Episode 38: The New Year's Eve Countdown of the Top 100 to 51 Best Wrestlers of 1975

[00:00:02] Time for the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Podcast. We've got lots and lots of things to talk about and to do today, covering the territories from the 1940s to the 1990s. It's the best thing going today. [00:00:18] Interviewing wrestlers, referees, authors and other media personalities that have made the sport of professional wrestling great. The cream, yeah, the cream of the crop. And now, here's your host, Tony Richards. [00:00:34] Hello again, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Podcast. Coming to you live here on New Year's Eve in Western Kentucky from the Richards Ranch, I'm your host, Tony Richards. And man, as we bring this outstanding year to a close, 2025 has been the most amazing year for me. As I look back, a real year. Every year when I do my little meeting with myself, I have a little meeting with myself at the end of every year. It usually takes, you know, over the course of a couple days. [00:01:14] This year has. Has been a little unusual because most years I try to take off. [00:01:21] I start slowing down after Thanksgiving, and I try to take off between Christmas and New Year's for sure. [00:01:28] That's when I was traveling quite a bit and traveling home to see my family for the holidays. Well, this year I live here, close by my family on our family horse ranch that my dad established so many years ago. And so it's been a little bit different year. [00:01:47] I think I've worked more this year during the holidays than I have in almost any of the previous years. [00:01:54] But anyway, at the end of every year, I try to have a meeting with myself and I do a little journaling. [00:02:01] And one of the things, besides reviewing the year, some of the questions I ask myself, what worked well for me this past year and what needs to stay right there? We'll just leave it right there and move on to something different next year. What worked well for me this year and what do I want to carry forward into 2026, let's say, which is the year we're on? [00:02:29] And then sometimes I'll ask myself, you know what, what things do I just need to leave in 2025 and just put it to bed and not carry it forward into 2026. [00:02:42] And that can be very therapeutic for you, especially if you've been carrying around what we call baggage, right? Drop those bags in 2025 and don't carry them forward into 2026. Just leave them behind and say, thank you, so long. I don't need you anymore. I'm going to move on into the new year with something different. [00:03:04] And so this year, as I was doing all those little exercises I do with myself. I really reflected on what a great year it's been this year, how many wonderful friends that I have made. [00:03:17] I went to the St. Louis hall of Fame and Fan Fest by my friend, put together by my friend Herb Simmons. [00:03:25] Had a great time there for a couple of days. [00:03:29] Unfortunately, the day before that started, there was a tornado in St. Louis that devastated a large section of the city. And some people lost their lives, some others lost everything they owned, and that was terrible. But the event itself was fantastic and was a great thing. I'll never forget meeting Butch Reed's family. [00:03:54] Hacksaw Butch Reed was inducted in the St. Louis hall of Fame. And I'll never forget meeting his family in a hallway there in the hotel. And they were looking for the area where the conference was being held. And I got to take them, walk them down to where Herb was having all the stuff. And they. When Butch was inducted into the hall of Fame, they carried a photo, a large picture framed photo of him in the ring. And it was just very touching. And when Johnny Valentine, his son Greg Valentine, was inducted into the St. Louis hall of Fame, and he looked to the ceiling and pointed up and said, that's for you, Pop. [00:04:35] I mean, that's just a fantastic memory to be right there, just a few feet away from seeing that. And I had a great time at the George Tragos Luthes hall of Fame in Waterloo, Iowa. I would encourage you to make your plans to come join us there in 2026. [00:04:52] It's a great few days of pro wrestling and amateur wrestling, and there are a lot of people that come there. You get to meet a lot of great former stars, you get to see some great current wrestling. [00:05:07] And I just had a wonderful time there, hanging out with JBL and Jerry Briscoe and all, all the great friends that I have there. And I'm hoping that we're going to have an even better year this year at the Trago Spez hall of Fame in Waterloo in July of 2026. Make your plans now to come and join us there. [00:05:29] It's a wonderful, wonderful time right there, pretty close to just a few blocks away from where the NWA was founded in 1948. And so come on by. I also, as soon as I got back from Waterloo, Iowa, I had to really hustle because at the end of July, I was moving and I was moving back here to Western Kentucky. [00:05:51] Some of you know the story, some of you don't. My mom, My dad died three years ago. [00:05:56] My mom and dad were married for 61 years. That was the first time that my mom, who this coming February will turn 82, that's the first time she'd ever lived by herself. She lived with her parents till she was 17. She married my dad when she was 17. They lived together for 61 years. And at the age of 79, she was alone, living alone for the first time. And, you know, I. You know, one of the things about the Richards ranch here in western Kentucky is it's out, you know, someone out, you know, out past. You know, somebody asked me, you know, are you going to be living in the sticks, Tony? I said, no, it's past that. I mean, you go through the sticks to get to the Richards ranch. I mean, it's a. It's a fairly remote location, just, you know, 30 or so miles from Paducah, Kentucky, just about an hour and 20 minutes from Nashville to the south, about an hour and a half south of Evansville, Indiana, where I used to go watch wrestling every Wednesday night. [00:07:01] And so it was a transition, you know, moving here. I remodeled an old house. [00:07:07] There was a. One of my mom's best friends passed away, and they. She and her husband had bought this property in 1950, 1953, somewhere around 50 to 53, and built this house. [00:07:22] And so it needed refurbishing and remodeling. And so at the end of 2024, I started about the. I bought the property, expanding the ranch by a few acres and began the process of hiring a contractor to remodel and refurbish the house and update it and get it ready for me to move into. [00:07:43] And I moved the last week of July of this year, 2025, and it wasn't quite ready. The contractor, who. I can't say enough good things about the Hadfields, they did a wonderful job on my house. And I lived here for, oh, six, seven weeks while they finished it up. And it's always interesting living in a house where the construction work is being done at the same time. [00:08:09] But it all worked out, and by a little, around Labor Day or so, they finished up. [00:08:16] But it's been extremely rewarding. I mean, being able to take the time to drive my mother to her doctor's appointments and take her to the bank and the grocery store and some other things. She still drives. I mean, she's still a good driver and still gets around pretty well. But just being here in her final years, I mean, we know at 82, she's got a limited amount of time left. We don't know how Much, that is, hopefully it's a fairly amount, fairly good amount. [00:08:44] But I'm going to be here to spend that time with her and to help her. I want her. One of my dad's things was he got really, really sick at the end of his life. The last three years of his life were brutal and I really tried to support him and my mom doing everything possible. [00:09:01] We got medical equipment and different things. He had copd really bad. He had had lung cancer. He had had a large section of his lung removed. [00:09:12] So he labored in breathing and was a lifetime smoker. [00:09:17] He would tell you if he was here today, you know, don't smoke. And he wished he had never started, but he, but he did. [00:09:24] And you know, you can't go back. You just try to do what you can. And the last three years of his life were horrible. I wouldn't bring him back if I could. [00:09:33] He's in a much better place now and feeling a lot better. [00:09:37] But I tried to support him, but I did it from, you know, three, 400 miles away. And I, you know, I got a place down here at Kentucky Lake where I would come and spend, you know, several days at a time to try to be there, to spend time with him. But I want to be here. I did it kind of when I could, but now I'm here spending time with my mom and I want her to. My dad never wanted to go back to the hospital. He never wanted to go to a care facility. He wanted to be at home. [00:10:07] And so he did. He passed away in our, I call it the ranch house there with my mom by his side. He passed away peacefully there and, you know, so he never had to go back to the hospital. And I'm hoping that my mom can do the same thing, that she won't have to go to a care facility, just living a couple acres over in the ranch house. I'm down here in the bunk house and she can live there for the rest of her life and spend her days there and not have to go somewhere else where she doesn't want to go. So anyway, it's been a great year, had some great. [00:10:43] Did the wonderful series on stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw and the life and career of Jim Barnett. Got great reviews on that. We started up the pro Wrestling Time Tunnel podcast here with all of you guys that are listening and watching and got great support and great, great feedback on it. And it's been a wonderful year. [00:11:05] And I'm just finishing up the eight part series on the life of Roy Welch and The Welch family legacy with Jerry and John on stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw, as well as all the wonderful things that we've done here on this podcast. We started writing the Daily Chronicle, the daily history newsletter that comes out every day, and giving you bits of wrestling history every single day. I'm always trying to balance it to give you just enough. So it's not overwhelming, but it's just a nice amount of steady flow for those people who are pro wrestling history enthusiasts, which is what we call our fans here at the Time Tunnel. And so I was thinking about the end of the year, and I spent a lot of time time traveling this year back to 1975 with all our guests on our podcast. [00:11:58] And so in my mind, you know, I start thinking about. I had been a fan for about three, three years. I became a fan in 1972, and I was nine years old, and 1975, I was 12. [00:12:14] And so I was much more aware and have a much more vivid memories. In 1975, I was buying wrestling magazines left and right and watching the shows. I. [00:12:29] We used to get the, you know, goules. Welch had a number of television shows that they did. Most people are most familiar with the Memphis show, but in 1975, when it was a full, whole territory before the split, they had various television shows in different markets. [00:12:47] And I was very fortunate here in Paducah because we got the Nashville show, the show that was recorded in Nashville and that had an hour of wrestling. But then I could turn the antenna. And for those younger people who don't know what I'm talking about, we used to have an antenna outside the house on a pole. And when we moved over here to the ranch in 78, we moved over here to the ranch in 78, it got easier because we had a steel tower with a rotating device at the top of the tower that inside the house, we had a control. And you could manipulate that control and turn the antenna in any direction you wanted. It had, you know, it looked like a compass on the control, and it had north at the top and west and east and south. And you turn that to where you wanted the antenna to point, and the device would turn the antenna. Well, in 1975, we had a little skinny pole and the antenna was on top of it. We had a VHF antenna, which was a long flat antenna on top of the pole to get the VHF stations from 2 to 13. [00:13:57] And then under that, we had a little bow tie antenna that got UHF channels from channel 14 on up. [00:14:06] And so I was fortunate because we Got the Nashville show in Paducah. But then I could turn the antenna. I could go out there and rotate the antenna by hand, turn the pole and turn it north to Evansville, Indiana, and get the Memphis studio show that was running in Evansville, Indiana. And so I got two hours of wrestling a week, which was pretty phenomenal in 1975. And I got to see a lot of the programs and feuds that were going on in the territory. Because I got to the shows, I got. Every now and then, they'd show a clip from Birmingham, and