I appreciate the response from part 1 of the IWU Flowers. I especially appreciate Bill Behrens chiming in and explaining more of his dealings with Moose Lewis. I never knew the full Moose/WWF/Bill story. It was nice to add some detail for that time. It also explains why Moose had such a hatred for Bill, because Bill is a good businessman, and Moose is Moose. Enough of the preambles, we got a story to tell.
I was really upset about the events that transpired in Birmingham. Looking back now, I will admit I could have handled things differently. I see that with age and maturity on my side, but 22-year-old me wasn’t having it. Monday morning I quit IWU and was working other shows and doing my usual. IWU may have run one or two shows after the Boutwell debacle, but nothing of significance until that summer.
After Rick Rude passed away, Moose was looking for a fitting tribute to the man who would have been our Commissioner. That would come in the form of a summertime event called Homecoming II The Rick Rude Memorial Show. When I saw this announcement I had doubts it was going to even take place. It was set to take place at the Gwinnett County Civic Center and would feature a blend of the IWU roster and a scaled-back number of big names. Since I was not involved with the company at this time, I remember very little about the event. I do know that it was a success thanks to Dark Gable, Sweet Daddy, Mysterious Benefactor, and Johnnie Walker (not Mr. Wrestling II) tirelessly promoting the event. They did not want a repeat of the Boutwell. The event featured Rick Rude Jr. making an appearance in tribute to his dad. Reckless Youth and Mike Quackenbush also appeared. More importantly, people showed up. I cannot give you numbers, but I know there were people there and it was probably 300-400. I was there visiting friends and I had a very positive conversation with Moose. I was not prepared for what was going to happen next.
A couple of months after the Rick Rude show, I got a phone call from Moose asking if I would mind talking to him in person at his memorabilia shop in Buckhead. I agreed and when I showed up, Moose said he was getting the band back together again. Apparently, during the time off between The Rick Rude show and that day, he had secured a TV spot on a new network in Atlanta, HotLanta 34, and had also secured some TV cameras. I didn’t want to know where the old cameras came from, but I can imagine they were never fully paid for. After setting up some ground rules, I agreed to come back and work for Moose again doing the same things as before.
Getting ready for our first TV taping was a task in itself. We posted the news on our website. We sent mailers out to the 100-plus members of the IWU fan club, and we began hanging posters in the Decatur area. Our first TV taping would take place at The Atrium in Stone Mountain, Georgia. What a day this was. Moose booked a lot of talent for this first taping. The stories were pretty much non-existent, but it was a start. First joining the announce team was Fast Eddie Layne, the host of Beyond Ringside in Alabama. Eddie is an amazing guy and underrated as an announcer. I had the joy of working with him in Alabama for GCW for a while and the guy was a blast to work with. We also had a guy named Billy Devito. Billy was a backstage interviewer, but more than that he was a wrestling fan who decided to try his hand at announcing. Billy was a good guy, he didn’t last long. Rounding out our announce team was a guy named Lance Cavett or as Moose called him Lance Romance. Lance was a spitting image of Bert Prentice. Lance wanted to announce and be a photographer.
Lance, was a strange guy. He did promo shots for some of the guys, but one who stood out was a guy named The Midnight Idol. Idol was a good-looking guy, very muscular and athletic, and could cut a promo, but his in-ring stuff left a bit to be desired. However, he was going to get booked based on his looks. Lance was also a huge fan, and I only know this because of the promo pics he dropped off at the office. As I was going through the pics to find ones we could use for 8x10’s and ones for the site, I came across the 3 dozen or so pics of The Midnight Idol. There were poses, normal poses, like showing off his muscles and whatnot, then they got strange. There were pics of his calf muscles, thighs, and his butt. However, none of them were as strange as the feet pics. He was posing his feet. I politely called Lance and asked if he had given me the wrong package of pics. He said nope and that was that. I threw the bonus pics away and tried to erase them from memory. Lance once threatened to sue me. We were working together on an episode of IWU. At this point, I was working heel on commentary and I would throw all kinds of comments Lance’s way. Mostly about him being overweight and having a taste for feet. Prior to a show, he pulled me off to the side and told me he was going to sue me if I kept making fun of him on commentary. I tried to explain to him that what I was doing was typical commentary stuff, like Jim Ross and Jerry Lawler. When I said Lawler he became very flush and shouted at me “You, sir, are no Jerry Lawler. Jerry is a personal friend of mine and I am insulted you would even compare yourself to him.” I just laughed. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Nonetheless, we worked the show that day. During a match that featured The Beatniks and their new valet, Tonya I commented on how hot she was, and he came back with, “Yes sir the Midnight Idol is looking mighty fine tonight.” I lost it, and said, “No you idiot, I am talking about Tonya, what the hell are you watching” We never saw or heard from Lance Romance after that.
