[00:00:02] Speaker A: Time for the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Podcast.
[00:00:05] Speaker B: We've got lots and lots of things to talk about and to do today,
[00:00:08] Speaker A: covering the territories from the 1940s to the 1990s. It's the best thing going today, 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] Speaker B: Welcome to another edition of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel History Podcast. I'm your host, Tony Richards, welcoming you in for what I hope is an amazing big show that we've got prepared for you today. We're coming to you live from the Richards Ranch in Western Kentucky, my childhood home. I lived here from 1963, thereabouts. We lived in a couple of other little places, my mom and dad, after I was born here in this little town of Lola, Kentucky is really not even a town, it's more like a village and it's more sparsely populated today than it was when I came into the world in 1963.
But we moved out here around 1977 or so. I think I was going. I was between my freshman and sophomore years in high school and helped my dad and some other men build the ranch house out here that mom and dad lived in their entire rest of their lives.
My dad passing away in 2023.
And then you may be familiar with the fact that I had lived in Columbia, Missouri from about the time of Y2K until last summer in 2025.
At the end of 2024, the lady who lived here in the neighboring little piece of property was my mom and dad's friends throughout their lives. They. He passed away the day after my dad did.
Excuse me, I got little, got a little hitch in my voice today.
He passed away the day after my dad did. And then she passed away, oh, about a year later.
And so her daughter called me and wanted to know if I'd be interested in purchasing this property.
And my mom just turned 82 this year. And so I thought, hey, I need my job, my regular shoot job as an executive coach. I can do that anywhere. As long as I got Internet, I can do my job. So it doesn't really matter where I live.
So I packed up everything, bought this little piece of property, worked on this house for about a nine month period, I guess, and then relocated here in the last week of July, 2025. And so we're coming up here on a year of me living here at what I call the bunk house on the Richards Ranch. And so we do our podcast here every single week with some of the amazing analysts, commentators, historians, wrestlers and people who have contributed and been in the business.
And so today is no exception. Steve Giannarelli is going to be here and we're going to do the first half of 1976. Well, now actually we're going to do like the middle of 76. So we're picking up when we finished our last episode, Bruno was in the hospital with the broken neck from Stan Hansen. So today we're picking up from there. We're talking about Bruno in the hospital, his recovery, and the amazing return that they did with Stan Hansen. We're talking about the Ali and Anoki mixed wrestler boxing match from 76 and that closed circuit early attempt at a pay per view. And so we're talking about all of that.
And then I also am going to do a segment today on Dory Funk Sr. And I'm going to be recapping 1965 and his career, talking about the earliest parts of 1966 and get that new segment off the ground here. So that's going to be occasionally when we can, we're going to do a segment there on Dorie Funk Senior and we're going to cover the entire year of 1966, which was a really pivotal year for Amarillo and West Texas wrestling and a pivotal year for the Funk family. And I'll tell you all about that here in segment too.
Then in our final segment today, George Shire, the historian who inducted me into the Trago Stairs hall of Fame here a couple of weekends ago, will be here.
And we had a viewer and listener write in and ask who George thought was the greatest AWA champion of all time. And so I took that question and expounded on it and told George, I want to hear your top five AWA World Heavyweight Champions of all time. So George is going to be here and we're going to do that countdown. George's Top five AWA World Heavyweight Champions of All Time hey, if you haven't subscribed, please hit that plus like subscribe, follow whatever that button is on your podcast app. If you're listening on Apple or Spotify or something like that, there should be a button.
I helped a lady at Trago Stez a couple weekends ago subscribe to the show and hers was a plus sign. So whatever that button is, do me a favor and hit that and subscribe to our show so that you won't miss a single episode. Every Wednesday morning at 5am Central, 6am Eastern, we drop and you'll be notified through your app that, hey, there's a new show with that crazy Tony Richards in your podcast. Appreciate for you to listen to. And if you're listening on Apple podcast, please hit that five star review.
Excuse me, I'm going to do that from time to time. I've got, I caught something in Iowa while I was there and then it's taken me now about a week and a half. I'm just slowly but surely getting over it. So I apologize. Just bear with me.
It's a throat gets scratchy and I have to cough.
I hope this thing is on its way out. But on Apple podcasts and some other podcast apps you can give us a five star review if you hit that. That increases our visibility out there and helps more people find the Pro Wrestling Time tonal history show and that would help me quite a bit.
We just, just added the latest my appearance. I had two appearances on Talking Memphis Wrestling. I did one from Waterloo the night that I arrived there and then I did one last week talking about the hall of Fame induction. And we also talked about the death of TNA series on the Dark side of the Ring that had a whole lot about Jeff Jarrett, who of course was a second generation wrestler here in the Tennessee territory and he was the founder of tna. So they asked me to be a guest on Talking Memphis wrestling. So those two episodes are now in the playlist on our YouTube channel. Tony's guest appearances on other podcasts, so you can easily access that there. And so we're always curating that material. The History of Texas Wrestling series that I'm doing on stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw, we've done five episodes. Episode six is going to drop this week and we always try to put it in that playlist. Tony's guest appearances on Briscoe and Bradshaw.