I'd hear Sterling Brewer do a match, or they'd do an angle there in the. [00:14:49] On the set of Birmingham. Every now and then they'd run a tape from Chattanooga, where Harry Thornton was, and get to see something from Chattanooga, or they'd run something from Huntsville, and Grady Reeves would be on there. And, you know, so you see that. And so I got to see a lot of wrestling in 1975, which was two hours a week. [00:15:09] And it would be a couple more years before I would ever see any other wrestling besides the wrestling that was coming out of Tennessee. But I got to see all the wrestling magazines, so I got to see all these wrestlers in print that I didn't see. Now, in later years, with all these wonderful, great research tools, I've been able to acquire knowledge of all kinds of Wrestling in 1975. So I was thinking back about 75, and I was thinking, you know, one of the things that used to be awesome is Casey Kasem did a show called American top 40. [00:15:42] And on that show, he would count down the top 100 songs for the year on New Year's weekend. And so I got to thinking, I wonder if I can make a list of the top 100 wrestlers. And this is my list. So this is with Tony's bias, Tony's eyes, Tony's preferences, Tony's likes, and Tony's dislikes. So this list is entirely made up of me putting down what I think, based on the exposure I've had then and since then, about the lives and the careers of these 100 wrestlers. And so in this first segment of the show, we're going to count down from 100 down to 80, you know, so number 100 down to number 80. We're going to take a little break. I'm going to come back. We're going to do 79 to 51 on this new Year's Eve show. And then tomorrow on New Year's Day, we're going to go from 50 to 100 here at the pro wrestling timetunnel. So let's get started. [00:16:42] Number 100. [00:16:44] And so the thing you got to remember is there's 5, 600, 700 guys working in the wrestling business in 1975. It was a high point. As a matter of fact, I think 1975 is probably the most powerful year in territory era wrestling. It probably the territories were probably at their strongest and at their best in 1975. I mean, you could argue the late 60s, the mid-60s to late 60s, 65 to 70, might have been the best five years in territory wrestling. 1975 was a great year. But from 75 on, the foundations of territory wrestling were starting to have cracks. It was starting to crumble. Sam Mushnick retired as president of the National Wrestling alliance and his influence, and he was the glue that held a lot of these territory booking offices together. [00:17:42] Right. And so just because a wrestler isn't on my top 100 list for the year doesn't mean they weren't influential and they didn't have a great year and they weren't great wrestlers. You know, probably there were 200 or 250 really great wrestlers in 1975. So there are people who fall outside the top 100. [00:18:02] And I'll give you a great list that making that number 100, a demarcation line and a boundary. [00:18:10] I went back and forth quite a bit just trying to figure out who should be right in there. And I ended up with a tie at number 100. [00:18:17] And it's the only tie in the whole list. But it was because there were two guys who really were linchpins from the past to the future in 1975 that were in main events. They were having great matches, and their primary job was to get guys over and have great matches and be the legends of the 50s and the 60s who really were pushing the guys of the 70s. And so at number 100, I've got a tie between Pat O' Connor and Luthez. [00:18:51] And we've got two former NWA world champions. [00:18:55] You know, Lou Thes was the wrestler of the year in the 1950s and the early 60s as the NWA champion. Pat O' Connor held the championship from 59 to 61. And they're both fantastic. Pat O' Connor was the booker for Sam Mushnick in St. Louis, which is another reason why he gets on this list, is his position within the wrestling power structure. [00:19:23] And at the end of 1975, Pat O' Connor is in a battle royal in St. Louis. [00:19:30] It's like a 12 to. I can't remember the exact number. 12 to 15 man battle royal. And it comes down to Pat O', Connor, who's the local St. Louis legend and former NWA champion, and Terry Funk. [00:19:43] And Terry Funk wins the battle Royal in St. Louis by eliminating Pat O'. Connor. And then the next week or 10 days later, Terry Funk wins the NWA world title in Miami, beating Jack Briscoe, the current champion. And then they come back as the first card in 76. The first card's main event are the two guys that were in the Battle Royal elimination. [00:20:07] And it's Pat O', Connor, former NWA champion and St. Louis legend, taking on the brand newly minted NWA champion, Terry Funk. [00:20:16] And for that reason, I got Pat O' Connor on the list at number 100. It was that kind of influence that caused me to put him in here. And then Lou Thez, anytime Luthez wrestled somebody on a card, no matter where it was in the world, that wrestler was immediately more important. [00:20:34] They were immediately more credible. And if they wrestled Lou to more than a 20 minute match, that that rub got on that wrestler. And Lou was doing that. In 75, he was working for Gulas Welch. He was extremely unhappy, as he would prove in 1976 by being part of an outlaw group in Nashville going against Goulas Welch, the UWA. But in 75, Lou is still having matches, he's still selling tickets, he's still drawing people. So I put him on the list at number 99. [00:21:10] Number 99, I have a Canadian wrestler by the name of Guy Mitchell. And Mitchell had debuted in 1959. He had worked out in gyms in Canada. He came to the United States in 1960 and he debuted under the name Guy Hill. [00:21:28] And he was wrestling for Georgia championship wrestling in 1961. And a news reporter was writing a story about the matches and he accidentally called him Guy Mitchell. And so he took on the name and he won the Southern heavyweight title for a short period there as Guy Mitchell in 1975. He's working in a Canadian promotion for most of the year. Also. I should mention Too that in 1965 he was one of the knockoff Assassin tag teams. You know, Jody Hamilton and Tom Ernesto had been the Assassins. They had been a very hot team in the early 60s through most of the 60s, wrestled in most of the territories. Dick the Bruiser had bought or taken over or whatever he did with the territory in Indianapolis there in 64. And so one of the things he did was he had an Assassin's tag team. And it was Guy Mitchell and Joe Tomasso. [00:22:29] And they were the WWA World Tag Team champions there for a long stretch there in the mid-60s, well, in the mid-70s. Guy Mitchell is working in Vancouver for Gene Kinisky and the partners there. And he is winning tag team championships and he's winning the Canadian Heavyweight championship there. And he had a really, really strong 1975. So we'll put him in at number 99. [00:22:58] All right, so let's see. Number 98. [00:23:04] Number 98. I've got gorilla Monsoon. [00:23:07] And the book came out this year by Brian Solomon, Irresistible Force. [00:23:13] There's nothing more that I could possibly say about the book that hasn't been said. So many great compliments have been lauded on to Brian for his book. And I totally agree, it was one of the best things I read here in 2025. And Gorilla Monsoon in 1975 is part of the management in WWF. He's very influential politically behind the scenes. He's helping book the wwf. He is running Towns as a promoter and he's appearing as a special referee and also in some matches at the top of the card in some of the WWF Towns. So for all of those reasons, I have to put Gorilla monsoon at number 98. All right, number 97. We have a fairly new guy who's on the scene in 1975, Big Ray Candy. And of course his real name was Ray Canty with a T, but he was the Candy Man. [00:24:10] A lot of people called him right? Later on he'd be Kareem Muhammad and a whole bunch of other different names. But in 1975, he is a big, muscular dude who everybody looks at and thinks, man, we, we need to get something out of this guy. And so they put him over. He wins the Western States Heavyweight Championship, which in later years in Amarillo, after they started using the international title as their main singles title, they used the Western states title as a title to get young guys in positions where they could really get them over. You know, guys like Scott Casey and Bobby Jaggers and Ray Candy. And another guy we're going to be talking about right at the end of this first segment at number 80 is a guy they also put the Western states title on, trying to, you know, enhance this guy's single career. But Ray Candy also went to Kansas city territory in 75. They put the Central States title on him there. So a lot of these territories were putting their singles titles on Ray Candy and pushing him to the top of the cards here in 75. So we put him at number 97. At number 96. We've got Apache Bull Ramos, who was Manuel Ramos from Houston, Texas. [00:25:30] And he was quite a performer. I didn't get to see him very much at all. And there's not a lot of tape of him out there, but there's plenty of documentation about his career. He debuted in 1956, so he's been in the business for 19 years here in 1975. He had great programs in his career with Bruno and Dutch Savage and Jimmy Snuka. And he had a lot of feuds with the Funks. Dorie Funk Senior really, really liked him. In West Texas, he had feuds with Mil Maskaris, 75. [00:26:11] He also was wrestling in main events and tag team matches in some of the Japanese promotions. [00:26:17] So in 1975, and he also won the Pacific heavyweight title up in the Pacific Northwest. [00:26:25] So Apache Bull Ramos had a great 1975. And for that reason we got him at number 96. All right, number 95, we have Joe Scarpa, otherwise known as Big Chief J Strongbow. And here's another veteran. [00:26:42] He started out in 1947 as Joe Scarpa. [00:26:47] And Jack Briscoe in his book. Now, there's been a lot of criticism of Joe Scarpa as an agent in his later years in the wwf. And so, you know, all of that notwithstanding, Jack Briscoe in his book about his life, said that when he was in Georgia, he learned so much about being a babyface from Joe Scarpa, one of the most over baby faces in the Southern wrestling territories in the 50s and the 60s. And in 1975, he's sort of the baby face that's just underneath Bruno. And so he's wrestling at the top of the main events in a lot of the towns Bruno's not in, he's wrestling just underneath Bruno on the Madison Square Garden cards. And at the end of 75, the last fourth of the year, last 25% of the year or so, you know, there was a talent trading thing going on between the WWF and the Georgia wrestling territory. Jim Barnett was taking guys from New York, Tony Guerrilla and Dean Ho came in as a tag team and Chief Jay Strongbow came in and worked. And of course, he had been a legend. I asked Bobby Simmons on one of our podcasts. I think it was the Thanksgiving show where I asked Bobby, I'm like, did fans in Georgia know that Jay Strongbow was Joe Scarpa? And he said, oh, absolutely, everybody remembered him. [00:28:10] And so wrestling fans are smart. Even though it was in the kayfabe days, there were still a lot of, you know, what we call smart fans Right. But Jay Strongbow, we will put him at number 95, 94. And you might be surprised that this guy is at this position. [00:28:31] But 1975 was an interesting year for Jerry Lawler. [00:28:36] At the end of 1974, after he had had his big run as the top heel in the Tennessee territory, he had a disagreement with Jerry Jarrett over his bookings. [00:28:48] And Lawlor, who had, you know, he had really worked himself into a shoot and really thought and considered himself to be the king of Memphis. He even told Jerry Jarrett, like, I'm, you know, Elvis sells out Memphis once or twice a year, and I sell out Memphis every single week. I'm really the King of Memphis, not Elvis. [00:29:10] This was backstage, right? In just a conversation. This wasn't on television. This wasn't in a worked interview or anything like that. This was in their conversation. And Jarrett could tell that Lawlor was swelling up a little bit, you know, and he was getting full of himself, and he should have been. He was drawing 10, 11, 12,000 people to the Mid South Coliseum in 74. And his feud with Jackie Fargo and then his quest for the title, where he was beating guys like Bobo Brazil and Dick the Bruiser and all these different. The chic and worked himself up to the big main event with the NWA title with Jack Briscoe in Memphis. It's the famous picture with Lawler throwing powder in Briscoe's face. [00:29:54] But he didn't want to go to Chattanooga and he didn't want to go to some of these other places. And Gulas Welch had a lot of smaller towns besides the big four or five towns that they had. And everybody worked