Hey, it’s April Fool’s Day, so that means it’s time once again for our meaty collection of ribs from the world of wrestling. This year, we have some fun tales from Terry Funk, AJ Styles, Tonya Partlow, Rock Riddle and Jimmy Korderas. Enjoy, but don’t try this at home!
Rock Riddle was once asked to wear a mask for a TV taping in San Francisco, and decided to have a little fun with Peter Maivia (also known as The Rock’s grandfather).
“I’m sitting there in the dressing room with Peter Maivia. ‘Pete, you going to be with me tonight. This be your last match. You has been. I beat you in Juarez, I beat you here tonight.’ I kept doing this and he doesn’t know it’s me, disguising my voice the best I can. Just continually cutting him down, insulting him. ‘You try, you try to do something in the ring. I give you wrestling lesson. Come on.’ But before we went in, I could see he’s getting [does angry look and sounds], not happy. I took the mask off and smiled at him. ‘Ha, ha!'”
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At the Cauliflower Alley Club reunion, Tonya Partlow introduced her mother, Sandy Partlow, with a a couple of stories of how Sandy learned to be one of the boys:
“On one occasion, she superglued Bulldog Bob Brown’s shoes to the dressing room floor — and you all know how well he could take a joke! She had an ongoing battle with Ron MacFarlane, Ron MacFarlane and Jerry Brown, which resulted in her padlocking their bags together, and they had to actually cut the handles to get their bags apart.”
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Dick Murdoch looks around for a karate expert. Photo by Terry Dart
Terry Funk was called upon to induct Dick Murdoch into the Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in May 2013, and launched into a pretty good tale about ol’ Captain Redneck and Killer Karl Kox:
“Dick was just great, and I’ll tell one story real quick on him. Him and Karl Kox, I used to ride down the road with them. When we was riding down the road, their favourite thing was to go ahead and find a hitchhiker along the road. Richard would go ahead and find them, and we’d pull up about a hundred yards in front of him. When we got about a hundred yards in front of him, Dick would get out of the car, and go back there and holler. ‘You sorry son-of-a-gun’ — he didn’t use son-of-a-gun! — ‘I’m going to come back there and kick the doodoo out of you. I’m going to beat you up until you never walk again.’ He’d start walking towards the hitchhiker, walking towards him. Pretty soon he’d get up there eight or 10 feet from him, and he’d say, ‘Hey, you don’t know karate, do you?’ He would make a karate expert out of every hitchhiker on the highway. They’d be swinging their arms, kicking their feet.”
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WWE referee Jimmy Korderas was never much of a ribber himself, but did share this tale of being ribbed.
It wouldn’t be a story about ribs without a mention of Owen Hart.
“One of the best ribs that was ever played on me was done by the late, great Owen Hart. I got a call at a hotel once, from what I thought was the front desk, telling me that my credit card had been declined and I had to come down there and straighten things out. After about ten minutes of arguing with this guy on the phone, I put on a pair of shorts — this was at about 2:30 in the morning — so I put on a pair of shorts and go to the front lobby, and talk to some sleepy guy there who tells me that he has no idea what I’m talking about. A couple of minutes later, one of the other boys comes down apparently with the same issues, and he wants to talk to the front desk guy because apparently his credit card had been declined. We found out much later on that it was Owen calling the rooms of the boys pretending to be the front desk. It was harmless fun — so big deal, we lost about a half hour of sleep. But it was really funny. Classic Owen.”
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Even if you are “Phenomenal” you can get ribbed. Just ask A.J. Styles:
“The best rib ever played on me was done by a bunch of good friends of mine: Christopher Daniels, Frankie Kazarian, Samoa Joe, and Sting. What had happened is that Daniels had lost his wallet the previous night. We were in Orlando, he had to get to California, I had to get home. So we were all looking for his wallet. So I have an idea that maybe somebody grabbed his wallet, took all the money out of it, and threw it in the pool. So I go to the pool to look, and sure enough, I see something in the pool. As I stretch out to take a closer look, I slip and fall in with all my clothes on — so I’m pretty pissed off. A little later, I get a call from Sting — well, a voicemail, because my phone was ruined. Sting said that he heard that I got drunk and fell into the pool, and how disappointed he was in me, as a Christian brother, for that to happen. I end up calling Christopher Daniels about this, and going off on him, thinking he told Sting that I was drunk and fell into the pool. And then he tells me that it was all a rib, that Sting was just ribbing me.”
— collected by Greg Oliver and Bob Kapur
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