Episode Transcript
[00:00:04] Speaker A: Hey, we're live from STS studios in Jonesboro, Arkansas for Was it really that good? And I have my co host. Co host with the most, Gene Jackson. How's it going, Gene?
[00:00:19] Speaker B: Going pretty good, Brian. How about yourself?
[00:00:21] Speaker A: Cooling down a little bit there in Alabama.
[00:00:26] Speaker B: Starting to.
Nothing major, but it's, it's getting better.
[00:00:30] Speaker A: We had the opening and I know you're not a football fan, but we had to open at a football season this past Sunday, which would be almost a week from now if this is released on Saturday as we're supposed to be.
And it usually right here in, in this area if it's football season when it starts, it's almost like from that point on till Christmas, you know, it's going to start getting a little cooler and I actually can get go outside without feeling like I'm dying. So there you go.
[00:00:58] Speaker B: I. I could care less about the football, but I'm super excited about cooler weather.
[00:01:01] Speaker A: Bring it on, I guess. Congratulations. You have advanced in the next round and you beat.
Who would we. Who would have thought.
The biggest bullshitter ever in wrestling and you demolished him 70% to 30%. It was the biggest advantage this tournament not of all time, but of this tournament that anyone has ever won. You advance to go against will be the winner of the. The next matchup, either this month or next month.
And then if you go that far, you'll win. You'll go against Richard Lee or Jody from P.O. boys. So congratulations.
[00:01:44] Speaker B: Well, thank you. I don't even know how I feel about that. The fact that I've been deemed a bigger bullshitter by. By then Kenny Boland by that larger version. I mean that was a nearly a Goldberg type squash for the Schiznader Awards. Thank you to everyone who voted for me. I appreciate that and I look forward to demolishing the next one.
[00:02:04] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I don't get to vote on the council unless it's a tie. So I put all my. Always listen to it not while it's happening, but when I edit it because there's so much going when it's happening to you.
I put down that you won. So I had put you like 4 to 1 on the questions and I was like, wow, that, that's a big deal, you know. And then all of a sudden everyone started voting and I was like, okay, okay, I'm not always right. I'm not always right, but most of the time I am. I was like, well, everybody is listening to this, just like me. There was people that voted for Kenny, but. Well, there wasn't a mini. So there you go.
Kenny will probably have something to say about that, by the way.
So this time, was it really that good? We kind of know the answer already, but we wanted to honor and talk about. We recently lost Bob Armstrong, the Bullet. And we wanted to talk about Bob and some of the angles that he did in his career. And you picked three videos? I picked three videos. So we're going to start with your three first. We'll go to commercial break, come back with my three, and we'll answer. Was it really the that good?
[00:03:10] Speaker B: Sounds good.
[00:03:11] Speaker A: All right, let's go.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So, you know, I was excited about doing this show. I was a huge fan of Bullet Bob Armstrong when I was a kid growing up. The first live wrestling, even before Memphis wrestling I ever saw was a continental show where Bob Armstrong, you know, was under the mask as the Bullet. I remember me and my friends on the playground when we wrestle around out there at recess, you know, I was either Jerry Lawler or the Bullet. And my friend James Atkinson was either he. Which one? I wasn't. He was the other one. So got a chance to meet him a couple times as a kid. Super great guy. Got a chance to work some shows with him as I got older. And again, just the nicest guy in the world.
And so I'm glad we're. I'm glad we're doing this show. So we're going to kick it off. I'm going to kind of do them in, I guess, sort of timeline order of how the videos go. And so the first match I chose was a match from Southeastern Championship Wrestling in the. I think it was around 82, if I'm not mistaken, early 80s.
It was Jerry Stubbs and Arn Anderson, which is a fun tag team. It's another reason I picked this match because I really like that tag team and wanted you to get to see him if you hadn't before taking on the, you know, Bullet Bob Armstrong and the Tennessee stud Ron Fuller for the currently vacant Southeastern tag team titles.
