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WOTD - DEAN CELEBRATION WEEK: DICK MURDOCH

RIPPA

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Ramsey

Ramsey

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I wish I could remember where I read the story (someone wiser than I will I'm sure will know the source) about Dick Murdoch and Dick Slater when they were teaming in WCW. Apparently during their time together, the Steiner's were terrorizing every team on the roster, stiffing them, dropping them on their heads, etc. One night they were matched with Murdoch and Slater. Everyone in the back was watching to see what would happen and, strangely enough, the Steiner's were on their best behavior.

 

I know the way of the wrestling world has become the streamlined athlete of the future, pretty enough and suave enough to be a "multi-media crossover product" but fuck that. I like raw boned rednecks with a beer bellies that work stiff and punch each other.

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Cobra Commander

Cobra Commander

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Murdoch randomly turning up in the '95 (?) Royal Rumble was one of the great WTF moments of all time.

sadly I doubt there's footage of the Backlund/Hall matches where Dick Murdoch was seconding Bob Backlund and there were Murdoch/Razor spots because Hall couldn't work a coherent match with Bob Backlund

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RIPPA

RIPPA

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Did they award a prize for highest finish in the IWGP League for a foreigner? 

 

It's definitely from the 84 IWGP League and Murdoch was the highest placing foreigner (assuming you count Andre as a New Japan regular) - that's all I got.

 

It wasn't a bet between the two since Murdoch clearly acts surprised that he is winning it and then motions like he is going to share it with Adonis.

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RIPPA

RIPPA

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Oh and if no one has seen it before

 

The WON Obit for Murdoch

 

It should come as no secret that many pro wrestlers aren't anything like what they are portrayed on television. Others take from their natural personality and do things to exaggerate those qualities to become their wrestling personality. In the case of a few, what you see on television as far as personality is actually the real deal. 

 
Dick Murdoch was almost exactly like the character he portrayed on television. Sometimes charming. Sometimes obnoxious. Often times hilarious. Always a character. Always the center of attention. He was a legendary story teller, whether they were true or not was usually irrelevant, and everyone who met him had their own set of stories to tell about him. He was one of the great workers of his era. He was a legitimate household name in Japan, having spent more time in Japan than any foreign wrestler in history with the exception of Stan Hansen, Abdullah the Butcher and Tiger Jeet Singh. While he was a star virtually everywhere he went, he was the type of a performer whose talents were more appreciated and even raised more awe among his fellow wrestlers than to most of the fans. Although his looks, physique and facial expressions made him a classic heel, he actually achieved his best success as a drawing card in places like West Texas and the old Mid South territory as almost a classic kick-ass character babyface. 
 
Hart Richard Murdoch passed away suddenly of a massive heart attack shortly after midnight on Friday night/Saturday morning, technically in the wee hours on 6/15. He was 49. He had promoted and wrestled a show the previous night at the old Amarillo Sports Arena, the same building he practically grew up in as a child watching his father, Frankie Hill Murdoch, in a legendary area feud against Dory Funk--well before anyone called him Dory Sr. Murdoch had a backer and was set to run a series of shows this summer at the Sports Arena called "Blast from the Past Wrestling," with this past week's show being the third of the series. The night of his death, he was competing in a rodeo doing bull roping as part of the Coors Team Roping Association, also in Amarillo. As perhaps America's No. 1 consumer of Coors Light, it was customary to go out after the rodeo and drink with the guys, well, actually it was customary for Murdoch to drink all day most any day, but he told his wife that he wasn't feeling well and wanted to go home. She found him dead on the couch at their home in Canyon, TX, near Amarillo, later that evening. It was not an unfamiliar story in Amarillo, as a generation earlier, two other area legendary area wrestlers and tough-guys, Mike DiBiase and Dory Funk Sr., both of whom were still active, passed away in Amarillo from heart attacks. 
 
The news was a shock to everyone in wrestling, however apparently Murdoch's blood pressure in recent months had been sky high, and he had gained even more weight. When he wrestled his final match in Japan on 5/23, he looked almost like an exaggerated version of himself. Funeral services were held on 6/17 in his hometown of Canyon, TX. 
 
