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Jack Brisco was a real wrestling hero

Posted: Feb 8th 2010 By: mikeiles

Jack Brisco was one of the greatest wrestlers in the history of the business.

But make no mistake about it. Jack Brisco also was a hero. An honest-to-goodness hero who pulled himself up by his bootstraps as a rawboned youngster in Oklahoma, worked incredibly hard to beat the odds, and went on to live his dream as a world-class athlete in both amateur and professional wrestling.

Brisco, who died Monday at the age of 68 due to complications following open heart surgery, leaves behind a legacy in wrestling that only a select few can share.

A three-time state high school champion in wrestling-rich Oklahoma. An All-American collegiate wrestler and NCAA heavyweight champ at Oklahoma State where he lost only one match during his career. A two-time NWA world heavyweight champion in the professional ranks who was regarded as one of the greatest technical wrestlers of our time.

But Brisco also knew when to call it quits. Unlike many who had come before and many who came after, he was able to leave the business on his own terms, and never looked back.

Jack Brisco was only 43 years old when he realized, in the midst of a fierce 1984 snowstorm in Newark, N.J., and unable to feel his face or his hands, that he was physically ? and mentally ? ready to leave pro wrestling?s long and grueling road behind. He decided then and there to cancel his future engagements, catch the next plane south and call it a day.

?I went home and thawed out,? he later joked.

And he never came back.

?I feel like I got out at the right time. I felt myself slowing down,? Brisco recalled. ?My mind was still there and I knew what to do, but my body was flagging behind, and that?s one thing that I never wanted to do, to outstay my ability.?

Brisco also did something he never thought he?d be able to do. For the previous 22 years, he had lived by the watch, always living by somebody else?s timetable, be it plane schedules, check-in times, match times or television tapings. But when he returned home to Florida, he took his big gold Rolex off, and he never wore one again.

But that was Jack Brisco. Devoid of ego and humble to a fault, Brisco was a man?s man who rose above childhood poverty and his hardscrabble station in life to succeed in a sport where one?s worth is measured by his mental and physical toughness.

Jack Brisco was born for the wrestling business. With natural, God-given skills, handsome features and an All-American background, he was tailor-made for the sport. Longtime Florida star and promoter Eddie Graham, who championed amateur wrestling, immediately made the young star his top babyface attraction.

Graham?s creative genius as a booker, paired with legendary announcer Gordon Solie?s astute commentary and ability to sell angles and characters, helped put Brisco, with his boyish good looks, innate ability and charisma, on a fast track for the world heavyweight title.

Before he could get to the title, however, he had to get through then-champion Dory Funk Jr. And those battles, waged over a period of several years, would result in one of the most classic series of matches in modern-day pro wrestling.

Gold standard

Considered by many to be the gold standard in technical wrestling, the Funk-Brisco program spelled sellout business throughout the country, firmly cementing the names Funk and Brisco in wrestling lore.

The travel was grueling, the matches usually lasted an hour to 90 minutes, but it was the apex of two tremendous careers.

?I never had a bad match with Jack,? said Funk, who estimates he and Brisco engaged in several hundred bouts together over the years. ?Every single match was spectacular for the wrestling fans. He was an ideal challenger for me to work with. It was always a pleasure to be in the ring with him. And he always had a super attitude. The opportunity for me to have Jack to work with was tremendous.?

Neither ever took a night off. Even when a ring once broke down in Funk?s home territory of West Texas, and he was in the position of challenger for Brisco?s world title, the two continued the match.

?We were running the ropes, and I noticed Jack was going down in the valley,? jokes Funk. ?Jack was trying to do everything right even though the ring was busted. It was so funny. He was still trying to continue the wrestling match.?

But with a pair of exceptional athletes the likes of Brisco and Funk, both of whom could make a broomstick look good in the ring, it was business as usual.

?We went ahead and worked the match in a busted ring,? said Funk. ?We returned the match, and the publicity was around a ?reinforced? ring. We actually worked a return out of it.?

It was like that everywhere they wrestled. Every night of the week with capacity crowds clamoring to see these two rivals in action.

?We were working without national TV,? said Funk. ?But it was the match to see. It was pretty much an automatic sellout. Fans all over the country loved to watch that match.?

And forget the modern technology. The only communication back then happened in the ring.

