FRED OTTMAN The Official Website!
BIOGRAPHY PART 3
THE OTHER MAN OF STEEL
After Tennessee, I went to Pensacola. Aka & Sika, the Wild Samoans, tried to open a territory there. Then my grandfather died. I went home. I got a phone call, and I went to Portland, Oregon, for Billy Jack Haynes, who had left WWF at that time. He had opened his own territory, Oregon Wrestling Federation, in opposition to Don Owens, who was the original promoter for Portland. I came up there and Haynes gave me the Hercules Haggerty gimmick.
I was there for probably six months, maybe. I was with another friend of mine, J.T. Southern; he had wrestled with me in Tennessee. He looked like David Lee Roth - exactly like him! At one point, he worked for WCW in Atlanta. He later tagged with Scotty Flamingo.
Then after Portland, Oregon, I came back to Florida. I went by the Championship Wrestling from Florida office there in Tampa. I talked to them, and they put me to work there. There you’d find a very young Dustin Rhodes (Goldust). It was great up there! And that guy had everything he had going for him. His father Dusty Rhodes was involved with the office. Also there at that time were Mike Graham and Steve Keirn. Dusty was in charge. It was renamed the Pro Wrestling Federation. The head of the company was a guy that worked for Circus Circus in Las Vegas. He was a friend of Dusty and they brought him here to be a figurehead. We did really well there! We had lots of wrestlers come in and out. It was filmed mostly at the old facility used by Championship Wrestling from Florida.
Gordon Solie was the man behind the mic. I loved Gordon. He was incredible. He was the voice of wrestling since I was very young.
That's when I morphed from Big Bubba into Big Steel Man. Then came Diamond Dallas Page, who was actually the manager of a club named Norma Jean in Fort Myers, Florida. He was amazing! He loved the business. It was great seeing him at WWE Hall of Fame ceremony in 2025. Okay. He was there with Lex Luger. He was such a great guy and so talented! And the vignettes he would do with me! At one point, I did one with him. We were training for a huge match, coming up with Dusty Rhodes, and we were at the airport there in Tampa. Picture a Porsche convertible with all these beautiful Hooters girls all around them. DDP brings up the fact that “I know that you think that I'm driving this, but I have another power source pulling me down this.” And he like going on and on and on. The camera pans out and as the Big Steel Man, I got a big, huge hemp rope and I'm pulling them running down the tarmac! And the girls start shouting “Steel Man! Steel Man! Steel Man!” And I, but I thought that was the, probably one of the coolest things I’ve done! And then they did one with me in the, cutting the promo for Dusty. You can actually see this promo by CLICKING HERE!
While I was there with PWF, we did our huge show. The Funks were there, Bam Bam Bigelow was there, the talent list was huge! We did shows at the fairgrounds there in Tampa. While we were there, Otto Wanz from Austria showed up. He had come over, and he was scouting for talent. He had notified the office of the purpose of his visit. He was coming to the show to watch the matches. The Monday after the show, they called me in the office and they said that Otto wants you to go to Austria for 10 days, in the same area where Arnold Schwarzenegger is from. Actually, his father was the head of the police department there. How cool is that? Arnold is a huge wrestling fan as a lot of you know. I'm gonna wrestle Otto and they're gonna do this whole big scenario.
That was my first time overseas and of course my first time in Austria or Germany. But the thing is that they do a style of wrestling called catch. They wrestle rounds like boxing, three-minute rounds, resting in between each round, go to neutral corners, and then bing, bing, bing, unless somebody is counted down or whatever, you continue the match. It's about 10 rounds total. If you don't pin him, if you don't submit him or you don't win in any way possible: done deal. So what was cool is that they wrestle in one building in each town for 30 to 40 days every day of the week and they sell out! Every day of the week! They're all hockey arenas and they're sold out!
It was the most amazing experience. They had a big parade. Each show, there were flowers and you got to meet everybody. There were opponents from the UK, France, Germany, Japan, US, Canada - an international audience. That's where I first met Fit Finlay from Ireland. I mean, it was incredible!
I was there to wrestle the champion, Otto Wanz and they took me all over the place. You can see one of those matches by CLICKING HERE. I did interviews with newspapers and met all these different people there. That's where the Summer Palace is located for the King of Austria. All the mountains and landscapes… my first time overseas in the wrestling profession was indeed amazing. When the tour was finished, I came back to Florida.