WWE Legends - Superstar Billy Graham: Tangled Ropes - Hardcover

Graham, Billy; Greenberg, Keith Elliot

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1416507531 ISBN 13: 9781416507536

Publisher: World Wrestling Entertainment, 2006

Synopsis

Presents the autobiography of one of the most influential professional wrestlers of the past thirty years, from his Texas childhood to his careers as a bodybuilder, bouncer, evangelist, pro football player, and trainer.

About this title

About the Author:

Keith Elliot Greenberg is a lifelong wrestling fan and a senior writer for World Wrestling Entertainment publications. He is also an award winning television producer whose work has been seen on 48 Hours, America's Most Wanted, VH-1 and The History Channel. He is the author of more than thirty non-fiction books for children and lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:

Chapter One: The Number One Creation

Ravage away, demons of sorrow

Unleash your armies, devils of pain

Your dark magic can't dim the memories

Of Superstar Billy Graham's golden reign

-- poem by Jeff Marshall, literature professor and wrestling fan

I wasn't supposed to be here.

By October 2002, I'd become a literal shell of the man who'd sold out Madison Square Garden nineteen times, when the world knew me not by my birth name of Eldridge Wayne Coleman, but as Superstar Billy Graham, perhaps the first modern "sports entertainer" in the pro wrestling frater-nity. Now, when I stepped out of the shower, I'd shift my back to the mirror and turn out the light to avoid glancing at my reflection, knowing that my withered body could never measure up to what it was in my glory years -- charismatic, bronzed and blond, a spectacle with bulging veins, twenty-two-inch "pythons," and a rap that was more responsible for my drawing power than my actual wrestling ability.

"I am the sensation of the nation. The number-one creation."

Twenty-five years had passed since 1977, the year I became heavyweight champion of the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), the company now known as World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE). Our business was divided into dozens of regional promotions, but the WWWF was the biggest, stretching from Bangor, Maine, down to the nation's capital. Of all the towns around the horn, New York was the focal point of the territory, and -- in my opinion -- the criterion for everything.

It was a city that was both terrible and wonderful. In the places where my fans came from -- Queens, Brooklyn, and the Bronx -- the Son of Sam, a man later exposed as a pudgy postal worker, slaughtered innocent lovers passing time in their cars, then sent taunting letters to the press, convinced that his neighbor's dog had commanded him to kill. In midtown Manhattan, people were bathing in coke-induced disco decadence at Studio 54, while downtown on the Bowery, others were rebelling against it, as punk rock went through its toddler stage at CBGB's. The Bronx was burning -- with landlords torching tenements that were no longer worth the bother -- but nowhere as brightly as in Yankee Stadium, where Reggie Jackson fought the team's owner, manager, and the rest of the American League, slamming baseballs in the direction of the number 4 train that rumbled on the tracks behind the bleachers.

The city crackled with kinetic energy, and I was part of it. From the corporate towers of Wall Street to the heroin dens off Times Square, New York venerated Superstar Billy Graham, getting down on one knee in the middle of the ring at the Garden and flexing, while my manager, the Grand Wizard, stood behind me -- in wraparound shades and a red, white, and blue sequined turban with a feather sticking out of the top -- grooming my glowing locks with a comb he reserved for just such occasions. I wrestled Bruno Sammartino, symbol of immigrant pride, and took his title away by pinning him with my feet on the ropes. I fought Andre the Giant, the "Eighth Wonder of the World." I dragged the "American Dream" Dusty Rhodes around the ring with a bullrope. And I'd stroll out of the Garden and hail a cab as cops, pretzel men, and street walkers looked on in wonder. Because I was the Superstar, and I had that patter I learned as a teenage evangelist to lift up a struggling city and fill its soul.

"I'm the man of the hour, the man with the power. Too sweet to be sour."

Back then, I thought that I was indestructible, a concept enhanced by my gluttonous consumption of anabolic steroids. But thirty years later, I was paying the devil his due in large, painful doses. Nearly three decades of ingesting reckless amounts of Delatestryl, Winstrol, and Deca Durabolin had eroded away my joints -- my ankle was fused with bone from my pelvic area, both of my hips had been replaced, and my spine was collapsing. Hepatitis C had decayed my liver to the point of failure. My mind was confused because of the release of ammonia into my brain. My urine was as brown as Coca-Cola.

I was going to die.

Then, on October 18, Katie Gillroy, a beautiful woman I'd never met, was riding in the passenger seat of a pickup truck on Interstate 17, near Cactus Road, just a few miles from my apartment in Phoenix, Arizona. Police think the driver might have been cut off by another car and hit the brakes too hard, skidding into the median and flipping over. Katie was ejected from the vehicle and hit the guardrail. At 3:00 A.M., she was declared brain-dead.

