← The Steve Austin Show
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- [00:01]
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- [00:28]
Jim Ross
Anywhere.
- [00:28]
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- [00:43]
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- [01:27]
Steve Austin Show Announcer
The following program is a podcast one.com production from Hollywood, California by way of the Broken Skull Ranch. This is the Steve Austin Show.
- [01:35]
Steve Austin
Give me a Hell yeah.
- [01:37]
Jim Ross
Hell yeah.
- [01:38]
Steve Austin Show Announcer
Now here's Steve Austin.
- [01:41]
Steve Austin
I want to welcome old good buddy to the Steve Austin Show, Jumping Jim Ross. Jim, how are you?
- [01:48]
Jim Ross
I'm good, Steve. Thanks for having me on.
- [01:51]
Steve Austin
What's going on down there in Norman, Oklahoma today?
- [01:54]
Jim Ross
Well, we're just getting ready for the next hailstorm or tornado, whatever mother Nature brings us, but everything's good.
- [02:00]
Steve Austin
Is the weather bad right now? Is it stormy weather right now?
- [02:04]
Jim Ross
No, but, you know, wait 15, 20 minutes and I'm sure it'll change.
- [02:09]
Steve Austin
Well, man, I tell you what, anytime I talk to one of the guys, I always like to ask, you know.
- [02:14]
Jim Ross
Kind of the here and now, how.
- [02:15]
Steve Austin
Are you feeling right now? Everything good for you?
- [02:18]
Jim Ross
Yeah, I'm feeling good. I need to get some of those supplements you've been advertising and that might help me a little bit. But I'm feeling good. Changed my diet a little bit or a lot really. And Then I've gone, started going to the gym regularly, which I had never really taken the time to do when I was in the corporate world or when I was younger for whatever reason. Just busy. I thought I was busy. So. Lifestyle changes. Smart, you know, 61. It's about time for me to smarten up a little bit and do a few things right for myself.
- [02:51]
Steve Austin
It's funny, when you go down the road, the decisions you make to change your life for the better. Some of the things that I was doing back in the day don't jive well for a long term future as a human being walking the face of the earth. Kind of toned down the lifestyle in a lot of different directions. What have you done with your diet? How did you clean it up?
- [03:10]
Jim Ross
Well, I grilled more. Pretty much eliminated fried foods to any degree. Cut way back on the booze, very little dairy. Every now and then I'll have a bowl of Cheerios, a little skim milk. So very little dairy? No. Try to cut back on the sugar. I don't salt nothing. If it comes to sodium in it, that's what I get. I try to watch the sodium intake. Just some common sense shit, you know, just without overthinking it, you know, just being smart, quite frankly. And so, you know, fried foods, big country thing, you know, growing up, eating fried foods every day, eating a lot of red meat every day. And I don't do any one of them anymore. Hell, it used to be a half a gallon of milk a day. So that's gone. And then I replaced the happy hours of my buddies at the bar by going to the gym. So I swap booze to the treadmill. I don't get the buzz, but it's better for me.
- [04:12]
Steve Austin
You pushing in the iron over at the gym.
- [04:14]
Jim Ross
Not much. Not much. You know, I don't want to. I've been told by a lot of guys, look, just do low weights, a lot of reps. Don't be an idiot. I ain't going to set no records. I ain't going to the old, you know, the AARP Olympics anytime soon. So I'm not lifting a lot, but I do hit the machines and, you know, I had that colon thing and the abdominal surgery and so I did a little core training. And the thing I found out about that is that, you know, I'm wearing size smaller pants because I've been doing some ab work. Believe it or not. I ain't got no six pack or a two pack.
- [04:53]
Steve Austin
I don't either.
- [04:54]
Jim Ross
You ain't alone, but you Know, I never had one, so I've drank plenty of them, but I don't have none of that, so. But it's better. It's been smarter. I think a lot's been smarter. You can't lose weight and get healthier if you don't exercise, I can tell you that for sure.
- [05:10]
Steve Austin
That and people that just eat everything under the sun and then go to the gym and think they're going to train it off. Here's one for you. You can never out train a shitty diet. I mean, if you're eating everything under the sun and you go do this and that at the gym, you've got to be at a caloric deficit to actually drop any kind of weight. So that's where a lot of people kind of miss the mark. But I've been over at your house the last couple years. You've been on that treadmill and doing your thing and watching what you eat. You're on the right track. I'm glad to hear you're feeling good. And I wanted to talk about Jim. Many things with you and a lot of them are from the world. We both come from the world we both know and love the business of professional wrestling. But I want to take a little bit of time to talk about you, the human being. Because you're not just the voice behind the microphone, the voice of the WWE back in the day, or the voice of the NWA or Mid South Power Pro, one of the greatest announcers of all time. You're actually a human being. I realize that you're one of my best friends. You were there when I got my neck cut on. You've been through everything with me from high and low. But let's talk about your days back in Oklahoma. Were you born in Westville?
- [06:22]
Jim Ross
No, I was actually born in Fort Bragg, California.
- [06:26]
Steve Austin
Holy. You're a Californian?
