“Who Do You Think You Are? I Am!” The Oral History of the Greatest Outburst in Sports History
Thirteen years ago, bowling’s bad boy, Pete Weber, captured his fifth U.S. Open—and then let loose one of the strangest, most brilliant bits of trash talk ever invented“Who Do You Think You Are? I Am!” The Oral History of the Greatest Outburst in Sports History
Thirteen years ago, bowling’s bad boy, Pete Weber, captured his fifth U.S. Open—and then let loose one of the strangest, most brilliant bits of trash talk ever invented
Pop culture has no shortage of memorable bowlers. Fred Flintstone. Homer Simpson. “Big” Ernie McCracken. The Dude. But no one on earth, imagined or real, has rolled quite like Pete Weber.
After growing up in the shadow of his distinguished father, Dick, the first face of the sport, he became the hard-partying, trash-talking, trophy-collecting bad boy of bowling. His personality made him, well, polarizing. “Half of the staid bowling community hated Pete because he seemed to buck tradition,” says Tom Clark, commissioner of the Professional Bowlers Association. “His father was the perfect ambassador. It would be like if Arnold Palmer had this wild son who became Happy Gilmore.”
That comparison isn’t quite apt. “Only because in that specific analogy, Happy had no idea about the game,” says current PBA superstar and former Weber rival Jason Belmonte. “I think Pete is, for all intents and purposes, just one of the most gifted players to ever throw a ball down the lane.”
Weber turned pro as a teenager in the late 1970s. As a young man, he talked openly about his cocaine use and drinking. He got suspended twice from the tour for “conducting unbecoming of a professional.” Yet somehow his theatrics—the WWE-inspired crotch chops, the spiking of sunglasses, the verbal outbursts—never fully derailed his career. In fact, like John McEnroe, he tended to feed off confrontation. Over 40-plus years, he piled up 37 total PBA tournament titles, 10 majors, and $4.1 million in prize money.
His most famous victory, the moment you might know him for even if you know nothing about bowling, was Weber at his most pure: deeply melodramatic, extraordinarily clutch, and bizarrely charming. On February 26, 2012, in North Brunswick, New Jersey, he won his record fifth U.S. Open championship by a single pin. When he clinched it on his final roll, this leapt out of his mouth: “Yes, goddamn it, yes! That is right, I did it! Number five! Are you kidding me?! That’s right! Who do you think you are? I am! Damn it right!”
At first, the nonsensical celebration was treated like a punch line. “I made all the halls of shame,” Weber says. Then, something strange happened. The lowlight turned into a highlight. “All of a sudden, it was a catchphrase,” Weber says. Strangers shouted it at him. High-profile athletes began repeating it triumphantly. Thirteen years later, it’s one of the most famous explosions in sports history.
The line may not have made any sense, but the more you relive it, the more it feels like a piece of beautifully broken poetry—the kind of thing that only could’ve been written, on the spot, by one man.
Part 1: “It’s My Life”
Two things were always true about Pete Weber. He was a handful, and he was electrifying. Being in his orbit was, for better or worse, never boring. Just ask anyone in the bowling world.
Tom Clark (commissioner, Professional Bowling Association): Anyone who loved bowling like me, you just loved to watch Pete. It’s almost like it’s his game. He was born into it, and he plays it so effortlessly, yet he has more power than you could ever have.
Jason Belmonte (seven-time PBA Player of the Year): Like watching a river run. The water was just constant and flowing. There was no change in his motion.
Randy Pedersen (PBA Hall of Famer and television commentator): Pete—I don’t want this to be misconstrued as me saying he’s stupid—was just a simple guy. And he never overthought anything. When he stepped up on the lanes and he needed a strike, he kept it simple. He just thought about maybe breathing and maybe how it would feel off the end of his hand. He never psychoanalyzed any situation.
Clark: He seemed to ooze bowling.
Mike Fagan (two-time PBA major winner): At the end of the day, Pete is a down-to-earth, nice guy. If he’s not on the lanes, he’s fine to deal with. When he’s on the lanes, he’s another competitor that’s trying to win, do his job, and get fired up.
Pete Weber (PBA Hall of Famer): It’s my life. The dramatics I just added.
Clark: It’s fun for me, but that’s because of my personality. A couple commissioners before me, he almost couldn’t deal with Pete and had to suspend him. He caused a problem at a pro-am once. He swore too much at the tournaments. He’s flipping off the pins. He’s a bad example. He’s drinking too much. You kind of get stuck in between people saying, “You need to be a great role model,” and people saying, “You need to be purely entertaining.”
