[Cheering continues]
♪
My opinion is, Junkyard Dog was the most prominent
Black wrestler to ever lace a pair of boots.
Overcoming incredible odds, a young,
Black wrestler rose from humble beginnings to become
a generational superstar, achieving unimaginable
heights in a sport dominated by white performers.
Yes, he did, he paved the way for all of us.
You feel you're gonna be wearing the crown?
Just as sure as I'm Black and the
day's sunny, Mean Gene.
His charisma and, you know, his personality
is what got him to where he was,
'cause he was a fan favourite,
no matter how you looked at it.
JYD was on top, selling it out.
I mean, it was incredible.
If you guys could just hear the crowd,
they just loved him.
And couldn't nobody stop him.
He's invincible!
[Junkyard Dog] There ain't nothing else all I can do
no better, and that's fighting.
I seen the stars for him, because at that time,
there were no Black superstars.
Bill Watts, he saw dollars.
I saw his charisma, and named him.
Gave him music, and did everything,
and he was so dynamite.
The unlikely friendship between promoter
Cowboy Bill Watts and The Junkyard Dog
was tested when the Dog defects to the WWF.
I think Dog went because
there was a better opportunity.
You know, there's more money and then
he was gonna be a big star there.
But JYD's dreams of achieving superstar status
in the big leagues fell short.
Vince McMahon didn't use him like Bill did.
I wish he had because he could have been
one of the biggest stars in the WWE.
Yeah, it broke his spirit because he went there to be
that big hero again, and he didn't get it.
How can Vince McMahon put everything on JYD?
'Cause you don't know if he's gonna show up or not,
you're not dependable. Untrustworthy.
Dog forgot one thing- you can't do
what the white man do and keep your job.
♪
When you're trying to become a star,
and on your way to stardom, you can figure out a lot of
things to be successful as a wrestler-
you have to put the time in.
You have to become known by the fans.
You have to be able to sell your product.
You have to be able to have some dialogue.
When Junkyard Dog came to Mid-South, he had dialogue,
he had style, he had physical attributes.
These things turn into box office.
These things turn into money.
Sylvester Ritter was probably the greatest star to
come through the state of Louisiana...
they ever had, in terms of wrestling.
[Announcer] He represents the people.
They all love him.
Dog had a great following. He was universally loved.
That gleam in his eye, his little smile that he had...
was infectious.
Man, he just got over.
The people in Louisiana loved him.
You know, he'd get to the ring, you know,
and he'd grab that top rope and lean back and
shake his legs and his butt,
and the people would just go wild.
I'm lacing up the boots, and the whole building's
going, "Who that? Who that?
Who that gonna beat The Dog? Who that?"
Boom, boom, boom. "Who that?!"
I'm lacing up my boots, going, "Holy smokes!"
[Chuckling]
More than just a wrestler, Junkyard Dog is a hero to the
working class, a beloved figure in the city of
New Orleans who became a superstar to fans
across the Southeast...
transcending the sport to become an icon.
The Junkyard Dog, brother,
nobody messes with the damn Junkyard Dog.
I'm Jake "The Snake" Roberts.
Hall of Famer, and I can still kick your butt.
Mid-South, I am tired of you ripping me off,
and playing your stinking games with me!
New Orleans was his town, man.
By God, if you were wrestling him, brother,
you were scared to death...
because you didn't know if you were gonna make it
out of that arena back to the dressing room.
Police usually had to carry the guys out that
wrestled Dog, because if you parked your car
in that parking lot, they would destroy it.
"Who that gonna beat that Dog?"
Nobody, that's who.
Before becoming one of the most popular wrestlers the
south had ever seen, The Junkyard Dog was
a rookie named Big Daddy Ritter...
Searching for his big break in Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
Well, Dog tried to get into wrestling several times.
They were all short-term deals.
He wasn't on everybody's most wanted list
because then, A, he was Black.
And, a lot of the white promoters-
and they're all white- had a quota, seemingly...
unwritten, unstated, but it was there.
And so, he didn't fit their quota,
they already had a Black babyface.
I ain't gonna hire another one.
It's sad to say. It's coarse, it's hurtful.
I am Jim Ross.
Been into wrestling since 1974,
and along the way I got to meet The Junkyard Dog,
become friends.
It's great to have you back, Junkyard Dog.
JYD, when I first met him, was all-
seemed like he was always smiling.
And his skillset was limited.
But my God, the charisma and the love that
he created with fan base.
Well, you can't coach charisma.
You either got it, or you don't.
Despite Ritter's charisma and size, only Bill Watts,
the owner and promoter of Mid-South Wrestling,
decides to take a chance on the young brawler.
Cowboy was bigger than life.
He was a disciplinarian.
He was kind of like the head coach.
You know, I never met Vince Lombardi,
the famed football coach of the Packers that won multiple
Super Bowls, but some of my older peers said that Watts
was Vince Lombardi-like.
