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Honky Tonk Still Swaggers

Posted: Feb 28th 2009 By: CMBurnham

From baby face to heel and right back to being the good guy, 55-year-old Roy Wayne Farris has lived up to the high expectations of a myriad of delighted wrestling fans for more than 30 years, most under the guise of The Honky Tonk Man. From his fancy Elvis Presley style outfits and long sideburns to his rendition of "Cool, Cocky, Bad" which appeared on Piledriver: The Wrestling Album 2, Honky Tonk has danced before huge crowds with the World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and World Championship Wrestling (WCW) companies, along with a host of independent programs he enjoys today. When you see Honky Tonk strutting his wares inside the squared circle, many times sporting a guitar in hand, you see shadows of the king of rock and roll. It is a shtick he successfully formed during his lengthy stay with Vince McMahon, adding a slight twist, however. "Not an Elvis fan. Never was" he offers with a smile. "Just something I started doing and became quite successful."

And I honestly don't know why. Most people who have been successful in sports and business can tell you they don't know why. If, for example, you asked Bill Gates as a college dropout if he honestly believed there would be a computer in everyone's home, making him a hero, he would honestly say he never dreamed of such a thing happening. There's no formula for it. Honky Tonk, a headliner at last Friday night's Great Canadian Wrestling (GCW) card at the Oshawa Legion Hall, put on an entertaining show before a packed house.

He performed in Port Perry one night earlier and was in Lindsay for a show last Saturday evening. "I love the small venues. I really do," he says,"I'll keep right on wrestling right up until the telephone calls stop." Farris, who throughout his career portrayed The Masked Marvel, under his real name, and a punk rocker, is best known for his Honky Tonk personna, especially on a night in 1986 at Hershey, Pennsylvania when he used the head of Randy "Macho Man" Savage to tune his guitar, much to the chagrin of the late Miss Elizabeth during Saturday Night's Main Event.

Honky's allies, The Hart Foundation, intervened during a match and after being shoved to the canvas while attempting to save her man, Miss Elizabeth dashed back to the locker room and returned with an obliging Hulk Hogan. The feud with Savage would continue to a point, "We're not friends. We don't even speak to each other. For some reason, he never trusted me and I don't know why. That's just how it is." That was an era, of course, when Honky Tonk was the heel. But times have changed in the interim. He enjoys having pictures taken with fans. He signs autographs and he carries an Intercontinental title belt with him, a crown he held successfully for a record 64 weeks during his tenure with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF). "I've accepted the role of a good guy," he notes. "I mean, it was easier back then (WWF turned WWE) to be the bad guy. I think the young guys breaking into the business who want to learn how to interact and react to the crowd should discover what it's like to be a heel first.

"But, I have to say, it was more dangerous being the bad guy. I mean, people pulled knives and rocks were thrown through my windshield. Heck, the good guy left with the pretty girl while I was down getting my tires fixed." Yet it was an experience he realizes shaped his life and the style he has maintained throughout his grappling career. "I had been in front of big crowds in Puerto Rico and different places around the world, but not on a consistent basis. That all changed when I joined (McMahon). Every night was before 12,000 to 20,000 people and this went on every night of the week. The schedule was gruelling and it was beating us down. We're talking 300 shows a year, nine a week with two shows on Saturday and another two shows on Sunday. But, if we didn't work, we didn't get paid.That was okay. I worked small venues for 14 years hoping to one day get to the big stage. And when I got there, I didn't mind at all." Rack it up to the futuristic McMahon, who knew how to work a crowd and media, unlike former WCW honcho Eric Bischoff, according to Honky Tonk.

"No comparison. Two companies run by two completely different people," he offers. "Vince turned the WWE from wrestling to television and he was brilliant getting it to the way it is today. Bischoff was a young upstart who had no background in wrestling at all. He was nothing more than an errand boy for Verne Gagne and, somehow, he got a position with a Ted Turner company. Turner couldn't have been monitoring the money that was going out of his (WCW) company. Bischoff let the money fly out the door." And like so many wrestling fans, Honky Tonk is cognizant of the many wrestlers who have lost their lives to drugs, especially the female side. "When I heard about Miss Elizabeth, that really surprised me because I never knew she was into drugs and alcohol."

"It was something she obviously kept well hid. I knew Sherrie (Martel) did drugs 20, 30 years ago. That one didn't surprise me at all. And how about Dino Bravo, the Canadian from Montreal who was shot to death in his own home? That did surprise me because I never believed he was involved in anything like that." Despite this, the sport has given pro wrestlers an opportunity to fulfill a dream.

"Thankfully, wrestling has been good to me," concludes Honky Tonk. "It's great entertainment. People are here having a great time without thinking about the ecomony or whether or not they're going to lose their job. It's a way for them to come out and escape from reality. And wrestlers like myself are their cartoon characters."

Tags: Honky Tonk Man, WWE, WCW, WWF, Verne Gagne