Dory Funk Jr. knew Murdoch, who was born August 16, 1946 in Amarillo, from when Murdoch was four years old and Dory was eight. Murdoch traveled around the circuit with his father from the age of five and the two would see each other at the matches and see their respective fathers duke it out in the early 1950s. The first incarnation of the Funk-Murdoch Amarillo feud was so heated that during one calendar year, they headlined the Amarillo Sports Arena, a small old-time wrestling all that was legendary world wide among wrestlers for its atmosphere, in singles matches 30 of the 52 weekly shows. Murdoch was a wild kid even then, running around ringside, throwing chairs, wanting to hop the rail, and basically being rambunctious and misbehaving. Those traits never left him, as he was famous within wrestling for people who went out with him for doing, well, almost exactly what people who watched wrestling on television would assume Dick Murdoch would do after he had a few beers in him. 
 
If he was outside the ring exactly what he looked like on television to the fans, a beer drinking crazy redneck, he was exactly the opposite inside the ring. 
 
Despite having a physique, which the joke was, looked like a grape balancing on two sticks, at about 6-foot-3 and weighing anywhere from 260 to probably upwards of 300 in recent years, Murdoch was among the best workers of his era, certainly among the top ten in the United States during the late 70s, and probably one of the most versatile workers of all-time. If need be, he could exchange holds on the mat in an entertaining manner. As a brawler, he was right up there with Stan Hansen and Bruiser Brody as the top of his era. Despite not looking the part, when he wanted to, he could go up for dropkicks, leapfrogs and flying head scissors. He was equally effective as a performer as both a babyface and a heel. Many people talk about the night in Knoxville in 1994 when he wrestled Bob Armstrong and Armstrong held him in a headlock for 23 straight minutes and Murdoch knew so many tricks of working in and out of a headlock that they kept the audience entertained. And when one throws in aspects of working such as timing, both timing of moves and when to do moves to get maximum response out of them, crowd psychology and facial expressions, he could best be described, as a worker the calibre of a Terry Funk that put himself at less physical risk than Funk did. He probably threw the single best worked punch in the business, and probably one of the best shoot punches as well if need be outside the ring. And he appeared to have phenomenal stamina, at least considering how his physique looked, working many 60:00 singles matches during his career, including a few all-time classics at the age of 40 in the Mid South territory in world title matches against Ric Flair. Others would say it wasn't so much he had great stamina but simply a combination of knowing when to pick his spots and simply having the guts to work through the exhaustion barrier. Of course, he was all that on his good days. 
 
When he was in the mood to clown around, which was a lot of the time, particularly as he got older, he could clown around and get the crowd going as well as almost anyone. And when he was in the mood to have a stinker of a match, he was strong and tough enough that his opponent wasn't about to be able to get him to do anything. 
 
And that was the enigma of him. He was strong without looking strong. Agile while looking anything but. And he was a great natural athlete, without any formal athletic background. 
 
One story wrestlers from West Texas love to talk about revolved around a West Texas State alumni football game in the 70s. During his wrestling career, Murdoch was always billed as a former football player from West Texas State, the college that produced numerous wrestling stars such as The Funks, Stan Hansen, Bruiser Brody, Dusty Rhodes, Ted DiBiase, Tully Blanchard, Manny Fernandez, Tito Santana and Bobby Duncum. That was one of the few things about him that was a work. Since he was from the Amarillo area, it just naturally fit when he worked out of the area since the college built up a mystique in some territories because of the number of successful pro wrestlers who came out of it, and also because he regularly teamed with Rhodes during the early part of his career and in many ways was best known in certain parts of the country for his long-time association with Rhodes, who was the Southeast's No. 1 attraction at the time. The fact was, Murdoch never even played football in high school. Anyway, being the b.s. artist and tough guy that he was, he talked his way into an alumni game claiming he was a former middle linebacker at the school, and played in the game, and the story in town was that he was so good that they thought he was too rough on the football players. He was just a large coordinated guy with a lot of guts, whose athletic talents were in unique events such as the ability to hit a sign on the road with a beer bottle every time out while driving at 75 miles per hour. 
 
