Episode 33: Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Thanksgiving Spectacular Show

[00:00:02] Speaker A: Time for the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel podcast. [00:00:05] Speaker B: We've got lots and lots of things to talk about and to do today. [00:00:08] Speaker A: Covering the territories from the 1940s to the 1990s. [00:00:13] Speaker C: It's the best thing going today. [00:00:18] Speaker A: Interviewing wrestlers, referees, authors and other media personalities that have made the sport of professional wrestling great. [00:00:27] Speaker D: The cream, yeah, the cream of the crop. [00:00:30] Speaker A: And now, here's your host, Tony Richards. [00:00:35] Speaker C: Hello everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel podcast show. And this is our 2025 Thanksgiving Spectacular Show. We're going to go around to various territories in today's show and talk about the Thanksgiving cards from 1975, 50 years ago, today or tomorrow. Whenever you're listening to this podcast show, we usually drop on Wednesday, which means the Thanksgiving be the next day. But some of you will continue to listen to this show on through the weekend and on into next week and for the years to come. But we are close to Thanksgiving and that means we're going to have a big spectacular show. Lots of guests on the show today, lots of wrestling talk, lots of wrestling history talk, which is what we talk about here at the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. Thank you so much for joining us. Let's kick off the show by talking about what they were doing on Thanksgiving in 1975 in the Gulas Welch, Tennessee territory. So Wednesday night, the night before Thanksgiving was. Wednesday night was always Nashville or Evansville and Evansville didn't run and Nashville did run. And on that card the night before Thanksgiving, the interns were the southern tag team champions, the masked interns with Dr. Ken Ramey. And they took on Tojo Yamamoto and Tommy Rich in the main event. In the semi Main event. 1126, 1975 Nashville, Tennessee. It's the kickoff of the Jerry Lawler Bill Dundee feud. When Lawler came back into the territory, Dundee was a baby face. Lawler was a baby face shortly but eventually he turned on Bill Dundee. And this feud is going to go years into the future, as you and I both know, into the 90s and beyond. Getting real hot in the late 70s and in the 80s. But it all started right here, 1975, the night before Thanksgiving. Also bounty hunters defeated Don Green and Joy Rossi two falls to one. And Bearcat Brown versus Mitsu Arakawa went to as matches often did. That kicked off the show back in these days to a 15 minute time limit draw down in the Gulf coast territory that belonged to Lee Fields. This is Thanksgiving night. On Thursday night at the Rainbow Garden in Panama City, Florida. Mike Boyette beat Dandy Jack Donovan the British Bulldogs. That's Ted Heath and John Foley. They defeated Nick Kozak and Jimmy Golden. Wrestling pro number one defeated Ted Heath by disqualification. And wrestling pro number two defeated Don Fargo by disqualification. One of the wrestling pros was Leon Baxter, and the other was Gordon Nelson under a mask, who was also Mr. Wrestling out in West Texas. He had a couple of different mask Personas. Here he is the wrestling pro. And they had the two wrestling pros as a tag team. So in the Tennessee territory on Thanksgiving night, Thursday night in the western end of the territory was Georgetown, which just outside of Lexington, Kentucky, at the Country World Convention Center. Diamond Lil versus Honey Girl Paige. Dennis hall versus Luke Fields. And I'm not sure if that was one of the Fields boys or not. I know early in his career when he wrestled in the Gula Swedish towns, he used the first name of Luke. But Robert Fuller and Sam Bass were in the semi. And then Phil Hickerson and Dennis Condrey versus Jackie Fargo and Don Carson as the main event there in Georgetown, just outside Lexington in Bowling Green, Kentucky, at the JC Sports Pavilion, which was Nick's town. Georgetown. Lexington was Jerry Jarrett's side of the company and his town. And Nick Agulis ran his side of the company in Bowling green at the JC Sports Pavilion. The Bounty Hunters vs Joey Rossi and Steve Kovacs in a Mongolian chain match. And Mitsu Arakawa, David Schultz and the Alaskan Jay York vs Tojo Yamamoto, Tommy Rich and George Goulis at Bowling Green at the Sports Pavilion. So those are some of the cards that were running on Thanksgiving in 1975. Now let's go to a special guest today. I'm not going to do any plugs today. No selling of anything. I just want to have a special Thanksgiving and just talk about wrestling today. So we're going to talk about a territory that you may not think about as far as wrestling on Thanksgiving, because after 1983, most people thought of the Crockett territory as, you know, the Thanksgiving show. Also, you know, Georgia had tag team tournament for years. And we're going to talk about Georgia a little bit later in the show. But right now we're going to talk about the American Wrestling association, the awa. And the AWA had a tradition of Thanksgiving. And who better to tell us about that than George Shire, our resident AWA historian and analyst and expert for the American Wrestling Association. So I invited George to the Richards Ranch to have a conversation about Thanksgiving in the awa. And I think you're going to enjoy it. So let's go to that conversation. Now, here's George Shire talking to me about the AWA and Thanksgiving. Well, we're doing our annual Thanksgiving Spectacular in 2025, looking at Thanksgiving cards all around the United States in 75. And so we're going to go to the American Wrestling association now, Minneapolis, Minnesota. And of course, our resident expert on that part of the wrestling world is here, George Shire. Hey, George, it's good to have you back, man. I always like talking wrestling with you. [00:07:11] Speaker A: Well, when we're talking wrestling, we're talking fun, right? [00:07:14] Speaker C: You bet. Yeah, lots of fun. And of course you are. I'm here at the Richard's ranch, where the leaves are falling and the rain is falling and it definitely feels like fall. And you're situated in your wrestling room there, surrounded by all your collectibles over the years. So we've got the right environment to talk about this stuff. [00:07:34] Speaker A: Absolutely. And you're talking winter here in Minnesota. We haven't quite had it yet. I think we're going to be about 53 degrees today, which is unusual. Normally by this time we've had 16 inches of snow, so. Good stuff. [00:07:48] Speaker C: Yeah. So I know fans are familiar with Thanksgiving shows in the later part of the territory era, starting in the, oh, sort of the 1983 Crocketts had their first Big Starcade show. And, you know, Atlanta had a tag team tournament a lot of times in the early 80s. But I don't think fans are really that familiar with Thanksgiving as a tradition in wrestling throughout all of the territories. Tell me a little bit about what Thanksgiving was like in the awa. [00:08:27] Speaker A: Well, you know, I think the AWA could almost have been the forerunner, Tony, because Minneapolis and St. Paul, which is Minneapolis, the home of the AWA. And usually it was tradition as far back as the very early 60s, after Verne took over running the AWA or making the AWA in 1960. Usually either the day before, the day after, and more often than not, on the actual day of Thanksgiving, the Minneapolis Wrestling Club, which was the parent company, they would run what they referred to as a Thanksgiving card. As it got into the 70s, it was really almost every Thanksgiving on Thursday evening, we had a wrestling card. And it used to be fun because our announcers in the day. And of course, originally it was Marty o'. Neill. Marty would tell fans on the Saturday program, the Saturday wrestling program. He'd say, you know, fans, this Thursday Thanksgiving, you get done fighting with the family and you're tired of the football run, don't walk down to the Minneapolis. Or if it was St. Paul Auditorium and you'll get to see the greatest wrestling in the world. And what was unique about that was Verne would always Vernon Wally Carbo. They would hold a card that was kind of climatic of some of the recent feuds that were going on or the programs that had been taking place. Every once in a while there'd be a wrestler or two that hadn't been a regular in the AWA brought in or that special night and they used to throw in. And Marty would say, and for you kids, we've got the midgets. And of course they were called midgets back then. I think today that's politically incorrect. But they were midgets. And we'd have a midget tag team match or something along those lines. I never really knew if they drew crowd or not, who drew fans, but nonetheless, they were on the card as an added attraction. [00:10:37] Speaker C: Sure. And added to the dimensions of the entertainment part of the card. [00:10:41] Speaker A: Absolutely. And the fact that you'd get done with your turkey dinner and, you know, visiting with the family and friends or whatever and the cards, believe it or not, they used to start at 9 o'. [00:10:52] Speaker B: Clock. [00:10:53] Speaker C: Right, right. I've noticed that in a lot of the newspaper stuff that I've seen, which. Yeah, I know they did that a lot for the. I mean, Minneapolis is in the center of farming. [00:11:05] Speaker E: Right. [00:11:06] Speaker C: I mean, so much farming. And so especially in the summertime, farmers aren't going to quit until 8:30 or 8:00'. [00:11:13] Speaker E: Clock. [00:11:14] Speaker C: So that would give them chance to get their family and get to the wrestling matches in the fall and winter. The 9 o' clock start seems a little late, though. [00:11:23] Speaker A: Well, and you know what? It wasn't until we got into the 80s that wrestling, at least here, and I know other places too, we went to an 8 o' clock or a 7 o' clock start. But traditionally through the 50s, 60s and well through the 70s, Minneapolis St. Paul and the rest of the AWA had 9 o' clock start. And the ironic thing about that is that if you're a wrestling fan, you know that 9 o' clock start means it's usually about 10 after or 20 after before they actually get to it. [00:11:56] Speaker C: Sure. [00:11:56] Speaker A: Because of all of the hoopla that's going on. And then, then you'd have a two hour card. Yeah, two and a half hour card and. [00:12:05] Speaker C: But, but then once the card started, you built momentum. I mean, you didn't have long ring entrances or music or all of that. Two guys just came to the ring, they got checked by the referee, which I don't know that we even do that anymore. I don't think the referee even checks guys. [00:12:24] Speaker A: No. You know, the referee doesn't even come in contact with them. And, you know, I think it's nice the way you just described that, Tony, to. To not be a fan and have experienced that. It's really hard, I think, to envision. And we can try to paint the picture, but we know that if you go to a wrestling event today, whether it's an indy card or one of the big extravaganzas and. And it's a holiday card or whatever it is, you know, that auditorium, that arena is lit up like it just. It's bright, it's big lights all over. And then we got those pyrotechnic entrances and the long entrances. And of course, the entrance music, that's part of the show. And the fans today appreciate that and expect that, and that's fun for them. But in my day, like you said, I always referred to it as we had four lights and a ring. We had the ring, which I called the wrestler stage, to work on. And above that ring, you had four or five lights that were only on during the match, right? And the rest of the auditorium was dark, and I mean really dark. So you just had the shadows going down from the. From the lighting, but you couldn't see the audience other than the immediate front row. And when the wrestler made his entrance, you could only hear the crowd chirping in the background, getting louder and louder and louder as that wrestler, if it was the bad guy, the booze, or if it was the good guy that cheers as he got closer to the ring. And they used to enter from opposite sides of the ring. So the bad guys came in one area, the good guys came in the other. And when they got to that lighted ring area, that's when the fun began. And they'd climb into the ring and usually the. The heel was first. He would enter the ring and. Or a heel tag team, if that be the case. And you'd have the fans booing and, you know, making all kinds of noise, and the heel being able to play to them, you know, shot up and, you know, that sort of thing. But then the baby comes in and he gets the cheers. [00:14:42] Speaker C: And that was. That was very important for new wrestlers. So it was part of their ability to start to get over with fans because fans could immediately know this guy is a good guy because he came from that end, right? And that guy is going to be a bad guy because he came from that end. And in this particular territorial era, that was very, that was a very important dichotomy between good and bad guys. [00:15:12] Speaker A: Right, well, and you had your, your referee, as you mentioned, the announcer would come in, whoever it was in the local area, and he would come in and he would introduce, always the bad guy first. You know, from this corner, from Algeria, 235 pounds, Mad Dog Vachon. And of course he could get all the hatred and the booze, and sometimes they were throwing paper and you name it. And then when he switches over and in his corner, fans, you know, and whoever the wrestler was, and introduce him to the cheers, then the wrestlers would come together in the center of the ring, the referee in the middle, and as you said, the referee would be attempting to give instructions. You know, no punching, no kicking, open hands. They actually said those things. [00:16:05] Speaker C: Exactly. [00:16:06] Speaker A: And you could hear them at ringside and you know, keep the fist open and, and then he would check the wrestlers boots, he check his waist, round his waist, make sure there's nothing in the trunks. And we don't do that anymore. [00:16:23] Speaker C: Right, right. And that, that, that just was a synchronization with the fans that this match was about to take place. And they kept, they worked really hard to keep building that momentum. From the opening match to the main event, it got a little bit more intense, A little bit more intense, a little bit more intense. [00:16:45] Speaker A: And the whole thing that was very emphasized in those days by every single promoter, and especially Vern Gagna, they wanted a story told and they wanted the story to be the climax. The main event was that, that was the ending of the story. That was where the story had to be finished or at least telling a story for the future. [00:17:05] Speaker C: Right? [00:17:06] Speaker A: But those opening matches, especially the opener, it was just 15 or 20 minutes where you had a couple of guys that were exchanging holds and you could establish who the good guy and the bad guy was. Sometimes a new heel would be introduced in an opening match, new to the territory and, or vice versa, a new baby. And so it was a chance for the fans to get to know. But, and it was funny because you and I, we discussed this in a previous conversation. It was important for Vern Gagne especially. He said, no wrestler, no match, no tag team will use the same thing in their match that will be used in a later match. [00:17:47] Speaker C: Right. [00:17:47] Speaker A: And because each one had to be different. And I know the reason I bring that up is because you and I had talked about just recently, a month ago, I went to one of our local little indy cards and they do such a Good job. The promotion is great. And you know, I always wish they thrive would do well. They had probably 3,000 people in this big gymnasium, but we had 10 matches, Tony on the card and all 10 matches. And I'm not teasing, I'm not trying to be mean or anything. Every single match was an identical repeat of the one we had just seen. The same moves or lack thereof. All the high flying off the top ropes, through the ropes, throwing out of the ring, slamming one another 15 times and they were all the same. That would have never happened in, in our, our era. There, there was exchange of holds, there were rest holds, there were referees not seeing the hair pull or the choke by the villain. And just so much that told a story. And, and I'm, I, I don't know if anybody would understand that today if they did that at a wrestling card. It would probably, probably get booed, I don't know. [00:19:02] Speaker C: Well, fans are probably wondering, well, how did, how did that happen? Well, one way it happened was everybody watched everybody's match. They got the rest was. And that was because the arena was