And another reason I chose this match is because at the end of this match, Ron Fuller turns on Bob Armstrong, costing them the titles. Stubbs easily pins a bloodied Bullet Bob and they become the Southeastern tag team titles. And this was one of Bob Armstrong's longest running feuds was with Ron Fuller and the Fuller and Armstrong family. It was just the Hatfields and McCoys of society, you know, Southern wrestling, gosh, they turned back and forth on each other, you know, many times throughout the years. But this was another one of those instances and again, I think that Stubbs and Arn Anderson are an underrated tag team for the time period. And I just thought it really, you know, captured that whole Ron Fuller vs Bob Armstrong element there because you, you really didn't see it coming until about halfway through the match, you know, when.
[00:05:33] Speaker A: I saw it coming. So there's a tag.
They, Bob starts bleeding. And so he does get the tag over there to, to Tennessee Stud. I'm gonna ask you something here in a minute about that. But, but he gets the tag, boom, boom, boom. And then when Ron tags back in to a bloody, to a bloody Bob Armstrong, for Bob to take heat again, I was like, wait, Ron, why did he just tag him in? Because he's bleeding really bad.
I also liked stubs and arm. I thinking about when they do the Askarn again, I'm gonna ask him where they got those hats at so that, that those hats look so cheesy. So tell me if you can remember, why was Ron Fuller, by the way, that motherfucker's huge. God, he, I, I just, I don't remember Ron and Robert being such big men, but they were big. But Tennessee Stud mask, he had TS on it and they were Tennessee Stud instead of Ron Fuller.
[00:06:33] Speaker B: Well, so he's never confirmed this, but the best, the best I can tell if you watch the timeline of when this started happening here, he would, he would get in the ring and wrestle with his Tennessee Stud mask on because he was always Tennessee Stud Ron Fuller.
[00:06:51] Speaker A: Right, right.
[00:06:52] Speaker B: And then in the back after, and you saw in this, this particular video, in the back, he's wearing a hat and he's Ron Fuller and he's referring to himself as the Tennessee Stud.
As Fuller's hair started thinning more and more, he started wearing this mask in the ring.
And here they didn't really make a big deal out of it. Now later in continental, in like 87, he loses a loser leave town match. So he starts back wrestling in the mask again as a baby face.
Because it was always more so when he was a babyface. I don't know, I guess he thought being lose, you know, losing your hair get you heat or something, I don't know. But anyway, whenever he's baby face, he would rock the mask. So he started wearing the mask in the ring and they would all only just refer to him as Tennessee Stud and they wouldn't really refer to him as Ron Fuller. But in the promos, Gordon Sully would introduce him. Okay, now here's Ron Fuller speaking on behalf of his good friend The Tennessee Stud.
[00:07:48] Speaker A: So weird. So weird.
[00:07:50] Speaker B: And sometimes he would speak in third person, but other times he would say, and when we get down there and dothan tonight we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And then Gordon would be like, ah, speaking on behalf of the Tennessee Stud, his good friend Ron Fuller, of course. Now Gordon Sully was also infamous. Whenever Bob Armstrong lost loser leave town and was wearing the mask as the Bullet putting the microphone on his face go. Well Bob, you and your son Brad tonight are going to be tagging up against Jerry Stubbs and the Dirty White Boys. So you know, Gordon came and went on keeping kayfabe on his mask thing, but as best I could tell, it was just a means to cover up the fact that Ron was losing his hair.
Ron has one of my absolute favorite podcasts. I love the Stud cast. I've become a loyal listener to it. I like it almost as much as I like shooting shiznit.
But he wears the God awfulest toupee of anyone I've ever seen. If you look for a current picture of Ron Fuller, it is the God awfulst, just most ridiculous toupee you've ever seen in your life. It's, it's almost comical. It's like he's doing it for comedic.
[00:08:56] Speaker A: Effect, but I could just never do it. I was, I met my father in law, but my first father in law the first time and he said, well son, he goes, at least we got something common. He took his cap off, you know, he had the male pattern baldness Baha. And the next time we went out to eat, we went out to some breakfast buffet and I come in and he's sitting at the head, head of the table and he's got hair. And I was like, what the.
