APTER:  Well, besides being the magazine that is bringing wrestling magazines into the new millennium, as they say, a magazine is only as good as the people who put it together, here.  We have the best staff in the world, of any wrestling publication.  Team WOW is made up of the finest editors and artists in the world, I'd put them up against any magazine, any where, in any kind of competition.  It's Team Wow that makes the magazine, not Bill Apter.  Bill Apter is the figurehead, I do a lot of the road trips and everything, but a magazine is only as good as the team that puts it together.

SLAGLE: Do you remember what your first exposure to Billy Graham was?   Like, the first time you came across him?

APTER:Yes, yes, very much so.  I met "Superstar" Billy Graham...he was doing a feud with "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes in Florida.  My dear friend Gordon Solie, who passed away a few weeks ago, called me and said (doing a Solie impression) "Bill Apter, both Graham and Rhodes would be a good opportunity for you to get a cover on our wrestlers."  So, I went down there, and met Billy Graham for the first time, and Dusty Rhodes, actually, for the first time.  They were both super to me.  And, after that little loop in Florida, they started running the whole Bullrope Match all around the circuit and then brought it to Madison Square Garden.

I remember Billy said to me right away (doing a Billy Graham impression) "I know who you are, Bill Aptah, I read those wrestling magazines.  You guys did the story on me from Los Angeles, where you said I don't preach, that I'm not like the preacher Billy Graham..."  And, I had talked to him a few times before I met him, and the great thing about Billy Graham was, and is, that he's a self-promotional person.  He pushed himself, and I loved that.  He would be in Madison Square Garden, in the middle of the heat of battle, he'd turn a guy around and put him in a chinlock, and go, "Bill Aptah, put this on the cover, I want to see this on Inside Wrestling, right there on the cover, Bill Aptah!"

He was always Mr. Publicity.

SLAGLE:  That's great!

APTER:  And we remained consistent friends, we really did.

SLAGLE:  Over the years...

APTER:  Absolutely.

SLAGLE:  Now, could you just go into a couple of the ways, since you had such a unique view of the wrestling business at the time, could you go into some of the ways Billy Graham differed from his contemporaries?

APTER:The only person who was Billy Graham before Billy Graham, to me, was "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers.  Rogers had an outrageous personality, he had The Strut.  "Superstar" Billy Graham was a three-dimensional character, and most of the people around him were one-dimensional.  They weren't...Bruno Sammartino, at that point, was a great champion, he talked fairly well, but he wasn't that kind of 'cartoon character.'  Bruno and Pedro Morales and their contemporaries were not the cartoon characters.  "Superstar" Billy Graham became to me, back in the seventies, like, wrestling's first real cartoon character.  He was a real broad character, three-dimensional.

SLAGLE:  I wanted to ask you for some of your thoughts Graham's legendary manager The Grand Wizard.  Usually, they paired managers up with the guys who couldn't talk.  That obviously wasn't the case with Graham.  But, I always felt that The Wizard really complimented the whole package.  What are your thoughts on The Grand Wizard?

APTER: Well, The Grand Wizard was also a very good friend of mine, and if I may, I'll imitate him...

SLAGLE:   Absolutely, be my guest!

APTER:  Well, The Grand Wizard would come on the interviews and go, (imitating The Wizard) "Superstar Billy Graham will defeat Pedro Moral-eez.  And, if they find Moral-eez's heart, his little black heart, on an X-ray, Superstar Graham will go there and destroy him once again..."

Anyway...

SLAGLE:  (laughing) That was perfect, man! That was really good...

APTER: But yeah, they complimented each other, they were friends.  The Grand Wizard was a great character, and I think that was part of Vince McMahon Sr.'s first dabbling into the 3-D characters, because Ernie Roth was also way ahead of his time, he was a three-dimensional character.  So, they hooked them up and you had a '6-D' group there, and they complimented each other brilliantly, they worked off each other.  Sometimes, you can be a great talker and a great performer, but still...Laurel without Hardy, Abbot without Costello, Martin without Lewis.  It might not have been the same thing.  Superstar Graham without the Grand Wizard?  Graham was getting over in Los Angeles, but when he came here, to get him over quickly, they put him with the Grand Wizard, and they complimented each other.