so dark, as you mentioned before, they could come out of the locker room over in the back and be in the back and see the ring and watch the matches. And they watched all the matches before their match and while the matches after their match and they were, they're thinking, okay, that, that guy's, you know, held a headlock for a little bit. I'm not going to do that. I'm going to do an arm lock or I'm going to do a leg lock or I'm going to, you know, hold him down or whatever. Or I probably can get a little bit of heat here because they haven't gotten any heat up until my match. And they, and they'd watch them and they'd make middle notes about that and every guy was making sure that they were contributing to the entire show and the entire team because they were counting on each other to draw money. That's how they got paid. They weren't on guarantees like today. They had to draw people. So they had to pay attention to make sure the show was as good as possible, not only for tonight, but for the next show, the next month or the next week. [00:20:20] Speaker A: Right. Well, you know, the other thing about that, when you say that the wrestlers were in the back and they were watching the cards or the matches, the reason they did that too, Tony, was they wanted to learn, right? They wanted to see what this baby face does to get over or what, what is, how does he interact with the crowd or. Or what works for him or. And the same with the heels that, you know, the business stole a lot from one another. I mean, they wouldn't use the same stuff in the same territory. But these wrestlers, as they traveled around the country and, you know, a lot of times they only. They weren't only working one territory all the time. And so they were always trying to identify a character for themselves or a gimmick that would work. They'd see something they like, and they could go somewhere else and use it. And sometimes they used it to expertise, and other times it bombed. But it was a. It was a learning experience. And Verne, he used to urge his wrestlers, you watch. You pay attention, watch this match, watch what these two do. Watch how well they work together. And that was important. And today. And again, I think this is good that we can compare today and yesterday. And I always want to do it respectfully, because in a positive way. Each era has their time, their product. But I see so much of today's wrestlers where they literally will talk a match through in the locker room area, and they will say, well, okay, you're going to do this, and you do your move, and then I want to get my spot in, and I want to. I'm going to come off the rope. And I sat there and I went, why? Because I know that back in the day, all of the guys that I admired, they didn't have to talk the match out in advance. They would sometimes do it during the match, you know, whatever code or word they used to flip off the rope or catch this or that, but they really only knew what the finish was supposed to be, and they would work towards that finish. They knew they had to go 40 minutes. They had a finish to get to. But during the match before that finish, man, they entertained you, and they worked. [00:22:37] Speaker C: It might have worked. It might not have even been a detailed finish. It could have just been. All right, Tony, tonight you're going over with George. [00:22:47] Speaker A: Yep, exactly. [00:22:48] Speaker C: And then you'd have to figure out exactly how to do that. And it was a little bit on you to think, okay, well, George and I are going to work here for the next six weeks, so I need to work out a finish that isn't going to kill it. I don't want it to be definitive because we need a rematch or we need to come back with this, you know, so they had to really be invested and think about these things. But not the entire 20 minutes or 30 minutes. [00:23:17] Speaker A: Well, and you take a guy like Cowboy Bill Watts, you know, he, in my opinion, Bill Watts is right up there with the greatest promoters ever as far as a mind for the business. You know, people have good and bad things to say about his manner and his way of promoting, but Bill Watts was a genius. And he used to tell guys, Tony. He'd say, tony, you're going to go over George and you guys work out a finish in the match, and if you need a finish, I'll give you a finish, but be creative. Come up with something on your own. But. And he would say things like, and if you two pussies can't come up with a finish, then I'll give you the ending. And you do this right. This, this was Bill Watts. [00:24:00] Speaker C: Yeah, exactly. [00:24:01] Speaker A: But he wanted the guys to be creative, but he always had something in mind and he knew how he wanted to show. And Vern was that way, too. Vern didn't strictly say, well, this is the finish of the match unless it specifically had to deal with a rematch or something really important for an angle to continue. They'd want to have that finish prepared. [00:24:23] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:24:24] Speaker A: But literally for 20, 30, 40 minutes, whatever it was in the match, they. They just worked it out. And the thing was, too, that it's a dead horse today, but we had two out of three fall matches. And I will tell you, there were stories that could be told to get to that third fall. That was the one that counted. If there was a third fall, generally speaking, they wanted to keep the drama going, and you'd have a first fall winner and a second fall, and you have a baby and a heel wrestling each other. And if it was for the championship or whatever, if the champion was a heel, the babyface won the first fall. If the babyface was a. Was the champion, the heel won the first fall. That's the way you kept your audience engaged. And usually it wasn't always kosher. If the bad guy won, there might have been that karate chop or that. That somehow the foreign object or whatever it was and the ref missed it, or whatever it could be. But the story was what was important. [00:25:32] Speaker C: 1975, Thanksgiving was on the 27th of November, and the crowd was 5,140 fans. Tell us a little bit about this building in Minneapolis, legendary building for wrestling. [00:25:50] Speaker A: Well, that would have been the legendary Minneapolis Auditorium. [00:25:54] Speaker C: Right. [00:25:54] Speaker A: And I would want to point out that today, you know, fans are used to all of these big 30,000 seat arenas because they use them for hockey and basketball and football, etc. But in our day, we had, usually in each city they had an auditorium or an arena they called it, but usually Tony, they were about 10,000 maximum for wrestling setup down here, down here. [00:26:23] Speaker C: In the south, they were five and 6,000. [00:26:26] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, our Minneapolis Auditorium, the Minneapolis, the original one, was built back in the 40s. They had a lot of renovations of it over the years. But for a wrestling sellout, if it were a capacity crowd, and according to the fire marshal, you know how many could be in there, they could legitimately report 9 or 10,000. And it. It worked for wrestling on an average card in the Minneapolis auditorium. And I will point out that our St. Paul auditorium, they were. Was pretty much the same type of situation. [00:27:03] Speaker C: And that was a civic building. [00:27:05] Speaker A: 10,000. And you'll notice they were called the St. Paul. [00:27:09] Speaker C: Also notice St. Paul was a civic center. Right. [00:27:12] Speaker A: Well, that was in the 70s. [00:27:13] Speaker C: Oh, okay. [00:27:14] Speaker A: Yeah, it was the Civics. And that's what I was just going to allude to. During the 50s, the 60s, et cetera, the arenas, the auditoriums, they usually just were called the city. They were in the Minneapolis Auditorium. There was no name to it. [00:27:28] Speaker C: Right. [00:27:28] Speaker A: And the St. Paul Auditorium in the early 70s, 19, I think it was 1970 or 71, the Civic center was built and it was a bigger auditorium on the same site. Well, actually adjacent to the old auditorium a little bit for St. Paul, but it became the St. Paul Civic Center. Now, the reason I bring that up is today's world. Every arena, every auditorium has to have paid for advertisement for a name, a sponsor. [00:28:00] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:28:01] Speaker A: Global Global Insurance or US Bank Stadium AT&T Stadium. Yes. And every. Or some big department store or some name on it that's all paid. So we no longer have those auditoriums. But the card you are specifically talking about in St. In Minneapolis for 1975, Minneapolis Auditorium for that night, pretty much a capacity crowd. And I will point out, I wanted to share this. When you mentioned about. We talked about wrestlers coming in for that night and the midgets, etc. Yeah, you got to applaud Vernon Gagne on this one. He would have all of the guys, if they didn't. If they didn't live locally, like Larry Hennig or something, who lived locally. Vern would have all the guys over to his house. Vern and Mary Gagne and the family, the Ganya family. And they would have the wrestlers over for Thanksgiving dinner. [00:28:58] Speaker C: Oh, wow. [00:29:00] Speaker A: A lot of people didn't know that. And that means it was the heels and the babies and the midgets too. And they would be at the Vern Ganya house and have Thanksgiving dinner. [00:29:11] Speaker C: How long did he. I mean, what. When would he have started that and when would he have ended that? George, do you have. [00:29:17] Speaker A: Vern did that pretty much for every Thanksgiving, actual Thanksgiving Day card that he had through the years. And as I said, usually from the beginning of the 70s, throughout the 70s, we pretty much hit Thanksgiving on the day for our card. And normally we ran Saturday nights in the 70s on. For local Minneapolis St. Paul Wrestling. And so it was a Thanksgiving card. [00:29:45] Speaker C: Reading Brian's book on Vern, he had a night. Was that the house out at the lake that he had people out to? [00:29:53] Speaker A: Yep, yep. [00:29:54] Speaker C: Which would have been a great, great scenic, you know, sitting out there having Thanksgiving dinner at Vern's house and having a beautiful view. And that would have been really, really nice. Very. [00:30:06] Speaker A: Have you ever. Have you ever seen the 1974 the Wrestler movie that Verne Gagne? [00:30:11] Speaker C: Yes, sure. [00:30:12] Speaker A: Produced. Okay. You'll notice there's a scene in the movie where Vern is out in the backyard near the lake and he's doing some weightlifting when Ed Asner, the promoter, Frank Bass in the movie, comes out to talk with Verne, or Mike Bullard was his character and the movie. But that was the Ganya property on Lake Minnetonka there. [00:30:34] Speaker C: Nice. I have to go back, and it's been quite a while since I reviewed that. I need to go back and watch that again. [00:30:40] Speaker A: And if you ever get to Minnesota, the home right now, it's owned by Hennepin County. It's a. It's a national park site. They. That was a public domain thing that they took from Vern, and that's a whole nother story for, you know, Verne just lost it through public domain. [00:31:00] Speaker C: Wow. In the opening match, Khosrow Vaziri defeats Don Wade. And for those who don't put that together, that Khosrow eventually becomes the Iron Sheik. But Khosrow, he was an Olympian, right. And a heck of an amateur. I was just on a podcast with someone recently who made the comment that they didn't think he was a very good pro. Like, he wasn't a very good worker. What do you think? [00:31:31] Speaker A: Well, I remember when, you know, you've got to remember that Khosrow Vasari came out of Vern Gagne's camp, as so. [00:31:40] Speaker C: Many did, which would have been that Vern liked about him, was his amateur. Yeah. [00:31:45] Speaker A: Oh, absolutely. [00:31:46] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:31:47] Speaker A: Vern Gagne, we should always stress that, that Vern Ganya's territory was one of the few that really emphasized real wrestler, real amateur background. He loved those Guys. And Vern always said, you know, I want you to know how to wrestle. I want you to know how to work a match. And if you need a gimmick, we'll get to that later. But we want you to have that skill. And so that's why so many of the wrestlers that came out of his camp had that strong background. Khosrow Vasiri was legit, legitimately from. I ran. And when. If you saw pictures, you know, we. We could show you a picture of Khosrow Vasiri. Man, he was a skinny little runt. It just almost bony in the. In the midsection, had a full head of hair on him. And when he came out of Vern's camp, Vern used to always take his rookies, his. His newbies in the business, and he would have them work against the veterans in matches. And in this case, you notice that Cosra was against a guy named Don Wade, right? Well, Don Wade, to the AWA fans, was a nobody. He was only here for a short time. He didn't get any type of push at all. He had worked some other territories. He was a good worker. He just didn't have a. Any type of stellar career or anything. So in this match, it basically was a. I don't remember what the time limit was. Might have been 15 minutes or 20 minutes. That's usually what they were. But it was basically just a way for Cos Row to go out and get some recognition from the fans. And the fan. Vern always made sure you knew he trained his wrestlers. He would have little interview segments on All Star Wrestling, the TV program, and he would bring a guy out and introduce him to the fans and give his background of the legitimacy to him. So Khosrow also did some refereeing for Verne, and that was another thing that Verne wanted his rookies to do. He wanted them to referee matches because that got them to also work with the two guys in the ring to see how they interact and things they do and make a match go. [00:34:05] Speaker C: You know what's funny about that, George, I want to interject here for a second. That was really big in Sarpolis and Funk in Amarillo. They were really big on that as well. And that went back to the. The late forties and the. The fifties, where. I know, oh, shoot, I'm losing the. Their Collet Ripper Collins, he broke in and he was pretty boy Collins in Amarillo, but he was a referee, and they slowly but surely got him into the matches. And this is one of those things that happens in every generation that we just don't maybe make note of. But by the 60s and early 70s, young wrestlers would get offended by being asked to referee. You know, they'd be like, oh, I'm not a ref. I'm not. I don't want to be a referee. I want to be a wrestler. Well, this is how you learn as you get in there, you referee a match. And so Verne was probably the last guy who really kept it as a very positive thing for guys, you know, being asked to ref matches. [00:35:18] Speaker A: Well, and, you know, the thing is, I guess that's an experience that we can even relate to. It's basically, you're coming into a profession, you're coming into your. You've got a job, and you're going to work your way up from the bottom to get to the top. And again, a lot of our younger generation today, they want to come in, make the big bucks and be the boss. Today, they don't want to go through the ropes and learn. Learn the ropes, so to speak, no pun intended, because of wrestling. But that's really the case. And Vern would take. If you look back at early matches, if there's tape out there, and sadly, there's so few, but you'll see guys like Greg Gagne refereeing matches. Greg refereed. Jim Brunzell refereed. Obviously, we talked about Khosrow, Baron von Raschke, Jim Rashke, he refereed matches in those early years. Evan Johnson, Dennis Stamp, so many guys that went on. Larry Hynemi as Larry Hynemi before he became luscious. Lars Anderson, you know, he. He refereed. Gene Anderson refereed. And so that was very important to Vern that you're going to go out there and you're going to learn how the guys work together and you're going to be in a match. And then, as I said, Verne would take his rookies and he would put them against established stars and get them the ring knowledge they needed. It's up to the guys. Then, like I said, he would tell the guys. We just talked about this a minute ago. He would tell Khosrow and the rest of me say, I want you to watch this next match, or you get out there and see this match, you watch them work and you can't argue. And you mentioned the Funks having that same mindset. That was an old school mindset that worked for the business second match. [00:37:19] Speaker C: I'm always interested in these guys that are. They've been in other places during this time period. Bobby Duncomb had just Come off of a large feud with Bruno in New York in the WWW F. And he was working in Atlanta in Georgia Championship wrestling. He's in here in the second