Wrestling’s Renaissance man pins down success

David Renzi

Friday, June 27, 1997 | 11:17 a.m.

As he is now a household name on cable television -- in households that watch rasslin, anyway (which adds up to a lot of single-wide trailers) -- Mike Tenay has the power to startle the occasional home-beautification worker who knocks on his door.

Not long ago, it was the carpet cleaner. There was a double-take from the visitor, then the glint of recognition, then, at last, the volcanic identification, the sudden realization that Mike Tenay doesn't live inside a TV, isn't bound by the dimensions of the box, but actually -- yes -- owns a house! Breathes circulated air! Lives in Las Vegas!

"Iron Mike!" yells the man, who, through his Monday-night viewing habits and Tenay's Monday-night occupation, considers himself a personal friend, a comrade in the wrestling culture, a guy who knows his Power Bombs from his Atomic Drops (as Tenay does), who can discuss the intricacies of the figure-four leg lock (as Tenay can).

"It's scary," says Tenay, sitting in a chair on the newly cleaned rug in his living room. "The power of TV is absolutely scary. It can be fun, but it can be kind of strange at times. For me, it's so new, it takes me off guard."

Now, about this "Iron Mike" thing. This is a source of amusement to those who knew him as "Free-Drink" Mike, when he night-managed the race book at the Gold Coast and dispensed complimentary cocktail coupons to select friends and horse players. But now that he works for Ted Turner-owned World Championship Wrestling, interviewing combatants and providing expert commentary on its top-rated "Monday Nitro" broadcast on TNT, he requires a name that connotes toughness -- even as his suits say "polyester blend" -- and befits his new station.

In this, Tenay isn't alone. Most WCW announcers are quotation-marked. Bobby Heenan is usually "The Brain," though occasionally "The Weasel." Heenan was a particularly heinous, if ingenious manager before he became a commentator; hence the alternating nomenclatures.

"The Legend" is Larry Zbyszko, who acquired the nickname when he accomplished the impossible, beating the seemingly unbeatable Bruno Sammartino to win the old Worldwide Wrestling Federation heavyweight championship.

Fans need only hear "American Dream" to know you're referring to Dusty Rhodes, the roly-poly and bleached-blond Texan who speaks a language only he seems to understand; and "Dream" to know it's Gene Okerlund, the preternaturally tanned emcee with the smooth-toned voice and the extended forehead.

Tenay, who joined "Monday Nitro" on Sept. 2, 1996, is the anomaly of the group, a guy with no wrestling experience (unlike color commentators Heenan, Rhodes and Zbyszko) and minimal broadcast experience (unlike Okerlund and play-by-play man Tony Schiavone).

What he brings to the table is a fanatic's knowledge of the holds, history and participants, and an objective, professional voice -- a rarity among color commentators, who are typically former wrestlers and usually predisposed to siding with either the good guy or the "heel," depending on what they themselves were.

Talking on air

Tenay couldn't possibly have foreseen the direction of his destiny when, one night in 1991, he walked into the local KVEG studios (840-AM) to talk sports with overnight host Jay Richards. Ultimately, it was pointing southeast, to Atlanta.

Now, from a vantage point six years in the future, Tenay can look back and say confidently that his entree into WCW was a fluke. A fluke, because things here had to line up with almost cosmic precision to take him there.

First, there had to be a 24-hour sports radio program in Las Vegas. Second, its overnight call-in show had to be ailing. Third, Tenay had to be working on a night when Richards came to the Gold Coast to ask him to be a guest.

"He said, 'I can't get anyone to come on,'" says Tenay, explaining that the time slot (midnight-6 a.m.) wasn't conducive to obtaining guests or listeners on the East Coast.

Tenay agreed to come on the next night. He talked general sports for the first two hours, to near unanimous disinterest.

"We got very few phone calls," he says. "After the 2 a.m. news, Jay turned to me and said, 'You used to be involved in wrestling, right? Can you talk about wrestling on the air?'"

What happened next goes a long way toward explaining the uncanny ratings wrestling achieves in comparison to legit sports. "Monday Nitro," for instance, drew four times the audience the NHL playoffs drew on ESPN and consistently beat the NBA in the regular season and the playoffs.

"That's where people's jaws drop," Tenay says. "In terms of baseball, our show on Saturday afternoon ("WCW Saturday Night on TBS") always draws a better rating than the Braves. That's the Braves now, America's Team."

The reason?

"It's a release for people," he says. "It's a combination of sports and entertainment that you can't get anywhere else. There's nothing quite like wrestling."

Which he discovered that night in 1991. Tenay began to talk and calls began to come.

"All of a sudden, we looked up and all the phone lines were lit up, at 2:45 in the morning."

Next day the station manager called him.

"Can you start your first show tomorrow?" he asked.

Thus, "The Wrestling Insiders" was born. It went from one hour the first week to two hours the second week to three hours the next week and for its duration. Tenay hosted the nationally syndicated show until 1996.

"How do you plan that?" he says. "You go there (to the radio station) not even planning it, and the next day you're doing a show on that topic. There's no way to plan it."