everything. [00:30:07] And Jarrett just told him, he said, if you're not willing to work the small towns, you don't need to be working the big ones. And Jarrett had been in Atlanta as the booker for Jim Barnett. So he calls up Barnett and sends Lawlor down to Georgia, and Lawlor goes down there and he's a tag team partner for most of 75 with Don Green. [00:30:27] First part of the year, they won the Macon tag team titles in the city of Macon, I think. And then he languished around at the bottom of those cards in Georgia. He came back to Memphis for a little while and started a little program with Bob Armstrong. He went down to Florida with Don Green again, working a gimmick, the Masked Superstars under a mask with his Memphis manager, Sam Bass. And they worked in Florida as the B team or the B town tag team in a feud with Kenny Lucas and Jimmy golden. [00:31:03] And at the end of 75, then Jarrett takes Lawlor back and he has a program with Bob Armstrong. And then the beginnings at the end of 75 of the decades long feud with Bill Dundee. But overall in 75, Lawlor was, you know, on the second and third match on the card in Georgia and on the second or third match on cards on the beat towns in Florida, he didn't have a great 75 as far as the, in comparison to the other years he'd have in his career. And so for that reason, Jerry Lawler comes in at 94. [00:31:39] All right, at number 93 on my list of the top 100 wrestlers of 1975, I have the first Japanese wrestler, Kentaro Oki. And Kentaro Oki was a Korean wrestler. [00:31:56] He had been a student of Ricky Dozan and he had come to Japan in 1940. He came as an illegal alien in 1958. He was arrested in 1959. [00:32:11] Once he got out of jail, he was able to go to training with Ricky Dozan. And he joined the then biggest wrestling company in Japan, the Japanese Wrestling association, the jwa. [00:32:24] And make a long story short, he debuted there with Baba and Inoki and they were the three rookies who would eventually be trained to become the successors to Ricky Dozen himself. [00:32:38] And so after the JWA closed down, he moved on over into, well, actually all Japan wrestling sort of absorbed the JWA. And he had a really good 1975. [00:32:57] He was in the World League tournament in April. He got 12 and a half points to tie for second place in the tournament. He also had a feud with one of the top guys, CG Sakaguchi, and he got to the semifinals there on May 16, had a great match with Sakaguchi. Later in the year he challenged Baba for the heavyweight title. That would be the PWF championship. But Baba beats him in six minutes and 49 seconds. [00:33:31] And then in December he's in the open Championship tournament and he beat a couple of guys. He beat Ken Mantel, he had a draw against Dick Murdoch and Harley Race and Abdullah the Butcher. And he had a really good, really good 1975. [00:33:47] And he also won the Tokyo Sports Fighting Spirit Award for the year. And so Kentaro Oki, we'll put him at number 93 for the year in 1975. [00:34:02] Okay, now Bobby Duncombe, we got Bobby Duncomb at number 92 and he was a heel in 1975 in the WWWF. And you go back and check out some of my podcasts with Steve Giannarelli about the WWWF in 1975. And we document and go over all the great things Bobby Duncomb did there. [00:34:28] Managed by the grand wizard, having a match in February to begin the year with Chief J. Strongbow. He was tag team partners with Spiros Arion. Also one of the top heels against the team that I mentioned a little while ago, Tony Guerrero and Dean Ho. [00:34:45] He went to a time limit draw during the year with Victor Rivera. And he had a big match in Pittsburgh with Bruno Sammartino for the 3WF title. And I remember seeing a magazine in 1975 with Bobby Duncomb on the COVID vowing to kill Bruno San Martino. [00:35:08] Image. [00:35:10] Maybe he said destroy. Maybe that was what it was. You know, I vow to destroy Bruno Sammartino. And I remember looking at that magazine in our local drugstore. And I bought that magazine because I was so caught up in the drama that they put on the COVID with Duncan. [00:35:30] And he had a good Japan run in 75. He moved on over late in the year to the awa. And on the Christmas super show, we just talked with George Shire about that title change between Vern Gagne and Nick Bockwinkle. And Bobby Duncomb came in as a heel in that faction with Bobby Heenan. And Duncombe then becomes the policeman or the guy you got to go through to get to Buck Winkle and the championship going forward in the AWA. So Bobby Dunko's number 92, number 91 on our list or on my list is the great Rock, Don Morocco. [00:36:15] And Don Morocco, I think probably his biggest accomplishment in 75 was he went. He was. Took a tour of California and he was out there. He won the NWA America's title in the NWA Hollywood promotion. And he had an overall pretty good 1975, nothing compared to what his career would be going forward. But we'll rank Don Morocco at number 91 for the year in 1975. [00:36:45] Okay, so 1975 is number 90 on the list of my top 100 wrestlers for 75 is Rapid Ricky Romero. [00:36:56] And Ricky Romero was a. [00:37:00] I don't. I mean, he is a legend in West Texas. And we just lost my good friend a couple of weeks ago, his son, Ricky Romero Jr. Who I had gotten to be really, really close friends with in the process of writing this book about Dorie Funk Sr. Over the last research, over the last couple of years, and I'm working through it, I get a little bit of chance to write a little bit more on the book every single day. But Ricky Romero Jr. Has just been such a fountain of information. [00:37:30] He gave me so many Great photographs and just was an overall great guy. My heart went out to him because in a lot of our conversations, he wasn't feeling well. He'd been in poor health. [00:37:41] He had a bad infection that kept him in the bed for over a year. [00:37:46] And he was kind of feeling better and he was going back toward a good track of health. [00:37:53] But he passed away suddenly here a few weeks ago. Well, his dad, Ricky Romero, was and is a legend in West Texas. I mean, a top draw in that western states territory. And he came into the Western states territory in 1960. He was the top Latin American Spanish of Spanish descent, Baby face star alongside Gory Guerrero. They were the two guys. And in towns like San Angelo, Texas, they draw huge, huge crowds. And Ricky Romero was the overall biggest ticket seller of all time in the town of Lubbock, which was the second best town for that Western states promotion. Of course, Amarillo being the top town, and Romero was a Western states, the top whatever they named it, a bunch of different names throughout the years, but the overall top tag team championship there in the Amarillo territory with Dorie Funk Sr. And they together were just a phenomenal tag team. And then Romero had, in 75, he was tag team champions with Dorie Funk Jr. And they had been perennial tag team champions there. And he also defended his championship, and it was his. No one else ever had that title. The NWA Rocky Mountain Heavyweight Championship. When they would go to Colorado over there, to Pueblo and Colorado Springs and those markets, and they would go to Idaho and they would be in Arizona and over in that really extreme western parts of their territory, he would be on top in the main event and he would defend that Rocky Mountain Championship and sell a whole lot of tickets and make a whole lot of money. [00:39:49] Also at the end of 74, Terry Funk sold his part of the promotion to three or four guys, and one of them was Ricky Romero. And so he was also influential in the booking of the territory and in the ownership of the territory in 1975, which gave him an opportunity to bring his son in, Jay Youngblood, who debuted as a rookie in 75 under. And if you listen to the Amarillo show we just did a couple of weeks ago, he debuted under. He had a silver streak through his hair. And so he became just known as Silver Streak. They didn't tell anybody it was Ricky's son. And later on he would adopt the name Youngblood, as most of the sons did. But Ricky Ruero had a good 1975. I mean, he'd been in the business for quite some time by then. But he had huge fan appeal in that territory. And so we put him at number 90. All right, number 89. We got Bob Backlund. [00:40:53] And Bob Backlin continued to rise in the ranks of the National Wrestling Alliance. In 1975, he had been in the AWA and he had been in 74, he had been in the Western States territory we were just talking about. And they put that title on him, the Western States Heavyweight Championship, which was his first major title. He had worked for Eddie Graham in Florida and he was someone that Eddie Graham really liked as far as his amateur background. And of course, just recently on the Christmas Super Show, I had Jerry Briscoe on and something I had heard for quite some time and I wanted to ask Jerry about it was, was Jack Briscoe the model for Vince Sr. [00:41:38] In the WWF when he went to a champion like Bob Backlin? And I had remembered that Eddie Graham had recommended two guys to Vince Senior as his next big guys that he wanted, wholesome, clean cut guys, all American kind of types. And that was Steve Kern and Bob Macklin. Of course, we know that he went with Bob Macklin. But in 75, I mean, he won the Georgia Tag Team Championship with his partner, my good friend Jerry Briscoe. They beat another great tag team, Toro Tanaka and Mr. Fuji, and they held those titles for almost two months before they lost them to Les Thornton and Tony Charles. He also teamed up with Jerry Briscoe against another fantastic tag team who were put together that year of 75 as a tag team for the first time there in Georgia, Dick Slater and Bob Orton Jr. And they wrestled them on Thanksgiving night, which was an amazing match. I'm sure he was also getting quite a push in St. Louis. [00:42:43] And he is being prepared and prepped for that coveted NWA Missouri Heavyweight Championship, which is going to come to him. And we're going to talk about and cover as we go into 1976. [00:42:57] So at number 89, we got Bob Macklin. Okay? Number 88 we got Bobby Jaggers. And Bobby Jaggers had a great year in 1975. He's brand new in the business. [00:43:09] He probably worked a couple hundred matches. In 75, he worked for Watts & McGurk in Oklahoma for a little while. Tag team partners with one of the Hollywood Blondes, Jerry Brown. And then he got his big break. [00:43:24] He went to West Texas for Dorie Funk Jr. And Ricky Romero and Ray Stevens, who were the new owners of the territory. And they put the NWA Brass Knuckles title on him in May. [00:43:38] And he held that and put him in a feud with the Babyface they were getting over named Scott Casey. And they had a great program. They did everything. They did bull rope matches, they did first blood matches, they did I quit matches. And of course they had brass knuckles title matches that Casey eventually beat him for. And then they turned right around in June and put the Western states title on him because the Western states title had been vacated and they held a tournament. And one of the things they like to do in that territory is when they had a tournament for a tag team title or a singles title, they usually did that in Lubbock, which I mentioned was their second most important town. And so they had a tournament there in June in 75 for the Western states title. [00:44:27] And Bobby Jaggers came out wearing the strap. And then once that run was kind of over, toward the end of the year, he went to California, San Francisco to work for Roy Shire. He also made some appearances in St. Louis in 75. So number 88 we got Bobby Jaggers. Number 87, we've got a fellow by the name of Ken Matt. Ken Patera, the world's strongest man and especially the wrestling's strongest man. I should get that right. He was wrestling's strongest man. Of course, he's Olympian and a weightlifter and of course that was the big gimmick putting him over. And I had posted some photos of Patera doing an interview, some interviews in Mid Atlantic Championship Wrestling. [00:45:15] And they put him over as a singles babyface. [00:45:19] He also was in tag team matches for the NWA World Tag Team Championship, which was the great team of Gene and Ole Anderson. And he also had a feud with the number one singles wrestler there for most of the year, Johnny Valentine. Throughout the spring and the summer they did a TV angle where they did a fishbowl draw. [00:45:42] And Patera came out of that with matches with Valentine. And they had great house show matches and Patera had Valentine in the full nelson. And people thought Valentine was finally going to lose the title and finally going to give up to Pitera. And he never did get the United States heavyweight title though. And then of course, in early October, Valentine went down in the plane crash and was spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. And so that feud never really got blown off and never really came to a conclusion. But to replace Valentine, they brought in Black Jack Mulligan. They broke up the Black Jackson, the WWF and Lanza stayed up there and Mulligan came back to Mid Atlantic to wrestle and immediately started working with Patera. And they did, by the way, they did also in the territory was the frequent tag team partner of superstar Billy Graham, Steve Strong, who was a. A big strong guy as well. And they did an angle around a bitch press contest and they blackjack Mulligan and Steve Strong attacked Patero when he's doing the weight gimmick. And. And so he was out for a little while in an injury angle. And. And it was a great year for Ken Patera at number 87, number 86, we have a guy I mentioned just a little while ago, one of the original assassins, Jody Hamilton. And in 1972, when Anne Gunkel broke away from the National Wrestling alliance and broke away from the Atlanta office and started her own wrestling company, Gunkel Wrestling Enterprises, Jody Hamilton is one of the wrestlers, along with his partner Tom Rinesto, went over to Ann Gunkel and Rinesto became the booker for Gunkle. And Hamilton wrestled over there in the main events as the Assassin. And essentially that company went out of business at the end of 74. [00:47:42] And Tom Ernesto got hired as the booker for Barnett in 75. And I'm sure Renesto politicked with Barnett to get Jody Hamilton back in the National Wrestling Alliance. And as frequently happened in wrestling, all was forgiven and Hamilton was welcomed back as the Assassin. And in the second half of 1975 he wrestled there in the Georgia territory and did a great job and was, you know, a great addition. He had a great career in the state of Georgia and stayed there pretty much for the rest of his life, eventually working for WCW as a trainer. At number 88, we've got the Superfly, Jimmy Snuka. He was very active on the West Coast. In 75, Jimmy Snuka was a NWA Pacific Heavyweight Championship Northwest champion. NWA Pacific Northwest Heavyweight Champion. He beat a guy we just talked about, Apache Bull Ramos. In August of 75, he was in several battle royals. He won at least two that we know of that are documented. And he was Wrestler of the year in 1975 by ring around the Northwest Newsletter, which was written by our good friend Mike Rogers, who is on our show from time to time along with Frank Culbertson. And they tell us all the great stuff. He's written so many books about the Portland wrestling territory. And he also. Snuka also had a great year in Japan. He was tag team partner. Think about this tag team and I don't think we saw them in the United States and there's not a lot of tape of them out there together, but what a great tag team. In my mind, just thinking about he was tag team partners with Harley Race and Jimmy Snuka and Harley Race were in matches against Giant Baba there in all Japan. And so what a great. What a great year in 75, as Snuka would eventually become an icon in wrestling. So I've got him at number 88. At number 84, I have art Nelson. And Art Nelson had been in wrestling. He was. [00:50:02] I just documented a lot of his activity early on in Nashville, Tennessee, where he worked under a mask there as the Black Phantom and had so much to do with the success of Roy Welch and Nick Goulis in Nashville. [00:50:21] And also he was on top. [00:50:23] It was also awesome. He worked as a baby face on top in Knoxville, and he worked as a heel in Nashville, and no one ever knew the difference, right? He was under a hood in Nashville as a heel, and he was working as himself, as a baby face in Knoxville. And in 1975, he had an amazing notable moment where he came in as the booker in Amarillo toward the end of the year, and he came in as a performer under a mast as the Super Destroyer. And we talked about that angle and all the things he did causing Terry Funk to submit, Losing the international title to him, he injured him. And Frank Goodish injured Terry Funk in Lubbock the night before. And then the next night in Amarillo, Terry had to submit to the bear hug of the Super Destroyer. The Super Destroyer won the international title. And then, of course, Terry, just a few days later won the NWA World title, setting up a big program and a big feud at the beginning of 1976 in the Western states, Amarillo territory, between the Super Destroyer and new NWA champion Terry Funk. So Art Nelson, also known as the Super Destroyer, at number 84. At number 83, I have Ernie the Big Cat Lad. And Ernie is an interesting character in 1975 because he's working as a top star for the IWA now. He worked in the IWA, but he also worked in the NWA and Hollywood wrestling in Los Angeles. He worked a little bit in Georgia, and he worked a little bit in the wwwf. And Ernie Ladd, one of those interesting characters, you know, one of the big reputations of the National Wrestling alliance was it was blackballing guys that they considered to be outlaws and working outlaw promotions. [00:52:17] And here's Ernie Ladd, who is working at the top of the card in the IWA, and he had a big heel turn in 75. He was tag team partners as a babyface with Cowboy Bob Ellis. And they were against the champions, the Mongols, Geno and Bolo and Ladd. Attacked Cowboy Bob Ellis. He attacked the referee and he attacked everybody at ringside and just took the mic and declared himself the king of all professional wrestling, the Big Cat, Ernie Ladd. I'm the king of professional wrestling. I can't do Ernie as well as Cornet, but he. And I try not to do impersonations. [00:53:01] They're kind of. They've worn on me over the years of different people doing them. But he solidified himself as a top heel in the iwa. So he's working in this, what's considered an outlaw promotion by the nwa, but he's also working in la. He's also working against Bruno. [00:53:19] He beat Haystacks Calhoun by count out. He had matches against Antonio Inoki, Bobo Brazil. [00:53:28] He wrestled a very young Terry Gordy, who was wrestling as Terry Mika. It might have been his first year in wrestling in 75. He was also tag team partners with Thunderbolt Patterson. But here he is an outlaw considered by the National Wrestling Alliance. But he's also working some of the NWA territories and he's working in the wwwf, which at this time has come back and is an NWA member. [00:53:53] But you know, if anything else, they are using this as an example where they do not control the talent in wrestling and they do not blackball. Guys. Just look at Ernie Laddie. He's working for them. He's working for our affiliates. He's working for everybody. So Ernie Ladd, we'll put him at number 83 in 1975. All right, number 82, we got George the Animal Steel. He. He left the WWF for the first part of the year and he had been the mast student, but he came back hairy all over, a green tongue, animalistic behavior, tearing apart Turnbuck, all of that. And he was a heel in the 3wF. [00:54:42] And his biggest match was with Bruno Sammartino. He also worked for the Chic in Detroit. He bounced back and forth between Detroit and what's called New York. But he had a Madison Square Garden match with Bruno on August 9th, and he worked the Boston Garden on October 4th against Bruno. And he was one of those bridge, I call them bridge guys. [00:55:06] So Bruno had his main programs that he had with Spyros Arion and different guys, Waldo Von Erich, but then you had bridge guys like Lou Albano and George the Animal Steel and Bobby Duncombe, and they would do these in between programs at Madison Square Garden at the Spectrum in Boston. And George, then this is the launching pad for him being George the Animal Steel for the next 15 years or so. And of course, in the national expansion. You know, when Vince Jr got ahold of him, he made him this lovable cartoon character. And the whole deal with Randy Savage and Elizabeth and all that. But here in 1975, we put George Steele at number 82. All right, number 81, we're going to go to. We're going to go to 80 and then take a break here. But at number 81, I've got a guy whose whole family of brothers were in professional wrestling. The Lewin brothers from Buffalo, New York. And he had two other brothers, Don Lewin and Ted Lewin, both of whom were professional wrestlers. Don and Ted were world tag team champions at one point. [00:56:19] And Mark was trained by his brother in law at the time, Danny McShane, who was a huge wrestler in Houston and in Texas and across the country at one point, early on in the 50s. [00:56:34] And McShane brought him into the business and trained him. He had a lot of success early on in his career. He was a very good looking man, still is. And he had a baby face tag team with his friend Don Curtis, and Don Curtis and Mark Lewin. They sold a lot of tickets in New York, Madison Square Garden and in Chicago and they turned heel. [00:56:58] And of course they split up in the early 60s. And Lewin went on to a singles career. Don Curtis went on to a singles career and eventually ended up in Florida as the promoter of Jacksonville, Florida. For being on Eddie Graham's management team down there. Had a whole, whole lot of success eventually Mark Lewin, but would become Maniac Mark Lewin, but here in 1975, he has a great run in Canada. [00:57:26] He starts out working in Canada. We talked a little bit about him. I had Larry Lane, Red Dog Larry Lane on the show talking about his career in Stampede Wrestling for Stu Hart. And Mark Lewin was up there as the booker and working along with the guy he's associated with for a long time, King Curtis, ikea. [00:57:46] And they had a great run there in Canada. And then he came down to Detroit and worked for the sheet and chic in big time wrestling. [00:57:55] And he won the NWA United States Heavyweight Championship. A lot of people say the Sheik kept the title a long time and never lost it. And well, he did lose. Bobo Brazil was almost the US Champion as many times as the Sheik. But here in 75, Mark Lewin beat the Sheik. The Sheik put him over in September right there in the middle of KOBO Arena. And then Mark Lewin lost the title to Bulldog Don Kentucky, who had been in Tennessee as the Mid America heavyweight champion. For Goulas Welch. And he came up to Detroit and took the title from Lewin. And they had a program toward the end of 75 on over into 1976 there that sold a lot of tickets and was a drawing, drawing program for that Detroit territory for the Sheik. He was also in Australia and New Zealand that year. [00:58:51] Lewin has always been a world traveler, wrestling in all kinds of strange and exotic places. [00:58:57] He was the booker for Jim Barnett in Australia for a very successful run. But here in 1975, we put Mark Lewin at number 81. [00:59:06] Okay, our last wrestler we're going to talk about before we take a break. We'll give you a chance to do something and get a drink of water or drink whatever you want to do or take a biological break or whatever, and I'll get a chance to catch my breath. But number 80, I've got Frank Goodish, who modern fans pretty much know as Bruiser brody. [00:59:29] And in 1975, he finished up the run he had with Stan Hansen. They were the tag team champions for Leroy McGurk in the Oklahoma Territory. [00:59:40] And they were. [00:59:42] I mean, I think people saw their potential. They go back to West Texas State together, right? [00:59:49] And so in 1975, they split as a tag team and Goodish ends up in West Texas, working in Amarillo. In 1975, he had some singles matches. Of course, they split them up doing singles matches in McGurk's territory in Oklahoma. But in the Western states area, they put that. That title on that they put on people. The young wrestler that are. That's coming up, they put the Western states heavyweight title on him, and they also hooked him up with Art Nelson when Nelson came in as the booker and the top heel under the mask as the Super Destroyer. But they really, they really put Goodish over there, being a West Texas State guy and really having favor with the ownership guys there and Amarillo and seeing his talent so early on, he. [01:00:43] He beat the guy we had on the list a little bit earlier, Ray Candy, who had come in and they had put that title on to get over. But in October, Goodish won it. He's not here very long. He's here in West Texas for two months, and then he loses the Western states heavyweight championship and he moves immediately down. You can tell a guy's career trajectory by the moves they make in the territory system. And so where does Goodish go after Amarillo? He goes to work for Eddie Graham in Florida in. At the end of 1975, and he's there just a couple of weeks there at the end of the year, and he beats Rocky Johnson for the number one championship, the Florida heavyweight title. And that is a very strong into a the first singles year for Frank Goodish, who would become Bruiser Brody a little bit