Belmonte: You didn’t know if it was going to be a funny thing that he was going to do, or if he was going to get mad, or if he was going to do nothing. You were just waiting to see what it was.
Weber: I’m famous for the crotch chop. I’m a wrestling fan; that’s where I got it. I’ve seen football players give the crotch chop. I’ve seen baseball players give the crotch chop.
Pedersen: I’m not going to say he was the most Shakespearean player we ever had.
Belmonte: I don’t think he’s Confucius or Buddha here with his thoughts, but I definitely feel like he has this really genuine care for the game. And considering that he did it for so long, he knows what it’s like. He knows the trials and tribulations.
Pedersen: The one thing about Pete is he’s genuine, right? Nothing was ever staged.
Belmonte: I don’t think many of us were like, “Oh, I wish I acted like Pete.” But we appreciated who he was. He was authentic.
Ryan Shafer (five-time PBA tournament winner): I can honestly say I’ve never had more fun bowling matches on tour than I did against Pete. Right after he started the “I am P-D-W!” stuff, I remember I bowled a match against him in North Carolina. Of course, he was doing his thing. And he did the “P-D-W” thing. And I got up, and I threw a strike, and I said, “I’m R-F-S.” And of course, people at home were thinking, “What’s he talking about? His middle name’s Richard.” And, of course, I meant the f-word. I’m Ryan f-ing Shafer.
Clark: One of the first times I talked to Pete, I wrote about him for USA Today. What he told me that kind of shows how he can come up with these lines—even though he’s not really an educated person—was “When I’m bowling on TV, I don’t want anyone to turn the channel.” I used to use that to try to get the other players to be themselves on TV. They get very nervous. It’s very hard. I want them to be comfortable, and I always say, “Pete Weber said it perfectly: You don’t want anyone to turn the channel when you’re on.”
Belmonte: Once I got to know him and I got to bowl with him, [it] was really difficult to focus on my own game because I was so excited to watch him bowl. I just wanted to see Pete. I’m trying to get strikes myself, and at the same time, I’m literally staring at the guy a couple of lanes away from me. I’m just watching him bowl.
Part 2: “Pete’s Just Manifesting This Person in His Own Mind”
In early 2012, Weber was 49. It had been five years since he’d won his fourth U.S. Open title. One more victory in bowling’s most prestigious tournament, and he’d break the record he shared with his father and Don Carter. Heading into the weeklong event’s last day, which was televised on ESPN, Weber was seeded fourth. To take home the trophy in the stepladder final, he had to get past third-seeded Ryan Shafer, second-seeded Jason Belmonte, and top-seeded Mike Fagan.
Weber: The U.S. Open is everybody’s favorite tournament to win because it’s the hardest.
Clark: The [lane] oil dictates the strategy of the game. It dictates the scoring pace of the game. When you make the oil pattern completely flat, which is what we do at the U.S. Open, the cream rises to the top. When you’re on, let’s call it easy conditions, the oil will only be piled high in the middle of the lane. What that means is the ball, if it’s thrown down the middle of the lane, it will hold its line.
Weber: It’s exactly like the U.S. Open in golf. Don’t miss the fairway.
Belmonte: You almost dreaded it. You almost were like, “This is going to be a shit week. It’s going to be so, so hard.”
Clark: A person like Pete Weber, he seems impervious to oil patterns. He looks like he’s bowling on a regular easy condition.
Pedersen: I don’t think it’s a stretch for me to say that he was kind of on the downside of his career. He was 49. I don’t think he was the player that was feared by everyone anymore, although if he were to win or be in contention, nobody would be surprised.
Weber: I was still out there pretty active. I was still bowling good. I was still making TV shows.
Pedersen: The entire environment’s completely different than what you’ve gone through the entire week. So through the week with qualifying and then match play, there’s noise, there’s people applauding throughout. You’re bowling next to other players at the same time. And then TV day, it’s just you.
Fagan: That’s a whole other animal with the lights and the cameras and the set and the fans. And believe it or not, the lanes change immensely because of the hot TV lights. For me, it goes by fast. You prepare, you prepare, you prepare. But experience is super key.
Clark: If it was track and field, it’d be like a marathon race in anonymity for the entire length of an event until the final, that’s a 100-yard dash with cameras everywhere and fans right on top of you.
Weber: There’s no fatigue on TV. Your adrenaline’s going, you’re pumped up.
Clark: I remember during that show when we were at breaks, his wife, Tracy, was sitting right behind him, near me, and they had these little things that they do that are so—I don’t know what you want to call it. But he would flip her off. He just had this little running feud with his wife.