While he was successful almost everywhere he went until the inevitable slow down that comes with age, he gained his most fame and made his biggest paydays in Japan. As several wrestlers of today have lucked out financially by being at the right contract stage at the greatest time ever to be a top wrestler in America, Murdoch was in much the same position in Japan. 
 
In the early 80s, New Japan and All Japan were at war. Murdoch had been a top star with All Japan from his debut in 1973, capping it off by winning the United National title (one of the three titles that comprises today's Triple Crown) from Jumbo Tsuruta on February 23, 1980, and dropping it back two weeks later. At the time Antonio Inoki of New Japan was doing a promotional gimmick of creating a tournament to determine the real world championship, to be called the IWGP title, with a world wide tournament. To get his new title over as something more than just another promotion creating a world title, Inoki tried to create the illusion (sound familiar) that it was open to wrestlers from different companies and to get this illusion over, top stars that had never worked for New Japan before or had never worked in Japan before needed to be involved. And in particular, wrestlers that had worked for rival All Japan needed to be involved to give it the credibility he wanted. New Japan then raided All Japan of its of its top foreign stars, Murdoch and Abdullah the Butcher, to get the tournament idea over, with Murdoch debuting on August 21, 1981 with his new employer, with a very lucrative by the standards of the time contract paying him $7,000 per week and he remained one of New Japan's top regulars until they stopped using him in August of 1989. 
 
With New Japan, Murdoch was always one of the top pushed foreigners, but promoted at a level below the megastars such as Hulk Hogan or Andre the Giant, more on the level of people like Adrian Adonis or Masked Superstar, who were top workers and solid attractions for New Japan. These were the types who would work the six-mans on top most nights of the tour, occasionally work programs back-and-forth with Tatsumi Fujinami (the group's No. 2 babyface), and get a rare singles main event and lose to Inoki, including once in the finals of the 1986 IWGP singles tournament. 
 
It was in Japan that Murdoch's second most famous tag team was born, with Adonis. The two were similar in many ways. Unique physiques that belied their ability. Good charisma but not big drawing power charisma. Excellent workers. Both made their national reputations originally the same way. Murdoch by tagging with a supercharismatic Dusty Rhodes in Michigan and more so in the AWA, being the team workhouse to compensate for Rhodes' weakness as a worker. Adonis the exact same way, only with Jesse Ventura. Billed as the North South Connection, the two became the top foreign tag team with New Japan during the television glory days of the promotion when it was on network television in prime time every Saturday night doing monster ratings. Because of him always being in a top match, his unique character nicknamed the "Super Rodeo Machine" and the television visibility, it made him a household name in Japan even though he was never in the top draw position, and kept his career alive in Japan until his death. 
 
Murdoch & Adonis went to the finals of the Madison Square Garden tag team tournament in 1983, New Japan's counter to All Japan's traditional World Tag League event in December, losing to the dream team of Inoki & Hogan. As was traditional, Vince McMahon Sr. attended the final nights of the tour and it wasn't long before the two were put together in the WWF as well, with vignettes being done of two totally opposite personalities being put together. They captured the WWF tag team titles from Rocky Johnson & Tony Atlas at TV tapings in April 1984 in Hamburg, PA, and held them until January 21, 1985, losing to Barry Windham & Mike Rotundo. While holding the belts, they continued to work regularly for New Japan as well, including going to the finals of the 1984 MSG tournament, losing to Inoki & Fujinami. Since they no longer held the WWF world belts as a team, New Japan created a new tag team title, the WWF International tag team titles (the predecessor of today's IWGP tag team titles), and Murdoch & Adonis were made the first champions, although they almost immediately dropped the titles to Fujinami & Kengo Kimura. Murdoch left the WWF in 1985 to return to Bill Watts' Mid South Wrestling, where he had his greatest success as a babyface in the late 70s as the territory's top star, partially due to politics as the WWF/New Japan relationship was falling apart and Murdoch was a bigger star in Japan than in the WWF while Adonis stayed in the WWF, put on an enormous amount of weight and did the gay gimmick. At that point Murdoch formed a tag team with Superstar. After Adonis left the WWF and dropped some weight in 1988, the duo was put back together in Japan, including losing an IWGP tag title match to Riki Choshu & Masa Saito just two weeks before Adonis' untimely death in an auto accident. 
 