later. And it would set the stage for his move on up to New York next year. So it's going to be interesting in my shows with Steve Giannarelli to talk about some of the things going on here with Goodish as he makes a little New York run in 1976. All right, those are my top wrestlers for 1975, from 100 to number 80. Let's take a little bit of a break and I will be back to count you down from night from 1975's top wrestlers from number 79 down to number 51 here on the New Year's Eve edition of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. We'll be right back. All right, welcome back, everybody, to the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel history podcast. And we're into our second big hour. I feel like Gordon solely. Are you ready for our second big hour of Georgia Championship Wrestling? [01:02:28] Are you ready for our next big segment here? Our next big hour of ranking the top 100 wrestlers from 1975. And in our first hour of today's show, we went from 100 down to number 80. [01:02:44] And now we're going from 79 to 51. And I want to remind you that tomorrow on New Year's Day, we'll have the second edition of this podcast show where I'm ranking my top 100 wrestlers for 1975. [01:03:00] And in that show tomorrow on New Year's Day, we will rank from number 50 down to number one wrestler in the entire world in 1975. And I just want to remind you, this is my list. [01:03:14] It's mine and mine alone. I didn't consult with anybody else. I didn't send it out for anybody else's approval or feedback or input. This is all me. So if you're mad that your favorite wrestler didn't get ranked or got ranked too low or you didn't like the, just be mad at me. [01:03:33] Because this is based on several things. One, based on my experience as a fan back in 1975, and as I mentioned earlier in the show, I had access to magazines and that was about it as far as knowing what was going on in the world of wrestling. [01:03:53] And I got two hours every week of Tennessee Wrestling from Roy Welch and Nick Goulis. And so some of these guys on here are guys that I saw on television back then. Some of them are guys I saw in matches live as a 12 year old, either in Paducah or one of the surrounding towns in a spot show or in Evansville, Indiana on Wednesday night. [01:04:19] And some of it comes from my experience in studying professional wrestling for the last 50 years. [01:04:28] Some of it comes from knowing what will come of these wrestling. And I really tried to suspend my bias. [01:04:38] It's difficult to explain. I mean, all human beings are biased. And so everyone who does a list or make it's all subjective, it's not objective because it's based on that person's thought process. [01:04:52] And my thought process is I didn't want to put too much emphasis on what they would become later in their career, but I also wanted to note the importance of a year. So like in Frank Goodish's case, you know, Frank Goodish, I ranked at that spot because 1975 was such a significant year as a singles. He made the transition into singles and then what he would become as Bruiser Brody later, without giving too much credence to what he would become, but just inside the year of 75 and then putting the singles title in Amarillo and the singles title in Florida at the end of the year and putting him in a position to really move on to have a another great year in 76. So I don't know if it makes any sense or not, but the list made sense to me in my head. [01:05:48] And you know, it's all fun. We're just having fun. And so I'm sure you'll have your thoughts about my list and perhaps you'll take the time to make a list of your own. All right, let's. We're at number 79 and we're going from 79 to 51. During this segment here on New Year's Eve and the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel, we're saying goodbye to 2025 and hello to 2026. At number 79 we have one of the former famous kangaroo tag team, Don Kent. [01:06:22] And he's one of those guys that I saw on Television in 1975 in the Tennessee territory. [01:06:29] I never saw him wrestle. I've seen him on tape since then, but I hadn't seen him during my fandom. In 72, Al Costello and Don Kent were in the Tennessee territory. And I saw them just sort of briefly in a memory on television. I know there's a tape out there of the Louisville show that George Goulis and Lynn Rossi hosted that was found not long ago. And the kangaroos are on there with Crybaby Cannon And I can't say that I. [01:07:09] I'm trying not to confuse that, seeing that recently with what I saw back in 72 as a fan at 9 years old, I just can't remember. You know, I might have seen them, but I don't really know. But I for sure remember Don Kenton, 75, because he was a big deal in the Tennessee territory and he would defeat Jackie Fargo. That's one of the reasons why it really sticks out, is because he beat Jackie Fargo early on in 75 to win the NWA Mid America heavyweight Championship. And then he got into a feud with Crazy Luke Graham. [01:07:47] And that was a heel versus heel kind of program, which the Tennessee territory just treated those just like any other program where a lot of territories never really got away from the baby face and heel dynamic in Tennessee. It was almost like anybody could fight anybody. And I remember specifically some of those particular goings on between Don Kent and Crazy Luke Graham. [01:08:13] And then once he lost the title there, sort of in springtime and early summer, he left. And I didn't know where he went back then. Now I do know he went to Detroit and he worked for the Sheikh. [01:08:27] And he got into a feud that we mentioned earlier with Mark Lewin. And he. [01:08:34] He beat Lewin late in the year for the United States Heavyweight Championship there in Detroit. And he would transition into 76 with a feud with Lewin there that was very, very memorable. All right, number 78, I've got killer Kowalski. And of course, if you name wrestlers, you just walk up to somebody on the street and say, hey, can you name me a classic old school wrestler? They might say Killer Kowalski, because he's got such a distinctive name. [01:09:06] Early on in the year, he teamed up with Bobby duncomb in the 3wF, and they had a feud with Dean Ho and Tony Guerrilla. He also feuded with Chief Jay Strongbow a bit there in the 3WF. And he had matches with a guy we mentioned earlier that Brian Solomon wrote the book about Guerrilla Monsoon. [01:09:28] And he had. [01:09:31] He was actually in Japan, a tag team partner with Bruno. And in Japan they took a loss to which everybody took a loss in 75 to Giant Baba. But Bruno and Killer Kowalski lost to Giant Baba and Samson Kutsuwata. [01:09:48] And then in late 75, he got a mask and he went into Florida as the Mask Destroyer. And he beat my buddy Jerry Briscoe for the Florida Southern Heavyweight Championship in October of 75. And he defended it for most of that year. I just wonder if he wasn't in Florida on vacation. [01:10:11] He ended up In a couple of match with Cyclone Negro before the year was over. But Killer Kowalski had a good 75. So we put him in there at number 78. All right. At number 77 we have another West Texas State graduate and former. [01:10:30] I don't know if he ever actually played, but he had tryouts with the Detroit Wheels football team back around this time and he decided to just continue on with wrestling. [01:10:42] And he had been the Tri State tag team champions was they were called the World Tag Team champions as they were in a lot of different NWA territories back then in Leroy McGurk's Oklahoma territory. And they were a fearsome tag team even though they hurt a lot of people because they were. They were rough, tough, and they were early on in their career before they really, really settled in learning how to work. And toward the end of the year as the that team split up as good as Enhance and went their separate ways into singles competition. And Goodish went to Amarillo and Hanson went to Dallas. He also went to Texas and he started wrestling in the big time wrestling territory which was based in Dallas with Fritz Von Erich booking office there. [01:11:32] And the big deal there at the end of 75 was. And why I ranked him up a little bit higher than Frank is that he had a run with Fritz Von Erich for the American heavyweight title there toward Christmas. [01:11:48] And of course he put Von Erich over there in that match. But he also faced the Destroyer there while he was in the Dallas territory. So he worked Dallas, Fort Worth, San Antonio, Corpus in Houston, all those great towns down there in Austin, and felt probably right at home being a Texan. And so Sam Hansen comes in at number 77. [01:12:16] At number 76, I've got a guy who is breaking in in his first few years in wrestling, Tatsumi Fujinami, who had a great year in Japan here in 75 as his name is just starting to come to the forefront in professional wrestling. All right, let's go on to number 75. We have another legendary name. He was a part of that whole NWA title breakup there in the late 1950s and on the East coast was promoted as the NWA world heavyweight champion. He's called the Flying Frenchman. That is Eduard Carpentier or Carpentier. I always mess his name up because I want to say Carpenter and then I get caught in the middle between English and the French accent. [01:13:07] But Eduard Carpentier, come on, Tony, come on, get it together. Carpentier. [01:13:14] And he had a pretty good 1975. Of course, his career is moving off toward the. You know, he's over the apex of his career, he's did a lot of flying maneuvers. He had a fantastic athletic build. He was doing the back flips and the cartwheels and the somersaults and all those kind of gymnastic moves all the way back in the 50s, his NWA title run didn't really take. [01:13:41] Johnny Doyle went to work over in the Capitol Wrestling Corporation office for Vince McMahon Sr. And they booked Carpentier up and down the coast there as the NWA champion and drew some money, but it didn't really go. And so Carpentier is still a draw here though, especially in St. Louis. And he had a main event in St. Louis in 75 against Jack Briscoe. So his name is still very relevant and I put him up several spots above Pat o' Connor. And a Luther is kind of guy who still means a lot on a card, still draws money, especially in the big towns where he had drawn for the previous 15 years. [01:14:22] But his career is on the back end and he's on his way down over the next couple of years. So I put him at number 75, at number 74 as a nod to his distinguished career at number 74. I had to get familiar with this particular guy because Mexican wrestling, Japanese wrestling, I've learned quite a bit in the last several years and I've gotten a little more astute in that. Mexican wrestling I'm still kind of learning, but this guy was extremely important in 1975. He's at number 74 and it's Ray Mendoza and he was a co founder of the Universal Wrestling association and he had Francisco Flores, Rene Guardo, Karloff Lagarde, they all came from EMLL and they had resigned because they were frustrated with the management and they didn't feel like they had opportunities for their sons that were coming up in the business. And so the UWA debuted in 75 on January 29th as a rival promotion to the legendary and longtime EMLL. [01:15:33] And Mendoza wrestled as what's called in Mexican wrestling a rudo, which we call heels in America. He wrestled in a lot of tag team matches and a lot of bloody, bloody brawls. He lost a hair versus hair match to Pero Aguayo in May on the 19th anniversary of Arena Mexico show. And he was also the first UWA World Light Heavyweight Champion, winning that tournament in November in Mexico City. And he defended the title throughout the rest of 75. So I put Raymond Doza in here at number 74 and I just saw a, I guess we still call them tweets on X, which used to be called Twitter. But Dave Meltzer from the Wrestling observer sent out something saying, I wish we had videotape of the UWA back during this time frame. And, boy, I do, too. [01:16:36] As I was writing Ray Mendoza's name in here in this particular slot, and I was thinking about his impact and the influence and what was going on in the split in Mexico at the time. It would be nice if we had that on tape. But sadly, as. As with a lot of things that we cover here on the Time Tunnel, we do not have video. [01:16:58] Okay, Ivan Koloff is number 73 and a name that everybody knows. He was a world champion in the 3wF. He famously beat Bruno there in 71. [01:17:11] Came out of nowhere, and all of a sudden, boom. Bruno has lost the world championship to Ivan Koloff, which essentially made Koloff for the rest of his career as a former champion who had defeated Bruno Sammartino here in 75. I put him kind of in the same category as Ernie Ladd. He's working as an outlaw because he's working at the top of the cards in the IWA promotion, and he's one of their main