Latest / ABJ / Gorilla Monsoon | ABJ Podcast (Tornado Tag)

Transcript

Gorilla Monsoon | ABJ Podcast (Tornado Tag) · ABJ

• 0:11
  What is going on everybody? And welcome back to the A BJ
• 0:15
  podcast Tornado Tag myself a BJ alongside the Co host BP Burke.
• 0:23
  This is going to be a fun one work.
• 0:24
  We're coming up on the Thanksgiving season and we
• 0:28
  decided who's someone we're really thankful for in the world
• 0:32
  of professional wrestling. And a lot of names can get
• 0:35
  thrown out here. Like who do you really
• 0:37
  appreciate? Who do you think really has
• 0:38
  shaped wrestling as a whole? And what aspects has shaped
• 0:42
  wrestling? And I think when it comes to
• 0:44
  this man, you have dove into working the coveted position
• 0:49
  named by him and we've done the commentary role, which are two
• 0:52
  huge aspects of him that a lot of people are mostly known for
• 0:57
  because we were probably not breathing at the time.
• 1:00
  He was actually wrestling, but. Yeah.
• 1:06
  So welcome everybody. This content may not be suitable
• 1:09
  for children, anyone under the age of 18.
• 1:11
  And this is definitely not safe for work.
• 1:12
  Today, we'll be deep diving into one of the most one of the sorry
• 1:16
  the life of one of the greatest professional wrestling most
• 1:19
  iconic figures, Gorilla Monsoon. From a collegiate athlete to a
• 1:23
  towering heel, from broadcast legend to an on screen president
• 1:26
  of the World Wrestling Federation.
• 1:28
  His journey spans decades of of change, drama and impact.
• 1:33
  Let's set the stage BP. All right, so let me set the
• 1:36
  stage real quick. I'm going to, I'm going to say
• 1:38
  three things before we get started.
• 1:39
  Yes, first and foremost, this is going to be a happening.
• 1:43
  This is going to be a happening because right now the
• 1:46
  electricity is so thick you could cut it with a knife.
• 1:48
  Literally. You could literally cut it with
• 1:50
  a knife. Because tonight the irresistible
• 1:53
  force meets the immovable object.
• 1:55
  And and what if I get a little crazy or antsy or I get out of
• 1:58
  hand a little bit here? I'll have you thrown out of
• 2:00
  here. All right, all right, cool.
• 2:02
  I will definitely keep my P's and Q's.
• 2:04
  But I'll give you a warning first.
• 2:05
  After a few will you stops I will have you thrown out of
• 2:08
  here. Got you, got you.
• 2:10
  My God, let's just start real quick there before we get into
• 2:13
  his early life. I I generally there's a lot of
• 2:16
  things that I feel like I've done in professional wrestling
• 2:18
  in the aspect of of production and everything like that.
• 2:21
  But honestly, to me, my highlight, my favorite is being
• 2:26
  on the balcony with you at the sanctuary and channeling our our
• 2:30
  best versions of Gorilla and Bobby slash of Jesse and we us
• 2:36
  to kind of mixing the pot between all three of them and
• 2:39
  blending those styles. But then also channeling our
• 2:42
  Muppets old men on the balcony being crazy.
• 2:47
  But yeah, I just I, I when I feel like yeah, yeah, when I,
• 2:51
  when I feel like our when people would describe like our
• 2:54
  commentary style, I, I definitely say it's, it's it's
• 2:57
  that era. It's that it's that Gorilla,
• 2:59
  Jesse Gorilla Bobby style that we do.
• 3:02
  And I, and I think more so you than me is what's carrying it
• 3:06
  because you're good at what you do.
• 3:08
  And I think Gorilla is low key one of the best commentators of
• 3:11
  all time. He just, he kept it tight.
• 3:13
  He did exactly what needed to be done.
• 3:15
  And that's where a good color person can shine, because he
• 3:19
  they knew Gorilla would steer the ship back where they need to
• 3:21
  be. Right, especially people who are
• 3:24
  very comfortable with Monsoon, which which was primarily Jesse
• 3:28
  Ventura and Bobby Heenan, as you said, because and and I think
• 3:32
  this is the same thing that happened with you.
• 3:34
  And I, I think it all started because it's hard to work with a
• 3:37
  commentary partner. It's hard to work with a partner
• 3:40
  anywhere in professional wrestling.
• 3:45
  Not that I've ever been on the ring and ever or ever will be,
• 3:48
  but it's hard to do anything without mutual respect with
• 3:53
  everybody involved. Like they always say in
• 3:55
  professional wrestling, when two friends fight, when two friends
• 3:58
  work each other, it's a great match because they're, and yes,
• 4:01
  it is because they're not afraid to unapologetically go all out.
• 4:04
  And, you know, if you catch somebody, that's fine.
• 4:06
  You know, that's part of the business.
• 4:07
  But it's also because if you tend to be friends with
• 4:09
  somebody, there tends to be a mutual respect there.
• 4:12
  And there was a mutual respect between Gorilla Monsoon and
• 4:15
  Jesse Ventura, and Oh my God, was there between Gorilla
• 4:17
  Monsoon and Bobby Heenan. And that's a huge, huge, huge
• 4:20
  part of it. And, and that that was a thing
• 4:22
  too, like doing the style of commentary I do where sometimes
• 4:26
  I throw a little realism, we'll say, if especially a little
• 4:30
  inside baseball between the boys, I'll throw in there and
• 4:33
  the fans don't know what I'm talking about, but the
• 4:36
  commentary team does. The boys know and, and, and,
• 4:39
  and, and sometimes I go a little hard on my, my broadcast
• 4:42
  partners where I've been asked, do you legit don't like me?
• 4:46
  Because how I'll how I do my thing.
• 4:49
  And I never had to worry about that with you.
• 4:51
  I knew that no matter what I said or what I did, you knew it
• 4:53
  was all just part of the the thing.
• 4:55
  Yeah. It's all a show.
• 4:57
  Sorry, Kay Fade. It's all a show.
• 5:00
  In fact, it's funny we bring it up because that was Gorilla
• 5:03
  Monsoon's license plate. Like literally his car.
• 5:06
  New Jersey license plate Kay Fade.
• 5:09
  Oh, he, he, he's the coin. He is the guy that had it,
• 5:12
  literally his real license plate, said kayfabe.
• 5:15
  There's a few people. I have it now.
• 5:17
  Yeah. It's.
• 5:17
  Become a novelty thing, but he his actual license plate through
• 5:21
  the DMV had it. I love that.
• 5:23
  Dave. Yeah.
• 5:25
  All right. Well, let's get into the the
• 5:26
  early, early life origins of and before before we do this.
• 5:30
  I want to really shout out and, and a lot of this is stuff I
• 5:32
  knew already and some of the stuff is going to be little
• 5:34
  tidbits I picked up, but a lot of this is and the reason we're
• 5:38
  doing the show. I suggested we do this topic.
• 5:40
  I want to shout out a great book, Irresistible Force by
• 5:43
  Brian R Solomon. Brian R Solomon is a writer for
• 5:46
  Pro Wrestling Illustrated back in the day, in the late 90s,
• 5:49
  early 2000s, I believe he wrote for WWE magazine, WWF Magazine
• 5:53
  back when that was still a thing.
• 5:55
  He wrote a book about the original Chic, which I have
• 5:57
  since bought after reading the Monsoon book.
• 5:59
  So shout out to him. Shout out to his book.
• 6:01
  Check it out Irresistible Force. I believe it's on I I got it on
• 6:04
  Kindle. I believe it's available on
• 6:06
  Amazon. I don't know how many like
• 6:08
  physical booksellers it's at, but it's having read the entire
• 6:11
  thing it's definitely worth a look.
• 6:12
  Is it is he involved in the writing process or is someone?
• 6:17
  No, it's his book. Like it's not an autobiography.
• 6:19
  I mean, spoiler Grill Monsoon has been dead for 25 years now,
• 6:23
  or over 25 years. No, it's a biography.
• 6:26
  He wrote it. OK, I I prefer those than
• 6:29
  sometimes people's accounts of what they think the guy.
• 6:32
  What he did is he had an opportunity to speak with a lot
• 6:35
  of people who knew Gorilla Monsoon.
• 6:37
  He's and he's a lifelong, He's been in the business for now
• 6:40
  like 30 some odd years almost. And then on top of that, he did
• 6:44
  have a lot of access to, she has since passed, unfortunately, but
• 6:48
  she had he did do a lot of interviews with Maureen Marella,
• 6:52
  who was Gorilla Monsoon's widow, some of Gorilla Monsoon's
• 6:55
  children, his daughters, some of the people who grew up in his
• 6:59
  neighborhood, who went on to do things in professional
• 7:01
  wrestling. He even got a chance to talk to
• 7:03
  and I forget her married name, but I'm just going to use her
• 7:06
  birth name, her maiden name, Jessica Heenan, Bobby Heenan's
• 7:09
  daughter. He he he did his research, he
• 7:11
  put the work in and it's it turned out in a phenomenal book
• 7:14
  where it is it is a great it. Doesn't want to, I don't want to
• 7:18
  bury the lead or anything, but I did, I did looking into the book
• 7:21
  a little bit because I, I definitely have it on my list as
• 7:23
  well. But I, I, I, I stumbled across a
• 7:25
  little bit of a clip or podcast thing where they talked about
• 7:30
  their exit of WB and how it affected them.
• 7:34
  So fucking heartbreaking. Yeah, and, and shout out to
• 7:37
  Brian Solomon as well. He he's a podcaster on top of on
• 7:41
  top of being a, a writer. He does the Shut Up and Wrestle
• 7:44
  podcast. Shut Up and Wrestle with Brian R
• 7:46
  Solomon. It's on the Arcadian Vanguard
• 7:49
  Podcast Network, which is known for a podcast for a guy.
• 7:51
  I know you're not crazy about it.
• 7:52
  I'm I'm somewhat of a fan. Respect the fuck out of Jim
• 7:58
  Cornett. He's a historian.
• 8:00
  I just, I just, I don't it. It's kind of like he's created a
• 8:04
  mob of wrestling fans who would think they're more entitled than
• 8:07
  they should be because they listen to Jim Cornett.
• 8:10
  Most wrestling fans, I've come to learn feel are are fairly
• 8:13
  entitled unless you're just super cool.
• 8:14
  But Jim Cornett fans think because they listen to Jim
• 8:17
  Cornett, they had they can regurgitate his shit with 0
• 8:20
  experience or zero. Like I, I, I, I just think my
• 8:23
  biggest problem, I understand the older guys is like, just
• 8:26
  because it's not their time and their generation and things are
• 8:29
  a little differently. It sucks and it's not good
• 8:31
  because it's not the same. It was, it was, and that kind of
• 8:34
  upsets me. But as a hit wrestling
• 8:35
  historian, the guy's fucking a legend.
• 8:37
  He's he's the best. And and shut up and wrestle's a
• 8:41
  great podcast. A lot of it is interviews guests
• 8:44
  like people who Brian Solomon has had throughout the
• 8:47
  throughout the worked with throughout the years, gotten to
• 8:49
  know throughout the years. But I, I, I thought it would
• 8:52
  have been improper to not spend a couple minutes just talking
• 8:56
  about him, since his book was kind of the catalyst to
• 8:58
  absolutely. Go, go, go and give them.
• 9:01
  And I knew a lot of the listen. And follow them on social media
• 9:04
  and listen to that podcast. And go get the book.
• 9:06
  Absolutely Yep, get the book out.
• 9:09
  I I can't recommend the book strongly enough.
• 9:11
  It's a it was a great read. So let's talk about the man
• 9:15
  behind that book, behind somebody who has done pretty
• 9:19
  much everything in professional wrestling.
• 9:21
  Like you said, one of the most important positions, a position
• 9:25
  I get to sit at once a month now, which is surreal.
• 9:29
  The gorilla position is named after Gorilla Monsoon.
• 9:32
  But the man behind the presence and, and, and a guy who always
• 9:36
  was able to separate himself from his wrestling character is
• 9:41
  Bob Marella, Robert Marella, whatever you want to call him.
• 9:46
  And, and what a what a what a guy, what a, what a story.
• 9:49
  He's born June 4th, 1937 in upstate New York in Rochester,
• 9:53
  NY. And he's born to a family of
• 9:57
  Italian immigrants. His, his family, I forget the
• 9:59
  name of the, the village by the book, by that book, if you want
• 10:02
  to give the exact name, but he, he came from a, an Italian
• 10:07
  American family. His parents were immigrants.
