D.M. 9.30.02

 

Although deaths of active wrestlers are far too common, and most are far younger than Ted Petty, the death of the wrestler best known as Flyboy Rocco Rock stunned in particular the East Coast wrestling community.

 

Petty died at the age of either 49 or 50 on 9/21 from what is believe to have been a massive heart attack while traveling from a show in Jersey City, NJ to Philadelphia, where he had a second booking that night.

 

While most wrestling deaths seem to have a reason, whether they be noticeable health problems, long-time drug problems, suicides or simply freakish accidents, Petty was known for keeping in great condition and few knew he had a family history of heart problems, Although he was around during some wild days in ECW, he had no reputation of being a major partier.

 

The reality is that the greatest risk factor when it comes to heart problems is not bad diet or lack of exercise, or smoking, but family history.

 

Petty wrestled under numerous identities in a 25-year career as an independent wrestler who caught fame during the wave of ECW. He achieved his only real notoriety as half of the tag team Public Enemy, which headlined ECW in 1994-95 as four-time tag team champions. Along with Mike Durham, better known as Johnny Grunge, they were the face of the promotion during the period it started being put on the map with regular sellouts of the ECW Arena and popularizing the three-way dance concept. While it didn't happen, the two were so popular that at the time they left for WCW, there was fear it would be a crippling blow to the promotion.

 

Petty had wrestled Devon Storm [Chris Ford] for Jersey Championship Wrestling in the second match of the card, leaving early to catch a second booking for 3PW at the ECW Arena where he was scheduled to face Gary Wolfe. At about 9pm, while on the highway, near Elizabeth, NJ, traveling with girlfriend and wrestler Jeanne Durso [who wrestled under names Little Jeannie and more recently as Sweet Destiny], he apparently told her he was having trouble breathing. She asked him if he was having a heart attack, and he never responded, and probably died at that moment. Durso called 911 from a cell phone was told paramedics would meet her at the next Toll Plaza. But when they arrived, he had already passed away and was pronounced dead at Trinitas Hospital in Elizabeth.

 

Friends of his said Petty had complained of chest pains for about a week, but never went to the doctors to check them out. Ford, who like many on the East Coast wrestling scene, considered Petty as a mentor. He sad that there appeared to be nothing wrong with him that night.

 

"When we talked over the match, he just said, 'let's go out there and have fun," Ford recalled. "He said he hadn't done that in a while."

 

Ford noted the show was mainly a kids audience that they wrestled in front of, so they were easy, and they didn't do anything dangerous or out of the ordinary. Ford said he later asked his girlfriend if there was any sign of him hesitating like he may have been short of wind. Ford said neither he or she noticed anything wrong. After their match, Ford and Petty two left the building together because Petty didn't know how to get to the turnpike, where both would be jeaded to a second booking [Ford was working another city off the same turnpike]. He said Petty followed him and both went their separate ways. After his later match, he got two messages on his cell phone from Georgiann Makropolous, the first saying Ted had a heart attack, and the second saying he had passed away.

 

Petty never arrived at the 3PW show, but they never got word of why until Durso called after the show was over.

 

Ford was stunned, and wonders if New Jersey deregulating wrestling, which resulted in no longer having doctors take blood pressure before the shows, could have made a difference. But it's too early to know what caused the heart attack and whether a pre-match exam could have helped. There were the same questioned asked when Gary Albright in Pennsylvania died in the ring of a heart attack when Pennsylvania had largely deregulated wrestling and no longer had wrestlers take physical exams, and All Japan also never put wrestlers through exams.

 

Petty is listed as being born on September 1, 1953, although many friends said they believed he had shaved a year off his age with that birthdate. He lived on a big farm near Bound Brook, NJ and was considered a mentor by many of the wrestlers in the Northest because he was so giving when it came to advice.

 

Countless stories have come in about Petty trying to teach wrestling and take care of guys who were just trying to learn wrestling with no other reason other than he enjoyed teaching people.

 

"He didn't even know me and he helped me out a lot," said Gabe Sapolsky, the ROH booker, who worked in the ECW office when Public Enemy hit it big there. "He was a normal guy and all the wrestlers respected him because they knew he was tough. Nobody ever said a bad word about him."

