STW - Pat Patterson "My Way" [Show Notes] (Patreon)

Pat Patterson was born on January 19, 1941, in Montréal, in a tiny apartment near the corner of Frontenac on Rouen Street, in the Ville-Marie borough. His birth name was Pierre Clermont - a name he said he hated. He legally changed it in 2009 - but his entire career, he was known as Pat Patterson.

He had a beautiful name! Why didn’t he like it?

My father’s name was Gérard Clermont, and he was a good provider, though I was never particularly close to him. My mother, Simone Lupien, was the most wonderful mom anyone could have had. I was very close to her; she was the only member of my family who understood me from the start and always accepted me as I am.

He didn’t know it at the time but Pat had a bad childhood, he wrote in his memoir.

I grew up in a two-bedroom apartment: one bedroom for the parents, another bedroom for six children. Pat slept in a foldout bed that was in the closet. No bath, no shower, and no hot water. If they wanted to wash their hands, they had to boil the water. In Montreal, they had to use public baths so they would go twice a week.

Did you ever talk with Pat about his humble upbringing? How do you think it affected him as he found success?

Pat wasn’t good at sports, in his own words. Back then, traveling circuses went from town to town and he spent a lot of his free time there, hanging around the acrobats. His father wasn’t a fan of that and ended those aspirations. Pat made a go at singing too - a talent he would display throughout the years. One thing was clear: Pat Patterson needed an audience.

First Exposure to Pro Wrestling

One Friday, Pat’s mom brought home a loaf of bread - since the family would have no meat that night. Inside of the bag (No idea why) was a ticket to a wrestling show. Pat went - and the bug bit him.

I remember watching Buddy Rogers enter the ring. It was like God was walking down the aisle. He had a presence about him; I didn’t know what he was made of. It was incredible, and I’ve never seen anything like it since — this slow, easy wrestling with Édouard Carpentier. My God, it was so beautiful. Years later, I wrestled with both of them and became friends with Rogers.

Did Pat mention Buddy Rogers or talk about his influence?

I knew after that first wrestling match that I had found my calling, but I needed money to attend the big shows on Saturday nights or the even bigger show at the Montréal Forum on Wednesday evenings. One of my friends had a delivery job for a little restaurant and I helped him and he paid me for my work. He also delivered newspapers, and I helped with that too and earned some more money there as well. It wasn’t much, but it was enough to see the wrestling show. (p. 17)

Pat didn’t have it easy along his journey into pro-wrestling. And his first job in wrestling is proof of that:

First Job In Wrestling: Selling Hotdogs

I think the first job I ever did in the wrestling business was sell hot dogs. I was not good at that at all, since all I wanted to do was to watch the matches. Once, one of the wrestlers asked me to get near the barricades for his match so he could turn the hot dog tray over my head. I was happy to comply, because it meant I wouldn’t have any more hot dogs to sell and I could watch the rest of the matches without working. My boss didn’t see it that way. He fired me. It didn’t matter to me: I wanted more of the kind of crowd reaction I experienced when I was showered with hot dogs, mustard, and ketchup.

Do you think Pat getting a taste of making a crowd pop was basically a taste of an addiction that fueled him through some of these hard times? What’s it like when you make a crowd pop for the first time?

Pat described one of his biggest early influences as Killer Kowalski. He patterned his look and color choices after Kowalski as years would progress. But as a young new-guy, he hoped to simply get his autograph. As he wrote...

Killer Kowalski gave me his bag once, and I got in with him. That didn’t happen too often, mind you, but I felt like I was on top of the world that night. When I started to wrestle, I patterned my whole look after him — with my purple trunks and boots. I wanted a picture of me coming off the top rope with the big knee just like Kowalski, the move with which, in 1956 at the Forum, he tore off Yukon Eric’s ear. When I finally got that picture, all I wanted was to show it to Kowalski and have him sign it. Many times, I tried to get close to him and get it autographed without success. I was always sniffing around trying to get as close as possible to the dressing room, so I could show him my precious picture. Finally one day, I had my chance. I was about to get kicked out of the dressing room when Kowalski showed up at the door. “What do you want, kid?” I held up the picture and was so proud to ask him in my best English ever, “You autograph, please?”

What was it about Killer Kowalski that connected with the legendary wrestling figures like Pat, Triple H, and others who he influenced?

Pat moved to Boston where he began to develop into the legendary figure we hear about today. With barely any knowledge of English, Pat began to make his way in the world.

My English was, as I’ve said, terrible. I made all the classic mistakes French people make when learning English. We just take the French word and try to say it in English. So I would say gouvernement instead of government, only I added an English pronunciation. I probably don’t have to tell you, but everyone was always laughing at my attempts to speak English. But living with so many different people helped. They asked me often enough to repeat myself. The more I talked to people, the more functional English I learned. What really helped was television, especially The Price Is Right.

My first week in Boston, I ate the same thing every day: hamburger steak. Why? Simply because I had no idea what anything else on the menu was. One time, the special was pork chops and I knew I liked chop de porc frais, so I was about to try it because the names were so similar. When they asked me if I wanted “gravy,” I was sure I was not going to like the meal. “Just hamburger steak,” I said. My friend ordered the pork chops with gravy. When I saw what they brought him, I knew I would be ordering it soon.

Do you have any fun stories about Pat’s limited English? What was his favorite meal to order when you were around him?

Pat’s sense of humor was beginning to make itself known to the world around this time, too. He told various stories of his pranks and humor around that time in Boston, often involving his grumpy landlord “Ralph.”

Another time, I let the water run in the bathtub all night in the second-floor bathroom. Next morning, Ralph called out to me, “Patterson, there is some serious shit going on around here!” “What do you mean, Ralph?” I answered as if I was still half-asleep, playing dumb. “Let me show you.” He brought me over to his apartment. Water was dripping down the wall from the ceiling. It was goddamn Niagara Falls in there.

Then he brought me to the basement where there was a barbershop and there was water dripping everywhere. I started to get very nervous and hoped he would never find out I was the culprit. Thank God, he trusted me. I didn’t intend to cause damage like that, I just thought it would be funny. I was dumb, but I never did anything in my life that was mean-spirited; I just wanted to make people laugh and entertain myself with their laughter.

Did you ever see Pat pull any pranks that went to this level? What’s the harshest rib you saw him pull on someone?

Another fun story from around this time...

At some point, a fire alarm was installed in the building. And, of course, almost every night like clockwork, someone would pull the alarm . . . OK, it was almost always me, but everyone was laughing as we ran outside half-naked. Those were the crazy days. When you don’t know anything, you don’t worry about anything. I didn’t know you could get arrested pulling those kinds of pranks. I was lucky I never got into any real trouble.

Was Pat always a good humored person?

Classic Story With Mae Young

While working for a promoter in Boston, the promotion brought in several women wrestlers to work cards during a run. One of them was future WWE Hall of Famer Mae Young. The promoter put her with Patterson so she would know how to get to the shows.

She showed up in a brand-new car, looking like a movie star, and she said, “Patterson, get in the car” while smoking the biggest cigar I had ever seen. She asked if I ever smoked and when I said no, she said, “If you want to be a top guy, you might as well start. Light it up for me.” Then I saw her wrestle. Holy shit! I told myself that I never wanted to get in there with her. It was a tag team match, and she was really beating the hell out of those girls. She looked like a star. After the match, she had me drinking beer after telling me I needed to do that too if I wanted to be a star. Let’s just say, she was a little rough around the edges.

One night around 1 a.m., I heard banging on my door. It was Mae Young wearing only her bra and panties with a martini in her hand. What the hell? “Patterson, let me in.” “What’s the matter?” “Don’t worry, Pat, I just want to talk bullshit with you.” She kept on talking forever that night, telling me how good I was and how far I would go in the business. She finally passed out, so I put her in my bed and slept on the floor.

The next morning, I had to help her get home since she was still in rough shape. When I got home, I realized she had pissed all over my bed. I don’t remember if I gave her clothes or if she left in the morning as half-naked as she had come in the night before. Still I never let her forget that she left that surprise in my bed. I loved her dearly.

What made a grizzled veteran Mae Young endeared to a young Pat Patterson, here? Was it his attitude, his talent, his determination, or something else?

Did Mae often show up to people’s hotel rooms at 1 AM just to shoot the shit?

Pat falls in love

At around the same time, he met Louie Dondero at a Boston bar, and started a relationship with him that lasted until Dondero’s death in 1998. At first he figured it would be a short-term thing, because his career was in wrestling and Dondero lived and worked in Boston. But after he left Boston for Oregon, a few months later, Dondero moved to Oregon with him.

Do you have any fun Louie Dondero stories? Was he around a lot while you were there?

Pat on Mad Dog Vachon

Pat wrote that the big reason he got his break in Portland was because of Maurice “Mad Dog” Vachon, who had seen his work and specifically vouched for Pat. But after Pat moved, he had worries on if his relationship with Louie could last. Pat tried to keep his sexuality, as he wrote, in the closet. But a crazy story happened one night...as Pat wrote in his book:

We stayed at my hotel for a couple of weeks as we looked for an apartment of our own. At first, I was hiding him and that wasn’t fun. One night, Mad Dog Vachon showed up in the hotel lobby a little drunk. Louie was afraid of Mad Dog and he took off, as if he had just seen the devil himself. I can’t really blame him because we were all scared of the Dog at one point or another. Maurice knew I was gay. He had met Louie when I came back from Boston to wrestle in Montréal and naturally he had figured things out. Seeing Louie in Portland, Mad Dog got himself all worked up. He had vouched for me and now I was putting him in a precarious position. “You prick, you double-crossed me . . . You brought your boyfriend here . . .” “Maurice, he’s my friend,” I said, “and he’s important to me.” “Where is he?” Mad Dog yelled, madder than ever. “I don’t know. When he saw you, he bolted.” “We’ll find him,” he said. We jumped in his car and we drove around downtown,

After they drove around downtown for half an hour, they spotted Louie. Mad Dog floored it to catch up to him. Louie had been running for his life as fast as he could, as though he had just been sentenced to death. And, as tragic as it is to write this, it’s important to note that it might have been death sentence for someone to be openly gay in that setting. But, Mad Dog Vachon pulled up next to Louie and in his broken English, said:

“We go to the hotel and we drink.”

As Pat wrote...Maurice Vachon was instrumental in helping people in the business accept Louie and me. Maurice was so well respected in Portland, and since I was teaming with him, no one bothered me; the other wrestlers were even encouraging me. Whenever we traveled, Maurice would ask, “Where’s Louie?” And when I’d say, “Well, he stayed home, Maurice,” Mad Dog would shake his head.

Louie appreciated what Maurice did for us and they remained good friends throughout the years. Much later, when we were living in Florida and had a beautiful home on the canal, we had not seen Maurice in years. Mad Dog was not rich, and he was at the tail end of his career. He let us know that he would love to visit us if he could. Without hesitation, Louie said, “Just tell me when; bring your wife and some friends.” I think Maurice stayed for a month and Louie took real good care of him.

Pat said he was instrumental in getting Mad Dog Vachon into the WWE Hall of Fame and Pat was very proud of being able to give back to someone he appreciated so much.

So this mean, nasty, vicious looking monster was actually a sweet old man?

Andre and Pat

Pat moved to San Francisco and Big Time Wrestling in 1965.

When André the Giant worked in San Francisco, he was happy to meet me because I spoke French. We quickly became friends. When he arrived in town, my friend Davey Rosenberg, a publicist who got me a lot of coverage in the papers, arranged to take pictures of André in a Cadillac with his head sticking out of the sunroof. Of course, that made the papers;

I went to Las Vegas with him because our television broadcast played there. We were going to see Tom Jones; waiting in line to get in, like everyone else, we stuck out like a sore thumb. I’m not sure if they knew who we were, but they gave us really good seats. Anyway, after the show, we both needed the bathroom. I found a hanger in there and had an idea. I decided to hook it onto the back of his jacket. Without knowing it, André proceeded to walk around the casino with this hanger, complete with a ten-dollar bill attached to it, dangling from his back. I think because no one was used to the surreal sight of someone that big, no one wanted to tell him. Finally, an old lady came up to him and pointed it out, asking what was going on. I was busted — and we had a big laugh about it.

(pp. 95-96).

What was the relationship like between Andre and Pat when you were around the two?

The Blonde Bombers

Pat was one half of a successful tag-team along with Ray Stevens. It was called the Blonde Bombers. Patterson and Stevens were one of several versions of the tag team that have existed across the wrestling scope. Pat had some of the highest praise he could give to anyone about Stevens in his book.

In my book, I would put Roy Shire, Eddie Graham, and Dory Funk Sr. on my short list of wrestling geniuses. There are many other good painters out there, don’t get me wrong, but not everyone can be a Picasso. But Ray Stevens, as far as wrestling performance goes, also has a place on that short list. He got it right, and got it right all the time. And it seemed like everything came to him naturally, that he never had to struggle to learn anything. Shawn Michaels might be the best comparison I can give to help you understand how good Ray Stevens was. Ray was a prodigy. Now, if you said that to his face he would probably tell you that you were full of shit and that he wished he would have worked openers instead of main events, so he could have more time to chase women and drink beer . . . Do you want even more proof of his talent? Before I got to the territory, he won the award for Most Hated Wrestler in the Bay Area. But what’s truly remarkable is that he also won Most Popular Wrestler for the same year. Ray was unique — just like me.

