By Scott Bowden
February 17, 2005
The man who would be King of Memphis
On the 10th anniversary of Eddie Gilbert’s death, Scott Bowden pays homage to Hot Stuff
As I write this, it’s nearly 10 years ago that Eddie Gilbert passed away at the age of 33 in a motel room in Puerto Rico. The cause of death was rumored to be a drug overdose. As documented in one of my first columns, Gilbert orchestrated my turn from mild-mannered referee to dastardly (though quite preppy) heel manager in May 1994. Really, it was a dream come true for a Memphis mark like me, who grew up idolizing Jerry Lawler—much like Gilbert himself did.
Reader Gary Graham writes:
First off I have to say that I love your column, and I am a regular reader. I am writing to point out the fact that this coming Friday, February 18th, will be the 10-year anniversary of the death of Eddie Gilbert. Can you believe it has been 10 years? Eddie Gilbert is definitely one of my favorite wrestlers of all time. I was followed his career dating back to 1982 when the Super Destroyer (Bowden: You mean, Masked Superstar Bill Eadie) supposedly "re-broke" Gilbert’s neck. In 1984 I was living in Pompano Beach, Florida, and for some reason we got Memphis TV on one of our stations. I remember how happy I was seeing Eddie Gilbert in Memphis, and how cool I thought the tag team of him and Tommy Rich were as the New Fabulous Ones. Hell I was a stupid 8-year-old mark in 1984 (Bowden: I was a stupid 13-old-mark who marked out over the New Fabs) I had no idea how lame the New Fabs were at the time, nor did I have any idea that they were just a big rip-off of Stan Lane and Steve Keirn. At the time I was just happy to see Eddie on TV every Saturday again. You can imagine how horrified I was, when Eddie turned on Tommy Rich, thus breaking up the legendary tag team of the New Fabulous Ones. I was so depressed for a couple weeks. How could Eddie do this? What had gotten into him? I can remember sitting in my 2nd grade class thinking maybe Eddie will apologize on TV this week and everything with him and Rich will go back to normal. Well that never happened. As I got older, I realized what a cool heel Eddie was. His interviews were intense, his matches and brawls, believable. I still love watching the Eddie Gilbert/Cactus Jack feud to this day on my tape collections. After I started reading the sheets in the early 90s I began to realize how Eddie was paranoid and weird and how he had his problems and demons for sure. I read your column a few months back where you interviewed Kevin Lawler, and he talked about how paranoid and strange Eddie was when the two of them shared an apartment in Philly. But no matter, Eddie Gilbert is still one of my all-time favorites, and his death on February 18th, 1995, hit me very, very hard. Anyways, in honor of the 10-year anniversary of the death of Gilbert, who, love him or hate him, was one of the most five identifiable men in Memphis wrestling history (at least in my opinion), would you please maybe share a road story you have of Gilbert this week, maybe one that you have not written about in any of your past columns? Maybe a funny road or backstage locker room story about Gilbert? Maybe shed some more light on his fling with Tammy Sytch? Ha. Anyway, it would be much appreciated. Keep up the good work on the column!
OK, Gary. This is how I first met Eddie Gilbert.
Despite the fact that nearly the same crew was working the next night in Memphis in July 1989, a friend and I made the drive to Jackson, Tennessee, for a NWA/WCW card, headlined by an injured Terry Funk vs. Sting, and an old Memphis gimmick—the two-ring, triple-chance battle royal. I was an 18-year-old mark, fresh out of high school, and I fully believed that my destiny was to be a booker.
This WCW card in Jackson was to be a homecoming for Eddie Gilbert, the nearby-Lexington, Tenn.-boy done good, who had a solid place on the booking committee in Atlanta. In fact, Gilbert’s Memphis influence was already creeping into WCW, with the addition of longtime Jarrett-announcer Lance Russell. (I don’t mean to slight Eddie, but I’m sure he also was behind the ill-fated tag-team of Johnny Ace and Shane Douglas, who were originally billed as “The New Generation,” a moniker used in Memphis years earlier by Bart Batten and Johnny Wilhoit. Like “The Dynamic Dudes” was so much catchier.)
Although JCP/NWA/WCW had been a hot promotion from ’85 to ’87, the company fell on hard times (as booker Dusty Rhodes might say), a result of stale booking, frustrating screw-job finishes (Road Warriors DQ’d in Chicago vs. Tully & Arn) and low morale when it become apparent to all the boys that Jim Crockett was in over his head. (Those empty “balloon-payment” contracts didn’t help.) But 1989 offered promise, with Ted Turner buying the promotion to keep rasslin’ on the SuperStation, and the arrivals of new stars like Ricky Steamboat, who was immediately programmed into a feud with Ric Flair. The two old rivals from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling produced some of the greatest matches in the history of the business, although it didn’t exactly translate into box-office success, mostly because of Steamboat’s outdated family-man routine.
Really, Steamboat’s arrival signaled the beginning of the end for Gilbert as a major player—at least as a wrestler—in the company. Although he had developed a successful heel persona over the years, Gilbert arrived in WCW in the latter part of 1988 as a babyface. Gilbert appeared to be in the best shape of his life, as he had supposedly loaded up on steroids to pack muscle onto his small frame. The promotion was in a transition phase, so Gilbert, the new kid in town, was able to position himself into a program with Horsemen Flair and Barry Windham. Undoubtedly, Gilbert was ecstatic. Steamboat was brought in as Mr. X, Eddie’s secret weapon against the Horsemen. Almost immediately after Steamboat’s debut, the last TV taping at the legendary WTBS Studio, Gilbert was dropped from the angle at the request of Flair.
