411’s Dark Side of The Ring Report: ‘Breaking The Cycle: The Graham Dynasty’

-This will be informative for me as I don’t much about The Graham Family other than they were a major part of the wrestling scene in Florida. Mike Graham popped up on some WWE DVD releases back in the day and I remember him taking shots at Jeff Jarrett among others. Let’s get to it!

-Chris Jericho is our narrator!

-Disclaimer: The following episode features discussion about suicide and suicidal ideation. Viewer discretion is advised.

-Based on the disclaimer and intro, this is going to be heavy.

-Jim Cornette gives us a history of Championship Wrestling from Florida and how a member of The Graham Family was either on the card or behind the scenes during the glory years. He continues that they drew thousands of fans and had Super Bowl like ratings in the State.

-Next is Nicole Gossett, the granddaughter of Eddie Graham and daughter of Mike Graham. She talks her up bringing and how different wrestlers would be sleeping on their couch. She was scared of Andre as a little kid. It was the family business!

-Cornette notes everyone wanted to work in Florida because of the money, the weather, the girls, and the chance to learn from Eddie Graham. Eddie made you believe he was the toughest man in Florida, and we get some classic FCW footage.

-Kevin Sullivan (great to see him and he looks pretty good for his age) calls Eddie a genius of the business. He mentions Eddie’s father died young.

-Dotty Curtis, the wife of the late Don Curtis, is next and says her husband met Eddie in 1952 and became friends. Don was the promoter in Jacksonville and asked Eddie to join him. She notes that the business will never have another Eddie Graham.

-Eddie was born Eddie Gossett and his career changed when he took the Graham last name from Dr. Jerry Graham. Cornette mentions he was the originator of the Graham Dynasty. He carried himself like a star and had the gift of gab. More classic footage! Brother teams were over in New York and if someone looked like you, they would just claim to be brothers. The Golden Graham Brothers were born and were massive stars in New York where they would sell out Madison Square Garden. Cornette thinks they were making close to six figures in the 50s which would be well over a million today.

-Dr. Graham was an alcoholic and mentally ill. He caused a lot of trouble and liked to go into biker bars, get in a guys face, and yell: “My name is balls. Do you got any?” I could see how that would cause an issue.

-Graham was in his hometown of Phoenix, AZ where his mother was in the hospital. He told the doctors she better come out alive and she didn’t as she passed away. Graham returned to the hospital with a 12 gauge shotgun, 38 caliber revolver, and a 8 inch hunting knife. He gets to ICU and fires a shot at a doctor and then grabs the stretcher that his mother’s dead body is on. They try to stop him and he throws his mother’s corpse on his shoulder and yelled, “I just want to take her home and bury her.” I mean, this is just the opening 10 minutes!

-Eddie didn’t want to be partners with Jerry anymore and left New York with his family and settled in Tampa. He knew he could get over there and be the star. Cornette says over the next twenty fives years he became the biggest star ever in Florida and was able to eventually buy the territory.

-B. Brian Blair is next and says he started in 1977 in Florida. He talks about the Armory in Tampa and how hot it was. Nicole mentions all the wrestlers in Tampa give everything they had on Tuesday nights and became big stars. Eddie Graham was able to keep good relations with Vince Sr and Vince Jr.

-Cornette gives us a rundown of the NWA and how Graham was President of the NWA twice. Eddie was a violent person and did what he wanted or you were out. He wanted his wrestlers to lay their shit it, and make people believe. Blair says he told the boys if they lost a fight to a mark they were fired as they always had to protect the business. They talk about what was essentially a torture chamber in the basement were they would weed people out who were trying to be wrestlers. Blair notes he isn’t proud of some of the things he was asked to do and notes they were told to break people’s bones.

-Sullivan tells a story of some guy being booked for shows and they aren’t sure how he got there. He was in a match with Sullivan and said he would make him look good. Graham told Sullivan, if he doesn’t come back bleeding you are through. Sullivan: “I kept my job.” I bet he did! Sullivan says he had a family and it was his lively hood. He notes it was probably the worst thing he ever did.

-Commercials!

