On a side note when I worked with WCW back in the late 90's, there was a story going around that before getting hired in the 80s by the NWA (while it was still run by Crockette) Rocky King had been a homeless man for many years.
No one knows how many years he had been homeless. Rocky had always been a very private individual and never talked about his private life because he felt ashamed of it and inferior while being around these other "privledged" guys. He had some self esteem and insecurity issues that bothered him for a really long time. He only opened up in small bits to a few people that he trusted (such as Pez Whatley who he nearly always hung out with exclusively after Pez arrived in WCW after retiring and working as an agent for the office and a trainer at the Power Plant) He stated that he became homeless at Christmas time (never heard the exact reason or circumstances why) during his senior year of high school. And since no one really knew how old he was, it was speculation to how many years had passed since that time and how long he had been homeless.
However, he was always around downtown Atlanta begging for money and hanging around outside the arena with his cup whenever there was a show. (or any event of any kind) There was some lazy workers that were employed by the arena (the Omni in Atlanta) as the general building maintenance and cleaning crew. (These were not NWA workers like the ring crew, but the employees of the Omni that worked there like the concession station workers, ticket takers, etc..). But some of the lazy workers (about 5-6) there started pooling $5-10 each and they would offer it to Rocky King if he would come in and do the "undesireable" type of work that they were supposed to do but didn't want to. Like cleaning the bathrooms, unclogging shit packed toilets (apparently The Raging Bull Manny Fernandez was infamous for shitting so much that he would actually clog up TWO toilets. He would pack shit into one until it was clogged full and then later come back later after his match and clog up another one and he never did a curtesy flush or anything, so it was all backed up and required a stick or clothes hanger being inserted and furiously worked back and forth in order to chop up the turd logs into manageable size pieces that could be flushed), cleaning the blood and vomit off the dressing room floors (Tim Horner and Ronnie Garvin were both said to be so upset by the sight of blood that they would throw up. Horner was noted for projectile vomiting across the floor at times to hit the walls and lockers. He once was said to have fainted on the spot and couldn't be revived for several minutes after a victim of Abdullah the Butcher was carried back to the dressing room).
So anyway they would hire Rocky to come in and do this for them while they goofed out for the next several hours getting paid anyway. (and would help scourgue up left over food and snacks from the concession stands that didn't sell and was going to be thrown away for him as well) It went on for several months before Omni management discovered what was happening. They fired the workers who were doing this, but they were scared to really do anything to Rocky in fear of him going to the state labor board and claiming that he was working as a real employee of the Omni. (Because the workers had given him a Omni Staff tshirt to wear so he would blend in and not be questioned). So they hired him out as a contractor (to 1099 his tax form, never expecting him to file taxes anyway). They gave him jobs like directing traffic into their parking garage and overflow lots. Picking up trash outside on the sidewalk at the main entrance, etc.. Any place where a scruffy black man would not be looked at closely by their paying customers and perhaps generate disgust. (Remember this is Atlanta and it was in the 80s, still operating under backwater Southern views).
Well since Rocky was not a full time employee (or direct employee) of the Omni (hired as a contractor) and he was in the area all the time anyway (no home to go to), he started arriving at the building in the mornings of the shows and offering the NWA to help set up their rings, backstage props, etc... So he did that for about a year. (remember the Omni didn't have events everyday and he could only work with NWA when they were running shows in the Omni.) So he was helping during the day of the show with the manual labor for NWA, showering in the back, and then changing shirts to go out and work for the Omni. Eventually the NWA management noticed him as a hard worker and offered him some hours each week when they needed help at their TBS location of weekly studio tapings.
It was while he was working as a cleaner and basically gofer around the studio that he would strike up conversations with the wrestlers backstage being a total mark for some of the angles and story lines going on at the time. He kept trying over and over to get a real job within the wrestling world and not just in the studio where it was taped or the building it was held. He would do anything, he told them. He would be the guy to come down to the ring before the match started and carry the wrestlers belts, robes, props, etc.. back to the dressing room (sort of like the minor duties a "batboy" does in baseball) but mostly he what he dreamed about was to be a manager of a tag team. When asked why he didn't want to just be a wrestler, he remarked that he couldn't fight well enough to win a match with a lady.
