Beyond Nitro w/ Guy Evans - CFS Mania, Brother! [Article] (Patreon)

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In 1997, the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based Commercial Financial Services (CFS, Inc.) was the talk of the financial press. As the largest debt collection company in the United States, CFS boasted a valuation of $3 billion, a set of revenues tripling on a yearly basis, and a dedicated employee base of 3,000 workers. With a profit margin exceeding that of Intel and Microsoft, the company’s growth had been staggering - “mind-boggling” even, according to an analyst quoted in the Wall Street Journal. Seemingly, only one logical question remained:

How big could CFS get?

In 1995, by way of illustration, the CFS organizational chart could fit on a single piece of 11x17 paper; by 1997, however, it had grown to encompass a display 30 feet long, wrapping halfway around one executive’s office. New recruits were being added at a frenetic pace - up to 45 people a week, at one point - supporting a workforce making 2.2 million phone calls a day. Already the second largest employer in the state of Oklahoma, CFS offices in Europe were now being planned, as was a $180 million move to a new, state-of-the-art company headquarters. By 2000, executive leadership promised that 9,200 more jobs would be created - en route to the ultimate goal of 30,000 CFS employees.

Sitting on top of it all was Bill Bartmann, CFS’ charismatic founder, spiritual leader and motivator extraordinaire. Dubbed by the media as The Richest Man You’ve Never Heard Of, Bartmann’s net wealth, estimated to be in the $2.4 billion range, rivaled that of Ted Turner - an unlikely turnaround from an earlier period of financial hardship. Back in 1986, after all, Bartmann had been a million dollars in debt - the result of a failed oil pipe manufacturing business in Muskogee, Oklahoma. Debt collectors hounded Bartmann’s home day and night, with one famously telling his seven-year old daughter, “You tell that deadbeat if he doesn’t pay his bill, we’re gonna repossess his car.”

Improbably, Bartmann soon devised - along with his wife Kathy and CFS co-founder Jay Jones - a revolutionary (and outlandish) idea for a comeback: convincing a bank to lend him more money, this time for the purchase of defaulted loans (specifically, delinquent loans inherited by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, or FDIC, following a bank failure in Tulsa). After collecting enough money to recoup the cost of the purchase - and subsequently, making an initial repayment on his million dollar debt - Bartmann then borrowed further funds for similar “bad debt” purchases, eventually repaying his entire obligation. In the process, CFS became a full-service debt management company, and, by 1994, one of the fastest-growing private enterprises in America.

Initially, CFS collected primarily on car, home and boat loans from a variety of failed banks, but beginning in 1995, it bought, almost exclusively, uncollected credit card debt - or accounts in which no payment had been made for at least six months. “Basically what they did,” remembers Mark Melton, hired at 17 as the company’s youngest ever employee, “is go out and buy credit card receivables from all the major banks. At one point, they owned more than 50 percent of all the charged-off credit card debt in the United States.

“You could buy this stuff for almost nothing back then,” continues Melton, “because nobody knew it was valuable. You could go out and buy a billion dollars worth of credit card receivables for $20 million dollars - pennies on the dollar.

“They would then take it and go out to the public markets. They’d say, ‘Hey, we’ve got this billion dollars of receivables, why don’t you guys give us a loan - through a process called securitization - for 200 million dollars?’

“So you spend 20 million, immediately get 200 million, and then you charge the lenders 15% of everything you collect as a servicing fee. The thing was making money hand over fist…everyone thought Bill Bartmann was a genius.”

“Bill was the first person,” summarizes Kevin Highland, an associate director of credit with CFS from 1996 to 1999, “to take unsecured debt, collateralize it and borrow against it.”

Defying industry standards, CFS developed a culture which promoted a more personable approach to debt collection. Debtors were not to be viewed as debtors per se, Bartmann instructed his staff; rather, they were to be regarded as customers. “They’re not deadbeats, not derelicts, not pond scum,” he once said. “I believe 90% [of them] are good people who ran into a bad problem. Just like me…having been broke, I understand the customer.”

“I thought, ‘This is easy,’ remembers Melton. “It was like, ‘You just sit on a phone all day and call people about their credit card bills, and try to collect them. They had this whole philosophy of, ‘We’re not a normal collection agency’, [and] ‘Don’t be a dick - treat people with respect…you’ll catch more flies with honey than vinegar.”