(pp. 106-107).

The pair were later reunited in the American Wrestling Association, where they won the AWA World Tag Team Championship on September 23, 1978. The following year, Patterson began competing primarily in the World Wrestling Federation, although he and Stevens continued to team occasionally in the AWA until late 1982. They were inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame as a team in 2006 and have been described as one of the greatest tag teams of all time.

Did you get to see the Blonde Bombers?

What does Pat’s praise about Ray Stevens say? That seems like a strong endorsement.

Pat’s break in the WWF

I had met Vince Sr. for the first time a few years earlier in Las Vegas. Roy Shire was never a member of the National Wrestling Alliance but, as a courtesy, every year he was invited to attend their annual general meeting. They were hoping he would change his mind and join them. At very least, it kept relationships good for everyone. One year, Roy brought me with him. But because having a top talent sitting with all those promoters in “important” meetings was awkward, I ended up befriending Vince’s wife, Juanita. I was all dressed up and waiting for the last meeting of the day to end when I finally said, “We’re not going to wait on them forever. Let’s go to the bar and have some cocktails.” The promoters’ wives all thought it was a fabulous idea. So we went to the bar and had a blast. I guess I was charming, and I was definitely making them laugh. I don’t know why, but I was always very popular with the ladies. Juanita never got involved with the wrestling business, but I was the exception to the rule. She spoke the world of me to Vince Sr.

When he decided to bring me in a few years later, he planned for me to wrestle Bob Backlund for the World Heavyweight Championship. That was a new and exciting platform: to be in the main event on the grandest stage of them all. Guys who were my size didn’t usually come to New York to challenge for the championship. As I said, I was not contacted directly. Back then, they were very cautious about things like that. That’s something that would change when Vince Jr. took over — but that’s a story for later.

(pp. 129-130). ECW Press. Kindle Edition.

Did he have a unique charm that allowed him to make these good impressions on people?

In theory, who might have contacted Pat with those plans and how might that have gone?

Pat Patterson main events at the Garden

As I mentioned, when I came to New York in 1979, they wanted me to wrestle the champion, Bob Backlund. I challenged him for the title a record four times in a row at Madison Square Garden. It had never been done before and has never been done. Back then, if you didn’t draw at the Garden, you wouldn’t stay in a main-event program no matter what the original storyline plan might have been. The champion would remain in place, of course, but they would move on to the next challenger. That’s how it worked. Vince Sr. liked my first match with Backlund so much we ended up having three return bouts. The third match with Backlund along with the famous match with Slaughter I had later were my greatest moments as a wrestler. WWE has everything on tape except that third match with Backlund, and I’ve always been disappointed about that. In my humble opinion, we came up with one of the very best endings for a match ever.

The old man — that’s how I sometimes refers to Vince Sr. — wanted a third match after I had won the first match by disqualification and the second by count-out. Backlund had never lost a match at that point and he had now lost two in a row. For the third match, it was decided there would be no winner. It was my big chance — not a lot of main-event rivalries made it to a third bout in those days. At MSG, managers would retreat to the dressing room after the introductions, because they got so much heat from the crowd and it often led to trouble, sometimes even rioting. We got special permission for our managers to be ringside that night. The Grand Wizard would be there for me and Arnold Skaaland would be in Bob’s corner. As the main-event bad guy at MSG, you exited the building hidden in an ambulance, and the driver dropped you off at your hotel. This procedure was put in place after a car was turned upside down by the crowd. On that night, we all knew that the managers’ presence at ringside was like throwing a match into a powder keg, and I truly hoped it wouldn’t explode. Near the end of the match, I started to reach into my tights for the brass knuckles I’d hidden. Skaaland got on the apron to signal my cheating to the ref, and then the Grand Wizard jumped up as well. Of course, that distracted the referee who was busy telling both men to get down from the ring. I hit Backlund with the knucks and knocked him out cold. I went to nail Skaaland next, but he ducked and hit me with the championship he carried for Bob. So there we were, both the babyface champion and the heel contender side by side in the middle of the ring, out cold. The ref began counting us out, very slowly, hoping one of us would get to our feet before a count of ten.

By the time he got to six, the building was shaking. I was sure the roof was gonna come off — the fans wanted Backlund to start moving that bad. Everyone went on an emotional roller-coaster ride and the crowd was almost as tired as we were when the referee finally counted both of us out.

After that, we had to have a final and fourth match, and I finally lost in a cage. But now that I think back, Bob Backlund never pinned me for a count of one-two-three . . . Isn’t that something?

What can you say about Bob Backlund and Pat Patterson’s series of matches at the Garden? Did that cement him or make him a star in New York?

Patterson and the Intercontinental Championship

In the middle of this series with Backlund, I was actually crowned the first ever Intercontinental Champion — this also meant I was the first Intercontinental Champion to challenge the World Champion. That reminds me: the Intercontinental Championship . . . I won it in Rio de Janeiro. Which surprises me, because for some reason I don’t remember ever going there. But since I am indeed the first Intercontinental Champion, and the internet says I won a tournament in Rio to be crowned the first champion, I must have been there for at least one night, right? It must have been one hell of a party with Arnold Skaaland and André the Giant if I don’t remember any of it.

By the way this story is told, the Intercontinental title was made to establish someone as a challenger to the world championship. Do you see that as the reason for the belt’s creation and is that still the case today?

Pat on Commentary

After all of these trials and tribulations, Vince Sr. finally offered me the position of color commentator for televised matches and had me doing interviews ringside. On TV, as a rib, they had me say “Rio de Janeiro” as much as possible because I never could say it quite right. Sometimes they would tease me even more and make me do a five-minute interview with a wrestler who only spoke Spanish . . .

As a color commentator, Pat had a memorable pairing with Vince, Jr. Why did they work well together on the air? Did Pat’s charm help him make the transition here? A lot of wrestlers have tried to go from the ring to the both and didn’t work out (Honky Tonk, Neidhart, Booker T)

Pat vs. Sgt. Slaughter

Perhaps the most famous match I had in WWE, however, was against Sgt. Slaughter. When it happened, I was a full-time commentator and he was doing his $5,000 Cobra Clutch Challenge. The story of his challenge went like this: he would invite a wrestler into the ring and promise that if he could escape his sleeper hold, he’d earn the five grand. Of course, no one could break the hold. Sarge was managed by my former manager, the Grand Wizard, and he was the biggest bully in the business. Anyway, I was doing an interview with both of them after an opponent had just fled in fear. One thing led to another and then Slaughter slapped me, calling me “yellow.” (I had refused the challenge for weeks because I considered myself retired — even though Sarge was offering me $10,000, twice as much as a regular challenger. I figured I had nothing to prove.) Naturally, I got mad at being disrespected like that, so I challenged him to go right then and there. I took off my jacket, shirt, and tie, and I let him put the Cobra Clutch on me — and the crowd whipped itself into a frenzy. I fought like crazy, with maneuvers people had never seen, to get out of that sleeper. Knowing I was finally about to break his dreaded hold, he released it and then proceeded to hit me with a chair. People were freaking out. He picked up my bloodied body and put on the Cobra Clutch once again. I went completely out. He refused to release the hold even when others climbed into the ring to try to make him stop. It was quite an eventful evening and the WWE Universeclamored for revenge. (By the way, technically, Sarge never paid me for breaking the hold. With interest, I think I’m owed quite a bit of money today.) We had the inevitable confrontation after that on April 6, 1981, at the Garden and then we toured our rivalry around the territory . . . No rulebook could keep us in check and we were both disqualified. Our big night at MSG came on May 4, 1981. It was booked as an Alley Fight, and there was no referee in the ring with us. I won after repeatedly hitting a bloodied Slaughter with my cowboy boot, and the Wizard finally threw in the towel on Slaughter’s behalf. We won a bunch of awards that year for best match, and it also captured the imagination of the WWE universe for years to come.

A scare with a fun ending after knee surgery

I hurt my knee while working in New York, doing the same backflip over the turnbuckle I’d done a thousand times before. I needed surgery — I was getting older and my body was letting me know it. Luckily, I didn’t miss a lot of time, only about two weeks, because the procedure was arthroscopic. Anyway, two days after I left the hospital, I got a call. “Hello, sir, it’s Dr. Lewis.” I could not remember if this was the doctor who had operated on me, because I had seen two. He said he had worked on my leg.

“I have to tell you something; we need you to come back to the hospital.” “Why?” “You see, sir, we left something in your knee during the surgery. It will take only twenty minutes and everything will be fine.”

I was really pissed.

“How could this happen, doc? What time should I be there tomorrow?” “About ten should be fine.” “But I can’t believe you screwed up like this, doc . . .”

The doctor burst out laughing — it was actually a friend of mine pulling a joke on me. I was relieved. If he hadn’t blown his cover, I would have gone to the hospital the next day for sure. “Dr. Lewis” was, in fact, WWE Hall of Famer Arnold Skaaland.

Patterson, Pat; Hébert, Bertrand; McMahon, Vincent K.. Accepted (pp. 138-139). ECW Press. Kindle Edition.

Funny Prank on Andre

We were working a show in Portland, Maine, on a Sunday afternoon. Most of us were going straight back to Boston, I was driving the van and André was in the back near the big sliding door. I told him there was another car with some wrestlers just in front of us and when we passed them, we’d moon them. André was always in for a good laugh.

“OK, boss.”

So he opened the door, turned his ass toward the outside, unzipped his pants, and asked me to let him know when we were ready. As André exposed his giant ass for the whole world to see, I blew the car’s horn. But, of course, it wasn’t a car full of wrestlers. It was an elderly couple in the

wrong place at the wrong time. He was fucking mad. I’m still laughing about this one. Sorry, André.

What might it have sounded like when Andre realized he was mooning an old couple and was pissed at Pat?

Funny Prank on Rene Goulet

Rene Goulet was a funny guy and a fellow Quebecer. He was another Mad Dog protégé and worked with me as a producer for WWE. We had a show in Hartford once, on another Sunday afternoon, and it was still day when we got on the highway to head back home to Stamford. We hit some major traffic and we weren’t moving. That’s when Goulet said…[in French: I need to shit now]. But there was nowhere for him to go. Poor Rene.

“I have to go now; I can’t hold it anymore. I’m going to do it in my pants.”

I told him to take a deep breath and be patient; we were nearing an exit. He kept telling me that he wasn’t going to be able to wait that long. At some point, he grabbed some Kleenex I had in the car and ordered me to stop the car right there. I pulled over on the side of the road and he jumped out, dropped his pants, and let nature take its course.

Well by now, I hope you’ve figured out what my next move was going to be. Yes, of course, I drove off and left him all by his lonesome with his pants around his ankles. Everybody was honking their horns at him. When he was done he began to run after me, faster than a speeding bullet. I think he was even madder than André. But I would never have forgiven myself if I had missed that opportunity.

What do you think Rene Goulet may have said to Pat in the car when he caught up to him?

Another Funny Prank on Andre

During dinner, he dropped his keys and I picked them up without him noticing. As he continued to drink, I went to his room and I made it look like someone had [burglarized] him. I went back to the bar and sometime later we both went upstairs to bed. I had the room beside his and as we were saying good night, he realized that he couldn’t find his key. He went downstairs to get another and I pretended to go to bed. Obviously, I was in my room and waiting, because I knew I was about to have a front-row seat for the upcoming spectacle. As expected, he banged on my door, yelling that his room had been [burglarized]. I played it cool and didn’t laugh, even suggesting guys who he had a little bit of heat with on the tour as possible culprits. (I liked to stir a little shit in my day.)

Were there a lot of people who could prank Andre and get by with it?

Pat Pranks Killer Kowalski

While in Australia and Japan, I got to know and team with my idol, Killer Kowalski. We didn’t have much in common: he didn’t drink and he was a vegetarian. Still, I had found ways to have fun with him even though he was a serious man. In Australia, all the wrestlers went to a very nice family restaurant and he went too. The staff knew exactly what he wanted because he had spent quite some time explaining that they needed to take the meat out of all their recipes for him.

You know me well enough by now, right? You guessed it: if he got up to go to the bathroom, I would make sure the waiter added chicken to his meal. Killer would then get hot, because they had messed up his order. One time, he got so hot, he even went to the kitchen to complain to the chef.

Was Pat good at keeping a straight face during these kinds of pranks? A poker face, maybe?

Pat Pranks Brute Bernard

We played many jokes on the plane back to Australia to pass the time. A fellow Quebecer, Brute Bernard, who was completely bald, made the mistake of falling asleep. I drew a bunch of veins on his head and then covered his head with his hat.

When we got to Australia, he asked me to look out for his luggage while he went to the restroom. A few moments later, the whole airport heard the big scream from the bathroom. Everyone laughed.

Falling asleep on a plane with pro wrestlers seems like a bad idea, especially in this time...true?

