Bushwhacker Luke Williams recounts his New Zealand origins under police-regulated wrestling, his engineering career, and touring with Andre the Giant. He details his Stampede Wrestling tenure, where he was forced to assault children to become a heel, and his six-year "Sweet William" gimmick before Vince McMahon rebranded them. Discussing severe injuries like spiked knee implants and bankruptcy, Luke reveals plans to license his name for Hogan's Hangout in Florida while promoting the upcoming Spooky Empire convention in Tampa. [Automatically generated summary]
Transcriber: CohereLabs/cohere-transcribe-03-2026, WAV2VEC2_ASR_BASE_960H, sat-12l-sm, script v26.04.01, and large-v3-turbo
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Entertaining Early Days00:02:59
Today we have WWE legend Luke the Bushwhacker on the podcast.
Luke, thank you for blessing us with your presence today.
Whoa, g'day, Danny.
It's bloody good to be here, mate.
You're looking good, mate, but you smell like sardines.
And I've had that for breakfast for many years.
Have you, really?
I've known you for a long time.
You used to run the gym on Clearwater Beach.
You had your own gym.
We used to always work out together, me, you, and the Hulkster.
And those were some good times.
Some good times, mate.
That evolution of time, we have to move on.
You got to move on.
Every once in a while, you got to just move on and write a new chapter.
Exactly, mate.
And I'm moving on.
I don't know what the next chapter is going to be.
But, well, I've got a few ideas, anyhow.
Have you?
Yeah.
So, how have you been?
How are you?
Good, good, mate.
Good.
I just got back from Quebec.
A town, I worked in a town on Sunday afternoon.
It's the first time I've been there.
Since 1972 that was the last time I wrestled in that town and I had a few people there came up to me.
They were old They said I remember you being here.
Yeah, many many moons ago with Andre the giant That's crazy.
So you're how old are you now?
Hey Buy it I'm I to all the girls out there.
I'm 25 26 you don't look a day over 30 no no anyhow.
I'm 73 at Christmas January and you're still wrestling You're still in the ring, entertaining.
Wow.
You could call it, it's called entertaining.
Why is it called entertaining?
Well, that's what I do.
I entertain the people.
Is that what everyone calls it?
Is that what all WWE wrestlers call it?
WWE is World Wrestling Entertainment.
Okay, so you don't call it wrestling.
People just call it.
No, you could call it wrestling.
It's wrestling and that.
But when they look at me and they say, you still wrestling, I'm entertaining.
Right, right.
Sounds better at my age.
You don't do any kind of like.
Hard jumps or take any big bumps.
I give them you give them you give them I'm a giver not a taker remember that folks And to all you women out there Whoa what whoa I'm from down under you know what I mean and I'm a bushwhacker Where'd you get I hate being told though most of them tell me today, but I'm shaved most of the women when I say I'm from down under and I'm a bushwhacker they turn around and say to me Well, I'm shaved.
Oh, the women say that to you.
Yeah.
That's hilarious.
So where did you come up?
I mean, so we've had the pleasure of having many WWE superstars on this show.
We've had Jimmy Hart.
We've had Lanny Poffo, the brother of Macho Man.
And now you're the third WWE superstar.
Wrestling in Wellington00:06:56
So how did you get into the business?
Let's talk about your early days.
Where are you from?
How did you get started in this crazy, wacky world?
Funny part is the next door neighbor.
I was born.
In a town called Loahat, New Zealand.
It's a suburb of the capital, Wellington.
It's about eight miles out from the city of Wellington.
Yeah.
And my next door neighbor was a bodybuilder.
And he went into Mr. New Zealand and that, and he got placed.
And the judge in Mr. New Zealand was a former Mr. New Zealand, a 1950 Mr. New Zealand.
He was a judge, plus.
At this time now, he was the wrestling promoter for the only promotion in New Zealand.
And he said to my next door neighbor, my buddy, he said to him, You know, why not make some money with that body?
So my neighbor's name was Brian Ashby.
So he went into the gym.
It was in Wellington, you know, six or eight miles away.
And the gym was like the gym in the first Rocky movie.
If you ever remember that, the steam pipes rattling, it had a steam room, the old school gym.
The only two machines it had, or racks it had, was a bench press and a squat rack.
All the rest were kettlebells and free weights laying around the floor.
And there was two rings there.
20 by 20 rings.
The floor of the rings were hard as the floor is this room.
Or hard as the payment on the roads around here.
And the boxing rings, four ropes.
And the wrestling rings were four ropes too in New Zealand at that time.
And the wrestling shows were governed by the police.
And they came and checked the rings before to make sure it was 20 feet by 20 feet in the ropes.
Now, what the hell does that mean?
You know what I mean?
If it's 18 feet.
Right.
But fucking police came and checked it and measured it.
And everybody, too, had to put the promoter had to put everyone's name in two months ahead of the show to see if they had any criminal record.
This is how it was.
Wow.
The police.
The police sat ringside, and if you did anything illegal, they hopped up in the ring.
There was no punch.
Anyhow, there was no punching and no kicking.
So it was either forearms or the British uppercut, and you could do a knee drop.
Anyhow.
That's crazy.
So, how old were you when you got into this?
15, or just turning 16.
Anyhow, how I got into it, he said to me after he was going for about a month, and he says, why not come in there?
I was 175 wet.
175 pound wet at the time.
And I started going in there to the gym with him.
About six months down the line, I went to my first wrestling match, live wrestling match.
And one of the opponents didn't arrive in the light, well, junior heavyweight or light heavyweight.
And that next minute, I got a pair of boots thrown at me and a tank top thrown at me.
I had jeans on, and that's how I went to the ring.
And don't ask me about the match because it's a blank.
That was my first match ever.
The arena was full.
It was, you know, 3,000 people at that time.
You know, I'm talking about 1962 in little old New Zealand where they roll up the sidewalks at 6 o'clock at night.
You know, the bars closed at 6.
Everything.
Wow.
Just go downtown, any little townships, 6.37, you're lucky to find a cafeteria open in any of the smaller cities.
In the capital, you'd find them, but in the smaller cities, the sidewalks were rolled up and the lights were out.
Really?
The blinds were down.
That's wild.
Yeah, we didn't have it.
And we didn't.
Everyone sat around the radio at home listening to soap operas on radio.
We never got television until 67.
And it would start at 3 in the afternoon and finish at 8 or 9 o'clock at night.
That's how when we first got it.
Crazy, huh?
That's some crazy shit.
We were 20 years.
We were 20 years behind the States and behind Aussie at the time, too.
What were you doing in New Zealand this whole time?
Shagging sheep.
You were having sheep?
Shagging sheep.
That's all you did was shag sheep?
No, no, no.
I'm an engineer by trade, or a turner or fitter.
Lathe work and and um with a.
You know, turning um steel with a lathe and doing welding, arc and arc.
Uh arc welding argon arc, uh gas, gas brazing and and all that sort of stuff.
Yeah, dealing with steel, putting stuff together.
Okay, so that's what you did for a living when you first.
Yeah, I did a, I did an apprenticeship.
Okay, I did the 10 000 hours in that's a five year.
I did a lot of overtime and I did it in four years.
But meantime, in the meanwhile, I was resting too, because I'd finished work at four, and that in New Zealand, you can hop on a plane from the capital, and you can be at the end of the other island, or over in the South Island, anywhere within an hour, you know, once you're on the plane.
Everything is close.
The islands, New Zealand consists of two islands, 600 miles long, each, and each about 150 miles wide.
So that's it and we're way down south for you people out there don't know where we are we're south southeast of Australia and below us is South Pole America have got a base in the South Island and the southern in the South Island where they take go down to the South Pole you know what I mean?
Yeah, wow Did you ever go to the South Pole?
No, never never never flow it's two hours from Christchurch really that to two and a half hours and you're over people fly over tourists Americans go down there and they go on the charters and they fly over the South Pole.
We're a mountainous country.
What you call mountains over here, we call hills.
Our mountains are 40, from 12,000 feet to 20,000 feet.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, okay, so you're in New Zealand.
You're an engineer by trade.
Yeah.
You're doing welding.
You're doing all kinds of crazy work.
Yeah.
And on the side, you're wrestling.
Hollywood Heels and Hills00:15:27
You're wrestling, doing wrestling gigs.
Are you making any money doing wrestling back then?
Back then.
If I told you while you were in New Zealand where you're making a deal.
Yeah, when I tell you I was making £3 a match.
If you know what a pound is in those days, a pound was equal to $2.
Wow.
Two bucks a match.
Yeah, and a wage at that time would be, a good wage would be about £15 a week.
A wage.
That's for a, not a professional, but that's for an average worker, was £10 to £15.
A week.
Wow.
By accident, you kind of like fell into this.
This was never like a dream for you.
No, no.
The next door neighbor.
And I went in and that, hung out and that, you know.
So when did you develop that whole moniker, the whole, whoa, with the.
No, that came later.
That came many, many moons later.
We left home in 1907.
Give me how I lived.
So why did you.
Yeah, go back, go back.
Let's go back.
We mainly had Europeans.
Wrestlers from Europe and England.
