I don’t know why, I started searching today for old St Louis Wrestling stuff. Couldn’t find much though. Made me reminisce about the old days wrestling for Frank Reed, Steve Murphy and the other clowns in that area. God, those were some of the best days of my life. The wrestling was horrible (especially when I was involved), but it was so damn fun.
I remember when I created the Freddie Jacobs persona. The old Frederick Jacobs rich boy character had gotten old. It reeked of the old AWA. After much thought and not being very creative, I decided to steal Raven’s gimmick and do the grunge thing. Except I couldn’t grow long hair since I was still in the Air Force. But I think I made myself look grungy enough.
The CSWA was running weekly Monday night shows at the old Big Texas bar in St Louis. The week before one of the ring crew had jumped me at the end of a match. I don’t remember why though, but I knew he wanted to get involved in the business a little more. He wanted to be called The Captain. I have no idea to this day what his name was still. Just before the show began I pulled him and my best friend and tag team partner The Beast aside and told them of my plans. I told the Captain that if he really wanted to be in this business, he was going to get in that night.
His main job besides setting up the ring was always at ringside leading the national anthem. My idea was to hide behind the stage and jump him in the middle of the anthem. Yeah, being an active member of the military at the time, it was a little unpatriotic. But it was necessary to get the new character over. I had to do something no one had done before. And to top it all off, I didn’t tell anyone else I was doing it. I wanted to add to the surprise.
As the anthem played, I waited behind the stage. When The Captain sang “and the rockets red glare”, I burst on the scene and jumped him from behind. It was perfect from a wrestling standpoint. People were in shock. He literally flew off the stage. Being he was still a greenhorn and still under the old “kayfabe” rules, I beat the hell out of him, laying in every shot nice and snug. I then threw him into the ring and planned on piledriving him, but soon after the locker room emptied and grabbed me before I could. They all thought it was a “shoot”. Everyone was pissed at me screaming “What the hell are you doing Freddie?” Beast, sensing the upcoming beating I was about to get, grabbed me and pulled me to the back. Frank was swearing over the mic that I’d never work St Louis again.
We got to the back and everyone wanted to kill me. I told another member of the crew to go get Frank, Steve Murphy who was doing commentary and ring announcing and The Captain and we’d settle all of this outside. The show was literally stopped at this point, and it was exactly what I wanted.
In the back, the boys gathered like there was about to be a fight in the back. Steve, Frank, Beast and Captain followed me outside and Captain and played it like we were going to brawl when we both just hugged. Everyone was shocked. We just “worked the boys”. I explained that I had to get the gimmick over and that I knew that it would be shot down immediately. There wasn’t any bad blood between us and all was cool.
Later that night my plan was to give The Captain his opportunity to get his revenge on me. I wanted to save it for a tag team match next week for full effect, but Frank wouldn’t go for it. He was supposed to get his revenge on me after the main event, but in true CSWA fashion, Frank told him to jump me during the first match, thus killing all the heat we may have had at the end of the night.
Of course, the next week it was never acknowledged and we went on like it never happened. Again, typical Frank Reed booking. But for better or worse, the Freddie Jacobs era had begun.
“I’m Freddie Jacobs, who the fxck are you!?”
I miss those days…
