WWE Chairman Vince McMahon used to rely on one man to handle all the local promotions for the annual Wrestlemania mega-event, and that man was Bob Collins. The legendary behind-the-scenes promoter, a very well liked individual in World Wrestling Entertainment, was profiled by THE HERALD TRIBUNE in Florida,

which you can read in its entirety HERE
 

The article gets our highest recommendation!

 

 

 

Bob Collins fondly remembers a warm summer day in Boston in 1997 when, as promoter for World Wrestling Entertainment, he needed a publicity stunt to boost attendance for an upcoming event.

Collins tapped up-and-coming wrestler Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, who is now known to millions as a Hollywood actor but who was then struggling just to be known in the ring.

“We put him in a Cadillac convertible and drove it through the streets to generate publicity for the show, but nobody knew who he was,” Collins said. “It was a couple of more years until he went mainstream.”

Such was the life of Collins, the promoter of one of the world’s greatest entertainment juggernauts. A different city almost daily. Talent to be catered to. Venues to be booked. Tickets to be sold.

To Collins such matters were routine after spending two decades promoting the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus, and the Ice Capades.

Collins promoted WWE events worldwide for two decades, including the yearly WrestleMania extravaganza, which is professional wrestling’s equivalent of the National Football League’s Super Bowl.

Today, his tidy home in The Oaks Preserve is a shrine of sorts to all those years on the road with WWE owner Vince McMahon and the current wrestlers de jour.

One room is filled from floor to ceiling with WrestleMania event posters, several of them showing well-known wrestler Hulk Hogan ripping his shirt off a muscle-bound upper body. In the corner is a WrestleMania XXIV folding chair.

On the kitchen table are four plastic WrestleMania XXIII placemats.

In his den, on a bookshelf next to where the WWE logo is painted on the wall, are tomes such as Hulk Hogan’s book about himself, The Rock’s book about himself, “The Complete Book of Wrestling” and, of course, “The Idiot’s Guide To Wrestling.”

Slowly though, as the years wore on, Collins felt that it was becoming time to do something else. To strike out on his own. To promote his own events.

That day came on July 4.

“I was turning 60 in the summer, so I said to Mr. McMahon, ‘When I turn 60 I want to be promoting my dreams, not yours,’ ” Collins said. “I wanted to take my life and move it in a new direction.”

 

Joining the circus

 

Collins’ road to life on the road with the WWE began in Sarasota, where his snowbird parents would bring him from Cleveland for several months in the winter.

In between classes at a private school while in town, he became fascinated with the Ringling Bros. circus after his parents took him to see a show at age 2.

The family visited the circus’ winter quarters. Collins met some of the entertainers. At 5 years old, he got to ride one of the circus elephants, a picture of which is on the wall in his home office.

Grown, Collins bought a condominium near what was then called the Sarasota Square Mall and came back every year.

As he was wrapping up his stint in the military in 1974 and completing a master’s degree in public relations, Collins knew what he wanted to do.

“When I was getting out of the service, I thought: What would be fun?” he said. “And I thought: Wouldn’t it be fun to join the circus?”

A few phone calls and interviews later, Ringling Bros. hired him as its regional marketing director.

Collins got a full dose of what it takes to run things at a circus, whether that be arranging group ticket sales or the logistics of making sure the feed for the animals would be in place when they got to the next town for the next show.

“To this day the skills that I learned and the colleagues I had are still with me,” Collins said. “It was the experience of a lifetime.”

 

The Ice Capades

 

After four years on the road with the circus, Collins, then married, decided to leave and take a gig with a radio station in Miami.

Unable to stay away from the big top, Collins joined the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. Circus near Orlando as national director of marketing. He left after a year, however, to move back onto the big stage, in arenas, with the Ice Capades in 1980.

But that happened to be at the beginning of the skating show’s decline after 40 years of prosperity. Perhaps foreshadowing the failed Cadillac ride with The Rock that was to come years later, Collins remembers with a laugh now his utter fear during a show on Halloween Night in Ontario in 1980.

Pretty much nobody showed up — except the president of the Ice Capades.

“He said ‘Bob, you’ve got quite a future, but not with the Ice Capades,” Collins remembered. “He was joking, but I was scared to death for a long time.”

Collins hung on for eight years even as the then-owner Metromedia sold the Ice Capades and the Harlem Globetrotters as a package in 1986 to International Broadcasting Corporation for $30 million.

However, the decline in popularity continued a few years after Collins left for the WWE, and in 1988 the Ice Capades fizzled out.

 

'Intimidated at first'

 

When Collins went to interview with WWE owner McMahon, Collins had never seen one of his glitzy, over-the-top simulated sporting events that combine acting with wrestling.

“The WWE was looking for someone with experience in live events with family-oriented shows in arenas,” Collins said. “I went to interview and didn’t know what to expect.”

Instead of a bunch of muscle-bound former wrestlers, Collins found a group of mostly master-degreed businessmen and women in suits.

He also found them having a lot of fun.

McMahon hired Collins, who quickly began to learn the sport and its actors.

“I was intimidated at first. These were big people, and their in-ring personas are intimidating,” Collins said. “But when you get to know them you realize they are professionals, actors and athletes, and quite serious about what they do.”

Collins also found out the WWE was a cash cow. The WWE would earn in one night what it took the Ice Capades to earn during a good week.

The publicly traded company remains an economic force to this day. On Aug. 5, the company reported its second quarter results for the period that ended June 30 — revenues totalling nearly $130 million.

Equally impressive is how the WWE has spawned the careers of some of today’s notable entertainment figures from Hulk Hogan to The Rock to actor and former Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura.

“As a star gets more famous, more popular, it’s not that they get more difficult to work with, just harder to get access to,” Collins said.

The off-stage personalities of the hundreds of wrestlers that Collins has seen come and go through the years run the gamut.

“Some live their characters, and I’ve never seen them out of character,” he said. “Others are low key, and some are family people. They are all different.”

While promoting WrestleMania XII in 1996 in California, Collins was in Tijuana, Mexico, where he came across a table that consists of an anatomically correct, papier-mache lion on its back holding the table’s glass top with its four paws.

Today it is in that room with all those posters.

 

'My own stuff'

 

Collins, who is polite to the extreme, is now focusing on Robert I. Collins Entertainment L.C. His business card even has a picture of those old-fashioned “Admit One” tickets on it.

“I would still be doing WWE if I didn’t get this bug that I wanted to promote my own stuff,” he said.

Still unable to stay away from the big top, he called Pedro Reis, the producer of Circus Sarasota, and offered to promote the upcoming event as a volunteer. He has ended up as the marketing chair on the board of directors for the circus.

“One of these days I’m going to have to do something that makes money, but the satisfaction in this is great,” Collins said. “It’s like my social life.”

Collins is in the development stage with his “own stuff,” working to create and promote stage shows, musical and humorous plays and consumer shows of varying types in and around Florida.

If his track record is any indication, it will not be long until signs start appearing around town that say “Robert I. Collins Entertainment presents ...”

“I got into this field because I wanted to have fun with my life and career, and that’s the way it’s been for the last 34 years,” Collins said. “Who could ask for anything more?”