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Even at 85 years of age, Lou Thesz is one of the toughest men you will find anywhere.

To the casual wrestling audience or younger fans, his name may ring a bell. Jim Ross calls it out on TV, every time Stone Cold Steve Austin jumps on a wrestler rebounding from the ropes - that's the Lou Thesz press. How ironic that such a basic wrestling move has become synonymous with a man that mastered every complicated hold in the book, and boasts victories over the most famous and celebrated of his contemporaries.

In terms of pure wrestling ability and stamina, Lou Thesz is arguably the best pro wrestler of the twentieth century. He made his debut in 1935, and wrestled his final match 55 years later in 1990 at the age of 74. You name the legend, he conquered them - Gorgeous George, Buddy Rogers, Verne Gagne, Bruno Sammartino, Rikidozan. The list goes on forever. Lou Thesz beat them all. And although he no longer follows the business he helped define for many decades, Thesz holds great respect for one of the WWF's current superstars - your Olympic hero and mine, Kurt Angle.

I recently had a telephone conversation with the former multi-time world champion, in which Thesz discussed his friendships and rivalries, and told a few interesting stories about what went on outside of the ring with guys like Buddy Rogers and Rikidozan (including the reason Thesz refused to job to Rogers, and Rikidozan's affiliation with the mafia in Japan).

Denny Burkholder: You were the youngest undisputed heavyweight champion ever at the age of 21, correct?

Lou Thesz: Well you know, I had some wonderful, wonderful coaching with Ed "Strangler" Lewis and Ray Steele, George Tragos. These are the people that were very kind and very generous and gave me the knowledge. It was a labor of love for them, and also for me. When (then undisputed world champion) Everett Marshall was on the road, what they actually did was they were booking him night after night. We were getting ready for him two or three weeks prior to that. But I was doing concentrated training. We went after it, and everything worked out very well. I had really good gray matter behind me with Ed "Strangler" Lewis and Ray Steele. These are guys who really knew what they were doing.

DB: Now I've read interviews you've done in the past, and you said that Everett Marshall turned to the referee at one point and said he couldn't believe what kind of stamina you had.

LT: Well that was it, we were training for long-distance, you know. You wrestle for one hour, two hours, three hours without a stop. That's the way they conditioned me. I'm not really responsible for a lot of things, because I had the will to do it and the love to do it. But they're the people that led me to the water and I just happened to be there to drink it.

DB: Now you mentioned George Tragos helped train you, and Ed "Strangler" Lewis was your mentor.

LT: Yeah, he is. And another man who was really instrumental was Ray Steele, out of Lincoln, Nebraska. These are names that a lot of people have forgotten because it was a long time ago. But he was a great wrestler, a great hooker. He went to Japan and beat everybody with the judo and martial arts. He was just a super guy. And hooking, he knew how to hurt people (laughs). Anyway these were the people that befriended me, and they were very kind to me. They helped me a great deal. I really enjoyed the trip, the whole thing. And physical discomfort? Yes (laughs). I tell a lot of the young wrestlers out there, look, if physical discomfort's gonna bother you, don't wrestle. Do something else.

DB: Well I would imagine with someone like Ed "Strangler" Lewis training you for the ring, you probably got stretched out a few times.

LT: Oh sure, absolutely. The guy was a super wrestler and a great strategist. A very bright man. He was a bridge player, you know, and a fellow by the name of Goren - he was really the guru of all he contract bridge players - he rated Ed "Strangler" Lewis as one of the ten best in the world.

DB: Wow.

LT: I told Ed, I said, 'That's wonderful, what a great accomplishment.' He always called me Hunky, for Hungarian. He said 'Naw, Hunky, I'm not that great. It cost me a million dollars to learn.' (laughs) But he was a wonderful man. Very easy to be around. He could read people very well. He played poker, played bridge. He had a lot of bottom - a lot of intestinal fortitude. He was a brand new guy every day. One day we were up in Iowa somewhere, and we were doing a one-night stand - you get to bed at two o'clock, and get an eight o'clock flight, you know what I'm saying? Very little sleep. And he told me, he said 'What a wonderful day, Hunky.' I said 'Ed, it's raining!' (laughs) But his sight was very bad, he couldn't see very well. He didn't know. He was a fun guy to be around. It was a privilege, and I was just very lucky to have a man of that character be with me.