When they come over, we actually ran three times a week or twice a week, three times a week, and a guy would come over for, say, two months, three months, and that's when we get most of our work.
And in '68, I started going to Australia.
The American promoter from Atlanta, a well-known promoter who got Ted Turner to put the wrestling up on the satellite on TBS.
Well, he was over in New Zealand, and that was WCW.
He was over in Australia, I'm sorry.
He came over there in 1965 and opened up Australia.
That's when the Vietnam War was on, and all the troops were coming down to Australia for R&R, rest and recreation.
And he was there.
He opened up in Australia.
He bought out the roller derby and then bought a whole American crew in and started running it.
I'd go over there and work against the Americans and that maybe three times a year.
Go over there for a month or three weeks and work against the Americans.
Now, when Ted Turner was basically syndicating wrestling shows across the world and In lots of different countries.
Yeah, but.
It started with the U.S., right?
Yeah, but he didn't start.
The satellite didn't go up to 76, I think.
You know, the.
Yeah.
It was called WTBS.
It was called WTBS.
TBS, yeah.
WTBS.
And then he dropped the W off it and just TBS.
And what was the wrestling program called?
It was World Championship Wrestling.
That's what Ted Turner's was called?
Yeah, Ted Turner.
Well, that was Jim Barnett's company.
Okay.
Jim Barnett, the Australian promoter, actually owned part of Florida Championship Wrestling.
He owned a part of a lot of companies around the States, but he was on, in Atlanta, he had WCW.
Okay.
And then later on in life, you know, when all the small territories went out and Vince was the only one, and that's when Ted Turner bought NWA and it changed from NWA to WCW.
Okay.
The name and that.
And that's when they had the Monday Night Wars in the 90s.
But anyway, we're going back to the 60s.
Right, right, right.
We jumped well ahead here.
Fuck.
Anyhow, so I met a lot of Americans and that.
And Andre came over to our country too in 69.
Andre the Giant?
Yeah, so Butch and me worked against Butch, my partner, and myself.
We partnered up in 66, you know, locally and that.
But we never started touring overseas to, you know, to the Middle East, not the Middle East, to the East.
Singapore and up in Bangkok and that till 68.
Andre came over to New Zealand in 69 and Butcher me worked with him for a whole month around the country.
Really?
Yeah.
Holy shit.
What was that like?
Andre was only 350 then, 350, 360, and that, and with a big afro.
He looked skinny.
You know what I mean?
Well, 6'7, 7'2, with a big afro, and only 350.
You know what I mean?
That's incredible.
You spent a whole month with him.
So that's how when I first met Andre, and that.
And of course, too, I met the big names like Killer Kowalski.
He was the biggest, one of the biggest names in the heels in the world at the time.
Who was the main event at Madison Square Gardens in the 60s and in the 70s?
He was the main bad guy, and he's the guy that actually got Australia going for Jim Barnett.
You know, our business is Cowboys and Indians.
Yeah.
And that, and he was the guy they bought in, and he actually popped Australia and got it up going, you know, for Jim Barnett.
Wow.
And so when I come over in 72, Butcher Me came over to North America for the first time.
And why did you guys come for the first time?
What was the reason?
Well, you know, Hollywood, if you want to be a star in movies and television and that, you go to Hollywood.
All the wrestling magazines, you know, we didn't get a wrestling show till 76 in New Zealand on television.
And so we got wrestling magazines in the 60s and that, and, you know, they all come out of the States.
Everything came from the States.
The States was where it was, you know, for wrestling.
Yeah.
So it was bigger than England and Europe and all that sort of stuff.
So you guys, like, you know, we're doing it.
We got it.
If you want to make it big time, we got to go to California.
No, we didn't come to California.
That was for Hollywood and actors.
We just got two promoters that the New Zealand promoter knew very well.
They were the Vashon brothers.
Morris Vashon, Mad Dog Vashon.
He's dead now.
His brother.
They just put out another movie out about them this weekend.
But they were two Frenchmen, were well known throughout the States, and they owned a territory in Montreal called Grand Prix.
So they brought us over there.
This territory was running three towns a night.
This promotion was running, they had a crew.
This was a big promotion, running three towns a night in the province of Ontario and Quebec and northern part of vermont and upstate New York.
They'd come into that and that.
And it was out of Montreal.
Wow.
And so they brought us over there.
And of course, the main heel was Walter Kowalski.
And the main baby face, good guy, was the giant.
So we needed to.
Andre.
Andre had just come to North America the first time six months before we did.
Oh, shit.
And where was he living?
In France?
Yes.
Okay.
and he was working Europe and England and he came in a year, six months, eight months before us.
So when we come in, he was over like hell.
It was drawing.
This territory was on fire.
You know what I mean?
So when we came in, we knew the two main guys and after about a month, we were one of the main events in the third town, you know, one of the towns.
You know what I mean?
We were used right.
That HBO documentary on Andre was insane.
Yeah, the stuff that he had to go through like everyday life, flying in airplanes, how much of torture that was for him.
Oh yeah, going to the mountain, the Mountain Pooper I gotta tell you about that later on.
Going to the pooper, he could never get.
Oh yeah, you can't.
Anyhow, we're not, we're going back.
So here I am, in this territory and um, at the time too, Pierre Trudeau was the uh, prime minister.
His son is the prime minister now and he's not so like prime minister of of Canada Canada Yeah, and he was going out with Mick Jaggers' wife, Bianca.
He was effing around with Mick Jaggers' wife.
Mick had broken up with her, but that was a big thing at the time.
So his ex-wife?
Yeah, and at the time, too, when we came into, Parti Quebecois was trying to break away from Canada and be its own country.
It's crazy, you know, the politics then.
Quebec, you know, it was wild at the time.
That's pretty insane.
So anyhow, we were there working.
We were working there.
We worked there for a year and a half.
and we were used on top, semi-final on top in one of the towns and they come up and said to us, you know, we can move you out.
Now, he said to you, we have to start jobbing you.
Jobbing you is getting beaten all the time and put the new people over or we can move you out and bring you back later and move you to another territory.
And we said, where are you going to move us?
And they said, there's a promotion.
called Stampede Promotion.
Now we never heard of Stampede.
This is a notorious promotion in wrestling in those days.
Everyone of a name has worked in it.
And it was owned by Stu Hart.
We didn't know who Stu Hart was.
Bret Hart's father.
Stu Hart had 12 kids.
It's a notorious family in Canada.
And Bret Hart was WWE champion for many years.
And Owen Hart is the Fell out of the roof at one of the pay per views and got killed ringside.
He was on a hoist.
I remember if you know it was in Kansas City, come he was coming out on a rope, you know, when they have them down and it just the clips that come undone and he he fell to the pavement on a pay per view.
Yeah, that was a big lawsuit.
Anyhow, what was that?
So, what was what year was that?
That was in about 92, 99, 2000.
Anyhow, getting back.
So we moved into that next territory.
And we never knew the first night we're there, we're working against the champions.
And we got disqualified, you know.
Wrestling prearranged.
Anyhow, we got disqualified.
We started beating them up with the New Zealand flag.
We always carried the New Zealand flag, right?
Next minute, these kids were thrown into the ring.
And I'll tell you who by in a minute.
And we were told.
Beat him up beat him up said the two champions who we just got the squadron squadron from a line there and these four kids From 11 to about 13 are thrown in the ring and two of them are bleeding and I'm putting we're putting the boot to them and that and then we leave we did we get we we left the ring and we go back to the back and and we hadn't met Stu Hart yet and Stu Hart's there.
He said, what the what the F are you doing?
And we said well, the guy that threw the mitten said the guy that threw the guys, these kids in the ring said, beat him up.
So we beat him up and uh, you know what I mean because we came in to get over.
You know, it's the bad guys, right?
And this was televised.
Yeah, friday nights were televised in the pavilion.
You know, in the fairgrounds in in Calgary there's two arenas.
The pavilion would hold 3 000 and then now it's the Saddle Dome.
It holds 20.
That's where all the big shows and and uh, the paid-per-views are done and all that stuff yeah and, and the promotion did two did, did um three shows a year where they did the friday and they did the sunday, back to back, you know.
So anyhow, we beat him up and that now these were Stewart's kids oh, he didn't know.
And who was throwing them in was Abdullah the butcher.
Have you heard of Abdullah the butcher?
No uh, he blood crazy.
You know what I mean.
He cut them all and threw them in.
What yeah, was that planned?
Was that planned?
No, we didn't know.
He was helping us get over.
Yeah.
Abdullah is a heavy name.
He drew the biggest houses in Japan with King Brody.
Anyhow, if you know, wrestling fans know all about Abdullah the Butcher.
Right, right, right.
Anyhow.
That's fantastic.
And a big controversy with Vince McMahon.
Anyhow, so we put the boots in and he told us there were his kids.
And one of them was Brat, believe it or not.
And the other one, Owen was too young at the time.
And there was other kids.
He had 12 kids.
Eight boys and four girls.
Stu.
Anyhow, that was our territory.
So that was a Friday night.
That was played on Saturday morning.
So when we come to the show, that was a doubleheader that weekend.
Sunday was in the big arena.
Because they flew talent in for a big show, and when we went out, we got stuff thrown at us.
