SLAGLE:  Hey everybody, thanks for joining us here at www.superstarbillygraham.com, I'm Steve Slagle, and today we've got a special treat for our listeners.  I'm really excited about it because any serious fan of professional wrestling is well aware of our guest today.  His ground-breaking Observer newsletter not only set the standard for the "sheets" that followed it, but in my opinion laid a lot of the groundwork for the current internet climate, where internet news is geared more towards smart fans and breaking kayefabe.  And now, fifteen years, I believe, since he started it, it's the trade journal of professional wrestling.  It certainly is my pleasure to welcome Dave Meltzer to the "Superstar" Billy Graham website.  How are you doing, Dave?

MELTZER:  I'm doin' really good.  Actually, it's been eighteen years since I started The Observer.

SLAGLE: Eighteen years, now, huh?  Did you ever see that it would go this far?  Did you envision how successful it would be?

MELTZER:  I think when I started it I had no idea that it would, but I also thought it had the potential to be as big as it was, or maybe even bigger.  It was just one of those things.  I was in college at the time, and I had a bunch of friends in one of my classes, a newspaper class.  I was just starting to do the newsletter and like three or four guys in my newspaper class subscribed, and we used to always talk about wrestling.  These are guys where the 'real or fake' thing was never an issue.  It was one of those things where we knew what it was, and enjoyed it as entertainment.

SLAGLE:  Sure...

MELTZER:  I thought that the whole world of wrestling was missing that whole perspective, and the audience it could reach.  I thought if I could get that many readers, you know, people who are interested in this type of writing, in that little classroom, the potential is millions.  Obviously, it never reached that level, and I never expected it would, although it did turn out bigger that I expected.  But I can say I always knew the potential was there from the day I started it.  I think that there was a niche that wasn't being covered.  And, you know, everyone in wrestling was afraid of it, I think for all the wrong reasons.  They didn't really understand the potential of what wrestling was.  So, um...

SLAGLE:  Well, the reason I ask is because at the time, it was such a closed society and everything, the average fan just had no idea about...

MELTZER:  No, there was no...yeah, and they could've, because there was that curiosity, I thought wrestling had phenomenal curiosity.  Here it is, on TV, a lot of people watched it, and there was no avenue for real news, at all, none.  It wasn't what I set out to do, I started, like, doing the newsletter just for people who I traded tapes with.  Then, a couple of people heard about it, and, you know, that's where it came from.  But I never had any qualms about...I was writing about wrestling as it was, I wasn't writing some pro wrestling magazine story.  I thought, you know, "I'm too old for that stuff!"

SLAGLE:  Exactly, it kind of insulted your intelligence as fan, and I mean, because the only thing you could buy at the time were newsstand wrestling magazines.  It was like, all of these made-up stories and everything...

MELTZER:  Well, what happened was, when I was younger I did a newsletter, so I was connected to the newsletter industry, and even then, the newsletters had far, far more information quicker than the wrestling magazines, although it's nothing like today.  But I knew the people that did newsletters, and I started getting them again, and I realize that there's so much I could've done with newsletters.  Just by, you know, reviewing tapes, and stuff like that, which was in its infancy.  You know what I'm saying?  Just more insider comments.  And then it kind of just grew into an unofficial trade journal.

SLAGLE:  So you were originally a journalism student.

MELTZER:  Yeah, this was in a newspaper class when this was all going on.  I mean, I was going to end up being an NFL writer when somehow it got derailed.

SLAGLE:  Well, it's a good thing for the wrestling business that you did.  You know, so many people read the Observer and enjoy it, I know Billy enjoys reading it and really looks forward it. And that's what we're here to talk about today, "Superstar" Billy Graham.  Now, as a fan, you go back to Billy's earliest days in the U.S. I mean, originally, he started his career in Calgary as Wayne Coleman, as you know.  Then, I believe it was like `70 or `71, he moved on to the California circuit.