Pat and Lord Alfred Hayes

Another benefit of working in Montréal that summer was that my good friend Lord Alfred Hayes was also there. We roomed together in Rimouski one night. I don’t remember much about what happened, but when I woke up the next morning, the television was on and Alfred was not in his bed. Neither was his mattress or the sheets and pillows for that matter. I wondered if he was OK, or if he’d been kidnapped or something. I went into the bathroom, and there he was, sleeping on his mattress on the floor. Apparently, I had been snoring so loudly that after trying to wake me and turning the television on to mask the sound coming out of me, he just gave up and barricaded himself in the restroom. Apparently I can play pranks in my sleep

Pat Pranks Lord Alfred

Alfred had a fantastic brand-new van for our travels around la belle province. In the back, we played cards and drank beer. There was a hidden compartment under the ashtray. I started stuffing all kinds of garbage in there, especially empty beer bottles. After a few days, Alfred looked at me and said, “Patrick, I don’t understand; there’s a weird noise and this van is brand-new. It’s like glass clicking together.” I began laughing so hard he knew — I had to tell him what the noise was. Lord Alfred never swore, which made him a funny companion for me. Not that I ever treated him differently from my other friends . . . I gave him plenty of opportunity to curse me, but he never did.

What did Lord Alfred Hayes sound like when he was pissed? It seems like it would be hilarious to hear that proper, British voice get angry!

Pat becomes Executive Vice President

As Vince Jr. began taking over for his dad, I was already an established presence backstage, in the role of what we called an agent back then and a producer today. A few weeks before Vince Sr. passed away, we were working like crazy getting the national expansion underway with big television tapings all over the country. The old man called me from his deathbed. He wanted to make sure I would do something for him. “Pat, make sure they take good care of André. André is our man, you know. I know Junior wants to do too much sometimes, so please keep an eye on my son, too.” “Don’t worry, sir, I will always be there for them.” I get all choked up when I think about this, and it shows you how deep my relationship runs with that family. Until the day I die, I have that promise to live up to.

On May 4, 2015, on Pat Patterson Appreciation Night, Vince Jr. said I was a member of his family. I feel exactly the same way, but it was very special for me to have him express it like that, in front of fans in my hometown of Montréal. He also mentioned Louie on that night and that touched me

Powerful stuff. Is that why Pat came back so many times when Vince needed him? What can you tell us about Pat’s bond with the McMahons?

I made my home in Florida at the time, and on the road I worked as an agent with Jay Strongbow, Rene Goulet, and Jack Lanza. In 1985, George Scott was Vince’s first right-hand man in the office, but that didn’t last. The first time I went north to help Vince after Scott left, Vince was far behind, trying to do everything by himself. I had ten days off from the road and I told him that if he wanted, I would use that time off to help him in the office in Stamford. I explained that I thought I could help him with production, in the hope that he could take a breather and catch up on the rest of his workload. No one else ever offered to work on their days off and, let me tell you, I didn’t have to offer twice.After three weeks working in the office, Vince and his wife, Linda, took me out for dinner. She was the one who told me. “Pat, we have something important to tell you. As of now, you are a senior vice president for the company.” “Vince . . . Linda . . . I have no idea what this means.” “Linda, didn’t I tell you it wouldn’t mean anything to him?” Vince said. We all had a good laugh. And then he started to explain to me what a vice president was. “It’s a great title. It means we have confidence in you and that you are an important part of the company.” “Vince, I just know wrestling . . . I’m not sure I can be a good senior vice president.”

How good of a senior vice president would you say he ended up being? :)

In the office, I took care of everything regarding the talent side of the business since I knew what it was like for the boys out on the road. I knew a few ways we could immediately make things better and get them to the next city on the schedule more efficiently. The timing was great: my body could not keep on wrestling forever, but my mind was still as sharp as ever.

This might be a challenging question but how did Pat improve the company, from what you could see or heard from others after you came in?

Vince Pranks Pat!

One time, Vince was having a meeting with the Moondogs, Rex and Spot. They started to run tons of crazy ideas past him. Vince didn’t have the time to listen to everything they were saying and cut them off.

“It’s good stuff, please run it by Pat.”

After I got through with them, I tried to figure out what Vince liked about their suggestions. When I spoke to Vince later, I said, “You mean to tell me you liked their ideas?”

“Well . . . I just wanted you to listen to them.”

He had thrown me to the Moondogs . . . It was a harmless prank, and we laughed about it. At the end of the day, that’s all that mattered.

Do you remember any particularly funny ribs Vince got on Pat? Or maybe the other way around?

Some Things Never Change

We were at the gate in Houston once, waiting for our plane with forty-five minutes to kill. I decided to go to the restroom and smoke a cigarette. You could do that back then. Someone took the stall right beside me. That person spoke.

“Patrick . . . open up your book. We’re going to check our numbers to see if we should run that town again after tonight.”

“Vince, you gotta be kidding . . . ?”

Even when shitting, the guy is doing business?! Have you ever had to check numbers when...well...you know…?

Pat Pranks Hulk Hogan

On one occasion, he was in a big meeting with Vince in one of the boardrooms, so I went to the top of the tower in Stamford and hung a Hogan wrestling buddy from the roof so that it would dangle just in front of the window. We all had a good laugh, and that’s all that mattered. You need to laugh in this business if you want to make it.

It’s so harmless and simple and yet, it’s hilarious to imagine a board meeting with Pat Patterson dangling a Hogan wrestling buddy from the floor above. This should be Doug Halliday artwork. Do you remember that or anything similar to that?

In the old days, when we were having late-night working sessions at Vince’s home, his little daughter, Stephanie, would sit on my lap as we put the television tapings or the next WrestleMania together. Before going to bed, she would come in to say goodnight and give both Vince and me a hug. I felt like a part of the family, like the friend turned into the cool uncle. Strangely enough, I’ve read on the internet that I am Stephanie’s godfather. Let me get the record straight here: that’s not true. People, don’t go believing everything you hear about my life and career on the internet . . . At least not without checking with me first. Linda texted me a few nights ago because she had made my favorite cake for a family dinner and it made them think about me. It felt good to get that message. I never really worked directly with Stephanie or Shane because as they were getting more involved,

Patterson, Pat; Hébert, Bertrand; McMahon, Vincent K.. Accepted (pp. 172-173). ECW Press. Kindle Edition.

The Ring Boy Scandal

From Bleacher Report:

In 1992, the WWE had more problems to deal with besides steroids. Like in most aspects in the entertainment industry, sex sells.

The media, already in a frenzy with the steroid scandal, would be given another tasty morsel to chew on, only this time it would be at the expense of Hall of Famer Pat Patterson and Terry Garvin.

The allegations would start when Barry Orton (Wrestled as Barry O)  would claim that Garvin was harassing him during a long trip on the road.

According to Orton, Garvin would ask for oral sex on many occasions during the car ride. Needless to say, this made Orton very uncomfortable. They would not return in the same car on the way home.

The problems would not end there, though. A short time later, Garvin would be given a job with WWE, mainly because he was very good friends with Pat Patterson.

During Garvin’s time in the company he was known for using his influence to have sex with younger ring boys. Things would blow up shortly after Tom Cole, a ring boy, would lose his job after refusing Garvin’s advances.

Orton would be asked on a radio show if the rumors were true about Cole’s firing. He said yes, and then told the story of his car ride.

This interview would make the story covered countrywide. Vince had to defend himself on CNN and with many other members of the media.

A lawsuit would be filed by Orton, Cole, and announcer Murray Hodgson. Things would be settled a little later on, but Orton was let go because Vince felt he was the cause of the problem.

Garvin and Patterson resigned after the scandal broke, but Patterson would make his way back a short time later. Mainly because the company felt he was an innocent victim in all of this.

They felt he was targeted because he was openly gay. At the time, it was still a big deal to be gay as an open figure. Orton later said in an interview with Slam that he never saw Patterson do anything.

Looking back at this through the context of history, it really does seem like Pat took the fall here simply for being gay. Interviews around the time by Vince indicated he seemed to feel Pat was innocent and being targeted for his sexuality.

Is that what happened? Was this painful to see as a friend of everyone involved, knowing that innocent people would suffer to satiate the media’s thirst for blood?

Pat wrote this in his book…

Over the years, I’ve just ignored all casting-couch innuendo made toward me and my work at WWE. I was smarter than that. It still hurts, but there was really no way for me to defend myself. I became the disappointed wannabe wrestler’s ultimate excuse for why they weren’t offered a contract. And that’s just silly. People who were unhappy used the fact that I am gay to get back at WWE. To all the people who have ever said they weren’t hired because they were not gay, I can only say, “Guys, I’m sorry. You were just not good enough.”

Patterson, Pat; Hébert, Bertrand; McMahon, Vincent K.. Accepted (p. 217). ECW Press. Kindle Edition.

Pat talks about walking celebrities to the ring at Wrestlemania

When Burt Reynolds was at WrestleMania X, I personally walked behind him to make sure no one tried to pull his hair. I told Donald Trump about it, too. Fans can get crazy at times, and they might try to pull his hair. He thanked me for the advice. Celebrities generally can’t imagine how out of hand things can get when our fans get really excited. I was there when Lawrence Taylor was training for WrestleMania XI. He scared me because he wasn’t afraid of trying anything — including jumping from the top rope. I told him he was going to break his leg or worse, but he told me not to worry. He was a natural, easy to work with, and a very good listener. I had a good time being the referee for his match against Bam Bam Bigelow. It’s too bad about what’s happened to LT since.

Why was Pat always visible when a celebrity or Ms Elizabeth or some other VIP was coming down the ring? Was he a shooter? Was he just trusted?

Pat talks about the Bret/Shawn Ironman match

I will never forget the match Bret and Shawn had at WrestleMania XII. I was not working for WWE at the time — I was in the midst of one of my many retirements — but Vince told me I needed to come and watch WrestleMania in person. “What’s the main event?” “Bret versus Shawn, Iron Man.” “I’ll be there.” That match was my idea, but what I like most is that they tore the house down. It’s nothing less than what I expected them to do, and I cried watching them. This is exactly the type of match I would have loved to perform on a stage like WrestleMania. People can say what they want about wrestling, but to us, it’s real.

In his book, Pat wrote about how he helped both Bret and Shawn very much in their careers, especially early on, including vouching for the Rockers to bring them back in after they destroyed a hotel room, allegedly. How special do you think it was for him to see two of his guys main event Wrestlemania in a wrestling match?

Chuck Norris trusts Pat Patterson

The Survivor Series 1994 was pretty cool in that it featured Undertaker vs. Yokozuna in a rematch from the Royal Rumble - only, with a special enforcer. Chuck Norris. Pat wrote in his book that Norris was super nervous that night. Celebrities never knew whether wrestlers would play along or try to test them.

“Don’t worry, I’m Pat Patterson; I will take care of everything,” Pat said.

And the reply…

“I’m Chuck Norris and I trust you,” Norris replied.

And Jeff Jarrett took a huge bump from him that night in the main event.

Pat on Triple H

There was another rumor that I quit the business in 2004 as Triple H (Paul Levesque) was starting to assume more responsibilities. Now that’s complete bullshit. Believe me when I write this: I was burned out at the time. And it was probably the third or fourth time I quit. (I’ve lost count.) No, I don’t want Paul to fail. In fact, the opposite is true: I desperately want him to succeed. I want the business to continue to thrive after I’m gone, and after Vince is gone. Paul knows he’s now part of my family. He knows, because I’ve said to him, “I’m not looking for a job, but if I can ever help you with anything, just ask and I will be there. I will be there for you, just like I was with Vince and his dad. You will always get the truth out of me.”

Patterson, Pat; Hébert, Bertrand; McMahon, Vincent K.. Accepted (p. 173). ECW Press. Kindle Edition.

Do you remember much about Pat quitting in 2004? Did he have any conflicts with Triple H that you saw? Or were the two cooler than the ‘rumor and innuendo’ might have us believe?

Pat on Vince; Bruce/Pool Story

.

I never really fought Vince over anything. He’s the boss. Sometimes I’ve been disappointed when I’ve felt strongly about something and I could not get Vince on board — but that’s what happens in any job. It was never personal. In the end, it’s his vision, and it’s impossible for him to see things exactly like me. When it’s all said and done, he has the final word. I’m the lucky one allowed to play in his sandbox. I often explain it this way: he likes chocolate ice cream and I like vanilla. He’s my boss and I can’t force-feed him vanilla. But I can attempt to convince him to try it. If he still wants his chocolate, I will have to find some and deliver it to him. There is a way to work with your boss without getting into a fight, and we’ve been much more productive that way. I don’t remember him losing his cool even once in public. I saw him get angry only once and it had nothing to do with the business. You see, Vince has a soft side that not a lot of people get to see, especially today.

What can you tell us about Vince’s relationship with Pat?

Back in the day, he threw a pool party at his home with more than forty guests from the company to celebrate Howard Finkel’s birthday. He had a band, waiters, catering — the whole nine yards. At some point, people started to push each other into the pool with their clothes on. When I saw that, I decided to beat everyone to the punch and went inside, stripped down to my underwear, and jumped in. Bruce Prichard picked up my clothes and threw them in the pool: it was on. Alfred Hayes was next in . . . and pretty soon everyone but Vince was soaked. He wasn’t happy his party had taken this turn. You know who finally got Vince in the pool that day? Louie.

(pp. 174-175)

How did Pat return the favor to you for this one? What can you tell us about this story?

Pat Patterson and The Rock

Pat said in his book that he had a special relationship with the Rock.

The Rock and I have a special relationship — I have been friends with his family for so long, and I’ve known him forever. I will always remember when he first got in touch with me about wrestling and said, “It’s Dwayne Johnson.”

“Who?”

“Rocky Johnson’s son.”