That's how hot we were.
We didn't get the drawing power, but we were hated already.
People just hated you.
You guys were known as the go to heels.
Yeah, you know, we didn't have the drawing power yet.
But, you know, when you come into a territory, they feed you guys to beat up and, you know, get over, to get you over so you can go to towns and draw people.
It usually takes six weeks.
If you're good heels, It takes six weeks of television, you know, six television shows, and you're knocking the people on the mic, and you're beating people up, and by then, if you're good heels, you can get over.
And Butcher Me, get over.
So, wait, wait, get over.
Get over to draw.
Get over.
Get over means win?
To get over.
To get over as a bad guy, to be main eventers.
Okay.
Either to get over, you know, they feed your talent to get over.
Get over means you beat them up, whether you win one, two, three, but to get over as a hated you know what I mean?
Because the name of our game is the good guy beating the bad guy.
But you're going to have the bad guy's going to go get over as the bad guy to draw houses.
How do you think that Muhammad Ali, people bought tickets to see Muhammad get beaten.
He got over because he knocked people out straight away.
Getting Over as a Bad Guy00:02:32
And he said, I'm going to knock him out in three.
And he blah, blah, blah.
And they said, That cocky bastard, we bought tickets.
That's why he got over so big.
Because people bought tickets.
Because they wanted to see him get beat.
And then he always, you know.
Really?
Yeah.
And Tyson.
Look at Tyson.
Yeah, definitely.
He was a heel, too.
Tyson was a heel, too.
George Forbin was a babyface.
He was liked.
You know what I mean?
Did you draw any kind of inspiration from guys like that?
Yeah, yeah.
We draw inspiration from, you know, Killer Kowalski.
Here's the guy that went, who Muhammad Ali followed.
Gorgeous George.
Gorgeous George was an old-time wrestler, a fag.
He wasn't a fag, but no, he worked a fag gimmick.
Oh, he did, okay.
Yeah, and overstrong, and he gave out, Bobby came out flamboyantly, hair dyed, with rollers in his hair, blah, blah, blah, and all that shit.
That's what I did earlier on in my career.
I was Sweet William.
Sweet William?
Yeah, I worked.
Did you come out with the sheep?
I worked as a fag.
I worked as a fag for a long time.
Wow.
For the first five years I worked as a fag.
Six years.
Wow.
And that was in New Zealand?
Yeah, and Australia.
And you drew more emotion out of people because.
Oh, yeah, because I had a woman in my corner or a male in the corner and I'd slap him around, slap the woman around, you know, spray me with perfume, had rollers in my hair, all that stuff, go to women's salons, get my hair done.
Is there any footage of that on the internet?
I want to see that.
No, no, no, that, but I got photos and all that as I was when I was.
Doing that gimmick, yeah.
Oh, I would have wore flowery clothes, you know, with popped out shoulders and all that stuff.
What would you say?
What?
Ballet shoes with a cross thing over here.
Yeah.
Did you have to, in a lot of your matches, did you have to hide a razor blade in your mouth and cut yourself, make yourself bleed?
What are you talking about?
You know what I mean?
No, I don't know what you mean.
You never did that?
Look at my forehead.
Is that why your forehead looks like that from you cutting yourself?
I'm not saying that, but just look at it.
I can see it.
That's wild woman with long toenails.
How's that?
So, you don't talk about that?
Blood, Guts, and Synthetic Wool00:04:14
People don't talk about that?
Well, it's been told.
People talk.
I don't talk about it.
No.
Okay.
But it's pretty gnarly.
Like a lot of the guys that want to make it and they want to get over.
Yeah, that's what I'm talking about.
They have to do crazy shit like that.
They have to cut themselves.
Hey, when I said blood capsules, there's no blood capsules.
No, it's all right.
I've never used blood capsules at all.
And I squirted blood out to as far as where you are.
Fuck.
I've hit main veins.
Oh!
On your face?
Yes.
Oh, my God, dude.
If you want to go and see bloody matches, go to the 1986 in the Superdome New Orleans, the Sheepherders vs. the Fantastics.
Anyone go and see that?
That was.
Who were the Sheepherders?
I was the Sheepherders.
It was the Bushwhackers.
Oh, you called yourself the Sheepherders.
We were the Sheepherders well before the Bushwhackers.
Vince changed us to good guys.
And he changed the name to the Bushwhackers because he wanted to own us.
He didn't like the sheep herd.
Oh, because he wanted to change it so he could own it.
Yeah, own it.
He couldn't own it.
He wanted us to be the good guys.
He says, you know, it's time for you to change to be the good guys.
We'd been the bad guys.
I'd been a bad guy from 1962 to 1988.
What's with the whole sheep gimmick?
What's that called?
The sheep herd is because New Zealand has got 3 million people and 100 million sheep.
Oh, God.
That's what I said.
Did you catch on before when I said the sheep shaggers?
No, I heard that.
I heard that.
I just don't know where it came from.
New Zealand's well known for that.
There's really over 100 million sheep in New Zealand.
New Zealand was evergreen, mate.
They burned all the rough gorse and all the weed and all else.
And they put grazing, they grass seeded the whole countryside, the hills and everything.
We were the first country to do top dressing on planes.
You know, when they drop the seeds out of the wings and they come in over the pastures and that.
Yeah, yeah.
They feed the pastures.
New Zealand was the first country to do that.
The whole country's mountainous like that.
Yeah, yeah.
They've got big mountains, but we're just covered in sheep, you know.
Sheep were everywhere.
Did you have any bad sheep?
Huh?
Did you have your own sheep?
No, no.
But the sheep farms, you know, the sheep farms in New Zealand, They're three or four miles, you know, some of them are two or three miles by three miles.
Really?
Yeah, that's a big, big farms.
A hundred million sheep.
That must be a big wool export.
Yeah, it was, until synthetic came in.
We were big in farm products, you know, our butter and our wool, but now everything's synthetic.
That killed our economy when that synthetic stuff came out.
Synthetic wool and all that, they started doing all that stuff.
But New Zealand was big export in wool.
So for your gimmick, you guys were called the sheep herders.
Did you guys?
And we used to come out in sheep jackets, too.
You know, white jackets with sleeves off, thick wool like that?
Did you guys ever bring a sheep with you?
No.
Like to walk out with a sheep?
No, no.
You carry a sheep around.
You can't bring a sheep into a WWE match?
I mean, Stone Cold brought out a giant fucking beer truck.
We were not the sheep herders then, mate.
We were the bushwhackers.
No, I'm talking about when you were the sheep herders.
No, we never had sheep.
We just carried the New Zealand flag.
We were known for being nasty son of a bitches.
If you go online, it says the sheep herders were hardcore before hardcore became our name brand.
So, what did you guys do that was so nasty?
The way we worked, and we were blood and guts.
You just roughed them up.
Roughed them up, blood and guts.
That's why we worked a lot in South America and a lot in the territories where they had bloody matches all the time.
Hardcore Sheep Herders00:12:40
And we came up with a lot of different matches, names of a lot of different matches.
Those days there were territories, mate.
When we come over here, everywhere you ran seven nights a week.
Even when we went into that Grand Prix and that, they ran seven towns.
They were running 21 towns a week.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
And that, and every night.
And you come back to, you do programs with guys.
You might, Roddy Piper, Butch and me worked with Rick Martel and Roddy Piper for a year.
Every night.
We'd go into six man's, they'd bring in Jesse Ventura.
Or they bring in the giant, and we'd bring in another guy to be an outside.
And we just worked with those two to town so you could have storylines and plan things and do things to spike it.
And then you'd sell out, then you'd go down to three quarters of the house and it'd start winning.
Then you spike it again and come up.
You know what I mean?
That's what you have television for to do angles, to set your plots.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's when the heel does stuff to get.
To get the people going, and that's where Vince is like at the moment because being a public company and he's got all these stockholders and that, he can't do heavy stuff like he did before.
So, I mean, so when Vince bought you, when Vince asked us to come in there, so what was that like?
What was that like?
Did you meet him?
Did he reach out to you?
What was that?
Well, we were working for Turner at the time, yeah, and that, and we were working to get to main guys there, and um.
We were working in Cincinnati on a Saturday night.
I'll always remember this.
And I'm in the goals gym with Butch in the morning.
And I never worked my drum out so much.
Butch always worked his drum at the end of a workout.
His drum?
The drum.
Your stomach.
Your drum.
Oh, your drum.
Okay.
Your boiler.
I never heard that.
I like that.
Working my drum, mate.
You've got to fill your drum out.
That's why you go to a restaurant.
That's right.
Fill your drum out.
I love that.
Or your boiler.
My fucking drum, mate.
Your boiler.
And he was doing that.
So I went to pick up my messages from my home.
I was living in Charlotte.
Because that was the headquarters for NWA.
They were running all over the country.
As far as Baltimore and Philly, and we'd go to Long Island now and again, but we never went into Manhattan or any of there or up the East Coast there.
WWF was up there.
That was Vince Sr.
Ted Tuna's television was never strong.
His thing wasn't in the packages of the cable.
TBS wasn't strong up there till, I'd say 90 88, 90.
TBS got strong in the northern parts and it's strong everywhere now.
