A lot of people wonder why am I so passionate about fighting for the little guy and exposing government corruption. Well … here is a Christmas tale about my personal experiences over 30 years ago, trying to build my own small business.
Long ago in my past, after I had enough (so I thought) of dealing with City Hall and the Legislature as a community activist and reporter, and had enough of driving taxi for a living, it was time to pursue a crazy idea. Along with my much more talented friend, Dave Pinsky – who was at the time a theatrical agent and comedian – we wanted to run a proudly Canadian wrestling promotion built around homegrown Canadian stars.
I had been encouraged to do so by George “Crybaby” Cannon, who had operated a wrestling promotion from Windsor to Newfoundland in his career and forced Vince McMahon to buy his trademark “Superstars of Wrestling” for $100,000 in the early 80’s. McMahon and his henchmen were quickly dominating the industry but there was nothing in it for WWF to run events in places like Gimli, Dauphin or small prairie towns. Dave was already booking comedy shows and felt we could make a go of it, and develop some future stars along the way.
Here is a photo of me and Pinsky flanking Winnipeg promoter Tony Condello:
I took out a promotion permit and operated a 3 card tour in March of 1989. Six months later, we filmed a TV pilot for MTN-TV, where I had been hired as a reporter.
There was a pretty good group of talent here to work with. And it was very much a ‘the show must go on’ mentality. So when we needed a substitute at the taping, I got out of my suit, put on my boots, and lost in the opening match. Then, I put my suit back on to do the play by play.
Unfortunately, the wrestling business was regulated by a sociopathic old amateur boxer who had weaseled his way onto the Manitoba Boxing and Wrestling Commission and been elevated to chairman, the beligerent Buck Matiowski.
His attitude when I spoke with him spurred me to ask for my bond deposit to be returned right after the tour – I didn’t want that guy to have any control over my money. He didn’t like that. When we did the TV taping in cooperation with another promoter, Ernie Rheault, who had a permit- Bucky didn’t like that either.
After hearing about our plan to open 1990 with a card at Weston Community Centre, he called the hall out of the blue- threatening them with legal consequences.
Dave phoned Matiowski asking why the hall was threatened. Supposedly I faced a “lifetime suspension” for not having permits before distributing posters for the Weston show …which had never been an issue for promoters like the WWF’s local fetch-boy Bob Holliday, Condello, Rheault, or anyone else including me, ever before. Dave was also told I had not been licensed for the March tour, a blatant lie that was a red flag because Dave helped me organize that tour and made his wrestling debut on it, with our flagship Canadian flag.
A few days later, mysterious documents from the MBWC were mailed to Dave including a copy of the official Act, altered with white-out.
Typed over the white-out was an attempt to double the legal performance bond. I had never seen a copy of a government Act with white-out before.
Also included in the mailing was a supposed “Regulation 26” page, requiring a $10,000 line of credit and 3 references. Neither of these were conditions when I applied for the promotion permit for the March cards.
Since the Commissioner started inventing rules just for the Jewish guys, I went to the Legislative Building and found Opposition leader Gary Doer. I knew him from my time as an MTN reporter. He looked at the altered document and the weird “Regulation” page and told me to check them against the official files in the Legislative library.
Half an hour later, I returned and showed the future Premier of Manitoba the “Gazette” version had the legal bond at $500 and that was what the white-out concealed. I also discovered there was no “Regulation 26” on file.
Matiowski was retaliating over refunding my bond, I concluded, because he had bitched about it to Holliday, asking him to cause trouble for me. Now Buck was doing his own dirty work.
I started digging into Matiowski and learned that at February boxing card he suspended Karl Skripal for declining to fight after getting a head wound at work. What? How do you suspend a boxer who got hurt before a match, for refusing to fight? I knew Karl, who managed a nightclub, and found out that no one he knew had any of the required diagnostic tests before being licenced for that event.
I freelanced a story to the Winnipeg Sun about how Karl was hauled back to the Convention Centre by 2 of Buck’s goons impersonating Commission officers (for which no charges were laid) and he got suspended without any hearing or appeal.
