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On The Road With Dutch Mantell

Posted: Apr 11th 2010 By: CMBurnham

Ever dreamed of riding down the highway with one of your favorite professional wrestlers, listening to all those fascinating stories of the road, while being regaled with tales that could be told only by someone who?s really lived the life in the wrestling business?

That?s what it?s like reading Dutch Mantell?s new book, ?The World According to Dutch,? a delightful romp through the wrestler?s colorful career.

Mantell has done just about everything in the wrestling business ? from wrestling bears, to wrestling in prisons, to escaping bloodthirsty fans in Puerto Rico.

And he?s loved every minute of it, and it shows on every page of his book.

Mantell will be the first to lower expectations of those seeking smooth literary prose in this 272-page compilation of wrestling stories. But that?s part of the charm of ?The World According to Dutch.? It reads as if you were on one of those long road trips with Dutch, the type of trips he took for so many years while breaking into the business during the territorial days. The only things missing are the balogna and the bread, commonly known as ?bologna blowouts,? then the sustenance of grapplers on the road.

Mantell, who?s wrestled in every state but Montana and North Dakota, has his own unique way of telling a story. And most of them are true, he jokes, with many enhanced by his liberal use of ?Dutchisms,? descriptive phrases of speech that have become industry famous.

Some favorite Dutchisms:

? ?If you always do what you?ve always done, you?re always gonna get what you?ve always got.?

? ?When I got into the business, people thought wrestling was real and the space program was fake.?

Mantell is a master storyteller, a quality that served him well during his many years in the business, both as a wrestler and behind the scenes as part of a creative team. Forgive him if some of the details and descriptions are missing, or if a few dates are wrong. After thousands of matches and more chair shots to the head than he can remember, it?s allowed.

Mantell, now 60, enjoyed a nice career in wrestling. He broke into the pro ranks in 1973, early enough to take in the final real decade or so of territorial wrestling, and not too late to soak up advice and stories from veterans who came up the old-fashioned way.

Mantell, whose real name is Wayne Keown, made his debut as the easier to spell ?Wayne Cowan,? but it wasn?t long before he became Dutch Mantel, adding ?Dirty? to his ring name shortly thereafter.

The grappler couldn?t have chosen a better name. To him, wrestling was the wild, wild West, and he was the Dutchman. The thick beard and hairy back made him look like he came out of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western. And always close by was his trusted ?shoebaby? (bull whip).

Mantell was a solid worker throughout the Southern region, but it was in Tennessee where he earned notoriety via his feuds with the likes of Randy Savage and Jerry Lawler. He even devotes a chapter to a fight a pre-WWF Savage had in a Waffle House.

Mantell, though, was more than just a wrestler. A keen student of the game, he was a teacher, and he passed along what he had learned to young talent who were willing to listen to his sage advice. He was instrumental in the careers of some of the top stars of the ?90s, including The Undertaker, Kane, Sting and The Ultimate Warrior.

Mantell was even instrumental in hatching the Rattlesnake, giving Steve Austin (real name Steve Williams) his ring name, to avoid confusion with the other more established wrestler of the same name.

The story goes, according to Mantell, that he gave the rookie five minutes to come up with a new handle, or else he?d do it for him. Hesitant to come up with something that perhaps Mantell would hate, Austin left his fate in the hands of his new booker. The Texas native balked when he initially heard Mantell?s suggestion of Steve Austin. The greenhorn had told Mantell that he was from Austin, Texas, so that was good enough for Mantell, himself a Texas native.

They?re all ?alumni of the University of Dutch,? he jokes.

Throughout his career, Mantell billed himself as hailing from Oil Trough, Texas. Oddly enough, Mantell?s fictional hometown doesn?t appear on most maps. And if anyone asked, Mantell would declare that only three people live there: the mayor; his granddaddy, Sagebrush; and his cousin, Clutch.

Mantell gained inspiration for his book-writing experience by producing a series of blogs that were well received by the wrestling public.