match on the card, and he defeats a guy that spent quite a bit of time in West Texas as well. Bull Balinski. [00:37:47] Speaker A: Exactly. And when Bobby Duncombe came in, he was coming in allegedly being managed by Bobby Heenan. Somewhat of. He was going to be somewhat of a policeman for Nick Bockwinkle. And that's comes, you know, after Nick became champion. Bobby was kind of the guy they had to go through to get to Nick. And that was used that way for a while. [00:38:15] Speaker C: What a wonderful way to get Bobby over. [00:38:18] Speaker A: Well, and the thing is, too, Bobby, he came in, he was by no means. He wasn't a veteran at that point, but he wasn't a rookie either. He had had quite a. Quite a training ground, you know, down in the West Texas area with that group of guys, and he knew what he was doing. And I'm going to tell you something about Verne that a lot of people, unless they looked it up, I always thought that Bobby Duncomb was for a heel and a big guy, that he wasn't. He wasn't one of these whirlwinds in the ring. He was very slow and more methodical every time I saw him in either singles or tags. And he was more of a. He could pound on you a little bit, but he wasn't anybody that was going to set the ring on fire. But I will tell you something about Vern. Verne loved Bobby Duncan. And if you look at results records, Bobby Duncomb never lost to Vern Gagne. Vern put him over. Vern liked Bobby and was just fact behind the scenes. [00:39:29] Speaker C: I mean, we got some great video of Bobby and his matches with Bruno in New York. And he. I mean, he had the crowd going. He was a very hated heel. He came a couple of years before the famous Stan Hansen match where Stan came in as the Texas Cowboy. But the guy that did that first with Bruno was Bobby Duncombe. [00:39:51] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:39:52] Speaker C: Then two guys who've been working for Red Bastine, who's the booker down for Fritz Von Erich in Dallas. They're in here and they. I know at least Joe Leduc had worked the AWA before, but Joe Leduc in the. In the third match goes over Kim Duck. And they had had a feud down in Texas earlier in 75. [00:40:14] Speaker A: I want to back up just one second, and I'm going to touch on that Duke thing with you, but we were Talking about Duncan. And his opponent that night was Bull Balinski. Yeah, I think it's important for you to understand that when Verne brought Bobby in, he was just getting over. And he was going to get over because he was big, he was believable, he was real. But he put him in the ring with Bull balinski, who by 1975 was all but near the end of his active career. But Bolinsky, to AWA fans, was a guy that could beat anybody anytime he wanted to. That was the mindset. He had had a good feud five years earlier with Nick Bockwinkle. He was in headline matches with the Vachon brothers. So Balinsky storied career. I mean, he had been around the business for 20 years and under various names, different territories, but he came in as that out of out of work truck driver in 1970 for Vern. And a great gimmick at the time, because the out of work truck driver at the time was the fact that the national, whatever, truck driver union, they were on a strike. The real life there was a strike. [00:41:32] Speaker C: Right. [00:41:33] Speaker A: And Frank Shields, Bolinsky's real name, he comes in, Vern gives him this idea that we're going to use you as an out of work truck driver, and you're coming in here to beat up people for free or to get paid to pick up, beat up people that you've previously been doing on the loading docks for free. What a gimmick. [00:41:53] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, man. [00:41:53] Speaker A: Bull got over. And so by this time, this was really near the end of Bull's active career. And he would do a lot of refereeing for us after this. But he was there to make Bobby Duncomb look good. Better than he maybe was, or even better than he was. And that was Bull's job. And I wanted to point that out because that was the story for Wiley veterans too. They put the new breed over or the newer breed. Yeah. So that said your Joel leduc and Kim Duck match, it's funny because I saw them that they had wrestled in Texas and Kim Duck was. He was a guy in the AWA that got a massive push. But Verne didn't bury him either. He was a mid card guy most of the time, but he won and he'd lose a few. But he was real. He was absolutely real. And I enjoyed his work against Joe Leduc. I will point out, you said that Joe leduc had been in the AWA before. This was really his AWA early point. He had been here before that. Yeah. [00:43:01] Speaker C: Oh, yeah. Well, that surprises me. [00:43:03] Speaker A: Yeah. He had been in Canada. He had been all over the country. And most of the time, if you look where he'd been previously, he was usually a heel. [00:43:11] Speaker C: Yeah, he came in here, he had. As a baby, he had a big run in Florida for Eddie Graham in 75. And then he went over to Fritz Von Erich's territory in Dallas, and he worked over there, and he had a couple of shots because they were sharing talent between Amarillo and Dallas kind of in that period. And so he worked over in Amarillo just a few times. So, yeah, I guess he went all the way to the south and worked his way back. But I. I would have thought he worked in the AWA before. So my bad. [00:43:42] Speaker A: It was interesting because when he came in, you know, I. I'd certainly heard of him. I don't know how many other fans did. I mean, because we had very limited info out there in those days. But like I said, he'd been a heel most of the places he was at, and a brawler. I mean, Leduc was. He was a. He was an interesting heel. And he had the marks on his forehead where he, you know, bladed himself to death half the time he came in. And in the very beginning, it was almost as if Verne wasn't sure if he wanted to make him a baby or a heel. He'd actually had a match against Larry Hennig in the awa, and Larry right now at this point in time, was riding the crest as the. Probably the most popular baby face as Larry the Axe Hennig. He had been that way now for about a year, and he had had a match against Joe Leduc. Hennig and Leduc against each other, and they had this match. It was quite a brawl. It was in Minneapolis or. Yeah, it was in Minneapolis. I always have to think about where I sat, and then I know which auditorium it was at. He was in Minneapolis, and him and headache went out on the floor. The ring bell used as a weapon, and you name it. And it was like a week or two later, Verne put him together as a tag team. And leduc was a bonafide baby face. And then it was Larry the X headed Big Joe Leduc. And they were billed as the Lumberjacks. So leduc got a big push, and they had a huge feud with Baron Von Raschke and Mad Dog Bashad. And Mad Dog and leduc had worked many matches together over the years. [00:45:24] Speaker C: What's interesting to me also on this card, and, you know, probably because it was Thanksgiving at the time in 75, but there's 10 guys on the card and no tag team matches. So they're just working these singles matches one right after another that are getting a little bit. I mean you can imagine in the second match you got Bobby Duncan and Bull Balinski which you described the participants there wonderfully. Then you go to Joe Leduc and Kim Duck. Now we get to the semi main event, Pampiro Furpo defeating Baron von Raschke. You can just tell how the card is building, right? You can just feel that the competitiveness and the heat and the. And the contact in the matches is probably getting more and more and more intense. [00:46:14] Speaker A: Well, and the thing too when we talk about that build up, that match between Furpo and Raschke was technically a blow off match from a feud that they'd been having for many months around the horn. And Furpo of course he was a good guy. He had been a baby face in the AWA for a few years. This was his return visit after a late 60, very early 70 run where he turned baby here in the Twin Cities because he had been a hated heel in the 60s here and he and Raschke, which we should point out that in 1975 Baron von Raschke was at probably his best peak as a hated heel German. And I mean he had the goose step, he had his claw hold and he put that claw hold. Well, the irony in this match was that Ferpo had come up with his own version of a claw hold which he called El Garfield. And he had a claw hold similar to Raschke. So it was basically a battle of the claw. You knew Firpo was the favorite. Rashke was going to go over it in most of the matches. But in this Texas death match, and that's what it was billed as, which I always thought was funny. You have a Texas death match in Minnesota, right? You know, why didn't we have a Minnesota death match? I don't know. But it's also funny, when we had death matches, I remember as a kid, I'd say but nobody died, right? [00:47:46] Speaker C: And into the earlier death match and in the earlier years they would have captured the flag match with Germans. They have the Gestapo blood matches. They'd have, you know, things that were themed around the Germans. So you're right. [00:48:00] Speaker A: Well there was a loaded glove match on a pole and all kinds of things. [00:48:04] Speaker C: Especially for these two participants. It's kind of unusual I would think for a Texas death match. I would have, yeah, thought it would have been something different but well, it. [00:48:12] Speaker A: Just basically is telling the fans that the rules have been thrown out. You know, chokeholds are legal and this is legal and that's legal. The only thing you couldn't do in those days, and they kind of made it clear was you, you know, you couldn't choke someone or something, but so relatively speaking was good. [00:48:29] Speaker C: George, was this a classic Texas death match where they falls didn't count and yes, they had to answer the bell or they had to answer the 10 count and if you couldn't get to your feet, then you lost the match? [00:48:41] Speaker A: Yeah, I don't remember. I'd have to look at my notes because I don't remember how many falls it went. But yes, it was a typical. In this case, Raschke had won a couple of falls and Ferpa was, you know, looking like it's going to be the end of the road for him and he'd come back and win a fall and then win another one. And it really was at the point where in the end, Rashke, I think this one here, yeah, Furpo won and Rashke couldn't answer the bell and it's over. But then they had more action after that because Raschke recovered and it kind of keeps it for another day. [00:49:17] Speaker C: And, you know, unless it's a very rare occurrence, typically in these days, the semi main event went 30 minutes at least. So, you know, I don't know how long the match was, but I'm sure it was. I mean, that's another reason there were five matches on the card was because of this match, I would imagine. [00:49:37] Speaker A: Well, and the thing is too, what made this match exciting was that basically you had two heels that were going against each other. Tony. I mean, even though Furpo had been a long established baby face, you know, he was still the wild bull of the pampas. He was, he was an animal in the ring. He didn't know a rest hold at all. He didn't know how to do a scientific hold. You know, it was all clawing and scratching and kicking and stomping. That was Ferpo. And I want to tell you something. In the annals of heels, I would rank, from what I saw over my years, I would rank Furbo up there with the best of them. [00:50:18] Speaker C: Wow. [00:50:19] Speaker A: As far as being a heel and as a baby, you have to realize too, in 1975, Purple had already been in the business for 20 plus years. [00:50:26] Speaker C: Right. [00:50:27] Speaker A: And so, you know, this was nearing the end of his career, but he was getting some solid paydays because he could go, he could go in. And with Raschke playing The German. And again, you know, we should point out that in 1975 it was still okay to call them the hated goose stepping Germans. You know, we had all that hatred built up from World War II. It still went on, you know, 30 years after. Yeah, but today we've cooled that off, of course, and good we should. [00:50:59] Speaker C: To reference an earlier point, Jim Raschke was a heck of an amateur. Right. Fitting in with Vern's philosophy of legit wrestlers. [00:51:09] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. He was a legitimate amateur wrestler. He lived in Nebraska and he had basically been introduced to Verne by Omaha promoter Joe Dusick, who told him, go to Vern, get, get some training. And if you look at Jim Rashkey's early pictures, I mean, this guy looked anything but a wrestler. And Verne took him under his wing again because of that amateur background. And like I said, Rashkey wrestled openers back then. He worked with guys on the card. And it wasn't until he left the AWA in 1967 and went up to Canada at the urging of Mad Dog Vachon. And I'm sure you've heard that story. Mad Dog took him and basically said, you look like a German. And Rashke said, I am a German. And Mad Dog worked him into becoming the hated German. Up in Montreal, Raschke honed the character Baron Von Rashke by teaming not only with the Dog, but also with Hans Schmidt, who himself was one of the greatest heel German wrestlers of any era. [00:52:22] Speaker C: Oh, my God. [00:52:22] Speaker A: So there's where Raschke got his, got his training ground. [00:52:26] Speaker C: I, I'm glad you mentioned that because, you know, he comes to the Waterloo event and I, next year I'd like to get a little time with him because I'd love to hear about the DU6. And so I, I want to sit down with him and ask him. That whole Nebraska Omaha territory is fascinating to me. [00:52:44] Speaker A: You know, I will tell you that I was always fascinated with the Do6 too. And I only talked to Joe Dusick one time and it was with another person with me, and it was only about four and a half minutes, but. So I can't say I know the guy or knew of him or what he. But I have a certain point in my heart where I don't like him only because of the, the angle that he worked out with in 1971 when Alberto Torres. Yes. Passed away. [00:53:19] Speaker C: Right. [00:53:19] Speaker A: And Alberto had suffered a ruptured pancreas during the match and was rushed to the hospital. And he died in the hospital. And Joe Duk came out with the sick Thing about, he had Ox Baker and the Claw, a mask guy, Tom Andrews at the time boasting that they had killed. And they basically said, we killed him and we're glad. And of course, Baker pulled that off really well. He just didn't have a problem with it. [00:53:52] Speaker C: That affected Tom Andrews for the rest of his life. [00:53:55] Speaker A: Yeah. And when I talked to Tom Andrews, who I will say became one of my closest wrestling friends over the years, he and I talked about that a few times. That he said it just made him sick to his stomach. [00:54:06] Speaker C: He almost quit the business and he. [00:54:07] Speaker A: Was going to quit. He was going to quit the business. He told Joe he didn't want to do this gimmick, this, this way of describing wrestling. And Joe Duk said he wanted to. And Tom pretty much was going to quit the business. Yeah, until he hooked up with Jim Starr and they became the Masked Interns. But Tom had a different look and look out look on life because of that. And I have a sour spot in my heart for that promoter taking it that far. Yeah, that you're glad I killed him. I mean, I just. [00:54:42] Speaker C: So in the main event, we've got the brand new AWA World Heavyweight Champion. This is only a few days and weeks after he beat Vern for the title. Nick Bockwinkle in a match with a guy who's kind of been on a little bit of a vacation down in the Florida Territory in 75. Larry Hennig, who was down there working the top heel in the territory in 75 was Bob Roop. But his close companion who helped him quite a bit was Larry the Ax Henning. And so Larry's back here at home for the holidays and his run in Florida is pretty much over. He lost a loser leaves town match in Florida. And so this is the main event here and Nick's kind of, I guess this is Nick's first big match after winning the title. [00:55:34] Speaker A: Well, you know, and it's, it isn't exactly an unknown because Larry Hennig was so well known in Minnesota. [00:55:41] Speaker C: Sure. [00:55:42] Speaker A: You know, he started here in 57. He was a baby, was a heel, but he'd been on a year long run here of being Larry the Axe Hennig. And after Verne lost the match on November 8 to nick losing his title, Larry Hennig was a logical choice because he was so over with the fans at that point. And I guess I would, I personally thought for a while back then that maybe Vern was going to put the title on Larry and it was just Nick getting the, you know, the transition. I