“Holy shit.” I had not seen him in over ten years.

“I would like to meet with you. I’m in Tampa.”

I had no idea Rocky Johnson lived in Tampa, or that Dwayne’s parents didn’t want him in the business. He had an in at the FBI but wanted to try wrestling first. tomorrow but yesterday. They brought him to the office and he had a meeting with Vince and he was hired. His career was out of my hands from that point forward. I didn’t exactly give him a job, but part of what I did was let the office know who I thought we should look at. And in Dwayne, I really saw something special.

Pat flies to Tampa to fight the Macho Man

I fondly remember asking Vince about putting together an old-timer battle royal. He was sure no one would come because he felt they all hated him. They all came at my request. I caught some flak because I forgot about Angelo Poffo. A few days after the show, Vince told me Macho Man was going crazy because I didn’t invite his father to participate. But before the show, he never said anything to me. If he had, I would have invited him without hesitation. The truth is his dad’s name just didn’t cross my mind. I called Randy and told him I simply forgot. He wouldn’t listen to reason. So I said, “You’re still mad? I’m flying to goddamn Tampa and I will meet you face-to-face. We’ll settle this.” “I will be waiting for you,” he said in his wrestling voice.

I told Vince where I was going. “Vince, if he wants to fight, he’ll get a fight, because this is bullshit.”

When I got there and saw him, before anything else, I said, “Randy, let’s get a beer. How’s that sound?” We went to a bar and started to talk. “Randy, I have so much respect for you and I also respect your dad. I guess I just didn’t think your dad could still do it, so his name never crossed my mind. And nobody brought his name up. It’s my fault, my mistake. But it’s not because I didn’t want your dad in there. Let’s just shake hands.” He did some Macho Man stuff and then he “brother-ed” me and we shook hands — and that was the end of it. I never heard about it again in thirty years.

Can you give us an idea of what Macho Man might have said back to Pat in that conversation?

Do you recall instances where Pat would call someone out on their beef or bullshit? He seemed like a put up or shut up kind of person.

Pat Pranks Fans Who Think They Recognize Him

I was in my favorite Crescent Street bar once when I met these two kids from Toronto. Obviously, they were older than twenty-one, but at my age, I call everyone I meet a kid. Anyway, I was sitting there hanging out, as I often do on a Monday night so I can watch Raw — I have a report to send in, even when I’m not on the road.

Finally, after a while, they mustered the courage to ask me if I was Pat Patterson. I decided to have some fun and I said, “No, I’m not.”

One of them said, “It’s amazing how much you look like Pat Patterson.”

“Who is Pat Patterson?”

“He’s a wrestler.”

“I’m sorry. I know nothing about wrestling.”

The poor guys were freaking out because they thought they’d found my long-lost twin. They searched for pictures of me on their phones and showed them to me.

“Goddamn, that son of a bitch does look like me.”

Finally, I burst out laughing and told then I was indeed Pat Patterson. I had an audience of two and that was enough for me. Again, if you ever meet me, expect the unexpected.

Was Pat Patterson always in a good mood? He seemed like a happy person. Do you remember him pranking fans when he would meet them?

Another time, there were two women drinking beer on the patio when a homeless person passed by, grabbed their drinks, and started to run. I didn’t think and went running after him. I caught him before he could even reach the corner of the street. “Give me those goddamn beers now.” Everyone was watching, so I decided to scare him a little by telling him what I’d do to him if he ever tried that again. He ran off. I came back to the bar with the beers and got a standing ovation. Anything to get a reaction from an audience . . .

Pat didn’t back down from a fight, did he?

Patterson, Pat; Hébert, Bertrand; McMahon, Vincent K.. Accepted (pp. 231-232). ECW Press. Kindle Edition.

Pat’s worst day filming Legends House

The worst day of shooting for me was when we went fishing with Shawn Michaels. Four hours without catching anything — it was boring. And no offense, Shawn, but if Ray Stevens couldn’t get me into that kind of thing, no one can. The worst part is when we got off the boat, there was a real steep ramp to walk up. The camera crew wanted to shoot us as we got out of the boat.

“OK, everybody ready? Get out of the boat.”

They had cameras following us all the way to the top, but when we got there, they said, “We’ve got to redo it.”

OK. So we got back into the boat and “got off it” all over again.

After the fourth time, I got hot. And so I said, “Obviously you guys don’t know your shit.”

Doing that four times seemed stupid to me. But I don’t understand the business of filming like they do . . . So I told one of the producers, “I’ll bet you ten bucks you’re going to screw it up again.”

“Not this time,” he said.

We walked all the way up the ramp again . . . and of course they had to redo it. So I told the crew, “I’m not moving until you give me my ten dollars.”

They gave me my ten. And then we did it again.

Is the visual of Pat getting pissed at these young producers for doing reshoots as funny to anyone else as it is to me?

Observer Obituary

Pat Patterson, one of the greatest in-ring pro wrestlers who ever lived, who went on to become one of the most influential men in the history of the industry, passed away on 12/2 in a hospital in Miami’s South Beach at the age of 79.

It would take a book to cover the exploits of Patterson, born Pierre Clermont on January 19, 1941, in Ville-marie in Montreal. Some will talk of him as a wrestling genius, a master of psychology and finishes. Others will talk of him as the inventor of the Royal Rumble. He was also the person who first discovered and recommended and became the mentor for Dwayne Johnson, although he mentored many of the greatest wrestlers of this era. He was covered in extensive news coverage based on the idea he was the first openly gay pro wrestler, which is far from the truth but it was said so often that unfortunately, in almost every media story, that was the lead and considered his greatest accomplishment.

Fans of another era will talk about his tag team with Ray Stevens, the best of its time, or his singles matches at the Cow Palace in San Francisco and the rest of Northern California, or even his Madison Square Garden matches with Bob Backlund and Sgt. Slaughter. But there were likely few major cities that had wrestling outside of Europe that Patterson wasn’t a main event star.

Inside the ring Patterson was elite-level in every aspect of performing. He was one of the greatest brawlers ever. He was a master at carrying opponents, controlling a crowd, and of ring psychology. He came to the U.S. at 19 knowing maybe five words of English and at 24 was cutting promos in that language that would draw big crowds regularly at the Cow Palace and the HIC, at the time the two largest grossing arenas for big wrestling shows west of St. Louis. He could technical wrestle, not like Jack Brisco or Billy Robinson, but that wasn’t his character, and he could hang with them. He could fly, whether it be as a bumptaker, heel top rope moves, or as a babyface, doing comebacks with moves like dropkicks and flying head scissors. He was a great heel, but as he proved in San Francisco, could be a great drawing babyface that carries a successful territory. In the 70s, he was the same class level in the ring as the people talked about as being the best workers of that time period like Stevens, Harley Race, The Funk Brothers or Jack Brisco. While he fully admitted he was not a tough guy in real life, his aggression as a heel and fiery comebacks as a babyface made him come across as a true badass. While it was far from common knowledge he was gay during his San Francisco heyday, it was not a secret to most of the ringsiders, since the women, often underage, who would routinely sleep with the talent would often talk about what a shame it was that the top star in the territory who was so good looking “didn’t like girls” or other words far more stereotypical. Yet, it made no difference. There were occasional catcalls during his heel days, but he took it as heel heat. As a babyface, nobody, as in ever, said anything and whether it was young boys or old men, to the ones that knew, and many regulars did, it was immaterial. Fans reacted to him based on his role, his work and his star power, and in some circles in Northern California, he in his own way taught people that being gay isn’t a crime or anything as negative as much of the rest of society and sports viewed it at the time. When he got older, like with the Slaughter feud, he could play that aging veteran firing back against the badass heel for one last round. Out of the ring, Patterson was booker and Vice President of Talent Relations during the WWF’s mid-to-late 80s expansion, and with Vince McMahon, responsible for what was easily the most organized period of WWF booking of its national run. They booked months in advance, and in the major cities, would run monthly and run programs show-to-show. Under Patterson, at the arenas, they would have shows booked months ahead, and announce the entire next card at the arena and shoot angles on each show in the major markets to build the next show. They learned things such as Hulk Hogan, who was the draw, being more effective when he appeared a few times a year as he could burn out when coming to a city month-after-month, which wasn’t the case with previous champions like Bruno Sammartino, Superstar Billy Graham and Bob Backlund. But correctly managed, Hogan drew bigger and in more places then anyone until Steve Austin and The Rock. They fought and won promotional wars doing both clean and very dirty tactics.

When Patterson was the top star in Northern California, he wrestled against, and later teamed with Rocky Johnson, the father of Dwayne Johnson. Dwayne was a toddler going to matches at places like the Cow Palace and San Jose Civic Auditorium, and grew up a huge fan of wrestlers like Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant and other stars of the 70s. He studied the business from his teenage years, and after his football career ended, wanted to get in it. His father did not want that to happen, but eventually broke down and helped train his son. When he felt his son was ready to be seen, Johnson called Patterson to watch. Patterson reported back to McMahon that he had never seen anyone in his life with so much potential to be a wrestler as Rocky Johnson’s son. Patterson became Johnson’s mentor and go-to-guy when it came to the politics, which were deep at the time, and match layouts and finishes.

“Rough phone calls to get this morning to tell me, our dear family member, Pat Patterson who was my pro wrestling mentor and father figure has passed away," Johnson wrote in an Instagram post. “A Hall of Famer, TRUE trailblazer and one of the most brilliantly creative wrestling minds the industry has ever known. He was also responsible for calling Vince McMahon when I was training to become a pro wrestler (my $7 bucks days) and said, 'Vince you gotta see this kid work in the ring.' Vince flew me to RAW a few weeks later and I had my first match ever in Corpus Christi, Texas. The rest is history and years later, here I am writing this post."

A lot of people found it sad at Patterson’s behavior earlier this year at Rocky Johnson’s funeral, but the wrestling side of the family understood Patterson’s issues with dementia had gotten bad by that point.

Paul Levesque, at a WWE press call the next day, spoke heavily about Patterson, saying he didn’t think there was anyone except Vince McMahon who has had as big an influence on the modern wrestling business. He called Patterson the greatest mind for the business, and that everyone in pro wrestling, whether they know it or not, has been affected by him and his teachings. He said he learned big picture from McMahon, but things like constructing matches, finishes and things like that he learned mostly from Patterson, and if not from Patterson, he’d learn when he was starting for Kevin Nash, Scott Hall, Shawn Michaels and Sean Waltman, who would teach him but what they were teaching him was what they all learned from Patterson.

He said Patterson was a performer so could speak from ring experience, and that he’s learned from Patterson who to do that with today’s talent.

“I’ve been lucky to learn from great minds in the business and Pat is chief among them,” he said. “I may not have learned more from anyone than Pat.”

Patterson also was involved in all kinds of controversy. Most famous was a ring boys scandal in 1991-92 which led to him resigning from the company and his career in wrestling was seemingly over when he was the second most powerful player in the company. He was also sued by a clear con man at the same time this scandal broke. He was cleared in an investigation by the company and the other lawsuit fell apart. Patterson, ring announcer and head of ring crew Mel Phillips and Terry Joyal (Terry Garvin), who was Patterson’s assistant, and were all gay and were named in stories in the New York Post and San Diego Union-Tribune, and all three resigned from the company. He was a key topic of discussion on a 1992 episode of the Phil Donahue show, at the time the No. 1 afternoon talk show in the country, which did an episode on various WWF scandals which included McMahon, Superstar Billy Graham, Bruno Sammartino, John Arezzi, myself along with Murray Hodgson, an announcer who briefly worked for the company, Barry Orton, the uncle of Randy Orton, and Tom Hankins, a lesser-known wrestler who had bounced around the business and was a huge fan.

Vince McMahon at the time told me that it was a media going after people because they were gay, but when it came to the individuals, he always maintained one of the three was innocent. But he insisted, out of Patterson’s great loyalty to the company and the business, he would never work in WWF again. For his part, Patterson began studying to be a bartender, but it was clear quickly he was going to be brought back.

On the Donahue show, it was a horrific day for Patterson. Graham made an accusation against him on national television which Graham later recanted, and even though many in the company eventually forgave Graham, Patterson wasn’t one of them. Orton spoke of a trip when he was first breaking in working the Amarillo territory at 19 where he said during the entire trip Garvin and Patterson came on to him, and felt that turning them down hurt his career because they had become two top executives and he never got a push as Barry O. Ted DiBiase, who was in the same car in the front seat, said that it was a rib, but Orton didn’t know any better and was adamant about the story. And to be fair, Orton was hardly the only person who told similar stories about Garvin.

Hankins said he was at a bar after the show and asked Patterson if he could work as a job guy at TV tapings and Patterson, with lots of people there, basically laughed at him, he was short, heavy and not physically impressive in a day when wrestling was about bodies, and said something to the extent of the only way you can get booked is if you suck my dick.

There were witnesses who said it happened. It was just Patterson trying to make fun of him and to get a laugh, but Hankins took it seriously, and when he said it on the Donahue show it came off as terrible for the WWF and Patterson, although it would have been far worse today. It was a different time. Wrestling came off sleazy to the public and the general reaction was that wrestling was fake, so who cares, and even though it was big business, most mainstream media wouldn’t touch that type of a story.