While many employers, observed Bartmann, liked to describe their employees - in typical corporate speak - as their “most important asset”, CFS applied the maxim to a level beyond belief. Along with a 250 percent match on contributions to the company’s 401(k) plan, an annual-profit sharing bonus, and on-site child care, the company organized extravagant excursions for its entire staff. At a cost of $12 million, for example, Bartmann arranged for “every available 747 in the free world” to take all CFS employees and a “plus one” to Disney World, reserving an entire theme park and 4,000 hotel rooms in the process (as if it were needed, each party also received $500 in spending money for the trip). “I called him Robin Hood,” says Highland. “Robbing from the rich and giving to the poor ‘Okies’ is what I would say, when I had a couple of cocktails off-premises.”

In mid-1997, amid the first rumors that the CFS model was unsustainable, Bartmann made a typically outrageous challenge to his staff. “The only convincing proof we’re ever gonna give [Wall Street],” he said, “will be our results. We gotta beat our previous numbers. [So] here’s what I propose. If you guys beat our projected numbers this coming month…I’ll mud-wrestle Charlie in front of all of you.”

“Mud wrestling is for normal people,” clarified Bartmann at a subsequent meeting. “If we’re gonna have to do this mud-wrestling thing - and I’m in - I’ll do it…[but] I wanna pick the venue. I pick Las Vegas.”

“So here’s the deal,” he continued. “I want June numbers and I want July numbers. So here’s how we’re gonna play this game. Base case is that which everybody in the world expects CFS to get. That’s average…that’s normal…that’s regular. You give me June - plus 5% - [and] you give me July - plus 5% - [and] I’ll mud wrestle this big sucker in Las Vegas - with all of you watching!”

Bartmann’s target was quickly achieved, but his promise to mud-wrestle “Charlie” - better known as CFS executive Charles Welsh - soon morphed into something else. “Charlie had recently undergone back surgery,” Bartmann later recalled in his autobiography, “[so] I thought it best not to get in the mud with him.”

Instead, Bartmann remembered, he took a slightly different tack: “I hired Hulk Hogan to wrestle me.”

——

On October 18, 1997, Bartmann and his company took over Las Vegas’ Thomas and Mack Center for its most unique event ever: CFS Mania.

“We were just told to show up to this place,” recalls Mark Melton. “We took our seats and looked at the ring in the middle of the floor. We were like, ‘What…is happening here?’

“Welcome to CFS Mania,” bellowed Zach Zachary, the faux-announcer overseeing the proceedings, to an audience comprised of 6,000 company staff and families. “The hottest hotbed of hyperboly. The biggest brew ha-ha of braggery. And - just to tell you the truth - the most tantalizing ticket in town.

“…Boy have we got an evening for you,” continued Zachary. “Not since David and Goliath…not since Billie Jean King versus Bobby Riggs…not since Newt Gingrich versus…well, just about anybody…has there been a more anticipated match than the one we have for you here this evening, which putts Charles ‘Yabba-Dabba-Doo’ Welsh versus the Grand Imperial Puba himself - Bill Bartmann.

“This has got to be the event of the year. The happening of the decade. The show of the century. And besides, what else you guys got to do tonight anyway?”

Zachary then introduced his announce team partner for the night, an apparently brain-damaged veteran of the squared circle with over “1000 trips to the mat”: Choo-Choo Chuggman.

“It’s a beautiful…night here,” mumbled Choo-Choo. “There’s not a cloud in the…ceiling. Uh…and…I’m happy to be here, with my old pal, in the wonderful city of, uh…

“Las Vegas,” interrupted Zachary.

“Oh,” responded Choo-Choo. “Is that where we are?”

Over the next hour, a series of bizarre backstage skits, interviews and promos aired to the live audience, many of which parodied the style of contemporary pro wrestling. Finally - and mercifully - Bartmann entered the arena dressed as a conqueror, carried in Cleopatra’s barge, taken, incidentally, from its permanent place beneath the ceiling of Caesar’s Palace. “And now, ladies and gentleman,” said Michael Buffer, the noted ring announcer of ‘Ready to Rumble’ fame, “making his entrance to the ring…the big cheese, the head honcho, Mr. Big, the boss, the top man at the top of his form, introducing: Bill ‘Grand Imperial Puba’ Bartmann!”

“I think he got paid 15 grand,” says Kevin Highland of Buffer. “I think he got that every time he said that stupid [‘Ready to Rumble’] line. I just shook my head that we would burn money like that.”

Bartmann entered the ring opposite Charles Welsh, his nemesis for the night, but suddenly, an interruption took place at the announce desk. Out of nowhere, Brutus ‘The Barber’ Beefcake, last seen on WCW television in late 1996, emerged to be in Welsh’s corner.

“Well, who’s gonna help Bill?” responded Zach Zachary.

“We had all been told,” remembers Mark Melton of the moment, “to expect a surprise.

“All of a sudden…fucking Hulk Hogan’s there.”