DB: Now a lot of wrestlers tell stories about when they first started out, you know, there's a lot of trainers that will try to discourage the person or try to turn them away. Basically test what kind of guts you have before they really start giving you the knowledge you need.

LT: Well they did that with some people' with all people, actually, because many people think that they want to be a wrestler, but they really don't know what they're saying. Getting back to physical discomfort. If that discourages you' and Tragos was a wonderful man, and also a good strategist. But one time we went down to a place, and they had a heavyweight down there that was very good. At that time they were trying me out to see what I could do, and how well I could operate under stress. This young man had a pretty good track record. And I went in, and I was so uptight. I lived in terror of ever disappointing George and the people that had been helping me. And so I went out there, and I was so uptight, and the adrenaline was slowing. I hooked this guy and I beat him in 32 seconds. So the match was over, and we were driving back to St. Louis, and I asked George 'How was the match?' He said 'Eh, it was all right.' And I said 'What do you mean all right? I beat him in 32 seconds!' He said 'If the guy had wrestled, you don't beat him at all.' (laughs) You couldn't get a swelled head around George. You know, sometimes victories upset young people and they begin to believe their own publicity. But you couldn't do that around George. In that way he was quite humorous. He never did smile or laugh; nothing was funny. They used to call him Ice Water. Not to his face, but behind his back. (laughs) He was some kind of a man. Unbelievable guy.

DB: Now you mentioned the hooking style a couple of times. The title of your book is Hooker. Today, that's a term that isn't used so much. You hear "shooter" a lot.

LT: Yeah, It's actually the same thing, except to be a hooker, it's kind of a post-graduate course, you know? They have performers, wrestlers, hookers, and shooters. It's just a matter of shoptalk. In the dressing rooms, the pecking order was really an automatic thing. The non-wrestlers would sit on one side of the room, and the really sophisticated wrestlers would sit on the other side. No one told them to do that. It was just a normal thing. They were attracted to each other, you know?

DB: The hooking style is more submission-based, is that correct? Newer fans may not know exactly what the difference is.

LT: Oh yeah. You're right on target. It's how to hurt people. How to make them concede. Mentally and physically, you know. That's the name of the game.

DB: Now today, if you tried hooking in the WWF, you'd probably be fired, would you not?

LT: (laughs) Well, they've got a young man up there that can do it. Maybe not specifically hooking, but...

DB: I've heard you're pretty high on Kurt Angle.

LT: Boy, you picked my brain! We're very close. Wherever he wrestled around North Carolina, and all up and down the coast, I would visit the matches. He's a super kid. Well, I shouldn't say he's a kid - he's a hell of a man. He's got himself a 20, 21-inch neck. And when I was 21, I had a 21-inch neck also. But of course, with your neck and your abdomen and so forth, you can control your opponent very easily. With your head, you can control him. A lot of people really don't understand what I'm saying, but you can control a man with just your head, move him where you want him and so forth, you know? Another thing that helped me a lot, I was ambidextrous, you know. And that helped a hell of a lot, because if you switch horses in the middle of the stream, it really discourages and upsets a lot of people. If you're a southpaw and you can go back and forth, it puts you in a pretty good position.

DB: I want to talk about Rikidozan. Your first match against Rikidozan?

LT: I was wrestling for his group, but I first wrestled him in Hawaii. I didn't even know he existed, as a matter of fact. I wasn't interested in Japanese wrestling. I was too busy with my own country. But he was a really tough guy on his feet, because sumo wrestlers don't have any mat experience at all, because they don't have any mat wrestling. Of course, with freestyle or Greco, the way I was schooled, the ultimate thing is to get them on the mat and pin them. But he was very, very headstrong, and you couldn't discourage him. I banged him around a little bit, and cut him up a little bit. There was a little bit of blood there, but it wasn't mine, it was his.

