Nick Kiniski has told the story before, but never on the record until now, about how he was propositioned by Terry Garvin of WWE management back in 1987, during his brief run in what was then the WWF.
The recent allegations about Vince McMahon and the sex scandal involving paying off people for their silence — upset by a lawsuit by Janel Grant — has Kiniski revisiting his past.
Kiniski first told this writer about the incident in an interview in 2006, but wasn’t comfortable at the time coming forward. In 2006, Kiniski said of Terry Garvin:
“He used to say, ‘Come on, Nick, let me suck your dick. You can read a Playboy. You’ll have it made for the rest of your life.’ I said, ‘Hell, Terry, I’m not that way, but first time I fucking change, I’ll let you know.”
In an conversation on Thursday, February 21, Kiniski — the son of the legendary “Big Thunder” Gene Kiniski and brother of Kelly Kiniski — he expanded on the incident:
Madison Square Garden, they’re putting me over. Dave Meltzer said I had one of the best matches of the night there. Rene Goulet … he was an agent at the time, he said they liked my finish, it was a back suplex. I’d work with him sometimes, he said was great, he says “They’re gonna give you a push, lose a couple pounds.”
I said, “Rene, when’s the push coming?” He says, “I don’t know. They said they’re gonna give you a push.”
Then Terry Garvin comes up to me, “Hey” — he was starting to hit on me. He said, “Hey, let me suck your dick. You can read a Playboy. You’ll have it for life.” Well, I can play the game. I said, “Hey Terry, I’m not that way.” I lied, I said, “I inherited a lot of money from my grandpa, I’m not that way. But if I change, you’ll be the first to know you know.” I kind of laughed.
That was not the end of it.
He came in my hotel room and wanted to see my dick one night. I said, “No, get out of here.”
Kiniski then got in contact with Vince McMahon, who then ran the WWF as a private company.
“And I was in Milwaukie, Oregon, I remember and I called the head office, Vince McMahon, and talked to Vince and said, ‘Hey, man, I don’t appreciate Terry doing this,'” Kiniski recalled saying.
The work dried up from there, noted Kiniski.
“I go to LA to do TV. They wanted me to start doing jobs. I said, ‘No, I won’t Vince.'”
He put Randy Savage over and planned to leave WWF — and not long after, the wrestling business.
“You can beat me, but you can’t take my dignity from me,” was Kiniski’s philosophy.
“I remember when I quit, I was LA and walking through the dressing room. I told Bret, I said, ‘Yeah, I’m out of here.’ He goes, ‘Really?’ … When I walked about, I felt good about myself. You can’t take my proud from me.
Kiniski said he was ready to do his two weeks notice, knowing he would be losing continually.
“I said I’d finished my bookings,” said Kiniski. McMahon said, “No, you’re done.”
Kiniski called his father and said he was coming home.
“I had a falling out with Vince, and so I was done,” Kiniski said in 2006. “Dad goes back and is doing a show for Vince. He said, ‘Yeah, Gene, your son was just a fucking prick like you.'”
Gene Kiniski’s response to the slight?
“Ah, at least he fucking remembered me!”
Terry Garvin had been a successful wrestler and was hired by Pat Patterson, an old friend from Montreal, in 1985. Garvin (real name Terry Joyal) served many different roles with the company, including helping book the promotion and arrange television, and supervising the ring crew. He would also serve when needed as a referee.
On March 11, 1992, San Diego News Tribune reporter Jeff Savage broke a story about WWF ring boy Tom Cole’s claims of sexual harassment by Garvin and ring announcer Mel Phillips.
The book, Sex, Lies and Headlocks by Shaun Assael and Mike Mooneyham, covered a lot of the accusations and fallout. “[U]nlike [Pat] Patterson, Garvin wasn’t discreet about his lifestyle. He used his job to arrange trysts for himself and saw no reason to be particularly secretive about it. Nelson Sweglar, then the company’s operations manager, remembers walking into a bus and seeing Garvin, whom he found likeable, ‘hard at it’ with a ring boy.”
A media storm erupted, and WWF honcho Vince McMahon was called upon to defend his employees. Former wrestler Barry Orton (aka Barry O) came forward on the Larry King Show, saying that Terry Garvin had hit on him many years earlier as well. Eventually, Cole and the WWF settled their differences.
However, Garvin, Patterson and Phillips were all fired or resigned under pressure from the WWF on March 2, 1992. Only Patterson was ever re-hired. Garvin died of cancer in 1998.
When Vince McMahon appeared on an episode of Larry King Live on CNN to discuss the scandal, Barry Orton, the brother of Bob ‘Ace’ Orton, called into the show. On air Orton accused Garvin of sexually assaulting him in 1978 when he was a teenager.
“While I was working for the World Wrestling Federation I was never approached by anyone who said to me if you give me sexual favours I will give you job security or I would advance your career. However, there is an overall ambiance that does suggest that and there are situations that have occurred that support that fact,” said Orton at the time to host King.
McMahon asked Orton to “be specific” and King asked him why he didn’t explain the situation to WWE management.
“It is really simple, Larry. If you go and you c0mplain then you are gone. There isn’t anything you can do about it,” he answered saying the accuser would be fired rather than the victim because the wrestling business is divided into cliques. “If you rock the boat or make waves they will get rid of you one way or another.”
Orton claimed he was molested many years ago but not in the WWE. McMahon responded saying if the environment was so bad why did he come back to the WWE after a stint in prision? Orton said he was booked sporadically for a few months and then dropped off the radar.
“Who abused you?” asked King.
Orton answered that it was Terry Garvin.
Kiniski knows that he is not the only one that Garvin hit on.
“I’ve been in a hotel room room and I don’t know if they’re ring boys or jobbers, who were on the phone, ‘Terry, you promised me. I let you. Terry, you promised me if I let you do this, you would do this for me.’ I could see them arguing on the phone. Obviously they were talking about sex,” said Kiniski.
In 2006, Kiniski said something similar:” “They used to take those jobbers and fuck them. ‘Terry, you promised me, you promised me!’ He’d be on the phone. You can’t get away with that now.”
Post-wrestling, Kiniski was a firefighter and is still involved with the Breakers bar / Kiniski’s Reef in Port Roberts, Washington. At the time of his chat with SlamWrestling.net conversation, he was in Arizona
“I look back, and it was a zoo. I’m in the bar business, and people think what a wild business. This is pretty tame compared to the wrestling business,” Kiniski said.
TOP PHOTO: Nick Kiniski and Madusa Miceli in the AWA in 1987. Photo by Joyce Paustian
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