The "Superstar" Billy Graham Story: Rise, Reign & Tribulations

The Tale of a Pro Wrestling Legend

“I’m the man of the hour, the man with the power, too sweet to sour.”

-“Superstar” Billy Graham, June 27, 1977, addressing the sold-out crowd in Madison Square Garden.

“Superstar” Billy Gtaham poses with the WWWF world heavyweight championship.

As a new wrestling fan in the mid-80s, I only knew of “Superstar” Billy Graham from seeing him at the very end of his wrestling career.

His last major angle occurred in the fall of 1987 and saw him being “injured” by the One Man Gang due to receiving a splash after Graham had won a match against Butch Reed. Don Muraco saved Graham, and Graham became Muraco’s manager. In reality, at 44 years of age, Graham’s hips and ankles were completely shot.  He would wrestle his final pro wrestling match in November of 1987.

It was through the newsstand wrestling magazines I read every month from cover-to-cover that I learned about Graham’s rich and colorful history as a pro wrestler and how his trendsetting charisma had influenced many of the tops stars I was watching on TV in the mid to late ‘80s.

In 1992, steroid use was a hot topic in the mainstream media, the United States in general, and in the wrestling business in particular.

Two years earlier they had been made illegal and suddenly the super huge and ripped muscular bodies that been so popular in ’80s culture were no longer in vogue. The following year the federal government would charge WWE owner Vince McMahon with an assortment of steroid related charges, including conspiring to distribute steroids and possession of illegal steroids with intent to distribute, A federal trial, where he was ultimately acquitted, would occur in 1994 in Harrisburg, PA.

“Superstar” Billy Graham began publicizing his own health issues related to steroid use in 1992, talking to mainstream print and TV media. Through a friend of his, I obtained his phone number and contacted him to request an interview so I could write an article about him for a newsstand wrestling magazine. I wanted him to share his story directly with wrestling fans in a wrestling publication.

During the course of several conversations, Graham not only discussed his steroid use with me and how it impacted his health, but we also discussed his wrestling career. Portions of the following narrative are based on those conversations.

-            Russell Franklin

Wrestling figure released in the mid-2000s, depicting “Superstar” Billy Graham as he looked in the mid=’70s (from the author’s personal memorabilia collection).

April 30, 1977, Baltimore Civic Center, Baltimore, MD

WWWF Champion Bruno Sammartino vs Challenger “Superstar” Billy Graham

The crowd buzzes at the arrival of Bruno Sammartino into the ring, one of the most popular wrestlers in the history of pro wrestling.

The Italian strongman has dominated the WWWF for nearly its entire existence, having won the world title from the inaugural champ “Nature Boy” Buddy Rogers in May 1963, just over a month after Rogers was crowned the organization’s first champion.

Sammartino was champion until 1971, when he dropped the title to Ivan Koloff. He regained it in 1973 from Stan “The Man” Stasiak and has held it ever since.

The challenger “Superstar” Billy Graham waits patiently in his corner. Graham is one of pro wrestling’s most flamboyant personalities. He has bleached blonde hair, thick blonde sideburns, and the huge and defined muscles of a bodybuilder. He stands out in this era in every way. Dressed in tie-dyed clothes when he comes to the ring, Graham is also quite spirited when he gets hold of the mic and cuts a promo.

The ring announcer indicates that Graham weighs 275 lbs., and the challenger appears to be every bit of that weight and more as he flexes his muscles for the crowd at the announcement of his name.

The bell rings and Sammartino and Graham circle each other in the ring several times before locking up. Graham almost immediately shoves Sammartino back into one of the corners of the ring, forcibly breaking the lock up.

Sammartino shakes it off and moves forward. They lock up again. Same result. The sequence repeats itself the same way one more time before Sammartino finally overpowers Graham, shoving the challenger off with such force that Graham bounces off one of the corner turnbuckles.

Sammartino follows this up on the rebound with an arm drag on Graham, that brings the challenger down to the mat,

The crowd erupts with cheers on Sammartino’s first offensive sequence of the match. Graham tries to muscle out, but to no avail, as Sammartino transitions seamlessly to twisting one of Graham’s wrists before bringing him back down to the mat with another arm bar.

Graham rolls into the ropes to break the hold, and then takes a brief powder outside the ring to recoup himself.

When they lock up again in the ring, Graham gradually works Sammartino’s body onto the mat and on his back, pinning him down with their hands locked together. Graham gets a two count and the crowd cheers when Sammartino thrusts his shoulders up three quarters of the way from the ref’s hand hitting the mat for a third time.