One knock on Flair is that he could be two-faced—as bad as Hulk Hogan when it came to working the boys. Apparently, Flair didn’t care for Gilbert, quietly voicing behind his back that fans didn’t buy him as a headliner, especially against the Horsemen. Gilbert later felt betrayed by Flair, whom he claims even promised him a spot in the Horsemen when the heel “Hot Stuff” would finally emerge. Knowing Gilbert, the truth is probably somewhere in between.
SIDE-NOTE SLAM: Years before, I would have agreed with Flair. I’ve read some accounts of Gilbert’s life in which the writer claims that he was a natural for the business. To me, that short-changes Eddie, because he wasn’t. He worked at it. Sure, his father was a worker, but even Tommy looked more like an insurance salesman than a wrestler. Eddie’s interview skills were horrid for years, with his promo as The New Fabs coming to mind. He and Rich stormed the WMC-TV studio to get revenge on Koko Ware and Norvell Austin (The PYT Express). In a fit of rage, Rich ripped off his shirt a la Hogan (sans muscles) and went into his usual uncomprehending tirade…while Eddie carefully unbuttoned his shirt before spouting off: “I don’t care where it is. A mall. Downtown. At a service station. We’re after you.” Oooh…downtown, eh? God forbid it was a downtown service station. Then there’d really be trouble. Even his first heel interview was lame, despite the spot-on Lawler facial imitation, as Eddie resorted to insulting Michael Jackson (then still a hot performer) to get heat. He was a dedicated performer who worked at the art of the wrestling interview.
By July 1989, although working toward the bottom of the cards, Gilbert’s place on the booking committee was solid. There’s no question he was instrumental in bringing in Terry Funk, one of his favorites from Memphis, as the one man who could turn Flair babyface. As creative as he could be, Gilbert had a tendency to book every promotion he worked for Memphis-style, hence his group, “The First Family,” (the name of Jimmy Hart’s stable in Memphis) in Mid-South and in the NWA.
In the weeks leading up to that Mid-South Coliseum card in 1989, Gilbert even tried to arrange for his hero Lawler, who was still clinging onto his Memphis throne, to work the main event against Funk. I believe there was also talk that Memphis would become a part of WCW, serving as a training ground of sorts in exchange for the occasional top-name appearance to help keep the promotion alive, much like the WWF would do with Memphis years later. (The term “developmental territory” hadn’t been coined yet.) That would have been a dream scenario for Gilbert, but the timing just wasn’t right, as Lawler and Jarrett were still doing OK business, enough to keep their heads above water. Besides, they probably knew that Memphis fans would eventually catch on that the local boys weren’t in the same league as the NWA guys. Not to give them too much credit because Jarrett and Lawler learned that lesson the hard way in the mid-’80s, hosting a PRO WRESTLING USA card at the Mid-South Coliseum, with the local talent (Dutch Mantel, the Dirty White Boys, Lanny Poffo, Phil Hickerson and Spoiler, etc.) working as jobbers for the established AWA and NWA stars. Business, which was already dropping, took another plunge in the weeks following.
Although everything wasn’t quite working out like he envisioned, Gilbert was in good spirits this night in Lexington. As he signed autographs backstage afterward, I nudged my way next to him and dropped some inside terms I’d learned from THE WRESTLING OBSERVER to let him know I was “smart.” (Looking back now, I realize how dumb I must’ve sounded.) I think it was something like: “Man, Eddie, you and the booking committee are really turning things around. I’m glad you guys fired Bob Orton for not doing that job on TV. I mean, if he’s not gonna do what y’all say, then, well…y’know.” Gilbert kept signing programs and the like, looking at me only briefly before saying, “Thank you very much. It’s a slow process.” Needless to say, I was thrilled. I just knew that Eddie and I would have a great discussion about the business if only these stupid marks weren’t around. Solution: My friend and I waited in my Camaro (dear God, the humiliation) until he and his wife, Missy Hyatt, left the building. We followed them for a few miles, and I was quite certain that he wouldn’t be speeding up to lose us if he knew it was me, the smart fan. Finally, he pulled over to a convenience store to pick up a 12-pack of beer. He leered at me cautiously before saying, “Oh, shit. It’s you. What’s up, guys?” We stood in the parking lot for 10 minutes, with he and Missy tolerating our questions. I mentioned that my girlfriend at the time, Julie, and I had tickets to the matches in Memphis, and he invited me to a pre-match pizza party with the wrestlers, which was sponsored by the local TV station that aired NWA PRO WRESTLING.
The next night, Julie (who looked a lot like Jessica Simpson) and I had our pics taken with Eddie, the Road Warriors and Steve Williams. Funny: Doc and the Warriors were cordial enough…for about 10 minutes. Then they abruptly left, stacking 10 Domino’s Pizzas and taking them back to the dressing room, leaving us marks to fend for ourselves with the remaining four pies. Eddie hung around talking to me…but paying special attention to Julie. Afterward, Julie confessed that she thought that maybe Eddie had grabbed her ass not once but twice while we posed for pictures. Being naïve, I assured her that she must have been mistaken. I mean, yeah, right. No way. Years later, after I got to know Eddie, who had a reputation as being a notorious flirt/ladies man within the biz, I thought back to that night. And I laughed. I’d bet anything that he fondled my girlfriend that night.
|
It’s strange. The only time I get emotional about Eddie is when I look at old pictures from his first couple of years in the business. He looks like such a good kid…so happy just to be in the business. (Legend has it he skipped his high-school graduation ceremony to make an outlaw booking.) To me, his is one of the saddest stories in the business. Yes, he made choices that led to his undoing; however, the business—the one he loved—shaped those choices.
I guess I just miss him.
E-MAIL THE AUTHOR |
ARCHIVES