• 10:09
  He was the first generation born in the United States and.
• 10:14
  You see that if you kick out all the immigrants, you don't get
• 10:17
  fucking gorilla monsoons. Simple as that.
• 10:20
  So that should be enough right there.
• 10:24
  Fucking let's calm down, all right?
• 10:26
  So he winds up and I'm, I'm, I'm forgetting the book and I don't
• 10:30
  have it in front of me to, to, to, to go through it.
• 10:32
  But one of, I believe one of his parents did die very young and
• 10:35
  his, the other parent remarried. I believe, if I'm not mistaken,
• 10:40
  his father may have died young and then his mother remarried.
• 10:42
  It might be vice versa, I'm not sure.
• 10:45
  But that's important to note because it's you can't tell the
• 10:51
  story of Gorilla Monsoon without having the ideal in his head.
• 10:55
  That family is not necessarily blood because that becomes
• 11:01
  extremely important. One of the most important things
• 11:03
  in the life of Gorilla Monsoon is that ideal.
• 11:06
  And we'll get to why later. So Gorilla is a little sickly
• 11:11
  when he's younger, but kind of overcomes it and it's a bit of a
• 11:16
  growth spurt. Girl Monsoon was a big man.
• 11:18
  If you saw our graphic, he was a big, a big man could, could be a
• 11:21
  scary man when he wanted to be. And he, he winds up going to
• 11:26
  Jefferson High School of Rochester, NY and he's a three
• 11:29
  letter man. He at that point he's over £300.
• 11:32
  He's well over 6 feet tall, well over 66.
• 11:34
  He's a he's a giant of a man. So of course, you know,
• 11:37
  ironically, they nicknamed him Tiny Bob, Tiny Marella.
• 11:41
  In fact, I believe we'll get, we'll get to this.
• 11:44
  And he lettered in track and field where I believe he was a
• 11:46
  hammer throw shot, but I don't think he was doing hurdles.
• 11:48
  He wrestled and he played football.
• 11:50
  Didn't they also call him Gino Gino?
• 11:53
  Was his nickname yet Gino not not a lot of people called him
• 11:56
  Bob, especially in wrestling. Like even if you want like you
• 11:58
  were talking about like kind of pulling back the curtain and
• 12:00
  everything. The biggest pullback, the
• 12:02
  curtain moment with Gorilla Monsoon, is it there were so
• 12:05
  many times that Jesse Ventura would say, what do you think
• 12:08
  about that, Gino? Monsoon?
• 12:11
  What do you think about that, Gino?
• 12:12
  Yeah. Gino is always a big one.
• 12:15
  Not a lot of people in professional wrestling, if any
• 12:17
  called him Bob, he was Gino. He was Gino and and that that
• 12:21
  comes from wrestling. A little bit later it became a
• 12:22
  nickname, but his his birth name is Robert James Marella and he
• 12:29
  and if he wasn't Gino, it was Bob.
• 12:31
  So he goes to Ithaca College. It's funny, when I was in high
• 12:36
  school, I got so many pamphlets from Ithaca College.
• 12:38
  And I, I, I was like, oh, that would be a cool place to go.
• 12:41
  Like their, their pamphlets just look cool.
• 12:42
  It's upstate New York, beautiful greenery making.
• 12:44
  Beer in Ithaca. I've had a couple of Brewing
• 12:47
  Company. Beers.
• 12:47
  See, I brought that up to my one uncle and he's like, oh, they
• 12:49
  make good shotguns there. I guess they make shotguns in
• 12:52
  Ithaca, NY. But it's also where one of the
• 12:56
  most influential people in media now, Bob Iger, who has been the
• 12:59
  guy at the helm of Disney for the better part of the last 25
• 13:02
  years or so, 30 years, he went to Ithaca, David Boreanis, who
• 13:06
  played Angel on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, an Angel.
• 13:11
  He was the male lead in Bones. He's on like some SEAL team
• 13:14
  show. He was there.
• 13:15
  His father was actually the most famous weatherman in
• 13:19
  Philadelphia, Dave Roberts, that was his father.
• 13:22
  But Gorilla Monsoon went there. Bob Morello went there in the in
• 13:29
  the 50s and was a track star, but a, a, a very, very, very
• 13:34
  accomplished wrestler. And a lot of it was just his
• 13:36
  natural strength and agility. And he wound up almost winning
• 13:41
  national championships to this day.
• 13:42
  They had the Bob Tiny Morello Award that is given out to a
• 13:45
  wrestler at Ithaca College or Ithaca University now I believe
• 13:48
  it's called. So like to this day, there's
• 13:50
  still not a Gorilla Monsoon award.
• 13:52
  It wasn't about what he did later.
• 13:53
  It's the Bob Tiny Morello Award, so.
• 13:57
  Finished second, right? Like he was a runner up.
• 14:00
  He, he was very close to a, a, a national championship in
• 14:03
  wrestling. He wound up traveling to Russia
• 14:05
  where he got a little demoralized because, and I, I
• 14:09
  was funny. I was reading about this.
• 14:11
  I was reading about this earlier today, just just scrolling
• 14:15
  through Reddit. What happened to him with
• 14:17
  amateur wrestling? Cause a lot of it was just his
• 14:19
  natural ability as natural size. He could overpower people.
• 14:22
  He was athletic. He had some agility too.
• 14:25
  But then there's people who are just savants.
• 14:27
  Like there's a reason, like they say when they would mess around
• 14:30
  backstage, Kurt Angle, even though it was a little bit
• 14:33
  smaller, got the better of Brock Lesnar, cause Kurt Angle, like
• 14:36
  Brock Lesnar was an NCAA champion.
• 14:39
  He was here, Kurt Angle's an Olympic gold medalist.
• 14:41
  He didn't mess with Kurt Angle. So they say when like he was
• 14:45
  part of a team that went to Russia in the late 50s, early
• 14:48
  60s. And the thing I was looking at
• 14:51
  earlier was talking about how sports has that.
• 14:54
  There's levels to this. I think everything, anything you
• 14:58
  do has levels like and when you realize you're not in your
• 15:01
  category no more, you're like, oh, I didn't either get good or
• 15:05
  get the fuck out. Right.
• 15:07
  And, and and that's the thing, like they like they always say
• 15:09
  the worst player on the worst team in the in the NFL, in the
• 15:12
  NFL was a great player in college.
• 15:14
  Yeah. And a superstar in high school.
• 15:17
  Yeah, who's the who's the guy that goes around?
• 15:19
  He's like he he was the he's like a street ball player and
• 15:22
  he's always challenging people and he goes, I can beat a guy in
• 15:24
  the NBA And then a dude showed up from the in the NBA who was
• 15:27
  like didn't get any time on the court.
• 15:30
  He was like, and he's like, I'm not, I haven't even got I don't
• 15:33
  even think I scored a basket in the NBA.
• 15:35
  And I will come and dust you like, you know what?
• 15:37
  I. Mean like there's levels to
• 15:39
  this? Yeah.
• 15:41
  I always think of the episode of The Simpsons.
• 15:43
  It was an earlier episode where Homer is the mascot for the
• 15:46
  Springfield Isotopes, the minor league team.
• 15:48
  Yeah, and they love him. And he goes to the main thing,
• 15:51
  the capital City team, the major team.
• 15:53
  And he's just they hate him. They want, they want the capital
• 15:58
  city goofball who's who's the his counterpart.
• 16:00
  But anyway, Gorilla Monsoon or Bob Marella.
• 16:03
  He he married young too. He married a woman named Anez.
• 16:06
  But somewhere between college and his eventual career, they
• 16:10
  they wound up splitting up because he wound up getting in
• 16:13
  the construction. He want to buildings a lot of
• 16:15
  buildings around Rochester. But because he had that name
• 16:19
  value of this college star, a lot of wrestling promoters in
• 16:23
  Rochester, you're like, hey, would you come in?
• 16:25
  You're you're a local wrestling icon, you know, almost won a
• 16:29
  national championship and you're a local boy here in in
• 16:31
  Rochester, which is near Ithaca. Like everybody knew who he was.
• 16:35
  So he did a few angles there as just Bob Marella, Bob
• 16:38
  Tinymarella. And that was that for a little
• 16:41
  bit. And then he started getting
• 16:42
  noticed and he started working for Rochester ethic.
• 16:46
  All these things are way upstate New York and kind of caught the
• 16:50
  notice of Maple Leaf Wrestling, which is run by the Tiny family.
• 16:54
  Frank Tunney was the main guy there.
• 16:55
  His nephew Jack Tunney wound up being a huge deal in the WWF for
• 17:01
  a while. So he wound up going up there as
• 17:04
  and, and the Gino Morello thing wound up becoming like more of a
• 17:06
  character because he would sit, he loved his Italian music.
• 17:11
  He would love to listen like Frank Sinatra.
• 17:12
  He would sing opera. He loved his Italian music.
• 17:15
  So he would do a thing where he would sing an opera song before
• 17:19
  the match and then he would wrestle.
• 17:21
  And so eventually that's where the Gino Marella thing comes in
• 17:24
  because it just sounds more Italian.
• 17:25
  Gino sounds a little more Italian than Bob.
• 17:28
  So he becomes Gino Marella as a character and he winds up going
• 17:32
  to Stampede. He winds up going to, to, to to
• 17:35
  the Hearts. He he wound up wrestling in
• 17:38
  Calgary and the the when he starts traveling.
• 17:41
  Fire their first bear that showed the fuck up.
• 17:45
  No, he isn't there, but I don't know if he ever, if Bret Hart
• 17:48
  ever, if he ever licked ice cream off of Bret Hart's feet
• 17:51
  like Terrible Ted the Wrestling Bear did.
• 17:53
  Terrible, terrible, terrible. Ted's glad he wasn't there when
• 17:57
  Gorilla Monsoon showed up. So so it's it's it's funny, the
• 18:03
  the forward to the book we were we've been talking about the
• 18:06
  Irresistible Force book was written by Bret Hart and yeah,
• 18:10
  and and it's around the time he starts traveling that that
• 18:12
  Gorilla Monsoon or Bob Morello's first marriage does break up him
• 18:15
  and his wife and as do decide to separate.
• 18:19
  So he's in Calgary. He gets in the infamous dungeon
• 18:22
  and and he was able to not and that's according to the book,
• 18:26
  not necessarily best Stu, but hold his own enough.
• 18:28
  That was almost a stalemate. Like Stu was hurting him but he
• 18:31
  wouldn't make him wail in pain and submit and eventually they
• 18:34
  kind of just agreed to a stalemate, which is insane.
• 18:38
  Like Stew was that much of A gangster.
• 18:40
  He's he's chucking her. He's, he's putting down £300
• 18:43
  Gorilla Monsoon. Yeah, he will.
• 18:45
  I'll show you a hold or two. Sunny.
• 18:47
  Yes. Talk about levels to it.
• 18:50
  Like I don't I don't think I've ever heard of.
• 18:51
  And now obviously there's always that folklore, right?
• 18:54
  Like Stewhart has that Bo Jackson style fucking history to
• 18:58
  him. Like no one ever got the better.
• 19:01
  Like Stu was Superman. Reggie, you should have said
• 19:06
  something when we were younger. Yeah.
• 19:09
  But the more important thing is he earned the respect.
• 19:12
  He earned the respect of Stu Hart, which carried a lot of
• 19:15
  weight in those days, a lot of weight because everybody
• 19:18
  respected Stu Hart, everybody respected Frank Tunney.
• 19:22
  And the other thing that that at this point Geno Marella had a
• 19:26
  reputation for was this is a college graduate.
• 19:30
  This is this is a point where even more than now, a lot of the
• 19:34
  people involved in professional wrestling were the freaky
• 19:38
  people. Let's just be honest, They were
• 19:40
  they were not the fine, upstanding members of society.
• 19:43
  And this is a guy that had very, very, very traditional values.
• 19:48
  He was not a big drinker, not a big carouser, wasn't out trying
• 19:53
  to find a new woman every night. He he did his job.
• 19:57
  He, he, he, he always, even to the very end, loved to be one of
• 20:01
  the boys. He loved to chat in the locker
• 20:03
  room, tell stories, play cribbage, play P knuckle.
• 20:07
  He loved to play cards. He loved the gamble.
• 20:09
  He loved the gamble. That was his vice.