Getting back to that first taping. There were a lot of things happening. First, Moose brought in Bucky Seigler to take over booking the show. Bucky Seigler was an old-school guy. He had started in the Mid-Atlantic area and worked in Georgia. Bucky did jobs on WTBS and at one point was a very good hand. In 1999, he was a bit past his prime and honestly, I think drugs accelerated all of that because he was physically in good shape, but mentally, not so much. Bucky’s booking wasn’t so great either. Again, there were no stories and we were just having matches to have matches. We had a locker room full of amazing talent, but they were being grossly misused. That first taping went pretty well. No injuries, no major malfunctions, and everyone pretty much left happy, well almost everyone.
This would be my first introduction to Nemesis. He was just getting his start around this time and was booked for this show. I do not remember who he worked that day, but I do remember the commotion he caused at the end of the day. The guys were waiting around to get their envelopes and Bucky was paying the boys. Moose had stuffed the envelopes before the show and gave them to Bucky to pay everybody. Nemesis got his envelope and he felt it was a little short, and became very upset. There was a lot of shouting and arguing and I believe DeKalb County police were called to escort Nemesis off the premises. Once everything was settled down a couple of other people mentioned their envelopes were a little light as well. This happened a few more times, and eventually, Bucky was let go. There was never any proof that Bucky was skimming people’s pay, but if I were a betting man, I would say Bucky left those shows with a lot more than his guarantee. Nemesis was completely justified in his feelings but probably should have handled it just a bit differently.
We all left that first Atrium taping feeling pretty good and felt that maybe Moose had turned a corner and IWU was going to be successful this time around. With our first taping out of the way, it was time for me to go to work and begin editing the show. One of the guys who made that happen was Eric Thornton. Eric was an amazingly talented videographer and director who was working for the Georgia Outdoor Network at the time. He was not much of a wrestling fan, but Moose was paying him and he was having fun. Eric and I hit it off immediately as we had a similar sense of humor. That would help considering the number of hours we would spend at the editing studio. Speaking of which, this editing studio was top-notch. Comfortable furniture, snacks, and the guy who ran it, Griff, was a great guy. We would get studio time on Mondays and Tuesdays. This studio was state of the art, several movies and TV shows would rent this place and edit their products. The first night in the studio, I thought we were going to take the new footage and work with it and start piecing things together for our subsequent tapings. Instead, Moose handed me the footage from The Homecoming and told me to get a few episodes out of it. I thought he was joking. He wasn’t. So, here we were with this footage from a nightmare of an event that we had to try to make an interesting episode of TV out of.