"My way or the highway. Here are the rules.
There are not many of them. I expect you to adhere to them,
and there's no negotiation."
Bill Watts gave him the biggest break for a Black man.
[Phone playing song]
Oh, I'm gonna turn this off.
Hey, this is "The Birdman", Koko B. Ware.
Man, you know me flying all over the place
in the wrestling business.
[Announcer] "The Birdman"! Koko B. Ware!
I mean, wrestling is a white man's sport.
JYD, well, he wasn't a wrestler at all.
He couldn't put you in a leg lock or a chicken wing.
He don't know nothing about all that.
He was a street fighter.
Bill Watts gave him a chance...
to draw some money, and you know what,
he bust Louisiana wide open.
[Jim] Mid-South Sports was based on realism.
So, athleticism, realism,
making it more easy to suspend your disbelief of
the art form that is pro wrestling.
Watts had a rule- if you go to a bar,
or you get into any kind of scuffle and you
get your ass whipped, you're fired.
The booker for Cowboy Bill Watts was Ernie Ladd.
Ernie Ladd was a philosopher.
He was 6"9 and 300 pounds.
So, Ernie was always looking for talent.
Somebody along the way told Ernie that, "Hey,
there's this Black guy, big, muscular powerhouse.
Kind of guy you'd like, Ernie,
that you ought to take a look at."
So, Ernie brought Dog in and,
he had a rough start because Cowboy didn't know that
Dog was not a great technical wrestler.
He brought that big, fine, Black specimen
of a body down that aisle.
Some young gals started screaming and hollering,
and we would excite the crowd.
He was so statuesque, and he looked great.
Turn your head, you wouldn't forget him.
Dog just clicked with the wrestling fan,
so he knew how to connect with the audience.
This is "Mr. USA",
WWE Hall of Famer, Tony Atlas.
So all you boys in the Mid-South,
get ready for yourself, because I got trouble here,
and I got trouble there!
And I got trouble coming your way, to the Mid-South!
We gonna boogie, baby!
So, I have to give credit for this to Cowboy Bill Watts.
Bill Watts came up with ideas.
Dog was a hell of a football player.
He was a hell of a street fighter, he was a brawler.
So, what Bill Watts did was create matches
that fit Dog's style.
Bill wanted Dog to do a few things really well-
clothes lines, thumps, body slams, tackles.
And so, those things, based on his football background,
those things could be translated
very easily into pro wrestling.
[Announcer] Boom, power slam!
To boost Junkyard Dog's star power,
Bill Watts and Ernie Ladd know they need to find the
perfect villain for JYD to face in the ring.
[Announcer] Which, wait a minute!
What's he doing?
There's nothing that he couldn't do in the ring.
You know, if he was in the ring with the right guy.
I am Ted Dibiase.
Towards the end of my career, I was known in the WWE as
"The Million Dollar Man".
[Announcer] Ted Dibiase! [Audience] [Booing]
-1, 2, 3! -[Match bell ringing]
1, 2, 3. Alfred nearly raises a hand.
He put something in that glove!
[Ted] And the thing that I did was,
I always highlighted in the ring
what he did best.
I mean, Bill Watts coached me.
The Funks coached me.
They would say, "Teddy, you gotta basically put him
in the middle of the ring and work around him,
and emphasize or highlight the things that you know
he does very well, and stay away from the things that,
that he doesn't do so well."
He had enough trust in me to know that, you know,
I wasn't gonna make him look bad out there.
I was always gonna make him look good.
The Dog just thumped him, and there's the count.
Well, you talk about an action-packed duo, they are.
[Ted] We became friends.
We traveled together a lot, and so much so that
when we got married, JYD was my best man.
That's how close we were.
That chain around his neck.
Put that music on, "Another One Bites The Dust".
And he came back in with the thump,
the rest of it is history.
[Announcer] There he goes with that big thump.
He just put him about 6 feet under.
Bill Watts is the first wrestling owner, promoter,
who ever featured as
one of his very top stars, a Black guy.
This last year has kind of been the year of the Dog.
I don't know if it's a Chinese year of the Dog
or not, but in Mid-South Wrestling,
it was the year of the dog.
Bill Watts took JYD and made him "thee" star.
When you get awards like this
it's because you're doing so many good things.
[Tony] They had a very, very close relationship.
Anything that Dog needed or wanted, or disliked,
he would never talk to the wrestlers about it.
He would only talk to Bill Watts.
I don't think anyone in the business
did more for an individual
than Bill Watts as he looked at
mentoring and helping Dog.
Bill looked at him like he was family.
You always go out and give 100%
for the people and for yourself.
A lot of people were just astounded that Cowboy
was so friendly with a Black person.
And, Cowboy said, "I want you to know one thing," he said,
"my favourite colour is green."