?In those days everybody dressed in separate dressing rooms,? said Funk. ?If you wanted to see your opponent it was nearly impossible. First time I?d see Jack was in the ring, and it was always terrific.?

?It was a blast working with Jack,? added Funk. ?He was very good to work with and very competitive at the same time. You?d just push him a little bit, and he was going to push back. To really get a competitive match, all you had to do was just push Jack a bit and he?d fire back, and the people knew it was real.?

And was there a secret way to get under Brisco?s skin and raise his dander?

?I could get him excited,? laughed Funk. ?All I?d have to do was mess his hair a little bit.?

Working with Brisco was the highlight of Funk?s four-and-a-half-year reign as world heavyweight champion.

?He was a ball to work with. It became a real pleasure to be able to stay in the ring and have that spotlight for an hour. All the hard work in professional wrestling is getting there, but once you?re there the thrill of being able to perform in front of the wrestling fans is really something.?

Quiet confidence

Pro wrestling Hall of Famer Bob Roop, a heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler at the 1968 Summer Olympics, fondly recalls meeting Brisco in Florida during the early ?70s.

?When I broke into the business, Jack and I took an immediate liking to one another,? said Roop. ?He was Championship Wrestling From Florida?s star babyface, an experienced hand, and to have him treat me like a peer was especially gratifying. My attitude at the time was that a newcomer like myself had dues to pay and deserved no notice from the veterans, so having Jack treat me as an equal was special. We had a lot of fun together for most of my first year in the business. Once I became a heel, we weren?t able to pal around much.?

Strangely enough, says Roop, it wasn?t until he recently read wrestling historian Bill Murdock?s 2004 book on Brisco that he realized just how little he knew of this intensely private, yet self-assured, individual.

?What an eye opener,? said Roop. ?Jack never talked of his background with me, not one word about his family origins. He was an eight-year veteran when I began and perhaps had left his amateur days far behind him, but I think it interesting that I spent so much time on the road with him and knew so little about where he came from, and heard so little about his amateur days. After reading the book, I realized Jack was a very private man.?

Roop says it made him respect Brisco even more.

?He was a great amateur wrestler. I had no idea of his struggle just to stay in school, how he managed to do family, school, work and athletics at the same time is a real testament to character and steadfastness. I was a decent amateur, succeeding at every level, state champ, varsity heavyweight in college, AAU national champion and Olympian. My background provides credibility in saying Jack was a truly great amateur. It was an important part of his life, perhaps a major driving force for his early years, and my accomplishments pale compared to the success created by his focus, dedication and effort.?

No one, says Dory Funk Jr., appreciated a strong amateur background more than his father, Dory Funk Sr., who was an Indiana high school state champion wrestler for three years, as well as an Indiana State University Amateur Athletic Union champion.

?Jack brought so much credibility to the wrestling business,? said Funk. ?Being an NCAA wrestling champion at such a young age was unbelievable. To bring all that credibility and become such a great worker was awesome. My dad always thought the NCAA style of wrestling was the best. He thought the collegiate wrestlers were the best, and I?ve always tended to think the same thing.?

There were no pretenses. What you saw was what you got with Jack Brisco.

Murdock, author of ?Brisco,? says the wrestler was everything he was advertised to be.

?You grow up and you have these idols and heroes, and you think you know who they are. Many times they turn out to be just the opposite of who you think they are. But Jack was who I thought he was ... who I wanted him to be. He was the same guy.?

Jack and Jerry

One of Jack?s most enjoyable runs in his pro career was teaming with younger brother Gerald. ?Jerry? Brisco was an accomplished amateur and pro in his own right, and his tag-team combination with Jack garnered a number of titles, from Texas to Florida to the Carolinas.

?Jack told me that he had more fun working with Jerry ? working the tag teams and working heel ? than he had at any time in his career,? said Murdock. ?He said it was such a great way to end his career. Teaming with his brother meant more to him than the world title.

?That?s what impressed me so much about Jack. I always had been a fan of Jack, and he had always been an idol to me, but to see how close his family was ... how much they loved their mom and their brothers and sisters, and overcoming the hardscrabble life they had early on.?

As great a role as Brisco played inside the squared circle, he also would play an influential role in a pair of unrelated events that would change the direction of the wrestling business in the 1980s.