So the next time, yeah, the next time we're at Christmas, he's bald headed again and I go into his bathroom because someone else was using the. So I go into the master bedroom bathroom and there's like these, those dummy heads with like four different hairdos. And I was like, oh, this is just. And I've never done it. I, I did have the. What is skullet? You know, the long hair in the back, no hair on top for a while with the ponytail. So I hate to admit that, but. Yeah, but at least I didn't do the comb over. There you go, so what, what else did you bring to us?
[00:09:56] Speaker B: Some guys just treat it like a hat. But anyway, yeah, so, so again, kind of keeping with the, the Bob Armstrong Ron Fuller feud. So we had one from Continental, and this is where Bob Armstrong has lost to lose or leave town. So now he's officially wrestling as the Bullet in the Mask. And he's wrestling Ron Fuller, who at this point is a heel. So he's not wearing his mask. You can. You can see his balding head. And so they go at it in a single match. And of course, at that time, the whole deal was the classic. If they can get the mask off Bob Armstrong and prove it's, you know, or the mask off the Bullet, I should say improve. It's Bob Armstrong, then he's out of here. So that was the aim of the Tennessee stud stable, which was Ron and Robert Fuller and Jimmy golden. And then I believe at this point, Jerry Stubbs was a part of it.
And I can't remember. I watched this video a couple. Two or three weeks ago along with several others. So I can't remember if this is the one where they snatch off the Bullet's mask and then they managed to put a referee shirt over his head or something. And he doesn't get, you know, it doesn't get seen. Gordon Sully.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Gordon Sully says, cuts away. And then he makes a. He says, I'm sorry. I said cuts away. So they never did see. You don't ever see his face.
[00:11:13] Speaker B: I was thinking that's. I was thinking that's the right one. Like I said, I watched probably 10 before I narrowed it down to the three. So I just want to make sure I was on the right one. So that was kind of fun because that was kind of their deal there for a while. Back and forth. Bullet had the mask, Fuller had a mask, and they were trying to get each other's masks off and everything.
And then the third match that I.
[00:11:32] Speaker A: Chose, I want to. I want to comment on the second one. That place was packed and they were so noisy. I mean, and even though they had. It seemed like that's all they done was, you know, the. The stud stable being heels, they all ran down. The crowd still just nuts over them. And I. That's what I remember. And I remember every time when Bob would make comebacks and everything. And by the way, it seems like he liked to bleed. How about that?
He would do those karate chops and everything, and everyone sold him like crazy. And the crowd was. Would move with it. I remember being in Nashville, Tennessee, the first time I ever really felt this was. I was at Nashville for one of the Memphis shows and somebody did a drop kick in the first match, and it was like the Whole crowd went, whoo. You know, I mean, you could feel the crowd. You do that when you do it live, when, when you actually, when you was managing or when you was wrestling, you can feel that, but as a fan, it. Sometimes you don't feel it, but you can feel it on this. It was like they just wanted, they wanted them to fight and they also wanted to watch a bunch of people jump in. It was hilarious.
[00:12:41] Speaker B: In Alabama and Georgia, I don't, I don't. You know, fans that didn't grow up on that and maybe seen him later in his career in Smoky Mountain or just read about him, didn't really know. I mean, Bob Armstrong was, you know, the Jerry Lawler of Alabama and Georgia, the Southeastern, you know, Florida, Pensacola, all that. You know, he was the Jerry Lawler, the Hulk Hogan. He was the most baby face they had. I mean, they, People absolutely loved him. Like you said, they hung on his every word and promos and they were right there with him. Them chops, people loved them. And they were just like when Lawler would drop a stack and stop throwing the. Start throwing the fist. And you can watch in the crowd and you see the heads moving, you know, and the people moving along with them. Same with those, those chops of bullet Bob Armstrong. And that was really cool. As a kid, my very first wrestling match I ever went to in Columbus, Mississippi, the main event was a match similar to this one. It was the Bullet against Tennessee stud Ron Fuller. And kind of the same thing. Bullets got him rocking, rocking, rocking. And then the stud stable hit the ring. And then of course, the other Armstrongs hit the ring and they end up doing the, the old deal where they turn it from a single into a six man tag. And of course, Armstrong's one, and everybody went home, went home happy.
