVITT:
In plain English, we were sick of it. Bashing Vince McMahon has become
a cottage industry. Geraldo said to Vince, 'We've got a woman
here who claims you raped her. Do you want to come on and deny that?'
What kind of a choice is that? It gives dignity ... if he appears. And
it's bullshit.
3.
CHAUFFEURS
know more secrets than a bevy of high-profile
lawyers. Never was it more true than in the case of Jim Stuart,
McMahon's limo driver for six years, who claims he witnessed a rash of
"unconscionable acts."
JIM
STUART: He
(McMahon) would be doing drugs in the back of the limo, and I began to
complain about it. I'd say, 'Vince, I don't think that's a good idea
while we're driving,' and he'd say, 'That's none of your affair, that's
mine.'
He cited McMahon's disregard for the law, when
Vince ordered him
to speed 100 miles an hour from New York City to Hershey, Pa.
STUART:
It was
wintertime and cold outside and we're late for a show and th
speedometer needle is bent all the way, and he's yelling at me to go
faster. He's back there with a couple of friends, and they're drinking
and doing coke and laughing. Finally, I say, 'Vince, do you really
think this is smart? What if we get pulled over? and he says, 'I'll
handle that when it comes, I'll get out of it.' And that's how he is.
He doesn't stop at stop signs or red lights. He says, 'Drive through
that light.' He doesn't think those lights are for him. They're for
somebody else.
After McMahon fired Stuart in 1990, the limo
driver filed a suit
against him in August 1991 and, in a deposition with Titan's lawyers in
March 1992, Stuart charged WWF officials with extensive use of "illegal
substances," although the only name he said specifically was Vince's.
Stuart went on to claim the reason he was fired
was because he
knew of a move to dump someone who was his friend. He said he was
worried about retaliation.
McMahon's lawyer, McDevitt, responded by saying
Stuart "couldn't
get over the fact he was just a driver."
FOUR
Ringboys, the Veep
and the Assistant
1.
ON FEBRUARY 15,
1992, in the midst of a drug scandal which had
rocked the WWF, and had even spread to the other minor organizations, a
preliminary wrestler opened up an even seamier and sordid world within
the business.
Barry Orton -- Barry O -- and his revelations on
Mike Tenay's Wrestling Insiders show,
and
later in other publications, including Penthouse, pulverized the WWF and
the tremors from the fallout shook Titan Towers to its foundation,
forcing the resignations of McMahon's second-in-command, Pat Patterson,
and his assistant, Terry Garvin, and, in the aftermath, WWF announcer
Mel Phillips was also implicated.
Even more devastating was the scandalous reports
of a suit
aleging child sex abuse within the WWF.
BARRY ORTON: I'm
driving from Albuquerque to Amarillo and the wrestling boss is in
the passenger seat, and he keeps begging me to suck me. I tell him that
I'm not that way, and I'mt interested. But he won't let up. Every 20
minutes or so, he starts up again: 'Oh, let me (do it to you), just
once. Let me just touch it ...
The child sex abuse issue, which involved WWF
ringboys and the
Patterson-Garvin-Phillips connection, began earlier with an item in the
New York Post:
PHIL MUSHNICK: The
World Wrestling Federation, already reeling from allegations of
persistent steroid abuse among its biggest kiddie-TV stars, appears
headed towards an even bigger scandal. According to highly-placed
sources, a lawsuit will
be filed soon, alleging that male WWF administrative employees
and executives harassed and abused underage teenage boys, who were
engaged as ring assistants in the mid-and-late 1980s. The suit, which
is expected to be filed ... at a New York federal courthouse,
will also, according to the sources, charge the WWF with transporting
minors across state lines for the purpose of oral corruption as well as
violating child-labor laws. The plaintiff's tale of sexual misconduct
by WWF employees, according to the sources, have been corroborated by
another party, who claims to have been similarly abused while an
underage teen in the employ of the WWF as a "ringboy" or go-fer ...
The familiar growl of Shults, who had provided
details along
with Graham about pervasive illegal drug abuse within the premier
wrestling organization, iincluding steroid abuse by its marquee
performer, Hulk Hogan, had also railed against alleged sexual abuse.
"We're talking about some of the top executives'
sexual habits,
their sexual preferences, sexual abuse and harassment," Dr. D was
quoted as saying in the independent Pro
Wrestling Torch magazine.