So that our YouTube channel is organized and it's easy for you to find stuff that I'm doing and stuff that we're curating there for your wrestling enjoyment of the kayfabe era and the territory era of pro wrestling. I just added about 4,50 matches to that playlist of 1976. So there's a, there's a playlist being curated on there. Of course we're doing 1976 territory reviews here on the show, which is our most popular segment by far. And we're trying to add video content on our YouTube channel so that you can go there and watch some of the things that we're discussing here on the podcast. It's called 1976 Wrestling. And so we just added 50 or 60 more wrestling matches and interviews and shows just added a cool Muhammad Ali show when he was hyping up the Ali Anoki fight there. So check that out. Okay, let's get this show on the road and give my voice a little bit of a rest. And welcome into the Richard's Ranch, Steve Giannarelli. As we're talking wwwf 1976. Hello again everybody. Welcome to the pro wrestling Time Tunnel History show. I'm your host, Tony Richards, live from the Richards ranch in Western Kentucky. And joining me for today's episode is our WWWF analyst and overall great guy, Steve Gennarelli. Hey Steve, how are you man?
[00:09:20] Speaker C: Hey, it's good to be here with you, Tony. This is something I've been looking forward to for a long time. It's one of the earliest memories I have of wrestling. So I'm really happy to talk about this with you today.
[00:09:31] Speaker B: Oh my gosh, me too.
On the last episode we left Bruno in the hospital. So we got to get him out of the hospital after, after he suffered the lariat from Stan Hansen and got his neck broken. And I remember the headlines of all the wrestling magazines. Doctors told me I may never wrestle again and all of that stuff. So we got all of that coming up today. Plus the great Ali and Anoki mixed boxer versus wrestler match that was promoted in 1976. We got a whole lot of things to talk about today before we get into the show though. Wrestling fans, if you're going to step into the ring like old school legends, you better smell like you belong there. I think Vic Van Vader could have used some Grizzly Up. So this week's sponsor is a Grizzly up soap company in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Right here in Western Kentucky.
A great cute couple. As a matter of fact a couple of weeks ago they had a feature in one of our local newspapers here about their life and the Grizzly up soap company. And I really appreciate all of our listeners ordering some soap. We got a great special feature called get on your soapbox which we're going to be doing here really soon on the pro wrestling History Time Tunnel show. Grizzly Oak soap company is in Hopkinsville and they make small batch handcrafted goats milk soaps made for real people who actually do real things. Whether you're channeling totally savage, you're going force with grit, cooling off with Arctic breeze or keeping it classic with tobacco and bay leaf or oatmeal, milk and honey. These bars all hit different, all natural ingredients, long lasting scent. Your bathroom is gonna smell. Well mine smells like Kentucky bourbon. Yours gonna smell like whatever soap you get because it really does make your bathroom smell good. It's tough enough for the grind, but gentle on your skin. Their motto says it best. If you're gonna be a bear, be a grizzly and smell good while you do it. Shop the full lineup of fantastic
[email protected] or swing by their storefront, 200 East 9th street here in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. It's Grizzly Up Soap Company. Get clean, stay savage, and be a grizzly. All right, wonderful. Thank you. And I appreciate everybody. You made one our last week's episode.
The last two weeks, three weeks. The last three weeks where we've done the trago thes hall of fame series shows with Ron Fuller and George Shire and Jimmy Garvin and James Beard. You guys have made those our biggest listened to and watched episodes of all time.
And I really, really, really do appreciate that. Thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you for hitting that like button, that subscribe button, that follow button. Whatever podcast application you use to get our show or if you're getting it on YouTube or substack, make sure you hit the subscribe button. So you always know. You know, we drop a new show every single Wednesday morning at 5:00am Central, 6:00am Eastern Time, and you don't want to miss what we've got coming up for the rest of this year. As we continue to talk about 1976, Steve, I'm already starting to make out my top wrestlers of 1976 countdown list.
So I'm ready for the New Year's weekend that's coming up. And I started that last year and got great feedback on it. So we're going to do that in 76. We got a big Thanksgiving show coming up. Just a whole lot of stuff happening here. We got two more mailbag shows to do. Which, by the way, that was also a very highly rated show. It actually was the highest rated show until the next show came out. So I appreciate everybody submitting your great questions and the great feedback that we got on the last mailbag show. And Steve will be back in late September. You know, I've got people, Steve, that are requesting more mailbag shows.
[00:13:37] Speaker C: So I love doing with you and I always learn a lot and the questions are always so good. So whenever you need me on the mailbag, I'll be back for that.
[00:13:47] Speaker B: Oh, man. Like, well, I'm. They're asking for it more often, so I don't know what the frequency should be. But I mean, if, if our Listeners and our viewers want it, we want to give it to them. And you know how much I enjoy talking about wrestling history. So.
All right, so we're in the WWW F 1976. When we last left our heroes.
Stan Hansen was gloating, talking about, I know in a lot of the wrestling magazines, he was talking about, bring on this person and that person and this champion and that champion. And I don't care who I face, just give me people and I'll wreck them just like I did Bruno. And so he broke Bruno's neck in the ring. It was actually an accident, but it was promoted as a terrible, terrible, devastating thing.
And so where do you want to start this week, Steve?