You know what I mean.
Well, that's 30 years ago.
But USA Network and W, is it WN?
What's the another cables?
A few cables.
They're strong up there anyhow.
Yeah, so we wouldn't come up that far and I anyhow.
They went to the anyhow, going back to Cincinnati went, Pulled up my messages and there's a voice.
It's Pat here.
He says, When you got time, give me a call.
Pat Patterson?
Yes.
Wow.
Oh, you know Pat Patterson?
I know Pat Patterson, yeah.
Yeah, Pat.
Patricia.
Anyhow, one of the best tag wrestlers ever.
Now he's like one of the top executives, right, at WWE.
Yeah, but one of the top, you know, he was one of the top.
Him and Ray Stevens, Butcher Me copied a bit of their stuff too.
They were one of the best tag teams ever.
Anyhow, He said, give us a call.
So I said, that's funny.
So, anyhow, I give them a call and I'm on speakerphone.
And the speakerphone, they're in Vince's home, not in the office, they're in his home.
And I said, is Pat there?
And he said, yeah, Pat.
And he says, yeah, there's a guy here who wants to talk to you.
And then a voice in the background said, Kiwi, I'd like to use you.
I said, who are you?
He said, oh, Vince McMahon here.
And I'd been sending tapes to this fucking bastard since Betamax.
If you know what Betamax is.
Yeah.
Early 80.
Yeah.
I'd been sending to the dad, the Betamax.
And then I said, every year I'd send tapes to them.
Can you use us?
Because that was the number one, one of the number one companies in the country.
You know what I mean?
They only worked up north at the time.
They only came down as far as Philadelphia and Baltimore, and they did Boston.
They did all that up there, but it was big money there.
So I've been trying, but they didn't take us smaller guys at the time.
They had big guys.
I'm talking about guys six foot four, six foot three, and 260 up, you know?
So he says, Yeah, and I said, Yeah.
I said, Yeah, I'm interested.
He says, When can I see you?
When can I talk to you?
And I says, you just name the time and that.
And we were working planned every day for NWA.
And he says, right, when you get home, there'll be tickets at your door.
There'll be tickets at your door when you get home.
I gave him my address on the phone and he says, next Wednesday.
And he says, all you do, you don't have to bring anything with you.
When you fly up there, you'll be flying home the same night.
So we flew into Kennedy.
There was a limousine up there waiting for us.
We went straight up to Stanford, Connecticut, which is an hour away from Kennedy.
Met Vince.
Vince Jr.
Vince Jr.
Yeah, Senior was dead.
Senior died in four.
Okay.
Three or four.
83 or 84.
And that we met him.
And that funny part of us went into the office and was sitting there.
And he says to us, You know, I'd like to bring you in as baby faces, good guys.
And of course, I piped up and said to him, Bring us in as heels first and turn us.
And he says, No, I don't do things that way.
And then I found out, You don't tell Caesar, his nickname was Caesar, you don't tell Caesar what to do.
You know what I mean?
He says that, and I'd like you to be between the sheepherders and the moon dogs.
Work like between the sheepherders and the moon dog.
The moon dogs were two guys and had bones.
Big, heavy guys were crazy and had bones.
You know what I mean?
And there were heels up there.
And he says, and I'll start bringing you up every week for the next month to do vignettes, which you know what vignettes are small movies, two to three minute movies, you know, to get you over.
So, um, We got home, and when we got home, and that there was the tickets there.
Two days later, Butch calls me up and he says, Fuck, there's something here, a package here, they've sent the wrong names.
It's for the bushwhackers.
And I says to Butch, he says, they must have sent them to the wrong person.
I said, No, he's changing our name because he wants to own it.
You know what I mean?
He's changing our name.
So that's how we became the.
The Bushwhackers.
Oh, yeah.
So you didn't even know what he was going to call you until he sent you that.
No, no.
Wow.
You know, a Bushwhacker.
No, like, back and forth about it at all.
He just made up his mind.
No, no.
You don't have a choice.
You know that?
If you want to work the Caesar.
Anyhow, a Bushwhacker is like a Robin Hood steals from the rich and gives to the poor.
Okay.
You know what I mean?
Mm hmm.
And they did a thing like that with Mick Jaggers in Australia, that movie.
I forget the name of it, but that's what he was.
You know, a bushwhacker.
So there you are, that's the name of that.
So he kept bringing us up, and at the time, which was exploding on television, was Crocodile Dundee.
Yeah.
And that's so, all the vignettes were written around like that, you know, driving on the wrong side of the road and talking and that, and we did a lot of vignettes.
And that crazy ones going to a drink machine and putting, you know, and shaking the machine saying, How do we get these drinks out?
And people on the street say, Oh, you drop, put quarters in, then the can will come out.
And how do you open them?
And I took out my teeth and popped them with my teeth.
You guys are just kind of like cavemen.
Yeah, cavemen and that, you know what I mean?
And doing all sorts of stuff.
And then we asked the guy for directions, and we turned around and Butch says, Oh, these Americans are great.
They'd even tell you where to go, you know, but we put it the way that they tell you to fuck off, you know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah.
The way, and we did a lot of vignettes, you know.
Went into restaurants and that, and they served us stuff.
We ordered the whole menu, and we threw away the knives, and we ate from down under, you know, with our hands and that, and all that sort of stuff.
We did a lot of vignettes.
So by the time we got a month was over, they'd see we'd done, every time we flew up, we did two or three different vignettes.
Wow.
So for a month, we did 12 vignettes.
And then, when did you guys get into that?
And then they called us up and we started on the road.
And at the start, we didn't, he never gave us the arm swinging or the head licking.
We came up with all that because the Moondogs.
We said, Butch said to me, he says, the Moondogs were on, been on USA Network for the last five years, and we've been on in the, on Turner Network on and off from 79 to 88.
So let's create something different.
And when we were, when we're working in Turner Studios, we, every time we went outside the ring, we'd swing up our arms and go, whoa.
You know what I mean?
To scare the people.
You know what I mean?
We go out there and go, whoa!
And that, and so he said, let's go, let's start swinging our arms, going to the ring.
So that's how we got the march.
And then we added the lick, which I grabbed the head, but I always licked the back of my hand.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, you don't want to do that.
Head licking.
Butch got staffed later on.
That's why he got real sick.
You got staffed?
Oh, yeah, we'll get to that.
He nearly died twice.
He died twice?
Nearly died twice, yeah.
From licking heads.
Well, he got staff infection.
and that it could have been from licking, or it could have been from a thing, a liniment called DMSO, which they use for horses.
It heals torn ligaments and muscles overnight.
You rub it on, and it goes with DMSO, and it's very strong.
You can put it in your hand and use the thing, ultrasound under here, and it will bubble in your hand.
It goes right through, and a lot of people have used it.
If you've got bacteria on your hair, and you rub it and you've got a scratch, that'll take it right to the bone.
So we don't know that he got the star from that or it was licking.
You know sweaty sweating, sweaty hairs and that you know, and all different people because he used to grab them and give them a lick.
Yeah, I mean that's that's, that's dirty ass, man.
Yeah anyhow um so anyhow.
That's how we went through that.
Spikes at WrestleMania00:10:46
We, after about a month, we got our gimmick down pat, you know our marching and that yeah, and now in Reena, as soon as we start our music, come on, everyone will be standing And doing this, you know what I mean.
And even on NFL, guys would go behind the line for a touchdown and then, you know, they'd do the march.
Yeah, they'd be marching.
That's how hot it got over.
March.
In the late 80s, that got over.
And it's still, when I was working on Sunday, you know, I come out of March, all the people are swinging their arms up, standing, you know, because as soon as they hear the music, the wrestling fans, they know it.
Thanks to WWE Network.
They play all our old stuff.
They've even got our sheep herders where we were bad guys.
They've got all that stuff.
The network's got all the stuff on.
That keeps us alive.
And every time they do the Royal Rumble, which is the pay-per-view in January, they always show the one that I was throwing.
As I got up on the apron, Earthquake grabbed me.
Took me over the ring and and went out and I, as soon as I landed, I just started marching.
Yeah, I saw that video.
That's been got, that's been played since 1992.
What?
Every year, what's the most amount of money you ever made wrestling?
Is there like one match that made you the most money ever?
What was like your peak week?
What was the best week you ever had?
I don't know mate, I can't just like estimate just rough.
It doesn't have to be exact.
Biggest week, 10 or 12 grand.
10 or 12 grand yeah Wow.
How many matches did you have to do that week?
A full week.
Full week every day?
No, I've made more than that, but you know, that's the biggest one in a pay per view.
That's the biggest payoff I got in the pay-per-view.
Oh, okay.
Yeah.
Damn.
And what was like your biggest match?
What was like the peak match that you had?
Okay, there's two different ones that I'll remember for a lifetime.
And that is the first one is the Wembley Stadium in London.
The old Wembley Stadium.
The last show before they pulled it down to build the new one.
We, Butcher, me and Hacksaw Duggan were against the Nasty Boys and the Mountie.
There was 94,000 600 people there and we were we were the first match to get the people up You know the crowd had been sitting there and that first match is a big thing Yeah, because if the first match sucks the crowd's down for and it's hard to get them back.