To anyone familiar with the business, it wasn't
anything new,
for as one old-time promoter put it, "certain WWF executives are
queerer than a three-dollar bill."
2. BARRY ORTON
LET ME begin by
saying, I believe it is each and every citizen's
prerogative as to their sexual preference. I believe that whatever they
do is fine.
I don't think that anybody should push that
preference where
it's not wanted ...
I'm a man, and it's like I've never done
anything wrong or
pushed myself on a member of the opposite sex. But when you're younger,
you don't know any better. When you're older, you start respecting
people's feelings.
I want to make it clear that unwarranted sexual
harassments of
any sort are wrong. For people willing to do sexual favors or get
advancement make it very unfair to those unwilling to make that
sacrifice themselves to that length. That goes on a lot ...
I'm not blowing smoke where it needs to be
blown, but I'm
talented. I worked very hard. Performing was my life.
Imagine how I felt knowing I needed to kneel
before someone ...
I passed up some lucrative situations offered to me where I could have
been living the good life instead of struggling.
It happened a lot.
Some guys are immune to that sort of thing. Hulk
Hogan is one of
them.
I don't think I have to go out on the limb
throwing names
around, saying who is immune.
The WWF is becoming a bit overrun by the
homosexual community or
clique.
As for Orton's allegations, WWF spokesman, Steve
Planamenta,
wrote if off as "another guy selling a book."
Then Barry O related his Albuquerque-Amarillo
trip with Terry
Garvin when he was only in his late teens.
"I just kept explaining to him, 'No. Hey, you're
a nice guy.' I
didn't want to offend him. With the way he's looked at me since he's
been in office, I knew he was never going to forget that. You can be
damn sure when my ass was on the line, I would be saying, 'Here's a guy
who is never going to bat for me.' Had I given in, who knows? I could
be wearing the WWF title right now ..."
Barry O wasn't finished and related another
incident while he
was on the road. He was sitting in the back seat between Patterson and
Garvin, who were grabbing at him. He ran out of the car.
"It wasn't like a rape situation," Orton stated,
in a sworn
deposition. "It was more a teasing type of thing. But, you know,
they were trying to overpower my will." He added that when he got out
of the car, his pants were ripped in the crotch area.
With McMahon denying Orton's claims, concerning
Patterson and
Garvin, Barry took a lie detector test.
"After complete testing and careful analysis of
the polygraph
charts, this examiner is of the opinion that Mr. Orton was truthful and
there were no deceptive reactions to the revelant questions asked,"
confirmed Anthony De Sio, president of the Las Vegas -based Colt
Protective Security.
3.
THE HEAT, particularly when accompanied by headlines,
which screamed: Boy Sex Scandal Rocks
Wrestling,
forced WWF vice president in charge of talent, Pat (Pierre Clermont)
Patterson, and booking assistant, Terry (Terry Joyal) Garvin, to quit,
and threatened the very future of the company.
The resignations had come after two former
ringboys and an
ex-office employee, Murray Hodgson, pointed fingers at the two, and, of
course, there was Orton's accusations.
McMahon denied all the charges against Patterson
and Garvin and
was particularly upset at Orton for bringing up an incident from 1978.
Calling Hodgson a "certifiable lunatic," Vince said he was fired
because he couldn't do his job properly.
Junior believed Patterson and Garvin would be
unable to defend
themselves against the charges even though both claimed they were
innocent of any wrongdoing because both, admittedly, lived a gay
lifestyle.
Patterson, who was one of the all-time great
workers during a
24-year career, came to work for McMahon The Elder in the late 1970s as
a wrestler. He sold out Madison Square Garden four times in title
matches with then-champion Bob Backlund.
Known as Pretty Boy, Patterson was particularly
well known in
northern California where he was the area's top draw before he
headed East. His tag-team partnership with Ray Stevens was exceptional,
with both holding the NWA and AWA world tag-team titles during their
careers.
Patterson would eventually move into an office
role after
serving as color commentator on TV and as a part-time wrestler. After
leaving the ring in 1985, he eventually took over as McMahon's second
in command, as far as talent and booking was concerned, following
George Scott's firing.