“It was almost like somebody took a butane can, lit it, and shoved it up his ass.”Randy Pedersen
Weber: Well, she just kept me calm at times. I’d turn around and look at her, and she would keep me calm. That’s pretty much what she was there for.
At some point that day at the Brunswick Zone Carolier Lanes, Weber started getting agitated. This time, he says, someone in the crowd was trying to rattle him. To this day, the person hasn’t been identified.
Weber: It was a teenager. He rooted against me out loud. I don’t care if you root against me, but don’t do it loud enough for me to hear, because I don’t put up with that.
Belmonte: No one that I knew on the day saw that or heard that. We started thinking, “Pete’s just manifesting this person in his own mind. I think he’s just legitimately created something to amp himself up.”
Pedersen: I don’t know if it was a child, if it was a man—I still have no idea.
Gary Thorne (play-by-play announcer, ESPN): I could tell something was bothering him, whether he was making it up or not, and he kept looking over towards the audience side. But we were at the pin end on another alley. That’s where our broadcast booth was. So I couldn’t hear what was going on up the head of the lanes.
Clark: All of us—the tournament director, me as the commissioner—we were all trying to find this person in the crowd, and we could not. I don’t think anybody’s ever found him.
Shafer: It was real because it started the match against me. Whenever Pete was up, the guy would stand up. I saw it.
Pedersen: When Pete started with the person in the stands, he was trailing Ryan Shafer. And it was almost like somebody took a butane can, lit it, and shoved it up his ass. And all of a sudden, he became Pete Weber.
Weber defeated Shafer, 223-191, then moved on to the semifinals to face Belmonte, whom he also beat, 225-213. All the while, he couldn’t seem to shake off the person in the crowd who was annoying him.
Weber: I just remember that every game pretty much came down to the 10th frame, and I was the one that had to finish the 10th frame. And every game it just seemed that I was fortunate enough to throw the strike or throw the double strike to win the match. Ryan, the guy’s phenomenal, really. I mean, he’s made a lot of shows. He doesn’t get good breaks on TV, and I feel for him.
Belmo, sorry, but that was just an extra-special treat, because at the time, Belmo was one of the hottest bowlers in the world. So he wanted to beat me just as bad as I wanted to beat him.
Belmonte: I remember in our match, he was talking about someone in the crowd. And I was like, “Oh, I didn’t see anything, I didn’t hear anything, but OK, no problem.”
Weber: Sorry, but this is my job. This is my livelihood. Don’t fuck with me.
Part 3: “That’s Either Brilliant or That’s the Dumbest Thing Ever Said”
In the final, Weber squared off against Fagan—and his nemesis in the crowd.
Fagan: The thing me and my grandparents loved to do is just watch the Wide World of Sports on Saturday afternoons on ABC Sports. And Pete Weber was a staple on there. I grew up watching him, kind of emulating his style. So it was a bit surreal to be competing against him.
Weber: Michael was known throughout the tour. He had won the Masters. His release was phenomenal.
Belmonte: I was actually really conflicted that day because Mike Fagan was one of my travel mates. We were very close. And so obviously I wanted Mike to win, but Mike and I were also battling for the Player of the Year that year. And if Mike won, he jumped me in the points. If Mike came second, I was the Player of the Year. And so there was a conflict between “How much do I want the Player of the Year?” and “I want nothing but amazing things for my friends.”
Shafer: I stuck around just because it’s the U.S. Open, and it’s the best tournament. You want to see who wins. You want to congratulate the person, mainly because, if it’s you that won, you would like that reciprocated. I love Mike Fagan. I think he was a great player. He could throw it as straight as a string, and he could hook the whole lane. Incredible talent. But having said that, when it’s my childhood hero in the title match, I’m going to cheer for Pete.
Fagan: I was trying my best to stay focused on what I needed to do. Pete’s famous for his antics, and it can get in your head really quickly if you allow it to. Whatever Pete was doing with the crowd and the yelling, I was trying to block it out as much as possible.
Clark: [Pete] probably weighs 130 pounds, and yet when he’s out there bowling, he’s scary. He is intimidating, and he doesn’t like any sounds.
Shafer: Pete gets bothered by a lot. If you’re bowling next to Pete and he’s on the approach, and you reach up to grab your ball, my God, he will let you have it. He’s easily distracted, I guess. He wants everything to be perfect.
Weber: The tenpin I left in the second frame, [the heckler] was like, “Yes!” I said, “Really?” And then he moved a couple times while I was on the approach and made me back off. I wasn’t real happy about that.
