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Blackjack Mulligan and Johnny Weaver
had reunited with each other via the internet a year or so ago, and
since then the two had enjoyed the exchange of memories and
reminiscences, as well as the usual e-mail jokes that go around.
Johnny had only recently learned to use the computer for e-mail
correspondence, and was enjoying keeping up with some of the guys he
had worked with over the years, including Blackjack, Rip Hawk, Ivan
Koloff, Jim Nelson, and others.
Blackjack reminisced about Johnny
Weaver, who passed away in February, during a recent phone
conversation.
“I still can’t believe Johnny’s gone,”
he told me. “We had just exchanged e-mails and we had spoken on the
phone before Christmas.” Jack had invited Johnny to come spend
Christmas with him and Julia and Barry at Jack’s cabin on the San
Saba River, south of San Angelo, Texas. “He told me he’d have to
pass, he was going to see his daughter Wendi on Christmas day.”
Jack’s nickname for Johnny was “J-Dub”,
short for “JW”. The name was actually given to him by Dick Murdoch
who liked the character by that name in the 1972 cowboy movie “JW
Coop.”
“He called me Mully, I called him J-Dub,” he said. The two had not
seen each other in over 15 years.
“We were close, we shared so much on
the road.” Jack told me. “The best times were in 1978 travelling
with J-Dub and Dickey Murdoch all around the Mid-Atlantic territory.
We spent a lot of time and rode a lot of miles, Johnny always
chewing tobacco, listening to 8-track tapes of Merle Haggard, Willie
Nelson, and Ernest Tubb.” Those 8-tracks resulted in a slight clash
of musical tastes while driving those Carolina back roads. “Over and
over and over again, those tapes would play, I got so sick of Merle
Haggard,” Jack laughed as he told me. “I was into the new Southern
Rock, the Marshall Tucker Band, Charlie Daniels, and those guys, and
Johnny liked that old traditional stuff. Of course, all those guys
Johnny loved, those guys are all on my iPod now,” he laughed, “but
wow, he used to wear those 8-track tapes out!”
Thinking about that now, it makes sense
that Blackjack remembers those times with Johnny in 1978. Back in
those days, the good guys and the bad guys didn’t travel together,
and up until the spring of 1978, Blackjack was one of the top bad
guys in the territory. But the famous “Hat and Robe” angle changed
all that, Blackjack became a fan favorite, and he and Murdoch formed
the M&M Boys tag team, and Jack finally had a chance to travel with
Weaver, even occasionally co-hosted a TV show with Weaver, for whom
had a great respect.
“Riding with Murdoch and J-Dub, you
were always learning,” Jack said. “Weaver had one of the greatest
wrestling minds ever, one of the most creative people I ever met in
the business. Back in those days, I’m talking the 1960s here,
matches were two-out-of-three falls, and were long drawn out
affairs. And the finish you came up with in that third fall was
designed to sell tickets to next week’s show. It wasn’t so much the
TV back then, TV was very different, you didn’t have all those wild
and crazy promos to sell the tickets back then. It was what you did
in that third fall in that town that week, and how you left the
crowd, was what sold tickets for the next show. You didn’t wait
until TV to find out what the next show was and then buy your
ticket. Back in those days, they wanted a big advance from the fans
as they walked out the door that night. They walked right by the
ticket window on the way out, and bought their tickets to next
week’s show. So the psychology of the match and the finish was key
to the success of that town.”
Blackjack couldn’t say enough about how
good Johnny was at making that all work.
“Johnny was a master. And you had to be
creative, because you ran those towns every single week. Finishes
had to be different from one show to the next; the people couldn’t
see the same thing happen again. Now days, they (the WWE) run
Greensboro once a year, so you don’t have to even think about things
like that. But then, it was key to the success of a town.”
“Weaver was a master thinker,” Jack
continued. “He and his partner George Becker both had good brains.
Becker booked and Weaver helped him, and then later Weaver got the
book. George Scott was probably the greatest booker of all time, but
Johnny Weaver was the greatest finish man ever.”
Blackjack knew of Weaver’s reputation
when he first came to the Mid-Atlantic territory in 1975.
