CWF #20 Page #2

Roop and Keirn met several times in the weeks leading up to the big angle that would ignite their feud.  On June 29 in Tampa, Roop and Sr. lost the Florida tag belts to Keirn and Backlund. The next night in Miami, Keirn beat Roop by disqualification. On July 6 in Tampa, Keirn and Backlund defeated Roop and Sr. in a rematch for the straps. However, in just a matter of days following Col. Keirn’s retirement, an idea was proposed to turn his military background and POW status into an angle between his son and Bob Roop. “The angle was Steve’s idea,” recalled Roop. “He was languishing in the wings of being a lower card booking with no real angle at the time. He talked it over with his dad, and asked if he would mind being used in the angle. His dad’s response was ‘Son, after eight years in a cage I am not bothered by just about anything-do your angle.” The stage was set, and at the television tapings the next afternoon, July 7, all hell was about to break loose. 

As the Wednesday afternoon TV taping faithful filled into the Tampa Sportatorium, little did they know what that afternoon had in store for them. “To set up the angle, earlier in the show Keirn came out and talked about how Eddie Graham had been like a surrogate father to him while his own dad was in the POW camp in Vietnam,” recalled Roop. “Then Eddie came out, and together they introduced the Walter Cronkite-narrated newsreel showing Steve's dad coming down the ramp of the airplane to, for the first time in almost eight years, step onto American land and Steve racing across the tarmac to greet him. It was pretty touching stuff. I had good heat with the Grahams due to them pretending to break my leg when I had, in an earlier match, injured it and needed an operation. So, having Eddie out there with Steve, who I had zip going with, no heat or interest, was my excuse to talk about Eddie, then move on to Steve. I said that Eddie was, to me, more of a criminal figure than a father figure and was the kind of low character who had deliberately broken my leg with his cowardly son helping him, the two of them doubling up on a great champion like myself. And, as for Steve Keirn, all the sob-sister babbling about his old man being a great hero was really disgusting to me. I, too, was a veteran who had served my country, and could tell everyone two things. The first rule of military conduct is ‘I will not be captured by the enemy.’ The second rule is ‘if I am captured by the enemy, I will make every effort to escape.’ Colonel Keirn had been captured twice- in Germany during WWII AND in Vietnam. To my mind, any man who was so unskilled as to be captured not once, but twice was not much of a serviceman. And, not only was he captured, he did not escape the enemy in either instance. In my mind, Col. Keirn was not a hero-he was a bungler and a coward. Within fifteen seconds of my uttering the above, Steve came racing onto the set, banged the TV camera stand on his way by and dove over Solie's desk at me. He was thrashing me and, out of the camera's eye, I was tossing up pencils, cups and whatever else was lying there next to me. The two Ortons came to my rescue and dragged me out of there to leave Steve, who came up with tears in his eyes and, in a choked and agonized voice, said, ‘Roop, my dad has suffered enough. If you want to pick on someone, pick on me! Leave my dad alone, he has suffered enough.’ I was back in the office by that time, watching him on the monitor and had Jody Hamilton, the booker, say, "woooo, Bobby, damn, you better get you some weapons boy!!!" Jim Barnett was saying, "oh my GODDDD, oh what have you two done? Oh my goddd, what are we going to do?" Steve returned to the office about that time, limping and still teared up a little. When he raced out to do his bit, he misjudged the TV camera location, it had a much wider stabilizing base than the upper part, and he whacked the hell out of his ankle when he went tearing by. It caused the camera to wobble a little, creating a great, more realistic, effect, but it damn near killed him with pain and was responsible for the tears and agonized voice.  He said he was just barely able to talk at all, creating a much more dramatic and effective persona and appeal than being violently angry and merely screaming at me like most of the babyfaces did in their interviews when wronged somehow.” 

The angle got over huge with Roop becoming the top heel in the state overnight. It also generated an incredible amount of heat for everyone involved, especially Roop. “At the time, I had a significant other who happened to work as a waitress in the Enlisted Man’s Club at MacDill Airforce Base,” recalled Roop. “She was serving some servicemen when the angle played on the attendant TV. She came home scared to death and told me that the servicemen reacted to the angle by expressing the desire to get their hands on an anti-tank mine, locate my address, and heave it through my living room window. Fortunately, they either couldn’t find a mine or my address, so I didn’t get a visit.” 