-Sullivan says Eddie was a go getter and expanded outside of the business. He wanted to write checks instead of just receiving checks. He got involved in charitable organizations in every town and county in Florida. He helped raise the profile on amateur wrestling and was basically a rock star in the State. He had politicians in his pocket as it was a big deal for them to be on FCW TV.

-The main problem for Eddie was alcohol and we get a story about him drinking while taking his boat out. It freaked Mike out as he was worried his father was going to kill himself on the water. Eddie took his bike and was going to jump off a bridge on the boat. He didn’t make it in time to see the boat, and if he had jumped, he probably would have died.

-Eddie was a lovable father, but was demanding and put high expectations on Mike. We get sound from Mike from an interview he did in 2010. He talks about the pressure and scrutiny of being Mike Graham. Cornette notes Mike was shorter and didn’t have the personality of his father, but had the knowledge. He was a good worker and was in a lot of tag teams. He never wanted to be the big star of the promotion and Sullivan notes he blended in well with the boys better than most who were a promoter’s son. More classic FCW footage!

-Sullivan says he had the honor of being Mike’s partner and his opponent. He was never going to back down and couldn’t go home after getting his ass kicked. Nicole talks about her dad coming him bloody sweaty, and smelling like alcohol. It was a normal life for them.

-FCW became a breeding ground for generational stars like Hulk Hogan, Ric Flair, and Dusty Rhodes. Sullivan notes that Dusty was like a surrogate son and was loved by the family. Eddie took Dusty under his wing and when Dusty turned face it set the territory on fire.

-Eddie retires in his 50s and things outside the ring started to turn. Blair notes he was torn between two women and had shady business partners calling. Add to that the alcohol and medication that were getting to be too much. He would get a cheap bottle of wine at a late night story when coming home. One night the place wasn’t open and he was so desperate he found a bunch of used bottles in a nearby field and drank whatever he could get out of them. Yeah, that’s an alcohol problem sadly!

-Commercials!

-Graham is struggling with finding meaning outside a wrestling ring. Eddie and his wife went to a restaurant, and nobody recognized him and he didn’t know how to deal with that. Nicole notes he was never really the same after that encounter. One of the last checks he ever wrote was to a liquor store for eight dollars and he wrote “peace of mind.”

-Eddie had turned 55 and Nicole was skating around him and asked what he got for his birthday. He told her fifty-five and she asked fifty-five what, and he said back, “fifty-five years.” Looking back she realized what that meant and how he knew it was over.

-Mike Graham (again from 2010) mentions he was at Super Bowl XIX between Miami and San Fran (Go Niners) and received a page to report to the box office. He was told to call home and they said it was his dad. Eddie had shot himself twice and Dotty notes she will spare us the gory details about the bedroom. Back to Mike as he says his dad was in the hospital and on life support. Mike made it home and knew it wasn’t an accident and his dad wouldn’t want to be like that so he told his mom it was time to pull it. He died five minutes later!

-It sent shock waves throughout Florida specifically and all over the country. Every talking head gets emotional and wonder why he did what he did. Sullivan says people knew he was depressed, but nobody thought it would get that far. Eddie did a good job of hiding what was going on with him mentally.

-Cornette says that within a year Florida was on it’s last legs. That also coupled with Vince going National or as Blair calls it, “Vince robbing the territories.” Again, one man’s robbery is another man’s talent acquisition. Someone was going to do it and Vince just had the vision to do it first.

-Sullivan notes the territory started struggling a year before Graham died and we see it wasn’t Vince, but Dusty. You see Dusty left and took half the territory with him. Mike notes that made his father mad as it was like he was trying to kill the territory.

-Mike picked up the territory after his father’s death, but it wasn’t the same place. They even ran an angle with The Freebirds dumping on Eddie’s legacy. Blair says that Eddie would have wanted Mike to use his death to heat an angle, but Cornette thinks it went too far. No matter what Mike did, things weren’t working and two years later FCW closed their doors.

-Cornette notes that Eddie would have been the only one to save it as he was the one guy that had the best relationship with The McMahons was Eddie.

-Commercials!

-We see footage of Mike Graham working in WCW where he had a job in and outside the ring to mentor the young guys. Nicole says her dad got bitter as the business changed with people who didn’t know about the business writing for the boys or coming up with ideas.