Sammartino rallies back and to the delight of the crowd he gets Graham down to his knees with a test of strength. In a reverse of a few moments earlier, with their hands intertwined, Sammartino muscles Graham down onto the mat, on his back, for a 2.75 count. Graham hooks the rope to break the count.

The momentum starts to shift to Graham after he shoves Sammartino off the ropes and knees the champ on the rebound, sending him sprawling to the mat.

Then Graham stomps Sammartino hard five times before yanking Sammartino up and putting him in a headlock. Graham strategically shifts his body away from the ref and jabs Sammartino in the throat with a thumb. The ref is out of position and misses the illegal move. Graham repeats it with the same result, sending Sammartino to the mat again, where he stomps the champ and then pushes his throat against one of the ring ropes.

Next, Graham whips Sammartino into a corner with such force that an audible thud is heard in the arena. Graham moves in fast, too fast, and misses a running knee.

Back and forth it continues, with each man only getting a few offensive moves before the other one takes control again. The volume of noise in the crowd rises each time Sammartino gains offensive control.

When Sammartino cinches Graham into an extended bearhug, the ringside crowd rises to their feet. This is the same way that Sammartino originally won the title back in 1963 from Buddy Rogers.

The ringside crowd gets even more animated when Graham breaks the hold by grabbing the ropes. Both wrestlers fall towards the corner. Sammartino rises quicker and appears to be building towards yet another triumph as he works over Graham with punches and kicks.

The ref taps Sammartino on the shoulder to get the champion to back up and for just a second Sammartino looks over to the ref.

Graham moves quick, sweeping one of Sammartino’s legs.

Sammartino falls flat on his back, and Graham covers him, putting his legs up on the top turnbuckle for extra leverage.

The ref slaps one of his hands on the mat three times for the pinfall.

The ringside crowd is stunned for a few seconds and then several of them stand up and start screaming at the ref, moving forward towards the ring, gesturing to the ropes, trying to explain to the ref that Graham cheated to get the pin,

The ref rings the bell and hands Graham the belt. The new champ briefly holds the title belt in the air before making a quick exit from the ring, perhaps sensing a potential riot.

A TASTE OF THE PERFORMANCE STAGE: FLEX AND GRIN

Slick with posing oil, as he prepared to go on stage for his posing routine at the finals of the 1961 Western Teen Mr. America Bodybuilding Championship, Wayne Coleman couldn’t quite remember what first inspired him to start lifting weights. He knew, however, what kept him coming back to the gym nearly every day, pushing himself to exhaustion.

It was the feeling he got from lifting weights, and the effect it had on his body that drove him. Wayne craved the rush of adrenaline that came with each repetition he performed, knowing it meant his muscles were getting bigger literally with every inch of physical exertion.

Wayne enjoyed physically pushing himself to the limit, and that had always been his mentality in athletics in general. That ethos was easily transferred over to bodybuilding training, where the results of one’s work were as easily measurable as gazing at your own image in the mirror.

The strength came first in the gym, then the muscle thickness. Several of the competitive bodybuilders in the gym commented to Wayne that his large-boned frame with naturally wide clavicles and a narrow waist would lend well to the teenage Wayne competing in bodybuilding shows.

That motivated Wayne and gave him a new challenge. He altered his workouts to mold more definition in his sizable muscles and meticulously tracked every calorie he consumed, making sure they came from high quality and clean food sources. His body responded in turn, tightening up, veins coming to the service of the skin, and his body fat dropping to low single digits.

Wayne was ready for the bodybuilding stage, and ready to win.

That all brought him here, tonight, ready and confident to claim his first major bodybuilding championship.

He heard his name over the microphone, so he stepped out from behind the curtain and began gracefully flexing his muscles, working his way through all the traditional bodybuilding poses.

He placed a special emphasis on doing poses that showed off his round, sculpted and peaked biceps, and well as power poses like the most muscular that showed off both the thickness and definition of his upper toros.

Wayne could hear the crowd buzzing as he flexed, as he liked the attention. Playing up the performance aspect, he found himself strutting to the different sides of the stages to more intimately flex for corners of the crowd, imagining he was giving them a private posing exhibition. Camera flashed in rapid succession. Wayne liked that too.

When Wayne was announced as the winner, he smiled and acknowledged the cheering audience, immediately craving the next time he would be able to perform in front of an attentive audience focused on his physique.