[00:13:59] Speaker A: So I forget this, you know, when I'm watching, I'm thinking the crowds are so big and they were so into it, blah, blah, blah. But then, and then I forget, you know, you can watch anything at home and most people stay at home.
And then back then even, you know, I had to, I had to search somebody. And you could tell the quality of some of these tapes. You have to get the second or third generation. Someone had a VHS, a VCR, which was like, we paid like 600 for our first one. So then you've got to find somebody with two that. That would double.
It was crazy. It was crazy thinking and then seeing this stuff. It just, I just thought it was awesome. If it really felt like. Well, it felt like wrestling. What I grew up watching. So. All right, your final clip.
[00:14:48] Speaker B: So the final one, this was a little more obscure time in Bob's career where he went to. So Brad was in Jim Crockett Promotions and Armstrong. Bob was wrestling down in Continental. And so he came to Jim Crockett Promotions in 87.
I want to say it was around March or April and stayed for a few months. Him and Brad tagged up for the Jim Crockett Senior Memorial Cup Tournament. And so this one was a television title match. Tully Blanchard defending the TV title, plus putting up his JJ's briefcase with $10,000 cash in it against Bob.
And I don't know, I mean, I know this is kind of random. There's a. This is by no means representative of Bob's best work or anything like that. But I just found it fun because this is a little later in Bob's career, which sounds weird to say later in his career because he would go on, you know, I watched Bob Armstrong wrestle on a show I was on a year and a half ago when he was 78 years old and he was tagging with Mike Jackson against two young guys. And the crowd went just as nuts as they always did. But anyway, this is kind of later in his career, but he was.
He still knew how to work the crowd. And I thought it was a really good match on Tully's part. Like if Flair had not been in Jim Crocker Promotions, I think Tully could have carried the world title and been a champion almost on the level of Flair and would have managed to keep a lot more heat than Flair. Where people, a lot of people love Flair. Everybody hated Tully, you know, but that's a whole nother show. But anyway, I just thought it was a fun match between Armstrong and Tully. Classic stuff, you know, Bob gets to chasing him, Tully slides in the referee goes to jj, Tully grabs that aluminum briefcase that the money's in, cracks Bob over the head. 1, 2, 3, manages to defend and keep his TV title and still be the shithead of the situation. And Bob comes out looking just fine. But it's not a period of Bob's career that you hear talked about a lot. Like not a lot of people talk about his short stint and Jim Crocker promotion. So I thought had something different to add to the mix.
[00:17:07] Speaker A: Right? I liked it. I liked whole psychology about it. I mean, it was almost total shine at the front with a lot for Bob. He really put Bob over. But in the crowd was so into it too.
And then when Blanchard, they came back from commercial. Blanchard was in the heat Bob, you know, made a couple of comebacks and then he would cut him off. But I love it that the finish involved a briefcase. Boom. And Bob blading and going right straight to the finish. They didn't do, they didn't do, you know, like.
And then beat the hell out of him for another seven minutes. It was like, okay, I'm just going to Blade for this finish. And I don't know if I ever would want to say, okay, yeah, that's, that's okay. Let's just blade for this. And then, you know, Brad did make the save for him, blah, blah, blah. But, but just the idea that you, you got out there to wrestle and then you're just going to bleed at the end, it was, I thought that was funny. But I thought the overall, the way the match was put together, I thought overall it was really fun to watch.
[00:18:06] Speaker B: I agree.
[00:18:07] Speaker A: All right, guys, we're gonna come back, we're gonna have my three matches on Bob Armstrong, the Bullet.
All right, we want to thank our sponsors. A big announcement tomorrow. That's right, tomorrow. I have confirmed it. I will be attendance Bill Dundee's big question and answer and movie premiere in Memphis, Tennessee tomorrow afternoon at 3 o' clock at Growlers. If you guys want to come by, I may have something free to give to you.
STS pod.club merchandise to give free. Just say hey to me and I'll throw it at you because I'm not shaking your hand. How about that? So I just thought, I'd be honest. I'm not shaking anybody's.