“I had heard a lot about Johnny from
Bronko Lubich,” Jack told me. Lubich and partner Aldo Bogni had been
main opponents for Becker and Weaver in the 1960s. “I was with
Lubich down in Houston. Paul Boesche and I didn’t see eye to eye,
and Lubich suggested that I call George Scott, who was booking
Charlotte. Lubich told me that Scott had always liked me, liked my
work. But when I finally got the call from George to come to the
Carolinas, I had just taken a spot with Vince Sr. in New York, Lanza
and I were bringing our team there. The way the WWWF did things, you
would go up there for several months and just do TV, and they would
expose you that way before you ever started going to their towns. I
was just getting ready to start their TV, and so I told George I
could come in for a few months and do a few programs and put guys
over on the way out. All I would need is two days every month to go
to New York and do their TV in advance of me going there.”
Scott agreed and Blackjack burst upon
the scene in the Mid-Atlantic territory. He stayed for a few months,
and then as planned left for the WWWF where he and Lanza held the
WWWF tag team championships. Following the Wilmington NC plane crash
in October of 1975 that ended the career of the territory’s top bad
guy Johnny Valentine and sidelined Ric Flair for months, booker
George Scott brought Mulligan back to be his lead “heel”. He also
brought back Weaver, who had left the territory early in the year
after Scott had removed him from his “babyface” spot.
It was then that he met Johnny Weaver
for the first time.
“Johnny and I hit it off pretty well
from the minute I got there. He had quite a reputation in the
territory where he had been on top for nearly 12 years, which was
very hard to do.” In those days, wrestlers moved frequently from one
territory to the next. This allowed promoters to keep talent fresh,
and allowed talent more opportunities to work and stay on top by
moving place to place. But once Weaver arrived in the Mid-Atlantic
area after an early career in the Central States and Indianapolis,
he basically never left except for a couple of short stints in Texas
and Florida.
Following Jim Crockett Sr.’s death in
1973, the territory was in upheaval as son-in-law John Ringley took
over the company, followed not long after by sons Jimmy Jr. and
David. There had long been differing opinions over who should be
booking the territory. George Becker was squeezed out in 1971,
replaced by Weaver and Rip Hawk. Johnny mentioned in his 2007
interview with the Mid-Atlantic Gateway that Jimmy Jr. wanted him
out as well, and had long pushed for the removal of the old guard.
Weaver said that he felt Ringley was in his corner, but that Jimmy
Jr. was adamant a change be made, and in 1973 George Scott was hired
to book the territory.
“Johnny told me years later of how they
fired him," Blackjack said. Called him down late one night to meet them in the
parking lot of the Coliseum on Independence. Very cold. That always
hurt him, stuck with him.”
After Weaver and Mulligan independently
returned to the territory following the Wilmington plane crash, they
first got to know each other well during those long days of taping
local promo spots to be inserted into the Mid-Atlantic and Wide
World Wrestling TV shows. The wrestlers would tape these promos at
WRAL TV in Raleigh NC during marathon sessions that lasted all day,
and then they would tape the two one-hour television shows there as
well. “There was a lot of time to spend sitting around and talking,
all the guys sitting around for hours. You got to know these guys
pretty well doing that,” Blackjack said.
Blackjack wrestled Johnny a few times
over the years as well, including a series of matches in 1976 where
he defended the US title against Weaver in several towns across the
territory. Blackjack was another in what would be a long line of
guys over the next few years (including Greg Valentine, Roddy Piper,
and Tully Blanchard) who had to get past the legendary territory
stalwart to prove his metal to the fans. Blackjack reminded me
during our phone call - “Johnny Weaver was the man.”
“I had not seen him in a long time,” he
said after a brief silence. ”But we had enjoyed keeping in touch
with each other with e-mails and phone calls over the last year.”
A couple of days after Johnny died,
Blackjack sent an e-mail to Johnny’s address, telling his old friend
he missed him and he wouldn’t be long behind him. “I thought no one
would ever see it, but his daughter Wendi got it and sent me a nice
note back. Probably thought I was nuts. I just wanted to tell Johnny
goodbye.”
- Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
March 11, 2008
This article was written for the
Johnny Weaver Blog website at
www.JohnnyWeaver.net
Link to article:
http://johnnyweaver.blogspot.com/2008/03/greatest-finish-man-ever.html
© 2008
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
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