Was glad it didn't work out that way. Nothing against Larry, because I thought he certainly could have been a great AWA champion. But the other side of it was, is that knowing Vern later, he was never going to put the title on a baby face that could possibly get more cheers than he could. That was, that was the mindset, it was the ego he had. So he enjoyed having Nick as champion because he was a heel and he never had. That's another part of the reason Billy Robinson never got the title. Yeah, Vernon didn't want anybody popular and unless it was a short thing like the Crusher that he did in the 60s, you know, Crusher didn't want the championship, but they do it for a rematch purpose or something. But yeah, I. Larry, this was a good match because Larry was so over. And every fan there believed that Nick's run was going to be short and Larry was going to become the champion, which they'd all wanted him to be at that point in time. Perfect main event. [00:57:12] Speaker C: Probably a good time to rewind the time, tunnel back 10 years to November 25, 1965. The Thanksgiving show drew 8,116 people to the same building in Minneapolis. And in the semi main event, Larry Hennig and Harley Race defeated Larry Haneemi and Mighty Igor. So Larry probably was on a lot of Thanksgiving shows over the years because he, he lived there, right? [00:57:43] Speaker A: Absolutely, absolutely. And it's fun. The way you talk about that match. I was trying to think when you said November of 65 and I was putting it in my head right away where, where it is sometimes I can picture the card. Yeah. Larry Hynemi, who at that point in time had only been in the business for just really a few months, 1975. And Verne had him team up with the veteran Igor, who fans thought he was a rookie. Igor's gimmick was still fresh, that he was a new young kid from Poland. But teaming him up with Hyeni and the whole objective was Larry Hynemi was going to get some ring work with two veterans at that point like Hennig and Harley Race and have a partner like Igor to get him over. There's another example of Verne doing that. [00:58:38] Speaker C: And then the main event of that 1965 Thanksgiving card, the world champion Mad Dog Vachon defeated the Crusher by disqualification. And they had quite the feud in 1965. They traded the title a couple of times, right? [00:58:55] Speaker A: They did. And the thing with the Crusher is that at that point in time in 1965, the Crusher had turned Baby Face in January of 65 when he came back at the urging of Dick the Bruiser, who had teamed with Hennigan Race a month earlier in a six man match. And Hennigan Race turned on the Bruiser, who was a heel. And the Bruiser wanted revenge. He was going to find the Crusher, who had been missing in action for about four months because he had lost the loser leave town match to Verne. So that's how that all started out with Crusher becoming a baby. He and Bruiser ended up taking the title from. Or Hennigan Race ended up taking the title from Bruiser and Crusher. And Crusher was the hottest babyface at that point in time. And going forward, as much as it hurt him, Verne knew that Crusher sometimes was more popular than he was. [00:59:59] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:00:00] Speaker C: In 85 was the Thanksgiving show in St. Paul. [01:00:06] Speaker A: Yes. Civic Center. [01:00:07] Speaker C: Yeah. Drew 12,000 people in 1985 on the 28th of November. And the road warriors beat the Free Birds. We got Mongolian Stomper beating Kevin Kelly. We've got a 21 man winner gets $100,000 and a Chevrolet pick up Battle Royal. That's kind of interesting. [01:00:32] Speaker A: Was that, was that Scott hall, the one that he watched? [01:00:35] Speaker C: Scott Hall. Scott hall won the. Won the battle Royal, the 100 grand and the new Chevy pickup. [01:00:41] Speaker A: Yep. And it was a big deal. The. The Chevy pickup was on display at the Civic Center. And I want to point out that card too, because when did you have the attendance figure for that one? [01:00:54] Speaker C: 12,000. [01:00:56] Speaker A: Okay. And that's about right when I think about it. So that would have been about 8 or 9,000 less than what the Civic center had been pulling off over a course of a couple years before this. But if you check the records, and I don't know what the exact date was, but wwf, which they were at the time, they had also run a Thanksgiving card, but not on the same night. And they were. They came into town and they also, if you check the attendance records, had about a 12,000 house. So in. In a couple day period, we drew 24,000 fans to two cards. But what I want to point out is that you mentioned the Stomper, the Road Warriors. Scott hall was being pushed is kind of like the second coming. Verne wanted him to be the second coming of Hulk Hogan at that point. [01:01:52] Speaker C: Yeah, he beat Voris Zhukov in a match also. [01:01:55] Speaker A: Right, right. And the thing there is that the point I want to make is that Verne was still holding his own. Anytime Vince would come to town, they were going Head to head with each other most months when Vince come to town and Vince would run his cards out at the old Metropolitan Sports center, which was where the old Minnesota North Star hockey team played. And for you fans that are aware of the Mall of America, that is where that building stands right now. The Mall of America is where the. [01:02:30] Speaker C: Wow. [01:02:31] Speaker A: The old Metropolitan Sports center and the old Minnesota Twins Metropolitan Stadium ballpark. [01:02:37] Speaker C: Wow. [01:02:38] Speaker A: That's where the Mall of America is. [01:02:40] Speaker C: There's a couple other things about that card I wanted to bring up too. Crusher Jerry Blackwell beat Michael Hayes. And in the opening match we have, and we talked about, Even in the 1980s, it was still the formula. You go out, you work a really good match in the opening match. And a lot of times it would be a time limit draw. But it was Wild Bill Irwin and a young wrestler named Leon White in a time limit draw which would later become Baby Bull. Right? [01:03:09] Speaker A: And then Baby Bull, Leon White and then later on, of course, Big Van Vader. [01:03:15] Speaker C: Right? [01:03:16] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. [01:03:17] Speaker E: And then. [01:03:19] Speaker C: Yeah, go ahead. [01:03:21] Speaker A: Bill Irwin was coming in too, because he had been teamed up with Scott, his real life brother. Rare time when wrestlers really were brothers and they were the Long Riders here. They had come off of a run in Texas wrestling together. [01:03:35] Speaker C: I really like the Long Run Masked. [01:03:37] Speaker A: Super Destroyers down in Texas. [01:03:40] Speaker C: I really liked the Long Riders. I thought they were, they were a great team. [01:03:43] Speaker A: I thought was a great gimmick. It really was. And the only reason I think Vern brought him in, brought them both back. We have to remember that Scott Irwin was trained by Vern gagne back in 1975. He came out of the same camp that Ricky Steamboat came out of and Jan Nelson and that guy with a boombox that we don't want to talk about. [01:04:14] Speaker C: Well, I was going to say, I hate to mention him, but he won the World Light Heavyweight Title on this match, beating Steve Regal. [01:04:22] Speaker A: Well, we don't, I don't, I don't even give him any time and we don't need to go into that. So he doesn't deserve it. [01:04:29] Speaker C: Let me ask you this question though. Why was Vern looking to have a World Light Heavyweight Title at that time? [01:04:38] Speaker A: Exactly for the reason to get the boombox guy over. [01:04:42] Speaker C: That was the only reason. That was the whole thing. [01:04:45] Speaker A: Okay? The fans know. I really don't want to discuss him because as a person he is awful. He deserves to be where he's in prison, folks, and he deserves to be there. But Buck Zumhoff, he was the one guy that Vern could never get other promoters to get serious about. And Verne tried to get him paydays. And true story, it was Bobby Heenan who went to Vern and he said, let me work with him. I'll take him. And you know, the feud that they had, Bobby would smash his boomboxes and. And the whole thing. But the only reason that that light heavyweight title came up was to try to get him over. That was it. They brought in Mike Graham, who was listed as the light heavyweight champion. We'd never had that here before. [01:05:40] Speaker C: Yeah. [01:05:41] Speaker A: And he lost it. And Steve Riegel, of course, being kind of a junior heavyweight light heavyweight at that point. And there was a hell of a talent in my book. [01:05:52] Speaker C: Oh, man. He, he. He goes the next year to Crockett. And I saw Steve Regal in a couple of matches in the summer of 86 in the Crockett territory. I always thought he had work. Work was really good. [01:06:05] Speaker A: I want. I want to. Since you brought up the Road warriors on this 85 card and they had a match against the Freebirds, you flash forward a little bit. And we had the Road warriors as our world tag team champions. And I think I've always been a critic in believing that Vern made a serious mistake when he put the title on the Road warriors only because who the hell's going to beat him? [01:06:34] Speaker C: You got to get to get it off of them. Right, right. It's like why you didn't put it on Andre, you know? [01:06:41] Speaker A: But I mean, the thing was, is that the Road warriors, in everybody's mind, yeah, they should be champions, but any champion, whether it's single or tag, I've always believed that the perfect formula is the fans have to believe they can be beat, and they just can't. They don't get beat because they get disqualified or this or that or the other thing. And in the case of the Road warriors, they. They redefined tag team wrestling. They had a different approach to it. They came in and just beat the crap out of whoever it was. They didn't care. And Verne putting the title on him, I always thought was a mistake. So here's where Vern, I think, did. And I've said this before, but I think it bears repeating, to me, it was one of the most genius promoting moves I've ever witnessed. He had the unlikely team of Gorgeous Jimmy Garvin and Mr. Electricity. Steve Riegel beat the Road warriors for the title, but it became believable because the. The three Free Birds had interfered in the match, and it ended up being that basically the warriors were beaten by five guys, if you. [01:08:01] Speaker C: And. [01:08:01] Speaker A: And to me, that was genius because Verd figured out a way to make them vulnerable and then it was believable too. [01:08:09] Speaker C: And they were on their way out too. So they. [01:08:11] Speaker A: Right, well, yeah, they were. That. That was true. They were on their way out and it was the only way that they were never going to just lose two guys. Animal and Hawk wouldn't have done that. And that's. That's another. [01:08:22] Speaker C: But you have a really good believable finish to get the titles off of them. And then they disappear for, you know. [01:08:27] Speaker A: Right. [01:08:28] Speaker C: They. I think they came back. We had the Pro Wrestling USA stuff and all that, but. [01:08:33] Speaker A: And they had. They had Wrestle Rock. Yeah, they were on Wrestle Rock. [01:08:38] Speaker C: But yeah, I mean, that was a heck of a card there in 85. And I absolutely. I think that's one of the forgotten runs of the Free Birds was their time there in 85, because they were working there. They were working down in Tennessee when Jarrett was working with the awa and they were. They were. That was a really good run for them in the summer and fall of 85, I thought. [01:09:02] Speaker A: Yeah. And it's important to point out that, you know, the invasion for the. From the WWF started in January of 84, December of 83. It started when Hogan went to the WWF and. And Vince Jr. Started raiding territories. Guys, I always say that Verne really held his own all the way through 1986 and into 87, despite the fact that he had guys coming and going like there was a revolving door on the building. You know, you mentioned the stomper on that 85 car. Grant you, the stomper by 85 wasn't the stomper he'd been five or ten years earlier, but he was still Archie Goldie, the Mongolian Stomper. And he had the Sheik Adnan Casey as his manager. And so he was over like hotcakes. And whether he was there a short time or whatever it was, Verne was still drawing. And I point this out to folks and you can look it up, it's fact. Vince would be coming in and running opposition to VERNE for about two or three years there from 84 to 87. And every time he did, Verne, in a lot of cases out drew him, even though Vince was presenting some of our guys on his cards, of course. [01:10:23] Speaker C: That was the reason. [01:10:25] Speaker A: And he was out drawing him, or they were at least holding their own and drawing close to equal. And so Vince never beat Vern as badly as people want to say. And then of course, later on, by the 1988 and stuff. Yeah, I'd got very ugly and sad. Yeah. And it got to the point where Vern didn't have auditorium anymore, he didn't have TV anymore. And that was all due to events as well, so. [01:10:50] Speaker C: Well, I think that's a pretty, pretty fantastic look at the Thanksgiving cards in 75, 65 and 85. George, I appreciate your time here today, and I want to wish you and your wonderful wife and your great family a wonderful and pleasant Thanksgiving holiday. So thanks for coming on. [01:11:09] Speaker A: Absolutely, Tony. And my wishes to you and your mom and your family. [01:11:13] Speaker C: Thank you. [01:11:14] Speaker A: You know, it's one, one thing we always have to remember. We have a lot to be thankful for, despite all the woes and troubles in our world. And we got to stop and smell the roses as Mac Davis sang and give, give thanks for our families and. [01:11:29] Speaker C: Our love and a great country we live in. [01:11:32] Speaker A: Absolutely. We do live in a great country. [01:11:34] Speaker C: You bet. And thank you. [01:11:35] Speaker A: God bless you, sir. [01:11:36] Speaker C: Yep. Yeah, it'll be me and my mom, my brother and my niece and nephew, and there'd be about seven or eight of us. And my mom, God bless her, she doesn't know how to cook for seven. She only knows how to cook for 700. [01:11:50] Speaker A: So I'll be down to your place for some turkey. [01:11:55] Speaker C: We'll have Thanksgiving food for the through the weekend. [01:11:58] Speaker A: You know, that's what's better than leftover. [01:12:01] Speaker C: I got nothing. [01:12:02] Speaker A: Man, oh, man. Warm up some dressing and a turkey. [01:12:06] Speaker C: Sandwich and some football. [01:12:07] Speaker A: That's almost as close to heaven as you can get. [01:12:11] Speaker C: Yeah, well, happy Thanksgiving, George. [01:12:12] Speaker A: Bless you, sir. Thank you again. [01:12:14] Speaker C: Well, did you enjoy that with George Shire? Learned a lot of things about Thanksgiving in the AWA that maybe you didn't know. We covered 1975 in depth. We also touched on the 1965 Thanksgiving card and also the 1985 Thanksgiving card. Wouldn't that a cool moment when Joe, George, George, George remembered about Scott hall on the Thanksgiving show. George Shire, just always wonderful to have him on the program. Okay, let's talk about. Sorry, I've got this cold and rainy and wet weather. I've got a little frog in my throat. Let's go out west to Amarillo, Texas at the Sports Arena Thanksgiving night. Amarillo, Texas. And I'll just remind you, we've got a full Amarillo show coming up on the Time Tunnel. But I'll remind you that the week before the Thursday night before Thanksgiving, Terry Funk lost the NWA International title to the Mast Super Destroyer, which under the Hood was Art Nelson who was coming in to be the new booker in the West Texas territory and to work on top as their new mast heel. And they knew Terry was going to be winning the NWA World title in a few weeks. And Terry was doing this during this time. He was going around creating the situation for him to come back as the NWA champion and be in that territory and draw money. For example, in St. Louis, the last card of the year before he won the title, Terry won the Battle Royal in the main event which put him over as the big number one wrestler in St. Louis. And of course he's going to come back and I'm sure they did an angle at the end of the Battle Royal setting up his opponent. Coming up at the first of the year when Terry comes back with the title in Greensboro. Terry lost the US title and well, we're going to get to that, but you're going to set up Terry in Greensboro at in Amarillo, he lost the title the Super Destroyer. So he will have an opponent ready made for him when he comes back with the world title, which would be the Super Destroyer under a mask. And the Super