event heels, and he's working against their baby faces in the IWA, which at the time, Big Tex McKenzie was a baby face, Argentina Apollo. And of course, the world champion in IWA was Mill Masqueris, the man of a thousand masks. [01:17:56] And I still remember seeing in some of the magazines some stories about MIL maskers and Ivan Koloff. And I just wish I could have. [01:18:06] Could have been there. Koloff also worked for Crockett, and he also worked for McMahon in the 3WF. [01:18:13] He had a main event match with Bruno in Madison Square Garden there in the fall of 75. So he is. He's working Outlaw, but he's working NWA, and he's working for Vince Sr. And he's in that same category where you could just look nwa if they pretty much had gotten past all the antitrust kind of stuff by this point. But, I mean, they had a flinch about it, you know, always wondering if the Department of Justice was going to come back and investigate him again for manipulating the talent in the wrestling business. And they always could point to. In addition to Ernie Ladd, they could point to Ivan Koloff and go, well, you know, one of our prominent members, Jim Crockett Jr. Over in the Carolinas, he's booking Koloff, and the IWA is even competing with him in some towns. And another one of our members up in New York, Vince Senior he's booking Ivan Koloff. So. So we're not blackballing wrestlers or manipulating the talent pool. [01:19:13] All right, number 72. And here's a guy that I put on my list for the Wrestling observer hall of Fame this year, and I put him in my last slot of people that I want to vote for, because as I looked at his career, and I especially looked at his career here a lot because we're doing the podcast in 1975, Bob Armstrong, and man, did he have a great 75. I mean, he. He started out in Florida and had a great first part of the year. [01:19:46] He was in Georgia Championship. I mean, he held the Southern title in Florida. Then he was in Georgia Championship Wrestling, and he captured the Georgia Tag Team Championship with Robert Fuller as his tag team partner, which that was a long, successful partnership and association with the Fuller and Welch family going all into the 80s and the early 90s there in Alabama. But he was champions there with Fuller in Georgia, and they had a good program with that great tag team, slater and Orton Jr. Going into the summer. And then in July, he went to Tennessee and he beat Al Green, he bit a rookie there named Dr. D, David Schultz, and he beat the big heel, Crazy Luke Graham, and he had a big feud with the Mongolian Stomper. [01:20:42] And Bob Armstrong ended up capturing that version of the Southern Heavyweight Championship. So the two big Southern titles in the wrestling territories, the Florida Championship, he held the first part of the year. [01:20:56] The Tennessee version of that championship, he held the second part of the year. And I just thought, how can I not vote for this man who sold a lot of tickets and was one of the top baby faces in the south in 1975. And throughout the early 70s and the late 70s, he had drawing power in the 60s, the 70s and the 80s, on into the 90s. And then his legacy with his great sons and the things that they went on to do in the wrestling business, I had to vote for him, Bob Armstrong. But I put him at number 72 here for 1975. [01:21:33] All right, number 71. Here's a guy who's mostly known because of the video era. He's mostly known as an evil manager from the Middle east with Devastation incorporated. But in 1975, he was one of the top heels for Leroy McGurk and Bill Watts. [01:21:52] And he had been one of their top heels for several years before that. But in 1975, he held their top title, which was the NWA North American heavyweight Championship. And he held that and sold a lot of tickets for the first half of the year, of course, in February, Bill Watts resigned as booker of Championship Wrestling of Florida and Eddie Graham. And he came back home where he was still holding partnership points and came back to increase his partnership stake. And he moved Fritz Von Erich out and he moved Vern Gagne out and started doing the booking there and started changing the territory around. [01:22:35] But, I mean, he was an admirer of Ackbar. You can tell that by the way he used him later on in the Mid south territory and in the UWF after they rebranded it. But he, he, Scandal Akbar had a great 1975 and defended that title quite a. Quite a bit. And even I'll just leave it at that. I mean, he had a great year and sold a lot of tickets and was on top and really kept that territory going when it was kind of at the bottom, scraping the bottom of the barrel. But he was still bringing in revenue for the company. And Watts got there, revitalized it, and 75 was the pivot year where they'd really turned things around. All right, at number 70 on my top 100 wrestlers of 1975, I have the former NWA world heavyweight champion, Gene Kinisky. Kinisky is partners in the Vancouver territory. He is Pacific Northwest Tag Team Championship with Massa Seido. I mean, what a tag team that probably was. Never got to see them together. [01:23:46] I don't know that there's tape of them out there anywhere, but man, oh, man, when I think about the power of Kinisky and Saeedo together, I mean, that's fantastic. They held those tag team championships. And of course, Kiniski had multiple runs with that Canadian Heavyweight Championship and was holding things together and keeping things going up there in Vancouver. [01:24:12] And of course, he also wrestled in St. Louis, where he remained a big name through the majority of his career. I put him at number 70. [01:24:21] All right, number 69. I have King Curtis, IKEA. [01:24:26] And King Curtis started out the year we mentioned him a little bit earlier. We talked about Mark Lewin. They traveled together and worked together across a lot of territories, Canada being no exception. [01:24:38] King Curtis beat Larry Lane for the North American heavyweight title there in Stampede Wrestling and carried that for half the year and had bloodbaths every night. Check out my visit with Larry Lane on the Stampede territory in one of our podcasts from this year, and he'll talk to you about working with King Curtis up and down the Canadian highways there. And in the second half of the year, he moved on down to Florida and he won the big championship down there, the NWA Florida Heavyweight Championship. And guess who he beat? Dusty Rhodes. And guess where he beat him in Tampa, Florida. The home office and home base of championship wrestling from Florida. So not only did he have the number one singles title, he beat the number one legend, Babyface, who was just coming off his big 74 run. And he beat him right there in Tampa, Florida. [01:25:30] And he lost the title. But then they had a tournament and he got it back again. [01:25:35] And he had a couple of great main event matches with Jack Briscoe for the NWA World title. While he's in Florida, he went out to Amarillo for a little while. He was in West Texas. He had some matches of Ricky Romero, but most of his year in 75 was spent in Canada and in Florida. And we put him at number 69, Big King Curtis Ikea. All right, Texas, we're going to go back to Dallas. [01:26:05] The booker out there for the Dallas office and working directly underneath Fritz Von Erich, Red Bastine. Red Bastine, I put it number 68. And he had already had such a great career in wrestling and he was bringing in some new talent there in Dallas, Mad Dog Vachon. He brought in a young guy who had worked a couple of months up in the Kansas City territory, a young skinny kid that this hall of Famer probably In the top 20 wrestlers of all time and many people's lists. And maybe some people would put him in the top 10 and maybe even top five. [01:26:48] Roddy Piper and Roddy credits in one of his books, he credits Red Bastine with being nice to him, helping him find a place to to live when he first came to Dallas and showing him around and being nice to a young kid. Another thing that Bastine did was at this stage of his career and he was started out the year being the NWA Texas Heavyweight champion, but he put guys over. [01:27:15] And if you check out our Dallas, Texas podcast with Greg Klein this year, you can go back and go through 75 there in the Dallas territory office and see where John Tolos was brought in and put over. Superstar Billy Graham toward the end of the year was brought in and put over. [01:27:39] Jose Lothario. Al Madrill was really kind of getting a push there and he also had some nice matches in St. Louis and put Stan Stasiak over there in St. Louis and also had a great match with Harley Race. [01:27:59] He had some chain matches in Amarillo with the Funks, both Terry Funk And Dorie Funk Jr. One of the few television matches we still have from the Amarillo territory is Red Bastine And Dorie Funk Jr. In a Texas Death match. [01:28:17] And so he, he had a pretty great 1975. And I make no secret about it, I'm a Red Bastine fan. And coming up in 2026, we're going to have an entire podcast show dedicated to the career of Red Bastine. And I'm going to do that with our buddy George Shire. So that's something to look forward to. [01:28:40] Number 67, I have Danny Hodge. [01:28:44] He pretty much was the second guy to really make that NWA world junior heavyweight title. Leroy McGurk, of course, was the first champion. [01:28:55] But the next guy that came along to really make a mark with that title was Danny Hodge. And he kept that legacy going with a lot of matches with Ken Mantel and hero Matt Suda over that World Junior championship championship in 75. [01:29:12] And he also was the United States Tag Team champion with a guy that a lot of people don't remember, but was really a strong baby face in these middle 70s years for McGurk and Watts Jay Clayton. [01:29:27] And so he pretty much wrestled there around Oklahoma, which, that territory, you know, Oklahoma, Louisiana, parts of Mississippi, parts of Missouri, but that's it. That was his home. And so Hodge had a really, not a fantastic, outstanding, but pretty steady and solid 75. So we put him at number 67, number 66, a guy that I saw in 1980 for the first time live. [01:29:56] Now, I had seen him wrestle on television before. I saw him live, but in 1980. [01:30:02] And I got a chance to meet this guy in St. Louis this past year in May for the St. Louis hall of Fame. And he was one of a couple of guys I got to tell how much I appreciated them and their career. But It's Bob Orton Jr. And in 1975, Bob Orton Jr. Is a tall, skinny guy. He is being put over in a tag team for the first time with Dick Slater and Jim Barnett was absolutely over the moon with Dick Slater and Bob Orton Jr. And he put them over in Georgia as a great tag team. They had a secondary version, a regional version of the World Junior Heavyweight championship called the NWA United States Junior Heavyweight Championship. And Bob Orton Jr. Had that for several months in 1975. [01:30:56] And just about every title they had in Georgia, they had the Macon Tag Team Championship, they had the Macon Heavyweight Championship, they had the Columbus Heavyweight Championship, a Columbus Tag Team Championship, the Georgia Tech, I mean, almost all of those. Slater and Bob Orton Jr. One or the other kind of had those in 75. So we put Bob Orton Jr. At number 66. Number 65. We have a guy who came out of St. Joseph, Missouri and He got into wrestling in the early 70s, had a terrible car accident that sidelined him and kept him out of the business. [01:31:33] But he made a comeback in 1975 we're talking about and we just recently lost him not long ago, several months ago, Ed Wiskowski, who you would know later on as Colonel De Beers. But Ed Wiskowski was a fantastic, fantastic worker. If you go back to our podcast this year where I visiting with Jerry Oates, who had a dynamic feud with Ed Wiskowski over the Central States Heavyweight Championship, Oates will tell you that Ed could work and he was a great worker. I still remember in a tag team elimination match that Frank Culbertson and Mike Rogers were showing on YouTube from Portland. [01:32:20] And Ed Wiskowski was one of the guys in that elimination tag team match. And I was just watching it and just marveling at his, the way he moved in the ring and the bumps he was taking and the punches he was throwing. And Ed Wiskowski is on his way here in 75 to a great career. And it started out right there in his home base of Kansas City where he won the Central States Heavyweight Championship from Jerry Oates. And he got a couple of title shots with the champion and he got that first week that Terry Funk won the title in December. [01:32:57] He went to Kansas City right after Miami and Jerry Oates got matches with him and so did Edwiskowski. So we put Ed in here at 65, number 64, I have tiger Jeet Singh. [01:33:11] And Tiger Jeet Singh was on the ballot this year for the