• 20:11
  That was his. I was just like everyone has a
• 20:13
  fucking vice. He had, he had two.
• 20:15
  He loved the gamble and he loved to eat.
• 20:17
  So those were his vices. He loved the gamble and he loved
• 20:19
  to eat, especially lasagna, you know, all the Italian food.
• 20:24
  Loved it, loved it, loved it all.
• 20:26
  So from there, he winds up bouncing around a little bit and
• 20:29
  he winds up at the Worldwide Wrestling Federation, which at
• 20:32
  this point Vincent J McMahon, the Vincent fan, we know his
• 20:36
  father is, is helping run things and.
• 20:38
  There's a couple more WS in there.
• 20:39
  WWWF Yeah, yeah, yeah. Capital Wrestling Corporation
• 20:42
  and his right hand man is a guy who predated him in New York
• 20:46
  Tutsmont. He he's a guy who his story is a
• 20:49
  hell of a story. Tutz Tutz Tutz, Mont Yep, I
• 20:53
  forget it. I think William might have been
• 20:54
  his real first name. He was another guy like he was
• 20:57
  one of those guys like from the farmer Burns school.
• 21:00
  I think he may have even trained with Farmer Burns, just this
• 21:02
  corn fed farm boy who could wrestle and and just be like
• 21:07
  twist anybody he wanted to in the knots and and that was like
• 21:09
  the respect and he was part of the early power structure in New
• 21:12
  York wrestling, even predating the Mcmahons like Jess McMahon,
• 21:17
  who would be the Vince McMahon. We know his grandfather, Vincent
• 21:20
  J McMahon's father. He did he dabbled in wrestling,
• 21:23
  but he was more of a boxing promoter in his day.
• 21:27
  The wrestling trade in New York was was dominated by a group
• 21:31
  called the Gold dust Trio, which that's where the name comes
• 21:33
  from. Yes, Yep, that's where he got
• 21:36
  his name and it was Tutzmont. Billy Sandow, who that's where
• 21:40
  you get Damien Sandow from. And Ed Strangler Lewis, who was
• 21:43
  the guy who was actually the ring most night.
• 21:45
  He was their key star. But Strangler Lewis and Billy
• 21:48
  Sandell had kind of gotten out of it.
• 21:49
  And at this point, the power structure in the New York
• 21:52
  territory is is Vincent J McMahon and Tutzman.
• 21:57
  And you have some some ancillaries like they're running
• 21:58
  in Pittsburgh. They have a good relationship
• 22:00
  with a guy who runs Philly at the time was named Ray Fabiani.
• 22:03
  They were they had some stuff in Boston.
• 22:06
  Vincent J McMahon was running out of DC, so they had a pretty
• 22:08
  good footprint. So Gorilla comes in and they're
• 22:12
  like, yeah, I don't know if this Gino Marella opera singer guy,
• 22:17
  like even by the early 1960s, which I think is when this would
• 22:20
  have would have happened, even at this point, it's a little
• 22:24
  passe. It's a little, it's a little
• 22:28
  bit, it's a little bit. Not New York enough, if that
• 22:36
  makes sense. Well, at this point in time,
• 22:38
  you're you're. This is the Bruno era.
• 22:42
  Not even not yet. It's about to be.
• 22:44
  It's about to be. It's they're just breaking off
• 22:47
  from the N.W.A at this point. They they want Buddy Rogers to
• 22:50
  be their guy. The rest of the N.W.A wants
• 22:52
  Luthez to be their guy. They're like, yeah, that's not
• 22:54
  going to really work for us. Luthez doesn't really.
• 22:56
  He's not, he's not big enough. He's a great wrestler, but he's
• 22:59
  not personality enough to be a guy in the Northeast like he's
• 23:03
  not it. It plays great in Saint Louis,
• 23:06
  it plays great in Kansas City, it plays great in the South.
• 23:09
  It doesn't play great in New York and Boston and Philly.
• 23:11
  In Washington DC, he's a little too vanilla.
• 23:14
  So they want somebody with a little more pizzazz.
• 23:16
  And boy is that the nature boy, Buddy Rogers.
• 23:18
  So Buddy Rogers is her number one heel, Bruno Sammartino's her
• 23:22
  number one babyface, and they're bringing in this Gino Marella
• 23:25
  guy who's he's from upstate New York.
• 23:26
  He comes there and we need to do something with this guy.
• 23:30
  So Vincent J McMahon, who was named so many of the, he named
• 23:36
  Hulk Hogan, he named Big John Stud, he named all all these
• 23:39
  guys. He's like, we're going to say
• 23:42
  this guy is from Manchuria, which is an area of Asia.
• 23:47
  I don't know if it's near, I believe it's near like Mongolia
• 23:49
  or somewhere around China. I know exactly where Manchuria
• 23:52
  is. And he drinks blood and he kills
• 23:55
  his opponents and he's just this wild man, almost like a
• 24:00
  predecessor to Kamala, like Kamala like is now known as a
• 24:03
  joke. But it was like, no, he he kills
• 24:05
  and eats people like he was coming over.
• 24:06
  He's a. Cannibal.
• 24:07
  African cannibal, savage and people.
• 24:09
  Bought it. People bought it, so that's what
• 24:13
  they do with Growl Monsoon. He grows up these this wild
• 24:15
  beard with these big sideburns, and he looks fearsome.
• 24:18
  Yeah, You know, I never heard Kamala talk until like five
• 24:21
  years ago when I was when I watched the old Mean Gene
• 24:25
  backstage interviews and Kamala and Kamala's.
• 24:28
  Like I was getting a little nooky nooky.
• 24:32
  Have you ever heard Kamala sing? Yeah, and that's why he goes
• 24:35
  don't quit your day job or something like that.
• 24:37
  Well, he did something a little more than that.
• 24:39
  He had a song about He had a song about Pat Patterson.
• 24:42
  It's a little politically incorrect.
• 24:44
  Oh, OK, so. Gorilla Monsoon is born and he
• 24:49
  has a pretty strong run there. In the WWWF, he was the
• 24:53
  understudy heel for Rogers. But around the time that Rogers
• 24:58
  loses the title of Bruno Sammartino, he's also having
• 25:02
  some health issues. He had some heart issues.
• 25:03
  He had to step away for a little bit.
• 25:04
  So the vacuum created by Rogers leaving is filled by Gorilla
• 25:09
  Monsoon, who's now the new number one heel.
• 25:11
  And he has. A big He did win some gold
• 25:15
  before he goes into a. Single.
• 25:16
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. He.
• 25:17
  Was A tag team champion right with?
• 25:19
  With no he. I thought he wanted.
• 25:21
  I thought he was a not maybe, maybe WWF.
• 25:24
  Tag No. He he won a few WWF tag team
• 25:26
  titles. He was.
• 25:27
  Him and Killer Kowalski were tag team.
• 25:28
  Champions they did. I believe if they weren't tag
• 25:31
  team champions, they got close to it.
• 25:32
  He had a great tag team with Cowboy Bill Watts at this time
• 25:36
  because Watts came in as like Bruno's buddy.
• 25:38
  That's when the tag team had like tag team and then the
• 25:40
  United States tag team champions and stuff, right?
• 25:43
  Yeah, well, a lot of places, like a lot of places called
• 25:45
  their main tag team title, the United States Tag team title.
• 25:48
  That's because even though WWF broke apart from the N.W.A and
• 25:53
  they like, they never called Buddy Rogers or Bruno Sammartino
• 25:57
  until the they pulled out from the N.W.A in 1983 when Vince
• 26:00
  McMahon, the we we know Vince and K McMahon took over.
• 26:04
  They, they didn't really, they weren't part of the, they were
• 26:07
  part of the N.W.A, but they weren't like you would never
• 26:10
  hear Bruno Semartino or Pedro Morales or superstar Billy
• 26:13
  Graham or Bob Backlund even called the WWWF or WWF world
• 26:19
  Champion. They never called them the world
• 26:21
  champion. They just called them the WWWF
• 26:24
  champion because part of the rules of the N.W.A, if you were
• 26:27
  going to be a member, and Vince was always a member even when he
• 26:29
  wasn't part of it. He had a vote on the champion.
• 26:32
  He was part of the nine man board that oversaw the N.W.A.
• 26:36
  And part of that deal was you never called your champion the
• 26:40
  world champion. So Bruno Sammartino was always
• 26:43
  the WWWF champion. He was never the WWWF world
• 26:46
  champion. So for their tag titles, they
• 26:49
  called them the WWWF United States Tag Team Titles, even
• 26:53
  though it's by design the same titles that went all the way up
• 26:55
  to like the Hardy Boys and Edge and Christian and the Dudleys
• 26:59
  and into splitting them up in the two brands and all that
• 27:02
  stuff. It's the same lineage and and
• 27:04
  and and Monsoon did. I think he won them first with
• 27:06
  Watts because Watts was a babyface turned on Bruno when
• 27:10
  heal. So Bruno Sammartino is an
• 27:14
  important guy to mention because they were very close friends,
• 27:18
  Bruno and Vince or Bruno. And no, they weren't good
• 27:21
  friends, Bruno and either Vince, like Bruno, always kept the
• 27:25
  office at an arm's length. He was always very leery of the
• 27:29
  Mcmahons, never trusted them. Bruno was pretty smart.
• 27:32
  Yeah, he was a smart guy. He was a smart guy.
• 27:36
  Yeah, so. But Bruno did bond very quickly
• 27:39
  with Gorilla Monsoon because of their shared heritage.
• 27:42
  They were both Italian. Like Bruno came like Bruno's
• 27:45
  story is wild, like his mother, like he they were, they were in,
• 27:49
  they were from northern Italy and like during World War 2,
• 27:52
  like they would they hit up, they left their town and they
• 27:55
  hit up in the mountains in a cabin.
• 27:57
  And his mother would like sneak in the town and break in the
• 28:00
  houses that were occupying occupied by the Nazis and steal
• 28:03
  food so her family could live like Bruno Sammartino and his
• 28:06
  mother. It's an incredible story.
• 28:09
  But they bonded over their Italian heritage.
• 28:11
  They bonded over, you know, they both loved Italian food.
• 28:13
  They love Italian music, like a lot of the Italian guys, Dominic
• 28:17
  Denucci's and other, a lot of the Italian guys at that time,
• 28:20
  even Chief J Strongbow, who was really Joe Scarpa, like a lot of
• 28:25
  those Italian guys at that, at that time stuck together and
• 28:28
  they were very good friends. And so they work together.
• 28:32
  They did great business together.
• 28:34
  Eventually what and what really happens The most important thing
• 28:37
  at Grill Monsoon is like it happens at this time is and I
• 28:40
  don't remember her last name. She's an Irish woman.
• 28:43
  He meets a nice Irish last. Every Italian makes that mistake
• 28:47
  at least once. They love the colleens as they
• 28:49
  say they love the colleens. It's a it's a downfall of every
• 28:52
  Italian man. They meet an Irish woman and
• 28:55
  then they they go insane. They go.
• 28:56
  Crazy. He didn't go insane, but he did.
• 28:58
  He did meet the love of his life.
• 29:01
  And I believe she worked at a bar that was either near where
• 29:05
  Madison Square Garden was at the time or that was near the, the
• 29:08
  WWWF offices that were in New York at the time.
• 29:11
  And I, I don't know her last of the time first name was Maureen
• 29:15
  Marie Morella. We'll call her for the rest of
• 29:17
  the way. And they fall her, they fall for
• 29:21
  each other hard. They fall for each other hard.
• 29:24
  And keep in mind this is the 1960s and I don't know the, the
• 29:27
  deal here. I don't there was a previous
• 29:28
  marriage where it ended or or if the father passed or anything,
• 29:33
  but Maureen had two children going into this.
• 29:37
  And this isn't like the time where like this was a like step
• 29:40
  parents were a huge thing. And this did not deter, I'm
• 29:44
  going to just say Bob Morello because this is more Bob Morello
• 29:46
  and Grill Monsoon did not deter him at all.
• 29:48
  Like those children became as much of his life as she did.
• 29:52
  One of them is Joey Morello, who later becomes a a referee for
• 29:56
  the WWF. So he winds up with falling for
• 30:01
  her. They, they become a couple,
• 30:04
  treats the two children she has like his own.
• 30:07
  But eventually things are happening and he has to wind up
• 30:09
  moving to California for a little bit.