[00:14:41] Speaker C: Well, I don't think we touched on this. Maybe we did, but the following month at msg, normally they would have had just a rematch with Bruno and Hansen, but Bruno was injured, he was on the shelf, and they had to cancel some shows. And then they had replacements come in for Bruno. In this particular MSG show was Stan Hansen in the main event, going against kind of the number two baby face at the time, Ivan Putsky. You know, and Ivan Putsky is a really muscular, rugged guy. He still has kind of the Igor look, kind of a beer belly, but really powerful powerhouse. And he faces the same outcome as Bruno did. He gets the lariat, he gets knocked out of the ring, he gets bloodied and counted out. And Monsoon and some others come into the ring to check on Putsky. But Hansen continues his, you know, bloodshed all over the territory, and he just seems unstoppable at this point. So that's. That's how the May MSC show ended. And now all, uh, all efforts and all energies are towards Shea Stadium now, which has the biggest Ali vs Inoki match, the Bruno vs Hanson rematch, and also Andre against Chuck Wepner, another boxer versus wrestler match, and some other decent matches as well.
[00:16:07] Speaker B: You know, a lot of these mixed matches, even though the show didn't do as well as they had hoped it would, but a lot of territories are having these wrestler boxer matches.
So that was kind of like.
That was the booking flavor idea of the time, you know, to have the wrestler and the. And the boxer do a mat do a match together.
[00:16:34] Speaker C: I think you gotta give a lot of this influence to Vince McMahon Jr. Yeah, he's not the promoter yet, he's just the announcer. But he's working a lot behind the scenes with, you know, his father. And also he's working with other promoters too, because he's selling them that this is A potentially a great avenue of income and revenue coming in. You're going to have the closed circuit of the Alenoki. You're going to have a wrestling card. You might have a boxer vs wrestler match on your card.
Like you said, Tony, it seems like most of the rest of the country was really kind of a mixed bag. I know Roy Shires in San Francisco. I think he took a bath on it. Really hated it.
But some of the other areas that did. Okay.
But I think what we need to really focus in before we get to the Bruno and Hansen is kind of more about the origin of the Ali Enoki. Like, you know, how and why and how did it come to be? Because that's one of the major stories of this year in 1976.
[00:17:38] Speaker B: I also want to mention too, Steve, just kind of. It wasn't the wwwf, but some of this other activity was Terry Funk, who was the NWA World champion. It gave a guy an opportunity to get into the business and be a big deal. Rocky Johnson and they, they were doing. They were promoting Rocky as the former boxer and a former sparring partner and those kinds of things. And those matches were main events and Drew. And they also had that in the Tennessee territory as well.
So Rocky Johnson owes part of his ability to get into the business to this big Ali Anoki match and boxer, wrestler thing. Of course, Rocky eventually goes total wrestler, but they. They promoted the boxer, wrestler, mixed match as a way to debut him.
And I know in a lot of the. In a lot of the newspapers, Terry was talking about, you know, when I beat this guy, I'm going to show wrestling is superior.
[00:18:39] Speaker C: Well, that's a really good point because it shows you that it wasn't just New York that was a success. It did have some poll in other areas.
And just to clarify, Rocky Johnson had been a pro wrestling veteran. I mean, he had wrestled in New York in the 60s. He had wrestled in territories throughout the 70s. But they're pushing him as this former sparring partner of Muhammad Ali. And. And that got a lot of leverage, like you said, that people just knowing that he was associated or affiliated with Muhammad Ali, it definitely made that match something to see with Terry Funk. So.
[00:19:16] Speaker B: So how did the whole Anoki Ali match idea first kind of come to fruition?
[00:19:24] Speaker C: Well, it kind of. It was kind of like all these things came together at one time. I think part of it was Muhammad Ali had really defeated most of the major names in boxing. He was kind of on top of the hill and, like, looking for new challengers and new things, And. And. And he. He had made a statement that he was looking for a, like, an Asian wrestler or someone he could have a mixed match with.
He was saying he was the greatest fighter in the world, so he wanted to take on a new challenge. You know, his people that were on his team, like Bundini, Brown and different people, they. They knew that this wrestling thing could. Could really just be a calamity and just be a terrible thing. But. But he. He saw dollar signs, and once he kind of threw up this challenge, Inoki's people came forward and said, we will pay you $6 million. Which, at the time was unheard of. You know, he had gotten big money for those previous fights with Joe Frazier and George Foreman and other people, but never got paid to the degree of $6 million. So that's what kind of made it into a reality. And Vince McMahon Jr. Had worked with Bob Arum a few years earlier in 1974. They worked jointly to try and do the close circuit of the Evel Knievel Snake River Canyon Jump, which is, as many people can remember, was a big flop.
And I guess Vince and some of the other people really, you know, took a bath on that one. Oh, my gosh. Said to me, tony, you know, some of the people who become, you know, billionaires and great successes, they have to have some failures along the way. And that's what happened.
[00:21:10] Speaker B: Steve, listen, when I was a kid, well, I was. I was about 12, I guess, at Christmas time, from, like, about 1974 through 1976, on my Christmas list was Evel Knievel stuff, the evil Knievel toys, the motorcycle, the track jump and all that. And that year of 76 was when they came out with the little rocket that Knievel was gonna sit in and jump over the canyon. And you wound up the. It had a crank on it, and you wound it up, and it shot the rocket out.
What a great memory.
[00:21:52] Speaker C: Oh, no, that is great. And I had gotten the one before I had gotten him on the motorcycle that you had to crank up like that. And I wanted the rocket, but I never got it. So if you got it, then more power to you.