- [06:29]
Jim Ross
Yeah. You know, that's my mom and dad. Mom and dad. My dad graduated from high school in May of 1951, and my mother was a junior. She was getting ready to go into her senior year of high school and they got this wild hair idea to get to elope. And I think that the reason they eloped was because my mother was with child. My fat ass. And so they that, or if the math is wrong, I was conceived somewhere on Route 66 in a pickup truck between Oklahoma and Northern California. I'm not sure the story, but one of two things are true. And whichever one makes the best country song is what it should be. I was born in Fort Bragg, California, where my dad Was in the logging business. A bunch of the Rosses left Oklahoma when the dust bowl came and they migrated to various parts of California. So I got a lot of relatives out in your neck of the woods where you are today anyway. I don't know if I got any relatives in Hollywood, but probably not. But nonetheless, Northern California is where I was born and Mendocino County. And I've tried to do a little research on Mendocino County. The only thing I've seen on TV that makes it really special, a lot of dope is they grow a lot of pot there.
- [07:48]
Steve Austin
They do pot capital California.
- [07:51]
Jim Ross
Yeah. So dad was a logger and we stayed there until I started the school. Then we moved back to Oklahoma. I went to first through third grade there in a two room country schoolhouse. Had two teachers. One taught first through the fourth grade, the other taught the fifth through the eighth grade. Then we got to go to big Westville High School. So I went school there till the third grade. Then I went back to California and went to school in Santa Rosa for most of my fourth grade year. So I'm a half assed Californian, which I don't, you know, I don't.
- [08:30]
Steve Austin
I want to touch upon that subject right there. I want to touch upon the fact that you're half assed Californian out of all the time I've known you, Jim. It's been for a long time, since early 90s. You never told me you was born in California. You was always the tried and true Oklahoman. Why didn't you bring this to my attention years ago?
- [08:49]
Jim Ross
Well, you know, first of all, I figured California wouldn't claim me. And I was, you know, I've been Oklahoma guy at heart, you know, mom and dad and all my, my family came to Oklahoma before statehood. I still own 190 acres of land down in eastern Oklahoma. That was Bureau of Indian affairs land grant to my great great grandfather. So that was in 1883 and Oklahoma became a state in 1907. So I kind of figured that my roots are all Oklahoma oriented. And of course, you know the old man, I guess not. He probably couldn't afford a condom. But nonetheless I came along and that kind of pushed me to California where I was. They dropped me in California. I was born six weeks early, by the way, January 3, 1952. And so I'm not embarrassed about it. It is what it is. It's just part of my life. But I enjoyed. Northern California is a pretty ass country, man.
- [09:51]
Steve Austin
Damn right it is.
- [09:52]
Jim Ross
I got to go back some of these Days someday. I'm sure everybody that I graduated with and forgot or I don't even remember names, but I didn't graduate with them, but went to school with them. But I'd kind of go through that area somewhere along the way just to see what the hell it looks like at this stage of my game.
- [10:07]
Steve Austin
You brought about 190 acres a while ago, and you and I have talked about this on many occasions. That being the big Indian country. I do a little bit of arrowhead hunting on the Broken Skull Ranch down in South Texas. Yeah, I find a couple arrowheads here and there. But how about giving me the invite to come up here and scour around for some arrowheads on the 190 acres?
- [10:26]
Jim Ross
Oh, yeah. Anytime. You know that, anytime you want to come, it's fine. We got deer on it, we got quail. There's all kinds of. The thing about not living there, you know, the Illinois river runs right through it. It's beautiful land. But there's a dirt road. There's a one way in and one way out. And for all those years that I was on the road, whether it be in NWA or even doing Monday Night Raw, when I came back, when I left Connecticut and moved back to Oklahoma, it was never really a consideration to live down there because it's just so damned isolated, you know, for a single. For my wife to be there, for Jan to be there by herself. And people know that I'm on. Watching me on television when I'm still on raw, you know, it just kind of sets you up for. It might not be the best thing in the world, but it's a beautiful country. There's good hunting. There's good. We have Hay Meadows. I got a buddy of mine that I went to high school with. I got at least two. He runs cattle on it.
- [11:26]
Steve Austin
Do you ever go down there and look around or just drive and check things?
- [11:29]
Jim Ross
I go down there about once a year.
- [11:32]
Steve Austin
How far is that from Norman?
- [11:34]
Jim Ross
But it's about three and a half hours.
- [11:37]
Steve Austin
That's a pretty good little haul.
- [11:39]
Jim Ross
It's a pretty good little haul to go sightseeing. And I talk to him on the phone, you know, make sure everything's all good stead. But it's. It's a. It's a beautiful piece of ground. And it's been my family since, like I said, the 1880s.
- [11:52]
Steve Austin
And I'm coming down here to go arrowhead hunting sometimes in this year. Are you down with that?
- [11:58]
Jim Ross
Yeah. Oh, yeah, we can do that. That trip is probably about a 12 pack 12.
- [12:02]
Steve Austin
Pack of beer. Okay. I want to talk about you and me driving down the road. Our little deal between Phoenix and Tucson. The ride we used to take. But I wanted to briefly touch upon your career as a Westville Yellow Jacket. Now everybody knows you as the voice of professional wrestling. But you had an athletic background. You played first base on a baseball team. You were a two time all conference football player playing center. You're a 1969 honorable mention allstate on the football team and a four year letterman in basketball. Anything else?
- [12:37]
Jim Ross
No. I was. I was also in the ffa. I know.
