Scott Bowden presents Kentucky Fried Rasslin

I was nearing the end of my first Memphis managerial run in February 1995 when I received the call. Eddie Gilbert, the man who orchestrated my turn from mild-mannered referee to dastardly heel, was dead of a heart attack at the age of 33. In what would become a morbid tradition for the next 13 years, Kevin Lawler broke the bad news to me. (To this day, whenever Kevin and I call each other, the one receiving the call answers, “Oh, no. Who died?” Sad, really.) Even though Eddie was in bad shape the last time I saw him, nearly falling asleep as we spoke backstage at the Mid-South Coliseum just two months earlier, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

The All-American Boy: Although he looked like the boy next door, Gilbert longed to be the King of Memphis.

I’d watched over the years as Eddie developed from an 18-year-old nervous babyface rookie into one of the best heels—and minds—in the business. Like Eddie, I grew up idolizing Jerry Lawler, dreaming of the day we’d conduct heel interviews together side by side. Eddie enabled me to live that dream.

This is how I first met Eddie Gilbert in 1989…and how I was forced to say goodbye less than six years later.

Despite the fact that nearly the same crew was working two nights later in Memphis at the Mid-South Coliseum in July 1989, a friend and I made the drive to Jackson, Tennessee, for an NWA/WCW card, headlined by an injured Terry Funk vs. Sting, and an old Memphis gimmick that Eddie had seen many times as a young man—the two-ring, triple-chance battle royal. I was an 18-year-old mark, fresh out of high school, and I fully believed that my destiny was to be a booker. Like Eddie, I played fantasy booker as a youngster, developing long-running story lines involving my make-believe wrestling friends. Now Eddie was living a dream of his own, as one of the bookers for the revamped, Ted Turner-owned WCW.

This WCW card in Jackson was to be a homecoming for Eddie, the nearby-Lexington, Tenn.-native. Gilbert’s Memphis influence was already creeping into WCW, with the addition of longtime Jarrett-announcer Lance Russell. The strong push of Funk as a deranged heel, including his crazed attack on NWA World champion Ric Flair months earlier at Wrestle War ’89 riled up memories of the Funker’s feud of years ago with the King of Memphis. I don’t mean to slight Eddie, but I’m sure he also was behind the ill-fated blonde-babyface tag-team of Johnny Ace (Laurinaitis) and Shane Douglas, who were originally billed as “The New Generation,” a moniker used in Memphis years earlier by Bart Batten and Johnny Wilhoit. (The latter team was doomed in Memphis after a music video aired on TV of them frolicking around Jerry Jarrett’s estate like two young lovers to the tune of “Let’s Hear It for the Boy.”) Somehow, Ace and Douglas were later renamed with an even worse moniker: The Dynamic Dudes.

A Heel Mentor: A young Scott Bowden listens attentively as “Hot Stuff” gives Lance Russell an earful.

Although JCP/NWA/WCW had been a hot promotion from ’85 to ’87, the company fell on hard times, as booker Dusty Rhodes might say, a result of stale booking, frustrating screw-job finishes (e.g., the “hometown” Road Warriors being disqualified at Starrcade ’87 in Chicago vs. Tully Blanchard and Arn Anderson) and low morale when it become apparent to all the boys that owner Jim Crockett was in over his head. Crockett’s ill-fated “balloon-payment” contracts were the final nails in the coffin.

But 1989 offered promise, with Turner buying the promotion to keep rasslin’ on the SuperStation, and the arrivals of new stars like Ricky Steamboat, who was immediately programmed into a feud with Flair. The two old rivals from Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling produced some of the greatest matches in the history of the business, although it didn’t exactly translate into box-office success, mostly because of Steamboat’s outdated family-man routine.

As it turned out, Steamboat’s arrival signaled the beginning of the end for Gilbert as a major player—at least as a wrestler—in the company. Although he had developed a successful heel persona over the years, Gilbert arrived in WCW in the latter part of 1988 as a babyface. Gilbert appeared to be in the best shape of his life, as he had supposedly loaded up on steroids to pack muscle onto his small frame. The promotion was in a transition phase, so Gilbert, the new kid in town, was able to position himself into a program with Horsemen Flair and Barry Windham. Undoubtedly, Gilbert was ecstatic. Steamboat was brought in as Mr. X, Eddie’s secret weapon against the Horsemen. Almost immediately after Steamboat’s debut, the last TV taping at the legendary WTBS Studio, Gilbert was dropped from the angle, supposedly at the request of Flair.