[00:22:04] Speaker B: I did, and I wish I still had it. I don't know.
[00:22:06] Speaker C: Me, too.
[00:22:07] Speaker B: I don't know what I did with it. I know in April of that year, in 75, Ali was in Japan on a press deal. There was a US Reception for him, and the president of the Amateur Wrestling association was there. And Ali started bragging about, there's no Oriental fighter who will challenge me. And I'm going to give a million dollars to them if they can beat me. And this made big time newspaper headlines in Japan, which caused Anoki to accept the challenge and offer Ali $6 million to, to have it. And they're going to have it in the Budokan, so.
[00:22:49] Speaker C: Oh yeah, and you have to, we have to take a look at Antonio Inoki and what his, what kind of a person was he and what motivated him.
Fred Blassi called him a conceited jerk.
So, I mean, I'm not saying that, you know, that word is gospel, but I, I know there were some people in wrestling kind of felt that way about him. But, but you know, he and Baba had come up through the ranks in Japan in the 1960s and by 1972 and they worked in the same company together, Baba has, has earned the trust of, of the, the Funks and the Bruno's and people stateside. And he's doing really well with his promotion, which would end up being the All Japan promotion, which would be doing really, really well.
Now Inoki has his own promotion, New Japan Wrestling, which is kind of more of like an up and comer and he's, he's just in the process of making a talent arrangement with Vince McMahon Sr. In New York. So there's going to be a relationship between the Worldwide Wrestling Federation in New Japan Wrestling. And now all these things are just coming together. You know, Ali's challenge and Inoki wants to be this big thing and no, his people are putting the money up and so it's all coming together and so they're going to have it as a closed circuit at Shea Stadium. But the thing is, I mean, to the American people here, Inoki, even though he wrestled in Cleveland and he wrestled a little bit in the iwa, he was just like an unknown quantity. I mean, he couldn't, you know, any known American wrestler probably would have done better as far as, you know, hyping it or whatever. But at least he seemed like a legitimate guy, a guy who has a skilled background who could give Ali a fight, but he was really kind of unknown guy to the great majority of people.
[00:24:46] Speaker B: Yeah, it worked great. It was a perfect match in Japan because the way, well, Baba really focused on pure wrestling.
His All Japan promotion was total wrestling and he was a longtime member of the NWA and was bringing in the champion and they were having these 60 minute draw wrestling matches and his Champions Carnival tournament was exciting the way he booked it. Anoki went the mixed martial arts route.
So a lot of his matches were him against all these different martial artists around the world. You know, he brought in the, the Swiss or Dutch, I can't remember, jiu jitsu guy or the judo guy and he beat him. So all of these different champions of all these different disciplines and mixed martial arts stuff, he's known for it. And now he's going to mix boxing in which again in Japan makes total sense because that's the way he's promoted his promotion to be.
And really the idea that he wants to get across is that pro wrestling is better than any combat sport in the world.
That's what he's trying to get across. And he's the best pro wrestler in the world that's on the top of this mixed martial arts combat sports pyramid. And Ali is the greatest boxer in the world at this time. Like you said, he's beaten all his challengers. He got the majority of the prime years of his career taken away because of his non participation in the Vietnam War.
And so he comes back, he has the Thriller in Manila and all these great big boxing promotions in different places. And so now he knows he doesn't have that many years left in his career. He's trying to maximize the income that he's going to have.
So it seems like a good dollar for dollar thing for him. He starts calling Anoki the Pelican because anybody who's ever seen a picture of Antonio Nochi knows he has this protracted that sort of sticks out and he got kind of a banana shaped face and you can just imagine the promos that Ali are cutting on him at this particular time. Anoki's firing back and they have these big press conferences in New York City where Angelo Dundee, who's Ali's trainer, is the person who's conducting them. And Mike LaBelle is there from LA and Vince McMahon and there's all this consolidation of all these promoters trying to show a unified front for this big match.
[00:27:31] Speaker C: The one thing that really surprised me when I read that there was a book about the Ali Andoki match and has every detail you could imagine. But the one thing that I really had no clue on, but I learned from reading that book and some other sources, I learned how integral Fred Blassi and Gene LaBelle were to the trying to make the match and try to tell a story in the ring and to try and bring that professional wrestling match or the idea of booking the match or booking an ending. And so I had always thought, since I was a kid and I knew about this, I always thought that Blassie going to Japan to be by Ali's side was just show biz. Blassie's one of the great talkers. He'll be great doing the interviews. And he went on the Tonight show with McLean Stevenson and Johnny was off that night. And, you know, they, they hyped how, you know, Ali would need Enoki in the groin because Blassie taught him that. And, but, but, but the bottom line was Blassie and Gene Lebell had all these great ideas.
You know, one of Gene Lebell's things was he was gonna, you know, during the fight and the, all the, the sweat and, and craziness of the fight, Gene Lebel was going to check Ali's forehead and he was going to blade Ali and that would make it look like, you know, one of the Noki blows, you know, struck Ali so hard that he's bleeding and that they could have just wrote the ending of the match right there.
But, but what, what turned out so different than what anyone ever expected was nobody really wanted to play ball. Nobody wanted to go the pro wrestling route. Instead, it really became a shoot match or a legit.