- [12:41]
Steve Austin
I want to get to that in a minute. I want to stick to the athletic part of this thing. A four year letterman in basketball. I would not have thought that. Jim.
- [12:49]
Jim Ross
I was Steve. I was a defensive specialist.
- [12:51]
Steve Austin
You didn't have a good pull away jumper.
- [12:54]
Jim Ross
I was a pretty good set shot. I had a pretty good set shot. I was a pretty badass horse player. But I was a defensive specialist and I was. If somebody got the hot hand, I was normally put in to shut them down by fish or foul and normally it was foul. I remember going to one game and somebody had the hot hand and I got my ass in trouble because I fouled out in a quarter. I had five personal fouls in a quarter of eight minute quarter basketball. And that's about a foul a minute little over. And my coach wasn't too happy about that. But I got mixed signals. He said to shut him down and I tried to shut him down. I mean literally. But I had fun playing, you know, it was good. Here's the deal. I was the only child. So my dad, we lived on a 160 acre farm. I always have chores to do. So I figured that I didn't want to be a farmer and I didn't want to be a rancher at that stage of my life. I knew that wasn't what I was going to do. Didn't know what I was going to do, but I wasn't going to do that. So I figured that all the activities that I could get involved in in school I should do because it kept me at school or school related activities rather than cleaning out a fence row or picking up rocks or you know, watering the dogs and all these other things that we did, the cattle and everything. So it wasn't that I was lazy, I just wasn't motivated for it. I didn't give a damn about it. But as I got older and as I've gotten older now, I look back on it and I should have appreciated it more. But I liked my dad was a good football player. You know, I remember coming home one time and telling him, I was in the ninth grade and I played on the varsity and I was on special teams. And I come home and he said, well, I got to play. And he said, I got a little problem with you playing varsity football. And I said, oh, here it comes, I'm going to miss. He's going to take me off the team. He said, your damn uniform ain't dirty enough. So I said, all right, well I'll get more. In other words, he was saying, you're not. You've got a little bit of a limber tail, you're aggressive enough. So the next game was a weigh game and the field was barren and bad and you know, no turf obviously. So I found the muddiest part on the field to do the calisthenics and the stretching and the warming up so that I was dirty before the game started thinking I was going to outsmart the old man. So I play, I'll make a tackle or two. I come home feeling pretty good about myself. I'm 15 years old. A buddy of mine as a sophomore drives me home after the game. The bus gets back, Dad's waiting up for me. I think I'm going to get an atta boy, you know, boy, that was a good tackle. You made a sack or whatever. And he said, I saw what you did. Saw you warming up in the damn mud like a pig. So you were dirty, you tried to outsmart me, he said. I said, dad, you just don't understand the game of football like I understand it. I'm 15 years old.
- [16:01]
Steve Austin
What do you think about that?
- [16:02]
Jim Ross
He was six' three, about 275, wore 18 and a half, 37 inch shirt, had a size 14 ring. He was a big bastard and little ornery. So I said, you just don't understand the game like I do. I'm 15 years old. So he moved the furniture around. We lived in a four room concrete block house and converted a dairy barn so I didn't have any carpets, just concrete floors. He moved the furniture around and mom stayed in the kitchen. And so me and him went one on one in the living room. End result is I had blood coming out of my ear now, ear busted, lips both top and bottom because he got them both and a little shiner and he just beat the hell out of me. So I go to school on Monday and the principal calls in the office and I guess, you know, did you have issues? You have A fight or something at school? No, I was going one on one with my dad. Nowadays it puts you on Dr. Phil and they'd have a whole week of shows about getting abused by your father.
- [17:08]
Steve Austin
Oh, hell yeah.
- [17:09]
Jim Ross
You know, then I go to a football practice and coach says, God damn, Ross, what happened to you? Did you get hurt Friday night? Because I was playing on a ninth grade game. So on the week and then I said on the varsity games on a Friday? I said, no, I got home Friday night and my dad thought I needed extra practice and we went one on one in the living room and I didn't do so good. So he toughened me up. But he was good at it for my own good, you know, gotta learn responsibility. And I let my ass over my mouth, all over my ass quite frankly. And he put me back in my 15 year old place.
- [17:44]
Steve Austin Show Announcer
The Steve Austin Show. The Steve Austin.
- [17:52]
Adam Kroll
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- [18:57]
Steve Austin
All right, coming back and talking to Jim Ross, covering his athletic career and getting coached up by his dad after a big game. Let's talk about some of your stuff as a student, Jim, you were actually a president of the student body. You were the state vice president of the Future Farmers of America where you were the state speech champion in 1968. And that's got us, you know, even at a young age. It's pointing you towards being an announcer now since I got this 411 on you. I never did know that. Were you taking speech classes? Were you always interested in speaking? Were you talkative as a kid? Give me some 411 on this.