SLAGLE:  You mentioned earlier how Billy would pose for shots and stuff during his matches...can you discuss his close relationship with the magazines?  Other than Dusty Rhodes, I don't think that anybody appeared, in the late seventies, on as many magazine covers...

APTER: Bruno Sammartino and Mil Mascaras, they were the other two that we used.  But, go ahead...

SLAGLE:  What was it like working with Billy back then?

APTER: Oh, man, a piece of cake.  I mean, it was like, "Hey Billy, would you mind..."  (imitating Billy Graham) "...posing for you, Bill Aptah?  No problem -- where do you want me, what do you want to do, Bill Aptah?"  One time, I was walking through mid-town Manhattan with him, he had just come from the State Athletic Commission, and I saw a garbage can, right on 43rd Street & Broadway.   I said, "You know what would make a great shot?"  He said, "What?"  I said, "Take your shirt off and get up on the garbage can."

"No problem, Bill Aptah, I'll stand up there all day if you want, but I gotta be at the Garden by three."

So, he got up there, tore his shirt off, did that infamous pose that's been seen everywhere...

SLAGLE:  Including this website...

APTER: Exactly.  And during that shoot, this one guy comes up to me and goes, "Bill Apter, Bill Apter, I know you from the magazines, I'm a big fan of yours, big fan of The Superstar's, and I'm gonna be a wrestling promoter someday, I'm gonna be..."  I mean, everybody tells me that.  But, it turned out that it was Herb Abrams, who was, who invented the, um...

SLAGLE:  The UWF.

APTER: The UWF.  And so, he became a wrestling promoter!  But, "Superstar" Billy Graham was Mr. Publicity, he was great.  He would call me every few months if we weren't doing anything on him and he'd come up with an angle or something that would put him back on the cover again.  And, to our benefit, as well as his, he sold a lot of magazines for us!  He really did.  He was a publicity hound.  What a great guy for that...I wish everybody was like that!

SLAGLE:  Now, having photographed hundreds of Graham's matches against dozens of different opponents, and after witnessing up close the type of fan reaction those matches used to get, the pandemonium, do you have a favorite "Superstar" Billy Graham feud?

APTER: Yeah, but there was only one match, it wasn't actually a feud.  It was at the Orange Bowl in Miami.  It was the WWWF champ "Superstar" Billy Graham against the NWA champion Harley Race...

SLAGLE:  The Superbowl of Wrestling!

APTER: It was a classic match!  It was pouring outside, and the guys worked on a mat that everytime they slammed each other, water would splash all over the place.  It was incredible.  Superstar bled during the match, it was just...the fan heat and everything, it was the match to be at for "Superstar" Billy Graham.

In terms of a consistent feud, Dusty Rhodes.  It was the feud.  It was two guys with the biggest personalities in the business at that time, against each other, and it was great!

SLAGLE:  And they were both in their primes...

APTER:  Absolutely, both in their primes.

SLAGLE:  Now, not to second guess anyone's booking, especially a man as talented as Vince McMahon, Sr., but for the sake of conversation, in your opinion, as someone who witnessed, first-hand, his title reign, do you think they took the title off of Graham too soon?  Or, was it a case of the timing being right for Backlund to become champion even though...

APTER:  They took the title off him too soon, there's no question in my mind.   Of course, when Graham won the belt from Bruno, he had his legs up on the rope.  And when Backlund beat Graham, Graham had his leg draped across the rope.  Vince McMahon...

SLAGLE:  We choose to ignore the first one...