When I finally got him on the deck, then he belonged to me. But prior to that, he was very tough on his feet. I gave him a lot of credit. I told him later, I really admire you for being headstrong, and for not being discouraged. And he said, 'Well, that's the way we worked in school.' He didn't get discouraged about anything, but I took him off his feet, and that was the end of the ball game. But after that, rather than be unhappy with me or something, he gave me some trophies, and its really strange. He was just a good friend. He learned his wrestling, freestyle wrestling, in Germany. He came through the United States, stopped in Hawaii, and that's when I wrestled him. After that, we wrestled several times in Japan and had sellout crowds in the ballpark. Forty, fifty thousand people. But I complimented him about the sumo experience that he had. He put me in with, I trained with the sumo wrestlers, and I really enjoyed that. They were a great bunch of guys. Riki was a super guy, and I'm just so sorry that he left us, because he should not have. He was a very innovative, bright guy. And Ed Lewis was, too. Some of these people will surprise you about the gray matter, you know. You think they're just big pug uglies, but that isn't true. And Rikidozan was a bright guy. But he had a little ego problem, and that's why he died.

He bought a nightclub called the Ch' Paris, of all things, in Japan. The Japanese mafia is really strong over there, and Riki was a part of that, too. They really liked him. But this guy that was in there one night, he was drinking and drinking. So Riki got unhappy with him and physically threw him out of the place, out in the street, you know. And about a month or two later, the guy was stewing over this, and he couldn't handle it - he was drinking, of course. Anyway, he came in and Rikidozan was talking with a bunch of people, and he owned the place. And he walked behind him and (stabbed him). If Riki had gone to the hospital immediately, he would have been all right, because we had antibiotics at that time. But he didn't - he wanted to be Mr. Tough Guy. So he stayed up there, and a thing called septicemia set in - the blood gets completely destroyed, it's blood poisoning. Acute blood poisoning, and even antibiotics wont touch it. And of course, he died the next day. And that was terrible. If he had gone to the hospital, he'd have been all right.

DB: I do remember a story about the first time or two that you wrestled Rikidozan. You impressed him so much by basically roughing him up that you became very respected in Japan as one of his friends, as somebody that HE respected.

LT: That's very true. He arranged all the tours; I didn't travel with the other wrestlers. He had me staying at some really wonderful tea houses, where the rooms start probably at a thousand dollars a day, you know. He really babied me and took care of me. And I told him one time, I said, 'Riki, you don't have to do that for me, that's not necessary.' And he opened a little Halliburton attach'. He opened it up, and he must have had a couple million dollars in there. He said, 'You've been very good to me,' and he said, 'Do you need any money?' I said, 'No, you're paying me very well! Your bookkeeper is paying me very well.' He said, 'No, but if you want some extra money, take whatever you want. We've got enough.' And you know, when you get a guy like that, you go the extra mile for him. Of course, I wouldn't take any more money. I said, 'No, Riki, you're paying me very well now. Don't give your money away; put some money away. You're gonna get old too!' (laughs)

He was a very unusual personality, and he had a lot of guts. You couldn't discourage that guy. I did a lot of crazy things with him, to get him off his feet. I finally convinced him that he was existing only from the neck on up. I cut him up, I cut both of his eyes, and all of a sudden, you reach a point where the person you're competing with thinks he exists only from the neck on up. Because that's the only thing they can feel. And that's how you get them off their feet. But it was an adventure. We discussed that later, and I said it was just part of the strategy. I didn't want to hurt you or cut you up. I just had to get your attention, where I wanted him. Your attention was up above, and I wanted you off your feet so I could handle you.