- [19:34]
Jim Ross
Well, you know, I think it started being an only child. I spent lots of time with my grandparents who had a farm out there near us. And my grandpa was a big reader, vociferous reader. And he taught me to read when I was about five years old and read the Sports page because I was a big sports fan. And then when I was in the first or second grade, I got a transistor radio. And the only station I could really get worth a damn was kmox out of St. Louis. And they covered all the Cardinal games. So I had a little ear plug and a little transistor radio and I'd listen to kmox. And they had two boys named Jack Buck and Harry Carey that called their games. And so those are the guys that were kind of like my babysitters when mom and dad both worked. Because I was the latchkey kid long before that term even became about. I stayed on 160 acre farm about 8 miles out of town, up a quarter lane dirt road, a quarter mile dirt road by myself. When I was starting, about eight or nine years old, I was just, you know, I had chores to do, I had responsibilities, right. And that radio was with me all the time. I'd listen to this, listen to that. And it seemed like then, Steve, that the AM stations, there weren't many FM stations then. And a lot of the AM stations were talk. And I just listened to guys talk and I listened to sports. And I think it influenced me a lot in that regard. That's unbelievable. Communication, the communication world kind of intrigued me. So then you see these old yahoos on TV doing the news or the sports and they were all, they weren't sweaty, they weren't dirty, they didn't have sweat rings on their arms, they had nice suits on, they looked like, you know, bad gig.
- [21:21]
Steve Austin
That kind of jive with your not wanting to be a farmer type thing, right?
- [21:25]
Jim Ross
Yeah, absolutely. And there's air conditioned and you know, hell, it was a good thing. So, you know, rolling out of bed at 4 or 5 in the morning before you had to do your chores before the school bus came at a quarter to eight. If it was, if it was, if the pond was frozen, you took an axe, you cut a hole in the pond so the damn livestock could drink. Things like that was the chores that I had. I had all the grunt work. I had every little lousy ass job that there was. The same way when my dad would take me hunting, he'd put me in a tree or in a place that I would be safe. And I have yet to kill a deer with my dad hunting. And now he might kill two or three and we'd have tags for me and tags for him and I'd tag out but never pop a cap. Right.
- [22:06]
Steve Austin
Funny how that happens.
- [22:08]
Jim Ross
Yeah. To kind of quell my desire to get up that early and go freeze your ass off to go hunting. Because I didn't get any action, you know, so that was kind of that deal. So the broadcasting thing was just. I think this kind of inbred in me just. I just. It felt right. I didn't know. Sure as hell didn't know it'd be wrestling. I thought, you know, maybe someday I can do what these guys are doing on television. And I'd hang on every word on a football game on TV or on the radio, and mostly radio, because then before ESPN and Fox and everybody else, it was, you know, you got a game of the week and it was wherever it was, and you had one NFL game on Sunday. Then the AFL got to come into play, and then it started getting around. That's why I kind of like the Houston Oilers. That's why we did WrestleMania 17 in the Astrodome. It was a big deal to me because I'd watched Earl Campbell run that football with Bum Phillips on the sideline wearing his hat. That was a pretty cool experience for me as an Oklahoma kid, you know. So I think that's kind of where that came in. So those old broadcasters really influenced me then. A guy named Don Dunphy was probably the most well known boxing announcer. And he was the play by play guy on Friday night fights sponsored by Gillette. Super Blue blades. And for the kids out there listening, that's a razor blade that you shave with. And the only thing we shaved in Oklahoma back in those days was our face. Not our chest, not our back, not our arms.
- [23:41]
Steve Austin
Old school, baby. Old school.
- [23:44]
Jim Ross
Damn right. So I listened to him. So it was all about storytelling and immersing yourself into whatever genre it was. So that was going to be kind of my. What I thought I might want to do at some point. But, you know, the farthest thing from my mind was, I want to grow up and be a wrestling announcer.
- [24:02]
Steve Austin
But then you ended up in college. You ended up in college. And what were you going to major in there at Oklahoma?
- [24:08]
Jim Ross
Well, I was. I went. I majored in. I thought I was going to be a teacher. I thought I would like to be a college professor and maybe. Or maybe do a little coaching. But I was. I was taking speech and I was taking broadcast journalism and I had a PE minor, the PE minor, just because it was easy. But then I found out it wasn't so easy because I had to take kinesiology and human anatomy.
- [24:33]
Steve Austin
But the pieces keep falling into place. From listening to that radio to taking the speech classes and taking the radio Television stuff. You're kind of forming a pattern here. I read there in the Wikipedia you announced your first football game on the sidelines.
- [24:51]
Jim Ross
Yeah. You know the little radio station. I went to school at Northeastern State and Tahlequah. It was an NAI school at that time. And just got, you know, right place, right time and needed somebody. I got paid 15 bucks for broadcast a college gang and I was doing Northeastern. They were called the Red Men then, named after the Cherokee heritage. Of course, that's not politically correct nowadays. Now they're the River Hawks. Because the North State Redmond is.
- [25:21]
Steve Austin
Yeah.
- [25:21]
Jim Ross
You know, the politicians got involved in that deal.
- [25:24]
Steve Austin
Politically incorrect.
- [25:26]
Jim Ross
Yeah. Well, they say it is. I still think of them as the Redmond. I look at it as it with a source of pride.
- [25:32]
Steve Austin
I'm the same way on that. But. So while this is going on the whole time, Are you watching the business of professional wrestling?
- [25:39]
Jim Ross
Oh, yeah. You know that. Now that started when I was about probably 8 or 10 years old again. With mom and dad working 6 days a week. I had. I had command of the television until they got home. And then television, the wrestling out of Tulsa and the territory came on at 4 o' clock in the afternoon. So I was in the all clear. I got an hour that I knew that I could watch from 4 to 5. And I was good. So I watched that one hour of wrestling religiously every single week. And it was so simplistic. It was a good guy versus a bad guy. You knew exactly why they were fighting. You knew exactly what they were mad at each other about. You knew the titles meant something. And it was so episodically produced that they would. One week would lead to another week because they're promoting the live events in those towns.
