Bill Watts

Football career Watts played as a linebacker for his high school football team, the Putnam City Pirates. Bud Wilkinson recruited him to play for the Oklahoma Sooners, where he played as a guard during his sophomore and junior years. However, his junior year was marred by a near fatal car accident involving him and his mother, resulting in him going into a coma. When he came out, he had lost a significant amount of weight, and had to put it back on, despite the coaches at the time preferring their players to be small and quick, which Watts had struggled with before the accident. Former Sooners teammate Wahoo McDaniel (then of the Houston Oilers of the AFL), introduced him to professional wrestling for the first time, something McDaniel did in the off-season. Watts turned professional in 1961 and joined the Oilers, but did not last long there, and according to a shoot interview, he left after knocking out a coach. "If you want a business, and you put money in it, why shouldn't you be able to discriminate? It's your business... That's why I went into business, so that I could discriminate... Who's killed more blacks than anyone? The fuckin' blacks." However, in February 1993, wrestling journalist Mark Madden brought the interview to the attention of Hank Aaron, himself a vice president in the Turner organization with the Atlanta Braves, as Madden had seen Aaron conversing with Watts on a TV special. Aaron, who dealt with plenty of racial abuse in his career as an African American baseball player, particularly when he broke Babe Ruth's home run record in 1974, pushed for Watts' removal.

February 1993 saw the company decide to take management of pay per views and programming entirely out of his hands and stated that he would be part of a large booking committee. Watts left prior to SuperBrawl III. In a letter he wrote in April 1993 addressed to Aaron, Watts contended that he resigned for his own reasons from WCW while arguing his comments were taken out of context and that the interview “was in the possession of TBS executives prior to my hiring in WCW; and I had already responded to that very allegation prior to being hired.” On April 4, 2009, Watts was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame as a part of the Class of 2009.

Personal life Watts has five children. From his first marriage, he has a son, William III (nicknamed Biff), and from his second marriage, he has three sons, Joel, Erik, Micah and a daughter, Ene. In March 2006, Watts released his autobiography The Cowboy and the Cross: The Bill Watts Story: Rebellion, Wrestling and Redemption through ECW Press. The book chronicles his upbringing, his career as first a wrestler, then a promoter, along with events in his personal life.

Watts served as co-host of a sports talk radio show on The Sports Animal in Tulsa, Oklahoma until late 2008. He was a longtime resident of Bixby, a Tulsa suburb. Gulf Coast Championship Wrestling NWA Gulf Coast Heavyweight Championship (1 time) Japan Wrestling Association NWA International Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Tarzan Tyler Mid-South Sports NWA Georgia Heavyweight Championship (1 time) NWA Tri-State / Mid-South Wrestling Association Mid-South North American Heavyweight Championship (2 times) Mid-South Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Buck Robley NWA Louisiana Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Buck Robley NWA North American Heavyweight Championship (Tri-State version) (7 times) NWA Tri-State Brass Knuckles Championship (2 times) NWA United States Tag Team Championship (Tri-State version) (5 times)– with Jerry Kozak (1), Billy Red Lyons (1), Greg Valentine (1), Billy Robinson (1) and Buck Robley (1) Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame Class of 2013 Southwest Sports, Inc. NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship (1 time) World Wide Wrestling Federation / World Wrestling Entertainment WWWF United States Tag Team Championship (1 time) – with Gorilla Monsoon WWE Hall of Fame (Class of 2009) Wrestling Observer Newsletter awards Most Obnoxious (1992) Wrestling Observer Newsletter Hall of Fame (Class of 1996)