And, at that time,
JYD was selling tickets, lots of 'em.
Junkyard Dog's captivating presence
draws capacity crowds night after night,
inspiring his fans to stop at nothing
to defend their hero.
The fans not only looked up to him, they worshipped him.
I'm Jim Cornette.
I've been involved in a variety of ways in
professional wrestling over the last 40-something years.
Because that's all you are, is a yellow, dog-faced liar!
You know what he just did?
He just wrote a cheque that his rear end won't be able to-
[Cheering]
The downtown Municipal Auditorium was
the Dog's house every Monday night.
And The Freebirds come in, and they want to take over.
The Freebirds had hair cream that could remove your hair.
And, they said they were gonna use it to take the hair
away from one of their opponents,
but when Junkyard Dog came in,
and tried to do something about it,
"accidentally", according to The Freebirds,
the cream wound up in his eyes.
I mean, this is supposed to be a solution to remove hair.
The agony he's in.
My God, that moment right there...
----!
The Freedbirds were dead men.
When the word got out that JYD had been blinded
by The Freebirds, and then
when JYD went on television and said,
"My daughter, my baby daughter is about to be born
and I'll be able to hold her,
but I'll never be able to see her,"
the people wanted to kill The Freebirds, literally.
As the highly-anticipated Dog Collar match with JYD
against Freebird Michael Hayes approaches,
Dog plays his part at ringside,
until one fateful night when the line between
fiction and reality really blurs.
JYD, himself, told me this story!
Others have disputed it.
But it sounds very typical of New Orleans and
the wrestling scene at that time.
They're in the downtown Municipal Auditorium.
And Dog is sitting at ringside.
He's blind, but he's in the corner.
The Freebirds look around and they see Dog
sitting in the corner, and all of a sudden,
some guy comes over the railing and
is right there at Dog's shoulder,
and the guy pulls out the biggest gun he's ever seen,
and said, "Don't worry, Dog, I got him!"
And for two seconds, Dog is conflicted.
"Do I grab this guy's gun and save their lives,
but expose that I can see?
Or do I sit here and let him shoot him?"
And while he was conflicted,
the cops came over the rail and
grabbed the guy and took him down.
[Jim Ross] In our little world out there in Mid-South,
he became bigger than life.
Sometimes you wonder when success comes
somebody's way...
is it truly a blessing or a curse?
[Announcer] JYD, JYD...
he transcends race, colour, and creed.
He's everybody's champion.
Under the guidance of legendary promoter,
Bill Watts, The Junkyard Dog has emerged as a main event
superstar in Mid-South, drawing record breaking
crowds for the company.
He was the Black Hulk Hogan down there.
Louisiana, Oklahoma, Arkansas...
I mean, he had all those towns just sewed up.
Let me tell you something, "Buzza Wuzza",
it ain't but one Dog.
Well, there wasn't many Black wrestling stars
when I broke in the business.
I'm WWE Hall of Famer, Teddy Long.
You will go, one-on-one, with The Undertaker!
[Cheering]
Dog was a big draw. He had that charisma,
so he brought the Blacks out,
and then also, he brought the whites out.
There were whites that loved JYD, too.
So, Bill Watts knew that was money, okay,
so that's why he pushed Dog.
[Announcer] Oh, the crowd said, "Who that? Who that?"
[Audience chanting] Who that? Who that?
[Announcer] "Who that?
Who that gonna beat that Junkyard Dog?
Who that?"
You know, in Mid-South, we stop at a restaurant,
we stop at a gas station,
people recognized us where we went.
We got a letters at Mid-South asking that the Dog and the
different stars can drop by and visit 'em.
I know we got a nice letter from a
kindergarten teacher in Lecompte.
Well, the Junkyard Dog found time,
and when word got out in that town,
they had Junkyard Dog Day, and I'll tell you,
it was great.
After he got his,
he wanted to reach back and help others.
He got more pleasure out of helping you,
talk to the kids, give them money.
Very generous, not just with his money,
but with his time.
You know, you get fame and stuff,
you get very well-known, and then forget about
the way that you grew up.
That's why I like to go back to the schools and visit.
Long before the bright lights and roaring crowds,
Sylvester Ritter, the man behind The Junkyard Dog,
grew up in a small North Carolina town.
What a lot of people don't understand or,
don't know about it is,
it's a true rags to riches story for him.
My name's Jarvis Woodburn.
I'm the nephew of Junkyard Dog.
I called him Uncle Dog.
That's what he was to me.
This was the- God, this was the old, old one, I believe.
Yeah. He grew up without a dad.
My great grandmother, which is his grandmother,
is the one that raised him and my mom.
True southern upbringing.
Family first, treat all people equally.
And, that's just the kind of person that he was.
This is the home where...
Sylvester grew up, he and my mom.