?The blogs have been a form of therapy for me which has resulted in a kind of enjoyment that I haven?t experienced before,? says Mantell. ?Writing brings a peace over me that?s hard to explain or to dissect, but writing is very enjoyable. The book was a spin-off of the blog. I never did sit down at my keyboard with the intention of writing a book. But I did sit down at my keyboard with the full intent of writing a complete blog. The blog gave birth to the book.?

Mantell has continued to produce regular blogs.

?The experience of writing a blog has been great for me. I didn?t have a deadline, I didn?t have a boss. I had me, a keyboard and my thoughts and how best to convey them to words. I wasn?t pressed for time and I found out that I could write whatever interested me at that particular moment.?

Mantell also figured out that his experiences transcended the wrestling business.

?I found out that I was writing about a slice of Americana that at least half of the American public has been exposed to in one way or the other. Pro wrestling transcends all ages, genders, socioeconomic groups and backgrounds, so the subject matter was familiar to a lot of people. What wasn?t familiar was my interactions behind the scenes.?

Mantell says the book has attracted a large contingent of ?closet? wrestling fans.

I?ve had people who?ve written me and told me that they wouldn?t be seen dead at a wrestling event, but they watch it on TV and loved my book because they could read it in secrecy. There?s a lot of clandestine wrestling fans out there who don?t want other people to know that they harbor a secret crush on pro wrestling. But they?re there. Pro wrestling is a line of work that attracts a lot of attention ... now and back in the day when I first started. Why it is I don?t know. It just is.?

Writing the book was a labor love for the Dutchman.

?I had these stories floating around in my head for so long and finally, I not only found the time to write the book, I found the inspiration. Once I was inspired to write, the actual writing was easy. Plus writing is one of my loves and since the stories were there waiting to get out, the book more or less wrote itself. The book flowed onto paper, and I was blown away at how effortless it was at times to complete a chapter. I also got a lot of enjoyment out of doing it.?

Mantell admits that it wasn?t a project he spent considerable time on. He penned the autobiography during a six-week span while living in a guest house on the beach in San Juan, Puerto Rico, while running the IWA promotion.

?My guest house was exactly 10 steps off the beach. Many days, I sat out the beach and stared at the beautiful Caribbean ocean and the palm trees swaying as the wind breezed through them, and visualized what I wanted to write and what wrestling fans would like to hear. San Juan is a 600-year-old city, and I?ve spent many winters on the island. The weather in Puerto Rico in October is tremendous, and one day is just like the next one ? 86 and sunny.?

Reviews for Mantell?s book have, not surprisingly, been positive. It?s been very rewarding, he says, being approached by fans who remember him from the ?old days? when he worked shows in their area.

?One of the nicest things I?ve had said to me about the book was in Evansville, Ind., recently when a young man came up to me to shake my hand and to tell me he had purchased and read the book. In relating the story to me, he shyly told me that a story in the book had reduced him to tears. I thought he was kidding, but he wasn?t. One of the stories in my book had affected him in such a way as to make him cry. I asked him what story, and he told me it was about the wrestling bear and my relationship with her that during a seven-day period in the summer in east Tennessee.?

The harshest criticism he?s received thus far?

?That the book ended,? he says. ?Everybody seemingly wanted the book to continue. And if that?s the worst criticism I have gotten, then I consider myself lucky. Truthfully, I have been completely blown away by the lack of criticism surrounding my book. Almost one hundred percent of all e-mails I receive have been extremely positive.?

Mantell says it?s hard to choose his favorite parts of the book.

?Some of my favorite chapters included The Undertaker and me getting stopped on an interstate and pulled out of the car at gunpoint. Another one was when I gave Steve Austin the ?Austin? name. A great story was Kane saving me in a riot in Puerto Rico, fighting for my life in Japan, and visiting Germany and being in the same building that Adolf Hitler walked in. These stories that I have placed in my book have been scratching to get out for a long, long time. One thing about some of the things I wrote is that if I didn?t document them ... in either book or blog form ... they would be lost forever. Many young wrestling fans today know nothing of the history of the wrestling profession beyond the realm of the WWE. I tried to dispel that notion in writing, shortly, how the business used to operate back in the days when pro wrestling was the Wild West.?