APTER:  I can...I can understand that!  But Bruno would say (does a Sammartino impression) "You can't ignore that, dog gone it, that was, that was a piece of history!"  But, did they take the belt off Graham too soon?  Yeah.  I think had Billy Graham gone on as champion, he would've equaled, even without cable tv back then, he would've equaled the popularity of Hogan.  Little by little, it would've happened.

But, Vince McMahon Sr. was sold a bill of goods by various promoters about Bob Backlund, how he's going to draw more money and everything.  And, they wanted to keep wrestling more, you know, chain wrestling, and holds and stuff like that when Billy Graham was more of a performer.  They wanted to get the belt back on a wrestler, not on a performer.  To me, that was a tactical mistake.  They had to load up the cards with Backlund, he was not the draw at The Garden.  Any time you see Backlund on the card, there'd be Dusty or "Superstar" Billy Graham or Mil Mascaras, you know, someone they knew was going to draw fans.  

SLAGLE:  Now, when Billy left the WWF in 1979, he made a return in 1982, over three years later with a totally different persona...

APTER:  The karate gimmick.

SLAGLE:  Yeah.  I was wondering what your thoughts were on that?.

APTER:  I didn't like it.  I liked the first "Superstar Billy Graham.  The karate Billy Graham wasn't...it just didn't have the same impact.  The fans wanted to see, for example, fans recently wanted to see Hulk Hogan instead of Hollywood Hogan and instead of that 'hardcore' Hogan he did for awhile.  When Hulk Hogan came out, he got the biggest pop of the three.   I compare that to Graham back then.  Graham changed his whole thing, and I would've preferred to see...

SLAGLE:  But, do you think it was necessary, looking back, for him to change his gimmick at that time?  I mean, would it have been stale if he came back in `82 and...

APTER:  No, I don't think so.  I think people would've welcomed him back.

SLAGLE:  Now, you live in Philadelphia?.

APTER:  I do now, I lived in New York up until two years ago.  

SLAGLE:  I'm sure you remember, even though you didn't live there at the time, the fans in Philadelphia, they didn't believe it was Billy.  He's told me stories where they out-and-out didn't believe that it was him.  They thought it was an impersonator.  He'd had death rumors and all of that stuff, not too much earlier.  Do you remember that, you know, people's reaction to the karate gimmick?   

APTER:  Well, I do remember people saying, "That's not Billy Graham," but not meaning it was an impostor, that it was not the Billy Graham that they paid to see.

SLAGLE:  Bill, I have one last question for you.  Looking back now, one of the best times of his career would be the WWF title reign and everything, but of course, Billy also had a lot of other good runs, like in the AWA and Florida.  What was your favorite era of Billy Graham?

APTER:  Madison Square Garden.  Madison Square Garden, every Monday as the champion.  Also, we used to go up to these little hole-in-the-wall arenas in Albany, NY and places like that, where Graham would wrestle 'top contender' Tony Garea or somebody like that back then...

SLAGLE:  And it was sold-out too, I bet...

APTER:  Oh yeah!  And he always put on a great show.  So, it was that first, that championship reign of "Superstar" Billy Graham that was the best.  It was a moment that no one else can repeat, and I'll always remember it.

SLAGLE:  Actually, I just thought of one last question, and I'll let you go, I appreciate your time....

APTER:  I don't mind...  

SLAGLE:  In your opinion, how would the business of professional wrestling be different had Billy Graham not existed?  I mean, I know it's kind of a broad question, but how do you think things would be different had he not been around?

APTER:  I think somebody like Hulk Hogan based his character on Austin Idol, who based his character on "Superstar" Billy Graham, who based his character, kind of, on Buddy Rogers.  So, I don't know where the transition from Rogers to Graham would've happened.  I don't know who was around to do something like that.  Certainly, Dr. Jerry Graham was colorful, but he was no "Superstar" Billy Graham.  So, I don't know what would've happened.  It's a great question...that I wish I had a great answer for!