To Eric’s credit, he did an amazing job of creating an opening out of the footage. The song, IWU, was done by a friend of Mr. Hughes and was quite catchy. I did voice-overs for the opening of the show, but for the first couple of episodes, there was no commentary. One of the matches from The Homecoming was Tommy Rich vs. Doug Gilbert. By the by, they will come into play near the end of our story, please stay tuned. Eric and I produced commercials hyping the shows for the coming weeks. We watched in horror at some of the things from The Homecoming Show. Quite possibly the greatest gem was a post-match promo by Tommy Rich. His and Doug’s match ended in a no-contest, so Tommy wanted a rematch. That wasn’t the best part. I am sure many of you know Granny. She was a huge wrestling fan from the West Georgia area. She was at every wrestling event from Marietta to White to Rome and just that entire geographic area. She was really laying into Tommy, and I am sure she had her stuffed monkey with her. Tommy looked down at her and uttered these words, “Ugh, I don’t know what you are, you’re an ugly something somethings. If I was a man, I would go with a man, before I would go with you.” Eric and I watched the tape again to make sure what we heard. After the third time, we were sure of it and laughed for about 15 minutes.
Eric and I both thought showing the footage from The Homecoming Show was going to be problematic for several reasons. Number one, there was no commentary and no way to explain what we were seeing. Number two, we were promoting people in these matches who would not be at any upcoming events, and number three when the footage runs out, we will have a whole new roster and differently shot footage. Moose insisted and off we went. The Homecoming footage lasted about 3 weeks. We heavily edited the footage because some of it just wasn’t good. The Roxy footage never saw the light of day because Moose could not find it. So then we were off and running with the stuff we had been shooting. The equipment wasn’t that great, but Eric was a master of using his resources and did the best he could. Eventually, we left The Atrium and the Marietta National Guard Armory became our spot to tape our shows.
At one taping in particular there was a falling out between Moose, Sweet Daddy, and Mysterious Benefactor. If I remember correctly, Sweet and Bene were either working Marty Miller’s EWA shows or SCWA run by Hardbody Harrison (yeah I said I would not mention him again, but for real last time, maybe). Moose had it in his mind that if you were working IWU, you couldn’t work anywhere else. Now, if you are paying guys enough to do that, then okay, you can get away with that. However, Moose wasn’t paying that well. Benefactor and Sweet left and went to work whatever other show they were booked on. A few weeks later, Marty and an army of guys showed up at an IWU show wearing EWA shirts. Moose was ready to shit his pants he was so angry. I thought it was funny and it was good to see some old friends. They were very cool and did not disrupt the show.
It was also around this time that I was helping with some of the booking. Moose and I would come up with ideas and he gave me some wiggle room in the way things would be produced for TV. One of the angles I came up with was taking over the ODD Squad for Mysterious Benefactor. I wanted to keep the group alive just in case Bene came back. Moose wanted to squash the group. By this point, the ODD Squad was Johnnie Walker, Dark Gable, Killa Frost, and Mr. XTC (Jimmy Rave under a mask). More on that later. We did the turn very subtly as I was being presented as Moose’s right-hand man and pretty much just a flunky for whatever needed to be done. One new addition I wanted to bring to the group was Tonya.
Tonya was a very attractive young lady. She had been around the wrestling business her whole life. She had dated some of the boys and done some valet work. She was very intelligent and was a great sounding board for ideas. A few years later she and her husband ran a small promotion in Tifton called Blue Thunder. While the show was not nearly as successful as it should have been, it was still an experience. I digress. I wanted Tonya to be our valet and in turn my “love interest”. She and I had great chemistry and she was an awesome friend who I love dearly. I was also trying to keep her on the roster because Moose’s wife Kathy had demanded she be fired several times and I refused. The angle began with The Beatniks firing her, then she came to my office upset and I would tell her I had her back. Sadly, the angle didn’t last very long because my time in the IWU would be coming to an end very shortly.
