The Rock And Roll Express Are Born By Dutch Mantel

The World According to Dutch


Have you ever wondered where some of the names wrestlers use come from? Well they can only come from two places. Either the wrestler gives himself a name or the booker/creative people do. In earlier times, a guy could get a name in 30 seconds. Now, it might take weeks to run copyright and trademark searches. The Rock and Roll Express didn't have to wait long. Below is the story of not only how their name was arrived at but also their gimmick as well.

Back in the early 80's, the Memphis territory was on fire. Jerry Lawler and I used to travel quite a bit together back on the Louisville and Evansville shots in those days. On this particular day, we were headed north on I-65 to to Louisville. It wasn't a hard drive and Lawler was a good guy to travel with. Easy going, very personable and hilarious. Louisville was about 2 and a half hour drive from Nashville and once you hit the Louisville city limits, the Gardens was just 4 blocks off the interstate. Basically, the entire drive was all interstate. Wrestlers loved that. I know I did.

As this particular trip started, Lawler, at the time, was booking the territory. As we talked on the way to Louisville, Lawler mentioned to me that he was bringing in Ricky Morton and Robert Gibson as a team but he needed something for them that was different. He needed them to have a gimmick. He asked did I have any suggestions. I, at first suggested that to be really different, they could wrestle naked. That would be really different I thought. But, after some thought, we decided that there were probably laws and stuff prohibiting that kind of athletic behavior. So we started slinging ideas back and forth but came up with nothing with any substance to it. I still liked the naked wrestling idea. I already had a name for the team. The Streakers.

We talked back and forth for over an hour and we still didn't have anything that we thought would work. I would throw an idea and Lawler wouldn't like it. Then he'd throw something and I wouldn't like it. Creatively, we were stumped on how to debut those guys. Matter of fact, we were stumped as to what we wanted to do that night too. But, Lawler was notoriously late for delivering finishes so I was used to it.


Finally, as we were about to stop for a stretch, I offhandedly remarked, "You know, Ricky Morton kinda looks like he could be in a rock band or something. Both of them look like they could be in a band. Why don't you just dress them up like little rock stars and call them Rock and Roll something? Ricky Morton has that mullet thing going on like all those rock stars do and and so does Robert so that might be something that you could use." Lawler looked at me and said "that's it. I have a bunch of stuff at home that I can put them in and we can call them the Rock and Roll Express."



Wow I thought. That gimmick came about quite suddenly.


We then stopped at an exit where we usually stopped on every trip to Louisville . Lawler walked in and went straight to a magazine rack at a store where we stopped. He bought two rock and roll magazines so that he could look at the photos and get some ideas of what Ricky and Robert needed to look like. He saw a photo of Motley Crue and that gave Lawler the look he wanted.

Lawler booked them the next Monday in Memphis and told them what he wanted them to wear. They were to wear long tights with bandanas on them and go to the ring with a heavy rock and roll sound as their entrance theme. In those days, ASCAP or the music companies didn't say anything about wrestlers using their commercial music on entrances. Now, don't even think about it.

On that Monday night, I distinctly remember walking into their dressing room as they were getting ready and Ricky was all dressed with his little bandanas all tied up around his boots. Ricky was all excited. Robert, on the other hand, didn't seem as gleeful. Robert wasn't sharing the same enthusiasm for the character that Ricky was displaying. I finally asked Robert what the problem was and he told me that he thought the gimmick was "silly."

I saw now what the problem was. Robert Gibson was actually embarrassed to put the long tights and bandanas on. Ricky got on him a little and shamed him into doing it but he didn't like it. He did it but he was still embarrassed. Ricky didn't care. He was just glad to be wrestling. Robert was still embarrassed when he entered the Mid Soutth Coliseum arena for the Rock and Roll Express' first match ever.

That moment changed Ricky Morton's and Robert Gibson's lives forever.

As they say in show business, it was all in the presentation. When their music hit and the spotlight caught them coming down the aisle, they looked like stars and the people responded to them that way. The Rock and Roll Express got over in one night. Big time. They got over with the young kids and especially with the young girls in the crowd. They would have gotten over more except there was another team in Memphis at the time with a similar gimmick, the Fabulous Ones who were blocking their way.

Business was very good that year and The Rock and Roll Express stayed in Memphis for about a year learning how to work and team together. Jimmy Cornette and the MidNight Express were working in Bill Watts territory, the Mid South, and Watts was dying for a team to go against Cornette's guys. The Midnight were established as the top heel team in the territory and Cornette had advised Watts that Ricky and Robert were the team that the Midnight could do HUGE business with.

A few phone calls later between Watts and Jerry Jarrett and it was set. The Rock and Roll would leave Memphis and start in the Mid South where they would feud with the Midnight Express. Their run together set attendance and gate records in Watt's territory never seen before. Watts was a promoter who serious wrestling who loved the big guys and never pushed the smaller guys but the fan's response to the Rock and Roll Express was just so overwhelming that Watts was forced to run with it. He ran all the way to the bank.

After a couple of years in the Mid South, both teams found their way to the Carolinas and the Mid Altantic territory and with Ric Flair anchoring the territory, it was deja vu all over again. The Rock and Roll made more money than they ever dreamed of making. I heard later that Robert Gibson got over his embarrassment rather quickly after seeing how well paid he was when he got his checks.

To think that all their success came at the hands of two guys casually driving up to Louisville, Kentucky one afternoon, who accidentally hit on a right formula, shows just how simple this business can be. Maybe if Lawler and I hadn't been in that car at that precise moment, at that precise time, Robert Gibson and Ricky Morton, as the Rock and Roll Express, could very possibly never have existed and both of them could have ended up as mere blips on the wrestling radar screen instead of having a place in wrestling history. Timing is everything.


Credit http://theworldaccordingtodutch.blogspot.com/