[00:18:42] Speaker B: Very cool.
[00:18:44] Speaker A: So. And I. No autographs. No autographs there. So.
All right, so I picked Piper and Armstrong and I know you thought, well, what the fuck? He picks the. One of the most popular things that Bob ever did.
I did that because I'm reading the observer and what Meltzer was saying about this. And I went and watched it and I just.
It goes back to the crowd in the way the crowd reacted when he, Piper spent weeks. It was like a slow burn where he just weeks on Armstrong's ass. And finally Armstrong has to, you know, has had it and they go, they do the pull apart brawl. But what I thought was it was just the crowd was so loud in that little Atlanta studio.
[00:19:33] Speaker B: Oh yeah. I mean you really could, you really could get an appreciation for how over Armstrong was and how much heat, you know, Piper had.
And.
Yeah, I mean, and I love the fact that, you know, he tried to come out the first time and they managed to hold him back and, and then, you know, the Next time he gets, he gets hold of Piper and, you know, big and seeing, seeing a very young Jimmy Garvin and very young Brad Armstrong, Kevin Sullivan and then famous Memphis referee Frank Morrell in the ring wrestling, you know, as the Angel. It was, it was an interesting, it was an interesting clip all the way around.
[00:20:09] Speaker A: I thought so. And it was just, I thought it came off as like, you know, for real. It came off as a shoot because like you said, he came out the first time, then they kind of, you know, and then here he comes again. They finally hit it. Here's some background that Meltzer actually mentioned about this. They built it. They built it. They got huge crowd for the first time.
This view didn't draw any more houses after the first match. And you know why?
[00:20:35] Speaker B: Why?
[00:20:36] Speaker A: It's because they put Piper over in the first match.
Yeah, the booker, the owner or whatever has told the booker, hey, we're going to put Armstrong over first because in reality, Piper's a bigger star.
No one's really, especially in Atlanta. No one's gonna believe that Armstrong could beat him if Armstrong beats him the first time and Piper gets his heat back. We got some more gates.
He didn't have but one big gate for this and that really sucks that he did. But it was such a good build, I had to include it as, as one of my picks. And we'll put all these videos up, guys. You gotta see the reactions.
Armstrong in my next video is from 1983. Continental Bob pins Ric Flair. They're building for Ric Flair coming in to defend the title against the Bullet. And what are you. I mean, I think this is so weird the way they used to build Flair and you know how they did this. But, but it was so good in the sense that it would get you so excited as a fan. So first he pins him in a non title match. I thought it was like a two out of three pause, but they mentioned it, non title later on. He pins Flair, Armstrong does. And then they've got this real grainy footage. It looks like they took it at a house show. And it's a tag team match and Bob pins Flair again.
So, I mean, you got two pins on the champion and you as a fan, you're thinking Bob Armstrong to be the new World Heavyweight Champion.
[00:22:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that's. I think, if I remember correctly, it actually was during a time where Flair wasn't the champion. He came in and challenged Armstrong for the southeastern title and Bob beat him. And then he comes back in that tag match that they showed with, oh, gosh I don't remember who I was in it. But anyway, like you said, he pins him and it's dark and it's barely can see it, but you see it.
But, yeah, that used to be. And I know Fuller has explained that on his podcast quite a bit that, you know, he doesn't necessarily like the way Flair was booked all over the place. But at the same time, it gave you the impression, you know, you want to buy tickets, you're like, well, hell, you know, Armstrong's beating him now two different times. We're going to see a world title change. And back then, it was a big deal to witness a world title change live and especially in your area, you know, so people wanted to be there for that. And if it was a foregone conclusion of, well, we know this guy ain't gonna beat the champion, you know, nobody's gonna come out. He said people would just, you know, stay home that week. So they did a really good job of making you think, well, there's no way in hell Bob's not winning the world title. He's got Flair's number. He's beat him twice. And then, of course, they did the thing, you know, on TV there where Flair attacked Brad and put even more heat on it, you know, so I.