The IWU was drawing good crowds in Marietta. We were booking talent from all around and the TV was getting noticed. This should have been a good moment for us, but it wasn’t. I am not sure if the animosity stemmed from The Homecoming and the early days of IWU or just pure jealousy, but Moose hated Bill Behrens and Wildside/NCW. He would constantly watch the product and then say some very disparaging things about anybody associated with Bill, Rick, and Cornelia. I was intrigued by the happenings there and little did Moose know I was emailing Bill looking for bookings. I remember the hatred for Wildside and Bill hit a fever pitch one Sunday afternoon when two young men, Jamie Noble and Jeremy Lopez showed up looking for ring time. Moose agreed to give them a match and put it on first. They couldn’t use their names because they had used them at Wildside. So, he came up with two ridiculous names, one was Paul Caldwell and I cannot remember the other. He asked me to referee the match. It went a 10-minute broadway that left the crowd wanting more. So, I got the okay to do five more minutes. Jamie asked me who should go over, I said do you just want to keep the original finish and go five full minutes. Big mistake. They went to another draw. Moose looked at me from the curtain and said five more minutes. I went to both and told them. The crowd was eating it up. So, they went five more to the same result. Moose, again yelled out five more. This time as soon as the bell rang, Jamie rolled Lopez up for a pin. Thank God, because I was freaking blown up. When we got to the back, Moose was as giddy as a teenager. He thought he had struck gold. He tried to convince them to cancel their Wildside bookings and go with him. Jamie very politely refused and Moose was hot. He didn’t go off on them to their faces, but he was hot.
With the Jeremy and Jamie thing in the rearview Moose was looking for other ways to “stick it” to Bill. One of these would be an angle that should have made some money. The year prior there was some heat between Murder-One, Todd Wimbleton, and Moose. To set the table and one of the things that was left out of part one, on purpose was that Todd Wimbleton and Murder had both worked for Moose as bookers and Todd was even doing some of the promotions. Like most of Moose’s fallingouts, it involved money. One year later bridges had been rebuilt and Murder and Todd were coming back as part of Moose’s MWO (Moose World Order). Well, Todd and Murder had other plans and attacked Moose in the ring. This brought out Billy Black to chase off Murder and Todd. I am sure to some of you this sounds like a typical wrestling angle and is no big deal, but it was just another poking-the-bear moment for Moose. A few months earlier, the aforementioned Billy Black and Vic Roze were arrested in Loganville, Georgia after they attacked Bill Behrens and TJ Gray in a legit moment. Moose thought this was the ultimate middle finger to Bill. In reality, I am pretty sure Bill could not have cared any less. Hell, he may not even know about it till he reads this. During the follow-up promo to Billy Black’s appearance, he even mentioned attacking some promoters. Black’s appearance in the IWU was not long, as this may have been his only appearance.
One of the guys who was loyal to Moose, and was putting in work was a guy by the name of Johnnie Walker. Like Sweet Daddy I plan on doing a Flowers dedicated solely to Johnnie, so forgive me if I don’t give away too many details. I was managing Johnnie and the rest of the Odd Squad. In one night we did a clean sweep. Dark Gable and Killa Frost won the tag titles from the Beatniks and I got the girl lol. Mr. XTC joined us as the Light Heavyweight Champion, and Johnnie Walker won the IWU Georgia title from Murder One. It was an awesome night and again a moment we should have been happy. Little did we know we were barreling towards the end of the IWU.
Things started falling apart when money became an issue again. Moose was falling behind on paying me. The vendor we were using for our pictures was holding 8x10’s because a check had bounced and Moose was avoiding them. I was working ungodly hours between being in the office and going to the studio two nights a week after a full day of work. On Tuesdays, I had to stay the night at the studio because I had to make 3 dubs of the tape to send out. By the time we got done with editing and rendering the master, it was around 2 am, so add 3 more hours to that and I was spent. Not to mention, I had to take two of the tapes to FedEx to get to the network to air the program. One night I was in the studio and Griff shut everything down and told me I couldn’t leave till Moose made a payment. It seemed checks to the studio were bouncing and they had been nice for long enough. Moose had to give them a credit card over the phone. The next morning I was set to go home and get some sleep, but Moose insisted I come back to the office. I reluctantly went. I was tired, I was angry, and I was about two weeks behind in getting paid and approaching week number 3. The whole day Moose was trying to be very secretive about what we were doing. He handed me a debit card I hadn’t used before with explicit instructions to go to the ATM to get money for the next two Marietta Armory events and a couple of other random purchases. I read the name on the card and it said Kathy Lewis. When I got to the ATM to get out the money for the Armory, I got the receipt and I was shocked. I had never seen that amount of money available on a card in my life. Then it hit me. Don had snuck and got Kathy’s card to pay for the Armory. It also occurred to me that Kathy had the money. Since I was owed two about to be three week’s worth of pay, I made a couple more withdrawals from the bank. I will admit, I was wrong. However, I was also owed. I went and paid the Armories, picked up the other items from Home Depot, and went back to the shop. I was doing some loose-end stuff on the website when Moose came to me and said he was planning on paying me the next day. When I told him not to worry about it, I pulled my money from the card so he could just pay Kathy back, his eyes got real wide and he couldn’t find the words to say. I said good night and headed to the Rib Ranch.