And they, they did give Inoki some ground rules that he had to follow before the match. And a lot of it was you couldn't just like grapple and tackle Ali to the mat. There were certain rules that, that applied to Inoki that he couldn't just start grappling and wrestling and, and basically so the match happens. You know, Ali is there, he's trying to box. You know, Inoki is on his back kicking.
[00:29:45] Speaker B: And I mean, Steve, Steve, I don't want to interrupt you, but I just got to say, how much better would that match have been if it had been a no contest finish with Ali bleeding?
[00:29:58] Speaker C: Right, right. And that's, that's a, that's what they wanted to do. I mean, Inoki Noki was smart enough to know that just being in the ring with Ali and getting the rub from being in the match with Ali, he didn't even have to win the match. Just being in the ring would have been enough.
And, and, and he, Inoki was all up for the idea of, he wanted some kind of convoluted ending where he was going to, he was going to do a major blade job and he was going to hit Ali with his Enziguri kick, knock Ali to the mat, and, and then, you know, who knows who's going to win the match? But, but, but, you know, he made it. He made, he believed. Inoki believed that as long as he, you know, kind of knocked Ali down to the mat and got his hand raised, or potentially got his hand raised, even just being bloodied by Ali, he thought that that would make it more of a show or make it, make it go over. But, but again, all these people involved, they couldn't come to any kind of a consensus, this is what we're going to do.
[00:31:04] Speaker B: This is the, I mean, this is another incident where the people who didn't know what they needed to do did not listen to the experts.
They didn't listen to Blassie and LaBelle, who were experts not only in wrestling, but in judo and other combat sports. And that finish, in my estimation, was genius.
And I guess Ali had a little bit of reservation about cutting his pretty face, you know, but I mean, one, one little blade job was going to heal up. I mean, not enough to get stitches, but just enough to get blood and get blood on his face. And he was such a hyped up, pulse going guy, by the time the match started, he would have bled like a stuck hog. And they, and, and they could have just declared a no contest, which was a common finish back in those days. We don't see him, we don't see him in today very much, but back then in the mid-70s, they were a very common finish when you wanted both guys to come out strong and that's. That would have been a amazing finish to that match.
[00:32:18] Speaker C: Yeah, I think it's just, it was just the logistics, I think, of you're taking people from one sport, people from another sport and trying to mix them together. And it's like you can't do it unless there's some level of trust. And like you said, when it, when it came down to the bottom line in the 11th hour and Noki wanted, wanted it to be a shoot, but he had rules that were preventing him from really doing anything.
[00:32:43] Speaker B: Well, it's a, it's a, Like I
[00:32:44] Speaker C: said, like I said, it was the best.
[00:32:47] Speaker B: It was a microcosm of we will see like nine years later, Pro Wrestling usa. These wrestling promoters cannot come up with the final decision about what direction they want to go in.
[00:32:58] Speaker C: Right.
[00:32:59] Speaker B: It doesn't even have to have anybody else involved.
They just can't agree. And so that's, I, I will say
[00:33:06] Speaker C: just to kind of recap that this part of the show, I mean, while fans at the time and the critics, everyone kind of felt that the match was a complete bust, Inoki kind of stayed with that idea of I'm a great mixed martial art fighter. And he ended up getting other Boxers like Leon Spinks and karate guys like William Williams, other people in the future that he did be. And his legend became more of a real legend over time. And, and as we know in the 80s and even the 90s, wrestling flair in Korea, I mean, he cemented his legacy as a, as one of the all time great wrestling legends and then became a politician after that.
[00:33:51] Speaker B: So I guess a couple of things I just want to throw in here. Ali had a big time line, I guess on June 16th when he got to Tokyo and there's a lot of fans there at the airport to greet him. And he says, there will be no Pearl Harbor. Muhammad Ali has returned. Which, I mean, sent shockwaves through the Japanese press.
And then another thing that happened just a few days later that probably caused a lot of consternation in Ali's group because he's got Dundee, he's got Bundini, he's got Pacheco, he's got all of his guys around him. And Ali asked, okay, when do we do the rehearsal for this thing?
And Anoki said, there's no rehearsal. This is going to be a real fight. And it just really disturbed all these guys. I mean, they started going crazy and that's when they started wanting all the changes to the, to the rules and making sure that boxing was not diminished and all that. And that's probably about the time this great brilliant finish was thrown out. When, when Anoki was shooting on Ali. But shoot Ali, or he's actually working, but Ali thinks he's shooting, but he's like, this isn't going to be any exhibition, this is going to be a real fight. Which is what he has to say because he is the king of combat sports. So he's got to present this thing as legit and real.
But Ali doesn't realize he's working.
[00:35:27] Speaker C: And you know, they ended up scoring it like a boxing match. They had three judges, but this part of it was much like a wrestling thing.
One, one judge scored it, I think it was their pro wrestling judge scored it for Ali, another judge scored it for Inoki, and then the deciding vote went to Gene LaBelle and he called it a draw. So that part was very wrestling esque in the sense of, hey, we want to send everybody home happy, we're going to call it a draw. And from what I gathered, nobody went home happy other than the fans in New York who saw the Bruno thing, which we could talk about now if you'd like.
[00:36:05] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead.