New Japan in the mid-80s was a crazy place to be with all the various styles blended together. It was the infancy of what is now called shoot style, with the likes of Akira Maeda, Yoshiaki Fujiwara and Nobuhiko Takada educating the fans to a new style, which few foreigners could do and even fewer in those days wanted to learn. Yet it was Murdoch, who picked up the exchanging submissions almost immediately and was one of the few wrestlers who could work the new style, and had the respect of the younger wrestlers as a tough enough guy who would have no fear in punching them in the nose if anyone tried to get cute. 
 
"He had the most powerful six-inch punch," said Jim Cornette, who liked Murdoch so much when he managed him in 1987 for Jim Crockett Promotions that he frequently brought him into Smoky Mountain Wrestling as a secret weapon on major shows. "I could hold my tennis racquet six inches from him and he'd throw a punch that you wouldn't even see that would knock it clear across the room. He was the strongest guy for how he looked." 
 
However in a worked situation, Murdoch had the rep for throwing the best looking punch in the business, but his opponent would never even feel it. 
 
"I can't think of anyone today to compare him to in that he could get something out of anyone," said Cornette. "I'd book him in matches and put myself at ringside just so I could watch. He was hilarious." 
 
Murdoch's first tour of Japan was for Yoshinosato's old Japanese Wrestling Alliance in February of 1968. He continued with that promotion through 1972, when, working for the AWA, he and Rhodes toured for the International Wrestling Enterprises which was affiliated with the AWA, during 1973. He switched to Giant Baba's All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1973 and remained there until the New Japan jump. After New Japan, Murdoch worked his way around the indie scene touring for FMW, IWA, W*ING and WAR with his final match in Japan being on 5/23 for Pro Wrestling Fujiwara Gumi where he faced the company's namesake in the main event at Korakuen Hall. Tokyo Pro Wrestling owner Takashi Ishikawa had planned to sign Murdoch this year to build him back up for a legends feud with Abdullah the Butcher. In all, Murdoch made 54 tours of Japan. 
 
It was in Mid South Wrestling where Murdoch picked up the guise of Captain Redneck. Billed as a former U.S. Marine, which was also a work as Murdoch started in pro wrestling as a referee right after his 1964 high school graduation and never looked back, he did a redneck gimmick as a heel tag team with veteran Killer Karl Kox (Herb Gerwig). Kox, who was 17 years older than Murdoch, did the teacher/student gimmick with him, with the two capturing the old United States tag titles from Danny Hodge & Jay Clayton. Next came the inevitable split-up and what was probably the most famous singles feud of his career. 
 
Murdoch's babyface push came largely from area booker Bill Watts, who at the time had not yet taken over the territory run by former wrestling legend Leroy McGuirk. Watts was the top babyface and wanted to slow down, and figured Murdoch, doing the patriotic former marine redneck gimmick would work great in the Arkansas, Oklahoma and Louisiana territory. From late 1975 through mid-1977, Murdoch was the area's top babyface, largely feuding with Kox in what are still thought of today as some of the greatest matches ever in that area and the feud climaxed in several matches that drew huge crowds of more than 15,000 at the Louisiana Superdome. It was in this guise where Murdoch picked up the brainbuster, Kox's finisher, as his pet hold. The strange part is sometimes, amidst the wild brawling and the blood, in matches that fans watching say looked as close to real as any matches they ever saw in the territory, Murdoch would at various opportune times tell a joke and try to crack Kox up. He was forever clowning in the ring, sometimes doing his Curley of the three stooges sell job. Often in Japan when working with an American, he'd loudly tell jokes in the quiet arenas in the middle of his matches that most of the fans couldn't understand. The teacher/student angle was one of Watts' favorite as he would regularly recreate it as a way to push a new babyface, and the role was recreated with Murdoch in the teacher role for Ted DiBiase, with the eventual turn, leading to Murdoch returning home to Amarillo. 
 