Hodgson was the most damaging, going toe-to-toe with Vince, making Vince look bad as he claimed he lost his job as an announcer for not having sex with a male Vice President, who he would not name on the Donahue how, but had named as Patterson on other shows and in the lawsuit, and McMahon immediately brought up that he was talking about Patterson. McMahon said he was fired for being a bad announcer. Hodgson was hired for the events center and had trouble remembering the names of cities and such, and while he had a good look and voice, they claimed he wasn’t good at the job.

My belief is that Hodgson, based on conversations with him, saw Patterson and Curt Hennig horsing around and joking about Patterson being gay, which he did constantly, and came up with the story. Hodgson was well spoken, and handled the media well, but in time, his own lawyer claimed after learning about him he immediately dropped him as a client and claimed he was the most dishonest client he ever had. Jerry McDevitt found that he had done this same thing at other jobs. The suit ended up going nowhere.

The ringboy stuff had no connection with Patterson as far as anyone could tell, only Garvin and Phillips, who never returned.

“The only time he accepted to speak to me about the allegations over the 15 interview sessions we did is the only time I saw him cry, and to this day, he was very hurt by the false allegations that tarnished his reputation,” said Hebert. “In Pat Patterson’s fashion, he just tried to push it as far back as he could and look forward.”

Linda McMahon found out that Dr. George Zahorian, a Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission doctor who would dispense steroids and pain pills to wrestlers was under investigation. Zahorian also sent fedex packages of steroids and other drugs to talent without examinations when they ran shows in the area less frequently. He also often sent sending steroid packages directly to Vince McMahon and Hulk Hogan. Often, when the steroids were sent to McMahon, he’d take some and distribute the rest directly to Hogan. This was a regular part of the television tapings in Hershey, PA, and later at house shows in the area.

It was Patterson who called Zahorian from a pay phone and told him to shred all of his medical records pertaining to WWF talent. Indeed, when Zahorian was arrested in his office, he was destroying such records at Patterson’s request.

After the Pennsylvania State Athletic Commission no longer assigned doctors to shows, and it was up to the promoter, Anita Scales, who was in charge of doing so, refused to hire Zahorian. Zahorian’s reputation as a steroid and drug dealer to wrestlers was somewhat common knowledge, and WWF became known as the steroid territory, where guys would magically gain 20 to 25 pounds and get more muscular shortly after arrival. With the easy access, McMahon was able to build the company around impressive bodies, a strategy that was wildly successful with Hogan and the rest of the crew during that 1984-90 glory period.

But others in WWE, including Linda McMahon and in particular Patterson, pressured Scales to hire Zahorian as a doctor on shows in the area. Patterson, as testified by Scales in the trial against Vince McMahon in 1994, called her up and told her to hire Zahorian because “the boys need their candy.”

Patterson also implausibly testified in the trial that he had never even heard of steroids until it became a topic when Zahorian was arrested, when knowledge of steroid use by wrestlers in the 60s and 70s, notably Dianabol, was commonplace among even the hardcore fans of that era, let alone everyone in wrestling, and Patterson in 1971 held the world tag team championship with Superstar Billy Graham.

Outside the ring he was fun-loving, always wanting to make himself and others laugh. He was gay. Everyone knew it. At times he liked to make people uncomfortable with it, but usually just as comedy, to make those around him laugh. He would do things that one could take as making passes, but were done in a comedy way, again to get people mostly around him to laugh. But they could be taken another way, which led to the issues that nearly ended his career in management.

“What I will say that I haven’t seen anyone else say so far is that once Pat was no longer just an in-ring performer and became part of the office, his personality changed,” said longtime promoter Sal Corrente. “I discussed it with him one day, he took his office responsibilities seriously. He was no longer just an in-ring performer. At the time I wasn’t old enough or experienced enough in business to really wrap my hands around that. I long reconciled that change in his personality especially when dealing with the kind of guys we know that wrestlers can be. You can imagine in the early days some of the wrestlers had a short-term problem reconciling the two Pat’s.”

He was never much of an athlete growing up, he was terrible in most sports but liked figure skating, yet he could do things athletically in the ring that some of the greatest athletes who took up the sport couldn’t do, nor even imagine doing. In a business that was often decades behind the times, and often homophobic, he was living proof that if you were great and you can draw, there wasn’t a promoter in the world who wouldn’t give you the chance to make him money.

He was also a paradox. He was gay, but loved booking talent to get homophobic chants from the crowd and would laugh at it. He was a great brawler, but dismissed pure brawling wrestlers saying it took no talent to do matches like that. His tag team with Stevens, considered by almost everyone of that era as the greatest up to that point in time, would get yelled at by Roy Shire, who put them together, for doing too many big moves, too many false finishes and ruining finishers, yet they always drew. He loved telling stories about his life, but not about his matches or titles won, saying he found that boring, yet was nearly in tears every time he went to the Cow Palace, and said the one piece of wrestling memorabilia he wished he owned that Shire’s old U.S. championship belt. He learned from people like Shire and Eddie Graham who promoted serious wrestling, but was a huge fan of comedy, once telling me how much he loved a WCW segment where Abdullah the Butcher pretended he was in an electric chair. And more than five decades later, he would privately dismiss the modern style of wrestling to be more Cirque Du Soleil, and decry the lack of true heels and heel vs. babyface style, yet cry from emotion after Takeover shows because of how far those young performers had taken the art form.

He grew up poor, in a household without a television set. He came from a very religious family, and at one time considered becoming a priest. One day, who knows why, his mother, as a gift, bought him a wrestling ticket to a show in Montreal. With no television, he knew nothing about wrestling. He went to the show, saw Buddy Rogers, and his life changed.

“It was like God was talking down the aisle,” he said in his autobiography, `Accepted.’ He had a presence about him. I didn’t know what he was made of. It was incredible, and I’ve never seen anything like it since–this slow, easy wrestling with Edouard Carpentier. My God, it was so beautiful.”

He said he knew that night he had found his calling. He started working at jobs, delivering food at a restaurant, and delivering newspapers, largely so he could afford tickets to the weekly shows. He didn’t have enough money to go all the time, so sometimes he’d hang around the arena until intermission and if people left the show, ask them if he could use their ticket.

Other times he’d hang out, and when the matches got exciting and the ushers were looking at the ring, he’d sneak into the building. He ended up getting a job selling hotdogs at the matches, but he wasn’t good at it because he only wanted to watch the matches. Once he and a wrestler did an angle, where he came near the barricade and the wrestler turned his tray of hotdogs on his head. The wrestler got his heel heat from it, and Patterson was happy, since with no more hotdogs left to sell, he could watch the rest of the matches. But that stunt got him fired.

He also idolized Killer Kowalski, who once let him carry his bags into the Montreal Forum, which allowed him to get into the building free. He was mesmerized by the photo of Kowalski jumping off the top rope before he severed the ear of Yukon Eric, one of the most famous endings of a match in Montreal until the night he suggested to Bret Hart that he let Shawn Michaels put him in a sharpshooter.

Patterson bleached his hair blond, like Rogers. He used the figure four leglock as his key submission move, like Rogers. He bragged about all the women that loved him, like Rogers. He wore purple trunks, like Kowalski. And the move he was most famous for, the kneedrop off the top rope, became the Bombs Away, after Shire put him in a tag team with Stevens.

He started wrestling on small shows in Montreal at the age of 17. He knew the name Pierre Clermont didn’t work as a pro wrestler. There was a wrestler on the circuit named Pat Smith, and he thought the name Pat was cool. He looked in a dictionary under proper nouns, closed his eyes, opened to a page and saw the name Patterson.

He was 5-foot-10 and 190 pounds, but somehow was a natural at it. He loved taking bumps and all the older wrestlers wanted to work with him for that reason. Maurice Vachon, not yet Mad Dog, but still a character who scared Patterson and everyone else to death because of his reputation as the scariest street fighter in the city, told him that he was good. There was no money wrestling on the small circuit, so to actually make money, he tried working different jobs, a shoe factory, cookie factory, which he quickly got fired from. The cigarette factory by his house was a plumb job, nice pay, great retirement, and he constantly applied to work there but was turned down. There was little doubt in his mind that he had been hired, he’d have never given up the job or left Montreal, and likely never would have made it in wrestling.

At about the same time, he figured out he was gay. He told his parents. His father was furious and kicked him out of the house, but his mother talked him into letting him stay. But he was ready to leave. In late 1960, Tony Santos, the promoter in Boston, was looking for new young talent and saw Patterson at a show at the Paul Suave Arena . He borrowed $20 from his sister, got on a greyhound, and went to Boston.

He had no money and knew about five words of English. He got an apartment for $40 a month, and mercilessly played pranks on the landlord and the older tenants. He learned English from always watching the TV show “The Price is Right.”

Patterson had first contracted bladder cancer several years ago and while his health was bad, the stories that he was on his deathbed were exaggerated. But he was in bad shape.

In recent years, he’d been suffering from dementia, which was getting worse. He was pretty good at telling stories and trying to be funny around fans. But he had moved to an assisted living situation.

He generally would spend his summers in Montreal and his winters in Hallandale in South Florida. But with COVID, and his memory fading, he was pretty much confined to his place in Florida. He had remained very close with Sylvain Grenier. Grenier met Patterson shortly after his own father died, and Patterson became his father figure. They were so close Grenier had power-of-attorney regarding him.

Grenier went to see him last month in Florida and noticed he had lost about 60 pounds and was concerned. He got him to the hospital and they found a tumor on his lung. He was scheduled for a biopsy to see if it was cancerous on 12/4, which never happened.

On 11/27, he was rushed to a South Beach hospital after a blood clot in his liver. The tumor had also spread. Shortly after, Grenier, who had gone back home to Montreal, was told to come back if he wanted to see him again, although by the time he got back, Patterson was out of it. Due to COVID he wasn’t allowed to even spend much time in the hospital. Officially Patterson passed away at about 1:15 a.m. on 12/2 due to liver failure, although there is a very good chance he had cancer, and that led to the other problems.

“I’m very sad to learn of the passing of wrestling legend Pat Patterson,” wrote Bret Hart. “Few minds in the profession had the depth that he did. He will stand as being one of the greatest visionaries and for having an incredible imagination that paved wrestling’s greatest memories. I can count on one hand the people who had the deepest understanding of great psychology in pro wrestling, and perhaps Pat was the greatest ever. His ultimate contribution can never be properly measured, but to those who know, Pat will always stand the tallest. Pat had so much to do with my success I don’t know where to start in thanking him. He had everything to do with the finish of my ‘96 Wrestlemania 12 Iron Man Match with Shawn Michaels. In fact, I’d say it’s fair to say that both Shawn and I dedicated that match inspirationally to Pat. That match was our appreciation and gratitude from both of us."

While it wasn’t called an Iron Man match, the most falls in an hour match was one of Shire’s style matches that he would do, not often. Two of Patterson’s greatest matches of the 70s at the Cow Palace were Iron Man matches with Stevens and Don Muraco, the latter of which many called the greatest match of the 70s in the building.

“Pat Patterson was the Yoda to my Luke Skywalker,” said Chris Jericho. “He taught me 90 percent of what I know about putting together a wrestling match and in-ring psychology. Beyond that he was a confidant, a mentor, a collaborator, a sounding board, an oracle, a prophet, a genius, a comedian, a singer and most importantly... a friend. I love you Pat and THANK YOU for everything....this hockey puck is gonna miss you.”

“Four years ago he told me he had a great life and had done everything he dreamt of as a kid sleeping in the closet and more,” said Bertrand Hebert, who wrote his autobiography. “He was ready to go whenever he would get called up. He had loved his life.”

Patterson helped lay out many of the most iconic main events in history, from Hogan and Andre, Hogan and Warrior and the Hart vs. Michaels match in Montreal.

Once, while wrestling in Boston, the women were brought in, notably Johnnie Mae Young. Since she and the other women didn’t know the area, he drove them to the shows. She was drinking and smoking a cigar and told him that’s what top stars in wrestling did, and if you wanted to be a top star, start doing so. One night she came to his place wearing nothing but her bra and panties. He had to make sure she kept drinking until she passed out.

At around the same time, he met Louie Dondero at a Boston bar, and started a relationship with him that lasted until Dondero’s death in 1998. At first he figured it would be a short-term thing, because his career was in wrestling and Dondero lived and worked in Boston. But after he left Boston for Oregon, a few months later, Dondero moved to Oregon with him. Vachon was furious at first, thinking it was not a good thing that Patterson brought his boyfriend with him in a wrestling territory that relied on weekly fans who all talked to each other. Then Vachon met Dondero and the two became best friends.

Dondero moved to San Francisco with him and the two bought a house together, and stayed with Patterson for the rest of his life.

Like in Montreal, everyone on the Boston circuit wanted to work with the guy in the purple trunks, because he took big bumps and made everyone look better than they really were. One day, he got a letter from Vachon, who gave him his start date for Don Owen in Oregon. Vachon didn’t ask him if he wanted to go, he told Owen how good he was and gave him a start date. Patterson wasn’t making money with Santos, and Vachon had told him Oregon was a great place to wrestle and make money. Santos tried to convince him to stay, saying Oregon was a completely different world than the Quebec/New England area that Patterson has never left.