[00:36:08] Speaker C: So, you know, and this is a match that still hasn't seen the live day, as far as I know. I mean, it was shown on closed circuit. And from what I gather, it was also replayed on hbo.
After that, they did show the match inside the card on hbo.
And basically Hansen, with a grand wizard by his side since blast, he was in Japan there in the ring waiting for Bruno. And when Bruno came out of the dugout, a lot of people looked at Bruno like Lazarus from the Bible. It's like he's alive. You know, people couldn't believe it. And you know, and Stan Hansen, I think was telling the story that, you know, this is New York.
These, there were people at this match, like women wearing mink coats and men in suits. And people were collapsing just seeing Bruno was there, that he made it and then the match begins. And I guess, well, not long ago
[00:37:03] Speaker B: I watched that whole documentary on Bruno and they do show Madison Square Garden and they show all these older Italian women who sat at ringside and who just.
They're just hypnotized by Bruno. I mean, they're just. It's almost like back in the 60s when the Beatles came to America and all these teenage girls were just losing their minds. I mean, that's what was going on in Madison Square Garden.
Every time, every time Bruno appeared, I mean, they were there and they had their lifetime seat at MSG and they were not going to give it up. They were going to see Bruno.
[00:37:42] Speaker C: Well, there was a belief that any Italian home had a picture of the Pope, Frank Sinatra and Bruno on their wall. And I believe it could be true.
[00:37:52] Speaker B: How cool was it though, at this time? I just gotta run this pasture real quick. And I just had another memory I'll share. But how cool was it that this was on hbo, right? I mean, I mean, I didn't even know. I didn't even know what HBO was at this time, as a matter of fact.
[00:38:09] Speaker C: Well, no, no, nobody did. I mean, at this point HBO is more like this kind of like east coast thing because in those early, early days they were showing first run movies, kind of like what HBO would later be known for. But they also had like things like the wrestling, the boxing, New York Ranger hockey games from Madison Square Garden, New York Knicks basketball games from Madison Square Garden. They even had Yankee games from Shea stadium. And in 74 and 75 when they were renovating the real Yankee Stadium.
[00:38:38] Speaker B: So I mean, listen, when I was a kid, one of my favorite shows was Sanford and Son and I. And I remember watching Sanford and Son and Fred was really upset because Lamont would not get him Cable.
And I was sitting there going, ooh, cable. I wonder what that's all about, you know, because I mean, I didn't see any other channels Besides network until 1980 or something like that, you know that I just remember thinking, oh my God, you get this cable that comes into your house and you magically have all these additional television shows. And I didn't know what, I didn't know what HBO was.
[00:39:18] Speaker C: Yeah, it started off very, very. It's kind of like the beginning of espn. I mean, now everybody thinks of espn. They think about NFL games and college football all day long or basketball. But in those early days they were doing stuff like steer rid and you know, they didn't have really major, major name sports in those early days.
[00:39:39] Speaker B: But, but anyhow, I just throw in here that I moved to Paducah in 1981 and the first thing I got was cable.
I mean I ordered up cable and got it into my house. And I still remember the dun dun, dun, dun, dun dun dun. HBO logo come. Oh yes, come flying in from the side with the things circling around the letter.
[00:40:05] Speaker C: Oh yeah. Especially on a Sunday night they would have a brand new movie.
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Oh yes, Sunday nights. How fantastic.
I'm just, I'm just loving going down memory lane today with you. Man, this is good.
[00:40:17] Speaker C: Oh, it's good memories for sure. And, but, but anyhow, the match with Bruno and Hanson, the main thing of it, I guess, and again, I haven't seen the match, but I've heard it described a few times.
The main thing to it was Bruno got the elbow pad off of Stan Hansen and during the match Bruno just like puts it on his fist and I guess he pounded on Hanson with the loaded up pad. And of course Hansen bleeds. It's only like a 10 minute and 20 minute match.
10 minute and 22nd match, something like that. Bruno wins on a count up as Hansen takes off after he's bloodied up. And of course that leads to an MSG cage match the following month.
This was the end of June, I think, the Shea Stadium. So they scheduled the cage match I think for August.
And, but, but along the way you
[00:41:09] Speaker B: say, you saying it was only a 10 minute match just makes me think that's our modern bias.
I mean back in those days that's exactly what it should have been. I mean you should have been.
[00:41:20] Speaker C: It should have been. Yeah, because.
[00:41:23] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, Babyface Bruno coming back was enough. Like, I don't even know if they needed the match. I mean just him showing up, you know, and he could have just Pointed his finger at Hansen and that would have sold out the next show, you know.
[00:41:37] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it really, it really drew the fans to Shady Stadium. They did have the, the Andre against Chuck Wepner match, which Brian Solomon really goes into detail in the book about Monsoon.
[00:41:49] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:41:49] Speaker C: And that actually proved to be kind of like whatever. The fans that wanted to see Ali Inoki, they really wanted to see the uniqueness of, you know, a top name boxer against a top name pro wrestler. Well, Andre against Chuck Webner served that purpose. You know, they really went at it with each other. And apparently Wepner did something he wasn't supposed to do. And Andre got really pissed off. And I think he, at one point, I think he basically grabs Wepner, who was almost Andre's size, he was very tall, and he threw Wepner out of the ring. And then they went out of the ring, and Monsoon, who was Andre's second, was very upset with what had happened and how the cornermen were doing something for Wepner he didn't like. And Monsoon actually broke the guy's hand.