“Ladies and gentleman,” announced Michael Buffer, “two of professional wrestling’s biggest stars - Brutus Beefcake, and the legendary Hulkster - Hulk Hogan!”

“We’re from Tulsa, Oklahoma,” says Melton. “Even though it became such a huge company, we all sort of thought of ourselves as small-town people. To get to rub elbows with Hulk Hogan was really cool.”

“I’m here to help my main man, the number one honcho - Brutal Bill, brother,” announced Hogan at the announce table. “You know, Choo-Choo - it’s good to see you. By the way, my brother…how’s your head? I kinda feel bad about dropping you on it so many times. And by the way, what are you doing here, Brutus ‘The Burger’ Beefcake?’

After getting into a brief, pantomime-like argument, Beefcake and Hogan descended on the ring, taking their respective positions in Welsh and Bartmann’s corner. “Now, now, everyone settle down,” announced an unidentified referee. “To ensure a nice, clean fight - we’re gonna have a few rules.”

Bizarrely, the referee continued his explanation with Hogan and Beefcake acting as visual aids.

“Rule number one!” said the referee. “There will be none of this!”

As if on cue, Hogan struck Beefcake with a painfully fake punch, drawing polite laughter from the assembled crowd.

“And,” yelled the referee, “there will be none of this!”

Beefcake responded with a weak punch of his own, aimed at Hogan’s gut, drawing a smattering of barely perceptible boos.

“And for heaven’s sake,” concluded the referee, “do not do this!”

What followed was something akin to a fever dream. Hogan and Beefcake exchanged numerous less-than brutal blows in a strange comedic sequence, culminating in Beefcake performing Curly’s ‘Floor Spin’ from the Three Stooges. Beefcake remained apparently frozen on the canvas for over 30 seconds - posing to no-one in particular - while Bartmann and Welsh taunted each other in exaggerated fashion: “You’re mincemeat! You’re gonna be hamburger!”

The two combatants encircled each other before two female wrestlers - announced as Bartmann and Welsh’s “secretaries” - started fighting in the ring instead. The farce continued until Bartmann and Welsh resumed a comedic staredown, drawing an eventual interjection from Hogan. “Hold it, hold it - cut,” shouted Hogan. “Stop it, man. You guys are the two greatest competitors I’ve ever seen. You know something, you guys have been working together so long and so well…you know each other’s moves, man. This isn’t gonna work…I declare the match a draw!

“…And the winner this year - and the greatest company of all - is CFS!”

As Queen’s ‘We Will Rock You’ blared from the speakers, Hogan and Bartmann posed, shook hands and soon gave way to an impromptu dance party. “We are not average,” blared Bartmann over a house microphone. “We are not normal. We are different - we are CFS. I would like to hear 6,000 people chant that chant right now!”

Ultimately, although the dancing revelers wouldn’t know it, the Vegas trip would be one of the last great outings for CFS, which closed its doors, amid a federal investigation, in June 1999 (after attempting to revive the company, Bill Bartmann died in 2016 at the age of 68). “Bond fraud is why it imploded,” summarizes Mark Melton. “They got too aggressive and borrowed too much. Instead of saying, ‘Oops, we fucked up - they started cycling cash through shell companies to make it look like they were collecting more money…when they really weren’t.’

As for his part, Hogan was paid - according to one source - $250,000 for the Vegas appearance. “That doesn’t surprise me at all,” responds Kevin Highland. “We had 500 million dollars in our account when we had to shut it down.”

——

The existence of the CFS Mania footage raises several important questions. Firstly, with respect to the general ethos of professional wrestling, it has long been considered of paramount importance to protect the business (or to refrain, in other words, from exposing the reality behind the prearranged spectacle). While such attitudes were becoming less prevalent by 1997, the act of a wrestler throwing comically fake punches - not to mention ‘selling’ in a theatrical style - appears to obliterate such an ethic entirely (especially when considering the resultant laughter emanating from the audience). To illustrate, the 5-foot-9 Bartmann described the ‘match’ as follows in his autobiography: “I got in the ring and surprise! I kicked Hulk Hogan’s butt all the way to Pizza Hut.”

“When we were in Florida,” said Kevin Sullivan in the NITRO book, speaking of the CWF territory, “Eddie Graham had two rules. One was that faces and heels couldn’t be seen together. The second was if you lost a fight in any public place, you were fired. Guys that wanted to be wrestlers used to [get beaten up by the pros]. Guys used to leave with broken noses and broken faces. One time they beat [a hopeful] so bad, they stripped him of his clothes.”

Graham was unlikely to have considered, however, that a third rule - that which related to wrestlers making a mockery of the business in public - may have also been necessary.

