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Mid-Atlantic
Gateway: Bill, you first came into Jim Crockett Promotions
in early 1976 as one of the Mongols…Bolo Mongol. Tell us a
little bit about the early Bill Eadie as Bolo Mongol.
Masked
Superstar Bill Eadie: Well, it all started in the early
70’s when I was teaching and had a good friend that played
college ball, whose Dad was the State Athletic Commissioner of
Pennsylvania. One weekend after school was out…my friend was
at Penn State and I was in West Virginia…he invited us to go
to the wrestling matches up there.
When
we went into the dressing room, we saw Geto [Mongol], who at
the time was the promoter. When he first saw us, Geto thought
my friend and I were two new wrestlers coming in. Geto started
talking to us and he said, ‘Where did you guys train at?’
I said, ‘West Virginia and he trained at Penn State.’ I
didn’t know what he was talking about! (everybody laughs)
M-A
Gateway: So Geto was interested in you as a wrestler
immediately?
Superstar:
Yes, he asked me right then and there whether I’d be
interested in professional wrestling. I told him I had never
even thought about it. You know, those matches that night were
the first wrestling matches I had ever been to.
M-A
Gateway: Did you decide to take the wrestling plunge then?
Superstar:
I did. My friend Ron and I went through nine months of
training with Geto…every weekend, all weekend from Friday
night through Sunday. After we finished up the training, Ron
and I both went back to teaching…Ron was teaching then as
well.
M-A
Gateway: How did you get your break?
Superstar:
Geto called me right after school had ended for the
summer, in 1974 I believe, and said his partner Bepo had
gotten thrown out of the ring in Louisiana and ruptured his
spleen. He and Bepo, who most people know better under the
name of Nikolai Volkoff, were just about ready to go on a tour
of Japan. Geto asked me if I wanted to go to Japan with him,
and I said, ‘I guess, I’ll take a try at it.’ I think I
started in September of 1974. And here I am, all these years
later, still wrestling (laughs).
M-A
Gateway: When you took off and headed to Japan as a
“Mongol,” were you then committed to a career change to
wrestling?
Superstar:
Pretty much. I did come back to teach another year, but
the principal at my school was nice enough to give me a leave
of absence as I wasn’t completely sure I wanted to wrestle
full-time at that point. But before too long I did quit
teaching all together, because I was also coaching football
and track there. When I really got into wrestling, I ended up
staying in it full-time for twenty-some years.
M-A
Gateway: In early 1975, you and Geto moved on to the new
IWA [International
Wrestling Association] promotion?
The
Mongols: Bolo (Bill Eadie, standing) and Geto
IWA
Tag Champions (photo/
Bill Janosik)
Superstar:
Yes, we did. We were the tag team champions there.
M-A
Gateway: Tell us a little bit about the IWA.
Superstar:
Eddie Einhorn headed up the IWA. He was a real good guy,
but he was very naive about the wrestling business. I think he
spent at that time about a million dollars on the IWA, which
of course today would be many, many times that much.
Eddie got ripped off, and he learned a hard lesson.
Even though I was young and a new guy, Eddie liked me and we
talked fairly often. He had a committee of veterans, rookies,
etc., and he wanted to set up the promotion to run much like
the NFL, NBA and Major League Baseball. But he eventually got
sick of dealing with [the IWA], and that’s when he turned
his attention to the Chicago White Sox.
PART
TWO
JIM
CROCKETT PROMOTIONS
AND
THE BIRTH OF THE MASKED SUPERSTAR
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