TRAVELING THE TERRITORIES: IN SEARCH OF A NEW PERSONA

In late 1969, Wayne Coleman was a professional football player who had bounced around several leagues the prior few years. He had been a member of the Oakland Raiders for one season but saw no playing time. He followed that up by getting signed to the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League, before moving on to play for the Las Vegas Cowboys of the Continental Football League.

Wayne was looking for a new challenge, sensing something other than pro football was his destiny, when a football player he knew, who was also a pro wrestler, recommended he give professional wrestling a try. He told Wayne that he might do well in wrestling with his size. Wayne’s friend recommended he go to Stu Hart’s wrestling school in Calgary.

Wayne heeded the advice.

By early 1970, Wayne was an active pro wrestler. He debuted in Hart’s Stampede Wrestling territory before moving back to the United States to seek wrestling work there. That same year, he began wrestling full-time in the NWA’s Los Angeles territory. He became the storyline brother of veteran wrestler Dr. Jerry Graham, re-named himself Billy Graham and dyed his hair blonde to match his “brother.”

The “Superstar” moniker would come in a few years.

Billy Graham spent the next several years traveling the wrestling territories of the United States, learning the trade, working hard to improve his skills in the ring and continuing to lift weights nearly every day.

His travels took him to the Championship Wrestling from Florida promotion, NWA’s San Francisco territory, and the AWA, based out of Minneapolis, Minnesota, among other places, and a stint in the WWWF in the mid ’70s as well, before going back to working the NWA territories.

In his prime in the mid-’70s, “Superstar” Billy Graham was the most muscular man in professional wrestling.

THE TITLE REIGN AND THE BACKLUND TRILOGY

“Superstar “Billy Graham returned to the WWWF in 1977, for what would be the biggest push of his career.

Common wrestling lore has always been that “Superstar” Billy Graham was told by Vince McMahon, Sr. the exact day he would be losing the world title in the days prior to him wining it in 1977.

When I interviewed Billy Graham, I didn’t ask him about that. Back then, the professional code was the wrestling interviews for print magazines were done in character and did not delve into the inner workings of the business. I did have conversations about the “inner-workings” from time to time, but they were only with wrestlers and promoters who I had become close friends with and the conversations were just that, conversations between two friends.

Furthermore, if I were to write about the inner-workings, the wrestling magazine publishers would not print it. They were the ones paying me, so I worked for them, and they did not want anything behind the scenes written about in their magazines. It was a very protective business back then among the older insiders.

I only know this from what I’ve read and heard, because I was not watching pro wrestling in 1977, but the consensus was always that Graham had a tremendous presence as world champion.

You see his vibrant and colorful personality when going back and watching old footage, but much like me talking about seeing WrestleMania 3 live as it happened and major NWA events of the era, someone else seeing it decades later only tells part of the story. You see the energy as a viewer, but it’s different than watching something live as it happened, be it on a TV or in person.

Supposedly Graham was hoping that the strong reactions he received as champion at live events, combined with the strong gates, would lead Vince McMahon, Sr. to changing his plans and keeping Graham as a long-term champion and not moving the belt to Bob Backlund in 1978.

It’s been suggested many times in print that Graham should have been turned good in an era where there was a strict dividing line between good and bad guys and no blurred middle, and Graham’s title reign should have continued with well past 1978 with him re-cast as the good guy.

As it goes, when Graham moved into his feud with Bob Backlund there was a growing smattering of fans at live events that were cheering Graham, something unheard of in the late 70s era wrestling, or the decades prior, to have a vocal segment of the audience cheering the heel because he was charismatic.

Graham defended the world title ten times at Madison Square Garden, the premier wrestling venue of WWWF and for pro wrestling in general in many ways for the era. In title matches, he wrestled Dusty Rhodes (one of their matches was the reference point in the modern Cody Rhodes “finishing his story” storyline), Mil Mascaras, Gorilla Monsoon, Bruno Sammartino, Ivan Putski and Peter Maivia. The vast majority of these shows were sell-outs.

Vince McMahon, Sr. did not change bis mind on the title change to Backlund, but what fans got were three memorable matches between “Superstar” Billy Graham and Bob Backlund for the title.

In the first one, Graham was the champion and in the other two he was the challenger.

Graham dropped the title to Backlund in February 1978 in Madison Square Garden, with a disputed finish that saw Graham’s feet on the ropes during the three count.