It fit with Matiowski’s pattern of throwing his weight around and disregarding required rules and procedures.
Matiowski was not only screwing with the wrestling business by inventing rules at whim, but he was so focused on having a fiefdom to rule he allowed boxing cards to take place without doctors clearing the fighters – criminal negligence.
Instead of alarms going off in the Legislature, the Sports Minister Jim Ernst ignored my letter of complaint.
The problem for the government was, MTN had cameras at that boxing card, and couldn’t be sloughed off. They called me about my Sun story, and we compared notes about Buck.
In April 1990, Mike Beauregard of MTN-TV ran a multi-part expose about the card in which the humiliated Commissioner admitted “it was a fiasco, I admit that”.
Watch Buck Matiowski sweat, lie, and get caught on camera. As Mike Beauregard said he couldn’t be trusted to manage a chip wagon.
Incredibly, after Mike joined CBC in 1995, we found out boxers were still being licenced as medically fit without proper tests- and I did the research for his I-Team story.
You can see all of the investigative reports by Mike Beauregard here:
Trying to get the the bottom of being frozen out of the market, I took the Commission to court in July of 1990 asking for a refund of the fees I paid on the 1989 tour, citing that the licencing bond they demanded had not been a legal request. I wanted to see how they’d explain it.
All of the comments and responses from their blowhard legal beagle, Charlie Phelan, rang untrue. He even claimed I was “a threat to the public interest”, which confirmed I was on to something that could land Matiowski in trouble.
In September of 1990 I followed up on my previous TV appearances in Kansas City to help publicize Steve Ray as a new up and coming headliner on some local events for promoter Bob Geigel, a former president of the National Wrestling Alliance.
Geigel pulled me aside at a show in Leavenworth. He told me the word was I was blackballed and no promoter in Canada could use me without getting hassled. I knew full well who was in his ear – his former tag team partner, the same person who was in Buck’s ear, and not coincidentally, a resident of Weston.
Which came up directly, 3 months later. Read on.
I explained the altered government documents and letting boxers fight without EEGs and EKGs. Shocked, Geigel related that in the USA, people go to jail for it. He said had no problem with me and told me to fight back.
I came back to Winnipeg and enlisted the promoter who broke me in, Walter Shefchyk, to set up Buck Matiowski once and for all. Because I had a hole card. When I had reviewed the Act, I discovered what lawyer Phelan surely also knew, and didn’t want revealed.
Fraud.
The original Act specified that the 3% gate fee had been decreased to 1% in 1979.
Although proposed to be raised in 1982, the tax was not legally upped to 3% until Oct. 4, 1988, under the signature of, you guessed it, Buck Matiowski.
Matiowski had knowingly ripped off the AWA (or more specifically the local AWA promotion headed by Global TV executive Don Brinton) during the Hulk Hogan boom, for over $70,000.
As well as the big office in the territory, the Commission ripped off Walter, Condello, and anyone else who ran wrestling promotions in Manitoba between 1979 and 1988.
In 1989 the Commission had a surplus of $100,000. Seventy grand belonged to someone else.
Those excess dollars were used to subsidize supervision of Boxing and MBWC expenses, which could never hope to pay its own way.
Matiowski acted like a feudal lord, flying to boxing conferences to hobnob with the likes of Don King and other commissions, with pro wrestling paying for it.
As part of the set-up, Walter submitted a performance bond cheque for $500 – which we knew from Gary Doer was the only legal amount as it was on the official books- and ran a November 10th bar show that I wrestled on. On December 7th his cheque was returned.
A letter signed by the unfortunately named Commission member Bill Crook said “we regret to inform you that we intend to lay charges” based on that show.
Hypothetically, everyone there, including bystanders like fans, other wrestlers, and even reporters, could be charged with participating in an illegal “prizefight” under the Criminal Code.
To make things worse, Bill Crook was quoted in the Sun on Dec. 11, saying that the Commission was going to get a legal opinion. Except his letter 4 days earlier to Walter said they were going to prosecute, not ‘seek an opinion’. They were trying to intimidate the wrong guy, because among other factors, Walter’s dad had been a high-ranking cop.