• 30:11
  He's going to go to the WWA, which is the, the LaBelle
• 30:16
  brothers, the LaBelle brothers from that territory, Jean
• 30:19
  LaBelle and I forget his, the guy who actually Mike LaBelle,
• 30:22
  Mike and Jean LaBelle are running that territory.
• 30:24
  And he's there for a little bit doing very well.
• 30:27
  But especially now that he met this woman, he's, you know,
• 30:31
  basically a father at this point to her, her two children.
• 30:35
  And he's like, I cause the point was they were just letting him
• 30:39
  go across. Because back then you would hop
• 30:41
  from territory to territory to territory, especially if you
• 30:43
  were a heel. You would do your program with
• 30:45
  a, you would get build up, do a program with a top babyface.
• 30:48
  And then you were gone. You were on to the next one.
• 30:50
  And you had a handful of homesteaders who just kind of
• 30:53
  stay in the stay in the same territory forever.
• 30:55
  Monsoon always wanted to be a homesteader.
• 30:57
  He wanted to put down roots. The wrestling business, he had
• 31:00
  an affinity for it. He definitely had an affinity
• 31:02
  for the camaraderie between the boys.
• 31:05
  But it was a wait. It was a job for him.
• 31:07
  Like he always said. Like at one point, one thing I
• 31:10
  missed early on, he was a teacher for a little bit as
• 31:12
  well. And he always said, if I could
• 31:14
  have made the same money as a teacher that I made as a in the
• 31:17
  professional wrestling business, I just would have been a
• 31:19
  teacher. One of the famous lines that
• 31:22
  grow the monsoon. And boy, is this not the case
• 31:24
  anymore. One of his famous lines is like,
• 31:26
  if you're in professional wrestling for anything other
• 31:28
  than money, you're a fool. That was one of his his famous
• 31:31
  lines. So.
• 31:34
  There's money in this. There was not only more for a
• 31:38
  small handful there is, but not only more.
• 31:41
  But back in the day, yes, there was.
• 31:42
  It was before it all got ruined. So like he's in LA for a little
• 31:48
  bit, but the thing was always when the time is right, we're
• 31:50
  going to bring you back to New York and you're going to be in
• 31:52
  New York forever. And that's kind of what
• 31:54
  happened. And it eventually after a little
• 31:56
  while in LA, he's like, I want to go home.
• 31:59
  I want to plant my roots. He wanted to marry Maureen,
• 32:01
  which he did when they got home. So he moves it.
• 32:05
  At first, he moved to Philadelphia.
• 32:07
  It was a little cheaper than New York and was kind of in the
• 32:09
  center of the territory. He's going to drive anywhere.
• 32:11
  And he winds up finally settling in South Jersey, like kind of
• 32:15
  right over the bridge. He was always in that
• 32:16
  Philadelphia area. In fact, one of my favorite book
• 32:19
  parts of the The Irresistible Force, because I didn't know
• 32:21
  this about Gorilla Monsoon, is they're talking about like how
• 32:24
  they wouldn't really talk about women and and carousing and
• 32:27
  partying and stuff like that on prime time wrestling, like when
• 32:30
  they're just chatting with the producers.
• 32:32
  One of Gorilla Monsoon's favorite topics was his beloved
• 32:35
  Philadelphia Eagles. Became a big Birds fan did did
• 32:40
  Mr. Monsoon, but they were, they were South Jersey.
• 32:43
  They were South Jersey, which is basically the Philly suburbs.
• 32:46
  That's where they plant roots. He comes back as a, a, a
• 32:50
  vilified heel and he's a fixture in in the WWWF for for the next
• 32:55
  couple of decades. But as he's still a big part of
• 32:58
  the wrestling side, he's also starting to work his way into
• 33:03
  the backstage side. Again, this is where Gorilla
• 33:06
  monsoons or Bob Morello will say here.
• 33:10
  Has he had it? Has he had his big match, his
• 33:12
  big showcase? Oh the the the.
• 33:14
  The Bruno match that was the first run the.
• 33:16
  Because so here's what I didn't know.
• 33:18
  I didn't know this, that the Bruno match, the tagline is
• 33:21
  essentially then what they what he uses.
• 33:24
  Yeah, I didn't know that. I always thought that was his
• 33:29
  tagline that was just popular because he said it on
• 33:32
  commentary. But it was actually the tagline
• 33:35
  for Bruno versus Gorilla Monsoon, which I did not know
• 33:38
  that. Yeah, no, he he had that big run
• 33:40
  with Bruno was the first time around.
• 33:42
  And then he had some more runs with Bruno and he had some runs
• 33:44
  with Pedro Morales. But yeah, that was the big one,
• 33:48
  was the first one. Yeah, that's going to be an
• 33:51
  awesome note to be like, you work so hard and you come back
• 33:54
  and then you're you're headlining Madison Square
• 33:56
  Garden. Oh yeah?
• 33:57
  Well, yeah, no, he, he and he becomes a fixture and he never,
• 34:00
  he works for them for the rest of his life, literally works for
• 34:04
  either Capital Wrestling or Titan Sports or World Wrestling
• 34:07
  Federation Entertainment, Inc for the rest of his life.
• 34:11
  So at this point, though, Gorilla is also developing that
• 34:16
  reputation for being a level head behind the scenes.
• 34:18
  He's a smart guy. He's a guy that is not that that
• 34:23
  has the respect of, and this is rare.
• 34:25
  He has the respect of the office and he has the respect of the
• 34:28
  boys and that is super, super, super rare.
• 34:32
  He's like Daniel right now. Danielson's kind of that.
• 34:35
  Funny, yeah. So what winds up happening is a
• 34:41
  few years and it was returned. Tutzmann is getting older,
• 34:44
  Tutzmann is getting a little bit older and it is time for him to
• 34:51
  back out and sell his shares. Like I'm not sure.
• 34:54
  I think him and McMahon may have been 5050 partners, but now he's
• 34:57
  getting out. So he sells a little bit the
• 35:01
  McMahon. So McMahon has a majority,
• 35:03
  Vincent J McMahon, then senior and then he sells out.
• 35:06
  He sells off to some other people within the business or
• 35:10
  some people who were kind of guys that are trusted within the
• 35:13
  business. And the guys who sells to are
• 35:16
  Arnold, Arnold Scoland, who was a wrestler managing Bob Back.
• 35:21
  A little bit later he sells some shares to Phil Zakko, who if you
• 35:26
  ever watch the old All Star Wrestling from the Hamburg Field
• 35:28
  House or Championship Wrestling from Allentown, especially when
• 35:33
  Joe McHugh was the announcer you're talking about, the
• 35:35
  promoter is Phil Zakko. Phil Zakko was the guy who
• 35:41
  actually was a partner. And do you know where Phil Zakko
• 35:43
  was from? Shanado.
• 35:47
  Close. close. A little closer to me.
• 35:51
  A lot closer to me. Pali Alto.
• 35:55
  Even closer to me. Pottsville.
• 35:58
  Yes. Pottsville.
• 35:59
  Phil Zacho of Pottsville, PA Wow.
• 36:02
  Yep. And he was.
• 36:03
  You know, the guy who was a journalist who used to always
• 36:06
  write and like expose Nick Manns and stuff like that.
• 36:10
  Phil Musnick. They is, I think, Phil Musnick's
• 36:12
  from Maunee City. I.
• 36:15
  Think so. I, I, somebody was saying there
• 36:17
  was a hold on Phil. I know I don't know where it is
• 36:21
  from. I know Brandy Mankiewicz, who
• 36:23
  was a writer for pro wrestling illustrators from like somewhere
• 36:25
  in. I could be wrong.
• 36:28
  I might be wrong. Yeah, I have no idea.
• 36:31
  Yeah, Phil Zakko was definitely from from Pottsville.
• 36:34
  So Phil Zakko and Phil Zakko and Arnold Skalin and Gorilla
• 36:40
  Monsoon all buy shares in Capital Wrestling Corporation,
• 36:44
  which is the the overhead company of WWWF like they always
• 36:49
  had. They always had like a a cafe
• 36:52
  president. I forget the guy who the name of
• 36:54
  the guy who was the president forever, Willie Sumpin.
• 36:59
  Hang on. Willie Gillsenberg.
• 37:01
  Willie Gillsenberg was the president forever.
• 37:04
  And then when they started doing some stuff with with Japan, it
• 37:07
  was one of the guys from New Japan.
• 37:09
  And then it was Jack Tunney. And we'll get into who the final
• 37:11
  WWF president was at the end of the the the whole thing here.
• 37:17
  But yeah, so because the Mcmahons until the late 90s
• 37:24
  always like to kind of keep hidden who was really in charge.
• 37:28
  Like Vincent J McMahon especially really liked being
• 37:31
  the man behind the curtain. He didn't he wasn't like a
• 37:34
  public facing guy. He liked to be the guy in the
• 37:36
  back pole in the strings. He didn't like to be the guy in
• 37:39
  front. Willie Gillsenberg was the front
• 37:41
  man as far as who runs the WWF. And the promoter of record in
• 37:44
  Pennsylvania was Phil Zaco. And they always have their their
• 37:47
  local promoters was Ray Fabiani and Philly.
• 37:50
  They had their guys other places too.
• 37:52
  In a lot of places in South Jersey, it eventually was
• 37:54
  Gorilla Monsoon or Bob Marella. So now Gorilla is eventually as
• 38:00
  the 70s go on, he's still very popular.
• 38:02
  He turns babyface, but in the mid 70s backstage guy, then the
• 38:10
  in ring guy. The in ring is winding down and
• 38:13
  the backstage is ramping up. He has his own office and
• 38:17
  essentially by the 70s he is Vincent J McMahon's right hand
• 38:22
  guy. He is.
• 38:23
  He's Pritchard. Yeah, Yeah, he is.
• 38:28
  Well, he, he's more. No, he he's not Pritchard.
• 38:31
  He's Patterson, Pat, OK. He's he's the guy like, like he
• 38:36
  is until a certain someone rises up, a certain brat from North
• 38:42
  Carolina who's at who's gone to military school rises up like if
• 38:46
  he's like, oh, yeah, when, when Vince is done.
• 38:49
  Gino's running this thing. Like we'll probably all have
• 38:52
  shares holders, but Gino's the guy who's going to run the ship
• 38:54
  When, when the when, when Vince is gone.
• 38:57
  And that's when he becomes that's when we get the gorilla
• 39:00
  position. That's when he becomes the guy
• 39:02
  that is in charge of kind of the day-to-day.
• 39:04
  Like, yes, Vince and J McMahon is overseeing it all and he's
• 39:07
  the guy. He he's the guy, but gorilla is
• 39:12
  doing a lot of the the work behind the guy.
• 39:17
  So that's kind of how things go up until Vince doesn't like
• 39:25
  there's a thing with the TV and Hamburg in the 70s, in the mid
• 39:28
  70s where their their announcer and Hamburg and Allentown, their
• 39:32
  announcer wants union scale, union wages, you know, and
• 39:36
  wrestling and unions don't mix. We know this.
• 39:38
  So Vincent J McMahon's like, yeah, you're fired.
• 39:40
  I don't need you, Vinnie. Vinnie, get in here.
• 39:45
  Get in here. You're our new announcer.
• 39:47
  I think that at this point, Vincent K McMahon, the Vincent
• 39:51
  Vince McMahon, we all know he at this point, I think he was
• 39:53
  already doing some stuff. They they stuck him way up in
• 39:55
  like New England and like Cape Cod and like way up there New
• 39:59
  Hampshire. That's where he was running like
• 40:01
  the ass end of the territory. But this is where he's kindly
• 40:05
  getting into the fold, kind of getting into the fold.
• 40:08
  And they say no matter how big he got, Gorilla Monsoon always
• 40:12
  either called him Vinny or Junior, which he hated.
• 40:15
  But Girl, Monsoon always called him that.
• 40:19
  So the we kind of are in a holding pattern here until the
• 40:23
  big stuff happens, which is 1983, Vincent J McMahon's in
• 40:27
  failing health and and Vincent K McMahon, Vince McMahon that we
• 40:30
  know is ready to make his move and he wants to buy the
• 40:33
  territory, but he doesn't have a lot of money.
• 40:36
  He hasn't gotten his inheritance or anything yet.
• 40:39
  So he has his whole plan where he's going to make all these
• 40:43
  payments and he he's basically buying out his dad who's just
• 40:47
  going to essentially give it to him.