Destroyer won that title by Terry submitting and giving up and not being able to answer the bell. After the the devastating bear hug and lubbock from Frank Goodish. And Terry's back was injured going into the match, of course, Baby face at a disadvantage and the Super Destroyer was cranking down on the bear hug. Terry couldn't take it anymore. Referee raised his arm and it fell. He raised his arm and it fell and he raised his arm and on the third time it fell and he called for the bell, gave the title the Super Destroyer. So the next week on Thanksgiving, Angelo and Lanny Poffo beat Randy Brewer and Dan Burdick. Randy Taylor or Tyler, Sorry. Randy Tyler defeated Jim Pride in 2 minutes and 11 seconds. Jim Pride is Randy Paffo, who would later become Randy Savage. And here he is in the second match on the card. In a really short two minute match putting Randy Tyler over who's a Wiley veteran. Sputnik Monroe beat Joe Polardi who was a wrestler they were breaking in and trying to get started out there who never really hung around or stuck around for very long. Ricky Romero defeated Hank James from the Detroit territory. The Super Destroyer and Frank Goodish as a tag team defeated Scott Casey and Lord Alfred Hayes. And that match went almost 20 minutes. Super, super match. Billy Robinson. This was a fantastic match, 25 minutes long. Billy Robinson versus Dory Funk junior went to a double count out What a fabulous technical match that that probably was. And then in the main event, a 16 man pole battle royal. Scott Casey won the 16 man pole battle royal and the $5,000 kayfabe prize in that main event. And they gave away 10 turkeys. And one of those turkeys had this special green dressing. And so that was a quite a treat for the fans there. The box office opened that afternoon at 4 o' clock with the regular ticket prices for Thanksgiving. And I'm sure they drew a pretty good amount there at the sports arena on Thanksgiving. Now let's talk about the Crockett territory on Thanksgiving night. Now, in these days, in the 70s, the Crockett's ran two Thanksgiving shows. They ran the big one in Greensboro. That has continued on over the years. And eventually the Thanksgiving show, just like 50 years ago in 1985, was a split show. Half of it was in Greensboro and half of it was in Atlanta at the Omni. But in these days, they didn't have the Georgia territory. It was still on its own and independent. So the regular Thursday night town for the Crockets was Norfolk at the Scope. And so once a month the Thursday night town would be Greensboro at the Coliseum. Well, at Thanksgiving night they ran both of them. They ran the Coliseum at Greensboro and they ran the Scope at Norfolk. And listen to this. At Norfolk at the Scope, they that seats about 10,250 for wrestling and about 13,800 for concerts. And they sold it out. Joe Turner beat Don Serrano. Don Kernodle beat Joe Soto. Tony Atlas beat Crusher, Jerry Blackwell. Tony Rocco and Roberto Soto beat Bill Howard and Larry Sharp. Danny Miller and Johnny Weaver defeated Michael Dubois or Dubois and Steve Strong. Andre the Giant, Rufus R. Jones and Ken Patera beat Gene Anderson, Oli Anderson and superstar Billy Graham in the main event. That was a great card in Norfolk. In Greensboro they sold out 12,102 people at the Coliseum. Klondike Bill beat George Harris. That's George the Blimp Harris. Bill White beat Pepe Lopez. Angelo Mosca defeated the Avenger. Swede Hansen and Larry Zabisco beat the spoiler tag team. Not Don Jardine. But the two spoilers, spoiler one and two, that came in after Don Jordan left as the Super Destroyer. Tiger Conway Jr. And Steve Kern, who were being pushed as young baby faces as a tag team, beat the Professor. Boris Malenko and the Missouri Mauler. Larry Hamilton. Black Jack Mulligan vs Mr. Wrestling went to a no contest. Paul Jones defeated Terry Funk to win the United States heavyweight title. And this is what I was talking about. Terry is setting up for future main events when he comes back with the NWA World title. Paul Jones is now going to be the US Champion and is beaten Terry Funk for it. It's a natural program when Terry comes back to the Carolinas and they are doing a masterful job setting Terry up to be the world champion and putting the money drawing programs in place for him when he comes back back through all the territories. And in the main event, Jack Briscoe, who is the NWA world heavyweight champion, has defending that title against Wahoo McDaniel. And Wahoo beat Jack that night, but it was by count out in a no disqualification match. So it was a title match, no dq, but count outs are finishes. And so Jack got counted out of the ring. He couldn't get back in to answer the referee. Count a ten count and Wahoo walks away the winner. But without the title and a fantastic card drawing over 12,000 people to the Greensboro Coliseum. Just amazing. And what a great Thanksgiving, either in Norfolk, Greensboro or Amarillo. These were the days, folks. These were the days. I hope you're enjoying your Thanksgiving holiday already or during it, or whenever you're listening to this podcast and visiting with your family and friends. That's what it's all about. And what a great time it was back in these days because we would have dinner together, lunch together and maybe take a little nap, watch a little football and then go to something outside the house. You know, get out of the house and go do something. And wrestling was something to go do in these days, as you can tell from all these wrestling cards that took place on Thanksgiving. 75. Okay, let's get to our next segment. And we're going to talk about Thanksgiving in Florida during the floor in the Florida territory. We're going to talk about the Kansas City territory and we're going to talk about Atlanta and the Georgia territory. So Memorial hall in Kansas City, Miami Beach Convention center in Florida and the Omni in Atlanta, Jerry Oates, Bobby Simmons and Mike George all came by the Richards ranch by phone so that we could talk about all these great towns and territories on Thanksgiving in 1975. Our conversation went all around the horn and talked about everything A couple of years before, a couple of years after. We talked about referees, we talked about bookers, we talked about a lot of great stuff and it's a great conversation. Let's go to that conversation about Thanksgiving in 1975 with Bobby, Jerry and Mike right now. [01:22:13] Speaker E: Well, we're doing our big Thanksgiving spectacular here on the pro wrestling time tunnel. And I'm joined tonight with three guys who have lots of Thanksgiving wrestling experience. I'm going to introduce each one of them. First of all, Jerry Oates, who was working in the Kansas City territory during Thanksgiving 1975. Jerry, how you tonight, man? [01:22:36] Speaker F: I'm doing great. [01:22:38] Speaker E: Also tonight, Mike George, who's got a heck of a story about Thanksgiving 1975. He had been working since the summer in the Florida territory down in Eddie Graham territory. Mike, thanks for joining us tonight. [01:22:54] Speaker B: Thank you very much. [01:22:56] Speaker E: And then also tonight, Bobby Simmons, who's on our show on a regular basis talking about the Georgia territory. He had just come back to the NWA office in 75 and was refereeing his first Thanksgiving show for them in 1975. Bobby, welcome to the show. [01:23:15] Speaker D: Thanks, man. I'm glad to be back with you tonight, Tony. [01:23:18] Speaker E: Man, this is going to be a really good, really good. I'm excited to have all three of you guys on tonight. And you know, a lot of things have kind of left as far as the wrestling business. And, you know, we don't even really have much of a Thanksgiving show on anymore. The Survivor Series is still the. But it's on Thanksgiving weekend. But back in the day, even before Survivor Series, even before Starcade, Thanksgiving night was a regular big time wrestling night. So why don't we just start with you guys sharing some of your Thanksgiving memories of being in the wrestling business. Jerry, why don't you go first? [01:24:01] Speaker F: Well, I know not necessarily in Kansas City, but when I was here in Georgia, we will wrestle in Columbus on Thursday and then the Omni that night in the afternoon in Columbus and go to the army that night. So we ran two, they ran two shows a night then. And Criminals too. [01:24:24] Speaker E: Bobby, was that going on when you were there? [01:24:28] Speaker D: Yes, sir. I, I started when Ann went out of business in November 74. I went direct. I was the only one out of Ann's crew that went directly to the NWA office. And yeah, it was Thanksgiving was a huge night for us. First time the Atlanta office ever drew a house over $100,000 was on a Thanksgiving night. And you know, that's back when ticket prices, top price was like $8. So that's a lot of folks. But yeah, Columbus always had a big show on that afternoon. And then I don't really know. I don't think it started in 75, but short of maybe 76, they always had a big tag team tournament on Thanksgiving night. [01:25:14] Speaker E: Yeah, I think it started the next year and we'd have, we'd have Teams. [01:25:17] Speaker D: From all over the country in here. And it was a big show, but yeah, that's what it was a. You could count on it. You could count on Columbus and Atlanta on Thanksgiving day. [01:25:29] Speaker E: Well, knowing Mr. Ward, the way you guys have talked about him over the years, I'm surprised he wasn't out giving out free turkeys or something that afternoon. [01:25:40] Speaker F: Every time it was run on Thanksgiving afternoon, 3 o', clock, it'd be packed to the raptors, wouldn't it, Bobby? [01:25:45] Speaker D: Yes, it would. [01:25:46] Speaker E: Wow. [01:25:47] Speaker D: Yes, it would. [01:25:48] Speaker E: Did you guys ever know anybody who made both shows? I did. [01:25:53] Speaker D: Everybody. Everybody. Everybody in the territory did. [01:25:56] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:25:57] Speaker D: Yeah. I mean, it was. That was just if you were. I mean, if you were the top guys, you know, and then the underneath guys, they would rotate them in and out of Columbus, you know, base, so. [01:26:08] Speaker B: That everybody get a shot at it. [01:26:09] Speaker D: But yeah, the top guys, they work both shows. And then a lot of times in Atlanta, we'd like. I say we'd. They would fly people in from. You know, we'd have teams, you know, the Briscoes would be here and. And sometimes the Funk would brothers and, you know, we'd get people from all over the country just to. They made a real big deal out of that tag tournament. So it was a. It was a really. Wasn't any holidays, but, you know, I mean, I don't know about everywhere else, but here, once. Once you eat Thanksgiving dinner, there's. I mean, it's over. [01:26:40] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:26:41] Speaker D: And so it was somewhere to go. And we had a department store in Atlanta. Rich's Department Store had a huge. They had two buildings downtown that had a glass bridge that was about five stories tall. And on top of that bridge they had a huge Christmas tree. And Thanksgiving night was always there. They lit their tree and they would draw 6, 7, 8, 10,000 people in the middle of Forsyth street to watch this tree be lit up. And then a lot of them would leave there and walk to the wrestling matches. [01:27:14] Speaker E: So, Mike, George, did you ever work Atlanta for Thanksgiving? [01:27:19] Speaker B: No, I'm afraid not. Afraid not. I was only Atlanta just for a short time. I was both times. I was there was both short times. [01:27:29] Speaker E: What's your. What's your favorite Thanksgiving show that you had in the past? [01:27:34] Speaker B: Well, I. I worked a lot, you know, Kansas City. But then a couple times I Out of the business for a little while and I'd be at my mom and dad's house, family and stuff. And we'd be having Thanksgiving and they'd call me out. One of. I'd work that night in. In Kansas City, because they were. People wouldn't show up and everything else. So I did a lot of that and I did a lot of. In 75. I was in Florida at the time. Miami. Yeah. [01:28:07] Speaker E: You worked the night before Thanksgiving, right? [01:28:10] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, I would left that night after I came back out of Miami, back into Tampa. I had a van and I had my Dobson Z and hooked up back behind them, drove all the way up into Kansas city, back into St. Joe. I was left the territory down there. Gus curse to call me up and he said, mike, you want to come back? I said, well, no, not really. But I said, yeah, I'll come back. And just happened to be. I had a heck of a snowstorm. I come through. Coming back in that night, boy, it was something else. But I drove all the way through. It was unreal. Wife, the kids, the dog, the whole deal in my van and where we went was froze to death too. [01:29:02] Speaker E: Was Thanksgiving ever really a very big deal in watch territory? [01:29:12] Speaker B: As many times I was there, I don't really remember being really big. [01:29:16] Speaker E: I don't think it was. I really don't. Don't think it really was. But on that Miami card, which was the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving in 75, they drew 26, 45 people to the convention center there. And Bill Dromo was on the card. Carl Von Steiger was on the card. Abe Jacobs and Rip Hawk wrestled to a time limit draw. You put the Destroyer over so that you. You gave notice and. And they had to put. It was that Dick. [01:29:46] Speaker B: Bob got me to go then. Yeah, I. I gave my two weeks notice and I was on my way back to St. Joseph, Missouri back. [01:29:55] Speaker E: Was that. Was that Dick Byers? [01:29:59] Speaker B: I think so. I think so. It's been so long, I really don't remember. [01:30:04] Speaker E: And then Cyclone Negro beat Terry Funk and Rocky Johnson beat King Curtis in the main event there. [01:30:11] Speaker B: Yeah, there's some good guys there at the time. Yeah, I was. That's my. I'd been in the business about three years. First time I was in Florida was in 72 and then in 75. Yeah, it was 75 was probably my best time. But then I came up for. For Gus and I would probably. I should have stayed down there, but I didn't. Were you when Harley was. Harley was the booker then, right? [01:30:40] Speaker E: Yeah. You went down there in the summertime. [01:30:42] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:30:43] Speaker E: Jerry didn't. In Kansas City. Were you on the 74 card also? [01:30:50] Speaker F: Yeah, I was out there in 74. [01:30:52] Speaker E: Were you and Mike on that card together? I need to look that up was you there. [01:30:58] Speaker B: M. I think I was in Louisiana at the time. [01:31:05] Speaker F: When I was out there in Louisiana and you. [01:31:09] Speaker B: I came down and you were already there there in Louisiana when I came down there. Yeah, I came. [01:31:18] Speaker E: Yeah, go ahead. [01:31:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I'm trying to remember. It was. I had so many different times. I went different places. That one time we were both together out there in Portland, Oregon. And then you left first and I gave my notice and. Ah, dang. All of a sudden we ended up back down in Oklahoma. I did. [01:31:44] Speaker F: Not. Oklahoma. [01:31:46] Speaker B: Then you were out of there. Yeah, I went back to Oklahoma again. [01:31:52] Speaker F: I was going back and forth. I wasn't permanent. I'd go like four days a week and come back home four days after. Yeah. [01:31:59] Speaker B: Yeah. That's what. [01:32:00] Speaker F: Together. Wrestled each other in Lake Charles. [01:32:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you about beat me half to death. Yeah. [01:32:06] Speaker E: So remember? Well, so On Thanksgiving night, 1974, of course, Kansas City was a Thursday night town, so Thanksgiving always fell on Kansas City night. But yeah, Jerry Oates and Mike George beat Frenchie Martin and Lord Alfred Hayes. [01:32:25] Speaker B: Frenchie Martin, what a character. I hadn't heard both of them were. Both of them were, though. Really? Oh, yeah, yeah. I had a. I remember watching Frenchie have a. Have a match with the chair and chair one. I believe that. [01:32:47] Speaker D: It was. [01:32:48] Speaker B: It was great. He attacked the chair and all of a sudden the chair got him and it hit him in the head and boom, down he went all kinds. Oh, this. He was unreal. Frenchie and the chair one. [01:33:01] Speaker D: It was great. [01:33:02] Speaker B: I, I laughed at that one. [01:33:03] Speaker D: It was, it was worth. [01:33:04] Speaker B: Worth watching. [01:33:07] Speaker E: And your brother Ted, your brother Ted on that same 74 card, Jerry, your brother had to work with Dr. Ken Ramey. [01:33:15] Speaker F: You're a kid. [01:33:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't remember that one. Yeah, yeah, so. [01:33:24] Speaker