MELTZER:  He probably started in 1970 in L.A. because when I...I started started watching wrestling around the same time he came to San Francisco, which was his third territory.  He'd just wrestled in Los Angeles with Dr. Jerry Graham and, um, he was really green.  Then Roy Shire brought him up, like it would be...I started watching wrestling in 1970, and I seem to remember Billy coming into San Francisco in, like, December of `70 or January of `71, right around that era.  He was one of, in fact, he was in the main event of the very first show I ever went to in San Jose.

SLAGLE: What were your thoughts about Billy then, if you can recall?

MELTZER:  Well, Billy Graham, he was my favorite wrestler when I first started watching wrestling, he was the favorite of all of my friends, and he was a heel at the time.  He was so colorful, it was, it was the interviews and the colorful garb, you know, that did it.  Looking back, we had some of the greatest wrestlers in the business, with Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson, as far as in-ring workers.  They were more popular with the rank-and-file fans, Pat Patterson was the heel, he was Billy Graham's partner, and Ray Stevens was the top babyface.  Peter Maivia was there, Rocky Johnson, Billy, those were the top guys in the territory, Pepper Gomez was around a lot too.  I guess Billy was my original favorite or the group, he wa definitely the most colorful.  Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson were more like the great workers. But I didn't really...it took me awhile to appreciate the talent of Patterson, as far as like in the ring and how phenomenal he was.  Stevens, I mean everybody raved about him and he was a real popular guy, but I didn't, you know, when you first watch wrestling you don't  really understand how Ray Stevens selling was what made Billy Graham (chuckling) look like a good wrestler. It was very early in Billy's career.  Now I can look back and think, you know, Ray Stevens was probably like the best worker in the business at that period.  There are a lot of people who will tell you he was the best.  I didn't...it took me a while to figure that out.

SLAGLE:  So was that mainly who he feuded with during this time period we're talking about?  Ray Stevens....

MELTZER:  Ray Stevens and Rocky Johnson were the guys I saw him wrestle most of the time.

SLAGLE:  Now, Rocky, he would've been just about a rookie then, too, wouldn't he have?

MELTZER:  Rocky had been in for several years. I think Rocky probably started around the mid-sixties.  Rocky was a helluva athlete.  I wouldn't say Rocky was the worker that Patterson was, but Rocky was a very exciting wrestler as far as a tag team guy.  Making the hot tag, Rocky's still one of the best I've ever seen.

SLAGLE:  Yeah, and he had some good moves, too. That drop-kick was awesome!

MELTZER:  He had a phenomenal drop-kick for his size, or any size.  Rocky had one of the best drop-kicks I've ever seen, even going back thirty years later.  And, you know, he would do the backdrops and land on his feet, he was very agile.  Plus, Rocky had a good body.  You know, in those days, Rocky and Billy were very different because most of the wrestlers did not have good physiques.  That was another thing were Billy stood out.  He was a real big guy, and he wasn't fat.  Rocky, in those days, was even more muscular than Billy.  Billy got more muscular later, but they had good physiques and the rest of the guys didn't.  You know, Stevens and Patterson did not have good physiques at all, they just happened to be great workers.

SLAGLE: Now, I was speaking earlier to Billy, because he had sent me some photos for the website, and there were some pictures he sent of himself and Patterson when they were the tag champs for the NWA.  This was `71 I believe.  Now, in the photos, both men, but Pat in particular, are wearing masks.  Billy was explaining this whole idea behind it to me, and how it used to get so much heat for them.  I was wondering if you remember this masked gimmick?

MELTZER:  You know, that was one of the earliest gimmicks I saw. They would do interviews, you know, the gimmick was that they would wear masks and they'd put a foreign object in the mask and then headbutt and pin the babyface.  They did it all the time.  Patterson actually probably originated the gimmick, although it may have been done years earlier in the territory, I don't know.  But I recall, you know, Pat Patterson did the mask gimmick where, um, you know, the gimmick was that there faces were so pretty that they didn't want to let the fans see their faces.  They would wrestle the whole match with masks and then they'd do the interviews with the mask off.  But they would always win with the foreign object headbutt.  So, that was what that was all about.  In fact, that was what set up the Billy Graham-Ray Stevens feud.  They had a tag team match at the Cow Palace where Billy Graham used a loaded headbutt and got the pin on Ray Stevens.   The tag match set up the series of U.S. title matches that followed.