One of his earliest breaks in the business came while wrestling in Georgia. At the time he wasn?t even sure if wrestling was going to be a career.

?I didn?t know I was preparing for anything. I never got into this business thinking it was permanent. This business to me, even today, has always been temporary. I never thought I would make three months in professional wrestling. But three months turned into six and then into a year, and I ended up just like the Energizer Bunny ... I just kept going and going and going. It?s almost like I got into wrestling and never got out.

?Georgia was a great place to learn, but back in those days, almost every regional territory were great places to learn because, unlike today, there was a cadre of veterans leading the way. Today that line of veterans becomes thinner and thinner every year. But I learned about 75 percent of what I needed to know in the state of Georgia ... from Savannah to Athens to Augusta to Macon to Columbus to Atlanta. I always loved Georgia and the fans from that era. For me, it was a truly golden time in my life.?

And while Mantell was soaking up experience from veterans such as Tom Renesto, a wrestler-turned-booker who had been one half of the famed Masked Assassins, he also enjoyed a mid-card program with one of the territory?s most talented junior heavyweights, Ted Oates.

?Ted Oates was one of my favorite guys. He and I broke in about the same time, and Ted was one of the greatest technicians that ever graced a wrestling ring. He got out of wrestling years ago and got a real job ... something that I never had the inclination to do. I never envisioned myself as an 8 to 5-type guy. But Ted could have been a huge star because he had a great work ethic and understood what worked and what didn?t. Ted and I learned this business together.?

Mantell got along with most of his colleagues in the grunt-and-groan fraternity. In his book he details a real grudge he had with Roberto Soto, one of the top babyface stars in Georgia at the time, and a subsequent backstage skirmish in Savannah.

?It was my second year in the business and resulted in me leaving the ring and taking the fight backstage. What happened in the ring turned ugly and instead of settling it in public, I left the ring and settled it backstage like the Wild West. We both ended up in a wild bloody fight all over the dressing room area and ended up with my eye closed and the guy I fought with 14 stitches in his head. Ah ... the good old days. After the fight, both of us looked those UFC fighters after a hard night in the Octagon. In those days, fights were common in pro wrestling dressing rooms and if you didn?t fight, you didn?t last long.

?Lars Anderson was another one that I got into a fight with in the ring because Lars was a bully and I was green. But I stood up to him and earned the respect of all the veterans. There were others that I didn?t much care for also ... but it wasn?t too bad. At least no blood was shed backstage.?

Mantell witnessed a variety of things in the wrestling business, and he found himself at the center of some of the more memorable ones.

He was in Puerto Rico when the legendary Bruiser Brody was killed. He stood backstage next to WWE owner Vince McMahon during the infamous Curtain Call at Madison Square Garden. He was part of the Andy Kaufman angle with Jerry Lawler in Memphis that made national TV.

?The craziest things I saw were the riots after matches that I had in Puerto Rico when, literally, the fans wanted to harm me. Seriously, it was a crazy and highly dangerous endeavor to try to navigate literally hundreds of irate fans just to get from the ring to the dressing room. Imagine the wildest and craziest red neck beer joint and multiply that by a hundred. That?s how dangerous it was.?

Puerto Rico also was the site of one of the most horrific tragedies ever in the wrestling business.


?The saddest thing I ever witnessed in the pro wrestling business was when Bruiser Brody died in 1988. Bruiser Brody was stabbed to death as a result of an altercation with another wrestler in a locker room before a match in a suburb of San Juan. There is a chapter in the book where I describe why the man who killed Brody ended up walking free just seven short months later after he was acquitted of all charges. Sad, sad day in the history of pro wrestling and to the entire wrestling fraternity.?

Mantell says he can?t imagine another career that would have provided him with the experience he?s had in pro wrestling.