- [26:30]
Steve Austin
And this is Bill Watts, correct?
- [26:33]
Jim Ross
That was. That was actually even before Bill.
- [26:35]
Steve Austin
Okay, before Bill.
- [26:36]
Jim Ross
Yeah.
- [26:37]
Steve Austin
Well, who was the promoter then?
- [26:38]
Jim Ross
Leroy McGurk.
- [26:39]
Steve Austin
Was Leroy McGurk. God dang it. I screwed that up. Gotcha. Go ahead.
- [26:44]
Jim Ross
So Bill. Bill ended up buying in and became a partner to McGurk. But at that time, McGurk's territory was junior heavyweights. And the big star was Danny Hodge. He was the NWA Junior Heavyweight Champion. Was a traveling champion. Didn't travel as much as the Funks and the Briscoes and the Kaninskis and Fez, all those guys. But he still traveled a lot. But he would work the dates in the territory and he was the big star there. But it was a junior heavyweight territory. So they're really. Upon occasion you get a Guy that was over 220, but if he wasn't under 220, you couldn't compete for the title. And the title was a big thing in that territory unless you had a hot personal issue. And there was some of them. The best tag team rivalry I ever saw in my life to this very day was the Kentuckians versus the Assassins. And that was Grizzly Smith, who's Jake Roberts, dad, and Tom Ernesto. They were the Masked Assassins. They took their name after Kennedy got assassinated in Dallas. You know, imagine that, taking a name off of a tragedy. And then they wrestled the Assassins, wrestled the Kentuckians. And obviously neither one of Grizzly Smith or Luke Brown were from Kentucky, but it told a good story. They looked like Kentuckians with a big full beard and great big guys, you know, grizzly was six' 10, 300 plus. So they weren't in the junior heavyweight conversation. But they had one hell of a personal issue in the territory to the point that Jody Hamilton, who was one of the Assassins, was telling me this angle. And I remember seeing it when I was 10 or 12 years old. He hard way Grizzly in a studio in Oklahoma City where they were taping TV and let him open his. Like a. He fillet his ass and he was bleeding like crazy. And it was. They did a post game interview, post match interview, and the announcer was so scared he thought it was fake. And he reached up to see if it was real and it was a gaping wound. And the TV station I know got in some hot water because it was so violent, it scared children. And I told my dad about it and he said, ah, hell, son, don't, because they're show business. He said, there's not a grown man alive that can let me stand in the corner on the second rope and hit them 10 times and not draw blood or black their eye. There's not a man alive that could endure that. So I said, okay. So I didn't want to believe him, but I didn't believe him. They suspended my disbelief. And I liked it that way. So I watched wrestling since I was in grade school and developed a love for it, even to the point of where when TBS came on cable, I drive 30 miles to Tahlequah to see my cousin when I was 16 to watch TBS on cable because we didn't have cable out in the country.
- [29:40]
Steve Austin
Who were some of the big stars in the ring at that time.
- [29:46]
Jim Ross
On cable back in those days? Oh, God, they had, you know, TBS was a melting pot because they had that national Cable overlay. So they. They brought in everybody that was anybody. I mean, it was. Bill Watts was one of the guys was on that show a lot. He was booking the territory. He had left. He had been partners with McGurk, and then he'd left. And they come back. They broke up more than, you know, they had more breakups than Lindsay Lohan's had rehabs. They were always pissing on each other and having fallen out. But there were some great stars in that TBS show, man. I mean, it was like the who's who. Here's what I remember the most about it. The wrestlers came and went, but for me, the one staple was Gordon solely, who was there every Saturday night at 6:05 Eastern Time. That was what I remember. And they'd have an angle. They'd send Freddie Miller, the ring announcer, back to the back to check on somebody. He'd come back with an update. Well, Gordon, I've never seen so and so this mad because for. And Thunderbolt Patterson was on there, you know, and it was a who's who because everybody wanted to be on the TBS wrestling show because they got national exposure, even though cable is in its infancy. So I think that got. Wrestling got in my blood then. And I'm like. I was like a lot of guys probably like people listening. People make fun of you sometimes when you're a wrestling fan. And I know that there is a pro wrestling bias. I know that there is in major sports. I know that there is in Hollywood. You know, anybody that says, well, you know, there's no people that don't look down at their nose on pro wrestling is full of bullshit because they do unfairly, in my view. In my opinion, that's. That's the way it is. You know, you got to like your career. You know, you had to separate yourself a little bit, take a step away, establish another level of work. But don't mean you turn your back on your fans. It's that you've immersed yourself in your other work just like anybody would. But the pro wrestling bias kind of follows you around. You know, it's, oh, he's the wrestling guy. I've been introduced as the wrestling guy about a zillion times in my life. And it used to piss me off, but it don't anymore. I'm proud of it, quite frankly.
- [31:58]
Steve Austin
But when you started in the business, didn't you start as a referee?