Clark: I was holding my breath before shots. It really felt like every moment was so intense and touchy. Pete kind of commands that and made that happen. There was history riding on it.
Pedersen: Like the other matches, the title match came down to the 10th frame.
Fagan: I had chosen to finish the match first on the left-hand lane. I got up in the ninth frame on the right-hand lane, which was the harder of the two lanes, in my opinion. And I made what I thought was a really, really good shot and left a ringing tenpin, which put me kind of behind the eight ball because if I had struck there and then struck out in 10th, Pete would’ve needed a double in the 10th, I believe, to beat me.
So that was really deflating for me. I knew I couldn’t shut him out of the match, but I wanted to put as much pressure on him as possible. I, unfortunately, leave the ringing 10, get back on the good lane, and now I really need to throw all three strikes in the 10th. I really took my time. They mentioned it on television. Pete was 49. I mean, he is not a spring chicken, so I tried to make him sit as long as possible before he had to get back up in the 10th.
Weber: He struck out, and I kind of expected it.
Fagan: There’s a euphemism, “10 in the pit,” which means there’s nothing left. And those three shots were all 10 in the pit. They were perfect shots.
Pedersen: Pete needed to go strike to win—or nine, spare, strike to win.
Weber: My first shot in the 10th, the only thing going through my mind was “Let it go. Just let it go.” And I took my deep breaths and I went through my approach and I let it go, and I just knew off my hand. It was like, “You win! You win!”
Pedersen: He left the tenpin.
Weber: It was like, “Oh my God. Really?”
Pedersen: His mind goes straight to “OK, we’re going to cover this.”
Belmonte: Once he left it, the first shot, the spare, there was really no thought in my mind that he was going to miss it. I think I was talking to a couple of mates at the time, we weren’t even thinking about the spare. We were saying, “Is he going to throw a strike on the next shot?” The universe is, in its own way, telling us this is how it’s going to go.
Weber: I went up and I made the spare, so I needed the strike to win by a pin. I thought about it for a minute. I took a rerack and just sat there and thought about it. I got on the approach and said the same thing: “Just let it go. Let it go.”
Pedersen: There wasn’t a doubt in my mind he would strike.
“You want to know my real thoughts? ‘Who the fuck are you messing with me in my house? This is my tournament.’ That’s what I really wanted to say.”Pete Weber
Before his fateful roll, Weber said two words to himself: “Balls out.” You can hear it on the broadcast. And as his shot was about to hit the pins, announcer Gary Thorne shouted, “Strike to claim it!”
Thorne: I’ve never scripted anything in my broadcast career for any event. I certainly didn’t do it for that one. It was my honest reaction as a fan coming out as a broadcaster. That’s what sports are all about when you’re looking at the end. This isn’t the middle of some season—this is it. I want to remind the viewer about that so that they can enjoy that moment the same way that I am. I don’t want them to forget that when that ball is rolled, this is it. This is what he’s got to have. If he gets it, he wins. And if he doesn’t …
Clark: I know the conditions, how hard they are to throw a strike when you have to. It almost felt like one of those surreal moments at a sporting event where you’re like, “Oh my God, this is happening,” and you can almost feel the place shaking. You can almost feel the aura inside that building, like, “This is it.”
Weber: I struck.
Pedersen: It was just dead-nuts perfect.
Shafer: As soon as he made the spare, I knew he would strike, but I didn’t know it would be the most perfect strike ever thrown in the history of the game.
Pedersen: He turns around, chucks the glasses to the ground.
Weber: I remember after that going, “Goddamn it, yes! I did it!” That’s what I remember. And then looking at the kid. “Who do you think you are?”
Pedersen: I knew that he was yelling at the person that he had been going back and forth with for three games.
Clark: I’m sitting in the front row. I couldn’t hear what Pete said. I had no idea. You can hear it on the show because he’s mic’ed.
Fagan: I didn’t really think much of it because he was famous for those types of outbursts, especially when he won.
Belmonte: We all knew he said something. But I wasn’t really focused on what he was saying. I was just appreciating what I just saw.
Shafer: I think he was trying to say, “Who do you think you are? I’m P-D-W!” And I think it was so overwhelming that he lost track of what he was saying.
Weber: It just came out that way from the adrenaline. You want to know my real thoughts? “Who the fuck are you messing with me in my house? This is my tournament.” That’s what I really wanted to say.
Pedersen: I heard what he said and I went, “Wait, what the fuck did he just say? ‘Who do you think you are? I am?’” OK, that’s either brilliant or that’s the dumbest thing ever said.
