On October, 10, 1999, an indelible mark on the brand of professional wrestling occurred. As a result of the popularity of wrestling and record ratings due to the Monday Night Wars, wrestling was experiencing an all-time high in viewership. Because of this, a few promoters and television producers sought out to make some (seemingly) easy money by capitalizing on this popularity and creating a show of their own. Only this show composed of superstars who were either unknown, way past their prime, or so out of shape to be physically capable of performing for a big-named company.
The event was Heroes of Wrestling, and it was DOA from the very beginning. While Dutch Mantel was the experienced veteran on the commentating team, Randy Rosenbloom, a last-minute replacement for Gordon Solie, quickly showed how grossly ignorant he was of the product by missing numerous cues and wrongfully naming maneuvers as they were being executed.
Although the attendance was over 2,000, which is actually good for an inaugural independent PPV show, spectators were soon disappointed by the quality of the event. Specifically, the fiasco of Jake Roberts being completely inebriated and incapable of getting himself together enough to not look like a total embarrassment. From this, to Jim Neidhart missing his flight and appearance deep into to program, forcing the main event to be re-booked on the spot, Heroes of Wrestling was the last of its kind, and the event has no plans of ever returning.
Nearly 17 years later, I was able to catch up with one of the spearheads of the Heroes of Wrestling idea. In a very riveting discussion, here is what he shared:
What caused you to endeavor in that type of project?
“Well, this goes back to the mid- to late 90’s, were I was involved in a bunch of syndications and pay per views. And, at the time, I was working with a project called the “Tough Woman” and “Tough Man” championships. I just was fascinated by the whole process of pay per viewing, and how you do it. I never been an aficionado of wrestling, but I was introduced to a guy (and I couldn’t even tell you his name). It was in New York, and he was like, you gotta come with me to a couple of events. It is InDemand, which was the pay per view office, said we’ve got this wrestling guy that keeps calling us. We like to connect him to you because we think you could bring this project to us, and we’d be interested if you were able to do it. We came up with the concept of, what if we took all the old wrestlers, the classic guys, and brought them together and did an event? Since I had the ability to make deals for locations and understood how to produce it and how to promote it. That’s how I got involved in it.”
How were you able to get all that money fronted to you? There are so many people who have indy promotions and wants to start wrestling projects, but yours was over a quarter of a million?
“I just thought, at the time, that it could work. The older wrestlers, for the most part, I was incredibly impressed by them. These are entertainers, and there were a couple of guys that were killing me, that I couldn’t stand, but a couple terrific guys. So the more I got into it, the more I was interested in doing it.”
What determined your selection of wrestlers for the Heroes of Wrestling card?
“That’s a really good question. I would love to tell you that was my call, but as I said, I was not an aficionado. I actually had a booker, a matchmaker if you will, and he understood the fandom of all the guys from Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, all of them, and was able to find them and get us in touch with them and I had an attorney to do a deal with each one of them. Everything we did was very legal, down to the protection against the World Wrestling Federation (at the time). So we ended up doing the event in Mississippi, and I was very excited about doing the event. The location, the people, the venue, all that was great. I remember a couple of weeks before, getting some of the nuances of it. The nuances were that Jake the Snake doesn’t even own his own snake. He actually rents the snakes locally. It was hilarious that Jake didn’t even own his own snake! So I’m now in the business of signing agreements with local snake vendors. The guy who was booking it, I don’t think he fully disclosed the state of mind or the state of person that Jake was.
So, literally, we’ve done all these deals, and we get to the event, and you obviously know wrestling’s scripted, and I wasn’t about to decided what was gonna happen in Jake’s match. That’s just not what I was gonna do, and I’d giving myself way too much credit if I decided, so I didn’t. [I just said], give us a classic matchup, and let’s make everybody happy. 90 percent of the people there were complete gentlemen, and I was just so impressed with everything up until the start of the event. Things are going very well, and the event’s rolling and people are enjoying it, and it was the second to last match. Apparently, kind of an old grudge match which, believe it or not, the guys didn’t even like each other. Literally, this match, which I was surprised at the level of abilities that the guys had, including Jimmy [Snuka] getting on the top rope, everybody was really doing a great job. I realize in the second to last match, it’s getting very physical. The razor blades are cutting and there’s more cuts than we thought, and there’s literally blood going all over the place. I turn around to [the booker] and I go, ‘What is happening now?! Do you not know what’s going on now?’ And they go, ‘They’ve went off script.’ I remember my announcer just get totally splattered with blood, including a bunch of people in the front row. Now the casino people are in my truck going, ‘What’s going on? This is not much fun.’ Somehow we get the match to end. So the last match is your guy, Jake the Snake. Bottom line, Jake comes into the ring, and he’s HAMMERED. I’m looking back at my guy and saying, this doesn’t look good to me. And he says, ‘Yeah. He’s fine.’ Next thing you know, the snake’s there. He’s got the snake, and it’s clear to me that the relationship between he and the snake was a new one. I’ve got people who paid to come to this event, innocent bystanders, and Jake starts swinging the snake in the middle of the ring.
So, I literally look around and I turn to my guy, and I’m like, can you stop this? Someone’s gonna get hurt. I’m about the have people go in the ring to apprehend Jake, take the snake away from him, and protect the people who paid to see the event. Then Jake starts swinging it to people. I turn to the technical director, and I tell him, fade it to black. And we faded to black. And that was the end of the show. I felt terrible, because clearly this was not the way it should have been. I didn’t know, and I take total responsibility. I felt terrible about it, because honestly, the reason why all the guys did it is because they thought there was more. They thought there were more events, they thought that there was going to be a tour. I walked out, and I looked at the guys, shook all their hands, and said, I want to thank you for your time. I walked out of there and NEVER did another wrestling event again.
I consider myself a professional. I considered it then, and I consider it now. But I didn’t do a good job. Even though some things were out of my control, I should have known that Jake was not a stable guy [at the time]. I put him in the ring. I paid him, so of course he showed up. Any excuse that I have that it’s Jake’s fault, it doesn’t in my mind hold water.”
Heroes of Wrestling was an incredibly humbling experience for both him and Jake Roberts. Thankfully, both have rebounded significantly. Since then, the interviewee has a prominent spot for one of the most widely-known media companies. Jake Roberts, as a result of dedicating himself to the lifestyle of DDPYoga, has completely turned himself around, experiencing wholeness – body, mind, soul, and spirit. While Heroes of Wrestling was arguably the worst pay per view in the history of wrestling, at least there is a positive story to come out of it, 17 years later.
Follow Chris Featherstone on Twitter at @cravewrestling
