Remembering my friend “Playboy” Buddy Rose – 4/28/09

Friends, I am absolutely devastated tonight upon hearing word that my friend of 38 years, Paul Perschmann, aka “Playboy” Buddy Rose, has passed away.

This is very painful for me. I am in a state of shock. Paul and I first met back in June of 1971, at the All Star Wrestling TV tapings in Minneapolis. We were both huge fans of Nick Bockwinkel at the time, and as a matter of fact, Paul was one of the names on the original permission slip that Nick signed for his “Bockwinkel Brigade” fan club. That initial association with Paul led to a friendship that has spanned the last few decades.

I will talk just briefly about Paul’s career. It will be well-documented in other places. From the AWA to the NWA to the WWF, he made a name for himself in wrestling. A champion. A main eventer. I remember when Paul first tried out at Verne Gagne’s training camp. He didn’t make it the first year. He was battered and bruised, pounded to the point of exhaustion. The next year, he came back and made it. Even as a barely-200 pound Paul Perschmann, he had immense talent and early in his career, the AWA tagged him with the likes of Nick Bockwinkel and Blackjack Lanza. He was the controversial referee the night Nick first won the AWA title from Verne Gagne.

From there it was on to Texas, the Pacific Northwest, the World Wrestling Federation, and all over the world, before he came back to the AWA and won the tag straps with Doug Sommers.

It is no secret that my friend had some demons. His weight, at one time a gimmick (“I don’t weigh 271 pounds, I weigh 217 pounds”) in the AWA and then even more so in the WWF (The “Buddy Rose Blow Away Diet”), went completely out of control. He had been ill with diabetes for some time, and most recently his weight was said to be 375-400 pounds. Sadly, he was a walking time bomb. The last time I saw him, a couple years ago at Cauliflower Aley Club, he did not look good. In that sense, Paul had been dodging bullets for a long time.

Having said all that, I have lost one of my oldest friends. That’s what is so hard to take. In our own version of what today is called “backyard” wrestling, Paul and I worked against each other at small, neighborhood shows. He and I spent many a Saturday afternoon, before he even broke into the business, waiting for the wrestlers to stop by the Wrestling Office at the Dyckman Hotel in Minneapolis. We played pinball together. We always had lunch at The Forum Cafeteria in downtown Minneapolis. I watched wrestling films at his apartment. He gave me rides on his motorcycle. When he lived with Ed Wiskoski (Colonel DeBeers) in the Twin Cities, we would watch wrestling pay per views, or go visit his neighbor in the next building, Sherri Martel. When he was wrestling in Japan, he would call me in the middle of the night and get the biggest kick out of waking me up. He didn’t care about the time difference. I can still vividly remember him shouting into my answering machine, “Mick, this is Buddy!! It’s Perschmann! Pick up the damn phone!”

At least a few times a year, he would call me from his home in Portland, just to touch base. When he was honored at Cauliflower, he mentioned me during his acceptance speech as one of the people who helped him at the beginning. I was deeply touched when he did that. He always made a point of saying how we both started on our paths in wrestling, he in the ring and me behind the microphone, at about the same time. He always told me that each of us wound up doing what we set out to do in the wrestling business.

To his wife Tammy and his daughter Alexia, my deepest sympathies. I know how much he meant to you and how much you will miss him. Likewise to his friends Ed Wiskoski and Ed Moretti, my condolences on the loss of your dear friend.

A little over a month ago, I got an email from Paul from out of the blue. In typical Perschmann/Rose fashion, he told me to email him back with a contact number so he could call me. He said, “or else, I will put the f*n sleeper hold on you for good, my friend.”

As so often happens, I got tied up in the everyday, meaningless garbage and b.s. that distracts us every day. I saved the email as a reminder to call him. I’ll get around to it, I thought. Well, I didn’t get around to it and I am sick to my stomach right now. It appears  that conversation would probably have been the last one I would ever have with him.

He was a swerver and a character, and I mean that in a good way. He was also an athlete who loved being a professional wrestler. But that’s all window dressing. To me, he wasn’t “Buddy Rose.” He was my friend Paul. I will miss him very much.

Mick Karch