 

Storm considered him like his wrestling father, and was stunned by the death. Petty, then wrestling as Cheetah Kid, was in the first independent wrestling match he ever saw at the age of 15, and in that weird irony, he wrestled Petty in his final match. He noted that throughout his career Petty always went out of his way to be his friend and in particular, looked out for him when he first started in WCW.

 

Petty was a great high school and college wrestler. In 1974, while wrestling for Middlesex County College, he won the national Junior College wrestling championship at 177 pounds. He then went on to Rutgers University where he was a successful wrestler although never placed at Division 1 nationals. He also earned his Masters Degree in Education. He also did some Golden Gloves boxing and taught English. He also coached wrestling for a year at Rutgers as an assistant and was later head wrestling coach at College of New Jersey, and broke into pro wrestling around 1978. Although some on the inside knew of his background as far as having been a good amateur wrestler and that he was a very tough guy for his size, he wasn't a bully and few in wrestling had any idea the was a legitimate national champion.

 

Carmine Despirito, a former wrestling magazine writer who later became a promoter in Wisconsin, was one of many people broken into wrestling by Petty.

 

"You never heard about it, but he put up a lot of wrestlers at his house and helped out a lot of guys who didn't have any money," he said.

 

Most of Petty's wrestling career came on Northeast independents, where he was the local star under the name the Cheetah Kid. He had started his career wrestling under a number of different names including Blue Max, Leopard Mask, Amazing Rocca and Antonino Rocca Jr.

 

He actually first became a masked wrestler, called Leopard Mask, in the late 70s. In the early 80s, after seeing the popularity of the original Tiger Mask in Japan, he changed his name to Cheetah Kid and was a pioneer in Northeastern wrestling doing moves like topes, planchas and lots of high flying that nobody outside of Japan and Mexico was doing, mostly learned from watching Japanese videos. He put together his own wrestling ring, which wrestlers liked to work in, and got tons of work all over the Northeast since he would rent the ring and be the best local wrestler on most of the show he appeared on. He did a lot of training at Larry Sharpe's Monster Factory, including helping train Bam Bam Bigelow, before he and Sharpe had a falling out.

 

"He was one of the really great guys in the business," noted Mick Foley, who said that with the exception of the wrestlers he trained with at Domenic DeNucci's school, the only wrestlers he invited to his wedding were Petty, Mike Kaluha and Tom Brandi.

 

Foley noted the irony that the night Petty died, he had been thinking about him because of a story that he never put in either of his books about getting his first break as a pro wrestler.

 

"It was a match I had with Cheetah Kid that got me booked in Memphis," he said. "He was the big flier on the East Coast and a real innovator. Our series of matches in the New York area were getting a lot of attention."

 

The two wre booked as underneath talent on two weekend shows in Jersey City and Queens.

 

"Wahoo [McDaniel] was on the show, and he told Jerry Lawler [who was half owner of the Memphis promotion] that there were these two kids who are really hungry," Foley recalled. "They didn't realize Ted [who was 36 at the time but looked much younger] wasn't a kid. Lawler came up to me and asked me if I was doing drugs. I didn't know it was part of a job interview. It showed that Wahoo's word carried a lot of weight in wrestling. Three days later, I got my call [to start in Tennessee]."

 

But just as memorable to Foley was coming back into the dressing room after one of the mactches, where they were flying all over the place and taking big bumps.

 

"Manny Fernandez taked to us both and told us to stop doing all that flying and bumping and leave that to the guys in the main event," he said. "Fernandez told us that our job was just to warm up the crowd for the main eventer. Ted looked right in his eyes and said, 'maybe the wrong guys are in the main event.' I'll never forget Petty telling Fernandez that, because Fernandez was a big star at the time and an intimidating guy."

 

Even though Petty loved wrestling, he was taking about giving it up in 1993 and just renting out his ring. Even though he had never made the big time in wrestling, he was very good with his money and the Northeastern indie wrestlers looked up to him as somone who was a business success. He was so good with his money after some big years under a WCW contract that he only wrestled at this point because he wanted to.

 

Petty got a brief shot as a supposed South African for WCW for the 1990 Starrcade PPV when they did a Pat O'Connor Memorial tag team tournament, but didn't look impressive. He teamed with Gary Fall, who later became one of the Doinks in the WWF and was better known as Ray Apollo. Under the name Sgt. Krueger, they wrestled an uncooperative Steiner Brothers team who wouldn't sell any of his offense or his flying. He did a diveout of the ring, which in those days was considered an innovative move rarely seen in the U.S. rings, and Rick took one step backwards and he crashed to the floor. The match wound up as a squash lasting only 2:12.

