SLAGLE:  Hey everybody, thanks for joining us here today on the "Superstar" Billy Graham website at superstarbillygraham.com!  I'm Steve Slagle, and on today's show, we've got a real treat for everyone -- a man who, in many ways, was just as responsible for getting wrestlers over as the performers and promotions themselves.  Additionally, he's the man responsible for bringing "Superstar" Billy Graham to the world, via the magazines he worked for during the seventies.  He's the current editor-in-chief of W.O.W. Magazine, and it's my pleasure to welcome Bill Apter.

APTER:  Glad to be here, stylin' & profilin' on here with you, Steve, and "Superstar" Billy Graham!  By the way, I must tell you, even before we get into the interview here, that he was always one of my favorite characters in the world, and one of my favorite people to imitate, "Superstar" Billy Graham.  He had a charisma, and still does, that no one else ever really had.

SLAGLE: Well, I would agree with you on that.  Now, Bill, how did you get involved with the London Publishing magazines, Inside Wrestling, The Wrestler, all of those...how did that come about?

APTER:Well, I've been a wrestling fan since I was five years old, and I started doing a radio show in New York at the very beginning of 1970, where I bought the time.   I had called the Capital Wrestling Corporation, which was pre-WWF, so to say, it was called the Capital Wrestling Corporation, and it was the WWWF, at that time.  I asked them for press ticket, `cause I was doing the show and wanted to interview some of the wrestlers.  They were, like, "Ok, come on down, just don't ask any embarrassing questions."  And, so I went down there and interviewed some of the wrestlers.  I started putting them on a show I was doing at 5:30, it was a five minute show on WHBI 105.9 FM.  I was paying for the time, but I started to get a reaction.  So, I sent some of the transcripts of the interviews to Stanley Weston because I was buying Inside Wrestling at that time, and The Wrestler magazine.  And, I got a letter back from him asking me how I got all of those interviews.  And not only that, when I went there, I shot some pictures on a little instamatic right along ringside, they let me in and gave me shots going back to the dressing room and stuff.  So, I sent them off to him, and he called me and I met him for lunch.  He said, "Do you want a job?"  I told him I didn't want to leave the radio thing, and he said I didn't have to, I could do this too.  He said, "There's a guy coming in to New York soon, my friend Eddie Graham is bringing him in and his name is Jack Brisco.  He's a real up-and-comer.  If you get an interview with him, then you've got the job, fulltime."  So, I went out, got the interview, that put the key in the ignition, and Wonderful Willie got started, baby.

SLAGLE:  And you haven't stopped, since, either...

APTER:  No, it'll be thirty years now, 1970, this October it'll officially be thirty years in the rasslin' business.

SLAGLE:  That's incredible.  Now, did you realize at the time how important Inside Wrestling & The Wrestler were in shaping the ideas of the wrestling fanbase, and how influential those magazines were in getting wrestlers over with people who had never seen them perform before?

APTER:I didn't really know that at the beginning when I started there, but as the years progressed and Vince McMahon, Sr. brought in people from the NWA like...Paul Jones.  Paul Jones (pictured, left) would say to me, "You know what?  When I came here, I've never been on TV here, no one knows who I am, yet, about 500 fans came over to me and said they knew me from the wrestling magazines."  So, yeah, after, like the early-seventies to the mid-seventies, I started realizing that whatever we wrote was sticking.  And, a lot of the wrestlers would come over and say thank you...or they'd be P.O.'d over a story.

SLAGLE:  Right.  So, at one point, I actually thought that, after buying the magazines for pretty much all of my life, once the internet came onto the scene, I thought that it would pretty much cause the demise of the wrestling publications by taking their place as the primary outlet for wrestling news and info.  Obviously, that's not been the case, and there's more wrestling magazines out there now than ever were before.  What are your opinions on the internet's effect on the wrestling business, and how has it affected the magazines, and the way they do business?

APTER: Well, let me explain something to you about The Magazines vs. The Internet.  The internet is great, it's a great outlet.  People can get news, up to the minute news everyday on there.  But, there's nothing in the world like getting a package in your hands, with something you can sit, read...and collect.  You can always go back and see the pictures or read the stories and reminisce.  It becomes part of your history.   As you're growing up, twenty years later, and I still do this with my old Wrestling Reviews from the sixties.  I go back, and I open it up, and I say, "Man, this is great!"  You can't do that with the internet.  To hold a package in your hand of that magazine, of something you love, there is nothing that will ever replace that.  That's my true feeling.  The internet, I have no problem with, except I don't like irresponsible reporting.  What will happen is, there will be something on a main site, and then some of the other sites will get their hands on it and embellish on it, and after a while, none of it's true.  You have to check out your facts.

SLAGLE:   Yeah, that seems to be, like, the one big problem with the internet, there's no...credibility.  No one has to answer to anyone, so they can just write whatever they want...

APTER:  Well, they have to answer to themselves, whether they want to be credible or not.  Has it affected sales?  No.  At least not as far as W.O.W. Magazine is concerned, because W.O.W. is almost an internet package in a magazine.

SLAGLE:  Exactly.  If anything, I'd think that the internet would enhance W.O.W.'s readership.

APTER: Or vice versa.  I mean, we point people to websites, when other other magazines don't do that.

SLAGLE:  Right.  Now, you take part in the WrestleLine site, too, right?

APTER:  Well...WrestleLine kind of licenses our name.  We have a deal with WrestleLine.  Bill Apter, Steve Anderson, and anyone else listed on the masthead write for W.O.W. Magazine.  The other people on WrestleLine do not write for our magazine.  We don't really like to be lumped into saying that these guys work for us, because they don't, and some of the 'journalism' I've seen on WrestleLine, I'd prefer that it's not lumped in with W.O.W.  You have to make sure on that page that someone has the title for W.O.W. Magazine, otherwise you're not getting W.O.W.   There are some people who don't work for us who are fine journalists and writers, but they're not W.O.W. staff.

SLAGLE:  Now, what do you see the role being for wrestling magazines in the new millennium?  Is it pretty much just going to stay the course for what it's been over the last thirty years or so, or...

APTER:  Well, I think it's to educate people about what wrestling is becoming now.  Up until a year, a year and a half ago, when I started with W.O.W., I was remaining stagnant.  The wrestling business has changed, Vince McMahon and Eric Bischoff, were all saying this is sports entertainment, it's rehearsed, it's this and that, while the other wrestling magazines were staying with the kaybefabed story, so to say.  W.O.W. Magazine is helping to educate the modern fan to get into what the modern business is, and this is how we talk about it.