[00:23:34] Speaker A: Thought Flair was so good going over the names of the people that were behind on the wall, and he was, yeah, yeah, all these people were so good, blah, blah, blah. And he had just, I guess it just won the title belt back from. From race. So it was a big deal. And Flair, you know, this wasn't one of those typical, you know, TBS Ric Flair interviews. This was like, really serious. Like, he. He took time to say, okay, all these people are good, but, you know, Bob Armstrong kind of just got lucky, blah, blah, blah, blah. But I do, I think it's interesting to see the way a world champion was booked. And they get a lot of criticism for Flair losing so much as the world champion, but it would make the interest level. I remember Flair, Lawler at the Coliseum, and even the inside insiders now were saying that Lawler was winning it that night. So make sure you're going to get down there and lawyer's going to win. And I went, and guess what? Lawler didn't win. So it was a great American bash, I think.
[00:24:38] Speaker B: And.
[00:24:38] Speaker A: But it. The build was so good out on television, that drew really good. But also the build, it was so funny that they were actually working.
They was working everybody, the inside, even the boys, what was going on. So it's kind of weird that that was happening back then, but. But I really thought Lawler was going to win the belt. And it's the reason I didn't go see Lawler Henning, because I was told, Yes, I was told by somebody in the know that Lawler was gonna win the belt, be down there, and they were gonna have tickets for me the whole nine yards. I could walk through the back and then go. Go to the Coliseum. And I did not show up because I knew it wasn't gonna happen.
Even though Jackie park counted four. There you go. All right, we got.
[00:25:26] Speaker B: I got. I called the 800 number and paid to vote for Jackie Fargo to be the referee, too. That's how big a mark I was.
[00:25:34] Speaker A: All right. Yeah, that's awesome, man. I. I think the only thing I did that I want to think I. The only thing I ever called and voted on was you could call or you could see the email. When you killed Jason Todd Robin in Bat and Batman, was he going kill the new Robin or not? And I killed him. So I was part of them that voted to kill him. All right, the next clip. And this is one of my favorite times of Armstrong's career because you get to see him as a heel. He is in Memphis and it's during the Smoky Mountain Wrestling USWA feud. Me and you've talked about doing a whole show on that. We may do it, but it's so good. You first you got a clip with Landell and Dundee with Kevin Christian. Old buddy Kevin Lawler is a referee.
And then you got Armstrong talking about the finish and man, he is putting down Dundee. He said, I bet I was around here a long time ago and you know, I was. And he calls him Billy Dundee, which cracks me up. And then he says, Dundee has always been a yes man.
[00:26:42] Speaker B: Man, I tell you what I remember, I was so they. You couldn't get TV5 where I lived after, like around 89, they stopped carrying it around Tupelo or around Aberdeen where I lived. And when I went to college in Boonville, I started being able to see it again. It was right in the middle of this Smoky Mountain fe.
And getting to see heel Bob Armstrong was just so hilarious to me. I mean, he was so good at it when it was so weird because, I mean, I grew up on Baby Face, the Ultimate Babyface Bullet Bob Armstrong, and he just seemed like such a natural heel. And since then I've seen some clips and have heard, like I say, on Ron Fuller's podcast, him talking about the first time they ever Turned. Have you seen any of the stuff from back when they turned him heel the very first time in Southeastern?
[00:27:35] Speaker A: I have never. I've never seen him as a heel in Southeastern.
[00:27:40] Speaker B: So nobody knew this was coming. So they did this tournament where the winner of the tournament was going to get a shot at Flair, who was coming in. And it comes down to the two top baby faces at that time, Fuller and Armstrong. And so Fuller beats Armstrong.
Armstrong comes out on TV and he's like, hey, congratulations, you was the better man.
He said, but listen, I just want to be involved in a world title match. Because at this point he hadn't had a shot. He said, if I could just be the referee, I'll make sure Flair doesn't get over on you. I'll make sure it's straight down the middle and you'll have a fair shot at that world title. So they make Bob Armstrong the referee. So you got two top babyfaces, Ron Challenger for the belt, and the other top baby face is the referee. You think there's no way Ron Fuller's not walking out the world champion tonight? And Armstrong strong turns heel and costs him the title.