My grandmother, great grandmother.
Ah, great, great grandmother.
It was old school.
Wake up in the middle night, gotta go to the bathroom.
Gotta do a number one, you go in the bucket.
Gotta do a number two, either you hold it,
or you're coming outside and use an outhouse.
There we go.
Ah, there's the source of heat right there.
♪
And this was kind of like the living room area.
This was a bedroom, here.
It's very cramped. I mean, when I-
I remember, when I was growing up there
was actually two beds in here.
♪
There's that wall with all of the, like, photos and stuff.
There's actually a...
a real, real young picture of him over there.
If these walls could talk.
But I grew up just like everybody else, with nothing.
I grew up hard, back down in the South.
North Carolina.
But I fought, and I'm stilling fighting,
trying to build on myself.
I saw him one time give the fans,
he took the dog chain off his neck and
gave it to a kid with a family there.
They just loved it.
He still stayed humble.
You know, he wasn't a guy that you couldn't talk to.
Dog never changed, he never changed.
He was the same guy, each and every day.
Though fame didn't change The Junkyard Dog,
life on the road, and the days and weeks
away from home begin to take their toll.
He would always try to come home around-
especially the holidays, when my mom cooks.
But then after that, it's just kind of like just
hanging out with the family for as long as they can
before they gotta get back on the road.
He had a daughter, Latoya.
His daughter was with us since she was two,
going on three years old.
He loved her to death, she loved him.
She was definitely a daddy's girl.
He was a great father, he was just on the road all the time.
Being on the road all the time is...
[Sighing] Well, I mean, it can take a toll.
It taxes on your body, it taxes on your mind.
It taxes mostly on your relationships...
with your children, with your wife...
with your family.
You know, an average week was 1500,
2000 miles a week. So, you're in a car a lot.
And, you're away from your family a lot.
And sometimes, a big, old, fat joint was your solace.
And of course, for Dog,
this created more of an appetite.
[Jake] We both were experimenting with
drugs at the time.
I remember JY showing me a jar that he had
over 1000 hits of Speed in it.
You know, and...
of course, when he came South,
it came with him.
Yeah, he was already into the Speed,
into the downers, and sleeping pills.
Ah, I hadn't gotten into that yet, but...
I was soon to start.
There was a couple times on the road with him,
he would always keep his pinky nail a little bit longer.
And I'd look over and see him, you know,
and he was just about to do it,
and he looked over at me, and he goes,
"If I ever see you doing this, I'll kill you."
"Alright. You don't need to tell me twice."
[Laughing] Kind of like rock 'n roll, I mean...
I didn't know wrestlers had groupies.
Found that out.
It's kind of like you see on TV with
these rock stars and stuff.
It was just like anywhere they went...
restaurants, bars.
When you got fame like this, he said,
"You can actually make money."
I said, "What are you talking about?" He said,
"I'm not gonna sleep with them for free."
I mean, some of these chicks would pay.
[Tony] I started hanging out with Dog 'cause I got
free beer, free food, and I got laid.
[Laughing]
And they paid for it!
We was in Little Rock, Arkansas,
and I was low on money 'cause at that time,
unfortunately, I was involved with drugs, and...
Dog said, "I can get you some money." I'm like, "Okay."
Said, "I got some girls coming over."
"Oh, thank you."
The door opened, and these three girls came in.
And each one of them gave Dog $100 apiece
to get laid by the wrestlers.
So, anyway, Dog said,
"He don't do no screwing. He like your feet.
So, he gonna play with your feet.
You let him play with your feet."
So, I'm playing with the girls' feet.
Dog getting ready to do the girl,
and then we hear another knock at the door.
[Knocking]
He thought it was another one of the wrestlers.
It was the girl's husband.
You know, he wanted to fight Dog so, he did.
It didn't last long.
Dog beat the hell out of him.
The girl stayed. [Laughing]
♪
Dog was one of the highest paid guys in pro wrestling
at that time.
He never made under a grand a week.
I think he was probably averaging more like 2 or
$3,000 a week, and in a territory that size,
that was pretty extraordinary.
Bill, he did nice things for him, including a car.
You know, when he pulled up to an arena,
you got noticed, in a positive way.
As one of the biggest draws in the territory,
The Junkyard Dog catches the eye of WWF promoter,
Vince McMahon.
In the summer of 1984,
McMahon makes JYD an offer
that's more than double what he's paid under Bill Watts.
Vince McMahon was starting the national expansion...
that he started in 1984.
And Vince was trying to suck up all the talent.
Unfortunately, the thing happened that
I never believed would happen...
and that was, Dog walked out.
He walked out on his professional saviour,
and he went to WWF for the cash.
Oh, hoo...
[Laughing]
Ah, I'd loved to have seen him
when he got that phone call.