-Mike had the thought that you can sleep when you die. He got his first tattoo was he was forty. It was a skull with flames and the words “Peace of Mind.” His drinking got worse after his father died and he actually had a license for Mike Graham and Mike Gossett so that when he got a DUI and they suspended one, he had the other. He started to get tough his son, Steven, as he wanted him to be tough. He was a stronger built guy and everyone expected him to be a tough, mean guy and that hurt him. We see family photos of Nicole with her brother and this is going to be heartbreaking.

-She sent him a text one morning and he didn’t respond, but she figured he was working. Mike was worried and asked if she heard from him. She went to check on him and she found that he had taken his life. She called her father and told him not to come. They met up later and Mike told her that if he had Steven, they would be burying both of them as he would have taken his life right there.

-Blair isn’t sure what demons got to Steven. The entire family was crushed and it just didn’t have to be. She notes her and Steven saw what suicide did to the family, but at the same time her grandfather doing it made it an option. “Well, he did it.” Everyone was worried about her, but she was more concerned with her dad.

-Commercials!

-His son’s death happened in 2010 and Sullivan notes Mike was living with “I must have been a shitty father and a shitty son.” Man! That is brutal and had to be crushing Mike. Sullivan notes they were friends, but never mushy with each other, but Mike told Sullivan he loved him.

-Nicole starts to break down as she talks about her daughter and told Mike this all ends with Steven. “Look at her, she doesn’t deserve this. What your dad did was horrible. What Steven did we are never going to recover from it. But this ends now! Look at her. She doesn’t deserve this.” Mike agreed and less than two years later he did the same.

-Sullivan says Mike and his wife were in Daytona Beach for bike week. She went outside to see some friends and when she came back and opened the door she heard a gunshot. Mike was dead, wearing Steven’s cowboy boots. Man! This is just awful! Sullivan: “He couldn’t break the cycle.”

-Nicole says she was still trying to pick up the pieces from her brother and this was a different level of pain. Cornette says it was a shock as you have to think the same thing can’t happen to two generations and in this case it happens to three.

-We go back even further as it seems Eddie’s father killed himself and Eddie’s brother, Skip, killed himself. I mean, you run out of words! Blair notes one suicide is too many, and here are five over four generations. They discuss how it can be seen as an option for those in the family of someone who committed suicide. Sullivan notes it is a heavy burden for Nicole and her daughter to carry.

-Commercials!

-Matt Borne (Doink) is next week!

-We need something positive to close so Nicole takes us to the old Armory. We see a display celebrating the wrestling history of the building that was put together by Boris Malenko’s son. It is a pretty cool murial and Nicole breaks down reading “this will always be the house Championship Wrestling from Florida built.” She tries to focus on all the good times and remembers her grandfather with a lot of love. Her brother was her best friend and she wishes he knew how everyone loved him. “Dad, we had that tough relationship because I called him out on things, but there was so much love and respect. I miss my dad so much, and I wish he was here to see my daughter grow up because he is missing out on so much.”

-Blair and Sullivan wishes they had more days with their friends. Dotty says it is best not to dwell on the bad and says she loves Nicole. She is the legacy of the family. Nicole took time and found The Crisis Center of Tamp Bay to help get a word out for people to who need help or for those who need to get out of bed because they lost family members. Blair says there has to be a lesson for everyone who watches this program. “Someone loves you always.” Nicole says for someone to speak up and find that peace of mind. She says it occurred to her that she has it, and got a simple Tatoo of “Peace of Mind;” She says she is so happy right now and you can see the smile beaming on her face.

-I am going to include this here because maybe someone reading this needs the help:

If you or someone you know is struggling with thoughts of suicide, there is help available. The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline provides 24/7, free and confidential support for people in distress, prevention and crisis resources for you or your loved ones. Call 9-8-8 and via online chat at 988lifeline.org

-This was a lot to sit through obviously, but God Bless Nicole and her strength. I am pleased to see she is doing so well, and I commend her for telling this story. Every talking head here was perfect and added so much. I don’t have much more to add as this one speaks for itself and really the message that ended the show that I typed above is the most important thing I can add. Thanks for reading!