• 40:49
  But he's got to buy out Gorilla. He's got to buy out Zacko, and
• 40:52
  he's got to buy out Arnold Skaland.
• 40:54
  Phil Zacko is getting all he's like, yeah, I'm done.
• 40:56
  I'm out. Arnold Skaland is kind of like,
• 40:58
  OK, yeah, I can I, I see the writing on the wall like there's
• 41:01
  nothing I can do about this. He's given, he's given the
• 41:03
  company was kid, whether I like it or not, and they can fight us
• 41:05
  in court and win. Gorilla was a holdout.
• 41:10
  Gorilla was a bit of a holdout. So there like there's again,
• 41:15
  eventually we've been tied up and Courtney would have been
• 41:17
  forced to sell anyway and he kind of knew that, but he made a
• 41:20
  good deal for himself. Like they all they all got kind
• 41:23
  of nice deals. Like, no, they didn't make as
• 41:24
  much money as if they would have held equity in the WWE until now
• 41:28
  where it was sold for billions. But they got hundreds of
• 41:32
  thousands of dollars at a time in 1983, when hundreds of
• 41:34
  thousands of dollars is like millions of dollars now.
• 41:37
  And Gorilla Monsoon got the sweetest of deals because he was
• 41:40
  the holdout and he was the heir apparent.
• 41:42
  Like he was the guy that would have taken over if if Vince
• 41:44
  didn't want to buy the company. And so he winds up getting a
• 41:50
  guarantee that he would always have a place on TV.
• 41:53
  He winds up getting 1% of or no, I'm sorry, 1 1/2% of the wage
• 42:02
  made by the opening match, essentially jobber for every
• 42:07
  show that WWF runs for the next 10 years.
• 42:11
  So I mean, even if that guy's making 150 bucks a night, 1.5%
• 42:17
  of that, I'm not good at math, but that's close to 200 bucks.
• 42:20
  And if they're running three shows a night, 300 nights a
• 42:22
  year, that's a nice chunk of change.
• 42:25
  Yeah. So they say that Monsoon was
• 42:28
  kind of down for a little bit after that because he always had
• 42:31
  visions of this is going to be my company, I'm going to run
• 42:34
  this someday, this is going to be mine.
• 42:36
  And it gets pulled out from under him because the owner's
• 42:38
  kid wants to take over. But they said like, like even
• 42:43
  when he was at shows where like Vince was trusting the run
• 42:45
  things he's like, and they're like Gino, Gino, what do you
• 42:49
  what do you want us to do? What he wants to do is like, oh,
• 42:51
  what do I know? I just work here the same as you
• 42:53
  do. Like I'm not in charge of
• 42:54
  anything. I'm not the I'm not, I'm not an
• 42:56
  owner anymore. But eventually he kind of
• 42:59
  settles into his role. He this is when he starts doing
• 43:02
  some announcing. He had done some announcing
• 43:03
  before. They they always found a way to
• 43:05
  keep gorilla involved. One of the big things we kind of
• 43:06
  skipped over in 1976, Vincent K McMahon, one of his first big
• 43:11
  promotional endeavors, even while he wasn't still, he kind
• 43:14
  of took the helm on this. It was his thing, not his dad's
• 43:17
  thing was in 1976 when Muhammad Ali fought Antonio Enoki.
• 43:22
  And the guy that that Vincent J McMahon, the guy that senior
• 43:27
  McMahon sent with Vinny to make sure that none of these boxing
• 43:32
  guys or the Japanese guys or anybody messed with, messed with
• 43:35
  with his son was Gorilla Monsoon.
• 43:37
  Gorilla Monsoon was with him every step of the way when they
• 43:39
  brought Muhammad Ali on WWFTV and he was doing an angle where
• 43:43
  he's beating everybody up. Who was the guy that got the
• 43:45
  better of him? Girl A?
• 43:45
  Monsoon picked up Ali and airplane spun him and talked
• 43:48
  about how a good wrestler can never a good wrestler will
• 43:51
  always be the good boxer and just talk down on boxing.
• 43:55
  So Monsoon still had that respect because he was a level
• 43:59
  headed guy, but if you crossed him he would mess with you.
• 44:04
  And anytime Vince needed that heavy behind him, it was always
• 44:07
  Girl A Monsoon until into the 80s when he started to get a
• 44:10
  little older, he got diagnosed with diabetes.
• 44:12
  That that bad diet caught up with the the love of sugary
• 44:19
  snacks, caught up with them and and all the stuff, all the carbs
• 44:23
  you love the all the Italian food.
• 44:25
  But still then he migrates like he did a little bit of
• 44:29
  announcing. A lot of his early announcing
• 44:31
  was actually done on a a channel that's near and dear to my
• 44:34
  heart, a channel called Prism. And Prism was like HBO or
• 44:38
  Cinemax back in the day. It was ATV channel he had to pay
• 44:40
  extra for, but it was local just to Philadelphia and like around
• 44:45
  Philadelphia, I don't know, they had it up here.
• 44:47
  I don't. I'm not sure how how long the
• 44:48
  street was. But Prism, like like HBO and
• 44:52
  Cinemax, it would show movies, but it would also show stuff
• 44:55
  from the Spectrum. One of the owners of Prism was
• 44:57
  Ed Snyder who was the owner of the Flyers and he owned the
• 45:00
  Spectrum. So they would show Flyers games,
• 45:02
  Phillies games, a lot of stuff from the the Spectrum and they
• 45:06
  would show the WWF wrestling from the Spectrum and you need
• 45:10
  announcers. So the announcers for the Prism
• 45:12
  shows would wind up being Dick Graham who worked for Prism and
• 45:16
  Gorilla Monsoon. And that's where he got a lot of
• 45:19
  his early reps with announcing. And then when they wind up
• 45:24
  having to expand their television and, and, and Vince
• 45:27
  is doing a lot more behind the scenes stuff.
• 45:29
  He's still announcing but doesn't want to announce as
• 45:31
  much. Gorilla Monsoon actually becomes
• 45:33
  a play by play guy, which is weird for an ex wrestler.
• 45:35
  Usually ex wrestlers do color, but he was so eloquent, he was
• 45:39
  so had that gift of gab that he wound up becoming a play by play
• 45:43
  guy. And then something unfortunate
• 45:46
  happened. Two things that are unfortunate
• 45:48
  happens, but they wound up being very good for gorilla monsoons
• 45:51
  announcing career. Obviously, when the full court
• 45:54
  presses on and and they're invading the territories, the
• 45:56
  WWF invades AWA and two of the people they signed, they signed
• 46:00
  and got to be a wrestler. Jesse the body.
• 46:03
  Ventura is coming into a program with Hogan.
• 46:05
  He's flamboyant, he's over the top.
• 46:07
  He's the closest thing you can get the Superstar Graham without
• 46:10
  being Superstar Graham. But eventually he has some
• 46:12
  issues with blood clots and he has to retire and he becomes an
• 46:15
  announcer. And one of the sadder things
• 46:18
  that happens is like they always had, you know how they call Paul
• 46:22
  Heyman the wise man? You know where that comes from,
• 46:25
  right? No, not fully.
• 46:27
  No SO. In the 70s and even in the early
• 46:30
  80s, they always talked about the three wise men.
• 46:34
  Like back in the day, the heat, the baby faces would talk for
• 46:36
  themselves, but most of the almost all the heels to get
• 46:39
  instant heat on them. Like immediately you have heat.
• 46:43
  Almost every heel of substance was paired with a manager.
• 46:47
  So they had their classy Freddy Blassie.
• 46:49
  Yep, he's one. There's three wise men that they
• 46:53
  had three managers. They called the three wise men.
• 46:55
  It was classy Freddy Blassie. It was Captain Lou Albano.
• 46:59
  It. Was like Captain Lou and shit
• 47:05
  the fucking grand wizard the. Grand Wizard of wrestling, yes.
• 47:10
  And he was a guy they thought they could build around because
• 47:13
  he was a younger guy. He wasn't as like Albano was a
• 47:17
  notorious drunkard. Albano would get so drunk he
• 47:21
  would get in a fight with Vince and quit and they would have to
• 47:22
  bring him back like a day later. When he sobered up.
• 47:25
  He was always like hot, like they said Shane, Shane McMahon,
• 47:29
  like he they said Lowell Battle was beat up Shane McMahon, who
• 47:32
  was like a teenager because he would anytime Alberta would talk
• 47:35
  and Alberta would be drunk off his ass and Shane McMahon would
• 47:38
  be like shut up fat boy and I don't care who your dad is, I'm
• 47:42
  going to beat the shit out if he just run over and try to beat up
• 47:45
  Shane McMahon. So Alberta was a bit of a
• 47:48
  Wildman. Blasi was a little bit on the
• 47:50
  older side, but the Grand Wizard was the guy who's going to be.
• 47:53
  Here I love I love classy Freddy Blasi's when he said the old
• 47:56
  school intros the shows and he would do like the monologue
• 47:59
  before the show. Oh, those speeches.
• 48:01
  Yeah, I think Dave Sahati, the production guy, had a lot to do.
• 48:04
  With those he was amazing, so good.
• 48:08
  But Grand Wizard was the guy they thought they would have.
• 48:12
  And in the early 80s on the when maybe 828384 he died like
• 48:17
  before, well before blasting a battle, the Grand Wizard died.
• 48:21
  And it's like, well damn, now we have to find a manager to fill
• 48:27
  that void. Who do we get?
• 48:29
  And they're raiding the hell out of the other way.
• 48:31
  They got Hogan, they got Gene Okerlund, they got Jesse
• 48:34
  Ventura, they got Adrian Adonis and Dick.
• 48:38
  They got so many guys in the other way.
• 48:39
  Hey, they're who's their champion?
• 48:42
  Bach Winkle? He's not come.
• 48:43
  Who's his manager? Turns out it's this guy from the
• 48:47
  Chicago area. He says he's from Beverly Hills,
• 48:49
  CA goes by the name of Bobby the brain Heenan and they bring him
• 48:54
  in the best manager that ever lived and I love Jim Cornette, I
• 48:58
  love Paul Heyman. There's only one and it's Bobby
• 49:01
  the brain Heenan. And eventually as they're
• 49:06
  they're having some issues with announcers and Jesse, like
• 49:10
  Gorilla and Jesse was the original kind of team, like
• 49:13
  you're you're a team, which was I think superstars was Vincent
• 49:20
  Pat Patterson or Vincent Bruno eventually.
• 49:22
  But then your B team was grilling Jesse.
• 49:25
  But then WrestleMania 2 happens and Jesse gets in trouble
• 49:29
  because he was trying to unionize.
• 49:32
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That did that didn't work for
• 49:34
  someone brother. And he ratted.
• 49:35
  He ratted Jesse out. Yeah.
• 49:37
  So Jesse was kind of gone away for a little bit like, OK, well,
• 49:40
  who do we stick with? Gino?
• 49:43
  Let's put Heenan with him. Let's put Heenan with with
• 49:46
  Monsoon. So good and magic happens.
• 49:50
  It's the best duo in the history of wrestling broadcasting.
• 49:55
  Like they just got each other and it wasn't just on camera.
• 49:58
  Like these are two guys who were, again, normal guys.
• 50:03
  They were family men who, like everybody else, is drinking and
• 50:07
  fighting and talking about what woman they're trying to get
• 50:10
  tonight. They're just talking about, you
• 50:12
  know, baseball and sports and. Wasn't Bobby also another guy
• 50:16
  who came up through like a really rough promoter and like
• 50:18
  his position wasn't something that is someone that this
• 50:22
  promoter would even thought of and Bobby earned his stripes?
• 50:25
  Like, I mean, Bobby always like, played his part, like Bobby
• 50:29
  would. Like, he was always a great
• 50:30
  manager, like talent shown through with Bobby, Yeah.
• 50:33
  But I mean, he had to really like he was, he was something
• 50:35
  that came in before 18. Like he, he was so persistent.
• 50:39
  Like he, he wore his way in, like, right.
• 50:42
  Yeah. He broke it with Dick the
• 50:44
  Bruiser. Yeah, he broke it with Dick the
• 50:46
  Bruiser. Were like, like he's funny
• 50:48
  because Heenan's book, he talks about this like he knew like
• 50:52
  wrestling was bullshit, but like they were all K fame, K fame, K
• 50:56
  fame. Like they were like taking his
• 50:58
  ear and folding his ear down, his top of his ear down and like
• 51:01
  slapping it. So then we get cauliflower ear
• 51:04
  and he's like, and then they're putting in with people like back
• 51:06
  then they wouldn't they when they would put people in, they
• 51:08
  wouldn't smarten them up. They just have to get in the
• 51:10
  ring and the guy would try to kill him and they just see what
• 51:13
  the kid would do. And eventually you're like,
• 51:15
  eventually they're just riding and bruises like this is all
• 51:17
  bullshit. Don't tell anybody, we'll kill
• 51:19
  you. And he's.
