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M-A
Gateway: When you came back to
Jim
Crockett Promotions in early 1980,
you teamed up with John Studd as the
Superstars #1 and #2. But Mulligan
was still the big rival, right?
Superstar:
Yes, at first it was John and I
against Mulligan and Andre a good
bit. It was always against Mulligan,
and whoever Mulligan would get as
his partner.
M-A
Gateway: Around this same time
you won a television tournament for
the NWA Television Title, beating
Mulligan in the finals. This was
your first title in the Mid-Atlantic
area, as before you always said your
mask was more important than a title
belt. Why the decision to put a
title on you at this point?
Superstar:
I don’t think there was a lot
of thought behind that. They may
have thought the belt would mean a
little more if it was on me…I
think every night the title was up
for the first 15 minutes. That
allowed me and somebody like Rufus
to go to a smaller town and have a
title match headline the card there.
M-A
Gateway: Another masked man,
Sweet Ebony Diamond, came in during
the spring of 1980. Why weren’t
there more “Mask versus Mask”
matches between you and Rocky
Johnson, or earlier between you and
“Mr. Wrestling” Tim Woods?
Superstar:
I don’t think George Scott
wanted it. George was sort of a
stickler on things like that. If two
guys were going out there with the
same colored tights on, one of them
would have to change. That was
especially true on TV….if two guys
were out there in the same colored
tights, he would stop the show and
you’d have to change. So…there
wouldn’t be much sense for me to
be in there with another masked man
because the masks wouldn’t mean as
much then.
When
I came down here to Georgia, the
situation was a little
different…there were a hundred
masked men in here. Ole worked a
deal where I would eliminate the
masked men one at a time, and it
finally ended up with just me and
Mr. Wrestling II. We would go after
each other’s masks, and people
would actually want to come and see
that.
You
mentioned Tim Woods….I did work
with Tim on occasion. Tim was a good
wrestler. But you really had to stay
in Tim’s ear. You had to tell him
verbatim what to do, because if you
let him think for ten seconds,
he’d be gone. (everybody laughs)
You’d be working on his arm, and
all of a sudden he’d be doing
cartwheels and everything else.
(everyone laughs) You always had to
be telling him, ‘Boy you’re
doing good, we’ll do this and
that.’ If you stopped doing that
with Tim, you were in for big
trouble.
M-A
Gateway: Well, since we are
talking about masked wrestlers now,
I don’t guess any interview with
you would be complete without asking
you why you wore a mask.
Superstar:
I enjoyed the anonymity of
wearing a mask. Honest to goodness,
Flair and Mulligan would go to a
restaurant and couldn’t even eat a
meal. I’d be two tables over from
them and nobody knew who I was. It
was great. I could take my wife and
kids to the amusement park and have
a good time, and never be
recognized.
M-A
Gateway: So you really enjoyed
the mask more so for personal
reasons, as opposed to in-ring
reasons?
Superstar:
Oh yes…I could be two people.
Once I got down the road, I would
take the mask off and I’d be
‘me.’ I was always ‘me,’ but
when I was wrestling I was the
‘other guy.’
M-A
Gateway: Speaking of ‘guys,’
you became a ‘good guy’ in the
late summer of 1980 when you had the
incident with Ray Stevens,
Jim
my Snuka and Gene Anderson
interrupting your TV interviews.
Describe your babyface turn, which
was pretty amazing at the time.
Superstar:
George Scott really wanted me to
be a babyface from the get-go….and
to take the mask off. But as I said,
I enjoyed the anonymity of wearing
the mask.
But,
really, the people actually turned
me. As a babyface, I was very
conscious of what I said on
interviews. I never promised
anything I knew I couldn’t back
up. Don’t say you’re going to go
out and break a guy’s leg, unless
you go out and break his leg.
Rather, a lot of times I would say I
was going out to ‘hurt’ a
guy’s leg…I can always
‘hurt’ something. There’s a
big difference between
‘breaking’ and ‘hurting.’
As
a babyface, basically I tried to
think like a fan would think. When I
promised something, it had to be
realistic. It’s just basic
psychology. Because when you don’t
live up to those promises, it just
nibbles away at you. Fans start
thinking, ‘Oh, don’t believe
that…he says that all the time.’
Like these announcers today that say
every Pay Per View is the greatest
wrestling extravaganza of all
time…the fans know better.
M-A
Gateway: You actually hooked up
with your old rival, Paul Jones, and
won the NWA World Tag Team Titles in
Greensboro on Thanksgiving night
1980. You also promised to take your
mask off at this time as you and
Paul pursued the World belts around
the area. Tell us about the victory
and the unmaskings.
Paul
Jones and Masked Superstar win the
NWA
World
Tag Team Championships in Greensboro
NC.
Superstar:
The change was in Greensboro,
but believe it or not, in most of
the towns for about a week after we
won the belts…people didn’t want
me to take the mask off. They
didn’t want to know what I looked
like. There was a lot of mystery
behind it…people could see my eyes
and use their imaginations beyond
that.
I
did take the mask off, but I put it
right back on…very few people saw
who I was. It didn’t really affect
anything. A lot of people around
ringside told me they didn’t even
look.
But there again, I made a
promise to the fans in a number of
towns that I would take my mask off
win or lose. If I wouldn’t have
followed through and done it, they
would have never believed me after
that. Afterward, I often got asked
why I unmasked and my response was
that I promised the people that
I’d do it, and I think that always
stuck in their minds.
PART
SIX
TRAVEL,
SHOW & TELL, AND FINAL
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