EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the second part in a series on the late Playboy Gary Hart.Gary Hart was a fascinating character in a fascinating business.His Playboy Gary Hart persona, that of a spoiled son of a mother with money, was the inspiration for the gimmick Jim Cornette successfully employed more than a decade later.But it was a far cry from Hart’s inner-city upbringing on the south side of Chicago, where he learned to fend for himself at an early age and got involved in a pair of businesses that both had to be protected — pro wrestling and organized crime.It didn’t take long for a street-savvy kid like Hart to wisely ascertain that there wasn’t a future working as a collections man for the wise-guy gang, and that a career in the wrestling business just might be something he could hang his hat on.
Born Gary Richard Williams on Jan. 24, 1942, in Evansville, Ind., Hart began his career in 1960 as a wrestler based out of Chicago. He later turned to a more successful role as a cocky, nefarious, well-dressed manager who would do most of the talking for his heel charges.Hart’s impact on the wrestling business was far-reaching. As a booker, he helped transform the Dallas-based World Class Championship Wrestling into one of the most popular and successful wrestling companies of that period. He also served as matchmaker in other territories, and was Jim Crockett’s booker-in-charge of the inaugural Starrcade in Greensboro, N.C., in which Ric Flair won the NWA world title from Harley Race.
Hart worked with good promoters and bad promoters, and had a special, but complicated, relationship with Fritz Von Erich (Jack Adkisson) during the late ‘60s and early ‘70s when Hart managed some of the top heels in Von Erich’s Texas territory, and for the following two decades when he served as Von Erich’s go-to guy in the front office and did most of the heavy lifting.
If you worked as closely as Hart did in the World Class office, however, an inordinate amount of tragedy came with the territory. He was there when several of the Von Erich children, all of whom called him “Uncle Gary,” succumbed to tragic, sometimes needless, deaths.
He saw Gino Hernandez, whom he considered a son, die from an apparent cocaine overdose at the age of 28. He witnessed close friend Chris Adams’ life spiral out of control until he was fatally shot in the chest during a drunken brawl with a friend.Hart often found himself at odds with the family patriarch over how to run the territory, and attributed denial to the Von Erich family problems. Von Erich refused to recognize that his family’s drug problems led to his sons’ demise.
“Nobody truly understands what took place in World Class during those times,” Hart wrote in his highly acclaimed 2008 book, “Playboy Gary Hart: My Life in Wrestling – With a Little Help from My Friends.”“There was a covering up of everything, and denial, not drugs, was the biggest addiction. A lot of people have it and don’t look at it as an addiction, but I do.”It was the same type of denial, he wrote, that he later would see in the wrestling business.“To hear anyone say that there is no steroid problem in wrestling is like listening to someone rave about the emperor’s new clothes when the emperor is standing there naked. It’s totally and absolutely ridiculous, and the wrestlers of this generation are protecting steroids with the same fervor that the wrestlers of my generation protected kayfabe. But unlike kayfabe, if this sort of head-in-the-sand, denying-the-obvious attitude continues, it will destroy wrestling. It truly has the potential to cause irreparable harm.”
Tragedy in TampaHart survived a 1975 plane crash in Tampa that claimed the life of Bobby Shane (Robert Schoenberger) — at the time one of the sport’s rising superstars — and seriously injured Hart, Buddy Colt (Ron Reed) and Dennis McCord (later known as Austin Idol). The same plane that had been piloted by Colt had been flown to Atlanta to Jacksonville to Tampa by Cowboy Bill Watts.
“Buddy was a student pilot, and I already had my instrument rating,” Watts recalled. “I was coming down anyway, so I flew his plane for him. It was the same plane he crashed later that night in Tampa Bay where Bobby Shane drowned, and Gary, Buddy and Dennis McCord were injured. They were lucky to get out alive because they had to swim to the beach. Gary lost his sight in one eye in that crash.”
The late-night crash of the private plane into the pitch-black water of Hillsborough Bay, just off the runway, knocked out all of Hart’s teeth, put a hundred stitches in his head, took away his sight in his right eye and left him with a broken back, left leg, left wrist and left arm. It fractured his sternum, his clavicle and vertebrae in his back.
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Hart survived, and in the process helped save the lives of Colt and McCord. But it was too late for Shane, whose body was found when the plane was brought to the surface a few hours later. His seat belt was still on, and his leg was pinned under his seat.Hart agonized for years over his colleague’s death. He had switched seats with Shane to have more legroom. Even though Hart unlatched his seat belt, which he attributed to his survival, he always wondered what might have happened had things been different. A coroner’s report later showed that Shane died on impact, and nothing Hart could have done would have saved him.
“Dealing with Bobby’s death was harder than the crash and the swim to shore. It was overwhelming,” said Hart.He also wondered just how far Shane, dubbed the “Boy Wonder” in his teenage years, might have gone in the business.“Even though he was 29 years old and had been in the business for only 11 years, he’d made quite a name for himself and has left behind a great legacy. His untimely death is all the more tragic because he had such a tremendous career in front of him, given the fact that he had just gotten his very first booking job in the States.”Reach Mike Mooneyham at [email protected], or follow him on Twitter at @ByMikeMooneyham and on Facebook at Facebook.com/MikeMooneyham. His latest book — “Final Bell” — is now available at https://evepostbooks.com and on Amazon.com.
Did you know …
Ron Simmons
Provided
Former WCW world champion and WWE Hall of Famer Ron Simmons was an All-American football player at Florida State and played his rookie season in the NFL with the Cleveland Browns.
Simmons played four years (1977–1980) as a defensive nose guard at FSU under coach Bobby Bowden, earning consensus All-American honors in 1979 and 1980. The Seminoles were 39–8 during Simmons’ years at the school, finishing in the Associated Press Top 20 three times, and earning back-to-back Orange Bowl trips after Simmons’ junior and senior seasons.
By the end of his senior year, he had tabulated an impressive 25 sacks on top of 383 tackles and was voted ninth in the Heisman Trophy ballot of 1979.Simmons played football as a defensive tackle in the National Football League, Canadian Football League and United States Football League for four seasons during the 1980s.
On this date …
Ray Traylor as Big Boss Man
WWE Photo
Twenty years ago today on this date (Sept. 18, 2002): Ray Traylor, Jr., best known to wrestling fans as the Big Boss Man, was found dead in his home in Dallas, Georgia. He was just 41.Ironically, Traylor’s portrayal of Big Boss Man, a rugged, nightstick-wielding prison guard, wasn’t much of a stretch. Traylor had served as a real-life corrections officer in Cobb County, Ga., before being discovered by a wrestling booker in 1984.The 6-6, 315-pound Traylor got his first big break in the business as Midnight Express manager Jim Cornette’s personal bodyguard, Big Bubba Rogers, in 1986.A couple years later, Traylor joined the World Wrestling Federation, and Big Boss Man was born.Traylor was posthumously inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2016.
Photo of the Week
Damian Priest delivers a big boot to the face of Carlito (Colon) during a recent edition of Friday Night Smackdown.
WWE