And so Fuller's like, now, like, that wouldn't be good enough, he said. But he said, Bob, he said, took it two, three, four steps further. He said, within two weeks, Armstrong's coming out, he's grown a mustache. Because, you know, back then that's how you could tell somebody was a bad guy.
They had a mustache.
[00:28:52] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:28:53] Speaker B: So Bob Armstrong comes out, he's grown a mustache, and he's smoking a cigarette on tv, he gets an earring. And this is like, you know, 1981 or 1980. And, you know, that was a big thing back then. You know, you just got, you know, man's. Man didn't do that. So he's out there, he's got a cigarette, he's got a mustache, he's got an earring in his ear and just talking just all kinds of shit. And I've only got to see just a couple of clips of it, but it sounds like just the most amazing thing ever. And they said he went from the most beloved man in South Eastern to the absolute most hated. They had riots, they had people coming, trying to hit the ring on him. And of course, eventually they turned it around and they swapped roles and Ron became the heel and he went back to being the babyface. But I always read and heard about those stories and found it so hard to believe because there wasn't YouTube back then. And I wasn't Tape trading yet. And so then to see him on Memphis TV doing this stuff. And listen, I wanted to find one of those clips of him, dog and Randy Hales, because, oh, my God, he gave. He gave Randy Hales. I mean, he just shredded him in some of those heel promos. It was great. And then I always enjoyed Jesse James Armstrong, you know, the early incarnation of the road dog. And seeing him and Bob out there together as heels was just a lot of fun.
[00:30:11] Speaker A: Oh, it was. And he called. He said something about Dundee used to follow Jerry Jared around, and now he follows Randy Hills around all the time. I mean, it was hilarious.
But then part of it was he was just.
He was so believable. He's believable as a baby face, but he was so believable to heal. You were like, wait, if you were watching this, he was thinking, does Dundee really do that? You know what I'm saying?
As a fan, you were like, wonder if that's what happens backstage. And I, you know, I don't know if it did or not, but I got one last thing, and then I'll ask you something about Bob that I remember mainly because I used to talk.
I used to talk weekly with Dave Meltzer. I was his. I was his Memphis stooge, and I gave him all information.
And I remember a story about Bob when the weights fell on his face. And. And I. I'm horrible about remembering stuff correctly because I remember JD McKay mentioned the shows that he was on. I was on those shows with Bob. I remember being meeting Bob. I can't remember which one of the sons was there.
It was Steve or Scott.
So I was on a show with him, but the story was when the weights fell, that they were doing something with Dibiase at the time.
And the announcers started blaming Dibiase for the.
For the weights falling on his face.
And then Ted would not say anything about it because at one point they didn't know whether he was going to be alive or not, that they thought he was dying.
So Ted said, no, hell no. I'm not going to mention that, you know, that. That I killed Bob Armstrong.
So there you go. He was. He was going to take the credit for killing Bob Armstrong. And the reason I really remember this is I got one chance to meet Ted Dibiase. I talked to him for very few, for about 15 minutes. He had showed me the Million Dollar Belt before it actually was on television, but it had been already taped. They'd already taped it before, but they hadn't aired it. And I asked him about. He said he would never take blame for almost killing somebody. So they weren't going to talk him into coming and doing an interview, even though he was a heel. So there you go. Teddy Beasi is not going to be the killer of Bob Armstrong.
[00:32:28] Speaker B: And you know, another fun fact associated with that, and I heard this straight from Bob Armstrong's mouth in the dressing room because one of the younger guys who didn't really know his backstory asked him, hey, why do you still wear that mask on just random shows. And the whole reason the bullet came along and wearing the mask, and if you look at his mask, you can tell it's very specifically designed, was after he had that incident with the weights falling and crushing his face and he had to have surgery and all that. One, he did look a bit different, but for two, his nose would just move. Like he could take his hand and just move his nose around like it. It didn't stay stationary like your nose is supposed to do. And so that's why for pretty much the rest of his career, he wrestled with that mask on, because that mask managed to hold his nose stationary in place.