Garvin, who was also an active wrestler during
the '60s and
'70s, part of the famous "family" with "brother" Ron and "brother"
Jimmy (neither of whom he wasactually related to) eventually held
office positions with several promotions after retiring. He was working
for Bob Geigel out of Kansas City when he made the move to the WWF, at
the same time as Patterson, in 1985.
Following Mushnick's story on alleged child sex
abuse ,
publicists, er, lawyers in Titan Towers issued the following press
release:
WWF:
The New York Post has
published a story
containing serious, yet unsubstianted, charges against the World
Wrestling Federation. We want to categorically state that the WWF and
its parent company, Titan Sports, do not and will not illegal or
improper behavior by any of our employees at any time. We will take
responsible action regarding any legitimate claims filed through lawful
channels. However, Titan Sports Inc. and the WWF feel no obligation to
respond to charges that cannot be reasonably substantiated. Further,
our attorneys have advised us to urge all news media and others to
consider the credibility and the motives of the accuser before
irresponsibly making public reckless charges, which are not grounded in
fact, and which may have been made with malicious intent. Titan Sports
is proud to have corporate policies that are at the leading edge of any
existing in the entertainment and sports industries regarding drug use,
employment practices, and employee behavior.
The WWF, perhaps even all of pro wrestling, was
running for
cover, for within a two-week period there were lies and hypocrisy on
the steroid issue, allegations of an organization rampant with street
drugs, alleged homosexual harassment of wrestlers tied into promotion
and earning power and even allegations of attempted homosexual abuse on
underage boys.
McMahon, ever the piece of work,
began mouthing off about a conspiracy as the reason for the flood of
bad publicity; citing Ted Turner, the CNN boss who bankrolled the
upstart World Championship Wrestling (WCW) out of Atlanta, Ben Weider,
his rival in the bodybuilding business, both in cahoots with Superstar
Billy Graham.
4.
THE ACCUMULATION of charges and countercharges began to
make everyone
appear paranoid.
Harassing phone calls, with an underlying tone
of physical
threats, were the norm, and affected two of the straight-up guys in the
business -- Graham and Shults.
Another was Billy Jack Haynes.
In early March 1992, after he had spoken out
about the rampant
steroid abuse and Hogan's drug habits, in particular, he blamed
Patterson for making two crank calls to his father's home in Portland,
Oregon.
The first call to his dad, William A. Haynes,
Sr., who's blind
and not even "smart" to the wrestling game, asked for his son, and when
he said Billy wasn't there, the unidentified caller said, "Tell your
son to back off or jack off." A few hours later, according to the
younger Haynes, a second phone call informed his father, "If your son
doesn't back off what he's doing, he'll be six feet under."
Haynes was seething mad and blamed Patterson, an
accomplisher
ribber.
Although he had been a whistle-blower concerning
the steroid
situation, Billy also began detailing his sexual harassment, which had
happened to him.
"I'm taking a shower after one of my first days
on the job,"
related Haynes, "and this WWF executive sneaks up behind me ... If you
drop the soap, you have to look left, right and behind you bend down to
pick it up."
5.
THEN THERE was Murray Hodgson, who was hired as
the TV voice of
the World Bodybuilding Federation (WBF), another offshoot of McMahon's
empire, in the summer of 1991.
Within weeks, on August 21 he was fired and when
the WBF
production aired, McMahon was the host.
Hodgson's professional integrity, as an
announcer, was riddled
with holes from McMahon's verbal bullets. He filed a suit claiming
breach of contract and wrongful termination of employment against Titan
Sports. There was also initially a sexual harassment charge filed
against Patterson, but the suit was later dropped because it apparently
wasn't routed through the proper channels.
Three months later, Hodgson claimed Patterson
accosted him in a
local mall, and he emphatically said, "it scared the living hell out of
me."
"He comes out of nowhere, and he (Patterson)
grabs me by the arm
and says, 'You're an asshole, Hodgson. Vince isn't going to stand for
this. You've got trouble. We're going to get you for this."
Hodgson notified McMahon of this incident via
fax eight days
later and, then, waited for a reply.
With alleged wrestling corruption now the main
menu on the
talk-show circuit, Hodgson and other accusers were to appear on Donahue to face Vince when he
received a call from an unidentified WWF administrator asking Hodgson
to fax to Titan Towers a settlement figure that he thought would be
fair.