Patterson got scared and never went. A few weeks later he got another letter from Vachon, mad about him no-showing. This time Vachon gave him another start date and said if he no-showed after all it took him to convince Owen to hire him, that some day he’d find him and beat the crap out of him. Patterson had seen Vachon in fights before and Vachon scared him to death. Patterson didn’t have money, but Dondero paid for his plane ticket to Portland. He went from averaging $70 a week on the Boston circuit to averaging about $300 a week in Oregon, which to him, in 1962, was big money. Patterson never forgot Vachon’s opening the door for him to make money as a wrestler, and decades later, pushed hard enough that Vince McMahon agreed to put Vachon in the WWE Hall of Fame. For whatever reason, in 2015, when he pushed for the same thing for Ray Stevens when WrestleMania was in the San Francisco Bay Area, which made sense given he was the biggest wrestling star in the history of the city prior to the Hulk Hogan era, it was also agreed to, was being set up, and then all of a sudden, McMahon changed his mind and it never happened.

Harry Elliot, the promoter in Washington, who knew Patterson was gay, dressed him up in lipstick, had him wear sunglasses, a beret, and carry a cigarette holder, playing gay as Pretty Boy Pat Patterson. Dondero became a performer as his valet. He only did it in Washington, not in Oregon. He then did the gimmick in Texas, but it didn’t get over, and it wasn’t a successful run. He also used the name Pat Andrews in Southern California, and went from territory-to-territory for short periods of time.

At the age of 23, Pat Patterson became a main event talent. On February 21, 1964, at Madison Square Garden in Phoenix, he defeated Frankie Cain to win the Arizona State championship. Nearly a decade later, with Cain now as The Great Mephisto, the two had one of the legendary feuds in Northern California wrestling history. But he was making no money, and got a start date from promoter Leroy McGuirk. He threatened to leave the promotion without losing the title. Promoter Ernie Mohammed paid him $1,000 to get him to lose to local wrestler Don Arnold (who years later I did a regular radio show in Phoenix with for a few years) on March 13, 1964, in Phoenix.

When he got to Oklahoma, McGuirk had heard about what he did in Arizona, and told him if he ever pulled anything like that again, promoters might not book him, no matter how talented he was. He worked on top in that territory as well, beating everyone on the way up until doing two-match programs in all the key cities with a DQ loss and then a clean 2/3 fall loss in world junior heavyweight title matches to the territory’s top babyface, Danny Hodge.

He returned to Oregon as a true main event star. Patterson & Tony Borne won the Pacific Northwest tag team titles from Nick Bockwinkel & Buddy Moreno (also known as Omar Atlas) on June 17, 1964, in Salem, OR. They lost the titles on August 6, 1964, in Salem, OR, to Billy White Wolf (Adnan Al-Kaissie) & Pepper Martin, and the team disintegrated. Patterson began teaming with Don Manoukian against Borne & Haru Sasaki, as well as there were singles matches between them.

Patterson became the territory’s top star beating Martin for the Pacific Northwest title on October 2, 1964, at the Portland Armory. He also won the tag titles again with The Hangman, who later became a major star as Ciclon Negro, and had a second run with the singles title. He lost a hair vs. hair match to Borne, and then put on a mask so fans couldn’t see him bald.

Wrestlers in Oregon, notably Martin, pushed for him to call Roy Shire, the promoter in San Francisco. Shire liked great workers and Patterson was already that. They also mentioned Shire’s top star was Stevens, and the two would make great tag team partners. So he called up Shire and said he’d love to work with him, and said that he was the champion in Oregon, business was strong and the guys there who worked for you said he’d make a good partner for Stevens.

Shire yelled at him, “The wrestlers don’t decide what I do. I decide.” But Shire gave him a start date, and he gave Owen notice. On January 8, 1965, in Portland, he dropped the Northwest title via count out to Martin. Four days later he put over Mr. Kazimoto, a Japanese wrestler who later became Antonio Inoki. While Patterson went on several Japanese tours over the course of his career, he never liked the style, especially because he lived for crowd response and in the 60s and 70s, Japanese crowds were notoriously quiet. On January 15, he had his last match as a regular in the territory, losing to Martin in a loser leaves town match. When he came back later in the year, he was half of the world tag team champions.

He started in Fresno, which at the time had its own weekly television show. Shire drove with him from San Francisco to Fresno, and on the trip said, “I heard you’re a queer.” Patterson said he promised he would never bring bad publicity on the promotion. And Shire told him his body looked like shit and he needed to lift weights.

Those words always resonated. Patterson went to the gym, which he hated, because he realized to be a main eventer, you had to look the part. For decades he would tell younger wrestlers with great talent and not so great bodies about how he hated going to the gym, but did so because he realized it was part of being a main event wrestler.

His first big show was on January 23, 1965, his debut at the Cow Palace. At the time, the big three arenas for pro wrestling in the U.S. were Madison Square Garden, the Cow Palace and Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. He was in the third match, and Shire put him against Red Bastien, one of the great wrestlers of the era and a longtime headliner. If anyone had ability, Shire’s rule was to put them over until they reached whatever he determined was their level. So he got a big win right out of the box, but more importantly, they tore down the house. Bastien went to Shire in front of every wrestler in the dressing room and raved about what a great worker he had just brought in.

Shire told him to bleach his hair because Stevens, who at the time was headlining in Australia which included a run as IWA world champion, was returning home for a few weeks, primarily to work the April 17, 1965 show at the Cow Palace. The return of Stevens, both the most popular and most hated wrestler in the territory, after several months away, drew 11,576 fans and on the first night the two ever met, Patterson & Stevens beat The Destroyer & Billy “Red” Lyons to win the world tag team titles. Patterson didn’t know he was getting the titles until he got to the building. But he got very sick. Dondero called him a doctor and told him he needed at least three days of bed rest and implored him to cancel. This was his first Cow Palace main event, and he refused to miss the show. Later, he thought that if he had missed the show, they’d have given Stevens a substitute partner and his entire life may have been different.

Stevens & Patterson became almost immediately the top tag team in the world. While based in San Francisco, they’d go into places like Oregon, Hawaii, British Columbia, Nevada, Arizona, Idaho and Southern California to defend the titles. But they never went to Los Angeles, which had its own WWA world tag team titles at the time.

The two became close friends, close enough that Patterson on occasion would “take one for the team,” since Stevens loved chasing women, and sometimes the women that he chased had friends. There was a famous story from that period when Stevens was dating Ann Calvello, the legendary Roller Derby heel. Calvello had a reputation for being tremendous in bed, and for being with famous athletes after her breakup with Charlie O’Connell, the biggest star in the Roller Derby. Calvello was actually the most popular female skater on the Bay Bombers, who were at their peak in the 60s, beating “Bonanza” the top rated television show in the country head-to-head on Sunday night in the ratings. But after her breakup with O’Connell, O’Connell went to promoter Jerry Seltzer and said either she goes or he goes. O’Connell was his biggest star and Seltzer forced Calvello off the Bombers and she had to skate as a heel, and became the top heel in the game.

She was known for dating San Francisco 49ers stars. A few years later, when Calvello turned 40, she had the 40 for 40 club. The idea was she would sleep with all 40 members of the 49ers that season. Her rule was that every player had to leave memorabilia, such as a jersey. Her apartment had memorabilia from every player on the team, as well as the head coach.

Stevens & Patterson were inseparable during those years. Calvello had her own touring schedule. But when they had free time, all three would hang out in San Francisco. All three were pretty big television celebrities at the time, so everyone knew they were hanging out and about the Stevens/Calvello relationship. The Roller Derby skaters were fine with Calvello hanging around football players, but, even though Roller Derby itself was a work, they hated Calvello being with Stevens with the idea that somehow her dating Stevens publicly might make people think Roller Derby was a work. Calvello, who was a fan of wrestlers as performers and slept with a multitude of wrestlers in the 60s, depending on where she was skating, including the Midwest and for years when she was the top babyface for a Los Angeles T-Birds offshoot in Australia, and even into the late 80s, would be furious at the skaters for the criticism.

It was Bay Area folklore, and it should be noted Patterson did deny the story in 2006 after the death of Calvello, that Calvello was one of the few women Patterson slept with. As the story went, Stevens passed out drunk and Calvello was not going to not have sex that night, so her only choice was Patterson, who had no interest. As the story went, she punched him to tell him she was serious, and he acquiesced.

Patterson came up with the concept of the Royal Rumble in 1987, an idea for a house show in St. Louis.

In the 70s, Shire would run a late January Battle Royal, bringing in some of the best talent in the country as well as his local stars. It was traditionally the biggest drawing event of the year. While business was still very good, the Battle Royal was the only event most years that could truly sell out the Cow Palace, which at the time with its different configuration could be just under 15,000 in, and they’d sometimes sell standing room.

The Rumble came from the Cow Palace Battle Royal, which actually came from the Texas Battle Royal that Ed Francis drew sellouts with in Honolulu. Shire, with local promoter Dallas Western, and Francis in 1964, had a wrestling war in Hawaii. Honolulu was red-shot, wrestling was doing sellouts and big ratings. Francis ran weekly while Shire got television in Hawaii and would run once a month, and Francis would go head-to-head. Shire was selling out the 8,700 seat “HIC” (Honolulu International Center Arena, now the Blaisdell Center) while Francis would sell out the 5,300 seat Civic Auditorium, often in advance. Francis knew both groups selling out wouldn’t last long, and feared two companies running would burn wrestling out. That was fine with Shire, since he made most of his money in California, but for Francis, the territory burning out would be death. Francis ended up making a deal with Shire to cut out Western and work together, with Francis running big shows at the HIC to go along with his weekly shows at the Civic, using the top Shire talent, which by this time was headed by Stevens & Patterson, as his outside attractions.

On December 22, 1965, Francis presented a 20 man Texas Battle Royal, using his local wrestlers, as well as Shire top stars, including Kinjji Shibuya, Pepper Gomez, Stevens and Patterson, as well as eventual winner Bearcat Wright. It was such a success that Shire came up with the annual Cow Palace Battle Royal, with the first one taking place on November 11, 1967. Shire brought in Hawaii stars, including Lord James Blears, who booked and laid out the Texas Battle Royal, to help lay out his first Battle Royal, also won by Wright.

Eventually it moved to late January, with the idea of starting the year off with the biggest show, and shooting angles on the show before the sold out crowd to carry the next several months. It is not coincidence the Royal Rumble is in late January, and serves the same purpose. While a hard and fast rule, generally speaking, the winner of the Battle Royal would get a U.S. title shot at the next show at the Cow Palace, and usually be pushed the rest of the year as one or the top two stars of the territory.

One year, Shire had gotten into a street fight with a guy over a woman he was having an affair with. Shire was not a big man, but in his youth he was a very good wrestler, not a world beater. He acted like he was this super shooter, but by most accounts, the real shooters didn’t take him seriously at their level, and would get mad when he acted like he was one of them.

But by this point he was in his early 50s, but still strutted around like he owned every place and was a badass. He got his ass kicked, bad, so bad that he was out of it for days, right before one of the Battle Royals. Patterson was the top star and had been in many of them by that point. Shire was pretty much out of commission and had Patterson lay out that year’s Battle Royal. He and Shire together laid out the country’s highest profile Battle Royals for the next few years.

In 1987, he decided to come up with his own Battle Royal, but with people entering every two minutes, and called it the Royal Rumble. The first Royal Rumble was on October 4, 1987, at a house show at Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis. It drew poorly and from all accounts, the match was a disaster. St. Louis was still a traditional market. While Sam Muchnick drew well with Battle Royals, the change of rules didn’t work in that city. By that time, both Crockett and McMahon were struggling at the gate.

A few months later, when Jim Crockett booked a PPV show on January 24, 1988, at the Nassau Coliseum built around a Bunkhouse Stampede, WWF countered with a free television special head-to-head on the USA Network. Patterson suggested the Rumble. McMahon remembered the first one was a disaster. Dick Ebersole, the NBC sports head, who worked with McMahon on Saturday Night’s Main Event, heard Patterson’s idea and convinced McMahon to go with it. The first televised Royal Rumble, won by Jim Duggan and constructed by Patterson, did an 8.2 rating, the third largest number up to that point in time for pro wrestling ever on cable television. The next year it became an annual January PPV event.

During that 1965-67 Stevens & Patterson era, there was big competition between the HIC and the Cow Palace over which arena would draw the largest gates in the Western part of the country. The Cow Palace was much larger, but rarely sold out. The HIC held had higher ticket prices, so that even if the Cow Palace drew its normal crowd, the HIC could do bigger gates. Stevens & Patterson would be headliners in both arenas, and were regularly selling out the HIC, at times well in advance, such as with a heel vs. heel match with Shibuya & Ciclon Negro on August 31, 1966. But Stevens always had his loyalty to the Cow Palace.

Johnny Barend, one of the all-time Hawaiian wrestling legends and a household name on the island at the time, got engaged to a young Hawaiian woman and the wedding was at a wrestling show in the ring at the HIC. It is still remembered as one of the most famous wrestling events of the heyday of 50th State Wrestling, and sold out well in advance and turned people away.

Patterson & Stevens wrestled before the wedding and Patterson was in the shower when he heard the wedding music starting. He rushed out, with no clothes on, peaking out of the dressing room. Another wrestler shoved him out the door hard so many fans saw him naked.

