Giving Paul Ellering His Flowers

0.031 - 29.224 Dave LaGreca

Welcome to the Busted Open podcast. This is Dave LaCrecca. On today's episode, myself and Bully Ray have one of the greats, and that is precious Paul Ellering, the Hall of Fame manager of the Legion of Doom, the Road Warriors, with some crazy stories I've never heard right here on the Busted Open podcast. This is the Busted Open Podcast. The one and only precious Paul Ellering. Sir, how are you?

29.284 - 30.666 Dave LaGreca

And thank you so much for the time.

31.747 - 41.261 Paul Ellering

I am good. And thank you for inviting me. And I appreciate the honor of you putting me on Mount Rushmore.

41.701 - 45.006 Paul Ellering

That's a tremendous honor. Thank you very much.

45.408 - 72.9 Bully Ray

Paul, whenever the conversation comes up, we are proud on this show to always say and shout at the top of our lungs how the Road Warriors are the greatest tag team that has ever existed. And you were a major part of that, being not only their on-air manager, but behind the scenes as well. And we will always show you the love, the respect, and appreciation of

72.88 - 77.626 Bully Ray

for what the three of you were able to accomplish in professional wrestling. So thank you as always.

89.763 - 108.553 Paul Ellering

And from there, we went on to create a dynasty and being in the sport of wrestling. It's just been a, Tremendous high point in my life. Especially being with Hawk and Animal.

109.375 - 137.111 Bully Ray

Paul, I want to ask you about some of the videos I see on social media. You guys have obviously performed in front of 100,000 people and massive crowds, but... I'm going to take you back to the all Japan days when the Warriors would make their entrance and just blaze through the crowd and the crowd would part like the Red Sea and there you would be in tow right behind them.

137.131 - 144.161 Bully Ray

Can you describe the energy in an arena when the Road Warriors would make their entrance in Japan?

155.67 - 179.719 Paul Ellering

And the first time, uh, we were in Japan. I told, uh, animal and Hawk. I said, watch, watch how these guys go to the ring. And, and they watched and they, we all looked at each other. Yeah, we're going to do that. And the rest was, uh, history, you know, uh, it was just, it was, we were like Godzilla. And, uh,

180.273 - 200.29 Paul Ellering

They parted like the Red Sea, and it was just a tremendous time in the sport of wrestling when Japan was so hot. And in the 80s, that was always our ace in the hole as far as bargaining went. We always had Japan.

201.451 - 221.653 Dave LaGreca

My question for you, because when I first started watching wrestling, when you first became a manager, you had the Legion of Doom with the Spoiler and Jake Roberts and the Road Warriors. Talk about that transition, because you were still very much a young man when you became a manager. Why the transition from wrestler to manager?

222.814 - 259.707 Paul Ellering

Well, that's a really long story. I was wrestling Robert Gibson. in, uh, Columbus, Georgia. And I ruptured my patella tendon. So I go back to, uh, uh, uh, Jerry Oates takes me to the hotel. We're going to go to the hospital the next morning. And, uh, who's there, but Dr. Jimmy Andrews, who's head of the Birmingham clinic now, or was, and, uh,

259.906 - 291.05 Paul Ellering

So he operated on me the first time and I was rehabbing for about seven months. And Ole calls me up and he says, you ready to get back to work, kid? And I go, yeah, I guess I'm ready. I, you know, really trained hard to get it back. I hadn't done anything in the ring though. And Ole says, after I wrestled on TV and he says, you know, maybe we should give the leg a, just another month or two.

292.011 - 300.282 Paul Ellering

It seems like you're favoring it. I said, okay, that's fine. And he said, did you ever think about being a manager?

300.302 - 334.297 Paul Ellering

He says, be careful because you get stigmatized as a manager, then that's where you'll be the rest of your career. And I had a, even before I got into wrestling, I was in college and I had a premonition dream that I was a wrestling manager. So this was five years before I even thought about wrestling. And when Ole said that, I said, let's do it. And the rest was history.

335.458 - 353.2 Paul Ellering

I started managing Spoiler and Jake the Snake, Buzz Sawyer. And then I managed Arne Anderson and Matt Bourne. They were the tag team. And Matt got himself into some trouble.

354.241 - 386.561 Paul Ellering

And so we were without a tag team. So Ole goes up to Minneapolis and talks to Eddie Sharkey, who had a training camp going at the time. And he found Mike and Joe there, Animal and Hawk, and said, would you guys be interested in coming to Georgia Championship Wrestling? And they said, oh, hell yeah, yeah, yeah. So, well, he says, okay, be there the next week.

388.003 - 400.765 Paul Ellering

And they flew in and I picked them up at the airport, took them to TV. And we were on TV the first day. And they were champions. And the rest was history.

401.74 - 417.224 Bully Ray

Do you remember what you thought about them the first time you saw them in the ring wrestle? Obviously, they were green at the time. They were not polished. But do you remember thinking anything to yourself after you saw that first match?