SLAGLE:  That's great...because, I mean, the pictures were just amazing, and they'll be on the website so people will be able to see what I'm talking about.  They're some really great photos.  Now, in hindsight, how important do you think it was to Billy Graham's credibility in the beginning for him to be portrayed as a member of the Graham "family."  It may not mean a lot to fans currently, but back in the sixties and seventies, I mean, you couldn't get much bigger than the Grahams, so, do you think that maybe Billy could've made it on his own, or did he need that gimmick to help him get established?  What do you think about that?

MELTZER: I think with his looks and interview ability that he would've made it just as big on his own.  It may have helped him...I mean, like, in San Francisco, they did bill him as being part of the famous Graham "family," but I don't think the Graham's...I mean, we had Luke Graham years later and it didn't mean anything.  You know what I'm saying?  I mean, at all.  So, it's not like the Graham name was guarantee of anything.  I think in the AWA, which is where he really hit it big as a main-eventer for a long run with Verne, which is the territory he worked, I don't know if it was directly after San Francisco, but it was shortly after it...

SLAGLE:  Well, it was in 1973, `cause that's the first time I saw him, like you were saying you saw Billy, you know, the first time...

MELTZER:  The first time was going back to Los Angeles, and then San Francisco, yeah, and then he went to the AWA.  So when he went to the AWA, I don't think the Graham name had anything to do with it, because by then, you know, he had the right look and the right package.  For New York, yeah, the Graham name was real big in New York, but he would've been just as big with any name in New York, I think.

SLAGLE:  Well, I was just thinking maybe, like, when he was first coming into the L.A. territory, it might've helped him get a step up.

MELTZER:  It probably helped him get his foot in the door, that he was with Jerry Graham.  But, in some ways, it was almost as much a disadvantage just because, you know, Jerry Graham was Jerry Graham.

SLAGLE:  Right...

MELTZER:  "My God, he's friends with Jerry Graham...what if he's like Jerry?"

SLAGLE:  Yeah...

MELTZER:  You know, Jerry Graham was a phenomenal talent, but Jerry Graham also had incredible baggage.

SLAGLE:  Well, he really made Billy look good in comparison, that's for sure, like as far as even just standing next to him.

MELTZER:  Billy would be like a saint next to Jerry, to a promoter!

SLAGLE:  Yeah...now, of course, Billy Graham has had a lot of imitators over the years.  I don't think people...some people don't realize just how many people that he's really influenced.  I mean there's the obvious ones, Jesse Ventura and Hulk Hogan and those guys, but I was wondering what your thoughts on some of the Graham imitators from over the years, guys like Austin Idol, Steve Strong, who wrestled in California during the seventies, I'm sure you're aware of him...

MELTZER:  I know Steve Strong (pictured right), yeah.

SLAGLE:  Who was your favorite of the Graham imitators, and who do you think really captured the essence of his character, and what The Superstar was all about?.

MELTZER:  I think Jesse was the closest. I mean, Hogan was the most successful.  But Hogan took it to a different...and, you know, Jesse took it his own way, too.

SLAGLE:  Now, is this Ventura in the AWA, or the WWF Ventura?

MELTZER: The AWA Jesse Ventura.   Because, you know, he had the same type of dress as Graham, he took it a little bit further, because he came later.  The same interview style as Graham, and maybe, actually, I think Jesse may have even been a better interview, I don't know...

SLAGLE:  Ya think?

MELTZER:  But I as a fan, like, Jesse was not a good wrestler in the ring, but as a fan, I always enjoyed Jesse Ventura as a personality a lot.  Especially in the AWA.