Wrestling observer hall of Fame. And I thought he should get some consideration. [01:33:19] He is largely forgotten these days, but man, he had a great feud with Antonio Inoki in New Japan Pro Wrestling in 75 and he won that NWF heavyweight championship when he beat Inoki, which Inoki putting a guy over tells you something back in March. [01:33:41] That was in Hiroshima, Japan, and over 12,000 fans there for that one. And he defended that belt successfully throughout 75. [01:33:51] It's about three months and he dropped the belt back to Anoki in June in front of a big crowd in Tokyo. But Tiger Jeep Singh, I bring him in at number 64, number 63, a guy who's primarily known for the AWA and on the downside of his career. But man, in 1975, Mad Dog Vashon could still work. [01:34:14] Maurice Vachon was a big time heel in professional wrestling in 1975, especially in the NWA and he was working in that Dallas loop that we talked about just a few minutes ago. He beat Don Leo Jonathan, he beat Don Morocco, he beat Blackjack Mulligan, and he beat Joe Leduc. I mean, he had Red Bastine was pushing Mad Dog Rashon to the moon. I mean, Red had some no DQ matches with him that were phenomenal. And he also went over to West Texas. They were trading talent back and forth by 1975 between Dallas and Amarillo. He went over there and worked. But he had the Texas Brass Knucks Championship there for a while in 75, and he had a brief reign as a tag team champion with Baron Von Raschke in the Central States area. But he lost that brass knuckles title toward the end of the year because superstar Billy Graham was coming in. And superstar Billy Graham was going to be the heel that they were going to push for the next few months there in the late summer of 75. But, I mean, you pick up something like Wrestling Monthly magazine or something, and boom, there's Mad Dog Bashon with the teeth missing in the bottom. And, you know, he was just. He just looked like a rough and tough professional wrestler. And he really could work in the ring, especially here in 1975. 62, number 62, here's a guy I really struggled with because I really wanted to rank him higher. But at the end of the year. [01:35:59] Well, I'll explain it to you. But in 75, he had a great year because he was. He started out in West Texas and he beat Dick Murdoch, who was the NWA International Heavyweight champion. And so Negro beat him. And Negro had a great reputation in West Texas. He had won the King of the Texas Death match tournament in 1972. He went through everybody, and he eventually went through Terry Funk, and he eventually went through Dorie Funk Senior in the main event. [01:36:33] And Dorie Funk Sr. Was known as the King of the Texas Death Matches. And he put over Cyclone Negro. That's how much Dorie Funk Sr. Believed in Negro and how much he wanted to put back into the business. So he pushed Negro and did the deal for him. [01:36:50] And Negro held that international heavyweight championship for maybe three fourths of the year. He defended it in Amarillo territory. He went to Kansas City and went around there for a week or two. He went to Oklahoma for Watson McGurk and went around for a week or two. He went to the Gulf coast territory down in Mobile, in Pensacola, and went around there for a week or two. He really treated it there from Amarillo in West Texas over to the Panhandle of Florida and up to St. Louis. [01:37:27] He really treated that international heavyweight championship like the traveling NWA world title there in 75. I mean, he went around in different territories as a traveling champion defending that title, and I just really respect him for that, and I. I wanted to put him up higher. And then toward the end of the year, he went to Florida and he teamed up with Omar Negro as his kayfabe brother. And they won the Florida tag team titles in September and held them through the end of the year till December. But it wasn't the same as his singles run in the first three fourths of the year or half the year with that international. I wish he would have held that international title for the rest of the year, and I wish he would have had the opportunity to defend it in Florida and in Crockett and some of the. And maybe out in California. [01:38:21] That really could have put something on that international title, which essentially belonged to the West Texas territory. [01:38:28] But Negro traveled with it and did a great job in 75 and finished up there as he would move on in 76 into Florida territory. But I really have gotten a lot of appreciation for Cyclone Negro. All right, number 61, we have another guy who's kind of known as a West Texas guy, Blackjack Mulligan. He had a really active year in 75. He started out, he had the international championship by also beating Dick Murdoch back at the very beginning of the year. He also held the Texas tag team titles over in the Dallas part of Texas with Black Jack Lanza that year. [01:39:08] And Lanza had been feuding on top with Fritz Von Erich over the American heavyweight title. Also, as we mentioned, Mulligan. [01:39:18] Well, actually, we haven't gotten to Lanza yet, have we? Haven't gotten to Lanza yet. But anyway, Mulligan debuted around late February, memory serves, in Crockett. And he was in a big feud with one of the top baby faces, Wahoo McDaniel. And he. [01:39:39] I don't know, it just didn't go anywhere. So he ended up going back to Lanza and teaming up with Lanza in the ww and they won the World Tag Team Championship. We talked about that in the podcast with Giannarelli in August by beating Dominic Denucci and Pat Barrett. And they held those titles for what I considered to be a short amount of time. It was from August to November, and they lost the titles to Tony Parisi and Louis Cerdan, Gino Brito later on, and he went back to Crockett because of the October plane crash and because of Johnny Val, and they didn't know if he was going to come back. And Ric Flair, they didn't know if he was coming back. So they had a hole on the heel side they needed to fill, and they filled it with Blackjack Mulligan and he would stay there. And coming up in subsequent years, it's going to be a lot of fun talking about what Blackjack Mulligan did in 76, 77 and 78 in the Jim Crockett territory. But Mulligan worked on top a couple times with Bruno before he left and put Bruno over, of course, in the world title matches on his way out. [01:40:50] All right, number 60. [01:40:52] Number 60. We've got another Japanese wrestler, Russia Kamura and Russia Kimura. [01:41:01] Is that right? Am I. [01:41:05] No, that's not right. I'm not to rusher yet. [01:41:09] Number he's number 58. Number 60 is High Chief Peter Maivia. [01:41:15] Getting confused my own, if you could see my notes. And I've moved some people around and struck through some and changed positions and finally I just said, okay, this is the list. Just, you know, I put it in in pencil, then I put it in ink, and now I've carved it in stone. So number 60 is the high Chief, Peter Maivia. And he was active across the National Wrestling alliance, and he is known primarily in the west coast, right in San Francisco and LA. And he did work there quite a bit in 75, but he had a run in Dallas with Big Time Wrestling and Fritz von Eric in 75, and he worked there by beating John Tolos, who also is known as a Los Angeles wrestler primarily. [01:42:06] But John Tolos and Peter Maivia had a program in Dallas at the Dallas Loop in Dallas and Houston and all of those towns. And Mavita beat Tolos in November for that Texas heavyweight title. And he is in a lot of great matches at the top of the cards there in Dallas, Fort Worth and Houston. And he beat Big Bill Miller there in December. And he teamed up with Red Bastine, who of course is over as the booker there and as a baby face. And he and Peter Maivia made a great team. Had a great match with Buddy Wolf and Han Schroeder there right around Christmas time. And overall, it was an interesting year for the High Chief Peter Maivia, but always interesting. Until I started studying for these podcasts we did in 75, I didn't know that he ever worked in Texas. Texas. But not only did he work there, he held the Texas heavyweight title. So he's number 60. All right, number 59. [01:43:07] Number 59 on my list is going to be. Let's see, he is El Solitario. [01:43:15] El Solitario Had a very notable year in 75. And he beat El Cardinal in Monterrey, he beat Attila in Mexico City, and he beat Destroyer in Juarez, Mexico. He was in several high profile tag team matches as a lot of wrestlers are in the Mexican Lucha libre style. And he won a match on the Big UWA debut show in January Will Mel Mask and Ray Mendoza. And he also wrestled there on several events throughout the rest of the year. [01:43:51] And he might be the baby face of the year in, in in Mexico. I'm not quite sure, but I know he had a phenomenal year. El Solitario. And we put him at number 59 based on the research I did. [01:44:06] All right, number 58, we have Russia Kimura. So I finally get to Russia. Almost downgraded him there. Didn't mean to. Russia is number 58. [01:44:17] Breakout year in Japanese wrestling. [01:44:20] He worked a lot for the iwe. He won his first championship by beating Mad Dog Vachon. And he defended that title multiple times throughout the year. [01:44:33] And he was active in several IWE tours, such as the Bigger Big Winter Series, the Big Golden Series and the Big Summer Series. And he had a lot of tag team partners, Mighty Anyway and Animal Hamaguchi. And he wrestled a lot against a lot of the foreign heels. Some we mentioned there, Gypsy Joe also. [01:44:55] And he crossed over to All Japan at the end of the year in the Open Championship League tournament, which ran from December 7th through the 18th. And he immediately was put into matches with Baba and Saruta and Dori Funk Jr. And Abdullah the Butcher and Dick Murdoch and all the big stars at the time of All Japan Pro Wrestling. But they really put him in a prominent position. He took a loss to Baba, took a draw with Saruta, took a loss from Dori Funk Jr. A draw with Abdullah the Butcher and a draw with Dick Murdoch. That's pretty good for coming in from another promotion and being put in the mix with all these great stars that were on top in all Japan. So Russia Kimura we put at number 58, at number 57, a guy that I talk about quite a bit because I don't want his memory to be lost. And I consider him to be the epitome of a Southern Wrestling babyface. And that is Ken Lucas at number 57. Ken Lucas was very active in the territory that he would be active in a lot in his career. [01:46:07] That's one that's not remembered a lot today, which is why we do a series on it in our podcast series with Michael Norris on the Gulf coast territory, which was founded by Roy Welch. Back with Buddy Fuller, his son. And they sold it to Roy's nephew, Lee Fields. And they're on the downhill side here toward the end of 75, as a matter of fact, they almost sold the territory to Jim Barnett at the end of 75, and that deal fell through. And they'd hang on for a few more years before selling out to Ron Fuller. But the Gulf coast heavyweight championship was a big deal in the Gulf coast territory. And to all those fans from Pensacola across the coast to Mobile, Alabama, and up to Hattiesburg, Mississippi, and Dothan, Alabama, and some of those Gulfport, Mississippi, just some great, great wrestling towns down there still here in 75. And Ken Lucas was their champion. He also won a title that I didn't know existed until I started doing the research for the show. And I want to talk to Michael about these two titles coming up on a 7 on a 1976 show we're going to do. But he won the city of Pensacola heavyweight title, and he also won, or actually he was awarded the city of Mobile heavyweight title. So in this era, there are still championships there. There was a city championship in Pensacola. There was a city championship in Mobile. There was a city championship in Columbus, Georgia. There was a city championship in Macon, Georgia. And these city titles from way back in the early territory days where they really needed a championship for just the. That town still existed here. And Lucas held those titles here in 1975, and he also was a Gulf coast tag team champion with Nick Kozak, and they beat the perennial champions down there at this time, the bounty hunters. And so not only that, to add to his gold collection, he won the NWA Alabama heavyweight title from Bill Malone in October. And overall, he ended up with his eighth Gulf coast heavyweight title reign before the end of the year in November by beating the Duke Miller in Gulfport, Mississippi. So, man, most of the year he spent with every title you can imagine in the Gulf coast territory. And Ken Lucas, who I've often talked about him, he, he early in his career, he worked out in West Texas, and he got to watch Dory Funk Senior work those Texas rings from the back of the