I think his name was Patty Braverman. He was a quarterman for Wepner, and he broke his hand because he was so upset. And they had big bra on the outside. But the, the fans at Shea Stadium got their money's worth. There was a good Indians strong Bowl and White Wolf against the Executioners. There were a couple of other matches, but mainly they came to see the Bruno Hansen thing. And, and it really sent the fans home happy that Bruno, they. He proved he could come back. He was healthy enough to wrestle. And, and, but, but behind the scenes, we knew Bruno was kind of giving his notice to Vince McMahon Senior, and he'd be, you know, giving up the title of Billy Graham come end of April the following year.
[00:43:20] Speaker B: A couple of things. I mean, how big was wrestling in 1976? So in June, Fritz Von Erich and Terry funk for the NWA title draws like 18,000 to Texas Stadium. In July, the Oklahoma promotion, Bill Watts and Terry funk draw over 18,000 to the Superdome for their first Superdome show.
And now here they draw 32,000 for this big, incredible, emotional night. And yet, for all the detailed analytic historian people that listen to the show, I know Pro Wrestling Illustrated didn't happen until around 1979 or 1980, but that group of magazines went back and now they just call it Pro Wrestling Illustrated for their awards for the year, but they called this the match of the year for 1976. And they named Bruno as the inspirational wrestler of the year for his comeback against Hansen.
[00:44:21] Speaker C: No, you're absolutely right. And that was on the. I think it was the Wrestling Annual, one of their other miscellaneous magazines at the time. And he was featured on the COVID Inspirational Wrestler of the Year.
[00:44:32] Speaker B: And there was one, like I mentioned earlier, there was that one magazine where they have a picture of him and his neck and chin is in this sling kind of thing, and the headline is, doctors told me I may never wrestle again. I mean, they got their money's worth out of every bit of promotion. And I love how you always, at different podcast appearances, bring up how integral magazines were at this time, because you didn't have very many media outlet, and the magazines being located in New York City, were always very favorable to the McMahon promotion. And they got behind this whole thing, like, in a big way.
[00:45:15] Speaker C: Oh, yeah, the magazine has really enhanced your enjoyment of the wrestling and gave you those things. Like. Like you said, that picture of Bruno on the COVID of the magazine, he's, like, wearing pajamas. He's got a thing around his neck, and, you know, he's hospitalized. I mean, that made you believe. I mean, sure, they've been telling you on TV all these weeks, oh, he's in the hospital, he's recovering. Yeah. I mean, you could have believed that. But when you see him on the COVID of a national magazine and he's got pajamas on, he's got this thing on his head. I mean, that look on his.
[00:45:47] Speaker B: That look on his face. I mean, it looks like somebody came in his hospital room and ate his cereal that morning. And he didn't.
[00:45:54] Speaker C: He looked very vulnerable. He didn't look like a wrestling champion. He looked very vulnerable.
[00:45:58] Speaker B: He was not happy. It looked like he was hurt emotionally at the deepest level. I mean, it looks like he had just. It looked like he had just been given that news.
[00:46:09] Speaker C: Yeah.
And it's. It's worth saying, too, that another interesting factor of all this is that, you know, he's in the hospital recovering from this legitimate injury, and, you know, his doctor is telling him, you got to just stay here and mend and heal. And apparently, at some point, you know, Vince McMahon, the elder, comes to the room and says, hey, you know, these sales for the boxing thing at Shea Stadium are not good. You gotta come back. If you don't come back, there won't be a company to come back to. So he's under all this pressure.
I gotta come back. Otherwise there won't be a company. He does come back, but, you know, that's kind of the. The beginning of the End, you know, he loses to Billy Graham in April the following year.
And, and I wanted to, I wanted
[00:46:57] Speaker B: to ask you about that. So does this Hanson thing kind of get in Billy Graham's way?
[00:47:04] Speaker C: It got in Billy's way only in the sense of they were going to have tons more Billy Graham, tons more call off matches all over the East Coast.
Bruno was already done with them as far as MSG challengers, but they were going to go over the entire circuit, you know, Washington and Baltimore and Boston with these, with these guys. But you know, when, when Bruno realized he got so seriously heard, he told, you know, Vince McMahon Senior that, you know, we gotta end this soon. And so they kind of like set the few following months and bring in a few more challengers and then let's wrap this up. And they, you know, made, they made the title change with Billy in April of 77. So it's the following year.
[00:47:49] Speaker B: Why, why do you think that McMahon senior didn't want to consider Hanson?
Because you think he already had his mind made up what he was going to do? Because he was kind of that way. Like once he decided what the title trajectory was going to be, he didn't alter it. I mean, but I mean, gosh, how hot is Hansen here?
[00:48:11] Speaker C: Well, yeah, he, and he's like an overnight sensation for sure.
I think that, I think that, you know, he felt like Billy Graham was just a safer bet. I mean, Billy Graham had been one of the most popular or best box office stars they had ever had come through the Northeast.
And he just was like kind of the ying to Bruno Zhang. And I think they felt like there's a lot more meat to that bone to bring Billy Graham back the following year and is around this time too that I'm sure that they got the idea of we want the all American boy. We want the Jack Briscoe type guy to come in and replace Bruno. And before you know it, Bob Backlin is here and he's doing TV matches and he would do them for like well over a year just to get ready for his title run.