 

He did achieve what was his long-time goal when he was booked on a New Japan tour as Cheetah Kid and set up to feud with the top high flying in wrestling at the time, Jushin Liger. But he was not a success thee and was never asked back.

 

He was wrestling on a tour of Manila and Singapore, where he wrestled his usual regular Northeast wrestling opponent, Mike Durham, who went by the name Johnny Rotten. Petty, as a joke, one night went out and did match without his mask as Honest Mario Savoldi, a rip on a Northeastern promoter who had made a lot of enemies. After seeing his facial expressions, Paul Heyman told him he should give up the mask. Sicne he had failed in Japan, WCW and in a WWF tryout, he had largely given up his dreams to be anything more than an independent wrestler. Heyman convinced him he had enough talent and just needed a break, and actually first used him as a masked man as part of a team called the Kimoto Dragons when Heyman and Jim Crockett attempted to start a new promotion in Texas, as a tag team partner with Dean Malenko. Petty actually took the role originally slotted for Eddie Guerrero, who was working AAA at tge tne, Heyman already had the plans to put Petty & Durham as a team for the Crockett company that only lasted one taping, but he hadn't come up with the Public Enemy idea.

 

When Heyman took over as booker of ECW on September 18, 1993, his first project was to create a top attraction with the concept of The Public Enemy. The idea was to have two white hoodies who were extremely violent. He gave them an interview tag line, "We are the first generation of American children more afraid of living than dying." Petty, a few weeks past his 40th birthday, was playing the role of a kid in his early 20s. He had them go over Jason Knight & Ian Rotten in what was a squash match. In those days, wrestlers usually worked their way up the ladders to stardom, having to prove themselves at a lower level before getting main events. Heyman had decided TPE would be a headline gate attraction team because of the modern urban hoodies gimmick, even the two wrestlers had no major league success beforehand. In what was unusual at the time, Heyman had all their opponent juice in TV squash matches as a way to get them over.

 

Heyman had them come to the ring to "Slam" by the rap group Onyx, but few remember that. Public Enemy became synonymous in wrestling not only in the U.S. but also Japan for dancing to the ring, no where more popular than the ECW Arena, to the song "Hotstepper." They were the team that originally popularized three way dances and fans bring the weapons style matches.

 

Their push nearly died on December 26, 1993 in a blow-off match against Pat Tanaka and Paul Diamond, who were former AWA tag champs, when the first exploding cell match in the U.S. was a flop with a pop gun explosion. Heyman immediately took them off television as a damage control issue. The idea was to turn them babyfaces for a program with the Bruise Brothers, Ron & Don Harris, which was when they started doing their trademark comedy high-pitched voice interviews.

 

While originally cast as heels in 1994, they made a reputation as it was done in those days, by beating big name stars. In a coup, Heyman brought Dory Funk in to team with brother Terry, who had a reputation of being one of the greatest tag teams in pro wrestling history, for a series of bloody matches and angles where TPE was put over. After beating the Funks, they were accepted universally as top talent and became ECW's biggest stars along with Sabu.

 

The two were not great workers by any means by this point, but in perhaps the most masterful job of creating superstars out of two journeymen wrestlers, Heyman had them fly constantly through tables, use barbed wire, and participate in memorable bloody main events and had virtually all of wrestling fooled. In addition, Heyman directed them in numerous comedy vignettes that were classics of their time, including them constantly making fun of Grunge's legendary drinking, making fun of Mikey Whipwreck and perhaps the most memorable, making fun of bad WCW PPV shows.

 

In the latter part of 1994, they were in a comedy program that was a big success for the company, feuding with Whipwreck and Cactus Jack. The program was not planned, and more the result of a panie when Funk walked out of ECW and didn't let anyone know the day of an ECW Arena show. Heyman came up with the plan of making Whipwreck the reluctant partner of Cactus, and with Funk no-showing, felt he needed to give the fans a little switch to make up for it. Whipwreck was doing a gimmick as the ultimate loser, who would somehow luck into winning. Somehow Cactus, who at the ECW level was a superstar because hed had main event programs in WCW and was already considered wrestling's premiere brawler, would pick Whipwreck as his partner for matches even though Whipwreck would pretend to be scared to death.