• 51:21
  Like. He's like Dick.
• 51:22
  I know. It's like I've been in a fight
• 51:24
  before. I know this isn't what a fight
• 51:25
  looks like. From Chicago.
• 51:28
  From Chicago. But no, they just just from a
• 51:35
  personality standpoint, they clicked, they clicked and they,
• 51:39
  they became the best of friends. They, they became so, so, so
• 51:43
  close. And the stuff they did
• 51:46
  especially so this is when cable TV is becoming a thing and WWF
• 51:50
  gets on USA Network and they did TNT for a little bit, which is
• 51:53
  like a talk show with Vince McMahon and Lord Alfred Hayes.
• 51:56
  But it really, really, really congeals and it didn't start
• 52:00
  like this for a while. You had Prime Time Wrestling and
• 52:02
  originally Prime Time Wrestling was I believe Jesse Ventura and
• 52:05
  Jack Reynolds, who was like an announcer who didn't last very
• 52:08
  long. And when he was gone, it was
• 52:09
  Jesse Ventura and Gorilla Monsoon.
• 52:11
  And then when Jesse had to go do the Predator movies and he was
• 52:14
  doing all this Hollywood stuff, I put Bobby with him.
• 52:17
  And if it was not for Prime Time Wrestling with Bobby, he and the
• 52:22
  Gorilla Monsoon, we would not be having this conversation today
• 52:26
  because I would not be a wrestling fan.
• 52:28
  I am without that damn show. There is still nothing in the
• 52:32
  history of professional wrestling that I cherish more
• 52:37
  than Prime time wrestling. Like 1988 to 1991, it is magical
• 52:45
  and the wrestling on it is almost exclusively terrible.
• 52:48
  It has nothing to do with that. It's mystery.
• 52:50
  Every theater because yeah, like they're not over talking over
• 52:57
  the matches, but the bits in between are so magical.
• 53:01
  They are. They are the best thing I have
• 53:03
  ever experienced in professional wrestling, especially when they
• 53:06
  would like the, the, the episode I always think of.
• 53:09
  And it's part of it is because like my family when I was a
• 53:12
  little kid, we got like a VCR that you could actually record
• 53:14
  off of the VCR, not Avhs player in like 1988.
• 53:19
  And they and Prime Time Wrestling came on like Monday
• 53:22
  night from 9:00 to 11:00. I'm at this point five years
• 53:26
  old. I'm in kindergarten.
• 53:28
  They're not going to let me stay up till 11.
• 53:29
  We'll tape it like I was like, no, I want to watch go to bed.
• 53:32
  We'll tape it for you. And they did.
• 53:35
  They, they would tape Prime Time Wrestling for me and I would
• 53:37
  watch. I watched those tapes
• 53:40
  religiously. It would stop, I would rewind
• 53:42
  it, it would start him again. And the one that sticks with me
• 53:45
  so much is their Halloween episode from 1988 where it's
• 53:50
  mostly in the thing and, and Gorilla Monsoon is in his normal
• 53:52
  like Plaid jacket and his blue like circular glasses, but he's
• 53:57
  wearing a gorilla mask. And Bobby the Heenan is the big
• 54:00
  boss man because he's the big heel at the time.
• 54:02
  It's a, it's an awful big boss man costume.
• 54:04
  He's wearing like sunglasses and a hat and a cart like a like a
• 54:10
  construction paper star that says big boss man on he has a
• 54:13
  stick. And eventually like he like does
• 54:17
  something and they like, oh, I'm going to get my make up done.
• 54:19
  They paint him up as a cat, but they show this interstitial
• 54:21
  where they're like, they'd always do these things where
• 54:23
  they travel. Oh, we're going to Busch
• 54:24
  Gardens, we're going on a boat, we're going to a casino, which
• 54:28
  there's a great story about that in the book.
• 54:30
  But one of the things they do is like, we're going to this hot
• 54:33
  dog place in Ohio and they go in and gorillas get the hot dogs
• 54:39
  made. And like, the whole thing is
• 54:41
  like, this place has spicy hot dogs.
• 54:43
  And he's like, I'm going to like, load that one up with
• 54:45
  spice. Load that one up with spice.
• 54:47
  And he goes back and he has like a regular, a normal looking hot
• 54:50
  dog on one side, which is his side.
• 54:53
  And like, there's this one that has like chili and all this
• 54:55
  other stuff on it. And Bobby Heena is like, I, I
• 54:57
  see what you did. Like this, this thing's this
• 54:59
  thing's going to kill me. Like don't give me this hot dog.
• 55:02
  I'm like yours, like, oh, you want to switch?
• 55:04
  You want to switch. So they switch around and like
• 55:06
  gorillas eating the hot dog and all the stuff on the Bobby's
• 55:08
  eating the normal looking one. And all of a sudden Bobby Heenan
• 55:11
  acts like he's in an airlock and he can't breathe.
• 55:14
  There it is. Yes, there it.
• 55:17
  Is for the people listening audio I just.
• 55:20
  Popped up the legendary Miss Elizabeth workout poster in the
• 55:23
  background. The glasses over the gorilla
• 55:25
  mask is fucking amazing. What about this Halloween
• 55:27
  episode? That was the next year.
• 55:30
  Yeah, that was the next year. But we're loving the genius.
• 55:34
  But the fact that Bobby. Piper.
• 55:35
  And Piper is Bobby Heenan, Yeah. That he just up as a genius is
• 55:41
  fucking hilarious. Well, because Hulk Hogan was
• 55:43
  here to Mr. Perfect, and that was his manager.
• 55:46
  But Bobby Heenan just starts choking because he got the spicy
• 55:49
  hot dog. It was perfection.
• 55:51
  And at the end of the show, the end of the show, they're going
• 55:54
  back and forth all the time, girls wearing the mask and
• 55:56
  everything. And this was actually Heenan's
• 55:58
  book. So the the ending shot like the
• 56:01
  credits are the credits are about to roll and everything.
• 56:03
  The main event's over. In fact, I remember the main
• 56:05
  event of that, it was from Madison Square Garden.
• 56:08
  Demolition were the Hills tag team champions.
• 56:10
  The main event of that show, because I watched it so many
• 56:12
  times, was Demolition against the Rockers in a really good
• 56:16
  match. And the end of the show after
• 56:19
  that they're doing, they're kind of closing off.
• 56:20
  Thank you for watching Prime Time Wrestling.
• 56:22
  Good night, everybody. So there's this guy, the
• 56:26
  gorilla, the gorilla mask, big guy in the gorillas mask and the
• 56:29
  suit and the Jack and everything.
• 56:31
  So at the end of the show, Gorilla Monsoon walks in in
• 56:34
  street clothes is like, all right, I'm ready to start the
• 56:36
  show. Bobby, what are you doing here?
• 56:39
  He's like, who have I been talking to for the last two
• 56:41
  hours? Like the whole gimmick is it's
• 56:43
  not gorilla like it sounds like him.
• 56:45
  He's wearing like the whole thing was like he wasn't him the
• 56:48
  whole time. But they did.
• 56:49
  You see what they just did on AW?
• 56:52
  Oh yeah, the Phantom of the Opera thing with Shivani and
• 56:55
  Hangman. Yeah, real quick, here's a funny
• 56:57
  photo. And I'm not saying this to be
• 56:58
  disparaging because the guy hates me now, but tell me that
• 57:01
  this photo of Gorilla Monsoon couldn't pass for Eric Pin hat.
• 57:07
  Yeah, yeah. Especially when he was doing the
• 57:10
  the more aggressive thing. Yeah, definitely when he was
• 57:12
  like fierce pin hat. Absolutely.
• 57:14
  Yeah, I was looking at photos like holy shit.
• 57:16
  It was like pin hat. Yeah, like that.
• 57:19
  Especially like the the, the label of his hot sauce.
• 57:22
  Yeah, yeah. So yeah.
• 57:25
  That that's that is the magical stuff.
• 57:27
  And for the rest of his career, primarily Gorilla becomes more
• 57:31
  of a mainly A commentator. He would do a lot of his
• 57:34
  backstage gorilla position stuff when Vince was doing commentary.
• 57:37
  Like it was a flip, like if Vince was on commentary,
• 57:40
  gorillas running backstage. If gorillas on commentary,
• 57:41
  Vince's running backstage. Which is why Gorilla commentated
• 57:45
  most of the early Wrestlemanias, because Convince wanted to run
• 57:50
  everything backstage and you didn't want to be stuck on
• 57:52
  commentary. So then the commentary thing
• 57:55
  starts to wind down as Jim Ross gets more involved in in
• 57:58
  commentary. He comes in and he's in and out
• 58:00
  for a little bit. Now that's where it gets sad.
• 58:04
  And that sucks. So it all kind of goes to hell
• 58:09
  around 9394 in 93. Bobby Heenan takes an offer he
• 58:15
  can't refuse for more money. I think Vince wouldn't actually
• 58:17
  have him take a pay cut. That would happen, but he was
• 58:20
  doing the whole he was, he pulled Bret Hart to to to pretty
• 58:23
  much to to Bobby where he was like, here's your big money.
• 58:27
  And Bobby was like, man, I earned it.
• 58:28
  Finally I'm here. And then Vince is like, I can't
• 58:31
  pay you. I can't pay you what you want.
• 58:33
  And he did. He literally did the exact thing
• 58:35
  Bret Hart to Bobby Heenan. And I mean, not to not to, to
• 58:39
  stick up for Vince, man, they're getting their ass kicked at this
• 58:41
  point. Not not like versus WCW, but the
• 58:44
  steroid trot like business is in the toilet in. 1990 I think from
• 58:49
  what I heard too at this point Gorilla knew he was done at the
• 58:52
  end of the year, but Bobby was leaving before Gorilla.
• 58:55
  Well, gorilla stuck around. Gorilla stuck around.
• 58:57
  But but Gorilla. Gorilla knew his time was coming
• 58:59
  too. But Bobby was leaving first.
• 59:02
  Yeah, so. Yeah, Bobby takes the offer for
• 59:05
  WCW, and a lot of it, he said, was just his daughter's getting
• 59:08
  older again. They're both family men.
• 59:10
  And one of the things we did talk about, like there's a lot
• 59:13
  of guys, Mike Kyota, Tony Chimmel, like a lot of these
• 59:16
  guys got in the wrestling because they were friends with
• 59:19
  Gorillaz family. They grew up in the
• 59:21
  neighborhood. In fact, I think it was Chimmel.
• 59:25
  It might have been. It might have been.
• 59:26
  No, I'm pretty sure it was Chimmel.
• 59:28
  Chimmel was actually a little bit of a jerk to Joey Marella
• 59:30
  Gorillaz son and gorilla Monsoon pounds on like Joey comes back
• 59:37
  and tells his dad yeah this kid this kid Anthony was was being
• 59:41
  really mean to me or whatever goes over to the Chimmel
• 59:44
  household pounds like not pounds knocks on the door.
• 59:48
  Tony Chimmel's father answers. He's like I, I understand young
• 59:52
  Anthony was being was being unpleasant to my son and I, I
• 59:57
  don't appreciate it and I I think it would be nice if.
• 1:00:01
  If he would correct his behavior a little bit and and and they
• 1:00:04
  want to becoming very good friends and like Chimel's like
• 1:00:08
  he could have just beat the shit out of my dad as girl monster.
• 1:00:13
  But he came over as, as Bob Marella, very calm, very
• 1:00:16
  reasonable guy and and it wound up working out and and then
• 1:00:20
  because Gorilla would always like try to grab ring crew guys.
• 1:00:22
  So Chimel and Mike Kyoto wound up becoming part of the ring
• 1:00:26
  crew. Chimel ends up becoming a long
• 1:00:28
  time ring announcer and Kyoto becomes one of the longest
• 1:00:32
  serving referees referees in the history of the WWF.
