10 Things We Learned From Dark Side Of The Ring: Billy Jack Haynes
9. Ken Patera Thought Their Tag Gimmick Was “Nuts”
In 1987, the WWF put a returning Ken Patera and Billy Jack together in a tag-team. They were affectionately known as ‘The Oregon Lumberjacks’, but several behind the scenes wanted things to be a little more on the nose than that. So, according to Patera, Pat Patterson walked into the locker room and handed them actual chainsaws to use during their entrances. Ken thought that was crazy, and says he wouldn’t do it.
Back then, he also viewed Haynes as a soft-spoken type who was a real nice guy behind the scenes. However, as Ken found out, “the gloss wears off after a while”. Billy Jack's true personality started to come through, which made it problematic for the team to gain any traction on the roster. Arguably, they were damaged goods politically in the office after spurning the chainsaw gimmick anyway.
Patera might've been more at ease with the idea had the WWF given them fake saws to use. He was rather worried about accidentally cutting somebody's arm off (or something like that) on his way to the ring, and he expressed those reservations to Patterson. By all accounts, Pat didn't really agree that the duo had anything to worry about.
This wasn't explored on 'Dark Side', but Patterson was surely feeding Haynes and Patera an edict from Vince McMahon himself. Going against that was career suicide, especially when Vince had designs on pushing the pair opposite rival teams like Demolition in featured spots.
Regardless, Ken just thought the chainsaw gimmick was "nuts" and couldn't make peace with it. VICE kinda missed an opportunity by never asking Haynes about this period. Being fair, they had a lot of other pressing matters to quiz him about!