?It?s been so crazy, so alive, always moving, always going somewhere different, somewhere new with new fans, new people and new experiences. I?ve been all over the world ... to most of the 50 states, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Germany, England, Scotland, Ireland, South America and all over the Caribbean. It?s one thing to get up in the morning to go deliver mail or drive a truck. It?s quite another to go work in front of 10,000 people on a regular basis. I mean, it?s nuts. Pro wrestling is not a normal lifestyle. We?re not athletes but we?re athletic. We?re not stunt men but we do all the stunts. We?re not comedians but we?re funny. We?re not actors but our emotions range from rage to revenge to malicious acts to comedy. We are all things to all people and a wrestler?s range knows no boundaries. In a short nutshell, it?s been one helluva ride and I?m still riding.?

The fact that Dirty Dutch is humorous, likable and loves the business makes this read an enjoyable one from start to finish.

?When I heard that Dutch Mantell was writing a book I instantly got excited, because I have maintained for the 30 years that I have known him that Dutch is one of the two or three funniest, most entertaining people in the wrestling business,? Jim Cornette wrote in the book?s foreword. ?He has taught me, worked for and with me, traveled with me and dined with me and calmed me down. But he?s always entertained me.?

Not as entertaining for Cornette, though, was a recent stint he spent with TNA on the same creative team as longtime nemesis Vince Russo.

Mantell was on the same team for part of that time, and he devotes a chapter to the acrimony between Cornette and Russo.

?These two guys don?t like each other,? Mantell writes in the book. ?Do they really hate each other? The answer is no. Hate isn?t strong enough for what these guys feel for each other. Words that would probably best describe their feelings would be detest, loathe and abhor?especially on Jimmy?s side.?

Mantell had known Cornette before he even debuted in a wrestling ring ? back to the days when Cornette was a teenager taking publicity shots of wrestlers backstage every Tuesday night in Louisville. Mantell also was the first wrestler Cornette ever managed. So Cornette seemed like a natural fit when Mantell called to offer him an agent?s job with TNA.

When Jeff Jarrett later offered Russo a position on the writing team, though, it seemed only a matter of time before something had to give with both Cornette and Russo working under the same roof.

The situation, says Mantell, always was tense, one he likened to a Mexican standoff that he was standing guard over.

?Vince didn?t like Cornette?s booking because he considered Southern booking too hokey. Cornette hated Vince?s booking because it made no sense. Vince didn?t like Jimmy being from the South, and Jimmy thought Russo sounded too New Yorker. Vince claimed Cornette couldn?t book Madison Square Garden, and Jimmy claimed that Russo couldn?t book a table at Denny?s for lunch.?

The two co-existed for a couple years, but the inevitable occurred when Cornette, who admitted he couldn?t support the creative team of Russo and writing partner Ed Ferrara, was released from his contract in September 2009.

Mantell had worked behind the scenes as a writer and agent for TNA since 2003, and had made a number of valuable contributions, not the least of which was helping create the popular TNA Knockouts division and bringing in Awesome Kong.

But in July 2009, Mantell was released by the company, and he returned to Puerto Rico to work for the IWA.

Mantell says declining ratings for TNA portend an even bleaker future for the company.

?I told Jeff Jarrett that his big mistake was allowing bigger con men than him to get in there. That?s what he did,? says Mantell.

?Before Jeff, Cornette and I left, we had this thing up to a 1.3 for three weeks in a row. When we left, you could almost track the demise of TNA from July 31 backwards. They dropped it down to a .9. And it?s continued to drop.?

?I don?t think they know their audience. In their eyes, if you don?t understand it, it?s not the writing, it?s you. The joke seems to be on them. I?ve been around a lot of offices with the death knell, and the TNA office has got the death knell about it. The only money they?re really making is off Spike, and if Spike balks, they?re screwed.?

?What a war this has turned out to be,? laughs Mantell. ?This hasn?t even been a border skirmish yet. How can you have a war when one side doesn?t even know it?s going on??

The book, which Mantell wrote with assistance from editors Ric Gross and Mark James, can be ordered on www.dutchmantell.com. But for the collectors out there, you can order a personally autographed copy from Dutch himself at dirtydutchmantell@gmail.com. Highly recommended.

Tags: Dutch Mantell, Jerry Lawler, WWF, Sting, Ultimate Warrior, WWE, Tom Renesto, Assassins, Bruiser Brody, Jim Cornette, TNA, Jeff Jarrett , Ed Ferrara