A lucrative offer from the WWF proves too strong
for The Junkyard Dog to resist,
as he suddenly departs Mid South,
sending shockwaves through the territory
and leaving promoter Bill Watts stunned.
The big topic of conversation is The Junkyard Dog and
what's happened to him and, we don't really know.
We do know that he's left the Mid-South area.
When Dog left Mid-South, it broke Watts' heart...
'Cause he had never been as kind...
and as giving to anybody in his career.
Bill went on television,
had a little verbal tirade directed at Dog.
I want to comment one minute on The Junkyard Dog,
because I watched him come to Mid-South as a youngster,
and a lot of people watched him grow to
become truly a superstar.
But then JYD walked out, not only on Mid-South,
which really hurt me personally 'cause
I considered him a great friend-
he walked out on all the fans.
I mean, to see a white man cry...
over a Black man back in the day...
I saw tears come out of Bill Watts' eyes.
This has hurt him bad 'cause Bill Watts did everything
he could to keep him there.
And it just looked like overnight, he was gone.
But in the aftermath of his departure,
rumours circulate that his sudden exit from the company
is motivated by factors beyond money.
Dog told me this story,
the way he went to the WWF.
Dog was in the bathroom, and he was in the stall.
Bill Watts and Grizzly Smith, they came in the bathroom,
and they didn't know Dog was in the stall.
Grizzly Smith went to tell Bill Watts, he says,
"Well, I think we're gonna lose Sylvester.
I hear he's going to the WWF, he's going to New York."
The next thing Bill Watts said to Grizzly Smith, said,
"Ah, don't worry about it.
That nigger ain't going nowhere."
Dog heard that.
♪ [Suspenseful music] ♪
And so, that's when he made up his mind
to leave and go to Vince.
♪
After The Junkyard Dog leaves Mid-South
in the summer of 1984,
Bill Watts begins a search for his replacement.
Brother, it scared him to death that his territory
was gonna just collapse.
So desperate...
that immediately he tried to
slide in another Black superstar.
Bill made a, I think, a...
mistake, in the sense that,
we started trying out every
African American wrestler that we could bring in.
George Wells...
You can't run this dog out.
I'm here to stay, and I'm here to
whip a whole lot of behind.
Brickhouse Brown.
[Announcer] Brickhouse Brown!
-[Cheering] -The Brickhouse is styling.
They brought another guy in, called him "The Snowman".
I had the pleasure of wrestling him.
Jake The Snake, he tried to take me out.
These thunder cookers, he can't do nothing with it.
Did not work.
I want the sucker right down here in the middle of this ring
right now!
[Jake] Butch Reed was a very good wrestler,
but he wasn't the Dog.
He was a bodybuilder.
He was too pretty- not that big, ugly,
bad son of a bitch that people could identify with.
And on and on. [Sighing]
No, none, forget about it.
[Jim Ross] They were good guys, they tried.
But, replacing a legend...
that's like hiring the next cowboy to replace John Wayne.
How the hell you gonna do that?
The fans of the WWF welcomed JYD with
open arms and thunderous applause.
[Announcer] This place has gone bananas!
He certainly has his legions of fans here, by the thousand.
And these fans are with him all the way!
He is something!
McMahon did a phenomenal job of marketing JYD
when he hired him. I will give him that.
You have become one of the most popular athletes
in the World Wresting Federation, perhaps in,
in the most shortest length of time than anyone
ever to enter the ring.
You know, I've been very fortunate.
A lot of help come from...
just understanding the people,
getting along with people.
It don't make no difference what race or colour is.
Financially, it was the best move Dog ever made.
He told me one time, he was making
six figures a quarter on his action figure.
That's the third time my junkyard's
been burgled this month.
There's only one way to protect this place, amigo,
you've gotta get yourself a Junkyard Dog.
I thought that was cool, seeing the cartoons on
Saturday mornings, his action figure.
The music video, all that stuff,
that was pretty cool as a kid to see.
Ah, "Grab Them Cakes".
He couldn't sing for shit though.
[Laughing]
♪ GET YOURSELF STARTED. ♪
♪ IT'S HARD TO STOP. ♪
♪ YOU JUST GO FOR YOUR PARTNERS ♪
♪ YOU KNOW WHAT. ♪
♪ AND THEN YOU G-R-A-B ♪
♪ T-H-E-M C-A-K-E-S! ♪
♪ AH, GRAB THEM CAKES! ♪
♪ OH! ♪
And his dreams were all being fulfilled...
and he was making money.
He was doing it, man, he was doing it.
Junkyard Dog, and World's Heavyweight Champion,
Hulk Hogan!
Longevity-wise, you know, it's hard to stick around.
Extremely competitive business,
everybody wants Hogan's spot, the spot below that.
A lot of hungry guys.
And, hard to stick around.
As The Junkyard Dog joins a WWF roster packed with
some of the biggest names in wrestling,
his magnetic presence can only carry him so far.
