Sunday Night’s Main Event Radio’s Donnie DaSilva was joined by WWE Hall of Famer Bushwhacker Luke. In the chat they discuss how he broke into Canada and the USA from New Zealand, working with Roddy Piper and Rick Martel all across Cascadia, Wrestlers not listening to crowds, and Bushwhacker Butch’s final days. Highlights from the conversation are below:
On leaving Australia and breaking in Canada before the United States:
Canada was my first point of entry into the North America and it was for the company called Grand Prix. We’re lucky because Andre had worked in New Zealand ’68 or ’69, well, before he came to North America and had a bunch of handicap matches all around the country with him. He did do loads in America in 1971 for Grand Prix ….We had worked with him in Australia ’65 ,’66, So he took took us under his wing, and that’s where the story started in North America.
On working with Roddy Piper and Rick Martel:
For 14 months, we had 22 consecutive sellouts in Portland, Oregon. In that loop, we’d go from the top of California to Oregon and through Medford and they would add Vancouver, Canada. We had a hell of a run with them. And there was a notorious cage match in Vancouver, with him (Roddy Piper) riding over the top of the cage after his kilt got stuck.
On today’s wrestler’s lack of phycology:
A lot of them don’t understand, they don’t understand. They’re like computers. You know what I mean? They’ve got the match in their mind and everything is planned … They do the finishes at the start of the match and do the main things they want to do to start the match.
On adjusting to life after his long-term partner, Butch passed away:
When that happened, I was mad at him. I kept telling him to take your water pill, take your water pill. He didn’t want to keep going up and down [from his room] from his signings so he stopped taking his water pills for four days. By Thursday it was the fifth day he didn’t take the pills. By Friday morning he didn’t come through. The water has already gone to his lungs and he was in LaLa Land, and then it went to his heart. It’s very sad how it happened. But you know, a year before he said to me, “I’m not feeling right, I think I’m on my way out.” … He loved the States. Everybody said that he came over to the country he loved and saw his ex-wife, me. I’d been together with him for 50 years, the longest wife was 21 years.
You can listen to the entire interview with Luke Williams by listening to the latest episode of Sunday Night’s Main Event here.
TOP PHOTO: Bushwhacker Luke at Wrestlecon at the Sheraton Philadelphia Downtown in Philadelphia, PA, on Friday, April 5, 2024 Photo by George Tahinos, georgetahinos.smugmug.com
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