DB: Well another great, legendary world champion on these shores was Buddy Rogers, and I know you had a great rivalry with Buddy Rogers for a while.

LT: Well Rogers, he was a performer, not a wrestler. We had some wrestlers, but he wasn't one of them. And he was a good show person, and drew a lot of money. I think at one time he was probably the most colorful wrestler we had in this country, or maybe in the world at that time. He was German, you know, and my mother is German. I speak German. And we had a good relationship, but I had to keep him under control, because he'd get a little bit lively with doing business. So I kept my eye on him, and kept my thumb on him in the ring.

DB: Was it true that you wouldn't do the job for Buddy Rogers?

LT: Oh no, I would not, because one time we were going to Louisville, Kentucky. I was in the army at the time. And he picked me up in St. Louis - this was long ago, of course. And he was gonna drive me to Louisville, Kentucky. And he said, 'Wow, were gonna wrestle each other, We got that big, fat slob, Ed 'Strangler' Lewis.' Ed was like my father, my uncle, my brother, he was everything wrapped up in one, and I loved the man. I said, 'What did you do before you decided to become a wrestler? Because apparently, you're not a wrestler.' He said, 'I was a police officer.' I said, 'Maybe you better go back and get a job, and walk the beat somewhere, because you're off base, and you just said the wrong thing to me, buster.' And I said, 'Anything unkind you had to say about Ed Lewis, you better not try it out on me. It's not going to work.' That's the thing that cost him all those years, it cost him a fortune, and it cost him my friendship. About a year or two before he died, we mended fences. But I never trusted him. He said the wrong thing about the right man, because without Ed "Strangler" Lewis, none of us would have been here to even wrestle, and try to earn a livelihood doing it.

DB: Now wasn't it true that at some point in the sixties, part of the formation of the World Wrestling Federation was a dispute over Buddy Rogers holding the world title?

LT: Oh, they had so many controversial things. In New York, they had about three or four people that are financially interested in promotions, and it was just a ball game, you know? It got to the point that I really kind of wiped them all off the maps as far as I was concerned. I did what I wanted to do. If I didn't want to do it, they couldn't do anything about it.

DB: Didn't Sam Muchnick and Vince McMahon (Sr.) once try to arrange a world title match between you and Bruno Sammartino?

LT: Oh, sure, I was ready to do it. I said, 'What are we talking about money?' He said, 'Well, that's no problem.' I said, 'Well, let me talk about the problem then.' And so we started talking, and they said, 'We know were gonna have a million-dollar gate.' I said, 'Okay, Ill get ten percent off the top, nothing gets deducted. So now were talking about a hundred thou.' And what about the match, and so forth. So we ended up, and we had about a half million (dollars) for the match at stake at that time. So he said, 'We'll go ahead and make the match.' I said, 'UP FRONT. I want the money UP FRONT.' He said, 'We can't do that.' I said, 'Well then you can't do it.' Toots Mondt was one of the manipulators, so he called me into the men's room. He said, 'I personally will give you another twenty-five thousand.' I said, 'Toots, you don't have enough money in your pocket to buy my coffee this morning.' And he didn't, he was broke. No way.

And I said, 'If you people have some front money, and you can give half of it up front before the match, and right before the match, before I get in the ring, I want the rest of the money.' And they said 'We just cant do that.' So I told Sam Muchnick that what they want is what they're not going to get, because they don't have the money. But Sam told me something that he should not have done. He said, 'I book the champion; that's my job. If I order you to go in and wrestle him, that's what you have to do.' I said, 'Well okay, why don't you go ahead and make the match.' He said, 'Well, what are you going to do?' I said, 'I'm gonna to beat him.' (laughs) He said, 'You can't.' I said, 'The hell I can't!' He said, 'You cant do that.' I said, 'I'm telling you up front, I'm being honest about this thing, but you are not, and neither are the other people.' So much for that.

DB: You said you were demanding the money up front - was that more or less a safety precaution against these promoters that you weren't used to dealing with?