You know what I mean?
We walked out there and that was The people were fucking on fire You know that you know because you know watching a football match There's you know, how many's 11 on the side in there?
How many's in a football team your football teams?
How many people on a football team?
No, there's like 20 or 30, I thought.
On the field at once?
Oh, no, Yeah, I don't know.
I don't know.
You know, now, but when you're in the ring, there's only six of us in that ring.
Right.
And you've got all those people looking at you.
You know what I mean?
And if you're a single match, you know, a lot of them have been in tags, me and Butch, and it's been 76,000.
But that was the biggest.
The biggest for me was 94-6.
Walking out there.
The aura, the tension.
Yeah, it's got to feel crazy.
It's just fucking mind blowing, you know what I mean?
And you don't have to do nothing.
You just have to go, whoa.
And the whole people will go, whoa.
You go, yay.
So there was me and Butch going, whoa and yay.
And Hexwood Duncan go, whoa.
So that it was fucking wild.
We could have done that all night and not have to do any action.
We did some wild stuff.
We didn't have to do much because the people were there.
They're just loving it.
Yeah.
It's insane.
Being the first match.
Being the first match.
And that, you know, since then, it's been, you know, they did 104,000 in Texas Stadium three WrestleManias ago.
That was how many?
104.
104,000.
Yeah, in the Texas Stadium.
I went to my first WrestleMania last year.
I think it was last year.
Maybe it was two years ago.
It was in New Orleans.
Yeah, I was there.
Yeah, that was the first WrestleMania I ever went to, and it was, I did not expect it to be that.
Because I'd only watched wrestling matches on TV before that.
And when I got there, I luckily got like floor seats.
I was maybe like eight rows back on the floor.
And Dana White was actually like a few rows in front of me.
And just the fucking show, the fire and the lights and everything was just so over the top.
The thing that stood out to me the most was the Undertaker's intro.
Everything like out of nowhere, the whole stadium just goes black.
And then it's just like that.
Kong sound that fucking that bell goes off and then the light shines down on him It just it fucking made my hair it made my hair stand up You don't have to be a wrestler like the ultimate warrior, you know, he was a bodybuilder stop eating He was a bodybuilder and that and He didn't care about the wrestling and that but the smoke and mirrors and him running to the ropes and shaking the ropes shaking the ropes.
That's all he had to do cuz he couldn't do God bless him up there, but he didn't have to do much more.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, and that's Smoke and mirrors.
They do a great fucking job with the smoke and mirrors, though.
Yeah, very.
Hey, the pyro and the lighting, and it's insane.
It's ridiculous how much money they have to be able to spend.
They have to spend millions and millions and millions of dollars.
Do you know how many 18 wheelers he's got?
Snow shows he's got about 15 18 wheelers to 20 18 wheelers outside with all the props and all the stuff.
Two of them are the broadcasting units where they're editing and sending it to the satellite.
You know, the live.
There's two trucks doing that shit.
But the rest is.
I wonder if there's a documentary on what it takes to run behind the scenes of WrestleMania.
All the trucks, the crew, the equipment.
Yeah, and the riggers to rigging beforehand.
You know, to rig everything up.
It's literally like a major motion picture budget for a one-time live show.
Yeah, and that's what he does too, you know, like he did the Bradley Center in in Brooklyn.
What's it called?
The Barclays Center.
Barclays Center.
Barclays Center.
Friday night was NXT.
You know, that's the.
Now that's on Wednesday night, right?
Now on USA Network.
NXT.
That's the guy's coming up, right?
NXT, he did on Friday night in the Barclays.
He did Saturday night, he did the Hall of Fame in the Barclays Center.
Sunday, they did the Outdoor in Meadowlands, the WrestleMania.
I'm talking about in the New York.
Not last year, the year before.
Then he come back on Monday night, the Barkley Center.
Tuesday night, the Barkley Center.
Monday night was Raw.
Tuesday night was SmackDown.
So he was the Barkley Center.
So he just once set up.
Oh, yeah, that makes so much sense.
That's what they did in New Orleans as well.
Yes, yeah, that's what they did.
Yes.
See, once again.
And it's coming to Tampa this year.
Yeah, but it's going to be there.
That's going to be insane.
But Amelia Arena for the show.
Amelia Arena?
Amelia Arena.
For WrestleMania?
No.
No?
No, Emily Arena.
No.
It's the Buck Stadium.
Oh, there's Randy James.
Yeah, Randy James.
Okay.
And that.
Emily is for the NXT, the Hall of Fame, and then Monday and Tuesday, Raw and SmackDown.
Okay.
Unreal, huh?
That'll be a long week.
Yeah.
God, that's going to be wild.
Yeah.
Are you going to be there?
Yeah, yeah.
And then, I don't know.
Not for them.
No.
And then there's, you know, when there's WrestleMania, there's usually about eight wrestling shows around it.
All the big independent companies in the States go to, you know, New Orleans, there was stuff going from Thursday.
Oh, yeah.
Even though they had WWE had their stuff.
WrestleCon and all that stuff.
Yeah, all that.
There's WrestleCon.
There's ROH.
There's all these different other companies running, you know.
This year, ROH will be running and they run Lakeland.
That's the closest they can get their building.
And that all the other places have been bought by different companies.
You know what I mean?
Right, right, right.
It's going to be insane.
That's what the guy, the mayor in Orlando, that's why he gives them everything for nothing at the WWE because it brings so much tourists from overseas to his place.
Because when they come to, you know, WrestleMania draws from Japan, from all Europe, and that from New Zealand, Australia.
Brings draws from all over the world, right?
And that's so, you know, Orlando, they've got.
Sea world they've got everything there, so that's why he gives it because the tourists not only come for WrestleMania They catch everything now Tampa too will they'll get they'll get them because people will come here to go to to Orlando to catch everything else too Okay, yeah, boost the whole city during that rail they should I don't know when they're gonna get that rail going, but they're gonna have that rail running to from Orlando to Fort Lauderdale and to Tampa.
Yeah, you know that one speed train or whatever it is or something like the bullet That's in the makings.
I don't know when that's going to happen.
That'll be fucking nice.
Yeah.
The time you drive to the place and then sit around, get on the plane and then get off, and that is, if they get the plane like the bullet, 120, 130 mile an hour, 150 mile an hour train, it's easier to do, you know?
Yeah.
I was going to ask you.
Anyhow, where were we?
What kind of fucking injuries have you had?
Have you had some pretty terrible injuries?
Have you had to have surgeries and back surgeries?
Because I know Hulk's pretty messed up from all his back surgeries.
Yeah, I've held off from back surgery.
Flying to Hawaii for Xanax00:05:14
But I've had two right knee replacements.
The first replacement I wore out wrestling.
And I did 14 years.
It lasted 14 years in the ring.
Oh, God.
And the new one has got spikes.
You know, where it goes into the bone and goes up in the other one.
It was round before.
So it's like that, where it goes up.
And it was smooth.
Now there's little spikes on it.
So when they cement it in with the spikes, it can't get loose.
Okay.
Yeah.
The last one I had a tour in England, and it was loose, and it was it was like electric shocks in my leg.
I was loaded on.
Painkillers?
Painkillers, yeah.
I had to do a tour.
Some Xanax or something?
Huh?
Were you taking Xanax or Viking?
No, that's not a painkiller.
That's a good person.
I'm taking stronger ones.
Stronger to.
Valium.
Valium, no.
That's like Xanax.
Xanax and Xanax.
The same, mate.
The good stuff.
The value, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
The Xanax is what you feed the sheep first.
Yeah, the Valium and Xanax have that.
Anyhow, yeah, so my career, that's where I came.
Then I came to the States.
I lived in Hawaii.
I worked across Canada, right across Canada in the 70s.
And a wee bit in the States, but I was living in Canada.
And then in 79, I came, in 78, 79, I came and I was living in Hawaii.
And we used to work on four islands a week in there.
And I used to fly over.
Diamond Head every night and see Jack Lord and the crew doing Hawaii 5 0.
Oh, yeah.
I had to come right low in that and I could look right down and see him doing Hawaii 5 0.
That's cool.
That was great.
But in Hawaii, I just kept my head above water.
Yeah.
I didn't make any money.
You know what I mean?
Right.
I made money to survive.
I lived right across, I lived on Waikiki Beach and that.
Got up every morning, went to the gym.
By 10 o'clock, I was on the beach every day.
At 5.30, I would fly out to one of the islands.
The promo had his own planes.
We'd fly to the islands and do an island.
I'd be back in Waikiki around 10 o'clock every night.
That's where the rock's from, right?
He's from Hawaii, isn't he?
The rock.
Yeah, he used to live in Hawaii when he was a kid.
Yeah, he lived there because his grandma and grandfather, Peter Marvilla, They owned the promotion.
Down the road, they owned the promotion.
And he was born in the States.
He lived in New Zealand, too, for two years.
Did he really?
Yeah.
I wrestled the Rock's grandfather.
Me and Butch wrestled him.
Peter Marvia.
You know, in Hall of Fame, we told the story about that.
We wrestled Peter Marvia, the Rock's grandfather.
And then the Rock's dad, I've wrestled him, I still see him a lot.