Despite his best efforts, he fails to recapture the
towering heights of his glory days in Mid-South.
I don't think the industry was ready to go that route.
Um, how can I say it?
With a...
Black wrestler.
That's just my opinion.
I really believe that JYD thought that Vince McMahon
was gonna push him the same way as Bill Watts.
And, it didn't happen.
He figured, well, I done let Louisiana down.
I done let my family down.
I done let Bill Watts down. He was just heartbroken.
Having left the Mid-South territory behind for the
promise of even greater fame, The Junkyard Dog fails to
reach the same level of prominence in the WWF.
Me and Dog wanna be climbing up mountaintops!
We want to go to the promise land!
We want to be with Hulk Hogan, brother!
They pushed some Black wrestlers there,
but as far as putting the Black man in the money spot...
No... Not at all.
They didn't go there.
So, I gotta put this Black and white thing together
all the time, 'cause that's the only way I see it.
From 1980, to...
I would say '86, 80% of the top wrestlers were minorities.
In the Vince Sr. era,
Vince McMahon Sr. figured that
you have to have a person representing every
nationality of people, and that was his idea.
Pedro Morales, Bruno Sammartino,
Rocky Johnson, The Wild Samoans,
Mr. Fugi, Bob Backlund.
In that whole list, I named how many white people?
One.
But right now, let's begin the festivities without
further ado, let's go up to ringside.
When Vince Jr. took over, well,
there wasn't as many minorities on top.
He came with the Hulk Hogan,
Roddy Piper, Bret Hart.
Well, he had a pecking order for Dog.
He needed a Black wrestler, but that,
he had to push the Caucasian wrestler.
It's not racism, it was a business decision.
He wanted to get the white fans to come more.
Vince McMahon didn't use him like Bill did.
I wish he had, because if he'd a...
opened that door, I think he could have been
one of the biggest stars in the WWE.
Do I think it affected him? Absolutely.
And I think that was when
the drugs got really bad.
[Tony] Dog started off with pot.
And, that led to cocaine.
He just smoked it. Y'all call it "crack" now.
[Jake exhaling sharply] Once he got into the coke,
the coke took him.
He had to have it every day.
JYD didn't care where he was at.
He'd just pull it out and do it.
On airplanes and everything, man.
He got me in trouble one time.
They were doing a TNT thing that Vince used to do.
He said, "I want you to make sure he gets there."
They got a Learjet for him, a nice jet.
So, when Dog landed,
they got the guy with the limousine to
pick us up at the airport.
Dog sent the limousine out to the ghetto
to get some dope.
So, they're driving around.
"Dog, we gotta get to the building. Dog!"
Finally, he found somebody to sell him his dope.
The limousine driver had no idea what was going on.
So, Dog asked, "Is it okay if I smoke?"
The limo guy, he thought he means cigarettes.
Dog said, "Yeah." He takes out his crack pipe,
and he started smoking crack in the car!
All of a sudden, the limo driver's like...
[Sputtering] He don't know what the hell to do!
We finally get Dog there, but we late.
Which means I missed my match.
Dog forgot one thing that Thunderbolt Patterson
was trying to teach all of us Black wrestlers.
Thunderbolt used to always say,
"You can't do what the white man do and keep your job."
By the late 1980s, The Junkyard Dog
is consumed by a devastating drug addiction,
and its consequences are felt
far beyond the squared circle.
He didn't look good. He would talk, but...
he wasn't that cheerful Dog that we knew.
He just wasn't the same person.
He didn't care what happened.
He didn't care at all. I mean, he just...
[Jake] Oh, my God, yeah, he was out of control.
I remember him sitting there in Madison Square Garden.
And loading a pipe up,
and hitting it right in front of everybody.
I go, "JY, what are you doing, man?" He goes,
"---- them, they don't even know,
they don't even know what it is."
[Groaning] You know?
He was just- [Exhaling sharply] Burnt.
Oh, yeah, the Dog came out of his hiding place.
Started to begin to move up and down
that ladder once again.
And like I said, time and time again,
if a Dog needs a bone to chew on...
Of course, he had a drug problem.
Everybody was taking drugs back then.
I can't throw no stones.
I- A to Z- I just never had that
addictive type personality.
But Dog, he struggled with that.
He sank into it. It was more and more, and...
You know, there was no talking him out of it.
No-shows, the way I understood it.
But when you miss shows, you,
you scare 'em when you do that.
[Koko] I didn't have no idea that he was
leaving or anything like that.
And that's the way the wrestling business,
it was like that.
They didn't give you two weeks' notice.
Tell you, "Hey, leave."
A guy can't go buy groceries.
He don't have any money.
And you haven't seen your family.
It's disheartening.
He definitely had a great soul.
If JYD's story isn't a cautionary tale,
then people aren't paying attention.