Keirn and Roop met in main events throughout the state, with Keirn getting a victory on July 13 in Tampa, and Keirn and Backlund beating Roop and Orton, Sr. on July 14 in Miami. One week later in Miami, on July 21, Roop and Keirn wrestled to a wild no-contest in a “special challenge match.” On July 27 in Tampa, Keirn defeated Roop in a steel cage. As the feud progressed, Roop continued to defend his comments regarding Col. Keirn on TV, by claiming a right to free speech as guaranteed by the First Amendment. Roop also continued to draw heat from irate fans. “A couple of weeks into the program we were working in Miami,” recalled Roop, “and were at the smaller room, necessitating me to park across the street from the Convention Center rather than behind it like we usually did. For some reason, I was alone, parked, got my bag and began to walk across the parking lot toward the entrance. There was a guy standing nearby and I walked past him without comment or response, then heard the unmistakable sound of a Weapon being cocked. I looked back and saw the guy pointing an Army issued .45 at my head, then heard him say, ‘I should blow your brains out, you no-good son-of-a-bitch!’ There was nothing I could do or say to keep him from doing whatever it was he was going to do, so I just turned my head around and kept walking. Talk about time slowing down. It seemed like an eternity for me to get far enough away to where I felt he probably wasn’t going to shoot me.” 

Roop and Keirn would meet three weeks straight in Miami, starting on July 28, when Roop won in a “lights out-lumberjack match.” The two met on August 4 in a Texas death match, with Roop once again claiming victory. Roop capped off three straight victories on the beach when he beat Keirn on August 11 in a brutal and bloody cage match. “Steve was a very giving worker, more concerned with the match than himself,” recalled Roop. “Even early in his career he was a very good worker, but also had the presence and charisma… he was handsome AND rugged at the same time. He would sell for me and was very talented at doing so, allowing me to build some incredible heat, Something I could not always get so-called better talents…’big-time stars,’ in their own mind, anyway, to do. During the angle, I worked a lumberjack match with Steve in Tallahassee and Ray Stevens was one of the lumberjacks. Afterward, he told me that we had a great match. ‘Damn, Bob, I believed it my own damn self!’ I didn’t know enough about Ray at the time to realize what a great compliment that was, coming from a master who started out working better than I ever managed to. It was a real feather in our caps and it was mainly due to Steve being a great talent and working with me in the kind of true partnership in the ring that we should all have been able to attain each and every night. He was much more concerned with getting the match over than he was himself. I wish that more of the boys had possessed the same attitude as Steve.” 

As Roop’s remarks regarding Col. Keirn continued to generate incredible amounts of heat, the weekly Florida wrestling program printed an editorial dealing with the controversy. “Roop has shown no remorse over having insulted one of our state’s outstanding military figures. Instead, he has complained bitterly that Keirn tried to deprive him of his right to free speech. That remark took almost as much crust as what Roop said about Steve’s dad in the first place! Freedom of speech is a great thing, but like any other freedom it needs to be used wisely. Roop’s remarks were, to say the least, unwise. Furthermore, he had expressed himself and had been asked to leave the TV interview area BEFORE Steve Keirn showed up. Obviously, Roop got his ‘right to free speech,’ then got what was coming to him-at least a sample of it. Here is a case where certainly no decent person could condone the remarks Bob Roop made about Steve Keirn’s father.” 

Though Roop was unsympathetic to Col. Keirn in the angle, he was a military man himself, having spent three years in the army as a paratrooper and Special Forces medic.

“Understand that I was not unpatriotic,” said Roop. “My dad spent many years on active duty and taught at West Point. Also, I had been out of service for seven years when we did the angle, and think about it, I wasn't denigrating the service, I was knocking Col. Keirn and didn’t feel any reluctance due to my time in the service. I was heavily invested in the business by this time. I had already done some main event work in the Amarillo territory and was hungry to get my teeth into something there in Florida. It’s another whole subject, but the office that Eddie Graham had was incredible. People like Lester Welch and Buddy Fuller, Hiro Matsuda and Duke Keomuka, then Jim Barnett getting a piece of it. It was a snakepit of conflicting ambitions and attempts to grab as many bucks as possible, so having some status as a money drawer was the only way for a boy to have any clout there and not become a pawn for the thwarted ambitions of some of politicians in the office.” 