- and I will state that I have no way to verify how much this next part is true or not, but everyone who told me this seemed to all have a very consistent story of the same kind -
From what I have heard, his desire to be an actual employee of the NWA (and Crockett) came to the attention of Ole Anderson who was still on friendly terms with his old foe Thunderbolt Patterson - who was a black man also. Thunderbolt had always claimed that racism held him back and his career could have been so much better overall if he had only been given a chance. (maybe so, who knows as it is one of those "what if" type things). Ole had long been claiming that while Thunderbolt was correct in his racism claim, he still should be proud of his career because overall his accomplishments and win/loss record in the Southern territories was second only to Tony Atlas at the times and in many ways, he had outdid Tony in many areas like charisma and fan appeal.
So to make a long story short, Ole got Rocky hired for the sole purpose to simply show Thunderbolt Patterson what his (thunderbolts) career COULD have been like. That is to say that he (Thunderbolt) could have lost every single match he was put in. (although later Rocky did win a few). While he was doing this in an effort to cheer Thunderbolt up and lift him up out of a depression slump he was in over his past (and lack of a current future and monetary savings, etc..) it was an incredibly mean thing to do to anyone if the only purpose you were hiring them and basically handing them their dream on a silver platter but only to humiliate them nonstop on national tv for a few months and then snatch the dream away again by firing them. (Ole originally got Rocky hired for only 18 bookings, which is just a little over 3 months).
So that is how Rocky King got hired into wrestling. Ole had instructed the dressing room to wrestle especially stiff with Rocky, even if he got injured for real because overall, he was really a nobody. He wasn't going to be there long. This was to perhaps show thunderbolt that if all else, at least he had good health at the end of his career and no serious injuries. Some of the wrestlers that had gotten used to seeing Rocky at the tv studio and the Omni had become somewhat chatty and friendly with him on a small level, thought this was wrong and unfair. Especially when word got out about the situation he was dealing with (homeless and no family), the last thing anyone wanted to do was injure an untrained wrestler who had no safety net to support him while he was out (no home, no family, no money, no insurance, etc..) So quite a few got together and told him what the deal was (about Anderson wanting them to stiff him on purpose) and informed him that it was in his best interests to sell it like he really was injured. Thus the art of Super Selling was born in that very first match.
It was said that no one had seen him with his shirt off prior to his first match and when he took it off, everyone was amazed at the above average development he had, especially his abs. Quite a few asked how to become leaner and get abs like that and he responded "It's hard to be fat when you starving every day."
He sold so well that he quickly became the most sought after opponent by heels for their squash match. Instead of the 18 bookings that he had originally hired for, he ended up employed for 20 years. He did get injured quite seriously in real life (not sure if it was a wrestling injury or from something else) but even then suits at WCW )after they bought Crockett out) liked him so much that they kept him around, giving him a job as manager/roadie/pest for the Freebirds with a Little Richard type gimmick. After that, he finished up his time in WCW as a referee before retiring completely. When you hear about people like Flair and others filing bankruptcy and being broke in real life after earning millions of dollars every years, it was ironic that he entered the business homeless and never earned the big pay checks like the main eventers, but yet he managed what little money he was paid very wisely and ended up owning 2 homes with no mortgage, his own independent wrestling federation (not sure if it still operates), he owned a car dealership (or least he did, not sure of current status) after partnering up with the car wizard Bill Herd in Atlanta to help run shows designed to keep kids off the streets, and is affiliated (either as owner or partners, not sure which) with a couple of wrestling schools.
The times I was there and saw him in person, he was always very quiet, very reserved and super super nice and polite. He had a Bible that he always carried with him EVERYWHERE. Never had a harsh word to anyone or a complaint of any kind. Even after he retired he would still show up for matches if they were close by and was always welcomed to the back stage area by all the other wrestlers.
(sorry for the long post.. am on a 3 hour layover waiting for a connecting flight and bored out of my skull)