Fired from the WWF,
and struggling to make ends meet,
JYD turns to the independent circuit,
performing in small high school gyms
for diminishing crowds.
After hitting rock bottom, JYD's fortunes change with
an offer to join World Championship Wrestling,
where his old friend and mentor, Bill Watts,
is now in charge.
And Bill Watts came in, and he knew that he could make
his mark if he recaptured that Black superstar.
He was likeable as hell.
Everybody there was happy to...
try to resurrect him, shall we say.
I knew that his days of working on the top were over.
He didn't know that.
He didn't seem like he wanted to admit it, but...
you ain't the same guy.
And, you look bloated.
You're not JYD right now.
And at some point, you hold out hope that somebody that
you love and respect, well, they'll see the light.
But let me tell you something- as my daddy would say,
"They gotta carry their share of the water."
I get mad when I pull up stories about it.
First thing people say, "Drugs this, drugs that."
You got a, a guy that came from nothing,
and they pulled him out of that environment...
give him all this money.
I'm not making excuses, but yeah, he did drugs.
Whoopee. I mean, everybody got demons.
I'm pretty sure the last time I seen him was like 1995,
and I came in and he was just mumbling.
[Mimicking mumbling incoherently]
That was about it, man,
and I went back to where he was sitting, they said,
"He's in the ring." I went out to watch,
they were ringing the bell, it was over.
Lasted about two minutes.
That's all he gave 'em. And he came back,
grabbed his money and walked out the door.
Didn't say bye, didn't say hi, didn't say nothing, man.
And I know exactly where he was at.
He was wanting to get outside so he could get high again.
Been there.
I've been there.
If he had his drug fix, he was perfectly happy
to go into isolation until he needed the money.
Then he'd work a show
for some independent promoter for the cash.
[Jake] You see the pain that you get
from the cocaine is because
you look in the mirror every now and then,
moment of clarity, and you'll look at yourself and
you'll see just how far down you've gone.
That's painful and, it's also shameful.
And those two things, man, will kill you.
In just over a decade,
JYD goes from headlining the Super Dome,
to working a part-time job at a local Wal-Mart.
Dog is used to being treated a certain way for
a long period of time, from his football career
to his wrestling career. And then all of a sudden,
all that is taken away from him.
You have to get used to being treated...
like shit, pretty much.
When I hit that spot, I tried to commit suicide.
I was homeless for a year and a half.
I slept in the park.
Didn't shower, or bathe, or brush my teeth,
or comb my hair for a year and a half.
That was right before Saba Simba.
So, Dog was going through the same thing.
He didn't save his money.
Dog was very careless with money.
He was making 8, $10,000 a week!
It just came so easy to him,
and all of us felt the same way-
not just Dog- that it would never end.
We figured this would never end,
that we always gonna be making money.
We always gonna be big stars.
This would never end.
So, the phone rings one day and I get a call from JYD.
I hadn't talked to him in quite a while and,
he knows by now that, you know,
I've had this change in my life and that I'm now,
not only doing school assemblies, but I'm,
I'm speaking at churches.
If you're a wrestling fan, you may have
remembered the Million-Dollar Man.
How many in this room would say you remember that guy?
[Audience] Yeah! Woo!
And he said, "I want you to encourage those kids
you're talking to...
not to do what I did."
And I was just like, "Wow."
I did what he asked me to do.
That sin, that one that goes away for a week or a month,
and then it rears its ugly head and it's back...
or maybe even worse, it's there every day.
Drugs, alcohol, addiction.
Here's a guy who was the biggest name.
And, succumbed to drugs.
And of course, yeah, it was probably
one of the last conversations we had.
The last time he came home
was for his daughter's graduation.
He was coming from Mississippi.
Dog was real proud of his daughter.
He wanted to make sure that he was at
his daughter's graduation because,
I mean, she would want him there, too.
I mean, that's- you gotta feel real proud if your dad
is The Junkyard Dog and he walks into your graduation.
[Laughing] It don't get no better than that.
So, he was certainly determined to get there.
[Jarvis] From where he was living out in Mississippi
to Charlotte, North Carolina
is about a 9-hour drive one way.
He misses the graduation.
We're all at my mom and dad's house.
He shows up. Of course, he apologizes,
you know, that he was late.
He holds my son for the first time.
My son was six months old, but he looks like
a little miniature baby doll in his hand.
And he held him for a while, but that was
the last family photo taken of him.
♪
And then, later on, you know, he said,
"Well, I'm gonna get back on the road."
So, I met him at this gas station,
and there's something on the driver's side door.
I'm like, "Dude, what's that?" And he goes, "Puke."
[Laughing] "Boy, so you had a long night,
last night." So, I didn't think nothing else about it.
And I said, "You gonna drive all the way back home?
You're not gonna pull over to sleep or anything?"
