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“It’s a talking dictionary. It gives you the definition of almost every word in the English language,” he explained proudly.

This is what years of taking bumps does to you, kids.

“Exacerbate: to increase the severity of something,” the computer voice continued.

“Despondent: to feel bad.”

“Nomenclature: a name.”

At this point Bob looked like he was about to ejaculate: to eject bodily fluids.

Bob also had a rule that a fan could have his autograph only if they could name all the presidents in United States history—in chronological order. I guess he wanted to educate the youth of Japan, one autograph at a time. When one teenage fan finally rattled them off, Bob was so impressed he signed two autographs.

The only time I ever saw Bob loosen up was when Dick Murdoch joined the tour. Despite my initial opinion of Murdoch in SMW, I was really happy to see him again. When Dickie was around you didn’t need to find a party, because Captain Redneck WAS the party. That evening he peer-pressured Backlund into drinking a ridiculous amount of beer, turning him into a raving drunk.

I was veritably aghast at the magnitude of bock he imbibed.

The tour led us back to the Hakata Star Lane and that night Murdoch was facing one of the WAR young boys.

“Mr. Murdoch, would you mind if maybe we did this high spot?” the young boy asked. Then he described an intricate well thought out series of moves that was guaranteed to get a reaction. Dirty Dick just kept nodding, “Uh-huh. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. I got it. Okay. Okay. Sounds great kid.”

As the rookie walked away pleased with his gumption, Murdoch looked at me straight-faced and said, “Ain’t no way in hell I’m doing any of that bullshit out there.”

Dick couldn’t speak much Japanese but he didn’t have to. He was in his late fifties but the crowd loved him and ate out of the palm of his hand. Like Negro Casas in Mexico, Dick knew what they liked and how to get them to react the way he wanted. I watched in awe and learned yet another lesson.

In wrestling, instinct means more than being able to speak the same language.

Now the antithesis to Dick Murdoch was Mil Mascaras. He arrived in WAR with the same giant ego and piss-poor attitude that he’d shown me in Mexico.

But the loyal Japanese fans loved him because of his success as a pioneering high-flyer in the 1970s. Now that he was in his seventies, he was a nightmare to work with. I drew the short straw when Tenryu told me he was bringing Mil in and wanted me to work with him every night.

“It’s not going to be fun for you I know, but you’re a good worker and maybe you can get a decent match out of him.”

I couldn’t.

But I worked my ass off every night trying to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. I was especially ticked off after our match on the second to last night of the tour when Mil cornered me. “Nobody cares about you. They just care about me. Nobody paid to see you, they paid to see me. So no more of your moves tomorrow night because nobody wants to see them.” Then he arrogantly walked away.

Too many blows to the head had left me with a memory problem and the next night I couldn’t remember if he’d told me to give him none of my moves or ALL of my moves. Just to be on the safe side, I gave him every damn move I could think of.

He didn’t say a thing to me after the match and I’ve never spoken to him since.

During my career, I developed a reputation for being able to make guys look better than they really were. That skill came from working with guys like Mil Mascaras. I learned if you make your opponent look better, it makes you look better. If you can become a ring general, you will always have a job within the wrestling business. Unfortunately it’s likely you will always do the job as well.

Being a ring general is no easy task and a lot of guys get offended when a younger guy with less experience is better at piecing together a match than they are. Thankfully that wasn’t the case when I had my first match against my old friend Tonga (aka King Haku) in WAR.

Tonga had been working for Tenryu for years and was the