LT: Sure, they were thieves. Of course.

DB: Now in the territories you were used to working, would you do that?

LT: No. They wanted a victory over me. And I had it figured out - it's gonna cost them a half a mil to do it. I wrestled Sammartino one time after that in Toronto.

DB: Right, and Frank Tunney promoted that.

LT: Yeah, Frank Tunney. Now there was a great promoter. Frank Tunney, Eddie Quinn, Tony Stecher, Sam Muchnick - to me, they're the cream of the crop. I really enjoyed working with those people.

DB: And you beat Bruno in Toronto, correct?

LT: Yeah I beat him in about... 25 minutes, I think it was.

DB: Did you ever have much experience wrestling Verne Gagne?

LT: Verne and myself wrestled I think three times. He was a great wrestler, and Olympian. We had a lot of mutual respect. We wrestled some 90-minute draws. He was a super wrestler. We had maybe some problems years and years ago, but every time we see each other, we just sip a little of the grape. Great guy, and I really enjoy his company.

DB: Another wrestling legend, Johnny Valentine, passed away within the past couple of weeks.

LT: Great guy, great guy. Not a sophisticated wrestler, but probably the gutsiest wrestler I ever saw. He had more intestinal fortitude in his hip pocket than most of them have up front. I really liked John a lot. He was not a great wrestler, but he really enjoyed wrestling. We wrestled several times, and he'd get some kind of a half-hook on me, and he'd say, 'Now I gotcha,' you know? And it'd take me maybe three or four minutes to work out of it. But I really enjoyed him; he was really a very, very nice person. Very sharp person, and a hell of a chess player. We broke bread together, and sipped a little of the grape together.

DB: Getting back to the performance aspect of wrestling - the performers vs. the wrestlers vs. the hookers - you've got guys like Gorgeous George back in the golden age, and he kind of revolutionized what is today known as "sports entertainment."

LT: Oh yes, he did, and he did a great job. And a lot of people don't know this, but he actually did some wrestling. A lot of people thought he was just a show person, but that's not true at all. The problem he had, he really wasn't a heavyweight. He only weighed about 180, and he wasn't big enough for the big boys. But when he came in with the Gorgeous George thing - and I'm gonna drop a name on you, but Bob Hope, I know Bob real well. I went on one of his sets one time, where they were doing "Fancy Pants." He asked me a question, and he said, 'This guy Gorgeous George, could he wrestle?' Now that's shoptalk. If Bob didn't know someone who knew something about wrestling, he wouldn't say 'Could he wrestle.' Because they just don't do that. It just doesn't come out. But anyway, I said, 'Yes, as a matter of fact, he could.' And I said he's not big enough for some of the big boys that knew their hooking and so forth, but I said he's very confident. And he was. I wrestled him in Chicago one time, at Wrigley Field, and he did a crazy thing where he would bounce you from the back, like a bronco or something, and then do a forward roll and send you over. And he did that with me, but I'd seen him do it before, and as he was balling himself up, I kept him going.

DB: Now that type of a performer has become the rule as opposed to the exception. Is that part of the reason that wrestling doesn't appeal as much to you?

LT: Yes, well, it's choreographed tumbling, is what it is. It's not really related to wrestling. It's not a sport; it's show business. I think that's fine, but personally, I'm not going to get involved in it. If I did that, I think I should be convicted of treason for doing a thing like that and ignoring the help that I got from Ed "Strangler" Lewis and Ray Steele and all my wonderful friends. I wouldn't live with myself.

DB: Do you think there's a chance that the sporting style of wrestling will return?

LT: When it gets bad enough, it'll get better. Then they're gonna have some very strict rules, and yes, it's a possibility. I may not be here to witness it. You know, I'm 85 now. But it's a possibility that that could work. Everyone likes to see a contest. That's why baseball draws well, and that's why football is doing good. Because it's a contest, people want to see it. And I do, too. Any time I know that there's a tournament or something - martial arts or something, I love it. I go, and I have a hell of a time and meet with the guys later. I really enjoy it. But it's a contest, and that's why I like it.