• 1:00:36
  But unfortunately, that kind of dovetails into what happens in
• 1:00:39
  1994, which is budget cuts happen where and Morella was a
• 1:00:45
  Joey Morella, his son was like a partier he he he was in rehab a
• 1:00:50
  few times and things like that. But that has nothing to do with
• 1:00:53
  what happens here. And and there were reports to
• 1:00:56
  prove this. They did a show somewhere in
• 1:00:58
  like Delaware or DC or something like that.
• 1:01:01
  But WWF had a rule with tours one time where I guess to save
• 1:01:03
  money, the airport you flew out of or in 2 has to be the airport
• 1:01:07
  you fly out of because I think Joey Morello might have been
• 1:01:10
  living in Florida at a time. So they have to drive from like
• 1:01:12
  DC or Baltimore, somewhere like that, only up to Newark Airport.
• 1:01:15
  And it's Joey Morello and Harvey Whippleman, and they're driving
• 1:01:19
  up to the airport and they're exhausted because they've been
• 1:01:21
  on the road. This is the end of a tour.
• 1:01:23
  They're just beat. And unfortunately, I forget who
• 1:01:26
  was driving, but whomever was driving falls asleep at the
• 1:01:29
  wheel on the 4th of July. And there's a there's a
• 1:01:32
  collision not very close to the not very far from the exit to go
• 1:01:36
  to the Marella family home. And Joey Marella was killed in
• 1:01:40
  the car crash. Long time referee, son of
• 1:01:42
  Gorilla Monsoon. And he was never the same, never
• 1:01:48
  the same again, ever, ever, ever.
• 1:01:51
  Like they just said, no matter, like it was just like his heart
• 1:01:54
  was never in anything the way it was before that.
• 1:01:57
  Which can you blame him? You know, can you blame him as
• 1:02:00
  he lost his son? So he does stick around for a
• 1:02:03
  little bit. In fact, in 1994, the original
• 1:02:06
  director of Prime Time Wrestling, the original head of
• 1:02:08
  production before Kevin Dunn, Nelson Swaggler, he does a show
• 1:02:11
  in Baltimore. They were they were hoping we
• 1:02:14
  become a larger thing. But it wasn't.
• 1:02:15
  Only less than a month called bingo Break.
• 1:02:18
  And this is the one time he's on there as one of the hosts.
• 1:02:22
  I forget the other person, Karen, I forget her last name.
• 1:02:24
  She was an actress. But he is there as Bob Marella.
• 1:02:27
  He's not Gorilla Monsoon and and Sean Mooney, who was a long time
• 1:02:32
  backstage guy and and and studio guy for WWF.
• 1:02:36
  He's the bingo host. Because it's basically the whole
• 1:02:38
  idea is like, it's like a Regis and Kathy Lee or one of these
• 1:02:40
  daytime talk shows, but we're also going to play bingo and you
• 1:02:43
  can go to your local store and pick up a bingo card and play
• 1:02:45
  and maybe win prizes. And it didn't, it didn't get
• 1:02:48
  picked up or anything. It was only in Baltimore for
• 1:02:50
  like a month, but the April 1st, 1994.
• 1:02:53
  So this is a little before Joey passes.
• 1:02:57
  He they have a guest for the April Fool's Day episode and
• 1:02:59
  it's Bobby the brain Heenan. And this is this little rinky
• 1:03:02
  dink Baltimore local show. And you have Girl of Monsoon who
• 1:03:05
  is part of the WWF and now WCW is Bobby Heenan.
• 1:03:09
  And they didn't skip a beat. And and even if that was the
• 1:03:12
  last time they were on TV together, but even after that,
• 1:03:14
  they made it the point to try to visit each other once a month.
• 1:03:16
  They talked on the phone all the time.
• 1:03:18
  Gorilla's health started to fail and they say quick.
• 1:03:22
  The the, the ending, essentially a lot of people, if you're not
• 1:03:25
  aware of this, Bobby the brain Heaton's last appearance, it
• 1:03:27
  will be is the first Monday Night Raw.
• 1:03:30
  No, it's not the first. It's, it's toward the end of the
• 1:03:32
  year. No, it's.
• 1:03:34
  His last appearance is a Monday Night Raw.
• 1:03:36
  It is, but it's nowhere near the 1st.
• 1:03:38
  It's at the end of the first year.
• 1:03:39
  It's like project. Yeah, but essentially they're
• 1:03:42
  like, all right, he's leaving. And at this point in time, he's
• 1:03:45
  not really commentary and gorillas not commentary.
• 1:03:49
  He's the backstage. He's like the president of the
• 1:03:51
  company at the. Time.
• 1:03:51
  Not yet. No, he's not the president yet.
• 1:03:53
  OK, They're both kind of commentators, but not regularly.
• 1:03:56
  Yeah, and, and essentially they're like, all right, well,
• 1:03:58
  this is his last night. What do we do?
• 1:04:00
  And he's like, throw me out of here.
• 1:04:02
  So like the joke of the entire time was I'm going to have you
• 1:04:05
  thrown out of. Here.
• 1:04:06
  Yep. And he finally did it.
• 1:04:07
  Gorilla was the guy, and then him wearing the wig and trying
• 1:04:10
  to sneak back in. Well, no, no.
• 1:04:12
  No, that that that was the first episode that didn't happen.
• 1:04:14
  On there. Oh yeah.
• 1:04:15
  But like and then also like he stole a bunch of stuff and had
• 1:04:18
  it in his bag like. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:04:19
  Like they threw the thing. Yeah, they threw his bag out.
• 1:04:22
  And they said that they both left the arena that night.
• 1:04:24
  Like the segment where he gets thrown out of here?
• 1:04:26
  Yep, they both just leave. They don't.
• 1:04:28
  They leave the show and they go back the hotel room and he said
• 1:04:31
  he opened up his thing and they shared a bundle of bananas and
• 1:04:34
  just hung out and talked and hung out for the night.
• 1:04:38
  Not to try to spoil too much from the Irresistible Force
• 1:04:40
  book, but they like, they did try to make a point to, to hang
• 1:04:44
  out with each other at least once a month and everything.
• 1:04:47
  And there was one point in the 90s where like he moved down
• 1:04:51
  the, like he, he relocated the Florida, I think northern
• 1:04:54
  Florida. So he'd go to Atlanta when he
• 1:04:56
  had to for WCW. He didn't have to travel a whole
• 1:04:59
  lot. It wasn't as as grueling as WWF.
• 1:05:02
  And his daughter, Bobby Heenan's daughter Jessica played
• 1:05:05
  softball. And they said there was a time
• 1:05:07
  when she was playing softball and Gorilla was down visiting
• 1:05:11
  Heenan. And they just sat in the stands
• 1:05:15
  in at the, at, at, at at Heenan's daughter's softball
• 1:05:18
  game and just basically did their routine, called it like
• 1:05:23
  they were back back in prime time, like making fun of
• 1:05:26
  everything and put on a show for the people in that.
• 1:05:29
  And what I wouldn't give to have been in that crowd, what I would
• 1:05:33
  have been to given that to be in that crowd.
• 1:05:35
  And yeah, Well, no, Yeah, pretty.
• 1:05:39
  Much. So Gorilla eventually does wind
• 1:05:42
  up kind of really recessing from his duties as an announcer.
• 1:05:46
  He had some pretty serious health issues.
• 1:05:48
  He had he had a pretty bad heart attack.
• 1:05:50
  He had diabetes. And and they say after Joey
• 1:05:53
  died, he just really didn't take care of himself.
• 1:05:55
  He started gambling a lot. That was the only time he really
• 1:05:57
  started drinking excessively. He didn't care what he ate.
• 1:06:01
  And I just exacerbated some things and to kind of take the
• 1:06:05
  load off Gorilla. And because they already had
• 1:06:07
  enough announcers at this point, you have Vince, you have Jim
• 1:06:11
  Ross is back in the fold permanently at this point, and
• 1:06:14
  he's taking an elevated role behind the scenes.
• 1:06:17
  And Jack Man's doing some stuff. Well, Macho's doing Macho, he
• 1:06:21
  was gone at that point. Yeah, 9094 Macho's in WCW by the
• 1:06:24
  end. But they make the decision to
• 1:06:27
  make Gorilla Monsoon because Jack Tunney is legit being like
• 1:06:32
  Jack Tunney. He had a similar deal where when
• 1:06:34
  Frank Tunney, his uncle who didn't have any kids so it was
• 1:06:37
  all off to Jack, sold off Maple Leaf Wrestling.
• 1:06:40
  Jack kind of Jack Tunney got the deal where he would get a
• 1:06:45
  percentage of the game from any show in Toronto.
• 1:06:47
  And also, oh, you get to be the Cafe president of the WWF, which
• 1:06:50
  he was from like the mid 80s until like 199596, I think it
• 1:06:55
  was 95. So when they they literally he's
• 1:06:59
  gone from the company, they make a role of the president.
• 1:07:01
  He's the fan friendly president. And he was more of like usually
• 1:07:07
  Jack Penny would show up and he would be like, yo, you know, the
• 1:07:10
  letter of the law says this and it's usually something that
• 1:07:12
  benefits the heels girls, the fan friendly president.
• 1:07:14
  No, you're cheating. No, you're not.
• 1:07:15
  You don't win. Like like he was a little more
• 1:07:18
  of like the Teddy Long babyface GM.
• 1:07:21
  And that lasts until in the late 90s.
• 1:07:24
  He even did stuff like as late as like they would very rarely
• 1:07:27
  do like physical stuff with monsoon.
• 1:07:30
  Like he had a few things with like Paul Lorndorf and and
• 1:07:33
  Kempeter in the late in the the early 80s.
• 1:07:36
  Bit by a snake. I don't think so.
• 1:07:39
  I thought they did a bit where a gorilla got bit by the snake.
• 1:07:42
  I don't think so. He got hit with a stool by the
• 1:07:45
  Brooklyn Brawler when they were setting up a feud with a Brawler
• 1:07:47
  and Heenan and the Red Rooster. I don't, I don't remember him
• 1:07:50
  ever getting bit by a snake when Vader attacked him when Vader
• 1:07:53
  was coming in. Yeah, try looking into that.
• 1:07:55
  I don't remember that at all. Warrior or Mandy Savage, Yes,
• 1:08:00
  but Gorilla Monsoon? You're right.
• 1:08:01
  It was. Yeah.
• 1:08:02
  He got. He got injured by Vader.
• 1:08:03
  Yeah. Yeah, Vader, I don't think he
• 1:08:05
  ever had Steve Austin attack him, but Steve Austin would get
• 1:08:08
  in his face when he was doing the initial stone cold stuff as
• 1:08:10
  a heel. You know, it's called magilla
• 1:08:12
  gorilla. But eventually, like health
• 1:08:14
  concerns were really becoming a thing as health was failing and
• 1:08:19
  he was still quote UN quote, the president.
• 1:08:21
  But he said this was too much for me to take on like attitude
• 1:08:24
  errors coming in at this point. It's like late 1997, I'm going
• 1:08:28
  to appoint a commissioner to handle the day-to-day
• 1:08:30
  operations. And that was Sergeant Slaughter
• 1:08:33
  and then and. Then Sergeant in the DX spots
• 1:08:36
  where they're. Yeah, because Slaughter, yeah,
• 1:08:38
  Slaughter actually wrestled tribulation and everything.
• 1:08:40
  And then in in 1999, in late 1998 itself takes a very serious
• 1:08:45
  turn and he just kind of disappears from TV.
• 1:08:49
  In fact, one of his last big TV appearances, I was actually
• 1:08:52
  there for it was WrestleMania 15.
• 1:08:55
  And we didn't really talk about like, like we kind of talked
• 1:08:59
  about how Philadelphia was like his home base, even though he's
• 1:09:02
  in in South Jersey. But he was very friendly with
• 1:09:06
  the media in Philadelphia. He had a column in the 80s for
• 1:09:08
  the Philadelphia Daily News, which is one of the big
• 1:09:10
  newspapers there, the big sports newspaper.
• 1:09:13
  I always know for their sports section.
• 1:09:14
  He was big good friends with guys from there in the
• 1:09:16
  Philadelphia Inquirer. So at the at the point at that
• 1:09:20
  time, the first Union Center for WrestleMania 15, first time
• 1:09:23
  WrestleMania is in Philadelphia. He is actually there as one of
• 1:09:27
  the three judges for the ill-fated brawl for All between
• 1:09:32
  Bart Gun and Butter Bean. He's one of the judges.
