"See, that was the other side. I certainly wasn't going to go in there just tell Flair how to wrestle his match. One that sticks out in my mind the most was a tag match with Flair and Jerry the Crusher Blackwell versus Dick the Bruiser and Butch Reed. Well, we had been doing a program, so the obvious finish was Reed pins Flair, but that's not what we did. We did three falls, Blackwell pinned Bruiser, Bruiser pinned Flair, and Reed pinned Blackwell. Flair was the only one not to win a fall, which set up challenges for his title, and how Bruiser complain about getting pinned? He was the one who would get to pin the world champ. I just gave the finishes, and said, 'You are the guys in ring, you figure it out.' It was 1982, and Bruiser could have said something, but he was cool. He had known me since high school, and he knew I wasn't going to screw it up. Plus, he didn't want to make Sam angry. I fully admit I was helped tremendously by being Sam Muchnick's guy."

Matysik said, however, that booking was easy, as he was following Muchnick's vision, which was long term, as opposed to the fly-by-night planning that appears to be the norm of today.

"Sam didn't do hands-on booking. Sam laid out that outline. All we got to do was color inside the line. Certainly, with the Briscos, the Von Erichs, Sam would explain where he was going, so they knew just because they lost in a main event, they weren't done. There was something coming back to you down the road. It was all planning, and I've seen it both ways with WWE, or WWF, or whatever, I mean with Vince. I think Vince goes into panic planning at times. I half understand the pressure of it being quarter-hour ratings he has to worry about. On the other hand, in the end, I've got to do what I believed was right. If it was good enough, I will find my audience. Just relax, and stick with plans. I looked at that HHH-Michaels finish (double pin on "Raw" last month) that was done before their announced match at the Royal Rumble. That was the kind of thing we would do to build a rematch. A lot of times, you get caught up in the moment, but that's the TV business. If you don't have the ratings, that's it."

Muchnick, who died Dec. 30, 1998, was one of the country's most well respected promoters by the wrestlers themselves.

"A lot of it simply honesty," Matysik said. "Sam didn't try to short somebody on money. Bruiser told me years ago how he had learned to trust Sam. The main event guys got box office statements, the same statement that went to tax office, and they were paid in cash. One night, Bruiser told me he got $852.16, and he figured, 'If he's giving me the 16 cents, then he wasn't going to screw me."

The difference between Vincent K. McMahon's approach to wrestling and Muchnick's became apparent soon after Matysik went to work for McMahon in late 1983, as the WWF was poised to go national.

"Vince Jr. told me many years ago, right I before started working for him, he told me, 'Larry, you've got to remember, we're TV producers. We just have to do wrestling.' I never could accept that. I'd always felt we were wrestling promoters who have to do TV. But who's to say he's wrong? He's the guy with a billion dollars. He read the future beautifully, when no one else saw it. I do think one of Vince's big advantages was being in New York, where he was dealing with the national media types who make that decision about what's wrestling. Vince Junior always said to me, 'If I don't do it, Verne Gagne's going to do it. World Class was the hottest syndicated show in the country at the time, and they could have made the push. Maybe those were excuses, and maybe they were the reality. You'd have to ask Vince, and he's not going to tell the truth anyway. I've always said he was the most brilliant man I ever met. You sit there with him and ideas just pop out of his head. He's also most unethical man I've ever met. He'll agree with you, but then you walk out with scars on your back. Whenever he says, 'It's only business,' that means all deals are off."

Matysik said he did not believe McMahon was the first in his family with designs on establishing a national promotion.

"I think Vince Sr. did have ideas, back in early 1960s. I also think a lot of people underestimate what Sam did politically at that point in time, how he got the belt off Buddy Rogers and had Thesz beat Bruno Sammartino. Sam somehow patched things up with Vince Sr. His partner, Toots Mondt, was a shark, a serious shark, but at that point, Sam somehow repaired the bridge with Senior. By the time I went to work full time for Sam, in 1970, Senior was a member of the NWA. I think had Sam's effort not happened, Senior might have had some thoughts of his own. And although there were multiple champions, Sam was not unhappy this happened. Even though Vince would have you believe wrestling was not drawing in the 1960s and 1970s, Sam said there were so many fans that there was no way one champion could service them all. I think the controversy helped, as I look back on it. The whole thing in the early 1960s was good for keeping the order of wrestling in hand."

Muchnick's 1982 retirement resulted in Harley Race, Bob Geigel and Verne Gagne taking over promoting Saint Louis.