And then I wrestled him.
In Australia, New Zealand and the States.
No way the rock's dad everywhere.
But but the rock's grandfather I wrestled just in Australia and in New Zealand.
Were they anything like the rock?
Or those guys like, yeah, it's what?
The rock's third generation right?
Where do you think he got it from exactly?
Yeah, I see it's before my time, so that's why I gotta ask.
No, the rock's grandfather, Peter Marveille, was a high chief, Samoan chief and that, and he was in the first James Bond movies.
He was in a lot of movies, Bit parts.
Oh shit, no way.
He's the one that had to fight and went through the screen in the movie with Kendall Sticks at the start of that first, was it Dr. No?
What was the first?
First James, I can't remember.
That's going way back.
Yeah.
But he was in those movies and that.
And then Rocky Johnson, he was a big name.
He was the first, him and Tony Atlas were the first black people ever to have the WWF.
World belts.
You know they were the first black people to have the world world straps in in wrestling.
Damn yeah, Rocky Johnson, I work with him all over the all over the States yeah, and in Australia and in New Zealand.
That's wild.
Yeah, I actually.
I actually met his uh, his mom at uh, Rick Flair's wedding.
Yeah, I went there and I made a little video, made like a little documentary, about his wedding and his mom was there and I got to talk to her.
I did a little interview Rock's mom and dad.
They're like super involved in wrestling.
They're super close to so many different people, like Ric Flair.
Well, they're broken up now, but they still live in the same street.
Who's broken up?
The Rock's mom and dad.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, they live in the same street as The Rock down in Davie, but because Rock bought all the homes for the family there.
Where's that at?
Down in Davie.
Where's Davie?
Meeting Andy Kaufman's Mom00:06:20
South Florida, like Lauderdale.
Oh, okay.
Yeah, anyhow.
Mum and dad used to come to our restaurant when they had the bushwhackers down at a steakhouse on Dal Mabry and that they used to come there all the time.
Yeah.
And eat.
Why are there, it seems like everybody lives in Tampa, every restaurant.
Why?
Because of the weather, mate.
The weather sucks here.
It's so hot.
Fuck, it's cold.
They like it.
Mate, you don't know what it's like to live up north.
Yeah, that's true.
You have to put clothes on to go outside.
You come inside, you have to strip off.
When you go outside, you have to double up clothes.
You have to double up everything.
So is it because all these WWE wrestlers, they've been exposed to every country, every city on earth, and they've found that Tampa is by far the best.
Yeah, and Florida too.
Just Florida in general.
Laws and everything too.
The tax laws are way better here for sure.
Yeah, they're cheap too, and if you go into bankruptcy, you um, still keep your home in your car.
You know what I mean?
Hell yeah, do a lot of wrestlers go bankrupt?
No, i've been.
I've been down there in the restaurant that did one on Dal Mabry.
I come back and it was three quarters of a million in debt.
I went overseas, for I went overseas and stayed up in the Middle East this is after WWF and I came back and it was 780 780 000 in debt.
I had to go bankrupt there.
Who the hell did you have running that operation?
No, there's only two people who had to the back door.
And by the time I got back, they said to me, everybody was coming in.
We're open from 11 a.m. to 12 p.m., midnight.
And they were going out after midnight and partying on the strip.
And that, you know, all the restaurants, the titty bars around there.
Then coming back, we sold lobster.
Monsters.
You know, filly mignon and all that shit.
And they were taking out cube rolls, lobster tails, and drinking the alcohol.
That's fucked up.
Just partying.
Five o'clock.
They were going out at five because I went to the company who was doing the service for us.
And they gave me the sheets.
And they said, this is what's been happening.
Everyone had the key code.
Anyhow, getting back to wrestling.
So anyhow, that was that.
That's crazy, man.
Yeah, anyhow, after we come into the States.
That's when I got into the booking side of it.
You know, my first territory is a booker.
If you know what a booker is, the booker is the guy that runs the back of the house for the promoter.
And that.
The wrestling promoter does a promotion, books the arenas, has the television and does all that sort of stuff.
You know, he doesn't write.
But the booker writes the television and books the talent and lays out the matches and writes the television show.
And I started doing that in 83.
And I did that right up until I went into WWE.
And when I got out of WWE in 2001, I went down to Puerto Rico and ran a company, IWA there to 2008.
And I had all Latins there.
Here I am, an English-speaking person, and I had 30 Latins working for me.
Oh, my God.
In Puerto Rico?
And it was Telemundo.
First, we could use other music, you know, any music and that.
And we could use, you know, the rock songs and all that sort of stuff.
And then Telemundo was bought out by NBC.
And then we had to tighten the whole show up.
You know, it had to be right on the second for commercial breaks.
No, we had to buy generic music.
And they had to change the whole front of the thing.
Who is the guy that got murdered in Puerto Rico?
Bruiser Brody.
Bruiser Brody.
And his wife is a Kiwi.
I still talk to Barbara on the internet.
You do, really?
His wife?
His wife is from New Zealand, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah, Lanny was talking a little bit about that.
Yeah, he was a good friend of mine.
He drew a lot of money with me with Abdullah the Butcher.
Did he really?
Yeah, Abdullah and him drew, they were the biggest stars in Japan ever.
From what they say is that he was like a big time bully.
Like he bullied people a lot.
Well, that's, yeah.
Not like in the ring, but like behind the scenes.
He was like kind of a dick and kind of a bully to people.
That's what I've heard from like documentaries about him.
And that's.
Yeah, well, that's a.
I know him from a different point of view.
He was a.
When he went in.
When he got booked to go work in a territory, he went in there to get over as the bad guy.
Yeah.
And he got over straight away.
Because if you don't get over, you don't draw any money.
He was always the main event.
And that you always gotta heal, it's gotta get over because the bait the good guy's gonna have someone to beat.
You know, there's always a good guy in a territory, a load the local good guy.
You know what I mean?
And you feed the bad guys to him all the time.
Once a good guy, bad guy gets over, he has a good strong run, then he goes and they have to get another bad guy over, and the good guy stays there.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Like Jerry Lawler stayed in Memphis all those years.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Made a you know, I remember when when the guy from Taxi, he's dead.
The guy from Taxi came in and that, and he was on the David Letterman show.
I don't know.
Remember the show Taxi?
Yeah, I remember the show.
I don't remember who you're talking about, though.
Who were the mainstays?
Andy Kaufman.
Okay.
Andy Kaufman.
He's the guy who came in and wrestled a woman and that, from New York and that, and got over and that, and he wasn't big and that, but he did a big program.
I was there when they did the bird.
Jimmy Hart was the main part of this, too.
Did he tell you about the Andy Kaufman thing?
No.
Oh, that was the big thing.
David Letterman came down.
They did the whole big, the Letterman show there.
No way.
Yeah, that's when they did the burning and that.
And with Kaufman, it was a hell of an angle.
An angle is a thing that you do to draw houses down the line and that.
The Hogan Hangout Story00:06:24
Okay.
T.O. Lawler did a big thing there.
Yeah.
So what are you doing now?
So what's next?
So what's your future?
What's the future for the Bushwhacker?
Well, For the loop to put my marching boots on and march for a while, just gonna march into the sunset.
No, no, I'm not marching into the sunset yet.
No, I'm going back.
Looks like I'm gonna go back into the um restaurant bar business.
Are you really?
Yeah, that's a tough business.
Yeah, I know.
Tough business, tough business.
I know I've been there.
The gym business, also.
I mean, you just got out of the gym business, yeah, but that I got out of that because of the rent, you know, the guy, the plaza was sold, and um, and then my contract.
They raised the rent on that.
And the rent was one and a half times what I grossed.
Wow.
God damn.
That doesn't work.
The brown box has taken over that and the Japanese restaurant.
Yeah.
The brown box is going to put a stairway up into there from the top.
Are you kidding me?
So they're going to be two levels.
No, I'm kidding you, man.
That's going to be insane.
Yeah, they're putting a bowling alley and games room and all.
Up top?
No.
Oh.
Down below.
Down below.
Yeah, they're going to dig a hole and go underneath.
Of course.
They're putting a stairway up top.
And going straight up.
You're not going to put a bowling alley on the second floor, are you?
A mini bowling alley.
I think they're going to put a mini.
A games room.
You know, like the Tappan Token?
That did shit on the South Beach.
But they've always had the idea, Dave and Buster.
If they do it right, if they do it right.
Yeah, that's a good spot for that.
That would be pretty cool.
That place is fucking jam packed every weekend.
I haven't been down there in years.
Now, you know the hallway there between the Japanese place and the gym?
Oh, yeah.
That's going to be closed off.
Okay.
And that elevator there, and they're putting a stairway there down, down into, right into the brown boxes.
Wow, that's insane.
So that's going to be, there's a, hey, that's going to be a big job there.
You know what I mean?
It's going to be at least, I'd say a half a million to, it's going to be a million dollar job.
Oh, yeah.
So where are you working out now that you don't have the gym?
Where are you in there?
I went there today to the, To Clearwater Beach Fitness, I sold the name and all the equipment.
I sold to the media and all that stuff.
Everything.
I told him everything.
Are you still working out there, though?