We were heading towards a pretty big weekend in the IWU. We were going to run Marietta on Saturday night followed by a matinee event on Sunday in Griffin. The Marietta show was hot. It was wall-to-wall people. By this point, Sweet Daddy had returned, managed by yours truly and he was going to work with Tommy Rich. Doug Gilbert was also booked on the show. Saturday in Marietta was fun. Tommy kicked the shit out of my shoulder while we were walking outside the ring. Everything was going down without a hitch. Again, we left happy. It would only last 12 hours. I was supposed to drive the ring truck to Griffin, but something told me not to do it. So, I think Moose may have driven it there or one of the guys from the shop. The show had a 2 pm bell time. At 1:45 three people were waiting to get in. This looked like a disaster waiting to happen. To their credit, guys were waiting to work. It didn’t matter the crowd size. We put together a decent card, but Moose wanted to let Tommy and Doug know they weren’t working and they weren’t getting paid. Moose sent me on this mission. I had heard about their reputation when it came to not getting paid. I was not about to be the fall guy. So I found an office in the Griffin Armory and told Tommy and Doug that Moose wanted to talk to them, could they hang out right here? I went and got Moose and told him Tommy and Doug were good to go. When we walked into that office and Moose said thank you for understanding, he knew immediately by their reaction I had just “Vadered” him (to get that reference, read the first part of this Flowers from last week). Tommy and Doug to their credit were cool as Moose explained.Doug was probably the coolest of them, saying how I needed to come down and pick Tommy up and take him promoting around the area. I thought that was a great idea, except I was also thinking this was going to be my last day in the company. Tommy and Doug took their checks and left. It would not be the last time Moose would see them though.
At the end of the day, Moose was trying not to pay some of the talent. I was yelled at for the lack of people there, even though I had been told not to worry about going to Griffin to promote because we had TV on HotLanta. I am pretty sure the signal didn’t reach there. I was also still hot about being embarrassed at the studio and numerous other little incidents. Johnnie Walker handed me the Georgia title, I put it in my car and I left without telling Moose bye. I woke up Monday morning with the full intention of going to the office. I looked in the back of my car I had merchandise and I had the Georgia title. I went to the mall that day. I sat in the food court for three hours. I was writing, I was reading, I watched people, and I just stewed over some pretty awesome mall Chinese food. I finally went back home. I had about 20 missed calls from Moose. It was studio night after all. For the next two days, I repeated the same thing. I woke up, went somewhere, came home and all day long ignored Moose’s calls. Finally, on Thursday, I told him I would bring his stuff back to him but I was quitting. To add a little context to this whole thing, Moose was not a fun person to work for. Sure I had some cool moments, but at the end of the day, you can only take so much of a person devaluing you. Moose was constantly devaluing my worth and what I did. And that Sunday in Griffin broke me and I decided I didn’t need it anymore. I wasn’t going to give back the Georgia title. It was a beauty and I felt that it was only being sullied being in his possession. When I showed up Moose tried to talk me into staying. He offered more money and a better work schedule. It didn’t matter, I was done.
