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Getting involved with ring announcing for the AWA in Duluth:
"I knew the promoter, the Duluth promoter, Harvey Solan was his name and he was a character and I knew him and he would bring guys to town. I remember interviewing Andre the Giant, I think there's a picture of me and Andre in the documentary. Dr. X, Dick Beyer, the Destroyer was in the AWA for a while as Dr. X and he came to....I worked at KDAL CBS affiliate in Duluth in the seventies and I remember one day. Dick Beyer, Dr. X comes to the front desk and he's got a beautiful green tailored suit and his mask on in the lobby of the TV station. You can't make that up. So I talked to him and met Ric Flair when he was a brown haired soft spoken guy through, through the promoter Harvey Solan and he said, 'You wanna do some ring announcing?' I was on TV in Duluth, and I said, 'Oh, sure. That'd be fun. I'd love it.' Ventura, I screwed up Ventura's weight the first night. I said, 'Ladies and gentlemen, he hails from Venice Beach, California. He weighs 248 pounds' and Ventura says, 'That's 278, Jack!' We got up, we started off with that and we were, we had a cordial relationship going forward. Billy Robinson got mad at me because I think on the first night I did it, I forgot to say five minutes gone, five minutes gone and he was angry at me after the match, his match. I hadn't given the time gone by indication that, they time out the matches [with], of course, how long you got before you go home. So, I had that kind of experience ring announcing and have been a wrestling fan for 60 years, probably, so it fit into my my area of interest, for sure."
How protective talents were of the business then, even with him:
"Very guarded. I remember Ken Patera....a friend of mine was at a college newspaper. He was doing a story on AWA wrestling coming to town. He asked Ken Patera, 'the action in the ring is real but the end of the result of the match is scripted, right?' Patera just looked at him like he was ready to strangle him and he said, 'Scripted? F you!' [Laughs] So yeah, they were very protective of it. Of course, you know all this. They, the heels and the faces didn't ride together. They had separate locker rooms. When, was it Iron Sheik and Duggan? Were caught riding in the same car? Eddie Mansfield had exposed the business, in what, '84? 2020, I think, John Stossel and David Schultz. But, this is the late 70s, and kayfabe was still very much alive in the heart of the wrestlers, for sure."
Memorable interactions with wrestlers from that era:
"Mad Dog Vachon. I talked to him one night as he was washing out his tights in the back of the Duluth Arena. Tthen he came to a festival, after Ventura got elected, he came to a festival on the State Capitol lawn, and he was selling a t-shirt that said, I beat up your Governor. So he had a merch, he had his own merch table at the festival. That's great. So that was fun. I'm not a professional in wrestling. I'm just a fan. I've had a couple of brushes with it, but I've always found the wrestlers accommodating, once they're out of their protective shell of the business. It's such a, it's such a weird subculture that I really drawn to it as just entertainment and a male soap opera, that sort of thing."
His love of pro wrestling:
"I grew up....I was in Duluth, an AWA country, in high school and college. I grew up in Southeastern Ohio, which was the Sheik's promotion with Wild Bull Curry and Bill Miller and I'm forgetting some of the greats. Jerry Graham was there, and, so we got that Big Time Wrestling on TV, and I fell for it there, and it's just been a natural progression, it's just one of those things that, It is a great diversion and there's good guys and bad guys and a soap opera aspect to it. It's fun to see the storylines develop. I remember very vividly one of the nights I did ring announcing in Duluth, Ivan Koloff's on the card and the action spills out of the ring right by the timekeeper's table where I am. Ivan just did these very light atomps on his opponent, it was clearly fake. And I've got a t shirt that says, To me it's still real, dammit.' But that night I realized it wasn't."
Whether there's a kayfabe in politics similar to pro wrestling and whether Ventura broke that:
"One thing Ventura was very adamant about was that he was not subject to special interest money, as an example. He would say that the the folks that do the politicians that do take the special interest money and are beholden to special interests are really just basically scoundrels who are at the public trough and are using rich people's money to get elected. He would often brush his hand above his head as if to say, 'I have no strings on me.' He called the campaign finance system like organized bribery. He was very tough on that stuff and in, in that way he thought the Democratic and Republican politicians were a bunch of bought and paid for phonies and, but masquerading as these public servants and so forth. It was a little over the top, but that was one of his constants was how phony the the establishment politicians were and are."
His dealings with Ventura while covering his political career:
"I was on the radio for 30 years in Minneapolis and then often talked about wrestling and we had wrestling guests come in from time to promote the local shows in the twin cities. So I think I got along with him better than most because I respected what he had done for a living before. So, we got along fine, but it wasn't after he left a SummerSlam in '99. He was a special troubleshooting referee for the SummerSlam in the Target Center in Minneapolis. He got all kinds of heat for doing this outside gig and disgracing the state of Minnesota, using his notoriety to do pro wrestling of all things and he got a lot of heat. His press secretary asked me if I'd come, this is a couple days later, asked me if I'd come in and do an interview just about wrestling and what this was about and how it promoted Minnesota and all this. So I said, sure, I'll have an audience with the Governor. So I went in and asked him about, a series, you know how you've interviewed people. You know how it works. You start off with a couple of softballs and you gent you build the tempo and ask the tougher stuff as the interview goes along. This is in the cassette recorder days. Finally, he turned off the cassette machine and took the cassette. Wow. I had to negotiate with his press secretary for several hours to finally get the cassette back and do the story. It wasn't all waterfalls and rainbows."