A fluke? OK. But an opportune fluke. In addition to taking calls from wrestling fans across the country, Tenay would also invite WCW wrestlers and executives onto the program -- a move that would pay dividends down the line.

"I think it opened up the executives' eyes to me being around and gave them an awareness of me," he says.

And it led to an invitation, in 1993, to host the WCW Hotline -- a weekly 10-minute recorded message containing the latest information and gossip.

"It amounted to a talk radio show one step further. It opened me up to a larger audience."

The hotline (1-900-909-9900, $1.59 a minute) has evolved to twice a week, airing Mondays and Thursdays.

"As we like to say, 'Parents, get your kids' permission before calling.'"

One leads to the other

The recorded hotline begat the interactive hotline, which WCW implemented at its pay-per-view events in 1994. Called "Backstage Pass," fans could dial the hotline and have Tenay relay their questions to the wrestlers in the locker room.

"I did that for one pay-per-view, and I haven't missed a show since," he says, adding that "Backstage Pass" is now done over the Internet.

Tenay conducted his first televised interviews at a pay-per-view event in Tupelo, Miss., out of necessity.

"Gene fell ill, and I was there to do the hotline," he says. "They decided to let me do it on TV. It was a last-minute thing that afternoon, about an hour before going on the air. I remember thinking, 'What an opportunity to go out there and fall flat on your face on live television.'"

Which Tenay almost did, through no fault of his own.

"I was about to interview Harlem Heat (a tag team) and Sister Sherri (their manager). The producer started counting it down (to air time), and when she said 'one', Sherri took her index finger and (put it) right between the cheeks," says a laughing Tenay, demonstrating his jump-through-the-roof reaction to the invasion of a foreign phalange.

"What a strange kind of welcome. She got me right on live TV."

Tenay did fall on his posterior at the next pay-per-view. Again, through no fault of his own.

"I had absolutely no idea it was coming," he says, referring to the incident in which Vader, a 6-foot-5, 450-pound wrestler Tenay was preparing to interview, grabbed him by the shirt, lifted him in the air and tossed him against the wall on live television.

Tenay survived, but Vader ultimately didn't -- at least not in WCW. He is now wrestling for the rival World Wrestling Federation.

Finding a niche

If anything cemented Tenay's place in the organization, it was his knowledge of international wrestling. When WCW opted to bring Mexican and Japanese wrestlers into the fold, it already had in Tenay a nonpareil source of arcane information.

He calls it a lucky break.

"International wrestling is more or less my specialty, something I've been following for years," says Tenay, who has a satellite in his back yard to pick up wrestling from Mexico. He also receives and studies tapes of Japanese wrestling. "It's a labor of love. I was watching wrestling from Mexico and Japan before I was ever paid for it."

It was just natural, then, that he'd be tabbed to host the international versions of both "WCW Worldwide" and "WCW Pro," weekly one-hour programs that go to 40 countries. The matches are taped at Universal Studios in Orlando, Fla., but Tenay sits in a studio at CNN Center in Atlanta and provides the voice-over as he watches a video monitor.

Tenay juggled his full-time job and his full-time passion for almost two years, flying back-and-forth between Las Vegas and the various WCW pay-per-view sites until the toll of living two lives became too much.

He still wracks up the frequent-flier miles, as his 98 flights and 107,000 miles since January would attest. He generally leaves Las Vegas on Saturday for the pay-per-view site, where he stays through Monday night. On Tuesday morning, he boards a plane for Atlanta, where he performs his voice-overs, then takes a plane that evening bound for Las Vegas.

It's tiring, he says, but it beats the drudgery of a 9 to 5, or, in Tenay's case, a 4 to midnight. He resigned his job at the Gold Coast in May 1996.

"I was under contract (to WCW), and I could feel it was going well. I got positive vibrations from people there, and I felt I had some kind of a future doing it," he says, explaining his decision to quit.

He was rewarded that August, when he received an offer from WCW Executive Vice President Eric Bischoff to join the "Monday Nitro" team.

"I said, 'I'll be there this Monday.' Scary, huh? The expression 'right place, right time' could not apply any better, from the standpoint of having all the international wrestling to Eric Bischoff being in charge. I don't think another person would have hired me, not having any broadcast experience or television training. He went out on a limb."

And while Tenay didn't think twice about accepting the offer, he did ponder the ramifications.

"I thought, 'Boy, is my life going to change,' and boy has it. It was a great opportunity, and I wouldn't have considered anything but giving it a shot in the long-term or the short-term. How often do you get a call from someone asking you to come on the highest-rated wrestling show on cable (as well as the highest-rated show on cable)? You go for it."

You go for it, that is, if you're home to take the call. Tenay wasn't. He found out from his wife that Bischoff had left a message.

"I was stopping off to make a bet and called him from a pay phone. I didn't know what the call was about, but in the back of my mind was this, 'Hmm, this could be a big call.'"

Tenay didn't say if he won the bet, but he sure hit the jackpot.

"It's the biggest break of my life," he says. "The thing that makes me appreciate it is, I never asked or spent a lot of time worrying about getting a TV job. It just sort of fell into place."

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