• 1:09:36
  It was him, Chuck Wetner, and I forget who the third guy was.
• 1:09:38
  He's so tiny. He had lost so much weight he
• 1:09:41
  had he had had some very significant heart attacks at
• 1:09:44
  this point and was in and out of treatment and just like it, it
• 1:09:49
  was getting really bad. And he did some things after
• 1:09:53
  that. He actually called some matches
• 1:09:55
  on like shotgun Saturday night or Meddler Jack, like not that
• 1:09:59
  long before he passed because it is later on around September,
• 1:10:03
  October, Like his health is still failing.
• 1:10:06
  And then he gets like checked out and he's like, eventually,
• 1:10:10
  like, you know, you're going to have to go on Mr. Merrell.
• 1:10:13
  You're going to have to go on kidney dialysis.
• 1:10:15
  Like your kidneys are failing. And he's like, So what does that
• 1:10:19
  mean? He's like, oh, well, you know,
• 1:10:21
  there's all these restrictions. You have to come in here three
• 1:10:23
  days a week. It's doing painful stuff.
• 1:10:25
  He's like, what if I just want to die essentially is what you
• 1:10:28
  said. I don't know exactly what you
• 1:10:29
  say. It's like, what if I don't want
• 1:10:30
  to do that? Well, you'll die like, OK, I
• 1:10:33
  think I'm ready. And that's kind of where it
• 1:10:37
  comes to where in in in late late 1999, the fall of 1999.
• 1:10:41
  He's like, he talks with his fans like I love all of you,
• 1:10:45
  very religious man. Like I hope to see all of you
• 1:10:47
  again someday. I want to be with Joey.
• 1:10:49
  That's literally he literally says I want to be.
• 1:10:51
  It's time for me to go be with Joey him.
• 1:10:54
  And Bobby went out so horribly, too.
• 1:10:56
  Yeah, yeah. And so he forgoes all treatment,
• 1:11:02
  doesn't want to do dialysis. They're keeping him.
• 1:11:04
  They said they had to like, change his rooms in the hospital
• 1:11:07
  because they were trying to like, keep him around and
• 1:11:11
  eventually just got discharged and they sent him home.
• 1:11:13
  This is like kind of before Hospice was a big thing.
• 1:11:16
  But they they sent him home, like, OK, let him be with his
• 1:11:18
  family. And eventually does die very
• 1:11:21
  peacefully at home surrounded by family.
• 1:11:24
  And they said during the service, Heenan was devastated.
• 1:11:27
  Like literally one point Heenan throws himself on the casket.
• 1:11:30
  But that's how devastated Bobby Heenan was.
• 1:11:33
  And this is at the peak of the Monday night working and works
• 1:11:36
  for WCW. And he wants to do it.
• 1:11:39
  An opening tribute to him. And and they're first like, no,
• 1:11:42
  we can't do that. He's a he's AWWF guy, but
• 1:11:45
  eventually they do let him and like have a few words and base.
• 1:11:49
  And it's it's really it's doubly sad because of gorillas linked
• 1:11:52
  to the Hart family. This is the same same show.
• 1:11:54
  It's in Kansas City, MO. It's the same arena where Owen
• 1:11:58
  Hart died. And one of the big things
• 1:12:00
  they're doing that night is Bret Hart is going to wrestle.
• 1:12:03
  And here's another sad story. Chris Benoit.
• 1:12:05
  Bret Hart and Chris Benoit are going to wrestle at night as a
• 1:12:07
  tribute to Owen Hart. But they do do it aside, they,
• 1:12:11
  they cut the Heenan and Shivani and Heenan says a few words
• 1:12:13
  about how you know that, that, that pearly gate, those pearly
• 1:12:18
  gates where you go to see if you get into heaven.
• 1:12:19
  That's called the gorilla position now.
• 1:12:21
  And I just let him say a few words about Gorilla Monsoon.
• 1:12:26
  And then the other thing is at that point, the WWF Hall of
• 1:12:32
  Fame, they, they started that in 1993 like 939495, they inducted
• 1:12:36
  some people in the WWF Hall of Fame.
• 1:12:38
  Now the WWE Hall of Fame and Gorilla went in.
• 1:12:41
  Gorilla went in in 1994. He was part of the first full
• 1:12:44
  class 93 was just Andre. And then they did a full class
• 1:12:46
  in 9495. Gorilla went in in 94 in in in
• 1:12:53
  2004, when the first year they brought it back, Heenan went in.
• 1:12:57
  And he's not fully Bobby Heenan. Like, he's still got his wits
• 1:13:01
  about him, but the throat cancer was already starting to get in
• 1:13:04
  there and his he could still talk.
• 1:13:06
  Like it wasn't like that similar thing that Roger Ebert had.
• 1:13:09
  No bottom jaw. Yeah, he basically had no jaw
• 1:13:11
  and couldn't speak, but he he talked a little bit of a, he
• 1:13:16
  talked with a little bit of a speech impediment because of
• 1:13:18
  what they had to take out there. But he could still make out what
• 1:13:20
  he was saying and everything. And he's talking about how much
• 1:13:23
  he loved his time in WWF. He's talking about how fun prime
• 1:13:25
  time is. And they're like, why doesn't he
• 1:13:29
  say mentioning Monsoon? Like he goes through this whole
• 1:13:31
  speech. He didn't do a long speech.
• 1:13:33
  He kept it short. But he's like, he's talking
• 1:13:34
  about all these things, but he's not talking about Monsoon.
• 1:13:36
  They were the best of friends. Why isn't he talking about
• 1:13:38
  Monsoon? He waited.
• 1:13:40
  He wanted to make sure his speech was entertaining.
• 1:13:44
  He wanted to be Bobby Heenan. He wanted to be the comedian.
• 1:13:46
  He want to be what everybody expected him to be.
• 1:13:49
  And he knew the second, the second he mentioned Gorilla
• 1:13:54
  Monsoon, Bobby Heenan is gone and Ray Heenan is there.
• 1:13:58
  Like he could not hold it together.
• 1:14:00
  So at the very end, at the very end, he starts choking up.
• 1:14:03
  And he's like, the only thing that could have made this better
• 1:14:04
  is I wish Monsoon was here. Yeah, I'm getting like emotional
• 1:14:08
  hearing that again. Yeah, no.
• 1:14:09
  And again, not to keep going back to the book like that, the
• 1:14:12
  the last few chapters of that book was like very, very hard
• 1:14:16
  to. It's so it's like there's a not
• 1:14:18
  a lot of people in wrestling who like you can come into wrestling
• 1:14:22
  with a best friend. You can make a wrestling best
• 1:14:25
  friend, but like sometimes the business wins and you don't have
• 1:14:29
  that. And, and most times best friends
• 1:14:31
  are mortal enemies or they just throw apart.
• 1:14:35
  And the fact that Bobby and Gorilla like always kept that
• 1:14:38
  friendship is a miracle and it's beautiful.
• 1:14:41
  Absolutely it is and, and and that's the real legacy is his
• 1:14:45
  family, his children, his grandchildren is now great
• 1:14:49
  grandchildren that that's his legacy and not going to be
• 1:14:55
  another one like him, right. Yeah, no, definitely not.
• 1:14:57
  And and just because this is close to our Thanksgiving
• 1:15:00
  episode, leave a comment below of what wrestler you're most
• 1:15:02
  thankful for. Why is Gorilla that answer if it
• 1:15:05
  is for you? I hope you guys enjoyed this
• 1:15:07
  episode. Anything you want to plug or
• 1:15:09
  anything before we get out of here bro.
• 1:15:11
  Yeah, I mean, I'll plug the usual PPW wrestling, PPW
• 1:15:14
  Frostbite coming up in a little less than a month now.
• 1:15:17
  It's going to be Saturday, December 13th of the Slidington
• 1:15:20
  Expo Center slash Slidington Social.
• 1:15:23
  They have some pickleball and VR stuff going on there now.
• 1:15:26
  Going to be a real fun show. Our last show of 2025.
• 1:15:29
  Moving on to 2026. It's been a fun year and I can't
• 1:15:33
  wait to see everybody one last time in in this year.
• 1:15:36
  Yeah, 2025. I, I feel like it flew by.
• 1:15:38
  I, I, I, I can't. I think this is the fastest year
• 1:15:41
  of my life. Well, it it does speed up as you
• 1:15:44
  get older. They always say that but it's
• 1:15:45
  been this went break neck. Pace.
• 1:15:48
  Yeah, it went really, really quick.
• 1:15:50
  Like they literally like we're about a week from now almost
• 1:15:54
  exactly. Well, I know this is tape
• 1:15:56
  delayed a little bit. So by the time we hear this, by
• 1:15:58
  the time this is going out to the to the general public, if
• 1:16:02
  you will, it's over a year since our our our buddy Rembrandt won
• 1:16:07
  that PPW heavyweight title. That's amazing.
• 1:16:10
  That feels like yesterday. I'm not.
• 1:16:11
  Sure if this is airing on the 14th or this is airing on the
• 1:16:14
  21st, but fun fact is that November 18th is the birthday of
• 1:16:23
  the Tornado Tag podcast. Oh, how about that?
• 1:16:26
  And I think it's, I think it's like 8 or 9 years old this year.
• 1:16:30
  Yeah, it's good. That's crazy.
• 1:16:32
  You're about to have an angsty teenager on your hand.
• 1:16:35
  Holy shit we're about to hit double digits doing this shit,
• 1:16:38
  VP. Not me, I I came on a little bit
• 1:16:40
  later, but yeah. Close.
• 1:16:41
  I mean, you were part of the first year though still, weren't
• 1:16:43
  you? Yeah.
• 1:16:45
  It was like August of the next year was like August of 2019
• 1:16:48
  that came in. All right, from the architect of
• 1:16:51
  big matches in the territory area to the resonating voice
• 1:16:54
  guided that guiding millions of household viewers, Gorilla
• 1:16:57
  Monsoon's imprint on pro wrestling is undeniable.
• 1:17:00
  His journey, athletic monster, heel, face turn, star
• 1:17:05
  commentator, corporate presence reflect the evolution of sports
• 1:17:09
  itself. So next time you hear, will you
• 1:17:12
  stop or hear backstage directions given?
• 1:17:15
  Remember the man who set the standard Gorilla monsoon?
• 1:17:19
  Thanks for listening everybody tuning into the A BJ podcast
• 1:17:22
  tornado tag. We'll see you guys soon.
• 1:17:24
  Sometimes these do pop up live. I'm not saying I'm going to
• 1:17:27
  always promote them, so always keep your bell notifications
• 1:17:30
  turned on if you're on Facebook, YouTube or whatever it may be.
• 1:17:34
  We may pop in and talk some wrestling or modern day stuff,
• 1:17:37
  but we have some more episodes coming up for you guys.
• 1:17:40
  We do these history things, belt histories, whatever it may be.
• 1:17:42
  Maybe some old school match watch alongs, but make sure you
• 1:17:46
  guys are always tuned in. Go grab some merchandise.
• 1:17:48
  Our tea spring is available. Grab some T-shirts.
• 1:17:51
  We are looking to. So if you see in the, the camera
• 1:17:54
  here, this is the the old school podcast table and I am looking
• 1:17:58
  to bring that back, but I have to we'll probably do it again
• 1:18:03
  like the old school wakes. I've been trying that 3 camera
• 1:18:05
  setup and it's just, it's not really working out the way I
• 1:18:07
  wanted to and the editing stuff. So I think we're going to go
• 1:18:10
  back to the old school setup, shooting down the table with the
• 1:18:12
  webcam and come back to stream yard again.
• 1:18:14
  I like it. I like that lifestyle and I I
• 1:18:16
  just need a little bit of an audio interface to do it because
• 1:18:20
  I don't want to unplug a whole bunch of stuff and move it
• 1:18:22
  around. So I want like its own stable
• 1:18:24
  setup, but it's coming soon. So merchandise and subscriptions
• 1:18:27
  and memberships on the YouTube channel help out so much.
• 1:18:30
  We'll see you guys next time. Make sure you support PPW
• 1:18:33
  Wrestling, High Tension Wrestling Network, and all of
• 1:18:35
  our our our friends in the wrestling business.
• 1:18:37
  Jump down to Pill Guru, grab some great beers, and we'll see
• 1:18:41
  you guys next time we're out of here.
• 1:18:43
  Go. Home, by the way, hang out.
• 1:18:45
  I want to ask you something after this.
• 1:18:47
  Bye.