SLAGLE:  Yeah, `cause he wasn't afraid to be a heel, just like Graham.  I mean, really making people hate him.  And the same goes with the WWF, but they kind of portrayed him in a way that you could get behind his character.  But whereas in the AWA, he was just, he was just a bad guy or whatever.  So yeah, that's my choice too, definitely Jesse.  Now, I wanted to touch on something that we kind of mentioned earlier, and that's that Billy is often thought of as a wrestler who basically got over on his charisma, and not necessarily his wrestling technique.  Now, I kind of disagree with that in a sense because you know, granted, Superstar wasn't doing a lot of high-flying moves and such.  But you touched on Ray Stevens' selling, earlier, and how that really kind of is a subtle way of being a professional.  I really think that applies to Billy, because I've seen so many of his matches, and he just sold like crazy, for guys that were much smaller than him, and obviously couldn't overpower him.  What do you think about Graham as a worker?

MELTZER:  I mean, I wouldn't, you know...his forte' to me was the interview ability and the colorfulness.  I think that's what got him over.  I think as far as in the ring, I think his psychology was good.  He knew, I mean, he really knew what to do in the ring as far as how to work a crowd.  Then, obviously, he was a tremendous money draw for his day.  He could reach the crowd.  In that way, he was a smart worker.  Athletically, he didn't do things you would normally associate with a great worker, like a Terry Funk or a Jack Brisco or anything like that.  But...

SLAGLE:  He always made his opponents look good, though...

MELTZER:  Well, he sold.  He wasn't an egomaniac out there in the ring, which, you know, a big guy like that could've gotten away with.  Especially because he was a big star.  Maybe that was the San Francisco territory indoctrination, because, you know, Roy Shire was such a detail man.  In Roy Shire's match, everybody looks good.  I grew up with that style of wrestling, everybody looks good.  You could be the biggest star in the universe, and you go in there for a television match, and it wouldn't be a two-minute squash.  It would be a seven minute match, and the guy who was losing would get three or four minutes, and I mean, one or two near falls.  You had to do the complete match.  We saw squash matches that were, I wouldn't say better matches than the matches of today because that wouldn't be fair.  But they were, um, psychologically, better matches than the majority of matches today, because Roy Shire just had tremendous detail work about the match, and everything the match had to be.  So, Billy's second territory...first of all, he's watching Ray Stevens and Pat Patterson, who were the premier workers in the business, and he's being told by Roy Shire everything he's doing wrong, so...I think that that probably stayed with him his whole career.  That's why, you know, when he did matches, he knew how to make the other guy look good, rather than just making himself look good.  And I guess he figured if he made the other guy look good, then because he was so big and strong, he had to show vulnerability.  Because if he looked like Superman, I mean, why would the people pay to see a babyface beat him if they thought the babyface couldn't?  So, you've gotta give `em...which is actually something that a lot of guys don't understand today.  You've got to give them that hope for the babyface to win, because if the fans have no hope that the babyface will win, the last thing they want to do is spend their money to see the babyface get squashed by the big powerful guy.  So, in that respect, he totally understood that.  I mean, like, you watch his matches, and he didn't guzzle people up.

SLAGLE:  Yeah, not at all.  Now, you know Graham feuded feuded all over the place with just about everybody you can think of during his era.  He had some really classic feuds with a number of different individuals like Bruno Sammartino, Dusty Rhodes of course, Bob Backlund, Mil Mascaras, Peter Maivia, Ray Stevens, all those guys, Dick the Bruiser, is there one or two in particular that you feel really clicked best with Graham, in terms of of drawing heat and audiences and just the quality of matches?  Does anybody stand out?