Walter rang me up first thing on the morning the Sun story ran. I had known him since 1980- he was my first opponent- and never had he been so angered. He picked me up and we were in the office of the Deputy Attorney-General at 8.30 AM. Walter demanded we be arrested on the spot.
Seriously, we stuck our wrists out and insisted on being arrested. The Deputy Minister stopped laughing when we produced the Crook letter to compare with what he told the Sun in the article. Not only was the Commission discussing Walter’s business with the press, but it appeared that they had made a decision and the legal opinion was a formality.
Next, Glen Dawkins of the Winnipeg Sun called to get the other side. I produced letters I sent to Sports Minister Ernst, right after I broke the Skripal suspension story. Ernst had ignored me. I had then sent a letter to Premier Gary Filmon. He ignored me too. Dawkins asked them why.
The evidence of altered regulations, double standards, and violation of due process was reported for all to see in the Winnipeg Sun.
A blazing banner headline on the front page of Dec. 21, 1990 declared “Ernst calls in auditor in boxing, wrestling flap.”
The story,”MBWC Mismanagement?” quoted Ernst as saying “I gave the Provincial Auditor the letter (to Premier Filmon) and said investigate”. But he was talking about the bond, and tryied to downplay the $70,000 gate fee overcharge.
On December 24th, I got out of my taxi at 6 AM to get a paper, and got the best present ever.
Dawkins reported on how I blasted Jim Ernst for pretending the ‘out of date’ Act was the problem and not Matiowski. I called for the Justice Minister to investigate the whole deal.
“They pile lie on top of lie to cover things up… if Buck Matiowski and Charles Phelan are the ones who will be drafting this new Act, it’s a waste of time to publish it”, I said.
It was Chrismas Eve, and I got the gift of credibility.
On Christmas Day, I got another gift, when minutes after I got home from my taxi shift, the phone rang.
“Is this Martin Price?”.
Well, it was and it wasn’t, since I had not used that wrestling handle for years, so obviously this person did not know me. Here’s how it went down:
“Your type has no place in the business!” said Bob Brown, and I was “causing trouble for everyone”.
Defending Matiowski from a provincial auditors investigation into the AWA and other promotions being overcharged for $70,000? That’s money that would have gone in some measure to the wrestlers payoffs. Brown didn’t care about other wrestlers, though.
The invention of bogus rules to keep me and Dave Pinsky out of the promoting game was “exposing the business”? More like, exposing the racket.
“Everyone knows you take the Commissioner out for coffee and have a talk and things get settled.”
When I asked Brown how much would go in the brown envelope to ‘get things settled’ with the Commission so I could tell the Auditor, the next thing I heard was:
“CLICK.”
BEST. CHRISTMAS. EVER.
************
When I finally met the Bulldog’s nephew Kerry Brown about 10 months afterwards, he told me Bob was purple with rage when he hung up the phone, and congratulated me for “standing up to that old bastard”.
Kerry could not believe that his uncle called me, on Christmas Day of all days, to berate me about something that had nothing to do with him. But Bulldog Brown, like Matiowski, was what we would have sarcastically called in those days, “a friend of the Jewish people”.
The provincial audit released in 1991 confirmed all the irregularities I had uncovered- and a few new ones. For instance, after Don Brinton didn’t renew his promoter’s licence, they kept his bond. He wasn’t the only victim of that scam, and I represented him to get money he was owed refunded.
Bob Holliday, by then Vince McMahon’s local stooge in Winnipeg, was livid and phoned my client to discredit me, only to be shut up when Brinton asked, ‘Bob why didn’t you notice I was being ripped off by your friend Buck?’
By October 1996 Commission regulation of professional wrestling in Manitoba was abolished and Buck Matiowski moved to Kenora, Ontario.
It wasn’t his last attempt to bully me, a story for another Christmas perhaps.
HEAR MARTY DISCUSS HIS STORY IN EPISODE 64 OF THE 6:05 SUPERPODCAST (AT 2.22.49)