The rematch occurred in the same building the following month and Graham won the match, but not the title, when the match was stopped due to a cut above Backlund’s eye.

The final match of their trilogy occurred in April 1978 and saw Backlund win definitively in a steel cage match.

Billy Graham in the early ‘90s.

THE TRIBULATIONS

The peak of Graham’s career would be that definitive ten months as world champion.

He left wrestling for a time in the early ‘80s but came back to WWWF (by then called WWF) in 1982.

Gone was the bleached blonde hair and tie-dyed clothes, replaced with a shaved head, a mustache, a leaned down body, and black karate pants. He proclaimed himself a martial arts expert (in actuality there was not an extension of his real life, as he would explain later, he had never even taken a karate class let alone was any kind of martial arts expert), Graham’s new persona lacked much of the fire that had resonated so strongly with the audience when he performed just a half decade prior.

The new character did get over with wrestling fans, but nonetheless he was put into a title program with Bob Backlund.

Graham was gone again from the WWF by the fall of 1983 and over the next few years he wrestled for AWA, Championship from Wrestling from Florida and Mid-Atlantic Wrestling.  He returned a third time to WWF in 1986, but his body was in a rapid decline and his days as a pro wrestler were numbered.

Graham attributed his physical decline to long-term steroid use.

He told me in 1992 that he had first began using steroids in the late sixties and did not stop using them until the summer of 1989.

“At the time I first began using steroids, they were considered a new wonder drug,” said Graham. “We didn’t know about any of the serious side effects that people know about today.”

He explained to me that powerlifters, bodybuilders, football players, and pro wrestlers at the time expected to gain tremendous amounts of strength and power from using steroids, in addition to noticeable increases in body weight and muscle density. These were things that would aid athletes in their respective sports, said Graham.

In the early years of Graham’s steroid use, the drug was easily obtained from doctors, he told me, and there was no public pressure or legality issues for doctors to worry about as there would be decades later.

Graham detailed how he had used both oral and injectable steroids during the height of his use.

“It was thought that you could get the best effect from combining both methods,” he said.

He stressed to me that he did not use the “megadose that many people used in the ‘80s”.

“Yes, I did go over the pharmaceutical recommendations. Also, I was never able to cycle off steroids and be off them for any period of time because there was always the demand for me to look good for television appearances and the live wrestling events.”

Graham said steroids were psychologically addicting.

“Once you obtain a certain level of superior strength and muscularity, and aggression from the drug, you always strive to maintain it.”

Despite all physical health issues he had suffered related to steroids, he was still tempted to use them.

“It’s a tough daily battle for me,” said Graham. “I have always wanted to reach that physical level again that I was once at, and it takes a lot of willpower to resist going back on steroids.”

Graham first started to develop problems related to steroids in 1985. He directly associated his steroid use with the deterioration of his hip and ankle joints that eventually ended in wrestling career in 1987.

I asked him if there was a diagnosed name for his condition, and he said it was called avascular necrosis.

“When you use steroids, your cholesterol is elevated. This causes plague to build up in your arteries and blood vessels. The hip and ankle contain the smallest blood capillaries in the body. These capillaries and blood vessels in my body became so clogged with plaque that it restricted blood circulation. With no blood circulation, the bones died.”

 If steroids had been illegal when he started out in wrestling in the late ‘60s (they didn’t become illegal until 1990), would that have deterred him from using them?

“I would have deterred me a little, but the thing I must point out is that steroids are so powerful and do in fact work well, so I would have probably used them anyway,” replied Graham.

Graham believed that a safe level of usage only occurred if a doctor was closely monitoring the athletes, which was impossible with them being illegal.

Just 48 at the time of our interviews, Graham told me he walked with a cane because of his steroid use and that it had also made him sterile.

What made him decide to speak about his long-term steroid use and how it impacted his health?

He told me that over the last five years he had suffered a great deal of pain and his story was one where a lesson was to be learned.

He was also a realist, he said, and he knew that by relating the complications he developed as a result of steroids, he wouldn’t get everybody stop using the drug, or even have sympathy for him.

“I only hope I can convince a few of my formers peers to stop before it is too late, and most importantly, prevent younger people, particular teenagers, from ever experimenting with steroids.”

Graham continued to have well-documented and severe health issues over the next couple of decades,

In 2004, he was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame. At times he worked with the WWE on various projects, and at other times he was critical of them.

“Superstar” Billy Graham died in 2023.

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