"When his wife, Helen, died, it really took a lot out of him," Matysik said. "She died at a banquet, right in front of him. Sam's strength in the NWA started waning in 1970s, anyway. They did all that Mickey Mouse crap with the champ. There was a lot of abuse of the champion. Harley Race and I had lunch one day in 1978 with Sam, and Sam was talking about retirement. Harley, who had differences with, and lot of friendship with Sam, said, 'If the old man gets out, this whole thing's going to crash.' And he was right. Sam kept all sharks in line. Had Sam been 15 years younger and at the height of his power when Vince tried to go national, it would have been a most interesting fight."

Soon enough, a power struggle erupted, and Matysik found himself running opposition shows to the triumverate-led NWA promotion where he had worked so long.

"Verne really stayed out of the whole argument. If anything, I think he wanted me to come out on top. They wanted to change some things financially in terms of how we were paying bills, not that that would have been necessarily wrong, but their way was a little scarier. Everything with Sam went to the CPA every month, and they wanted to change to their guy in Kansas City. They said about our accountant, 'He's not our guy,' and I said, 'What do you mean? He's Saint Louis' guy.' I have tremendous respect for O'Connor, Geigel and Race, but Saint Louis wasn't like everywhere else. They were running Kansas City 50 times a year, drawing 800 a week. We were doing triple the business with half as many shows. I knew how it was going to go when Sam went. I told him, 'I don't think its going to work.' He said, 'I don't either.'"

Matysik found some unlikely allies as he opened his own office, Greater Saint Louis Wrestling.

"One of people I was talking to a lot was Fritz Von Erich, because David and I were really close," he said. "David wanted to wrestle for me right off, and Fritz told me what happened in Dallas, when Fritz broke off from Ed McLemore, Sam threw his weight to Fritz. Fritz had to promise Sam to make peace after he won, though, because it was good for business. Fritz said he'd help behind the scenes, but he said, 'I want the same promise from you. I want you to make peace when this is over,' which I was happy to do. Of course, somebody got in the middle before things got to that point, and that was Vince. Channel 11, where we had TV, told us, 'You and Vince working together would be great,' I explained it to Fritz, and I said, 'Fritz, if you and I go together, we can hold him off, but he's got plans.' Fritz said no, he had known Vince Senior for 100 years, and he'd never let it happen."

Matysik has released three, two-hour videotapes containing some of the best action from Saint Louis' glory days, with such stars as Ric Flair, "King Kong" Bruiser Brody and the Von Erichs.

Matysik said he was choosy about what footage he would release, wanting to give fans the best of Saint Louis.
"Instead of doing whole shows, we're picking out some of the better matches, the hotter matches and focusing on some of the more memorable characters," he said.

One of those was Brody, who was a controversial figure until his murder in 1988. Brody was known for holding promoters up for more money at the last minute, and not cooperating with the in-ring game plan if he was unhappy.

Matyisk, however, said Brody was good as gold in Saint Louis when working for Muchnick, and later for Matysik, after Muchnick's 1982 retirement from promoting.

"Brody was a rebellious son of a gun, no two ways about it," Matysik said. "If a guy screwed him once on money, their relationship was never going to be the same. I always found his handshake to be his word, but then again, I never screwed him. There were no gray areas with him. If he respected and trusted a guy, he could make them look like a million bucks."

Another star to be featured is Dick the Bruiser, whom Matysik said reminded him of Brody in more ways than one.

"I think lot of people were afraid of him," Matysik said. "Dick was pretty rebellious, and when he ran opposition in Detroit, we laid off using him, and that killed Sam, too. The Sheik was not his style. Sam considered it cheap heat. He came here, did a short match and called it a DQ, and the crowd was hot. They were on the edge, but it was because they thought they were getting screwed, with the quick DQ. Sam was always nice to Ed Farhat, but Farhat told me once, 'I don't think the old man likes what I do in the ring.'"

The Saint Louis television and arena matches are fantastic bits of wrestling history, and these DVD releases are like finding treasure long thought lost.

If you yearn for wrestling matches without the lingerie shows, scatological skits and downright silliness that often accompanies the modern product, spend $22 on a St. Louis DVD and remember why you fell in love with wrestling in the first place.

And if you're a newer fan, check one out, so you can see pro wrestling before it became "sports entertainment."

You can find St. Louis wrestling DVD ordering information by dropping an email to: margaret463@juno.com.  

NEXT MONTH:

The NWA Title in 1983