Barry Windham, as you may know, is the son of Blackjack Mulligan, brother of Kendall Windham, and brother-in-law of Mike Rotundo (Irwin R. Shyster). He's also a multi-time WWF tag champ, a former NWA champ, a member of the most highly regarded lineup of the Four Horsemen, and a fairly honest guy. My only problem with him is that he's a bit scatterbrained and will start a topic but never finish it up (meaning I have to complete some of his thoughts), but I think that's residue left over from some nasty concussions he's had over the years.The interview opens as RF is interviewing Windham in the Turnbuckle Championship Wrestling dojo in Marietta, Georgia. TCW is Dusty Rhodes' current indy fed. How did he get started? He was going to West Texas State, which produced some of the GREAT wrestlers of all time including Terry Funk, Bruiser Brody, and Tully Blanchard. He got into the business setting up the ring for Dick Murdoch's territory in 1979. He couldn't wrestle at first because he was on football scholarship to West Texas, but JJ Dillon came to town one night and insisted he wrestle him. He went back to doing grunt-work and learned the business-side of wrestling from Terry Garvin, whom he puts over heavily. He refereed for QUITE a while before he was allowed to start wrestling full-time. His father's reaction- Blackjack never really asked him if he wanted to get into the business. When he found out Barry was wrestling in violation of his scholarship, he apparently wasn't happy but didn't say much. (Windham claims he was fast enough to make it as a pro football player (4.6 40 yard dash at 238 pounds) and could deep-snap, as well as being a heavily decorated amateur wrestler, so those options were open until he violated his scholarship) His first major territory- He'd worked Amarillo before but that was more like working a HUGE region rather than a real territory. He thinks he started working in Florida for Eddie Graham and Dusty Rhodes in February 1980. Guys he learned from- He learned a lot by watching Don Muraco. Unlike the current style in the business, Muraco would be slow and methodical but would make every single move mean something. Manny Fernandez was a guy he learned the technical side of the business from. Dusty also coached him on a lot of stuff. Mike Graham- One of his best friends. Hard worker, worked his way up from setting up the ring to finally wrestling. During the mid-90's while both were working for WCW, they'd be buying Harley Davidson motorcycles from people up north during the winter and either keep them or resell them in the south, which allowed them to pick up a nice amount of pocket change along with some nice hardware. Eddie Graham- Long-winded, only had a 6th grade education but learned out in the world VERY well. His suicide was a tragedy and was probably the result of unchecked mental illness. Had a great relationship with him. Dick Slater- "Like a Terry Funk clone." Slater watched Funk like Windham watched Muraco. Hard worker, very stiff. If he hits you, it WILL hurt. Kevin Sullivan- Vivid imagination. He predicts their shoot with him will be pretty interesting. "He was like the Devil's Advocate" and came up with a lot of unusual stuff like having Blackjack, Barry, Kendall Windham, and Mike Rotundo team up and discuss how they're family. Ending up in the WWF the first time- Dusty ran a show in the Orange Bowl in Miami and management's numbers came back lower than the actual attendance, so Dusty left Florida and took Mike Rotundo, Ron Bass, and Barry with him to Mid-Atlantic. The towns in Mid-Atlantic were on their asses at the time, so Dusty had to work hard on the storylines as well as getting guys to work hard in the ring, but promoter Jim Crockett wasn't taking care of the guys monetarily. Barry got a check for $134 for two weeks of wrestling, so he bailed on Crockett and it caused a large rift between him and Dusty. Blackjack hooked him up with George South, who was Vince McMahon's booker at the time, and Vince gave him a tryout which lead to a job. He ended up making $6000 in his first week, but is unsure if Vince did that for everyone to get their attention or if he did it in his case because he knew the chickenfeed Barry had gotten paid in Mid-Atlantic. Locker room atmosphere in the WWF- He wasn't really accepted into the power clique of Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, and Paul Orndorff, but Orndorff did like him and took him under his wing. He ended up hooking Rotundo up with a job in the WWF, but Rotundo did it in his usual formal way and gave his two-week notice to Dusty and Crockett before leaving. He thinks Pat Patterson came up with the US Express concept and talked about how they were getting thousands of dollars each week and made about $200,000 a year in 1985. Winning the tag belts from Dick Murdoch and Adrian Adonis- He'd known Murdoch all his life and Murdoch was a true character. He was happy-go-lucky 95% of the time but you'd KNOW if it was that other 5% of the ...