Roop and Orton, Sr. made several attempts at trying to regain the Florida tag belts, winning over Keirn and Backlund by disqualification on August 25 in Miami, and losing in a rematch one week later on September 1. Keirn gained a victory over Roop on September 10 in Ft. Lauderdale, and on September 29, Keirn and the Brisco brothers defeated Roop and the Ortons. Furthering their program, Roop and Orton, Sr. interfered in a match between Keirn and Backlund versus the Hollywood Blondes, costing them the Florida tag belts. On October 1 in Ft. Lauderdale, Roop and Keirn tore the house down in a Texas death match that went seven falls until Keirn claimed the victory. In Miami on October 10, Keirn and Jerry Brisco beat Roop and Orton, Jr. by disqualification.  “All of our matches together were great,” remembered Roop. “We didn't have to go too long as it would have been counterproductive to do so. Steve would hit the ring and kick the crapola out of me for a short period until I found some way to foul him and take over, build some heat and then go into the finish. This Mo. was absolutely necessary. For him to come into the ring and patiently wait for the bell to ring would have made him look like a disloyal son and a fool. He was perfect. He always seemed to do the exact thing I would have told him to do if I had needed to. He had a great sense of what was the right thing to do. His ability to read an audience was phenomenal.” 

By mid-October, with the Roop-Keirn rivalry coming to an end, Roop moved on and began a program with Jack and Jerry Brisco. The angle started with Roop and Bob Orton, Jr. “injuring” Jack, and lasting several months. Steve Keirn, fresh from his first main event program, captured his first major singles championship on October 30 at St. Petersburg’s Bayfront Arena, by defeating The Assassin (Jody Hamilton) for the Southern title. “This was STEVE’S angle, he came up with it and made it happen,” recalled Roop, who looks back fondly at this angle. “It was a tragedy in his life that created this opportunity, the loss of his dad during his formative years. I am grateful that he came to me with the chance to be a part of it. We both got our teeth into the angle and held on for dear life. The angle burst on the scene like a Supernova…and in the same way, burned hot and bright, then faded to black.” 

After an eighteen-year pro wrestling career that took him across several continents, Bob Roop retired from the ring in 1987, though he continued to be involved with wrestling, most notably Florida’s Global Wrestling promotion. Roop works as a lunchroom and playground supervisor at a school in Michigan, as well as being a den leader, cub (scout) master, and day camp supervisor. Roop currently lives in Michigan with his wife and two sons and is an accomplished author, with his first novel "Death Match," recently published and receiving rave reviews. For more info on Roop, as well as ordering info for "Death Match," please visit http://www.bobroop.com/ 

Steve Keirn continued his ascension and became one of the finest wrestlers in the country during the late 1970s and 1980s. He formed two long term tag teams, first with Mike Graham, and then with Stan Lane as “The Fabulous Ones.” Keirn joined the WWF in the early 1990s, adopting two gimmicks, Skinner, and then Doink. Keirn owns a Gold’s Gym in Tampa Palms, and trains students in the fine art of wrestling along with another CWF mainstay, Jimmy Backland. In 1997, Keirn crusaded unsuccessfully to have his father awarded the Congressional Medal Of Honor, the highest military honor. 

Col. Richard Paul “Pop” Keirn was also part of another famous wrestling angle in the fall of 1978. As Pak Song applied the dreaded claw to Steve, Col. Keirn entered the ring and attempted to free his son. Song turned his attention to the elder Keirn, and hit him with several vicious chops, until Killer Karl Kox made the save (and also turned face in the process). In 1995, Keirn and his wife, Hazel, celebrated their 50th anniversary and published his book "Old Glory Is the Most Beautiful of Air,” his personal story of being a POW in two wars. Col. Keirn passed away at the age of seventy-five on May 25, 2000 at Holmes Regional Medical Center in Melbourne, Florida. Befitting a true American hero, he was laid to rest on Memorial Day of that year with full military honors and a military flyby. 

Special thanks to Bob Roop for his assistance with this article. 

NEXT MONTH: 

Sir Oliver Humperdink and a “Touch Of Class.”

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