WWE HOFer Tully Blanchard Recalls 'Slap In The Face,' Quitting NWA While Champ

While holding the NWA World Tag Team Championship with Arn Anderson in 1988, Anderson and Tully Blanchard clashed with management that September over money and wound up being booked to lose their titles to Bobby Eaton and Stan Lane at an untelevised event on short notice. Blanchard and Anderson subsequently left the NWA and joined WWE a month later as "The Brain Busters." Blanchard reminisced on this time and his NWA departure on "Tully Vision."

"We actually quit the night before in Houston. I did," Blanchard remembered. "I didn't talk to Arn about it, I went off and I told Dusty [Rhodes], 'You want the belts tonight or tomorrow night? I'm done."

The decision was made by head booker Dusty Rhodes to make the title change for the following night's show in Philadelphia. Eaton and Lane were transitional champions to The Road Warriors but did enjoy a 49-day reign with the titles. Blanchard speculated that the money issue causing his and Anderson's NWA departure stemmed from a change in company management.

"It was probably the fact that [Ted] Turner had just bought (Jim Crockett Promotions) and they were giving guaranteed contracts to people and they didn't give Arn and I a contract with guaranteed money and that was like a slap in the face when they were giving big money to other people that we were making stars out of and that's just me speaking from the heart," Blanchard remarked.

If you use any quotes from this article, please credit "Tully Vision" with a H/T to Wrestling Inc. for the transcription.