- [32:02]
Jim Ross
Yeah. What happened was I was going to school at Telequa and I was doing all these ball games on radio and. And I was officiating high school basketball and football to make ends meet in marriage, number one. And we did. Our fraternity did a fundraiser. We got kind of on the dean's black list. We weren't real good students. Part of the guys weren't good students. Some of us did all right, but some of them didn't. But we had a couple of altercations on the intramural football field. And we had a couple of bar fights and. And we almost lost our license, I guess, to be a fraternity. And so we had to do some fundraising efforts to rehabilitate our image. So we. Another buddy of mine and I decided, well, the wrestling championship. Wrestling was doing these spot shows, fundraisers for Kiwanis, the quarterback club, whatever, in the gyms, football fields, rodeo grounds. So we went up to Tulsa and talked to McGurk and Watts after a Monday night show. And I never forget, Watts had a match that night with, I think it was Dory junior. And Watts got bloody as heck, and they stopped the match due to too much blood. And so we're waiting on him in the office, and he comes in all bandaged up. And Leroy McGurk was blind and he'd be. Finish was going to be. And he said, I heard you had a little rough night tonight. He said, yeah, Lero, I got a. I butterflied it pretty good. I'm going to go to the hospital, get some stitches, because he's talking to two fans. He's not going to let us in on nothing. And so we talked about doing a date at the Northeastern state field house. And I laid out what we'd do promotionally. And he thought that was pretty clever for a young punk kid. And so we did that. Sold out. Did well. Then did a second one. Did well. The first one, he booked Hodge on top and then sold out. Then he booked himself on top and the second one, and it sold out. So he said, kid, if you ever need a job when you get out of college, give me a call. I said, I might have something for you. So that's kind of how that started. And then my first job was 114 a week, all in, no benefits. And I was the driver for the blind promoter. I bought whiskey and cigars. El producto Presidents is what he smoked. He drank Jim Beam whiskey. He could tell that it smells. I got a different brand. He could tell by the smell of the whiskey what it was. So I had to be exact. He always gave me big bills to go pay for it. And I always gave him the exact change back. Because I figured it was a setup. I could easily pocketed that an extra 20. Give me 100. I never did take a dime, which is a good lesson, too. Don't steal. And then I started putting the ring up to make a few extra dollars. Then I was. Because I was big enough, Bill said, let's teach him a referee. So I started refereeing to make some extra money. So I think, you know, I got off the weekly and went on nightly as a referee. And for the first year, the most I ever made was 40 bucks in a night. And you pay your own gas. You know how it was, Steve. You paid your own hotel, you got your own food. But I was traveling with Skandar Akbar and Danny Hodge because they were partners, and both of them were rather thrifty. So I drove, they rode, and I got mileage, which was 2 cents a mile at the time. So if you drove 200 miles, you made $4, and you made $4 from both guys. So I'd make eight bucks. Well, hell, if you're making $8 from those guys, you're making 40. That's. That's almost 25% of your payday.
- [35:47]
Steve Austin
Well, let's talk about those road trips. You know, you're making eight bucks by driving them. You got your payday. And I've ridden down the road with Skandar. Him and Bronco Lubitsch took me under their wing when I was in Dallas, Texas, breaking in trips to Louisiana, all over the place. And, man, listen to Skandar and act talk. It was an education that, man, you'd have to pay good money for to get, especially riding with the cats. You're riding with Danny Hodge, a bad son of a bitch, and AK a smart, smart cat. What was the conversation about? Were you just a sponge there, soaking it all in, listening?
- [36:20]
Jim Ross
Yeah, absolutely. You know, you learned to respect your elders, and you drove. You engaged in conversation when you were invited into the conversation, like, hey, what do you think, kid? Akbar was such a big Texas football fan, and Hodge was an OU Oklahoma University graduate, believe it or not, in industrial arts. And, you know, he never lost a wrestling match at OU prenational title, so he was a big time sooner. So they'd argue about OU and Texas football, basically, and then I would, of course, chime in when I was asked. And then, of course, the Niaclas outnumbered. He loved it, though. He loved the engaged in conversation. But basically, we talk about what worked and what didn't. And, you know, it was the fundamentals of touching human nature or human elements, emotions, you know, did we let it. Did we sell too long, or we shouldn't have had double heat tonight. Tomorrow night when we do this, let's just get one heat, one hot tag. That's. Don't convolute the match. And then when I got to know them better, I could ask them questions about, you know, why that and what did that mean? And they were patient enough to tell me. Now, I rode with some other guys that were real pricks that didn't want to tell you nothing. They didn't. What do you want? They were unsocial, unsanitary pieces of trash. But because they paid me 2 cents a mile and I needed the money, they kind of got a ride by default, and that's how you made ends meet. But I also learned a lot of things from those guys of what not to do and the shortcuts not to take, you know, so it was a good education. It's one of the big things, Steve, that the guys nowadays miss. The young guys that are green don't get to ride on those car trips with the veterans who are experienced, who can mentor them. I'm a big believer that one of the biggest ills of the territories going away is the fact that the young guys don't have the mentors that they had back in the day when they were riding with these top hands who are more than willing, a lot of them more than willing to coach the other kids up. And that don't happen nowadays.