Murdoch had already been a top draw for Dory & Terry Funk as an occasional headliner in Amarillo. He grew up in the city, where his father had been the long-time top heel. He started out as a referee there right out of high school. One time, during a match where Sputnik Monroe was facing Duke Myers, a big cowboy got in the ring to go after Sputnik. Monroe kept his cool and started shadow-boxing and entertaining the crowd, but judging from the size of the guy, he probably would have killed Sputnik if they locked up which would have been an embarrassment to the wrestling business in that era. Murdoch, then 18, jumped in front of Sputnik and beat the hell out of the way and hurled him out of the ring. That was probably not the first time something like that happened, and definitely not the last. People remember that in the late 1970s, when Murdoch was a regular either on top or second from the top in St. Louis, flying in from whatever territory he was working, that Sam Muchnick could count on about once a year getting a phone call early the next morning after a show about a fight in the bar, usually the story ended with one punch being thrown, by Murdoch, and the fight was over. At that point in time, the biggest draw in St. Louis was Dick the Bruiser, and many credit wrestlers like Murdoch and Harley Race with their great working ability for keeping Bruiser's mystique and drawing power alive in main events long after it should have left him. While Japanese lore has it that Murdoch's first professional match was against Bob Geigel in Kansas City in 1965, he probably had some matches on the road in the Amarillo territory before going up to Kansas City and later into Tennessee where he formed a tag team with Don Carson. The general consensus was in 1965, after working nightly and training under Geigel and Pat O'Connor, he became a good worker before his 20th birthday and was the 1965 NWA rookie of the year. 
 
He reprised his fathers' feud, working against both Dory Sr. and Terry in Amarillo, and occasionally facing Dory Jr. when he was NWA world champion. Since Amarillo was never a big money territory, Murdoch would come home for a while, but then depart, but kept building his local name over the years until he became a top drawing card. 
 
"When he was away and would come back, we'd book him against whoever the top guy was in the territory and we'd always figure on it drawing a sellout," remembered Dory Jr., who along with Terry owned the Amarillo territory after the death of their father. 
 
After the big run in Mid South, Murdoch, Bob Windham (Blackjack Mulligan) and Mario Savoldi bought the Amarillo territory from the Funks and ran it for three years, largely around Murdoch and Mulligan. The first year was good. The second and third weren't. The group lost so much in the bad years that it resulted in the end of the long history of the Amarillo territory. It took years, even with Murdoch earning a six-figure income working part-time in Japan and being a top star in the U.S. in the interim, for Murdoch to get out of the financial mess the last two years of the territory created for him. 
 
Before Captain Redneck, The Super Rodeo Machine and the North South Connection were the Texas Outlaws--Dirty Dick Murdoch and Dirty Dusty Rhodes. The two came together shortly after Rhodes broke into pro wrestling after playing some semi-pro football. The two first went into Detroit in late 1969. Patterned after the duo of Dick the Bruiser, an all-time legend in Detroit, & The Crusher, being two large brawling bullies, the two won the area's version of the NWA world tag team title from Ben Justice & The Stomper. After that they went into Florida for the first time, then to Australia, and achieved their greatest fame during a several year run in the AWA as the No. 2 heel tag team behind Nick Bockwinkel & Ray Stevens. Their role was basically as a stepping stone team, in that they would put over a babyface team, which would give the team credibility and earn them the title shot at Stevens & Bockwinkel, usually on the show the following month. The two heel teams eventually met in a series of matches where Rhodes' babyface charisma first became apparent. During this period, the two had a second run in Florida. After Rhodes hit it big as a babyface in Florida in 1974, Murdoch would frequently come into town for short, and occasionally long stints, usually to help Rhodes in a feud, then to turn on Rhodes out of jealousy of Rhodes' popularity. 
 
During the AWA run came the movie, "The Wrestler," a nearly totally forgettable film produced by Verne Gagne except for the bar scene where a karate guy (played by the late Harold "Oddjob Tosh Togo" Sakata) kept making fun of Rhodes & Murdoch until they responded with a campy bar fight scene ending with Togo and a Japanese cohort being slammed through a juke box. 
 