 

Foley noted that he and Petty both loved that program because they enjoyed setting up all the Whipwreck spots. Perhaps their most memorable vignettes were filemd in Central Park where they would comedically train Whipwreck for his match with Sandman as they would have him climb trees and pick his pockets.

 

"It was so much fun because the Mikey character was so different from any character ever in wrestling," Foley said. "We had so much fun coming up with ideas to make the Mikey character work."

 

In 1995, Public Enemy had been turned babyface because people enjoyed their comedy and headlined the promotion with matches against Sabu and Taz, Pitbulls, Chris Benoit and Dean Malenko, Raven and Stevie Richards, Sandman and 2 Cold Scorpio and the Gangstas and even became on a small level, cult favorites for the W*ING promotion in Japan where the concept of fans bringing weapons such as computer keyboards and barbed wire bats was introduced to that country. The two would hold the tag titles and look at each other in their interviews and say "Hey, champ" to each other.

 

In something that seemed totally reasonable at the time but hardly looks as good in hindsight, in both 1994 and 1995, Public Enemy won most of the American-based tag team of the year awards. No doubt they were the tag team stars of the year as most of the other groups used tag champs as middle act and they were on top and as hot a tag team as there has been in years within the context of their promotion. In 1994, they placed third in the Observer awards behind Love Machine and Eddie Guerrero, who were probably the best tag team to work North America during the entire decade, and Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi. The next year, they finished a very close second, and had far more first place votes than Observer award winners Mitsuharu Misawa and Kenta Kobashi. As a team, they placed sixth and third respectively those two years in the Best Brawler category. Ultimately, when they were at the peack of their praise within the industry, their careers as top stars in wrestling was about to hit a brick wall.

 

They had become such big stars that both WWF and WCW, as the wrestling war got heated, both made plays for them as the hottest minor league characters in the business. Even after they did a WWF try-out match, losing to their tag champs, the Smoking Gunns [Billy Gunn and the wrestler currently known as Mark Barton in All Japan], and didn't look good at all, which got a lot of WWF wrestlers at the time questioning whether they were what they were cracked up to being, that didn't damper either side's interest. WWF, which worked with ECW secretly at the time, while WCW was considered an enemy group, figured they had first dibs and Heyman tried to manuever them when it was apparent they couldn't keep them, into the WWF's arms.

 

However, they made the decision to go with the guaranteed money of WCW. It was on January 6, 1996, during a farwell show in Philadelphia called "House Party '96," where the fans would made them, turned on them for attempting to better themselves, and would go on to become a famous "You sold out" chant among ECW fans was born.

 

Because of their ECW fame, they started in WCW with great fanfare in a feud with the Nasty Boys, another top brawling team of the era. But it became clear the two were not what people thought they were and except for spots when they used tables, taking out liberal usage of the blade and fans bringing weapons, their matches suddenly didn't look so good. They had some cult popularity early in WCW because they were given the tables gimmick, which was an easy pop, since it was new on a national basis, at the time. But it wasn't long before they were treated as jokes. After their contracts expired, they went back to ECW, but it was a very brief disaster, ending with hard feeling on both sides. The fans didn't seem them the same after they had largely failed in WCW and saw them as cast-offs instead of returning heroes. Heyman wanted to use them as legends to put over his new main team, the Dudleys. After doing an angle to set up the feud, the sides had a falling out and they noshowed their first scheduled match with the Dudleys and never worked in ECW again.

 

Surprisingly, they were offered a shot in WWF, who apparently were under the impression they were misused by WCW and remembered their popularity of years earlier. Not surprisingly by this time, it didn't work out. Their last match became something of WWF folklore, although many both in and out of the company considered it as total bush league. They were put in the ring in a TV match with Bradshaw and Faarooq.

 

Petty and Durham were told it was to be a one-sided squash and that they were not to get any offense in. What happened was a legitimate ass kicking as a farewell present so many got in their jollies and the reputation of the APA in the business as tough guys was made.

 

"Ted Petty was a guy with an extense amateur wrestling, boxing and kickboxing background," Foley said. "It doesn't take a tough guy to beat up a guy told by his employer not to do a single thing. I'm not saying he could have beat up Bradshaw, but it wouldn't have been so one-sided."

 

The two ended up back in WCW as being one of a million acts on the roster that were never pushed, before attempting and failing to regain their glory back on the indie scene after that gig was up.