- [38:48]
Steve Austin
Well, man, that was a big part of me in Dallas. You know, there's some great workers down there, guys that didn't get real big breaks. But as far as being workers in the ring and good psychologists, there was a bunch of them. Gorgeous Gary Young. I'd ask him a million questions. Matt Morne, Billy Travis, Jimmy Jack Funk, Chris Adams. It was always someone in my ear and, you know, after that match, man, that's the time to ask all the questions. And, you know, going to Tennessee and getting my ass eaten out by Dutch Mantell and telling me to watch every single match, it. That is a vital part of the learning process. You can only learn so much in wrestling school. You have to go out there and do it and screw it up a few times, have the bottom drop out, put it back together, and listen to what everybody else is doing and watching the matches. So you're getting all this education. You're riding down with Danny Hodginak, you're getting the 411, you're refereeing. How does this turn into an announcing job for you?
- [39:45]
Jim Ross
Well, you know, I was doing the refereeing thing. And in those days, Watts was producing his TV show for the Territory in Shreveport at the ABC affiliate in their studio, ktds, it's in Shreveport. And every other Wednesday we'd go in there and do two one hour shows. And then the TV station, it was live to tape and they'd do the editing and add the bumpers and all that stuff. And then every Wednesday we'd do the inserts. In other words, sometimes you go to commercial break and you would go to regular commercials like you see today. Sometimes you go to commercial break and you'd have an announcer in the studio interviewing the boys about wrestling in Baton Rouge and doing that set of interviews for Jackson, Mississippi, another set for New Orleans or Tulsa, you know, the localized promos for the live events. So I started helping Bill kind of organizing that. And that was all part of the learning process. The guy that did those interviews, it was a continuity glitch, day one, because he also did some ring announcing. He was the. He was a booth announcer for the station and he did the interviews and he. I don't know if he was even smart to the business. He just knew who to pitch it to, knew what the card was, had a good voice, distinguished looking fella. Well, he went on vacation. And so when we got to tv, that's when Bill found out that Reese Her Bowden. Is that guy's name Reese her Bowden? Some old timer out there are going to remember that. But he was on vacation and they had nobody to do the ring announcing. So Bill sent me to a store to buy a jacket and a tie, and I had a pair of slacks on and a dress shirt. So I had to buy a sport coat and a tie to do the ring announcing. And he kind of liked it. And so the next time that there was any, when Reese was. I think he was sick or something, he put me on commentary. Cowboy did. And basically when I first started my career, you know, my big line was, hello again, everybody, and welcome to Mid South Wrestling. I'm Jim Ross and this is Cowboy Bill Watts. Then my next line was, good night, everybody. For Cowboyville Watts, I'm Jim Ross. We'll see you next week. That's pretty much my whole damn spiel because Bill did almost everything. But I learned so much sitting next to him of how to get the right. I learned how to use the right adjectives for a heel and the right adjectives for a baby face. If a baby face left the ring, he was regrouping. If a heel Left the ring. He was a coward and he was. It got too hot in the kitchen. Both did exactly the same thing. But your psychological ploy that you utilized was the verbiage that you used. And Bill had it down to a science. So then he kind of gave me more rope and I started doing a little bit more and then he started liking it and then he left the commentary booth and put it and turned it over to me and he produced the show. I didn't have him in my ear, but me and Boyd Pierce would do the show. And then after the first show was over, we'd walk back to where Bill was and Boyd says, this is the longest walk, kid, you'll ever take in your life. Plus, when we open that door, we're going to find out right away what we said, right? And what we said was wrong, right? And I'd get my ass chewed out because I used the wrong adjective or I'd use the wrong adverb, or I didn't pause or I didn't sell a false finish good enough or a punch, you know, and whatever. But it was all a learning process. When I left the mid south territory and moved on, I had the fundamentals down as far as the psychological aspect of how to call a wrestling match and enhance both talents, the winner and the loser. Because, you know, back in those days, hell, you only had 14, 16 guys in a territory. Everybody was important. There wasn't no rundowns. You brought in guys to do TV work, you know, and they was the only ones in that day, Steve. They were the only ones that got paid. The regular guys in the territory didn't make any money for doing television because Bill's theory was the TVs was making your big money for you. So this is part of your giving, you know, part of your investment in yourself. It's appear on television and that's what sells the tickets. So the only guys that got paid were the extras that they brought in to do the favors on television.
- [44:24]
Steve Austin
That's interesting when you talk about the winners and losers and then how you guys are going to as commentators or you as a commentator is going to talk about these cats. I mean, a lot of people think in the business of pro wrestling it's all about winning. But hey man, you can learn as much or gain as much from losing a match as you can from winning the match. It's all on the story. It's how you lose. It's your body language, it's the finish, it's the announcing. It's all if It's a house show and there's no announcer. It is what it is, and it's how you go about it. But all those pieces certainly combined on a television level with the story, the setup, the angle, the talent is paramount because you can actually get more out of losing a match than the winter. But it's all how it's done.
- [45:09]
Steve Austin Show Announcer
This is the Steve Austin Show.
- [45:18]
Jim Ross
For weeks now, New Jersey residents have been plagued by unexplained drones flying overhead.
- [45:23]
Steve Austin
Is there intelligent alien life? And if so, has the government been covering it up?
- [45:28]
Jim Ross
All right, UFO sightings the military can't explain, Congressional hearings, Pentagon whistleblower. What does it all mean?