"They were trying to trick me," Hodgson said.
"McMahon would
have pulled out that piece of paper and said I was trying to buy him
off."
Also appearing on Donohue,
besides Hodgson and McMahon, were Barry Orton, Bruno Sammartino,
Superstar Billy Graham, Tom Hankins. John Arezzi and Dave
Meltzer.
With a powerful delivery, Hodgson claimed he was
fired from the
WWF because he wouldn't sleep with Patterson, and not as McMahon had
stated that he was a terrible announcer, and he couldn't make the
transition from radio to TV. Then Hodgson made a strong denial of any
payoff attempt on his part. Such a stance resulted in a near-standing
ovation.
Later, Meltzer wrote, "he (McMahon) was clearly
the heel and his
lack of honesty was pretty well exposed for the entuire nation to see,
"adding, " ... the show was over to soon. It accmplished very little."
The following day, Arezzi claimed two thugs
showed up and
apparently told his mother, "Your son lives in a very dangerous
neighborhood."
Meltzer dismissed the obnoxious phone calls he
received as the
"work of pranksters."
6. TOM HANKINS
(Open letter in
the Wrestling Observer Newsletter)
VINCE McMAHON's
denying of sexual charges against Pat Patterson
and Terry Garvin is a laugh.
I first started in the business in 1973 working
for Nick Gulas
out of Nashville. I was warned by Jack Donovan, Sam Bass and others
about Terry Garvin from Day One.
At first I thought they were ribbing me. But it
only took Terry
a few days to approach me in the same manner he did Orton, with my
answer to him being the same as Barry's.
In early 1985, one night in Los Angeles after
the WWF had run a
show at the Sports Arena, I happened to be at the University
Hilton Hotel , sitting at a bar drinking with Pat Patterson,
Andre the Giant, Jerry Graham and Mike LaBelle.
I was sitting between Andre and Pat.
After about an hour, I asked Patterson about
giving me a shot at
doing TV jobs for them. He told me, in no uncertain terms, that there
was only one way that I was ever going to work for them, and that was
by having sexual relations with him that very night.
Pat was pretty drunk at this point and he was
spouting off
rather loudly about his fondness for oral sex with other males and
asking me if that made him a bad guy.
I told him that I felt he was free to do as he
pleased, but that
I definitely wasn't interested in being a participant.
He responded by reiterating that I would never
work for the WWF
in that case. He kept his word.
He even went as far as to throw me out of the
dressing room at
subsequent shows although I had always been allowed free access up
until that point, even though I hadn't been working for them.
Based upon my experience, I cannot help but feel
that this was
typical behavior for Patterson.
Yes, he was an outstanding worker in the ring,
but his business
and personal ethics suck. He more than deserved to take this fall. I'm
just surprised that it didn't happen sooner.
If everyone who has experienced this same
situation were to come
forward and speak out, I think everyone would be shocked at just how
many instances like this there were.
Tom Hankins wasn't an island, in criticizing the
Patterson-Garvin-Phillips cartel.
Booker Lord Littlebrook (Eric Tovey) says
he wrote McMahon
in the late '80s about sexual harassment by WWF executives
against his midgets. His wrestlers were quickly dropped from future
cards.
"I've been in this business for 40 years,"
snarled Littlebrook,
"and if I have to stoop so low as to have my boys homosexualed, well
g.d. it, I'll wash dishes in a g.d. restaurant first.
He went on to claim one of his stable, The
Karate Kid (Chris
Duby) was sexually molested by a WWF exec in the dressing room of a New
Jersey arena.
"He was screaming that he wasn't that way, and
the boss just
kept playing with him anyway," said Littlebrook.
7.
BEYOND BIZARRE. Those were the only words that could
describe the
alleged Patterson-Garvin-Phillips involvement with underage
ringboys.
It centered around Tom Cole, who began working
for the WWFin
1985, when he was only 13. His job description would include setting up
and taking down rings and getting to "hang out with the wrestlers."
He only had worked a few weeks before the WWF's
primary ring
announcer, Mel Phillips, allegedly began sexually molesting him in motl
rooms.