Covering Ventura vs "atypical" politicians:
"Mike, it was so stressful because he could be on a telephone with a student radio station in Providence, Rhode Island, walking to his car at 4:45 in the afternoon and say something outrageous and it's on the wire and you've got it. It was stressful and around the clock keeping track of him because you just never know when he was going to make news. Looking back on it 25 years later, I look back on it fondly, but I do remember at the time, while it was fun and a big story and international in scope and all that, but it was stressful."
Ventura's legacy as a politician in Minnesota, 25 years later:
"I think the third party aspect of it is quite an achievement. I think, Minnesota has had some flirtations with third party candidates throughout its history, but this was a case where it was successful. He was a fighter for legalized marijuana, which is happening in our State this year. He was strong for the Equal Rights Amendment for women. He was for abortion rights. He was for light rail transit mass transit, along with a bus system. He wanted a light rail commuter system, which we have. So you look, He appointed, I think it's 73 judges through a merit selection process. I think when you look back on it, when you strip away all of the circus aspect of it, I think his record is pretty, pretty solid. He only got, he only stopped getting progress when the legislature of Democrats and Republican - and he's an independent - stopped being afraid of him and his voters, and he had lost some oomph with the voters. That kind of curtailed his his success rate of legislation. Had he wanted to be a party builder, and he didn't, but if he had wanted to be one, he could have really, I think, sustained a very strong third party apparatus in Minnesota. But that wasn't part of his agenda. He was moving on to something else."
Thoughts on the documentary:
"I liked it. I thought Mary Lahammer, the Co-Executive Producer spent...she started the year that Ventura ran for office and she had, she and Governor Ventura got along very well and she had a lot of access to him. Her interviews with Jesse, the people around him, I think, are quite valuable for the historic record and I think it shows that if you strip away some of the nonsense, he was a pretty progressive Governor. Some of the legislative stuff, the bills that he passed and the causes that he supported got lost in the tumult, in the Playboy interview or when they were drunk in St. Paul on the David Letterman Show and all that, I think we try to highlight that stuff, but strip away a little bit of it to see what was the record that he left in office. I think that part is valuable to the historic record."
Ventura's legacy as a personality:
"I think one thing is, what is possible in America? This is a guy that, came up...he was a swimmer. He wasn't a collegiate or high school wrestler and he forged this career in the media and in movies and politics. I think in a way it was a precursor to, the 90s and the 2000s and beyond where social media creates celebrities a dime a dozen and it's easy to do online social media wise. He did this really before there was a social media and it's just amazing what he put together. I think people, just the reaction we've had this week that I've gotten as I go around town, I think the people that watched [the doc] have thought, I thought he was a goof, but he was pretty substantial, and I think this may elevate him a little bit in the eyes of Minnesota, that it wasn't just a blatant career move, and that he profited off of being governor, that he actually did some substantial stuff, and you might disagree with what he did, but there was some product there that he did produce."
Thoughts on today's pro wrestling:
"It's changed hasn't it? The belts are less important. Since people know that it's predetermined and it's scripted and so forth. I think it's turned a little bit more into what is, what does Jim Cornette call it? Trampoline cowboys. The audience kind of judges the quality of the match on the quality of the stunts and the big moves and so forth. I wish the belts were more important, but the athleticism is amazing. It's dangerous. I think that WWE has been in a pretty good of a hot streak. I think AEW is a little bit trying to find its footing. The CM Punk business was very intriguing to watch over the last year. That that's been an out of the ring soap opera, which has been fun to follow. I follow publications like yours and Wrestling Observer, Wade Keller here based in the Twin Cities. I listen to the Jim Cornette and Brian Last podcast. So I keep up with it, but it's still fun. I don't quite have the wonder in it that I did when I was a kid, but I still follow it pretty closely. And, I only work one day a week these days. I'm retired from a radio and just work one day a week on TV. So it's a great, it's a great hobby for me to keep track of. There's more than enough content for you to follow then if you've got six days off."
His favorite memory ring announcing:
"I'll tell you what it was. This is really funny. Paul Ellering and Jesse Ventura have a bodypose down. They were going to see who had the best physique by audience applause. So both of them get in the ring and they have the spotlight on them and they're doing their poses. The promoter had told me, just announce Ellering by applause last. Okay, so he didn't tell me why, but he said, just make sure Ellering by his applause last. Measurement is last. 'Ladies and gentlemen, by your applause, we'll determine who has the best physique and wins the bodybuilding trophy.' First, Jesse Ventura. Boo boo, we hate him. Now, Precious Paul Ellering. Hooray! Okay, Ventura grabs the body posedown trophy, which had been gimmicked, cut nearly in half, and he brains Ellering with the bodybuilding trophy. That set up, and of course the crowd was just shocked that Ellering would get Pearl Harbored, as we said back in the pre-politically correct days, would be Pearl Harbored by Ventura with the Body Posedown trophy and of course that set up a rematch for next month at the Duluth Arena. That's one that stands out, that was a lot of fun because it got the crowd involved."
Our complete conversation with Eric is available now for PWInsiderElite.com subscribers.
You can stream the Ventura documentary now on the PBS App!
Eric still covers the political realm, hosting "Almanac" every week on Twin Cities PBS, a post he has held since 1986!
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