DB: Let's talk about your book, Hooker, a little bit. What motivated you to start this book?

LT: Well this fellow by the name of Kit Bauman, he was a wrestling fan and a real guru. I met him in Fort Worth, Texas, one time at one of the matches. He wanted to do a book, and I was so busy at the time. That was about 25 years ago, and I just didn't have the time. But I tried to get to it, and I ran into him again. I took a whole bunch of tapes and interviews, about people, and the wrestling game, and so forth. About 40 or 50 hours, I gave him. And out of that, he put a book together. He did it very well, as if I was dictating for him. In fact, he was here about a week ago. But I enjoyed doing it. I had some really good reviews on the book. We've been at this thing now for several years. And it's really strange, in the past couple of weeks, we have a major publisher that is beginning negotiating with us.

DB: That's good news.

LT: Yeah, it is. And I really feel very, very good about it.

DB: I know that your last match was in 1990 against (Masa) Chono.

LT: Yeah, I was 74 at the time.

DB: I've read interviews where you've said you were old enough to have known better than to do that.

LT: But I did it anyway. (laughs)

DB: You had your hip replaced before that, correct?

LT: Oh yeah, sure, I had a hip replacement.

DB: What was it like stepping into the ring with someone you had trained that was so much your junior?

LT: Well, he spent some time in Germany also. I was living in Norfolk, Virginia. Chono was gonna be coming through, and I coached him for a couple weeks. So we did that, and I really enjoyed his company. He's a charming man, a very nice guy, and a big guy. We wrestled, and he actually got me with the same thing I taught him. I used a Greco Roman backdrop. A crazy thing where you bridge out - in Greco Roman wrestling, bridging your neck is so important. That's why I emphasize, I had a 21-inch neck, and that's very necessary not only to keep yourself from getting injured, but to keep yourself from getting killed, for Christ's sake. Because it's very easy to break a neck, you know.

DB: It's probably the worst injury to have, is it not?

LT: It is, because you become not functional, you know? I've seen some people that had broken vertebrae, and they just never seem to recover. No matter how sophisticated the medication is, the treatment, they just don't make it. But anyway, it's just part of the game. You do the best you can to take care of yourself.

DB: A couple more things to touch on that are a bit more modern. Stone Cold Steve Austin is one of the most popular wrestlers right now. He's kind of brought your name back to the forefront every week on wrestling by using the Thesz press in every match.

LT: I'm very flattered that he's doing that. I'm really very flattered about that. I met him up there in D.C. And he's a very nice guy. I had no idea that he was going to use that at that time, and I don't think he did, either. But he's doing it. I'd like to polish it a little bit for him. The old guys, they're always a smart ass. They all gotta say something like 'If you did it like this, it might a little better,' you know.

DB: Well I think you have that courtesy, since the move is named after you.

LT: Well, that really is very nice of him. I've never contacted him since then, but I do appreciate the significance of him using that as a finishing hold. But he's a good athlete, and they have other good athletes. Like Kurt Angle is a hell of a wrestler, and a damn good athlete.

DB: Actually, Kurt Angle just had a match on pay-per-view a little over a week ago, called an Ultimate Submissions match. The WWF put him and Chris Benoit in the ring, guaranteed 30 minutes, and whoever got the most submissions on their opponent before it was over won. And it was considered one of the best matches of the year so far.

LT: You know, it's a strange thing, I don't know what's going on in the wrestling business. But I heard about that. I have a friend here from Germany that's into wrestling, and he told me about that. Who won the thing, Benoit?

DB: Yeah, they actually went into overtime because they were tied, and Chris Benoit got him about two minutes into it with a cross face.

LT: Well that's great. When you get people like that, and they've devoted their lives to it, they really enjoy wrestling, that's my pick of the litter. Because he and Chris, and people like that, they really perpetuate wrestling. The people that don't believe that they will should get in the ring with them, and try your luck with them.