E: So, Jerry, was Thanksgiving big in wrestling when you were a kid growing up? [01:33:31] Speaker F: No, not that I remember. I don't know when they actually started that. Do you, Bobby? [01:33:37] Speaker D: It's when Barnett came in here. [01:33:40] Speaker F: Yeah, it was gone. [01:33:42] Speaker E: Yeah, it was. [01:33:43] Speaker D: He, you know, we, we would not. I don't even remember as a kid. You know, I started going to matches when I was eight here in Atlanta, and I don't ever remember anything special. I know if Christmas fell on a Friday, they would run the auditorium on Friday night. They'd have matches, but I don't ever remember anything special. And then, of course, you know, when the, when the Omni was built and you had the bigger venue and it just. There was a lot of things changed, but when Barnett got here, I think he was kind of behind the holiday cards. [01:34:16] Speaker E: I know Crockett's, they started, I think in 1970, maybe, maybe even back in the 60s. But I wasn't sure when the Atlanta tradition started. But it started with Barnett, huh? [01:34:29] Speaker D: I'm pretty sure it was when, when Jim came in here because. Yeah, it was. [01:34:35] Speaker B: He probably copied that from St. Louis too, though. [01:34:38] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:34:38] Speaker B: Because, yeah, Kansas City was always big on Thursday was all. Anytime Christmas or, or Thanksgiving came on, we always had big shows on those days. [01:34:52] Speaker E: On that 75 card in Kansas City, Jerry, you drew almost 1500 people. Akio Sato beat Frank Diamond. Gene Antone beat Sandy Parker. Benny Ramirez beat Prince Tapu, the Samoan. Betty Nikolai beat Sean Brook or Sharon Brooks. Ray Candy beat Tank Patton, Big John and Ed Wiskowski versus Pat O' Connor and Daddy Little Bear went to a 30 minute time limit draw. And then you and your brother beat Dutch Mantell and ron Bass in 75 on Thanksgiving. Yep. And then in the main event, there was a 14 man battle royal. And Ray Candy went over in the Battle Royal. [01:35:40] Speaker B: Yeah, Geico. Love those Battle Royals. [01:35:44] Speaker E: What do you remember about Dutch. What do you remember about Dutch Mantel and Ron Bass? That. That was kind of a team there, right? [01:35:50] Speaker F: Yeah, My, my brother had great matches with Dutch because they had. When Gunko was running, that's where they both really learned what to do in the ring. And they had great matches. I mean, they, they wrestle every night everywhere, all over the state from for like two years. And then my brother had better matches with him than I did. And then Ron Bass was, he was kind of clunky, you know, he wasn't, you know, big bump taker or. But you had to work around that, you know. [01:36:24] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. [01:36:25] Speaker E: Bob, Bobby the Tom, Ernesto, the Dutch and Ted Oates. It was just a couple of those guys that he, as a booker saw and was able to put together. Right. [01:36:37] Speaker D: They, they started out in preliminary matches and wound up working main events. It, it. Well, this is a gospel truth. The police officers in Atlanta thought they were shooting. They go, they would go to screaming, they thought. And well, they was night ties in the ring with them. And I thought, they're shooting. [01:36:58] Speaker F: I'm sure you refereed nearly all you saw. [01:37:02] Speaker D: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, listen, this is not an Atlanta story, but they had a double knockout in Savannah one night and they cracked heads. And I was standing there counting, and I'm looking at them and I could see in their eyes neither one of them knew where they were. And I'm thinking if one of them comes To. And the other one, don't. This isn't going to be good. And finally they snapped out of it. But when we got back in the dressing room, Wayne told me. He said I was on my grandmother's farm. He said I didn't know what I was doing. So, yeah, they. They beat the crap out of each other, man. That was just, you know, but it was. That was one of those, I guess, two guys, every once in a while, they just click. They just click. And everything they do is good. And it's just. It was. I don't know. I don't even know how to describe it. It was. Well, two other guys. And this is going back, you know, Billy Spears and Roberto Soto. [01:38:07] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:07] Speaker D: Why could those two. Why did those two guys click like they did? But how much money did they draw in Atlanta? I mean, they were just. Yeah, one of those things. Ernesto was smart about that stuff. He could see it. Yes. [01:38:27] Speaker F: Oh, he had a mind. [01:38:28] Speaker B: That was unbelievable. [01:38:29] Speaker D: It was like a steel trap. And he. And, you know, he would. He would start. He would. He might see it in a preliminary match, and it would just. [01:38:37] Speaker B: He knew. [01:38:38] Speaker D: And then that's what happened with Ted and Wayne. It was. It was never planned to be that, but it just turned into that. [01:38:44] Speaker F: I mean, you had to do something with it, right? [01:38:46] Speaker D: Yeah. [01:38:47] Speaker F: I mean, they. Actors were better in the main event, probably. [01:38:50] Speaker D: They all. [01:38:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:38:52] Speaker D: I mean, you couldn't follow them that well. [01:38:54] Speaker B: That. [01:38:55] Speaker F: That's. See, that's where Short Booker is on the ball. [01:39:00] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:39:01] Speaker E: What were you going to say? Something about Ron Bass. Mike? [01:39:06] Speaker D: Oh, no. [01:39:06] Speaker B: Well, that and the other guy we were talking about, or partners, a Dutch man tail. Dutch? Yeah, Dutch. I. I like to watch Dutch blind as a bat. [01:39:19] Speaker F: But. [01:39:22] Speaker B: He gave that look like he thought he saw you, but he wasn't really sure, you know, And I thought. [01:39:28] Speaker E: And he was great. He had the Stan Hansen disease. [01:39:32] Speaker B: Yeah, you got that right. I had a story about Dan Hansen. You were there, Jerry. At the time, I was rafting somewhere over Mississippi and we said something about the finish. I was used to scoop, slam and that type deal. And I ran by the other side on him. Oh, he's lost. And I remember that one very well. He blinded. Didn't know I ran by him. God. [01:40:05] Speaker E: How long did that program with Dutch and Ron last, do you remember? [01:40:11] Speaker F: Not real long. I don't know if they left before we did or not. I think they did. [01:40:18] Speaker E: Dutch always says he didn't stay long. He didn't care for that territory. [01:40:22] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:40:24] Speaker E: Yeah, but other guys. Other guys Loved it there. I mean, so everywhere I went. [01:40:34] Speaker D: If. [01:40:34] Speaker F: I hadn't been there, I made the best of it. I enjoyed it because I love the business. You know, if I didn't like it, you could leave, you know, back in that time. [01:40:43] Speaker E: Course. [01:40:44] Speaker F: Go where? [01:40:46] Speaker B: Some place up and. Yeah, and where you go. Yeah, yeah, that's. [01:40:50] Speaker D: That's for sure. [01:40:51] Speaker E: And you were there in Kansas City for a good long while. I mean, you were there from all 74 and all 75, weren't you? [01:40:57] Speaker F: Right. But, you know, I. I enjoyed it. I. I had never been in that kind of weather in my life. [01:41:06] Speaker B: I know we didn't make much money back then, though, that's for sure. [01:41:09] Speaker F: No, you know, if they was you there, Mike, when Robley came in there. [01:41:17] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah. He said, yeah, yeah. He started changing things. Yeah. That's what they needed. There was a book or somebody with ideas. [01:41:28] Speaker F: They needed a new. New breath in there and that. But, you know, we didn't complain, didn't write, didn't go on. I mean. [01:41:36] Speaker B: No. Someplace to go, someplace to work. Yeah. And. [01:41:40] Speaker F: And I enjoyed it. I. I really did. I mean, there were some trips out there. Now, don't think there wasn't, but. [01:41:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I used to call the goggles Gaggles Safaris. Exactly. [01:41:53] Speaker E: Well, I know both of you. I know both of you have, like, nothing but respect for Bob Geigel, but he. Booking just wasn't his forte, was it? [01:42:01] Speaker F: No, no, no, no. [01:42:03] Speaker D: He. [01:42:03] Speaker F: He was a nice man. I thought the world of him. I like Pat, you know, Harley. [01:42:12] Speaker B: Harley went there enough, though. He was gone. [01:42:15] Speaker F: Yeah, he wasn't there. But, you know, they. I think they were content what they were doing, and that's why it didn't do what it should, you know? [01:42:26] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. It could have been a lot better, but just a long time ago, I'd say it probably was. Yeah. And they had. The ideas were normal. They just kept using the same ideas over and over all the time, and people get tired. They could almost tell you what was going to happen that night. [01:42:46] Speaker E: But, yeah, it seemed like Bob would be able to. Bob as a booker, Bob could get something going, but he didn't really know what to do with it once. [01:42:55] Speaker B: Yeah, that's true. [01:42:59] Speaker F: Bob have outside interests, you know? [01:43:02] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:03] Speaker F: You know, I think that's two bars. [01:43:07] Speaker B: Two bars to go on everything else. Yeah. Yeah. These girls try to raise too, though. [01:43:15] Speaker F: Yeah. [01:43:15] Speaker E: Go ahead, Bobby. [01:43:17] Speaker D: I was gonna say this is just my opinion, and I don't. You know, but when a. When a person owns the territory and they're the boss and they try to run it themselves. I think they're blind in some respects to what's going on because, yeah, they kind of get the it's my way of the highway attitude. I mean, even Gunkle, as strong as Gunka was, he was smart enough to have a booker. [01:43:42] Speaker F: Exactly. Another prime example of just what you said, Bobby, is the Dallas Cowboys and Jerry Jones. [01:43:50] Speaker D: Exactly. [01:43:52] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:43:53] Speaker F: You know. You know, things can pass you by. Yep. [01:43:58] Speaker E: There's no doubt about that. I think another thing can happen too. And we've all had this happen to us too, where you'll sit and work on something and work on something and work on something and cannot figure out how to fix it or how to figure it out or whatever. And somebody new can walk in and just tell you right away, oh, you just need to do this. [01:44:18] Speaker F: And I try this. [01:44:20] Speaker E: Yeah, I think that happens sometimes too, you know, where somebody new from the outside just has a better perspective on changing things up from time to time. [01:44:29] Speaker B: Well, that's what, that's what Robley did. He changed it completely. Dead there and down Louisiana and everything else. He changed everything. He had good ideas. Good ideas. [01:44:43] Speaker F: Somewhere here, I think was we was in Atlanta one night, not the Omni, but the auditorium before we went to the Omni, and Tom was doing the booking. I said, and it was so loud. I said, man, this is unbelievable. I said, look at this house. He said, but I got a problem. I said, what? He said, I got to get them all back next week. Yeah, you know, that's. That's just the way it is. [01:45:07] Speaker E: Well, that's that. That was always. You know, I've been doing a show with Briscoe and Bradshaw this week and for the next couple of weeks. And we're talking about the Welches and we were talking about the difference in wrestling in the south and the wrestling in the north and the wrestling in the south was every single week. I mean, you had to. And while we had auditorium somewhere between 3,000 and 6,000 people, up until we moved to buildings like the Omni, those buildings were full of 4,000, 5,000 people every single week. And you had to be good at your art to be able to do that. [01:45:47] Speaker A: To your point, Jerry, I mean, you do. [01:45:51] Speaker B: And, and I know my brother in. [01:45:54] Speaker F: Law, when Leo was doing the booking here in Atlanta, Leo Garibaldi and my brother in law could come up from Florida or something. He says, leo, how do you draw all these houses? He said, I have good talent. George always had good talent. Florida always had, was full of good Talent, you know, you got to have talent to do it with, there's no. [01:46:17] Speaker B: Doubt about it, but you got to. [01:46:19] Speaker F: Have a creative mind who to put with who, who draws what with who. [01:46:23] Speaker E: And, you know, and, and what those guys capabilities are, you know, give them things that they can do for sure. [01:46:33] Speaker F: Right. [01:46:35] Speaker E: Go ahead, Mike. What are you gonna say? [01:46:37] Speaker B: Oh, I haven't got much. You guys have said it all right there. It's all true. You gotta, you gotta find somebody with new ideas and know what he's got and what he can make it work. And every week change, do something different. Try to get those people back in that you had the week before. Not lose that many. That's the problem. You. Sometimes the ideas don't want to change and that's why everything falls off, because they don't want to change. They want to keep doing the same thing over and over again. [01:47:09] Speaker E: Thanksgiving of 75 in Atlanta is the year they go to the Omni for Thanksgiving, Bobby. And it's also kind of unusual. It's before the tag team tournament. I think that starts, as we said, in 76. But one of the things that's unusual about this card on Thanksgiving in 75 is that there's a bunch of people from Vince McMahon Senior in the territory on this card. Dean Ho and Luke Graham went to a time limit draw. Tony Charles beat Ron Garvin. Jerry Briscoe and Bob Backlin beat Dick Slater and Bob Orton Jr. I bet that was a good match. Moondog Maine beat Bobby Bold Eagle and Chief J. Strongbow. I had a question about this. Chief J. Strongbow beat Brute Bernard. Now, did people in Atlanta. Because Joe Scarpa was a huge baby face in Atlanta, did they know that's him or. [01:48:09] Speaker B: They did. [01:48:11] Speaker D: They may not have. Some of them did, the old timers, they had to. But say, now you're saying that from Vince Senior, Backlin was working this territory. He was here. [01:48:21] Speaker E: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [01:48:22] Speaker C: I wasn't counting him. [01:48:23] Speaker D: Yeah, okay. Yeah, Strongbowl. Course, you know, Joe lived in Griffin. He had a farm and Griffin, Georgia, that's where he. That was where his home was. Yeah, they were. I mean, Dino and Tony Guerrero had came. They were. [01:48:37] Speaker B: I think they were. [01:48:38] Speaker D: They had just came in or they. [01:48:40] Speaker B: Hadn'T been here long. [01:48:42] Speaker D: And of course, Luke Graham, you know, he's from Gray, Georgia, not far from where I live, so. But he was. [01:48:49] Speaker B: Yeah, they. [01:48:52] Speaker D: You look at that card, you know, was the opening match, Dean Ho and Luke Graham. [01:48:59] Speaker E: Yeah. And then the other two. [01:49:00] Speaker D: There's two guys that headline Madison Square Garden you bet. [01:49:03] Speaker E: And then there's three more matches. Robo Brazil and Ernie Ladd beat Harley Race and Ox Baker. [01:49:10] Speaker D: I refereed that match. [01:49:12] Speaker E: The spoiler beat Mr. Wrestling 2 for the Georgia title. [01:49:16] Speaker B: Yep. [01:49:17] Speaker E: And Abdullah beat the Sheik in a cage match. [01:49:21] Speaker D: I refereed that one. That might have. Well, I don't know that. Was that the one when. That might have been one with no referee. I might have been on the ground that night. [01:49:26] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:49:27] Speaker D: Anyway, I was responsible for making sure the cage got there and got put up. That was part of my deal. But, you know, I want to throw something in. It was said there just to. Just to kind of, you know, I don't. A referee can make a match or even break a match. We've talked about this before, but. Yeah, one of the things that you mentioned about every week, 4, 5,000, 6,000 people, you know, here in the Georgia territory, and I'm sure it was this way everywhere. We had what we call permanent reservations where sort of like season tickets, but you just paid for them by the week. You had the same people sitting on the first two or three rows every week in, you know, every town, you know, different folks, but wherever. And Leo was talking about his talent. And we got two guys on the phone