building. He stood the back of the building because he had the first or second match on the card. [01:49:08] And he'd watch Dory Funk Senior work every night in the main event. [01:49:13] And if you've seen Ken Lucas, you've probably seen Dorie Funk Senior because he worked a lot like him. And he would. He would work, he would get beat down by the heel and make his comeback very, very similar to Dory Funk senior. So number 57, Ken Lucas, number 56. We have the world junior heavyweight champion. In 1975, he won that title for the second time by beating Ken Mantel. That's Hero Matsuda. And he toured the United States and Japan with that title and defended it as a traveling champion, just like the NWA World champion did back in those days. Had a pretty hefty schedule. [01:49:55] Had great matches against Bob Orton Jr. And Al Madrill and Danny Hodge, and probably most of all. And he had great matches, too, with another babyface that was big in my day that a lot of people don't remember because of the success of his brother. But Ricky Gibson was a fantastic worker, and he had great matches over that world Junior heavyweight title with Matsuda in 75. [01:50:23] So we got Hero Matsuda, number 56. At number 55, we got Killer Carl Cox. [01:50:32] You want to talk about, show me the picture of a wrestling heel. [01:50:38] You want to show a picture of Killer Carl Cox? [01:50:41] And he had some fantastic matches in 75 with Bobo Brazil up in Detroit. He wrestled a little bit with the young fella, Stan Hansen. They had a couple of matches. [01:50:53] He worked across Texas quite a bit, ended up Oklahoma by the middle of the year and won that North American heavyweight title. And he came in as tag team partners with Dick Murdoch. And eventually he and Dick split, with Murdoch going more baby face and Killer Carl Cox staying heel. And they had a program. So he was probably at the height of his heel powers in 1975. And we like Killer Carl Cox. I've become friends online with his son and have exchanged a lot of great messages and information about Killer Carl Cox, number 54. I mean, this guy goes back to the late 60s. He was in a James Bond movie. I think it was Goldfinger. He was a dude that back then nowadays you wouldn't probably feel that way watching wrestling. But back then in the kayfabe era, Toro Tanaka was a scary dude. And of course, he had the nickname professor, which always gave me this image of this Asian evil professor guy that knew all of these things that I couldn't really see what he was doing to people. But he had these nerve holds. And I was pretty convinced he had some other tools in his trunks. And he was doing some dastardly things to these baby faces that looked like they were in excruciating pain. [01:52:26] He. [01:52:27] He had a pretty good 75 in Florida. He was in Georgia there for quite some time. And before the year was over, he was on top there in Georgia for the first part of the year. And then he was tag Team champions with Jody Hamilton the Assassin. They held the Columbus tag team championship and they had matches with the two wrestlings, Mr. Wrestling 1 and Mr. Wrestling 2. [01:52:55] But then he got back with his longtime partner for the last half of the year in Georgia and had some great matches. [01:53:03] That would be Mr. Fuji. So Professor Toro Tanaka and Mr. Fuji tagged up there and again in Georgia. And that's one of the things I liked about the southern territories too, is that heels wrestled heels at times. And so Tanaka and Abdullah the Butcher, they had a program there in Georgia over the Georgia heavyweight title. And so it's a great year for Professor Toro Tadaka. So I ranked him number 54. At number 53, we got a guy who was very prominent in Texas on the Dallas end of things and without people like us in our podcast, and I mean El Grand Marcus would probably be forgotten and is largely forgotten as a wrestler today. But he was a masked heel. He wore a white mask, he had white trunks, but he was a heel and he was over big time in that big time wrestling territory in Dallas and Fort Worth and Houston. And the first part of the year in 75, he was managed by Tony Rocco, who was going under the Persona of the Baron. [01:54:11] He was under a mask also. [01:54:14] And they got into a program with Al Madrill, who was a young baby face they were trying to push. So they put him with the Dom at heels, Marcus and Barron, and they would have matches. They had a program of the Mask versus the Texas title. And you know, Rocco ended up being unmasked. The Baron gets unmasked as Tony Rocco. He has to leave the territory, but Gran Marcus stays and he's there almost the entire year. And he turned baby Face because he turned on the Baron. They had a mask versus mask match there in the summertime and then he teamed up with Madrill and he had tag team match against John Tolos and superstar Billy Graham, who was the new heel in town. So he probably peaked in the first part of 75 and tapered off a little bit after he turned to face. He just wasn't quite as effective as he was before. [01:55:14] But I mean, he was a big, big, big performer in Houston. [01:55:19] Really was over with the people that went to very mixed crowd there in Houston of a lot of different melting pots there from south of the border and in Houston. A lot of oil business workers there. And he was a draw there and sold a lot of tickets for Paul Bosch and Fritz Von Erich in Houston. El Grand Marcus at number 53, another guy that goes hand in hand with that is the guy I've got ranked next, and that's Jose Lothario. [01:55:55] And Dusty Rhodes once said that Jose Lothario was the best baby face he ever saw. Which coming from what a lot of people consider as the best baby face they ever saw, Dusty Rhodes, that's a pretty big compliment. And Lothario was involved in a lot of feuds during the year. And you can check out our podcast with me and Greg Klein talking about that territory. In 75, he had some taped fist matches with the superstar Billy Graham. He had an arm wrestling contest, of course, which he lost. I mean, Billy Graham comes out there with those big pythons. I mean, for it to be believable, Lothario is not going to beat Billy Graham in an arm wrestling contest. Right. [01:56:40] They also had a match, a bear hug versus the Claw. [01:56:45] And Lothario beat Superstar to capture the brass knuckles championship there in September. [01:56:51] And he had a great year that year. He had wins against Blackjack Mulligan, Mad Dog Bashon, John Tolos, and he tagged up with Madrill. And he also had a tag team with Joe Leduc, who was in there as a babyface there in the Dallas territory. So a great year for Lothario. And we will put him at number 52. And then the guy we talked about who was also there at that particular time. And I put all three of these guys right here together. [01:57:21] Lothario, Gran Marcus and Superstar Billy Graham. [01:57:25] Part of the reason that I put Billy Graham here at the 50 line at 51 and not a little bit higher, if I do 1 for 76, he will definitely go up the rankings. But a lot of 1975, superstar Billy Graham was in a tag team. And it's also going to be why Dusty Rhodes is ranked a little bit lower in this list than maybe you would have thought that he would have been. But Dusty Rhodes and Billy Graham had a tag team in AWA for Vern Gagne for a majority of 1975. They worked together on top there and they wrestled Nick Bockwinkle and Ray Stevens for the AWA world title on several occasions. And they had a big six man program where Andre the Giant came in. Can you imagine that? Six man tag team, Dusty Rhodes, Superstar Billy Graham and Andre the Giant on one side of the ring that fantastic. [01:58:21] And eventually that summertime wore out, which up there in the Midwest, in the AWA in Minnesota, Iowa, North Dakota, South Dakota, Colorado, Southern Canada. What a great time in the to be in the summertime. I mean, it's just absolutely beautiful. And so they Spent most of the summer there as a tag team. [01:58:46] Dusty goes back to Florida at the end of the year. Superstar Billy Graham goes to Texas, and he spends the majority of the end of Texas there before he makes it back to the 3wF up in the east coast back in late October, where he tagged up with Spiros Arion at the Boston Garden, and he started doing television interviews, building himself up for what's going to be a huge program with Bruno Sammartino. I think they had one match at the end of 75, they're going to have a bunch more matches in 76. And set the stage for what's going to happen there in the next two years in the www. The Worldwide Wrestling Federation. So superstar Billy Graham is number 51. And that concludes the first 50 of my top 100 wrestlers in 1975 here on New Year's Eve. Before I let you go, I want to remind you I'll be back tomorrow on New Year's Day with another show with my top 50 wrestlers. We'll go from number 50 to number one and I'll give you my thoughts on each one, just like I did today and we will do that tomorrow. Don't forget to subscribe at my substack, the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel, and you can search for it there and it'll come up. And I put out a daily free newsletter called the Daily Chronicle. Comes right to your email inbox. All the archives are on the sub stack there that you can go back and look. And a lot of little mini bios that I've written all this year and that will continue on into 2026 and you can become a member there and get that newsletter for no investment whatsoever except your time to invest in a little bit of wrestling history knowledge when I send you the email every day. [02:00:41] We also have our audio and video podcast there on the substack. [02:00:46] And if you become a premium investor in my work as a wrestling historian, for just $5 a month or $50 a year, you can save $10. If you become a yearly premium investor, you'll get all my special content that I do research on. And here at the end of the year, I've been doing yearly recaps for all the years on the fives of the territory. [02:01:13] So I've sent out a recap of 1925, 1935, 1945 and 1955, and we still have 1965, 75 and 85 to come out and come to those premium investors, plus the other content. And we got some special things planned for 2026 that I think you're really going to like. You can also join our Facebook group, the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. We're up to over 2,500 members now and we'd love to have you there if you'd like to come over and participate with the great community of pro wrestling history enthusiasts that we have. And there's daily posts there in the Facebook group and we have a lot of participation and a lot of great things. We take pro wrestling history very, very seriously at the Time Tunnel. And so that's the. That's sort of the feel and the culture of the Facebook group. [02:02:07] And all our video episodes are on YouTube at the pro Wrestling Time Tunnel video channel. I want to remind you I'm also on stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw. This week we're coming out with episode seven of the Roy Welch family legacy. That's going to cover 1970 to 1975, which going to include the expansion of the territory, Jerry Jarrett's rise as booker, Jerry Lawler's introduction, the big Fargo Lawler feud, the Jackie Fargo gets his head shaved. A lot of great things in that episode. Roy Welch's health is declining and starting to fail and he's got Alzheimer's and it's starting to really show up. That's all in episode seven. And we'll conclude that series next week with episode eight. And then for a big finale, we have a superstar guest lined up to blow off that series on stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw. [02:03:02] Come back tomorrow for New Year's Day and we'll count down my top 50 wrestlers in 1975. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you've had a great year and best wishes for you coming into this new year of 2026. Thank you all very much for your support. Thanks for listening. Let me hear from you. Want to get your feedback, get your thoughts on my list. Any particular wrestler you want to comment on. Shoot them to me in the sub stack. Shoot them to me on the Twitter on X. You can follow me onyrichards4. Would love to have you in my community any way possible. [02:03:38] So thank you so much for listening. We'll see you back here tomorrow on New Year's Day. So long from the Richards Ranch. This is Tony Richards saying best wishes for a safe, safe, safe New Year's Eve. [02:03:51] Don't get out there and be foolish with the amateurs. Be a professional. [02:03:56] Stay home, enjoy yourself in a nice, safe place so that we can enjoy each other into 2026. Thanks everybody. If you want better neighbors, you'll be a better neighbor. So long from the bluegrass. [02:04:11] 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 of professional wrestling great. We'll release a new episode soon. Don't you dare miss.