MELTZER:  See, the thing is that in those days, we didn't see everything.  So you're relying on wrestling magazines, which were, you know, fictional. I mean, I was lucky in the sense that what we used to do...you know, we didn't have VCR's until the early eighties, and Graham was then past his prime.  His prime years were the seventies.  So, we could trade pictures, but you can't tell anything in a picture, um, but I did get audio tapes.  I always used to trade audio tapes with people in Chicago or Minneapolis or, you know, Denver, so I heard a lot of the promos in the AWA, and I heard all of his promos in the WWWF because I used to trade audio tapes with a guy in New York.  So, in that sense, as far as promo work, to me, I would say, I mean the stuff that he did here with Stevens, I mean he was new, and he got much better afterwards.  I think, to me, his interviews really clicked in the AWA with Wahoo and The Crusher.  Bruno obviously drew the most money with him of anyone, so I guess that would be the biggest.  I think he had great chemistry, because of the interviews, with Dusty Rhodes. Dusty stole some of his interview stuff, and they both were great interviews.  Neither were great technical wrestlers, but it was like, they were both...you know, Dusty Rhodes was the top babyface outside of probably Bruno, as far as territorial babyfaces in the southeast.  And Billy, Billy was arguably the top heel in the business at the time, certainly right up there.  So, Dusty was a perfect opponent for him, where Bruno, in the northeast, was a perfect opponent for him.  I remember the stuff with Crusher and Wahoo, maybe more The Crusher than Wahoo, and that's stuff that I remember, but I didn't see most of it.  It's had to compare.  The stuff I've seen on video, you know, I've seen a few old tapes of Bruno and Superstar Graham matches, and you know, Backlund matches.  I didn't think Backlund was that great of a worker, so those matches weren't necessarily that good. They were better in the magazines than when I actually saw them.  So that's the stuff I would say I remember, but, again, I didn't actually see most of it.

SLAGLE:  Yeah, that's the only bad thing, he came ten years too soon.  He missed out on not only the big contracts, but also small as having his matches on tape. I mean, there's still stuff out there, but...

MELTZER:  Verne has those tapes, I know because I've seen the Billy Graham stuff advertised on Verne's PPV's.  He'll still got all of those interview tapes, and those interviews, I would think the interview hold up better than the matches.  I mean, I can remember Billy Graham interviews today, and they're on par with everyone but the very top interviews today.  When I say most, I mean 90% of the guys today.

SLAGLE:  Definitely, I would agree with you on that.  Now, when Superstar returned to the WWF, as you remember, he he left in `79 and came back in `82, and that's when he had the new karate persona. Now for me at the time, as a fan, and I was just a young teenager at the time, you know, I thought it was kinda cool, just `cause it was something different.  Although I liked the colorful Graham better, still, he was really intense and a really, you know, just a bad ass dude.  I was wondering what your initial thoughts were about Graham's karate persona were at the time.

MELTZER:  Actually, by then we had VCR's, so I saw all of that.  I mean, physically, he wasn't what he once was.  But, you know, I thought he was hilarious.  He knew the facials, he did the interviews...on the interviews, angle-wise, I thought he was tremendous.  That's why he still drew big money, even though physically he was not the Billy Graham that he was in the seventies.  A lot of it was the name, that was a magical name in the northeast.

SLAGLE:  Now, another big aspect of Graham when he was in the WWF was the Grand Wizard.  In my opinion, the Wizard was just the about the perfect manager for a guy like "Superstar" Billy Graham.  But they also had a couple of other managers who, as you remember, handled all of the bad guys, Albano and Blassie.  Do you think maybe Graham would've been better off...or, how do you see him with a different manager?  What are your thoughts on the Wizard?

MELTZER:  With a lot of the guys, it would've made a difference.  But with Graham, I would say that his persona was so powerful, he didn't need a manager.  The guys who needed a manager were the ones who needed help talking.  I remember all of the pictures with Graham and the Wizard, and you know, it would've worked just as well with Blassie, or even Albano.  I think Albano would've been the worst of the three for him, the way that the mix was.  Blassie would've been a good one.  I don't think that who the manager was made a bit of difference with him.  With a lot of the guys, the manager was the heat, more than the wrestler.  That's in some of the cases, with the weaker challengers.  But in Billy's case, the name Billy Graham meant more than any manager could.