The IWU lasted a few more shows after I left. While I am not privy to what happened, there was one incident at the Marietta Armory shortly after I left that ended up being the last IWU show. Killa Frost had become Moose’s guy. He was working for Moose at his different businesses and whatnot. Something happened with Dark Gable and it led to Frost shooting on him and then half the roster walking out. I was there, as a spectator and when I saw guys leaving, I left too. It was the final nail in the coffin of something that should have been so much greater than it was. Speaking of coffins, Moose almost needed one. After all was said and done and IWU was shutting down for good, the checks he wrote to Tommy and Doug bounced. He ignored their many calls, until one day Doug called and said that they were in Nashville, but would be coming to Atlanta the next day would he be in the office. Moose said he wouldn’t be, that he was leaving the office that day. The next thing you know, Tommy and Doug came through the front door, locked it, and refused to leave until he made the checks right. I guess he grabbed Kathy’s debit card. It was also during this time that Kahn caught up to Moose. One afternoon, two Atlanta police officers walked in the shop looking for Moose. They had a warrant for his arrest. Moose was running down Roswell Road in Atlanta. He called Randy Mundy, a guy who wrestled for IWU and was a Griffin police officer. He asked him what he should do, and Mundy said first things first, stop running. Moose spent the night in jail.
I debated about writing this column and it turned into a two-part story. Who gets the Flowers in this one? Is it Moose? Moose was a con man, he wasn’t carney, he was a con. He built a lot of his business on bad checks and broken promises. In later years he would claim to have written a movie that was being picked up by Cinemax. He tried to start a whites-only basketball league, he claimed several times he was going to promote wrestling again. Honestly, I have stopped by the old place a few times in the last 20-plus years just to see if he is still alive and to see what he is up to. He told me a story the last time I saw him, which was back around 2017ish maybe. He supposedly was promoting a boxing event down in the Bahamas and was taken hostage by the government down there. Who knows with Moose? Moose screwed over a lot of people in life and very rarely told the truth. However, he did have some charming moments. It was because of his donations to Tom Glavine’s charity I got to attend a casino night at the 755 Club at Turner Field. I got to play poker with Ryan Klesko. I got to drive a delivery truck to Leo Mazzone’s condo and talked to him while the guys delivered a marble table. I got to hold a Cy Young Award. That was pretty cool. Most of all, I made a lot of friends. Guys and girls who I love dearly and have been a part of my life. Guys like Johnnie Walker and Sweet Daddy who I met working with the IWU. Guys who are no longer with us like Mysterious Benefactor and Dark Gable. I got to work with guys who were already my friends and we got to suffer through those crazy times.
Does Moose deserve flowers? As a human being, no. He is one of the worst kinds of people you could ever encounter. There are more stories, like how he booked a kid named Chad, who wrestled as Red Hot Chilli Peppa, was going to push the kid and then made fun of him after he suffered an injury in Moose’s ring. He bought replica masks and started putting other people as Chilli Peppa. What a disgrace. However, maybe Moose does deserve some flowers. Maybe a lot of us got to live a dream because he provided us with a place to work. And that place allowed us to network and create bonds that got us to better places. Maybe I was an idiot for going back twice. Then again, maybe it was the smartest thing I ever did. I learned a lot from my time there and from working with Moose. Most of what I learned is what not to do and how to treat people. It was a crazy time and what makes it even crazier is that all of this happened in less than two years.
I want to refuse to acknowledge that Moose Lewis had any kind of influence on pro wrestling in Georgia, but that would be ignorant of me. Moose, through all of his flaws, was a guy who dared to dream and thought he was bigger than the business. He did want to make wrestling a big deal and I applaud him for that. He went about it the wrong way. I hope that as he gets older and approaches his mid-60s maybe he looks back and realizes the greatest thing he could have ever created he destroyed. I also hope that he can find some peace and solace in knowing he helped to foster some amazing relationships that are still going strong to this day. The IWU was a crazy place. There are so many more stories, but some things are just not for print. I do use some of my experiences with Moose to help me handle current-day situations. Having said all of that, I guess reluctantly I give Moose his Flowers. Perhaps, some dead black roses.
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