Part 4: “It Didn’t Go Away”
Weber finally had his record-breaking fifth U.S. Open title. It was a moment that he wished his father, who died in 2005, could’ve witnessed. “He wanted me to succeed,” Weber says. “And he threw every shot with me. It’s not me, it’s the family. It’s not what I’ve done, not what dad’s done, it’s what we’ve done.” The victory was sweet, but in its immediate aftermath, Weber had no idea what was about to come next.
Weber: I had to do my interviews and go in the press room.
Fagan: I just sat there and waited for him to kind of do his thing and obviously get emotional. And he eventually came over to me and shook my hand. It felt like eternity waiting for him. I just wanted to get out of there.
Weber: As soon as I got done, I went into the bar and bought everybody a drink.
Pedersen: I’m at the airport in Newark flying home. And I just remember I was kind of gassed because I was just like, “What did I just witness?” One, what he did. Two, what he said.
Clark: I work on the production team. Three or four of us went to this place called Arthur’s, which is right around the block from Carolier Lanes in New Jersey. We always go there. It’s a great little local restaurant. The first thing we’re doing is going on YouTube to watch it. I wanted to just see it again. All I really wanted to hear was Gary Thorne. I mean, that was my main thing. What he said was fucking awesome. “Strike to claim it!” I’m like, “This is the best call in the history of bowling.” All we were saying at the dinner table was “Strike to claim it! Strike to claim it!” I mean, that’s how excited we were about it. And then we realized, “Oh, wait a second. This thing’s going viral, and it’s because of what Pete said.”
Belmonte: We all felt like it was going to go one of two ways. We thought, this is either going to be one of those viral moments people may make fun of, but in a good way. When your mom says, “Clean your room,” the kid will be like, “Who do you think you are?” That’s funny. And you’re poking fun at Pete, but you’re not saying Pete’s an idiot, right? You’re just copying him. But the other way was people saying, “Who do you think you are?” And it would have a very negative connotation. And we were really hoping for the first, right?
Clark: Then it was on SportsCenter that night on the “Not Top 10.” Now it’s like, “Holy shit, this is taking off. But they’re making fun of it.” I’m like, “This was the greatest shot in the history of pro bowling.” Then the tide just started to turn, and it started to be that what he said was this odd, unplanned poetry.
Pedersen: I’ve asked Pete about it before, and he goes, “Well, Randy, you know, it just came out.”
Shafer: That’s what made Pete who he is. He really motivates himself in that way. That intensity and that emotion that comes out, that is genuine. And that was great for the game. And I definitely think it gave it a bounce.
Pedersen: I mean, shit, it was on Tosh.0. Everybody and their brother just jumped on the “Who do you think you are? I am!” bandwagon.
Weber: It stayed around for maybe a year and a half, two years, then it kind of disappeared. And then all of a sudden, somebody posted it for the 10th anniversary, and it’s gone crazy. It hasn’t gone away since.
In 2021, Weber retired from the PBA Tour but didn’t make his final appearance on the “kids tour” until last year. Now he has a tournament named after him, which he calls his greatest accomplishment. At 62, he’s still famous for his (second) greatest accomplishment.
Weber: It’s kind of neat to see other sports figures repeat something I do or say something that I said. Like Patrick Mahomes, after he won the Super Bowl, he was like, “Who do you guys think you are?”
Clark: I started a bowling charity event with Chris Paul. Everybody knew who Pete was. They love that guy, and they almost can’t believe he’s there. Terrell Owens was big into bowling. He actually won the Chris Paul event with Pete Weber as his partner. You have T.O. copying Pete Weber’s moves. He’s doing the crotch chop.
Weber: Oh yeah, we got along.
Clark: He’s a senior tour bowler now. We call it our PBA50 Tour. He made a finals last year. On the livestream of this event, he said, “I am who you think you are.” He’s starting to play with the words. But he signs everything, “Who do you think you are? I am.” If people ask him to say it, he does it. He’s on Cameo.
Thorne: I was asking somebody, “Why has this lived on?” And I don’t mean that negatively, but what was it? What is there about that moment that so entrances people and keeps their interest up? I don’t have a really good answer for that, except that it was real. That was honesty personified right there. And it was so completely out of the realm of what we expect in that sort of situation.
Weber: I just thought it was going to be one of them little phases where it’s there for a month and then it goes away. Well, it didn’t go away.
Fagan: I didn’t actually understand the magnitude of it until I retired in 2015 and went back to business school at Berkeley. My first few weeks, people found out that I was a bowler and they came up to me and said, “Have you ever seen that one video where the guy flips out?” I was like, “Yeah, I had a pretty good seat for that.”