with me tonight that. That were masters of their talent. [01:50:18] Speaker F: Thank you. [01:50:20] Speaker D: Those people. Those people would be the ones that would sit there and go, well, I know it's not real, but I was there tonight. Jerry Oates and Mike Jordan beat the crap out of each other. And if they've ever hit one another, I'm sure it was a mistake. It wasn't on purpose. I use Ole and Thunderbolt as an example. People say, oh, I was there not to kill one. You know, they ain't never hit. I mean, never. But guys like Jerry and Mike and that kind of talent, they were that good. And that's what makes me so proud of our business back when we were in. It is people thought they knew what we were doing, but they had no idea. [01:51:03] Speaker F: They didn't have a. [01:51:05] Speaker D: They did not have a clue. And they kept coming back week after week after week. [01:51:11] Speaker B: That was the whole thing to keep them coming back. They had the. That was the secret of it. Keep them coming back. [01:51:17] Speaker E: And as a fan back then, I didn't want to know. [01:51:21] Speaker B: No, No, I didn't. [01:51:23] Speaker E: I didn't want to know. And I. We didn't ride in the car back home that night rebooking the show. Yeah, we. We just rolled back, talking about what we saw and how exciting it was. And you know, I got together for lunch with two of my best friends. We went to wrestling all the time when we were in high school together and we went to lunch the other day and we haven't seen each other in five or six years and we sat there and, and re remembered all these wrestling cards we went to and not one time did anybody say, well I would have booked that different. You know, that just wasn't something that was part of our fan experience. [01:52:07] Speaker F: Yeah, yeah. But you know another thing that Bobby mentioned about referees, if, if you have a great match going, whether it's a single or a tag, if you don't have a great referee in there with you, that he, he knows what, you know, a lot of guys tried to bury a referee like in a tag match, like false tags. We never did that baby face. We never did that. To me that, that's cheap. You know, I, if I was a roughly. I said don't pull that anymore. But, but Bobby not because Bobby's on here. He was one of the best that I was ever around and I, and I sincerely mean that. [01:52:48] Speaker D: Thank you. [01:52:50] Speaker E: Who'd you have in Kansas City? Who'd you guys work with? [01:52:53] Speaker B: Referee Wise, Frank Diamond, Bobby Whitlock, and it was young Bobby Whitlock. And I'm trying to remember the one that came in with, with Geigel a lot. He, he retired out of the business. He, I forget. But whatever the guy's name was, he was bald headed. No, no, not Frank. Not Frank the Ronnie Edison did a few of them but he didn't like doing that. Sonny Myers was doing it for the last and he didn't like doing a lot of them. Didn't like doing it though. [01:53:36] Speaker E: Sonny Myers. Sonny Myers refereed the Terry Funk title change in Miami. [01:53:42] Speaker B: Oh yeah. I mean he just spent a lot of time down in, in Florida. He likes it there. [01:53:47] Speaker E: Were you going to say, Bobby, I. [01:53:49] Speaker D: Said that match with that match you're talking about with Terry Funk, when the title changed. If you watch that, when he come out of the small package, he swung his arm, he put Sonny Myers nose all over his face. He broke his nose. [01:54:01] Speaker E: He sure did. He sure did. [01:54:03] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:05] Speaker E: We're coming up on, we're coming up on the 50th anniversary of that match. [01:54:11] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:54:11] Speaker E: Who'd you, who'd you work with in Florida, Mike? [01:54:16] Speaker B: Oh, the last part of it was Roger Kirby and, and it was. Oh, he ended up being a manager down there too. And I can't, I remember his name. Shame on me. [01:54:34] Speaker E: Who'd you work with as referees? [01:54:41] Speaker B: Yes. Dude Schwartz, he was, he was good. I enjoyed working with him. Good. Yeah. And. Yeah, yeah. [01:54:51] Speaker E: Of course, we'd be remiss if we didn't talk about a really good friend of all of yours, Charlie Smith. As a referee. Right. [01:55:04] Speaker D: He taught me how to referee. You guys were. [01:55:10] Speaker B: I don't remember him. I was in the wrong place, wrong time. [01:55:15] Speaker D: Mike was talking about, but Wayne couldn't see. Charlie Smith used to kid Renesto. He worked a match with Redness though, and Bob Armstrong and he told Ernesto, he said, I got the honor of refereeing the first braille match. [01:55:36] Speaker F: People didn't get credit. You know, it could be all of our rings out in Kansas City was 16 foot rings, not 18. [01:55:45] Speaker B: Too small. Too small. [01:55:48] Speaker F: Faster. But you know, a guy like Bobby, I mean, if you had a barn burner match, he was never in your way, ever. I don't care who was in there, whether it was my match, Mike's or anybody out of the funks or the Briscoes or Harley race. [01:56:05] Speaker B: He. [01:56:05] Speaker F: They were. He was never in the wrong spot. He just knew where to be. You know, we got caught up in a crisscross or whatever, you know. [01:56:17] Speaker B: I. [01:56:17] Speaker F: Mean, you know, it's not just the two in there. It takes the third one to make it really great. [01:56:23] Speaker B: I think you got to have a referee. Yeah, I had. You got one I liked Down Louisiana. Was. Was Jerry Usher. Something about him, he just. He'd. I'd do stuff and he looked at me. So what do you think about that? I don't know. Once you try this. Okay, I'll try that. What the heck. But I always like. Because he. He was thinking ahead all the time. He wanted to be a wrestler, but he was. He was better referee. [01:56:54] Speaker A: Yeah. [01:56:54] Speaker E: I don't know when we'll. Not to change the subject, but I don't know when we'll talk about him again. But Bobby, do you remember Moondog Maine on this card? And you have memories of Moondog Maine? [01:57:06] Speaker D: Yes, I do. He was a piece of work. [01:57:12] Speaker F: He wasn't. [01:57:13] Speaker B: He. [01:57:13] Speaker D: He was. [01:57:14] Speaker B: He was. [01:57:14] Speaker D: He was pretty good. I mean he was good hands, far as, you know, getting heat and stuff. [01:57:18] Speaker B: But he was crazy. [01:57:19] Speaker D: I mean, he didn't have lick since we left. We left this. This is. This is not Thanksgiving but Christmas. We. We shut down for a week at Christmas. We would run Saturday, we'd do Columbus TV and then work either Griffin or Carrollton on Saturday night. And then we'd shut down till Christmas Day and then we'd start Back. So we left Columbus TV that. That Saturday, and everything was great. And when we got to Carrollton that night, he was so drunk he couldn't hardly stand up. And he's working with Slater in the main event, and he. He body slammed Slater, and he climbed up to the top rope, and he went backwards. [01:57:57] Speaker B: He. [01:57:58] Speaker D: I mean, his knees didn't bend. He looked like a tree falling. He went backwards all the way to the floor. And I looked down at Dickie laying on the mat, and he looked at me and said, he's dead. And I said, well, let me go look. And I walked over there, and he was laying on the floor laughing. And he just hollered up at me. He said, would you mind counting me out? [01:58:15] Speaker B: I said, not at all. But he was good. [01:58:23] Speaker D: Yeah, he. Yeah, he would do anything. He'd do anything. He's a wild man. [01:58:29] Speaker E: Did he work. Did he work Georgia very much? Because I know he worked a lot on the West Coast. [01:58:33] Speaker D: He was here. [01:58:34] Speaker B: I don't know. [01:58:35] Speaker D: He's here maybe six months. Six, eight months. I don't. He had a pretty good little run here. He was. Yeah, he was funny. [01:58:42] Speaker F: But. [01:58:43] Speaker D: You know the combination locks on the school lockers? [01:58:47] Speaker E: Yeah. [01:58:48] Speaker B: Yeah. [01:58:48] Speaker D: All right. Well, on the back of those locks, there's a. There's a place for a little pass key. So I guess so if the principal had to get in a locker or whatever. I was in a ring one night, and I come back to the dressing room. When I came back, my bag was shut. And there was about 15 of them locks on my bag, and I didn't know what was. So the coach. I went and told the coach, I said, I don't know what this is, but I need to get these off. So Moondog tells the. Tells the coach. He said, man, he's. He's kleptomaniacs, and he's bad about stealing. [01:59:18] Speaker B: He said, I don't know what he's doing. [01:59:21] Speaker D: They opened that bag up. When I opened that bag up, there was about 25 brand new baseballs and softballs in there. And I found out later on Lonnie had a. Had a pass key, and he had loaded me up. [01:59:39] Speaker E: What's that? [01:59:40] Speaker F: Jerry Dromo would do stuff like that. [01:59:43] Speaker D: Oh. [01:59:47] Speaker B: But you. [01:59:47] Speaker F: You know, back. I'm talking about our middle of our careers, not toward our. But none of the guys thought they were bigger than the business. [01:59:59] Speaker B: No, that's true. [02:00:01] Speaker F: Some guys got to thinking they were bigger later on. Like Brody, he thought he was bigger than the business. [02:00:06] Speaker B: Although he's dead. [02:00:07] Speaker F: I'M just saying he was one of them and there was a lot of them. But you're not bigger than the game. You're not. I don't care who you know, I don't care how much money you're drawing. Somebody else can come in and draw just as much as you did. [02:00:22] Speaker E: But weren't you, I mean, in the days before guaranteed money, I mean, weren't you guys, you were counting on each other, right, to help draw the house. Everybody was working together. [02:00:34] Speaker F: We had to. [02:00:36] Speaker B: Yeah, that's the only way you made a living. Yeah, everybody had to work together. If you worked separately, just bye bye thinking about yourself. Only you were going to get anywhere because you could say, the one guys will look at you and say, well, I ain't doing it. I'm not going to help him. You guys, you can't do that. [02:00:59] Speaker E: We were talking about bookers just a little bit ago. Were there some bookers that were better at getting the guys to all jail together like that as a team than others? [02:01:13] Speaker F: That's a good question. [02:01:17] Speaker B: I, I'd say there's some, but I, you know. [02:01:23] Speaker D: I worked a lot of years with Ole Anderson and I would not say Olie was, was rah rah. I mean, he was, he was sort of, he was sort of, you know, my way of the highway. And then he was very gruff and, you know, he just. I never had a problem with him. I always knew where I stood with him and that was fine. But I did too. You know, it was, I mean, by then I was working in the office and I wasn't referent as much and it was just, you know, we didn't always see eye to eye, but, you know, it was just the way it was. [02:01:55] Speaker F: But, but with him, and that's the way it should be, it was strictly business. Yes, business. [02:02:03] Speaker E: Well, Mike, you and Jerry both worked for Watts. Did you think Watts was good at that? [02:02:10] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. [02:02:11] Speaker E: Getting all the guys on the same page, working together to make the territory. [02:02:15] Speaker B: Go well, if you didn't. Yeah, that's right. He'd run you off. He didn't. [02:02:22] Speaker F: But I've said on a lot of podcasts, and I think I said it on the first one, I was over on with you, Tony. Those two guys that guys hated working for, but I love working for them, was Watson. [02:02:33] Speaker B: Only because if you did your job. [02:02:36] Speaker F: You had no problem with them getting on to you. If you did your job like, well, watch now. He was a fanatic about being late, not showing up. If you didn't show up, he'd run my first night in the territory. I went to Pine, Pine Bluff, Arkansas. He had flown down from Tulsa and his plane from TV that day. And I drove, I went by myself, tried to find a place. I'm sitting in the dressing room. He's there. Kempatera walked in. There's a guy that went to the Olympics. Soon as he walked in, he said, there's no need of getting you putting your bag down. You're done, you're done. He said, what do you mean I'm done? He said, you didn't make Thanksgiving night in New Orleans. He said, you're done. I said, good God. He just fired an Olympic champion watches. [02:03:21] Speaker B: If I got here. [02:03:22] Speaker F: Yeah, that's just, I mean, it was business, right? [02:03:27] Speaker D: Yeah, he had a. He had about 20 points in the Atlanta office and him and Barnett a lot of times would mix like oil and water. [02:03:36] Speaker B: I can imagine. [02:03:37] Speaker D: And you know, it was all. And you know, every time, every time Oli would decide to take a sabbatical and before we could get a new booker in, he would, you know, Jim would bring Bill in here to book for a couple of weeks. He's trying to run his territory and he's in here trying to book and he listen, he'd write, you wouldn't believe the dirty notes and the name calling and he'd take stuff all over Barnett's office and then I'd have to wait till he leave and go there and take it all down. And he told me, he told me one night, door tormentor, he said, you took all them notes down. Didn't you know? Yeah. He said, why'd you do that? I said, look, you going back to Louisiana tomorrow, I got to be here all week next week I work here, you know. I said, I, you know, we can't do that. If you won't tell him that, tell him to his face, you know. But yeah, he was a, he was a stickler for our just another Watch story. And I wasn't there. But I've been told about this. When wcw, when Turner bought it and they were going to do. They brought Watts in to do the booking and the very first TV they did, they did it at Center Stage Theater here in Atlanta. And Watts got there about 2 o' clock in the afternoon and they had a buffet set up for the wrestlers. They all in there going down the buffet eating. And he went crazy. He said, what are y' all doing? He said, man, they here to work. We're not here to entertain them. He just, he was, he was all Business. [02:05:01] Speaker F: I know out in Louisiana. If he caught you out there at the concession stand buying hot dogs and go back to dressing room, eat them, he'd find you. [02:05:10] Speaker B: He'd find you for all kinds of things. Yeah, it was him. [02:05:14] Speaker F: And I never got. [02:05:16] Speaker B: Paul Orndorf got into it all the time too. [02:05:19] Speaker F: Oh, yeah, yeah. [02:05:21] Speaker B: Yeah. That's a. Paul. That's the reason why he left Hunter. Because he was Watts didn't like what he was doing and told him and he didn't like that. He didn't like being told. But he's who's all business all the way, all the time. You're right there. He should chew me out on my interviews, which I don't blame him. I deserve to be chewed on him. [02:05:45] Speaker E: Bobby, I think you. I think you said you refereed the Bobo Brazil and Ernie Ladd and Harley race and Knox Baker match, right? [02:05:53] Speaker B: Yep. [02:05:54] Speaker E: Yeah. What do you remember about that match on Thanksgiving? [02:05:58] Speaker D: Anytime he was in a ring with Ox, you remembered to stay out of his way because you could be his partner and he'd beat you to death. He. Bobo used to do this deal. I think one of the things that just really sticks out in my head, he used to do this deal where he would have a guy in a headlock and the other guy would come in from the outside and he would jump up and head scissor him and then take them both over. [02:06:23] Speaker F: He could do a lot of stuff with Big man, couldn't he? [02:06:25] Speaker D: Yeah, he could. And I remember he did that one. I remember Harley, he had. He had Ox in the. In the. In the headlock. And Harley came in and he. He jumped up and head scissors and took them both over. And I just. First time I'd ever seen that done. And I mean, I was amazed. But Bobo was such a nice guy. [02:06:44] Speaker F: Yeah. [02:06:45] Speaker D: Anytime he was here, you know, he'd want me to. Me and. Me and John Walker would ride with him. And, you know, he would. He'd always say, I'm making more than you made this week, so you don't owe me no trans. Don't worry about it. And he had that big red El Dorado Cadillac. And so it wasn't he do what. [02:07:04] Speaker B: Bobo was funny. [02:07:06] Speaker D: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Nice guy. Funny. [02:07:08] Speaker B: He had you in stitches. The only time I saw him was. Was over in St. Louis. That's the only time I ever had a chance to meet the guy. He was nice. So. [02:07:20] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:07:22] Speaker