Backlund by Bob Backlund

Author:Bob Backlund
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Sports Publishing
Published: 2015-06-25T16:00:00+00:00

The match with Harley in Florida went beautifully and drew another very nice house for Eddie, and, of course, a nice payday for us. It was great to see Harley again, and to be in the dressing room with a bunch of the guys from Florida who I hadn’t seen in a while. Eddie Graham gave me a huge hug, wished me well in my new role, and assured me that I had the chops to be Vince Sr.’s champion for a long time. The boys on the card were also very nice and congratulated me heartily on becoming the WWWF champion. I felt more welcomed and comfortable in the dressing room in Jacksonville that night than had I had felt anywhere in the WWWF.

After returning from Florida, I settled into the routine of the WWWF house show schedule. Basically, everything was keyed off of the Garden show. With few exceptions, we were in New York at the Garden every fourth Monday night. Television in Allentown and Hamburg was every third Tuesday and Wednesday—with the days consumed with taping the promo interviews, and the nights filled with taping the three hours of squash matches that would comprise the episodes of Championship Wrestling and All-Star Wrestling that people would watch on the weekends. Allentown and Hamburg also each got one competitive “dark” match, not broadcast on television, which was used to draw the crowds.

Every third Tuesday and Wednesday, we would head up to Maine for shows in Portland and Bangor, with an occasional spot show in Waterville or Augusta. Every third Thursday was Poughkeepsie, New York, at the Mid-Hudson Civic Center, or in Worcester, Massachusetts, at the Memorial Auditorium, while Fridays were at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh (monthly), Jack Witschis (weekly), Harrisburg at the Jaffa Mosque, or in Albany, New York, at the Washington Avenue Armory. Saturdays were at the Baltimore Civic Center, the Boston Garden, the Capitol Centre in Landover, Maryland, the Spectrum in Philadelphia, the Civic Center in Providence, Rhode Island, or the Civic Center in Springfield, Massachusetts. Sundays were at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, Connecticut, the Hartford Civic Center, the Nassau County Coliseum in Uniondale, New York, the JFK Coliseum in Manchester, New Hampshire, a spot show elsewhere, or an off day. There were other buildings we frequented also, and this schedule varied somewhat over the years depending on building availability and the schedules of the professional sports teams that were their primary tenants, but this was generally the way things went.

After I won the title, the first order of business was to have rematches with Billy in just about every building in the territory. In all those many rematches (and there were many of them), I never once got the sense that Billy was just going through the motions. Although I know that he was suffering inside from the loss of the limelight, Billy was always professional and gave his all to every match we had.

I now more fully understand, from watching his

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