To that end, it could be argued that superstar wrestlers, such as Hogan, are subject to a particularly stringent standard, as reflected in the familiar old axiom: With great power, comes great responsibility. If, as previously indicated, it is accurate that a fee of $250,000 was enough to secure Hogan’s services, such a benefit (significant though it may be) could fairly be weighted against the cost imposed upon the business at-large. Given its status as the highest rated show on cable television, it is likely that some of the 6,000 attendees were viewers of WCW Monday Nitro themselves - or, at the very least, had some passing knowledge of the wrestling business. For those attendees, did it matter that Hogan, a legitimate cultural icon of the ‘80s, took part in an obvious parody of wrestling? Or, alternatively, is the argument that by 1997, such an exposé was irrelevant?

One method of considering the latter question - that which addresses the impact of lampooning wrestling to a private audience - could be considered through the lens of an appropriate reference point. If ‘Stone Cold’ Steve Austin, for example, dropped the pretenses of his ‘gimmick’, circa 1998, and engaged in an event like CFS Mania, would that have made a difference? If Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, at the height of his wrestling notoriety, accepted a payment of $250,000 to make a similar appearance, would that have changed anything? If Ric Flair, or Dusty Rhodes, or Harley Race, or any number of legendary wrestlers participated in a similar charade, would the general appeal of wrestling have been lessened? If so, to what extent?

A charitable interpretation of the affair would argue something like the following: CFS Mania was a private event - not meant for public consumption - and therefore, all bets were off. After all, the event occurred at a time before smartphone cameras, and it is likely that very few copies of the production were ever circulated. But whatever happened to ‘living the gimmick?’ On WCW television, it is worth noting, Hogan was successfully portraying a villainous Hollywood Hogan character, and consequently, Hulk Hogan (and the familiar red-and-yellow getup associated with the role) had been absent since 1996. In light of this fact, does it matter that one Saturday afternoon, Hulk Hogan hammed it up at a corporate event - and eight days later, Hollywood Hogan was advertised in a brutal cage match on pay-per-view?

In various retrospectives of the time period, the mid-late ‘90s era of professional wrestling - including the ‘Attitude Era’ it eventually spawned - is often praised for its realistic elements. Famously, the July 1996 ‘Attack in the Back’ (an angle featuring the beat-down of various WCW wrestlers at Disney-MGM in Orlando) was received as so real as to incur a police presence at the property (incidentally, the attack occurred at the hands of Hogan’s heel faction, the nWo). Provoking such a reaction is regarded, and rightfully so, as a significant creative triumph, insofar as a number of viewers - convinced that their favorite wrestlers were really in trouble - felt compelled enough to call 911. But does the goal of presenting wrestling as ‘real’ - or, at least, an approximation of same - evaporate in a private setting?

Alternatively - and contrary to conventional wisdom - does wrestling occupy the same space, conceptually speaking, as other forms of live entertainment? If so, how does a character like Hulk Hogan exist outside of the confines of his fictional world? Does it depend on the circumstances, such as how much money is changing hands? Are we to accept that Hulk Hogan is simply a character played by a man named Terry Bollea - similar to how Tom Cruise plays a fictional character in the movies?

When Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage appeared on the Arsenio Hall talk show - to cite one of innumerable such examples - he could have been introduced as Randy Poffo, his real name, or ‘the man who plays Randy ‘Macho Man’ Savage in the WWF.’ Instead, as was typical for the time, Savage maintained a strict adherence to kayfabe - acting, looking and talking like his wrestling persona. For reasons that wrestling fans inherently understand, it is difficult to imagine a scenario in which an alternative presentation (e.g. “Hey fans, check out what my character did last week in this clip…”) would have been acceptable - regardless of the environment. In that sense, professional wrestlers occupy a peculiar place in the entertainment landscape: Hey, we know that you know…but we’re not gonna shatter the illusion for you.

In the final analysis, while a corporation requesting a private performance from Hulk Hogan demonstrates a number of things - including the power of the ‘Hulkster’ character (Hollywood Hogan be damned) and the synonymy of Hogan with wrestling itself - there is arguably something distasteful about an event like CFS Mania. The footage is remarkable for a number of reasons - including the fact that it went unseen for 20 years - but equally, it raises the possibility of similar events existing somewhere on a dusty videotape, or laying in an obscure storage facility waiting to be discovered.

In any event, if there is a comparable discovery involving a prominent wrestler to come, it is unlikely to top the spectacle of CFS Mania.

“I don’t think,” raved Zach Zachary on commentary, finishing up the broadcast, “that I’ve ever seen anything like it!”

You and us both, brother.