Yeah, I worked out there today, but I've been going with Hulk to the goals on East Bay.
With Hulk?
Yeah.
Okay.
Still hanging out with Hulk a lot?
No, I haven't been hanging out with him, but I haven't seen him.
You know, I've been on the road before at the gym and that, but now I've got more time, and I'm looking to do something on the beach.
I'm waiting for him to open up there, too.
See, but that's a long job.
Open up what?
You know, Hogan's Hangout.
It's been sitting there ready to open up for six months.
I don't even know what Hogan's Hangout is.
Where?
On the corner, next to the Brown Boxer.
In the same plaza?
Well, they have the beach shop.
You know where the surf shop was next to the beach shop?
The surf shop used to be.
Oh, yeah, or Mandalay's beach.
They've had that for three years.
They've done it all up.
It's ready to open.
And what's it going to be?
It's Hogan's Hangout.
Is that going to be a bar?
Hogan's Hangout.
What are you doing?
You're walking in, you hang out?
What are you doing?
Yeah, a bar restaurant.
Okay, a bar restaurant.
Wow.
That's going to be crazy.
Upstairs is open.
It's got inside out, outside upstairs.
What?
It's already open?
No.
It's ready to open.
I'm chomping at the bit.
I want to go hang out with Hogan.
It's been ready to open for the last three months.
I don't know what the city's doing.
You know what Claywater Beach is?
Yeah, they're pretty good.
That was three years in the makings.
They started doing this three years ago.
Damn.
You're behind time.
What's going on?
So is he doing it by himself?
I mean, who's he got working with him on?
Is that all confidential or do you know?
Is he like working with somebody who's no, someone else's.
He's just given his name.
Exactly, right.
Like with yeah, it's Hogan's Beach.
Like Hogan's Beach.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Wow.
So that's it.
That'll be cool.
I can't wait to check that shit out.
It's already built and it's got the big signs up.
Hogan's Hangout and all that.
That would have been perfect right next to your gym, man.
That would have been so great right next to the gym.
Yeah, right at the gym because it would have been good for traffic.
That would have been great.
Yeah, but they would this guy, as soon as he came in and bought the plaza, the word was he wanted to to make it all games, all, you know, food restaurants and games and that.
And he's got all those, you know, he's got the plane and all that stuff.
The simulation, the simulator.
There's about three or four of those places in that plaza now.
There's three or four rooms there now.
Really scary rooms.
And there's a.
Ah, the escape room.
Yeah, the escape room.
They have the escape room.
And there's, what's the name now?
The Pokeball Place.
And there's another bar there where they make all the slushy drinks.
Okay.
You know what are they called.
Yeah, it's a.
It's a clear one.
It's a.
It's a tourist.
It's a tourist.
Yeah, he's wanting to do that.
He's one.
So I got the message, even though I told him it when he first came there.
I said a gym was always good down there because it brings people to the plaza and they spit, then they can eat and get the hair all the.
You know what I mean?
Yeah, he wanted to get rid of me.
I used to drive.
I used to drive across town.
I used to make a 20 minute drive almost every day to go to that gym.
I loved going to that gym.
Yeah, that was the last of it and everyone around the country had come there.
They come in there and they always gave me good write-ups.
You know, I had a 4.9 and a five-star on Google, TripAdvisor.
Yeah, you did.
Yeah, you did.
You had a great place.
You ran that place right, that's for sure.
And it was 24 hours.
Yep, and that's it.
Well, I'm sure the new restaurant bar will be.
Yeah, it was already there.
If the guy.
I'm trying to get rid of.
Use my name.
I'm doing the same thing.
Oh, yeah?
Yeah.
Okay, that's smart.
Where's that going to be at?
Well, I can't say until I'm positive.
Stay out of the fucking bean counting and the liquor sales.
Stay out of all that crap.
Just rent your name out.
I don't want to be doing the wages.
You don't want to be in the business.
The tax.
Yeah, just license.
The tax man.
License the Luke name, and that's it.
Yeah, that's it, mate.
I want to do that.
Well, cool, Luke.
Running the 24-Hour Bar00:11:58
Thanks for coming out and sharing your stories and sharing your.
I haven't told any good stories yet.
I've just been telling you about my life.
Let's get a good story.
Let's get a good story.
What's the best story from your wrestling?
Tell me the wackiest, craziest fucking story you got.
We'll end it with like a crazy fucking story that'll blow people's minds.
I can't yet because I don't know how far I can go.
You can go.
No, this is a YouTube video.
So you can go.
Here's one.
You can go so fucking far.
You know, in NWA, we did a lot of towns in the south there.
And, you know, the.
the southern cops in a lot of these little towns and that.
There was one town when we used to do TV in, I can't even think of the name of the town now, but we had to go through smaller towns to get to it, you know, do the TV there.
And the cops used to wait for the boys to come through it to give them tickets, you know what I mean?
Right.
It's one of those things, you're doing 65, 55, 45, and you come near the town, it's 25, and then it goes down to 15.
Anyhow.
We go through that town and then we pick up speed and get out of town.
And there's Roddy Piper, me, and Butch.
We're drinking, and this is going back in the early 80s, having a couple of toques and that.
A couple of toques, a couple of bumps.
Yeah, and then no bumps.
No bumps.
That was like the drug of choice back then, cocaine.
I heard some crazy cocaine stories wrestling.
I can tell you something too, but I don't want to tell it because people are still alive.
Anyhow, just use pseudonym names.
Anyhow, We get out we get on the road there.
We just get out out about 20 minutes away and a guy had been following us.
We didn't know and now we've put some speed up and that and we get pulled over Yeah, and the fucking the cop was a real southern redneck cop and that blah blah blah He says he says they're gonna take you in You're caught at doing I think was 70 we're doing 70 and a 55 mile he says and he said he took the driver he said you follow me he says one of you is coming to he put one of us in the police car And one of us had,
it was Roddy Piper driving.
And we take us back to the little town and he took us back to the courthouse.
On the way back to the courthouse, he called the judge.
The judge gets up and that was the time we get there.
We're waiting outside.
The judge's home is next door to the little courthouse.
And it's one of these little towns, you blink as you go through it.
You know what I mean?
You blink as you go through it.
And.
We wait for him.
He comes across from his home to the courtroom in a dressing gown and slippers.
Let's us in and we go, we sit in front of the bench and that and blah, blah, blah.
And he finds Roddy right there and then.
So much.
And if you don't pay it, then they take your license.
So they hold your license there till you pay it.
And you get your license back.
Anyhow, I don't know what happened, whether he took the license, but we scraped up between the three of us, the find, I think, or he took his license.
Anyhow, the hammer goes down, the fine, pay, we go to leave.
We go outside.
Now he's sitting at a table like this, right?
And it's best like that.
And about where those things there is the window where you've got your other monitors there.
Maybe closer, half the distance.
And he's sitting here.
He's sitting at his desk about here.
And there's the monitors there.
We come around to that window there and Roddy gets up and pisses.
Pisses all over the window in front of the judge.
He could turn like just like that and he could see the piss hitting the window and that and I I was freaking out his buddy they was, he didn't give a, you know what I mean and he was pissing.
I can imagine if he just turned around and saw it, he'd come out.
We would have been locked up that night.
Oh my god, that's insane.
That's yeah wow, all right dude, thank you.
Thank you for the stories, Luke.
That was awesome.
That's a mild one, but there's a lot of.
I want to get some really good ones.
Here's one.
Then We're up in Bangkok or Singapore.
Yeah.
Boogie Street.
You know, you sit down.
Boogie Street's a market street during the day.
And at night, it's a market street.
People walking up and down, and there's market and restaurants, you know, little restaurants.
At night, the streets closed off.
It's notorious in the world, this.
And all the hookers and everybody else there is on Boogie Street, right?
There's little tables.
Guys don't own restaurants at that, but they put a little table out with four chairs.
One guy might put one table out or two tables out, and that's how he makes a living.
He brings your menus from about four or five restaurants around.
So you sit at his table and you order booze.
He'll go and get it off someplace.
And he's got all the menus.
You choose off what menu, and you sit at his table.
He runs the restaurant.
You know what I mean?
He runs the restaurant, brings the menus over there.
Now he brings the menu with all the girls on it.
And there's all the trinkets, too, on one.
You know what I mean?
And the live shows, the dog shows, the donkey shows, and all that.
And he brings the menu over, and we're looking through the girls and that.
The menu of girls.
The menu of girls, yeah.
And Butch points to one there.
She doesn't look too bad.
You know, we were living over there for $100 a week.
We were living like kings $100 a week.
Where was it?
Singapore?
Singapore, yeah.
This was 1969, I think.
And that, 70, 69.
And that was what kind of girls were on that menu?
She males and males and females and everything.
Oh, shit.
And that we were staying damn.
We were living at having an apartment overlooking the harbor because Singapore is a gateway to the east.
All the container ships come in there.
Anyhow, we're smoking this weed and my partner had never smoked Thai stick before.
And that tie stick.
Tie stick.
Okay.
Tie stick is you squeeze the buds of the juice strips out of it.
Sounds heavy.
And that, oh yeah, you hallucinate on it.