As a part owner of the Florida and Georgia promotions, Brisco was a key player in the 1984 acquisition of WTBS wrestling programming rights by WWE owner Vince McMahon, a pivotal point in wrestling history commonly referred to as ?Black Saturday.? Brisco, along with brother Jerry, covertly sold Georgia Championship Wrestling to McMahon, claiming business partner Ole Anderson (Al ?Rock? Rogowski) was running the company into the ground. The transaction helped give McMahon a valued cable time slot on TBS as WWE began its national expansion.

Brisco also was responsible for helping launch the career of Terry ?Hulk Hogan? Bollea in the late 1970s. Brisco spotted Bollea playing bass in a rock band at a local Tampa bar and arranged for him to train with Hiro Matsuda. And the rest was history.

Brisco finished out his career as a headliner, teaming with Jerry in the Mid-Atlantic area for a memorable series of matches with Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood, and winding down in the World Wrestling Federation (now WWE).

Unlike many stars who went to the well once too often, Brisco retired from the business and never looked back, refusing to return for a retirement match or one last shot at the brass ring.

Even when he had relinquished the world title in the ?70s, it was on Brisco?s terms, not the National Wrestling Alliance.

?When he knew it was time for him to go, time for him to drop the title, Jack was the one who decided that,? said Murdock. ?It wasn?t the NWA. It was Jack Brisco. They weren?t moving him down the card when he relinquished the title. He was still the main event. But it was time to go.?

Always a wrestler

Jack Brisco was a far cry from today?s overly privileged and overly pampered star athletes. He didn?t crave the spotlight, was happy for others? success and always seemed to be, for whatever reason, just happy to be part of the group. He was happy in his own skin, and it showed.

He was grateful to be part of a business that afforded him the opportunity to see the world, to perform at the highest level and to be a member of a special fraternity. The business gave him a good life, along with the love of his life, his wife Jan.

Always willing to make a sacrifice, he never forgot the path that led him there. Whether it was working in a coal mine, serving as a carpenter?s helper, or putting in after-practice hours as a janitor while, at the same time, Sports Illustrated was hailing him as one of the greatest collegiate wrestlers in the country. Or as a young star in the pro ranks, working the small towns in Arkansas that paid twenty-five bucks a shot, giving it 100 percent when fans stayed home due to a snowstorm.

Full throttle was the only gear Jack Brisco ever knew.

And in later years, when he could have just as easily picked up a quick paycheck in the wrestling business serving as a consultant, he was content with staying home and helping run the Brisco Brothers Body Shop, a local Tampa business he and his brother Jerry, a longtime WWE talent scout, operated.

He also was a traditionalist who believed that wrestlers should be athletes first, entertainers second, yet he didn?t begrudge today?s stars the big-money contracts and less-taxing schedules that didn?t exist in Brisco?s era. He was as honored and excited as anyone when he and Jerry were inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in March 2008.

?If he had wanted to, he could have, upon retiring as a pro, trotted out his amateur background and been welcomed to any and all national tournaments as an honored guest,? said Roop. ?Again I come back to the fact that Jack was a private person. Therefore it is left to us to invade that privacy to substantiate that Jack was much more than former NCAA and NWA champion ... he was also a champion human being ? decent, honest and a man of character. His memory will, for me, be greeted with fondness, respect and regret that he?s gone.?

?Jack was a great champion who held the title with so much dignity,? said Murdock. ?Great champions are rare, but good men are even more so.?

Dory Funk recalls that the last time he saw Brisco was at Wrestlemania 25 last April in Houston.

I had kind of been under the impression that Jack had been through the worst of his medical problems. I just didn?t imagine anything like that would happen.?

Funk?s voice trails off when he thinks about the old days. He had hoped to do another loop with his revered rival somewhere down the line.

?He was such a fun guy to know. I really will miss him. It?s disappointing the medical things he had to go through. I would love to still have a Jack Brisco around to make these events with.?

Murdock, recalling the last lines in his book, believes that Jack Brisco remained true to the essence of what ? and who ? he was.

?The ring gets in your blood and once it?s there it courses through your veins and deep into your heart. That is why I am happily reminded with every beat of my heart, that I am, and will be while I breathe, a wrestler.?

?Jack was a hero to everybody,? said Funk.

-- I?ll be joining 16-time world champion Ric Flair this week on the Monday Night Mayhem wrestling radio show. The program is celebrating its eighth anniversary and will feature a star-studded lineup that also will include Hulk Hogan and a number of surprise guests. Check out the Web site at www.MondayNightMayhem.com.