- [45:36]
Ancient Aliens Podcast Announcer
What does it all mean? We are here to try and figure it all out with our new Ancient Aliens podcast. There is a doorway in the universe. Beyond it is the promise of truth. It demands we question everything we have ever been taught. The evidence is all around us. The future is right by before our eyes. We are not alone. We have never been alone. Listen to the Ancient Aliens podcast, available wherever you get your podcasts.
- [46:17]
Steve Austin
All right, I'm sitting here talking about Jim Ross and getting into the business of professional wrestling, starting from off as a referee, then turning into one of the greatest announcers of all time. Jim is getting a lot of 411 from Bill Watts. But I've also read that when you consider your influences, you consider Bill Watts and Gordon Sully, the two main ones. Is this correct?
- [46:38]
Jim Ross
Yeah, early on, you know, Sully's work, his body of work was very consistent, very un. Pro wrestling announcer. Like back in the day, you know, a lot of those pro wrestling announcers were way over the top top, and they dressed outrageously. They were almost cartoon characters, caricatures of themselves. And that was exactly what Bill. He hated that. That's why he got along so well with Eddie Graham, because Eddie Graham had the same philosophy down in Florida, which is why Gordon was such a staple in Florida. And he was desired in other territories, including tbs, because he brought some civility, some class and believability to his broadcast. You know, his vocabulary was excellent. He had a very distinctive voice, which will happen when he smoked a couple packs of cigarettes a day and hit the hooch pretty hard. Very distinctive pipes. But he raised that whole profession, in my view, into an art form. And that was kind of my role model from the announcing wrestling side, you know, back when I was talking about, you know, Harry Carey and Jack Buck, who had great success in Major League Baseball and NFL and all that stuff. Those guys are hall of Fame broadcasters. In mainline sports, they were big time influences. Don Dunphy in boxing, he's in the Boxing hall of Fame. All those guys had a hand in it. But as far as learning the psychology of the business, you know, when McGurk was. As I mentioned earlier, Steve McGurk was totally blind. He was a great hand in his day. He was a NCAA champion in college, Oklahoma State. Which one reason him and Bill didn't get along, because Bill was an Oklahoma guy. That Bedlam thing, you know, they were always bitching about each other about that. And sometimes the rib got too far and they got. They'd fall out. But nonetheless, I took notes for Leroy in booking meetings. So I'd write stuff down so that when I drive Leroy home, he said, now, now, what do we talk about doing for Little Rock next week or in two weeks? Or what are we going to build? What was that deal we're going to do with Hodge or whatever. And I'd recite the angle back to him, so. Or the storyline. Oh yeah, don't forget now on that next tv, I want him to do an interview and talk about such and such. And I'd write that down in my little notebook. So that was like going to class. So I was lucky that Leroy was unlucky. He lost his sight in 1951. But I was lucky that he didn't have sight because I was a note taker.
- [49:11]
Steve Austin
How did he lose his sight?
- [49:13]
Jim Ross
He lost one eye when he as about a 9 or 10 year old in some kind of childhood accident or something. And then he lost the other one. There's a lot of stories about that, but the one that is the most believable is that he lost it. They had a car, they rear ended somebody. He always wore sunglasses to protect the good eye. And when they hit the car, he would doze off and his face went forward at the dashboard. It broke his sunglasses and a piece of glass stuck in his eye. He pulled it out of his eye. But instead of going right away to the doctor, he thought he'd clear up, which was obviously ill, ill fated. And he lost complete sight in his eye when he was the NWA Junior Heavyweight champion. And the promoter in Tulsa made him a partner because he was his top star and he was a sharp guy. He was really bright. You know, he was a journalism guy. He wrote all the publicity stories, even as a blind guy, which I inherited that job. And I started writing all the publicity stories because back in the day, if you ran a town, every week the sports page would run a story about your show coming to town as long as you wrote it. So I'd write those stories and I'd read them back to them and he'd edit it, you know, and I learned a lot from that. So all that was all learning. It was all going to school. But Bill is the one that really raised it to an art form because when he was on, he was on. I said all along, you know, there's never been anybody better than Vince McMahon in promoting wrestling and building what he's built in WWE, which I'm sure we'll get to. But the issue about Cowboy was that nobody out produced him in a one hour wrestling show. I thought he did the best job doing a one hour show because his big deal was he wanted the heels to have unmitigated heat. He wanted you to almost have to fight your way to the ring and back. And some heels aren't cut out for it and they didn't last long. The heels that made money for Bill Watts were guys that were damn sure fearless and didn't have any issues with nailing a fan who got a little rowdy and stepped out of bounds. They didn't go in the crowd to fight. They're not stupid. But if somebody got in the rain or they got inside the barricades or they come into the aisle way, they were fair game.
- [51:38]
Steve Austin
Heels that have heat. Heels that have heat and then baby faces that are over. We're on some, we're on on to some ingredients that equal money at the cash register. We're running out of time on this Steve Austin show, but we're going to pick it up next week.
- [51:54]
Steve Austin Show Announcer
This has been a podcast one production. Download new episodes of the Steve Austin show every Tuesday@podcast1.com that's podcastone.com.
- [52:07]
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- [52:16]
Jim Ross
Very cool.
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- [52:22]
Steve Austin Show Announcer
You can't outrun this.
- [52:23]
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Someone is going to pay for all this crime. But it's not going to be you.
- [52:27]
Steve Austin
Take care of business, fellas.
- [52:29]
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