When they got back to San Francisco, on the next television show, Stevens & Patterson were cutting a heel promo with announcer Walt Harris. Stevens talked about the war on who could draw the biggest gates with the HIC, and in pushing the fans to attend the next Cow Palace show so San Francisco would remain the No. 1 city on the West Coast, talked about how he and Patterson were true athletes and decried gimmicks, with Stevens telling Harris, “I promise you, my partner would never get married in the ring just to draw a house.”

In the programs, and on television, Patterson was actually portrayed as a ladies man, half the world tag team champions, mid-20s, making big money and good looking. He would talk about he only dated the hottest women and that most of the women in San Francisco were simply well below his standards, and had no interest in anyone who wasn’t a 10.

With the exception of a three week period where they dropped the titles in a feud with Ciclon Negro & The Mongolian Stomper, Patterson & Stevens traveled up and down the coast as champions until losing on April 8, 1967, to Gomez & Pedro Morales. The loss was because Patterson got a several month tour of Australia for Jim Barnett, which was the best paying territory in the world at the time.

Both traveled to other places and in 1969, Stevens returned as a babyface and Patterson also returned, thinking they would reform their team. When it didn’t happen, Patterson felt betrayed. It became what would be considered the second biggest feud (behind Stevens vs. Gomez in the early 60s) in the Shire era. Stevens as a babyface facing his tag team partner drew the area’s biggest consistent crowds since the 1961-63 heyday.

By this point the fans saw Stevens as their bad guy, the toughest of all, very much like Steve Austin would be viewed a generation later. Patterson was always the secondary member of the team. Their first match against each other drew 13,012 fans and $46,311.50.

Stevens was champion, but he ended up suffering a leg injury from go-kart racing before a match with Patterson. Patterson beat Morales on August 9, 1969, to become U.S. champion, which prolonged the program with Stevens when he came back from the injury to chase. On his return, on December 6, a 60:00 draw between the two drew 14,000 fans. Patterson on top, against others like Bobo Brazil and Maivia also did big business.

A no DQ match, followed by a no rules match with Stevens both drew more than 11,000 fans with Patterson retaining via fluke because ref bumps played into finishes and Patterson’s latest gimmick, claiming he was so good looking that the women didn’t deserve to see his face, he would wrestle wearing a mask. The idea is that he would load the mask and head-butt his opponents to win. Even after he turned babyface, every year or so, they would do an angle before a big match with Patterson announcing he would wear his mask, which fans saw as meaning he was going to use his loaded head-butt on his heel opponent and you were pretty much guaranteed a Patterson win.

This led to a Texas death match, which was established as the blow-off match that Shire would only book every few years, and Stevens was billed as the master and never having lost. Haystacks Calhoun was brought in as the special referee, and in one of the most famous matches in territory history on July 11, 1970, Stevens regained the title before a turn away crowd of 15,000, but it was due to Calhoun squashing Patterson. Stevens won another rematch and the feud turned into a tag team feud with Stevens being a double champion, holding the U.S. title and world tag team titles with Maivia. Patterson teamed with The Great Pampero (Firpo) and Shibuya, before Patterson & Graham won the titles.

Stevens left the territory for the AWA in 1971, and in 1972, Patterson turned babyface while put in feuds with Lars Anderson and Ernie Ladd over the U.S. title he had won as a heel over Johnson. Patterson & Johnson vs. Anderson & Paul DeMarco television match for the tag titles is generally considered the best TV match of the decade, in an era where almost all matches were stars vs. undercard guys.

Patterson had a major program with the Great Mephisto, who used a loaded boot to beat everyone, including winning the title from Patterson. Patterson stole Mephisto’s boot and wore it in a Cow Palace match, and used it to regain the title. Mephisto, who was very hot at the time, slapped around Shire in an argument and was fired. Like with the mask, Patterson every year or so would announce before a match that he was going to bring Mephisto’s boot.

Patterson had memorable matches with Stevens, with both as rule breaking babyfaces, Moondog Mayne, Don Muraco, including a 65:00 most falls in an hour title match that went into sudden death, and Mr. Fuji among others.

A February 12, 1977, match got mainstream attention. What actually happened was Fuji was U.S. champion, and set for a Texas death match with Patterson. Fuji and Shire had a falling out a few weeks before the match. So Patterson said he was going wear his mask. Fuji was never on television to promote the show, but Shire said Fuji said if Patterson was going to wear his mask, he would wear a mask as well.

Patterson going for the title in a death match drew 12,280 fans, the biggest for a non-Battle Royal show in three years. With Fuji gone, Shire instead brought up Toru Tanaka, who had been wrestling in Los Angeles, and put him under the mask and announced him as Mr. Fuji. Both were Hawaiians, but had very different physiques. Los Angeles wrestling aired on SIN, a local Spanish station that is now Galavision, so many fans immediately recognized his body as that of Tanaka. The fraud became a major news story that Shire false advertised a main event.

Shire’s license was in danger for perpetrating a fraud. Shire had to address it on television, saying after the death match, he heard fans say it wasn’t Fuji, and he tore the mask off the guy backstage, and it wasn’t Fuji, and he had no idea who the guy was as he was covered in blood. He claimed that he had been had by Fuji. Tanaka at the hearing before the athletic commission claimed his friend Fuji asked him to do it because there would be a big payoff. Shire escaped, and the commission banned Fuji from California for life, although eventually they rescinded that ban.

Behind-the-scenes things were getting tense. Patterson was helping book and was the top star. He felt he deserved a piece of the promotion. Shire turned him down. Dondero, who had many connections in the San Francisco gay community by this point in time, claimed to Shire he would offer him $2 million for the promotion. Business was good, but had fallen from peak years as Shire repeated gimmicks and his standard finishes, that were great at first, but not done over-and-over. Shire wouldn’t sell, and eventually Patterson left for Florida, and later the AWA, where he and Stevens became a tag team managed by Bobby Heenan.

At one point he came to Los Angeles. He had on a few occasions defended the U.S. belt on big shows at the Olympic Auditorium in Los Angeles. He was on a September 5, 1969, show defending against Apache Bull Ramos before a sellout 10,974 fans with 6,500 turned away at the door underneath a Dory Funk Jr. vs. Buddy Austin NWA world title match. He had been an outsider brought in for the annual Los Angeles Battle Royal, the idea taken from the one in San Francisco, but because Los Angeles had some of the best wrestling photographers in the world, the Los Angles Battle Royal, while not as bg among the wrestlers, was bigger among fans because of its coverage in wrestling magazines in the U.S. and Japan. When he came in billed as the U.S. champion, and SIN broadcasted that into San Francisco, Shire had a fit.

For years people talked about the bizarre interview on television where Shire came out, said that sometimes he may have gone on vacation for a few weeks and may not know who the champion was, but said about what was happening on the other station, “Pat Patterson is a damn liar and Mike LeBell (the promoter in Los Angeles) is a damn dummy.”

While Shire had some success with Bob Roop as booker, after Roop was fired, the territory went down fast without Patterson, and closed up in 1981. Verne Gagne had gotten TV in San Francisco on a stronger station than Shire, and threatened to come. Shire called up Jim Barnett, who had gotten Shire started in 1961, and complained about Gagne coming into his territory and for the NWA to stop it. Barnett told me he called Gagne. Gagne had hooked up with Leo Nomellini to be his front man in the market. Nomellini was a college football and wrestling teammate of Gagne, later a tag team partner in wrestling, who went on to become one of the greatest linemen in NFL history, while at the same time being the area’s top drawing card of the 50s during the football off-season. Gagne said he was coming either way, the irony that Gagne a few years later complained that Vince McMahon was violating the agreement among all the promoters to respect each other’s territories.

Shire decided against fighting, and staged his last Battle Royal. While Patterson was working dates for the AWA, he was mainly working for Vince McMahon Sr. Shire was able to get McMahon Sr. to book Patterson for his final show, and Patterson won the last of the Shire Cow Palace Battle Royals in January 1981.

Patterson & Stevens were put back together as a heel tag team in the AWA. At times during the 1972-77 period, Stevens would fly back to San Francisco and the two would reunite for shows as a babyface tag team, basically portrayed as the greatest tag team of all-time coming back together for a special match.

Gagne put Bobby Heenan as their manager for the run. Heenan, at ringside for their bouts a decade after their heyday, always claimed they were the best tag team he ever saw, from his vantage point of being at ringside with them every night. He said they were better than Stevens & Bockwinkel, generally considered the best tag team of the early 70s. He rated Patterson as the fourth best wrestler he ever managed, behind only Ric Flair, Stevens and Curt Hennig, and would note that Bockwinkel was fifth. They would be ahead of people like Paul Orndorff, Rick Rude, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, Andre the Giant, Adrian Adonis, Graham, Blackjack Lanza, Blackjack Mulligan, Ken Patera, Harley Race, Masked Superstar and countless others.

Patterson & Stevens won the AWA tag titles on September 23, 1978, when Greg Gagne & Jim Brunzell had to vacate them when Brunzell suffered an injury playing softball. They lost them on June 6, 1979, in Winnipeg, to Verne Gagne & Mad Dog Vachon, largely because Patterson was going to the WWWF for a title feud with Bob Backlund.

Backlund vs. Patterson is the only singles title program that ever headlined four straight Madison Square Garden shows. The McMahon concept is that based on the drawing power he perceived of the challenger, they would be one shot guys (big guys who weren’t that good or guys he didn’t have confidence in as draws), two shot guys (general rule for really good challengers) and three shot guys (the top tier guys). Patterson was scheduled as a three-shot guy. The fourth was because someone who was supposed to come to the territory backed out. I believe that was Terry Funk.

Patterson was known as the first IC champion, from a tournament in Rio de Janeiro. But the original idea to get Patterson over, since while being a super worker, he was not big and didn’t have anything special of a physique, was as North American champion.

Ted DiBiase came to the WWWF as a babyface as the first North American champion in early 1979. He was already a favorite of a lot of NWA promoters to be the next Jack Brisco-type NWA champion because he was such a great worker and spoke well. Patterson beat DiBiase on June 19, 1979, in a television match from Allentown to win the title, and to heat up the Backlund program.

In the champion vs. champion match, Patterson beat Backlund via count out in 23:51 on July 2, 1979, in Madison Square Garden, before a sellout of 20,055 fans. A rematch on July 30, which drew 18,000 fans, was a double count out. Patterson again beat Backlund via count out on August 27, before 18,500 fans. In September, Patterson showed up with a new belt, the Intercontinental heavyweight championship, with the story that he won it in a tournament in Rio de Janeiro, just before the fourth Backlund match. Finally Backlund won the cage match on September 24 before a sellout of 20,255 fans. They also drew well in all the other major Northeast arenas with multiple title matches, and a December 30 show in Toronto drew 14,500 fans.

While most history has the North American title disappearing with the IC title, Patterson did go to Japan on November 8 to drop the North American title to Seiji Sakaguchi, giving New Japan a second singles title to go with the NWF title. But New Japan forgot about the title the next year.

The IC title was the second major title belt Patterson was the first champion of. He was the first NWA/NWF North American tag team champion with Johnny Powers in 1973, a title that originated in Los Angeles. It became New Japan’s major tag team title until around 1979. They lost the belts to Inoki & Sakaguchi on December 9, 1973, in Toyota. Patterson came back to New Japan in 1976, and was considered so key in San Francisco that they booked Cow Palace dates around his tour. He and Larry Hennig lost to Sakaguchi & Shozo Kobayashi on December 8 in Yokohama in a North America tag team title match. In 1977, he came in as the top foreign singles star in the company, scoring singles wins over Sakaguchi and Kobayashi, before losing a December 1 match in Osaka for Inoki’s NWF world title. In 1979, he came in to drop the WWF North American title to Sakaguchi, but then beat Sakaguchi three days later in a non-title match. It appeared they were building for a title rematch on a later tour, but it never materialized.

His last tour was in 1981, when he and Badnews Allen were a tag team in the annual MSG tag team tournament, finishing in a forth place tie behind the winners, Andre the Giant & Rene Goulet, and Inoki & Tatsumi Fujinami and Stan Hansen & Dick Murdoch, who tied for second.

In a trivia note, as best I can tell, Badnews was the only wrestler who ever called attention to Patterson being gay in a promo building up a late 70s match in Los Angeles where he called Patterson a “he she.”

Patterson first went to Japan in April 1968 as part of that year’s World League tournament, which would be like G-1 today. He finished in the pack, as the top foreigners in the tournament were Kowalski, Freddie Blassie, Jesse Ortega and Tarzan Tyler.

In WWF, the rule at the time is that the heels would get their program with Backlund, or whoever the babyface champion was dating back to Sammartino in 1963, then work for a while down the card. Depending on how big a star McMahon viewed them, depended on how many guys they would do jobs for on the way out. But with Patterson, things were different.

He was protected from pin losses, aside from dropping the IC title to Ken Patera on April 21, 1980, in Madison Square Garden. While he did matches elsewhere, like some big AWA shows, Montreal, Japan and even Mexico, he never left the WWF.

After nearly three decades, he came back to Montreal in 1980.

After All Star Wrestling had closed in the spring of 1976, Jack Britton, Gino Brito’s father, a former wrestler-turned-promoter who had famously ran the wrestling midgets booking office, had taken over the territory in 1977. He was losing an average of $2,000 to $3,000 every Monday night running the Paul-Sauve arena. The promotion could not afford to run any other city as it had no television to help it get out of that rut.