And that was the real function of the mask. Like there was a couple times, like when he went to Crockett and stuff, he wrestled without it. But he said that was the reason. Up until when he was 80 years old and had his last match, he always wrestled with the mask on because the damage done to his nose in that.
[00:33:39] Speaker A: In that incident, I never heard the nose thing. I always was told he was wearing it because of the damage to his face, but also wearing it because Bob, it could wrestle, even being in the 60s because he had such a fantastic body, he still kept working out and had a really good body. So if he had the mask on, he didn't show his age kind of thing. Josh Briley, who was on episode 364, the guys from P3 radio, he has a fantastic story about Bob sent. He's. He found a letter from Bob that he sent to his grandmother. His grandmother made masks and stuff for the guys in Continental and Bob sent a letter to her. It's pretty neat. And Also Richard from P3 Road talks about meeting Bob backstage at TNA and him being just like the world's best gentleman. It's just like he. You know what I was thinking about when he died and all the good stuff that people were saying about him?
He remember it's gonna happen when Bobby Eaton dies. He's like, the Bobby. Yeah. That no one has anything bad to say about Bob and you know, Gene, I wish I could say that about myself, but there's probably. I probably got four or five people that fucking hate me. So I just felt like there was nobody that you would ever talk to that ever would say that Bob was hard doing business with or that he was shitty in the dressing room in and his son sued. All the times that I've been around, I've been around. At least I think I've been around every one of them except Brad.
They were super, super nice. They were, yes, sir, no sir to the bookers. I watched.
I was a road dog come, you know, when he was come off the WWE and then he was doing the local stuff, you know, in Dies for Tennessee saying yes, sir, no sir to the book.
So just a great, great family and always had a fun time with the. I love the mask gimmick where you, you, you're trying to get it off. And I love what they did with Midnight Rider at the time and with Dusty did that. I love Stagger Lee. I just, I don't know. I always loved that shit.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And as long term as he did it, you always had a story built into every man. I mean, if nothing else was going on, you always had the story of trying to get the mask off of him. You know, you always had that to fall back on.
But you know, something real quick, it was shocking to me is, you know, talking about what such good shape he was in all the way up to the last few years. Bob Armstrong was a chain smoker. Like every time I was ever around him, like every show, he sat outside and smoked probably a pack of cigarettes during the two or three hours we were at the show. I mean, that man smoked like a chimney. And the fact that he was able to stay in such amazing shape smoking as much as he did, I always found just really surprising. And a lot of the tributes I've heard for him and a lot of things mentioned his wife. The last couple shows that I worked with him on, his wife was there and she was just an absolute, very, very sweet lady. And you could tell even then that they were still very much in love and very close. And I don't know, man, as a happily married person, it's kind of depressing sometimes when you, you see all these people whose marriages don't make it and, you know, people are always so down on marriage. To see somebody that's been married, you know, longer than I've been alive and we're still so happy together was very, you know, uplifting to me to know that. Hey, you know, it can be done.
[00:37:11] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, we're two lucky guys, man. Me and you. We had horrible first marriages and found the second wife to be awesome, so we did good with that.
So I want to ask you, was it really that good when it comes to Bob Armstrong?
[00:37:28] Speaker B: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I'm not just saying that because he recently passed. I would have said it six months ago.
He's. He's one of the. He's one of the best to ever do it. And like I said, whether it was heel or baby faced, he excelled at both.
[00:37:41] Speaker A: I agree 100%. Huge fan. Always was. And when. When he. Even though I've only worked a little bit with him, it's one of those guys that meant more to me than, you know, some of the big stars. Even Dusty, when Dusty passed away.
But Barb almost was like he was one of the hometown guys, just like the Memphis crew was. I. I was a huge Continental fan, but was not able to watch it like I wanted to and knew it was all about the Armstrongs and the Fullers and what it meant for that feud. All right, guys, same bad time, same bad channel. On the best little wrestling podcast in the business.
Be there.
And as everybody knows, I love my mama.
Thank you, Gene.
[00:38:26] Speaker B: You're welcome.