Katie was only twenty-six years old -- vibrant, healthy, funny, and caring. She volunteered at the Humane Society, raised a small son as a single mother, and -- when she was just a teenager -- showed maturity and compassion far beyond her years. She signed her donor card. With that simple, selfless act, Katie saved my life.

I don't think it's fair that Katie Gillroy died at such a promising age, and left me on this earth with her liver transplanted in my body. I never imagined that God would literally give me a second chance at life. I've asked him about this, but I haven't heard back. Yet, here I am, still alive after all my mistakes, able to bask in the sun of the Arizona desert, hear the voices of my wife and grandchildren, and tell you the unvarnished story of Superstar Billy Graham.

There weren't any pyrotechnics or entrance music when I made my debut in this world on June 7, 1943. But I never needed those kinds of gimmicks to get a pop. Even in the delivery room, there was a lot of screaming.

I was a breech baby, coming out of my mother feetfirst. As I was being delivered, my umbilical cord wrapped around my neck. I was wiggling around a lot, and the doctor was scared that I'd strangle myself. So he drenched me in ether. Then he sent me home, still doused in the flammable liquid. Everybody smoked in my family -- my mother, my dad, my uncles -- and it's incredible that the house didn't blow up.

That was the first miracle in my life.

My mom, Juanita Bingaman, came from Paris, Arkansas. She had black hair and strong features and, somewhere in her past, was descended from Arkansas Cherokee. Throughout my life, I always felt an affinity toward Native Americans. I wore turquoise on wrestling interviews and incorporated it into the oil paintings I did at home -- aged Native American hands polishing blue stone; a warrior standing in front of his horse, his spear and shield held together with strips of leather. Part of me empathized with the outsider status forced onto the Native Americans on their own soil. Nonetheless, I'm convinced that my interest in Native American culture has less to do with my own ancestry than the fact that my parents chose to raise me in Arizona, among the Hopi, Navajo, and Apache, as well as the cacti, Painted Desert, and Joshua trees.

I was the last of Juanita's four children. I shared a father -- Eldridge John Coleman -- with my sisters Annette, six years older than me, and Joyce, two years my senior. My brother, Vance, was born in Arkansas in 1933, the product of a romance between my mother and some boy down there. I was very proud of Vance -- he fought in the Korean War, and became a police captain in Phoenix -- and have a framed photo of him in uniform next to my writing desk at home. But his presence in our household nearly split my family apart.

Joyce Coleman Sampson (Superstar Billy Graham's sister): My older brother was born out of wedlock. My grandfather chased the happy couple down before they could get married, and told my mother, "You're coming home with us." My grandfather said, "This boy will be raised in our home." He never gave the father a chance.

I have no idea what happened to that young man. But when Vance was about six years old, my mother met my father, Eldridge John Coleman. My father had bad feelings toward Vance. He never adopted our brother. So Vance's name was Bingaman, and the rest of us were Colemans.

When my mother's parents moved to Arizona, she moved, too. And she told my dad, "I don't care if you come to Arizona or not. I'm going, and I'm taking my son." She was going to divorce my dad because he wouldn't accept my older brother. But my father eventually followed her to Arizona.

I never knew that my first name was Eldridge until I wrestled in Japan and had to show my birth certificate to get a passport. Everybody called me Wayne. In fact, many of my close friends and family members still do. When you play a character for as many years as I played Superstar Billy Graham, there's going to be some overlap. But -- while other guys lose themselves in their personas -- I never stopped being Wayne Coleman.

My father came from Mississippi, raising chickens and turkeys on the family farm, while my grandfather, Tom Coleman, plowed the fields by mule. As a young man, my dad had wavy brown hair, a strong, chiseled face, and deep-set eyes. According to some relatives, at six-foot-four and more than two hundred pounds, he bore a striking resemblance to Superstar Billy Graham. As the city of Phoenix expanded, my dad drove telephone poles into the ground for the local power company, Arizona Public Service (APS). He used to wear shoes with metal hooks and clasps on the front and a belt that looked like a six-shooter, so he could climb up and wrap himself around the poles.

But I never saw that Eldridge John Coleman. By the time I was born, my father was no longer tanned or vigorous. Multiple sclerosis had driven him out of the sunlight and into a job as a shop foreman. In time, his face became puffy. The muscle between his thumb and index finger started to concave. Our backyard became overgrown, and my mother had to push him around in his wheelchair and pick him up to put him on the commode. I remember her having hernia surgery from lifting him so much.

My dad tried medicating himself wit...

About this edition

• Publisher: World Wrestling Entertainment
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 1416507531
• ISBN 13: 9781416507536
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 352