We're sitting in the apartments and that, and there's all ranch sliders and there's a balcony you're overlooking the harbor and all the container ships are there and the lights are flashing on them and that, and Butch thinks there's a war going on out there with all the lights flashing.
We've got the big, you know, like you see in movies, the big wooden fans, the props are about, you know, this wide, the big wooden.
They're like that, they're that wide, and they go like that, and it's going.
He's thinking there's helicopters coming in on us, and everything.
He's freaking out.
Yeah, I'm just telling you how we were on the first time we smoked Thai stick over there.
We were living on $3 worth of stuff a week.
That's crazy.
Eating, all our washing and food was cooked for us.
Our washing was done every night.
The clothes you take off, the housekeeper would come in early.
By the time we got up, all our clothes would be washed, what we wore the day before.
We were living the life.
Like kings over there.
Wow.
Getting your hair, going in for a mass, to get your hair shampooed and that and hair done.
You sit in a chair.
The woman who'd massage your feet and clean your feet and massage your feet and trim your nails and all that, and then massage your head, and then you know shampoo.
You massage your head and your hands and trim your nails, and that, and and um, you'd be high as a kite and you know how much i'd pay for that three dollars holy yeah, this was unreal.
And all the all the shemales you could ask for.
Anyhow, Butch points out this one on this menu in Bogey Street and he says that's her over there And that, so we have a few drinks to that.
We go over there and we take these two girls home, right?
Back to the apartment.
Yeah.
Butcher's wife doesn't hear this.
Anyhow, we're up in the apartment.
All of a sudden, I hear a scream and Butcher says, fuck, I've got a handful of fucking rocks.
Oh, no.
It was a guy.
Oh, beautiful tips, everything.
And I says, fuck it.
Turn around and fuck her.
She's got big tits.
Yeah.
What did he do?
Did he do it?
I don't know.
Oh my fuck.
Yeah, no, it's unbelievable.
That's insane.
You've lived one hell of a life.
That was in Singapore.
Bangkok, you've heard about Bangkok, right?
Yeah, that's just like the Hangrazy over there.
Yeah, that's a different live show.
I've seen donkey shows and all that sort of stuff.
Really?
Where the girl comes out and that.
With a girl, and she can't get satisfied.
Then the guy comes out, and then she can't get satisfied.
Then they bring the donkey in the harness.
Oh my god.
And it's got a rubber band and like a little tube around it's John Thomas.
So it can't go all the way in you, you know what I mean?
Oh my god.
And there's a harness.
The donkey's in a harness, you know what I mean?
She's in like this, and they lower the donkey down.
Oh my gosh.
Holy shit.
Because it gets wild in other countries.
I'm talking about in the 60s.
Yeah.
Oh, yeah.
Anything probably went back then.
You know, the girls from New Zealand, the drag queens from New Zealand used to go over to Singapore or, you know, Australia or Singapore and they get the cut and tuck done there.
You know, cut and tuck.
That was done over there years ago, the surgeons and that.
And get it, you know, get all the implants and all that sort of stuff.
You know, the ones that work in Australia and New Zealand.
When I was, now, I don't know if this is true or not, but can you, is it true what you used to tell me at the gym about the sheep?
Sheep.
Were you joking with me about the woolly girls?
The woolly girls, that's the woolly girls.
What is it?
If I'm going to say, sheep's pussy is the closest to a woman's.
They call them woolly girls?
Yeah, the woolly girls.
The farmers say that?
We were called, as a bushwhack sheep herders, we were called the sheep shaggers.
The sheep shaggers.
Is it true?
I don't know.
I haven't shagged one.
Oh, I thought you did.
I believed you.
No.
Because you used to say, like, the tongues are green.
I'm sure Shirley and somebody else are green.
Yeah, you've got to get them in the morning early to kiss them before their tongues get green from grazing.
That's what we used to tell all the people, you know, when we come in here, when we come over this side of the world, the people in the front seat would be driving us, and they said, what language do you talk?
They couldn't understand me and Butch because we'd talk so fast in English.
You know what I mean?
Now, if you go in the Caribbean, And you go to Trinidad and Barbados, that's really pigeon English.
Yeah, really pigeon English.
Yeah.
Karaoke on Indian Shores00:03:51
Yeah, man.
You know, but they talk so fast.
And that a friend of mine was down there, we're working, and we're in a bar.
He says, What are they singing?
What language are they singing?
I said, That's English.
Couldn't understand any of it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, it's down in those islands.
I worked in those islands for years Trinidad, Barbados, Jamaica, and that.
Really?
Yeah.
Sunfest, I've been to one Sunfest.
Yeah, and that was Bob Marley's son there.
Then okay, you know the dad had died.
He's a god.
But you know that that music, Reggae music, is big time.
Oh yeah, oh yeah, it's beach music yeah, oh definitely yeah, that's where a lot of that's, where most music came from, was Reggae music.
I mean, you know that guy too Tequila, what's his name?
Now he's still around, he's 70 and he's still singing in bare feet tequila, oh yeah, I forget who that is.
You know, barefoot on the stage.
Still selling out arenas.
Jimmy Buffett?
Yeah.
Talking about Jimmy Buffett?
Yeah.
Margaritaville?
Yeah.
He's semi reggae, but that's beach music too.
Oh, yeah.
He's still doing it.
Yeah, but he's still selling out arenas.
Oh, yeah, big time.
Summertime, he's big time.
He is big time.
He's always.
He's fucking cracked.
That guy's got some money.
Yeah, his voice is cracked, but he has girls surrounding him now.
Beautiful girls singing harmonies.
And he gets on that stage, knee brace and all.
And.
Jumps around.
He's the guy who did it right when it comes to licensing your name for restaurants.
That's the guy who did it right.
He's got weed named after him, those dispensaries and stuff.
Yeah, he's got his own brand of Margaritaville weed.
I forget the name, Jimmy Buffett weed.
Yeah it is.
Yeah, that's wild.
What was it like being around like Andre and Hulk back then in the prime good stuff.
Oh, Andre was.
We were like he.
Andre looked after me and Butch, as I said, we come from New Zealand.
He comes to New Zealand well before he comes to the States.
Yes, you knew him a long time.
Yeah, he took.
He made sure that we were always taken care of, Andre.
He was good to us.
Really?
And his last match for WWE, he's in our corner.
If you go to WWE on crutches, yeah.
And if you go online, WWE's last match, he's doing a promo.
Andre and the Bushwhackers.
Yes, he's behind you guys?
Yes.
I watched that earlier.
Andre was always good to us.
Hulk's the one that got me to move here.
Really?
No.
I'd lived in Florida before over in Hillsborough.
Hillsborough Avenue on Hillsborough River.
On the Hillsborough River, just off the Hillsborough Ave.
You know Hillsborough Ave?
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, where the river is.
I lived just in apartments there.
7980.
When I came here, he lived on Madeira Beach.
Yeah.
And I lived on Indian Shores.
Because Madeira Beach busts onto Indian Shores.
And there was a.
Terry Flair lived on Indian Rocks too.
Yeah, karaoke place there.
There used to be a karaoke place there.
And that just you when you come off the bridge Park Boulevard and you take a left and there was a bar on the friendly tavern friendly tavern.
Yeah, well, I need I lived as you come over the bridge I lived right in front of them the water there I lived in shore house.
Okay, first one as you come over to go to Krabby Bulls that way the first hole in the road you go straight in and drive under my place No way I lived there for 15 years.
Holy 16 years.
Yeah, I bought the place and I and I got offered 800,000 And fuck, I didn't take it waiting for the million.
And then I went down Puerto Rico.
I went down there to run a territory for a guy for eight years.
And the fucking thing dropped to 220.
Wrapping Up the Empire00:02:28
Damn.
Don't tell me you sold it when it went down to 220.
No, I had drawn on it.
I don't want to tell the story there.
Bad story.
I lost everything there.
Oh, fuck.
Because I bought other properties.
And I wasn't awake to when 208, when that went.
Bang.
Yep, I fucked over a lot of people that a lot of people a lot of people lost their shirt.
Yeah, that's crazy Well, cool Luke.
I think it's a good time to wrap it up.
It's been about two hours.
No, you're joking almost eight.
It's been an hour 45 You're joking.
No, we're cruising We cruising through this shit, man.
We're telling stories.
It's time to fill the boiler.
Yeah, I'm fucking starving Luke I got to go fill my boiler up.
Yeah, with some grub with some grub and some grubs filled the drum Cool, Luke.
Well, thanks again, man.
Okay, mate, it's good to be here, mate.
Thanks for coming.
And what's the name of the podcast?
Concrete Podcast.
Concrete Podcast.
And I've got a daughter who's just opened up Instagram.
It's DD Bushwacker Art.
She's 11 years of age and she's an artist.
She's your daughter?
Yes.
Wow.
So she's a great self taught artist and she's been doing it since she's seven.
Six or seven and add some great art.
What's the name again?
What's the Instagram name?
DD Bushwhacker Art.
Okay.
Yep.
I'll have to check that out.
Yeah, we'll put it in there.
And I will be too on Halloween.
I've got to check this out here.
What the fuck?
I'll be a spooky empire on the first and second of November over in the convention center in Tampa.