TOM COLE: He
(Phillips) would play with my feet and suck on my toes, and he would
masturbate while he was doing it. He played with my feet sometimes for
hours at a time. He had a foot fetish, and he played with all the young
boys' feet all the time. Sometimes, he would film it on a
camcorder ... Then Pat Patterson would walk by while I was
sitting up the ring, and he'd grab me. I'd hate it, but there was
nothing I could do. He's the boss.
Cole's allegations also included Garvin,
particularly, just
before his firing in February 1990. He related what happened after
Garvin entered the ringboy's room in Stamford: "He was drinking vodka
and trying to get to drink some. H said he could take me to a strip
joint or get me a prostitute, anything I wanted. I told him I wasn't
interested. Then he said, 'You could go a long way in the company if
you sleep with me.' Then he turned off the lights. I got scared
and said, 'You're making me nervous. Please leave the room.'"
The sexual harassment claims didn't end there.
A few days Garvin and Cole were on their way to
the WWF
warehouse, and Terry, supposedly, told the ringboy that he wanted him
to meet his wife. When he arrived at Garvin's house, he said he'd
forgotten that his wife was in Florida.
After putting on a prno movie and fixing himself
a drink, Garvin
begged him for sex, but Cole turned him down, and pleaded he be taken
back to the WWF headquarters.
"I was scared shitless," related Cole, saying
Garvin was too
drunk to move and continued to smoke marijuana and snort cocaine.
"There was no way I was going to sleep in his house, so I slept in the
van. The next day they fired me.
"I know if I'd slept with him, I'd probably be
rich now."
8.
CHRIS LOSS, who was 16 when he began working as a
ringboy in Niagara
Falls, N.Y., in 1989, recalled how Phillips "accidentally"
stepped on his foot, when he met him, and then he said his foot hurt,
the WWF announcer took off his shoe and began rubbing.
"He kept rubbing my toes and I thought, 'Man,
that's messed-up
behavior.' It was really weird, but I didn't say anything. I found out
it happens all the time to guys."
When Wrestlemania came to Toronto's SkyDome,
another ringboy,
Jeff Treader, from the Falls, recalled he slept in a hotel room, with a
knife by his bed because he was afraid of being abused.
Bruno (The Living Legend) Sammartino, who
claimed Junior had
"blackbballed" him from the business because of his criticism directed
towards the WWF, was indignant, concerning a story that Phillips had
been spotted in the backseat of a car in Pennsylvania, performing a
sexual act on an 11-year-old boy.
"McMahon was told about the incident, and he
elected not to do
anything."
As for Phillips, he was briefly suspended for a
similiar sexual
act, but returned as the circuit's main ring announcer until his
resignation in 1992.
FIVE
Trying to Catch
the Falling Star
1.
VINCE McMAHON
had set his priorities as he criss-crossed the
United States in March 1992.
Salvaging the monster merchandising empire he
created with its
main product being Hulk Hogan, had to be uppermost in his mind.
The other controversies, particularly the sex
abuse charges,
were secondary to the importance of not allowing Hogan's steroid and
drug problems sink The Titan.
The major share of the more than $125 million in
profits each
year, contrary to the figures of more than a billion being bantered
about, was generated by the "family value" images portrayed to the
Little Hulksters.
However, one of the key stories from the "dirt
bag" media, with
acusations of coke and steroids, put Hogan's image and the sport in
peril.
2. JOHN CHERWA &
HOUSTON MITCHELL
(Los Angeles Times)
EVERY WEEKEND,
millions of children -- quite a few adults --
suspend reality for a few hours, plant themselves in front of the
television and wait for the self-proclaimed "real" American hero to
appear.
Professional wrestler Hulk Hogan -- 6-foot-6 and
290 pounds of
muscle -- bounds to the screen and urges little Hulksters to say their
prayers, take their vitamins and believe in themselves. Hogan is a
Saturday morning cartoon come to life and the star of the merchandising
empire that grossed $1.7 billion last year (1991).
The Make-A-Wish Foundation says he is their most
requested
personality, and he reportedly visits as many as 30 sick children a
week. He has starred in two movies, both aimed at children, and played
Thunderlips in Rocky III.
He does commercials and there are almost 300
official Hulk Hogan
products, aimed at children.
But Hulk Hogan's image is in peril, and so is
that of all of
professional wrestling..
Hogan is acused of heving abused steroids and
cocaine. And
professional wrestling is