However, on February 11, 1980, Britton ran a show that was not only profitable but also drew 2,000 people, twice as much as usual. The promotion ran an angle using Pat Patterson and Lou Albano in the main event. Both of them had recognition in Montreal through WWF television from New York which reached Montreal airwaves through the ABC Burlington, Vermont television station. Sadly though, Jack Britton passed away the night before, on February 10, at the age of 63. His son Gino Brito was left in control of the territory, a territory that reached the outskirts of the Maritimes, most of Northern Ontario and the entire province of Quebec, but that didn’t draw enough in Montreal to jumpstart the business and reach its full potential.

Gino Brito spent two days with the company’s accountant Joe Bélanger, trying to figure out if he needed help or if he was bound to end up in the same situation as his father. Gino Brito didn’t want to make the same mistakes his father had and decided to request a meeting with Vince McMahon Sr. to find investors so that he could get the ball rolling and open more towns. Brito knew McMahon pretty well as he had worked for him a few years prior as Louis Cerdan, winning the WWWF tag team titles in the 1970s. It was shortly after Frank Valois had been replaced by Arnold Skaaland alongside Andre the Giant and Vince Sr. was looking to place Frank Valois somewhere. McMahon saw in Montreal an opportunity for Valois to stay involved in the business. He told him that Frank Valois was looking to go back home, and since André was still close to Valois, he also joined the adventure. Quickly, Gino offered them 40% of the business, and a deal was made for André and Valois to each buy 20% of the Montreal office. The company was called Varoussac promotions, and years later would be renamed as International Wrestling.

Meanwhile, McMahon asked Patterson to go to Montreal to make sure Andre’s best interests were being taken care of.

In May 1980, he started teaming with Raymond Rougeau, as a babyface. On June 2, in Montreal, they defeated Gilles Poisson and Serge Dumont to win the tag team titles. Two days later, they main evented in Quebec City in a rematch for the titles, in what was the first card in Quebec City in four years.

One time, the two of them were coming back from Quebec City and were riding together. Patterson stopped to get a six-pack of beers for the road. Rougeau, who doesn’t drink, took a chocolate milk.

“Pat thought I was weird,” remembered Rougeau. “Then, Pat asked me to open a beer for him and I said ‘No. I don’t drink one and I don’t open one either!’ Pat looked at me and he sure thought I was kidding. But I wasn’t. So he asked me again. And I told him the exact same thing. ‘I don’t drink one and I don’t open one!’ Pat Looked at me and was dubious. He was looking at the road, then looking at me, and then looking back at the road. And then he goes “You’re a crazy son of a bitch!” He ended up opening his beer himself. In his book, he wrote that he respected me a lot after that. 40 years later, he was still telling that story every time we were together!”

Patterson spent the summer in his native province, dropped the titles, and then left.

He became Vince McMahon’s color commentator. He continued to wrestle, usually winning, sometimes putting over the top heels via count out. On a few occasions, he’d get into a beef with a heel and do a big program, the most notable being his 1981 feud with Slaughter, which went all over the circuit and drew well above usual numbers in almost every city underneath the Backlund title match. Their May 4, 1981 match, an Alley fight in Madison Square Garden, was one of the earliest tape trader classics, like the Tiger Mask vs. Dynamite Kid matches were. The day of his death, at the Performance Center right before NXT started, they played the entire match on the screens as those in the building cheered and booed like they were seeing a live classic match. Ironically, Patterson used to tell people that when he’d watch the Slaughter match or the Backlund cage match, he would look back and have no idea how he did all those things.

Patterson vs. Slaughter, a bloodbath brawl that was virtually perfect for what it was supposed to be on that night at that time, right down to Patterson wearing an “I love New York” street fight and pounding on Slaughter’s head after taking off his cowboy boot, was voted 1981 match of the year. Many WWF people for years, including Howard Finkel, called it the greatest match in WWF history and Madison Square Garden history for years.

He worked in Mexico for LLI in 1981, building to a UWA heavyweight title match, losing to Canek on September 13, 1981, at Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City, which drew 18,000 fans.

He came back to Montreal in 1982, winning the tag titles again with Raymond Rougeau, on April 19 in Montreal, against Gilles Poisson and Sailor White. During that run, in June, Patterson turned on Rougeau and allied himself with one of Rougeau’s main opponent, Pierre “Mad Dog” Lefebvre.

That’s when he took the nickname of The Quebec Dream. Since Pat Patterson didn’t sound French at all, he got inspired by Dusty Rhodes’ American Dream gimmick and dubbed himself the Quebec Dream, which worked perfectly as a cocky heel for the Montreal crowd.

On July 26, wrestling was back at the Montreal Forum after 6 years of absence. The card was well picked by Brito and his team. It was a wink to the heyday of the 1970s. From Grand Prix Wrestling there were Dino Bravo, Gino Brito, Mad Dog Vachon, Édouard Carpentier, Andre the Giant, Gilles Poisson, Blackjack Mulligan, and Yvon Robert Jr. as a special guest referee, and from All Star Wrestling, there were Abdullah the Butcher, Eddy Creatchman, Raymond Rougeau, and his dad Jacques. There was four main event matches that night: André against Hansen, the champion Dino Bravo against Abdullah the Butcher, Rick Martel against Billy Robinson, and the first single match between Rougeau and Patterson, which ended up in a draw. The show was a success and drew 14,175 fans.

Patterson and Rougeau kept feuding. Since both were tag team champions, they had to choose a partner and faced each other’s team to crown a new pair of champions. Patterson teamed up with Lefebvre while Rougeau teamed up with Billy Jackson. The heels won the titles, but shortly after lost it to Gino Brito and Tony Parisi.

“One night in Rimouski, I proposed to do a boxing match against Raymond Rougeau and to make it a 10-round decision,” told Patterson in his book, Accepted. “After three rounds, I could not take it anymore. I didn’t know Raymond had a real boxing training. I could not touch him and he would sting me right in the face every now and then. So I said fuck that, took a dive and stayed down for the count. All the boys were watching and everyone was having a good laugh at my expense instead of the other way around.”

They also had single matches, among them a marathon match, a precursor of an Iron Man match. A marathon match was an hour long and the winner had to get the most pins or submissions on his opponent.

“Pat was such a ring general in those matches,” remembered Rougeau. “He was telling that we were not in a rush, we had to do it step by step, but that we were going to finish at a climax. And we sure did. He had such a creative mind.”

Patterson had a few singles matches against other guys than Rougeau. He had some with Bravo and also a feud over the name “Quebec Dream” with The Destroyer, who was selling t-shirts of The Quebec Dream in order to get under Patterson’s skin.

At that time, André decided to sell his shares in the company, unhappy with his relation with Dino Bravo. Pat Patterson wanted to buy André’s share, but Bravo wanted them too, and Brito, who knew Bravo since the latter was a kid, chose him.

“If I would have taken Pat as a partner instead of Bravo, it could have changed a lot of things for me and for the promotion,” reflected Brito.

Patterson left at the beginning of 1983 only to come back in April and this time, getting in a feud with all three Rougeau brothers. He would wrestle against Jacques Jr. as well as Armand. On Varoussac’s third anniversary show on May 30, Patterson, Lefebvre and Billy Robinson wrestled the three Rougeau brothers.

On July 4, Patterson and Lefebvre defeated the Rougeau brothers for the tag team titles. On July 25, Patterson and Lefebvre lost in one of the main events, going last that evening though, against Raymond and Jacques, with their father Jacques in their corner. The show, also headlined by Bravo against Masked Superstar and Andre the Giant against Blackjack Mulligan drew 18,347 fans, the biggest crowd in Montreal since 1973. Three days later, Patterson and Lefebvre against the Rougeaus, Andre against Superstar, and Bravo against Abdullah drew 13,000 people at the Coliseum in Quebec City.

The history of the tag team titles during that period is not that well documented. But the two teams exchanged the titles during the summer and kept feuding. On December 12, in Montreal, Patterson and Lefebvre lost it one more time to Brito and Parisi. It was Patterson’s last match with the company, as Vince McMahon wanted his guys to exclusively work for him.

WWF and International Wrestling ran joint shows from August 1985 to January 1986, after which a trade was made. WWF was getting the Montreal Forum in exchange of the Coliseum in Quebec City, which International Wrestling couldn’t use anymore since WWF took it in the summer of 1985. WWF had both French and English TV in Montreal since the end of 1984, so now with the biggest venue, they were able to do in Montreal what they did elsewhere. The Rougeaus started with the WWF in February 1986 and on February 24, on the first show WWF was running alone, Patterson came back and worked the main event, a battle royal, along with Mad Dog Vachon.

Patterson was hosting a French talking segment for WWF French broadcast only called “The Quebec Dream Brunch”, in which he would interview mostly English-speaking babyfaces and would insult them in French. These segments were really funny and are well remembered here in Montreal.

Maurice gave interviews before the show, shouting a single inflammatory sentence with that husky voice of his, to whip up fan hatred for his rival.

“There’s just one thing I dislike about Pat Patterson: it’s the fact he’s breathing! He isn’t the Dream of Quebec —– no, he’s the Nightmare of Quebec…”

Some 17,300 fans packed the stands to witness the two men settle scores. This was an important show for the WWF, and late-night television newscasts on Channels 10 and 12 were all abuzz about Maurice’s presence.

“If WWE wanted to draw in Montréal, we needed local stars, so that’s why we got the Rougeau brothers, Dino Bravo and Rick Martel,” wrote Patterson in his book. “It was never about getting my friends in New York as some would say or think. We had a business to run and WWE was successful running the Montréal Forum monthly for years because we did what needed to be done.”

Patterson main evented on October 21, at the Forum, teaming with Greg Valentine and Brutus Beefcake against the 3 Rougeau brothers in front of 12,650 fans. Eight months later, on June 29, 1987, still playing the Patterson-Rougeau feud, he teamed with Bravo and Valentine to face Jacques and Raymond.

On August 10, Patterson defeated Brutus Beefcake at the Forum and a few weeks later, on August 31, they had a rematch, main eventing the Forum with Mr T. as guest referee. Beefcake won the match in front of 14,624 fans. It would be Patterson’s last match until his Stooges days 11 years later.

A few months later, when Edouard Carpentier, who was doing French announcing but who was also the local promoter in Montreal, got suspended by the WWF, Patterson suggested Gino Brito for the promoter job, since International Wrestling had filed for bankruptcy in the summer of 1987.

“This is something I never forgot,” said Brito. “I will always be grateful to Pat for that.”

Patterson worked in the office, retired many times, but would always come back, with a more-and-more reduced schedule. Dondero, who passed away in 1998, was his soulmate and he was terribly despondent after his death. Many remember fondly his run as one of the Stooges, with Gerald Brisco, in the attitude era.

He worked with McMahon on key decisions that were the foundation of the industry from the mid-80s until decades later. When it was all about size and physique, Patterson was the key person in talking Vince McMahon into going with Bret Hart and Shawn Michaels as top guys, as opposed to plateauing them at the IC title level. McMahon was adamantly against Rey Mysterio getting the WWE title after the death of Eddy Guerrero, while the writing team all wanted it. It was Patterson who convinced McMahon, who actually wanted to have Mysterio lose his title shot after winning the Rumble and not be in the Mania title match, which he scheduled as Randy Orton vs. Kurt Angle. Patterson talked him into Mysterio going over in a three-way. Of course, McMahon was convinced it wasn’t a good idea and no babyface champion was ever beaten and even squashed as champion like Mysterio was in that reign.

He frequently went on cruises, but would come back, often helping lay out Royal Rumbles. He was always encouraging to younger talent, most of whom had never seen him wrestle, past perhaps watching tapes of his alley fight with Slaughter. He would attend Cauliflower Alley events and crack jokes all night. On May 4, 2015, after a Raw taping, WWE honored Patterson in Montreal. The homage was supposed to take place in September 2012, but because of Jerry Lawler’s heart attack, it was postponed. They gave him a Montreal Canadiens’ jersey, as well as a nice showcase with the Intercontinental belt in it. And of course, Pat sang “My Way” in front of the live crowd.

“I loved the man,” said Mick Foley. “I could listen to his stories for hours. One of the all-time great wrestlers, one of the best minds in the business and a dear friend.”

“Loss is incredibly difficult,” wrote John Cena. “Those we love are only truly gone if we stop caring. Pat Patterson lived life as it should be lived, with passion, love and purpose. He helped so many and always entertained with a story or joke. He will live on in my life always. Love you Patrick.”

Pat Patterson was in the main event of the first pro wrestling television show I ever saw. He was in the main event of the first live arena match I ever saw (Patterson & Graham & DeMarco vs. Stevens & Maivia & Johnson in 1971 at the San Jose Civic Auditorium, a match so intense and so much fun that me and my classmates who attended made going to the matches a regular part of our routine). He was in the main event of the vast majority of shows I saw live in my first seven years of being a fan. There was no pro wrestler I saw perform live more than Pat Patterson, and whoever was second wouldn’t even be close. When I was given the James Melby Award at the Cauliflower Alley Club Hall of Fame, Patterson was right in front of me and I thanked him in my speech. It’s hard to know how my life would have turned out if there wasn’t a Pat Patterson having so many great matches in main events for years in this area. Make no mistake, he was one of the most important figures in the history of this business. He was always looking to have fun and laugh. But he still leaves a very complicated legacy.

Thanks to Pat Laprade for Montreal wrestling history