DB: Kurt Angle, Chris Benoit, you know' guys like Bret Hart, who's retired now - those are the guys who perpetuate the sporting end of it.

LT: Oh absolutely. I admire them. I have nothing but good things to say about them. They've done their homework, and I always admire people that do that. It's personal pride, also. Pride and workmanship. As long as you give a damn what you're doing - if you're selling popcorn, or wrestling. If you do a good job, try to do the best you can.

DB: One last thing to touch on that just happened in the past few months. Vince McMahon and the World Wrestling Federation have purchased World Championship Wrestling.

LT: Well that was in the cards, you know. I knew that was coming up.

DB: Does this hurt the business?

LT: Well, it's just going to be a single person doing it. But in the past couple of years, one single person has been doing it anyway. McMahon's been doing it alone. And the man in Atlanta, what's his name again?

DB: Well Ted Turner owned the company, but it was Eric Bischoff running things.

LT: Bischoff is not a wrestling person. He doesn't know anything about wrestling. Nothing. But his boss had the deep pockets. He's a very nice man; I met him years ago. He's a good guy. But they were on the way out. They just didn't have anybody to count them out, that's all. They had nowhere else to go. But they had a man in there, Bischoff - he doesn't know one wrestler from the other one. He's a television person. If they were producing a movie or something, maybe they can get something done. But as far as being able to sell a bill of (wrestling) goods to the general public, he doesn't know which end is up. He had the reigns to steer the horse wherever he wanted to go, but he took it right down the tubes. And not only myself, but a couple other dozen wrestlers - we all discussed it, and we decided that his days were numbered. And that's exactly what happened.

DB: As somebody who has a lot of experience dealing with several different promoters, is it going to hurt the wrestlers to have Vince McMahon being the only real shot at glory?

LT: It won't help, but if anyone is' McMahon is wired for money. And if anyone is going to draw him money, he will get the mileage out of them. The wrestlers today are bright enough to take care of themselves. In some cases I'm sure it'll put some of the wrestlers in a poor negotiating position, but the ones that really have it, the guys that can really get out there and cut the mustard, they're gonna be fine.

DB: So basically it's the old theory that anyone with talent will make it.

LT: No question about it. When you know that you're in demand, it's very easy to negotiate. You just tell them what your bottom line is. I did that all over the world. I did that in Australia, New Zealand, everywhere. And if they didn't come up with the money that I wanted, I said 'Bye!' (laughs) That's the way it goes.

DB: If you could have had one match with somebody that you never got a chance to wrestle, from any generation, who would it be?

LT: Oh, the guy in England that professed to be the greatest wrestler of all time. There was someone over there that said he was a world-beater and so forth. And I tried to contact him, and had other people contact him. Promoters from all over Europe, everywhere. And he would never answer when they called. That's the only one that ever challenged me, where down in my guts, I think I want to find out if he's a better wrestler than I am.

DB: This was a guy from your era?

LT: Before my time, even. But maybe four or five guys - Kurt Angle is one, of course, that can cut the mustard. But most of them, I would say no.

DB: Do you see a lot on Ric Flair? He's been hailed as one of the best wrestlers of the past century.

LT: A repetitious wrestler. You see one match, you see 'em all.

DB: That's been said about him also.

LT: Yeah, he did some wrestling up around Minnesota. Johnny Valentine is one who was not only a better performer, but had a lot more bottom and would defend himself. But Ric is a good man. He's done very well for years and years. But he doesn't have the bottom that some of them have. If you get him in real competition, that's another ball game.

DB: And by "bottom," you mean guts?

LT: Guts, yeah.

DB: Well I've never heard anything about Johnny Valentine lacking in that area.

LT: Oh no, no, he's the boss there! (laughs) In Florida, I saw him two or three times. When he goes to the post, he cut these people up. Cut 'em like he had a big machete. Blood all over the damn place!