He said, "Nah, I'm just gonna go ahead and drive on,
you know, make it straight home."
I didn't know that was gonna be
the last conversation I had with him though.
On June 1st, 1998,
after leaving a celebration of his
daughter's high school graduation,
The Junkyard Dog sets out on the long and
fateful journey home.
We talked 10, 15 minutes, right before he was getting
ready to go, he's done gassing up and everything,
and he's...
I said, "Well, man," I said, "when you coming back down?"
He said, "Man, you know, I'll be back on the 4th.
Be back on the 4th." I said, "Alright, well, cool, man,
I'll see you then," you know, dapped each other up.
He gets in the car, and he drives away, I go home.
The next day, I get the call at work,
and it's my mom. And, she's...
you know, very upset, and I just- she said,
"Sylvester got killed last night."
I was like, "Wait, what?" And, she...
rambled something, and I could barely make it out.
I just heard, "Car, he got killed,"
and she hangs up the phone.
♪
And, according to the authorities,
the accident happened that morning.
So, he drove all through the night, all night long.
He fell asleep, there was no skid marks.
You can see where the car veered off the road,
and it flipped several times.
There's no way he could've been wearing his seatbelt
'cause he was too damn big for that seatbelt.
He shouldn't have been in that car anyway.
And, it was head trauma.
According to the autopsy.
A lot of time when you're on the drugs, you know,
you're up three or four days sometimes.
You don't get no rest until sometime the body just says,
"Hey, I don't want no more. I'm shutting down."
So, that's what the body has to do to you
for you to really go get rest.
So, I think Dog just hadn't had no rest,
and the body just shut down.
It broke my heart.
And I'm sure it broke the world's heart.
He loved Ted Dibiase. They was like brothers.
And, I know it broke Ted's heart.
I was very hopeful then that he was gonna get better.
Next thing I know, he's, he's had a...
car wreck.
I got a phone call when he had the car wreck.
To tell you the truth, I was happy for him.
'Cause I was still caught...
in the trenches.
And I knew that he'd escaped.
I knew that the pain was over.
I started crying 'cause I realized I never got to tell him
how much I loved him.
The period of time I was around him,
he was such a dynamite human being.
The fact of how we ended
our relationship was not near as important
as the time we spent together.
JYD was a neat, special person.
And then you also see the terrible battle
that's fought when guys get something that
gets a hold of them that they can't whip.
Alright, so, this is his grave site here.
One of his last wrestling pictures.
And, just below him, this is his daughter.
What actually, what it was, was a ruptured heart valve.
It actually literally exploded.
There was nothing they could've done anyway.
And then, she passed away, a few minutes after that.
And she was 31 years old.
My mom comes and she puts flowers and everything.
Never misses a holiday, birthday.
My mom finds it very difficult
to talk about Sylvester...
because she was so close to him and,
she raised Latoya as her daughter.
It's just traumatic for her to go back down memory lane,
so to speak. I think it just opens up...
too many wounds that probably haven't fully healed.
He was a trailblazer, man.
I'm sure a lot of those young guys
appreciate the path that you laid for 'em.
[Teddy] Yes, he did, he paved the way for all of us.
I mean, any time he came out, you always remember JYD,
and you will remember him when you left that arena that
night so, Dog's legacy is he's just one of the greatest
Black stars in pro wrestling.
JYD did more to create awareness...
and acceptance within the closed world,
very prejudiced world of pro wrestling.
He stepped to the front of the line,
and he stayed in the front of the line for many, many years.
The charisma was natural, and real, organic.
And that's what separated him from the pack.
Oh, the crowd saying, "Who that? Who that?
[Audience] Who that, who that?
"Who that gonna beat that Junkyard Dog?
Who that?" This guy is a true hero.
So, I prefer to remember him in the happier days.
And not anything else.
He broke the barriers.
I mean, the fans are just all over you, Dog.
It gets pretty hectic at times, but I enjoy it, man,
I love it. But see, in this business,
I let them get close to me.
He always had a moment for a kid, or a grownup.
He had that charisma that made him a god to those that
loved him, and there were so many people
that loved him, Black and white.
Yeah, hard to find anybody say something bad about JYD.
He was a stand-up guy in a business where
there's not a whole lot of stand-up guys.
...An honour to introduce Sylvester Ritter,
The Junkyard Dog, to the Wrestling Hall of Fame.
I'm hoping that he's remembered for
good stuff that he did in the industry.
LaToya Ritter will be the recipient of
the award for her dad.
While I'm standing here, it's important to me-
and I know it would be important to him-
to introduce his sister, Christine Woodburn.
He called her "Big Red".
I didn't get to speak to JYD very much at the end,
but again, that last conversation when he said,
"Tell my story...
when you're talking to those kids."
That told me, I said, "The guy that I knew is back."
♪