B: Big impressive. [02:07:23] Speaker E: I'm just curious, Bobby, Was. Would that have been. He called that spot, or was that just something that they Just. [02:07:30] Speaker D: No, he called it. He, he, they were. Evidently they worked it out because it was two. It was too smooth to just be spurred a moment. Of course, Harley could do things most human beings couldn't do at times. [02:07:39] Speaker E: So I was going to say that was probably a great spot for Harley. [02:07:43] Speaker D: Oh, it was, it was, it was, you know, it was, you know, and it was just a. I remember it being a good match, but I got a picture around here somewhere. I think I'm either raising his and Ernie's hand or something. But yeah, it's. I remember doing that match. [02:08:01] Speaker E: There's two big human beings right there. [02:08:03] Speaker D: Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And she, the Sheik and Abdullah. Man, they wrestled here against each other. I don't know how many times they did, man. And I generally always wound up in there with them and that was always a wild time. [02:08:18] Speaker B: But. [02:08:20] Speaker E: And the spoiler, and the spoiler in Mr. Wrestling too. Did you ref that match? [02:08:25] Speaker D: They had good match. Ronnie west did that one. I'm sure. If I did the other two, I mean, I know, I think Ronnie probably did that one. [02:08:33] Speaker E: Which is kind of an interesting stipulation. I mean, it was a Georgia title versus the Mask match, which both guys are masked. But if two loses the. The match, then Spoiler gets a title, but if Spoiler loses a match, he's got to unmask. That was probably a hot little deal. [02:08:51] Speaker D: Yeah, it was. And you know it. To me, though, I mean, here again, this is just my opinion, when you do those mask versus titles, you're kind of telling the people the title's going to change hands or somebody's going to keep it. I mean, they wouldn't know when you. [02:09:11] Speaker E: Got to the point where they pretty knew John wasn't going to take his mask off. [02:09:14] Speaker F: Right? [02:09:14] Speaker D: Yeah, yeah, no, no, he wasn't going to. They were in the spoiler, you know, he wasn't going to take his off. He was in the middle of a hot run and had Gary Hart here as his manager and it was, you know. [02:09:29] Speaker F: Can I, can I give you my opinion of him? Yeah, he was a jerk. No, I agree to work with. He was a jerk. [02:09:42] Speaker B: Yeah, that's my opinion. [02:09:45] Speaker D: Yeah, he would, he would. Don was a guy that would take advantage of people if he could get away with it. I remember you telling the Han Schmidt story about how he took advantage of you when you first started and it would never happen again if he had ever come across him again. Well, Jardine would. I mean, I seen him pummel guys on tv. They'd bring these Guys in to put him over on tv, and he would pummel them, you know, And I saw. [02:10:12] Speaker F: Brody do that in St. Louis. TV. [02:10:14] Speaker B: Yeah, he tried. [02:10:16] Speaker D: He tried that with Bob Armstrong, and it was a little different outcome. We had. [02:10:21] Speaker F: We had a. We were flown back out. I had my gym, but I was. I was still wrestling a lot, still going to Japan all. But I would still go back to Louisiana. And they flew with me and my brother out to Attack Tournament in Dallas. And so they having this big show. It was in Kansas City, Missouri, not Kansas City, Kansas. Dusty. Dusty and Murdoch were there, Dick the Bruiser was there, Jody Hamilton. All kind of tag teams. There was a tag team tournament, and it came down to the final four. It was me and my brother against Ernie Ladd and Brody. And I know, I knew Brody when he was not even in the business, when he was a mark in San Antonio. He come to the matches. So we getting instructions. He looked at my brother, he said, I just want to let you know. He said, I don't work with midgets. And when it comes down to wrestling, he couldn't carry my brother's wrestling bag. When it actually come down to working, that's my opinion, because all he did. [02:11:34] Speaker B: Was stomp, punch and kick. [02:11:36] Speaker F: But. So my brother said, we go back to the corner. He. He said. He said, now what's this going to be like? I said, I'm gonna tell you right now, he's not gonna do nothing. I'm telling you right now, he's not gonna do. [02:11:48] Speaker B: I wasn't scared of him. [02:11:49] Speaker F: I mean, he's big and powerful, but I wasn't scared of him. I said, I'm tell you right now, he ain't gonna do nothing to you, so don't worry about. I said, but I'm gonna start it. But I didn't know if him or Ernie was gonna start, you know. And Ernie Ladd was like, working with whoever. Yeah, you work with him, Mike? [02:12:06] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, yeah. He. Was he easy or what? Oh, God, yes. You grab. [02:12:15] Speaker F: But, but, but, but he didn't do anything. And I'm thinking, you know, that's. That's a hell of a thing to say. [02:12:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:12:22] Speaker F: You know, and I thought my brother was very talented and he could do anything. [02:12:28] Speaker D: It went to. [02:12:29] Speaker B: It went to brewery's head that he was. [02:12:31] Speaker F: Exactly. [02:12:32] Speaker D: I don't. [02:12:33] Speaker B: Yeah, I saw it went to his head. That's why he wouldn't show up sometimes over St. Louis. He wouldn't show up. He'd be booked there. And same way with. With Ganya. The three brothers. The brothers. [02:12:48] Speaker F: The. [02:12:49] Speaker B: The elf from Texas there. My mind's Erics. Yeah. Von Eric's. Sometimes they wouldn't show. They disappear, you know, make the spot shows sometimes. We had a couple of them over there, and they would never make them. Never make them. Can never find him. Yeah. Yeah. [02:13:13] Speaker E: Well, let's. Let's wrap up with Jerry. What. What would be your favorite Thanksgiving wrestling memory? Do you have one? [02:13:25] Speaker F: It would have been out in Kansas City. [02:13:30] Speaker E: You were on pretty good role out there. They put the singles title on you to put the tag team title on you. Two different times, once with Mike and once with your brother. I mean, that was a pretty good territory for you. [02:13:42] Speaker F: Yeah, Mike. Mike, My. When I went out there, I was out there like three months before my brother got there. And they. And Geigo. I guess Geigo didn't know my brother was coming, which didn't matter, but they teamed Mike and I up and we. We had those belts out there, and my brother was mad when he got there, and so I know Quincy, Illinois, guy go, come to me, and he said, you need to talk to your brother. He said, that attitude around here ain't gonna get it. But my brother wasn't the friendliest guy anyhow, you know, I mean, he really was. [02:14:14] Speaker E: You and Micah had a big feud with the interns in the rain. [02:14:18] Speaker B: And then. Then. [02:14:21] Speaker F: Mike, I think you left while we were out there. [02:14:23] Speaker B: Didn't you know? [02:14:28] Speaker D: You. [02:14:28] Speaker B: You left first. You guys left first. [02:14:31] Speaker F: Oh, okay, okay. [02:14:32] Speaker B: And then I stayed for. Then I left again. [02:14:36] Speaker A: Yeah. [02:14:36] Speaker D: Okay. [02:14:36] Speaker B: I just disappeared from there again. [02:14:39] Speaker E: Mike, what's your favorite Thanksgiving wrestling memory? [02:14:44] Speaker B: When I had a chance to have dinner with my family, they wouldn't call me to come in. Yeah. Because I'd have. I'd have. Be all set and just already ate, and all of a sudden they're calling. Yeah, Yeah. I think Thanksgiving, if you're going to be in the business, you need to be doing stuff, but if you're not, then it's time. Just enjoy your family. Enjoy it, because you only get one time at it. [02:15:11] Speaker E: You got that long. You got to take that long car ride from Miami all the way back to St. Joseph. [02:15:17] Speaker B: That was a long trip. Yes, it was. Middies all the way through, too. [02:15:22] Speaker D: Yeah. [02:15:23] Speaker E: Bobby, what's your favorite Thanksgiving wrestling memory? You got one. [02:15:29] Speaker D: They all kind of run together. I mean, I really don't have a specific wrestling memory of. I mean, I. The first night. The first night we drew, I was working in the office as well as reprieve a little bit and the first night we drew 100,000. I mean, I can remember how ecstatic Barnett was and when Barnes was a lot, everybody was happy. [02:15:50] Speaker B: That was a lot of money. [02:15:51] Speaker D: A lot of money back then. A lot of money back then. And we just. Yep. But, you know, we. I think Mike kind of hid it about the family stuff, you know, I mean, how many. How many Thanksgivings did I miss and Christmases did I miss? Because we. We kept. I mean, the. The sports arena ticket office here in Atlanta. It was open on Christmas Day, it was open on Thanksgiving Day. I mean, we were. [02:16:20] Speaker B: We were working. [02:16:22] Speaker D: And, you know, I missed a lot of those things. [02:16:24] Speaker B: And I. [02:16:28] Speaker D: Say I regret it. I did it because I wanted to do it and I loved it. [02:16:31] Speaker B: And I. [02:16:32] Speaker D: If I had to, if I was 16 and had the same opportunity, I'd probably pack my bag and do it again. But you do. [02:16:39] Speaker F: But. But to answer that. But we forgot what we were in. We were in the entertainment business. [02:16:48] Speaker D: That's exactly right. [02:16:51] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:16:52] Speaker F: People talk about, you know, oh, yeah, we're wrestling, you know, the wwe, World Wrestling Entertainment. I said it was always entertainment. We entertain people through wrestling. Like football entertains people through football, golf, tennis, baseball, football. You know, it's all entertainment. You take people's mind away from what they going through in their own life to have a few hours of enjoyment. [02:17:19] Speaker B: Somebody to like or somebody to hate. [02:17:21] Speaker F: That's what they're looking for. [02:17:24] Speaker B: Terry. [02:17:24] Speaker D: Terry Funk said it one time, and I thought it was a. The most eloquent way I've ever heard it put. We were there to suspend reality for a couple hours a week. [02:17:35] Speaker F: That's all entertainment is. You go to a movie, you watch tv, you go to a college football game. That's all you're thinking about. Because I love college football. I watch it all day on Saturday. I'm intrigued. I just, you know, I like to be entertained. [02:17:52] Speaker B: Yep. Yeah. [02:17:53] Speaker F: And I think our era did it better than anybody else. [02:17:58] Speaker D: I agree. I agree. [02:17:59] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:18:00] Speaker E: Well, guys, listen, I'm going to let you all get on back to your families tonight, and I really want you to know how much I appreciate you and how thankful I am for the relationships that we all share and the chance we get together every now and then and share these great memories from days gone by. So I really appreciate you guys doing this. [02:18:19] Speaker F: We thank you for having us. [02:18:21] Speaker D: Thanks. [02:18:21] Speaker B: Yeah. [02:18:22] Speaker D: Enjoyed it, man, as always. [02:18:24] Speaker B: Appreciate very much. Yeah, appreciate it. Have a good one. [02:18:28] Speaker E: You all have a great Thanksgiving. Okay. [02:18:30] Speaker B: All right. [02:18:31] Speaker D: Thanksgiving, guys. Good night. [02:18:33] Speaker F: Good night. [02:18:34] Speaker B: Bye. Nice. [02:18:36] Speaker C: You know, one of the great things about being able to do this podcast and do this show about pro wrestling history is the friends and the relationships that I've been able to develop. And I've been able to spend some time this week with some very, very special friends of mine. George Shire, Bobby Simmons, Jerry Oates, Mike George. I did another segment on the Briscoe and Bradshaw show this week so I get to spend time with Jerry Briscoe and John Bradshaw Layfield. And you know, that has made my Thanksgiving being able to spend time with everybody that helps out here at the pro wrestling Time Tunnel. Great show last week with Steve Giannarelli. I got a great show coming up with Greg Klein. Got a great show coming up with Tim Deals. Dan Black is going to be here to talk Amarillo wrestling. Just so many wonderful people that help make this show what it is. And I just get to sit here in the host chair and just enjoy the relationships, enjoy the conversation, enjoy the connection with all of these wonderful people. We're going to have another great Florida show with Howard Baum and then we got a special Christmas show coming up for you. Much like today's Thanksgiving show, we got a great two weeks to end the year on that are going to be great that I'm hoping that we can get some finalization on and we can get some things put together. But just a great, great time with some great, great people. And I'm very grateful in this season of being thankful for all of the wonderful people that are a part of this. I have a channel on substack and I publish a daily wrestling newsletter called the Daily Chronicle History Newsletter. Comes out every single day. It's published on our site. You have to be a subscriber in order to see it. You can be a free subscriber or you can be a Premium subscriber at $5 a month or $50 for a year if you want to save $10 on the subscription. And besides the Daily Chronicle, which is goes out to all our free subscribers, I'm also publishing another publication called 31 Great Territory Television Announcers. And we've done three of those profiles so far. So we've got some more to go on that that is featuring and talking about the great television announcers of the Territory era and also more premium content that only the premium subscribers get. And I'd like to thank you for doing that. All of our subscribers, all of our regular subscribers and all of our premium subscribers and just let you know that when you are a premium subscriber, I don't take it lightly that you're investing your money in that. And rather than buying the content I provide, I'd rather think of it as you are supporting me as a historian and you like the work I'm doing and you support the work I'm doing and you want to help in some way and you're getting something back for that, for that help that you're providing with the premium content that I publish on Substack. We also have a YouTube channel, the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel YouTube channel. All our previous podcasts are there in video form. You can also download our show on audio anywhere that you get podcasts. So if you get your podcast from Apple Podcast, if you get it from Stitcher, if you get it from Pocket Cast, no matter Spotify, no matter where you get it, you should be able to find it. Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Tony Richards, one of those two searches, ought to be able to find our show for you. And as I said, we've got some great shows coming up next week. Tim Deals is going to be here. Tim is our Tennessee wrestling historian. We're going to talk about 1975, the last couple of months of 75 in the Tennessee territory, and we're going to have a special guest. Kevin McCann is going to be Tim Deals and I special guest on our podcast next week. He has just written a book on Rowdy Red Roberts. Now, if you're not from around here and you didn't grow up in the Tennessee territory, you might not know who Rowdy Red Roberts is. But let me tell you something, it would behoove you to tune in next week because we're going to talk to Kevin about his book and we're going to tell you all about the life and career of Rowdy Red Roberts. Well, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, everybody. Plug in some old wrestling, plug in some territory area wrestling, plug in some old Starcades or some old Thanksgiving or some just your favorite television shows or whatever that you've collected over the years, favorite matches, favorite wrestlers, Spend a little bit of time in Thanksgiving with your favorite classic wrestling. And I'll meet you back here again next week for our next edition of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. Remember what I always say, if you want the better neighbors, if you want better neighbors, if you want better neighbors, be a better neighbor. So long, everybody. This is Tony Richards saying bye bye and happy Thanksgiving from the Bluegrass State. [02:23:53] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel podcast. Tune in for another great episode next week, interviewing wrestlers, referees and media personalities that have made the sport a proud professional wrestling great. We'll release a new episode soon. Don't you dare miss it.