Murdoch also had a cameo doing wrestling scenes in the Sylvester Stallone movie "Paradise Alley." While flying from Los Angeles with Dory Funk, where the movie was being made, to San Francisco, where both were scheduled to appear in a Roy Shire Battle Royal at the Cow Palace, the two were in first class drinking and telling loud stories and basically being obnoxious and annoying everyone on the plane, while apparently being oblivious to everything around them. As the plane landed, Dory noticed that right next to him on the plane was Bob Hope. He and Murdoch then started talking to Hope, but when the plane door opened, Hope probably did the quickest sprint at his even then advanced age out the door. 
 
Perhaps his most memorable angle of the 1980s came in late 1985 on one of the single greatest one hour wrestling television shows ever. Ric Flair came into Mid South Wrestling as NWA champion to work at the Irish McNeill Boys Club against Ted DiBiase, who was then a heel. Murdoch at the time was a babyface, and had just lost the North American title a few weeks earlier. Still, fans knew of their past teacher/student relationship. Murdoch came out and asked DiBiase to step aside and let him get the title shot. DiBiase refused. Murdoch posted DiBiase, who bled like crazy and was carted off. Bill Watts did a legendary interview warning fans that a pressure bandage has been put on DiBiase, but he was going to wrestle, but if the bandage came off, he was warning everyone that it would get very bloody and talked about DiBiase's guts in just taking the match and comparing it to the lack of guts of Roberto Duran in the no mas boxing match with Sugar Ray Leonard. Of course DiBiase bled again, came close, but ultimately lost the title match when he took a bump over the top and basically collapsed on the floor due to loss of blood. After the match, Murdoch gave him two brainbusters on the floor, turning himself heel and DiBiase babyface, and allowing them both to leave the territory because of Japan tag team tournament commitments--Murdoch being suspended, DiBiase billed as suffering a potential career ending injury. 
 
Murdoch and Watts always had something of a love/hate relationship. Watts would bring Murdoch in and Murdoch, when motivated, got the job done in the ring and on the mic. But Watts was a disciplinarian and Murdoch lived by his own rules, which were basically doing what he wanted when he wanted. One week, trying to make a point, when Murdoch was on top and the territory had a big money week, Watts fined Murdoch, who arrived late a few nights and no-showed a date everything he was to earn that week except $1, and gave him a $1 check to get his attention. The final break-up occurred in 1986, one year before Watts sold the territory to Jim Crockett. Murdoch was taking another West Texas State football alumnus with a wrestling family background, Kelly Kiniski, under his wing (in real life, not in the storyline). He felt Watts was treating Kiniski unfairly, particularly when he fired Kiniski as part of a numbers crunch. Murdoch spoke up because in firing Kiniski, Watts kept two bodybuilders with no wrestling talent because he felt they had more long term potential. The two bodybuilders were Jim Hellwig and Steve Borden. Murdoch liked to tell the story, whether true or not is probably another story, that during a run with Watts, the two were together at a bar after the show and Watts was reading the bible. Murdoch asked if he really truly believed in it and Watts said yes. Then he asked him if he really believed in the ten commandments and Watts said yes. Then he asked him what about the one about "Thou shalt not steal." And as Murdoch's story went, that's when Watts said, "you're fired." 
 
In recent years, Murdoch had continued to work smaller promotions in Japan and worked independent shows throughout the cities that comprised the old Mid South territory and in Texas. He had moved to Walsenburg, CO for a few years where he operated a bar, but in 1995 moved back to Amarillo and was married once again. He had a passion for steer roping and in his heyday as a wrestler had little time to do it, so he had more time in recent years.
 
In early 1995, he got another shot with the WWF, appearing in the Royal Rumble and working some house shows as a manager for Bob Backlund, largely at the request of Razor Ramon. Ramon was doing a house show program with Backlund, and figured that it was impossible to have a match with Backlund, so instead he could work around Backlund using Murdoch, the master at controlling a crowd, to control the match from the outside. Apparently nobody had any idea of what to do with him and he made his share of enemies complaining through all the television tapings as they continued to bring him in, pay him, and not come up with anything for him to do, so eventually he wasn't brought back. When it was suggested to bring Murdoch in as a manager for John Hawk, when it was decided to give Hawk the Stan Hansen gimmick, because who could teach someone to be Stan Hansen better than Dick Murdoch, but Dutch Mantel wound up getting the nod.

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