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17 towns in 2017: Jim Ross journeyed from farm in Westville to Garden in NYC

Posted: Nov 20th 2017 By: Jimmie Trammel - TulsaWorld.com

This damn book is jinxed.

Who could blame Jim Ross when that thought crossed his mind?

Ross, a hall of fame wrestling broadcaster who has 1.66 million Twitter followers, invested time and effort into sharing his life story by way of an autobiography, but the obstacles were heartbreaking.

Ross’ first collaborator on the project was author Scott E. Williams. They met for days at a time. Williams interviewed Ross about his life and recorded their conversations. The stories that came out of their conversations were going to be the meat of the book.

In August 2016, Williams died of a heart attack. He was 49.

In March 2017, Ross’ wife, Jan, died from injuries sustained in a traffic accident. She was 55.

Jan was instrumental in vetting stories that were going to be in the book, according to Ross.

When she died, he was ready to tap out.

“I was thinking about not finishing the book,” he said.

Then, out of the blue, he had a Westville moment.

Here’s the set-up: Ross was raised on a farm in Westville, Oklahoma. When he was in the ninth grade, assistant football coach Bill Scott visited Ross’ home to ask permission for the kid to suit up for the varsity. Ross’ father gave his blessing but only if the varsity had a legitimate use for his son. He didn’t want his son holding a blocking dummy when he could be doing chores instead.

Ross joined the varsity and started to feel his oats. “I had deemed myself a five-star recruit in my own recruiting service,” he said.

In the midst of all this, Ross made a decision. He reasoned that washing two uniforms every week was tough on Mom, and finding a way home to the farm was troublesome when you play for two teams. So, he told his father he was going to quit the ninth-grade team and focus on the varsity.

Ross’ father reacted by telling him “quitting is the easiest thing in the world to get good at.” Let me make it easy for you, his father added. If you quit on your ninth-grade team, your football career is history. And, just like that, quitting was no longer an option.

Ross remembered that conversation when he wasn’t sure if he wanted to complete the book.

“It just popped in my head,” he said. “So I finished the book, and I’m sure as hell glad we did because, not only is it selling well, but people are seeing it’s not a wrestling book. Nowhere in the book do I talk about my 10 favorite wrestlers. ... It’s a story about me going from the farm in Westville to the Garden in New York City. It’s that kind of journey.”

Ross is scheduled for a 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 26, signing of “Slobberknocker: My Life in Wrestling” at a Tulsa Barnes & Noble store, 8620 E. 71st St. In conjunction, Westville is the most recent town to be spotlighted in the Tulsa World’s “17 towns in 2017” story series. Each story focuses on a person or attraction in the town.

Ross’ story starts in Westville — and the West Coast. He was born in California (you’ll have to read the book to get the salacious gossip about why he wasn’t born in Oklahoma) but make no mistake about it: His Westville roots run generations deep.

In the book, Ross recalled living in a dairy barn that was converted into a four-bedroom home. When nature called, you ventured to the outhouse.

“It’s funny, growing up I had a lot of friends who hosted sleepovers, but they never wanted to stay over at my house,” he wrote. “No idea why.”

Ross said he wouldn’t trade his background — his raising — for anything in the world.

There were great times, like going to town every weekend for a haircut (always a flattop) and a double feature at the movie theater, or hanging out in the kitchen while Grandma made cobblers. She sprinkled cinnamon on leftover strips of dough and baked them for you-know-who.

There were hard lessons, too. He was told, in nicer terms, he shouldn’t give the pigs names because they were destined to wind up on a plate. He has a dog story that’s as heart-crushing as the end of “Old Yeller.”

Ross enjoyed going to a small school, where classes were petite enough for teachers to assist students. Active in the Future Farmers of America, he was the FFA state speech champion as a junior and was the FFA state vice president as a senior. He earned a scholarship to Oklahoma State University but had a little too much fun in Stillwater and rebooted his academic career at Northeastern State University, about 30 miles from Westville.

The “break” that sent Ross toward a career in pro wrestling came because his fraternity, Phi Lambda Chi, went too far down an “Animal House” path. The frat had to do something positive to rehab its image, or else. Instead of playing it safe and planning a traditional-type fundraiser, Ross and frat buddy Jerry Donley visited with pro wrestling honchos Leroy McGuirk and Cowboy Bill Watts in Tulsa to see if it might be possible to stage a wrestling event in Tahlequah.

The pro wrestling show was a success, and so was a follow-up. The guys in the wrestling biz were so impressed that they offered the college kid a job.

Ross got hooked on pro wrestling’s good guy vs. bad guy drama as a kid when he watched Saturday night bouts on his grandparents’ television set. He attended a pro wrestling card in nearby Stilwell when he was 12 and was giddy when he got his first autograph. Pro wrestling? Dream job.

But Ross said nothing about being raised in a small town could have prepared him for life on the road in pro wrestling, where it’s the wild, wild west and only the strong survive.

For instance: What do you do during a long car drive when the person in the passenger seat pulls out a gun and hints that you may soon be an accomplice to murder? The trip turned comedic instead of tragic.

Ross’ book recounts his career rise and his interactions with babyfaces, heels and characters who sometimes were too colorful (and flatulent) for their own good. Considered to be the most notable person in pro wrestling who has never been a pro wrestler, he has been involved in just about every other facet of the business. Did you know he conducted the face-to-face interview when Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson decided to become a pro wrestler? Ross loved him immediately.

Here’s an attention-getting excerpt from the book: “My first experience of talent relations had me standing fully clothed in the shower with two naked 600-pound men who were sobbing as I soaped up a sponge, ready to wash them down. I knew at that moment that I’d be in the wrestling business forever.”

Two weeks later, Ross was (temporarily) out of wrestling and giving life in Westville another try.

Ross, who lives in Norman now, still owns family land in Adair County. Asked what Westville means to him, he said, “It will always be my home. In my era, growing up there, moms and dads were still together, by and large, and they both raised their kids. I was very lucky. My folks, I don’t think my mom or my dad ever missed a little league game or a football game... ”

“I have memories of the townspeople. I have memories of my grandma and grandpa’s store that was there since the 1930s, I think. My great grandfather and great grandmother helped start the bank. My other grandfather on my paternal grandfather side, his group had the first mill. They were entrepreneurs. They were businessmen. They were marketers. I think that’s where I got some of my traits. They sold things. I’ve been selling things all my life. I sold wrestling for a long time. I sold the talent and sold the matches.”

In the book’s afterword, Stone Cold Steve Austin called Ross the greatest announcer ever to call a match.

After Williams’ death, Ross needed a new collaborator for the book. He said he found an amazing writer overseas.

Paul O’Brien of Ireland wrote a series of “Blood Red Turns Dollar Green” wrestling-related novels before being recruited to the “Slobberknocker” team.

“I got really lucky,” Ross said. “He was a big fan of my work all these years. He had watched me since the early ’90s in Ireland on television. I got ahold of him, and it was almost like he thought it was a prank call, I think. We got together and he and I finished the book.”

Ross said his love of writing goes back to when he was in high school and he provided write-ups about Westville games for the weekly newspaper. Thanks to his transistor radio, he dreamed of being a radio storyteller (read: broadcaster of sporting events) when he was a kid. His family didn’t squash the dreams. Said his grandmother: “Somebody’s going to do it.”

Asked when he got the idea to write an autobiography, he told a story about leaving WWE on Sept. 11, 2013, and driving from Stamford, Connecticut, to LaGuardia Airport in New York. During the drive, he mulled whether he should retire at age 61 or reinvent himself. Retiring didn’t seem to be the least bit attractive, so he came up with a grocery list of things he wanted to do. Writing a book was on the list, along with doing a podcast and one-man shows. The Ross Report podcast gets half a million downloads per week, he said.

Could the book become something visual? Ross said an agent sent the book to five people in the movie/TV world in hopes that one of them would like it. He said all five are interested. Ross has enough experience in the entertainment industry to know better than to get prematurely jazzed.

“It’s nice to be squired, and it’s nice to be romanced a little bit,” he said. “But until we get to the prom, it doesn’t matter.”

Ross’ wife gave him what he thought was good advice during the writing of the book. She urged him to be 100 percent truthful. That’s what he tried to do, even if it wasn’t particularly flattering.

“I had never talked about being disappointed in myself for not being a better dad,” he said. “I thought those were important things to talk about. Men should know that no job is more important than their family. I had that all screwed up for a long time. I regret it. I try to make up for lost time now. I’m glad the good Lord has given me some time back to do that.”

Ross said he has always been honest about this: “I am a round-faced Okie with this Okie accent and (have had) three bouts of facial paralysis called Bell’s palsy. There’s no way in hell I’m supposed to be on television or be a broadcaster of any regard. But I have defied those odds because I believe in this: I am damn sure not going to let somebody else define who I am. Not going to happen.”