[00:49:02] Speaker B: They put, they put Stan Hansen after the, after the feud is kind of over, they put him with Koloff as a, as a tag team. And I thought that was smart because.
[00:49:15] Speaker C: Oh yeah.
[00:49:16] Speaker B: How rough and tough and rough shod would that tag team have been? Ivan Koloff and Stan Hansen?
[00:49:23] Speaker C: Oh yeah. And to your point.
So the next MSG show they have this huge, the kind of the blow off match. Bruno beats Hansen in the cage match. But I think more interesting is that Bruno's next opponent in MSG is Bruce or Brody, Stan Hansen's old friend. And they have two matches at MSG over the next two months. And it just shows you that even though Bruno San Martino was probably this conservative, you know, good businessman, you know, articulate guy, for him to wrestle bruiser Brody after suffering a broken neck. And he's also fairly green. I mean, he must have had balls of titanium because it's like, who's going to do such a thing? But I guess those matches with Brody have never been seen. I don't think they're even taped if the MSG matches. But it definitely.
[00:50:18] Speaker B: Yeah, go ahead, Steve. Sorry.
[00:50:20] Speaker C: No, I was just going to say it was actually the elder Vince McMahon, that Gabe Brody, his name, I guess he was just wrestling as Frank Goodish before that. And they had some Bruno Brody matches. And before they left the territory, Hanson and Brody are teaming together, going up against the Strong Will and White Wolf team. So, I mean, again, this is the first year I'm watching wrestling and these memories have lasted me 50 years now. And it's like, I mean, this is the best wrestling I can remember in my 50 years. Just because it was so exciting.
And there is something to be said for that thing that your first wrestling is your, your favorite wrestling. Because it really is with me, really is.
[00:51:02] Speaker B: No, no doubt about it. So they have the cage match, August 7th of 76. Bruno won the match escaping the cage.
It was a, by all accounts, it was bloody hard hitting. Handsome.
[00:51:15] Speaker C: Yeah. I believe the match is still on YouTube if you want to see it. I'll try to post it to our group here.
I mean, Bruno just, you know, definitively wins.
You know, a lot of people don't like the WWF cage rules, you know, about walking out the door.
But the way Bruno would do it decisively to a heel opponent, like in this case Hansen, he just beat the hell out of him, like left him dangling in the ropes and then casually walks out slowly out of the cage. I mean, that, that's the way you can do it with, you know, really come out looking good if you're the champion. But, but yeah, it wasn't any kind of a chase. It wasn't any kind of, you know, who can get out faster than who. But this was a really, a good, good way to end their feud.
[00:51:58] Speaker B: I will, I will put that in the 1976 playlist on the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel YouTube channel as well.
Yeah, so it's a sold out show.
I think it was one of the first events they ever broadcast on the MSG network as well.
[00:52:15] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. That whole thing is kind of convoluted because it's almost like what had been HBO and all this, all the sports stuff that were on HBO kind of work their way over to the MSG network.
But when 1980 comes around, a lot of that same stuff works its way over to the USA Network. And of course that's where eventually Vince finds his home for a lot of his product over there with showing house shows and eventually his shows like TNT and primetime and All American, those types of shows.
[00:52:49] Speaker B: What were you thinking when you were watching? Did you think that Bruno might not come back?
[00:52:58] Speaker C: I guess I was still so, such a young fan and so kind of like, like a brand new to this thing called wrestling. I, I just assumed he'd be champion for a long, long time. I didn't know that. This is the beginning of the end and, and he ends up, you know, ends up this year with some really good challengers. He has the two matches with Brody, they end up having him beat. Nikolai Volkov was a very good challenger at the time and he has two MSG matches to end the year with Stan Stasiak. Stasiak wins one on a DQ count up. He hits Bruno with the heart punch, knocks Bruno out on the ring apron.
[00:53:36] Speaker B: Another former, another former champion.
[00:53:39] Speaker C: That's right, that's right. That's the guy Bruno had beat in 1973. And then in a Sicilian stretcher match, Bruno beats Dasiak in December of 76.
[00:53:51] Speaker B: Oh boy.
I mean this whole year he's got superstar Billy Graham, he's got big cat Ernie Ladd, he's got one match with Waldo Von Erich, who he had had a great series with in 75. He's got both Ivan Koloff and Nikolai Volkov, as you mentioned, Stan Stasiak, Stan Hansen, Bruiser Brody. I mean, good Lord almighty, what a last great year for Bruno.
[00:54:17] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. And I will add this.
One of my favorite Bruno opponents is Ken Patera. And he's, he's made his debut in late 76 in the WWF3WF. And he has a three match series with him. I'm getting ahead of myself in beginning of 77. Three wonderful matches at MSG with Pitera. But we'll talk about that on a feature show.
[00:54:43] Speaker B: Well, just one question. Was Patera's finisher the full nelson at that time?
[00:54:47] Speaker C: Yes, it was.
[00:54:48] Speaker B: So a whole neck injury is going to play out.
[00:54:51] Speaker C: Yeah, it was, it was just, it just added instantly added drama of all sorts to their patches and he was, he broke Kevin Sullivan's neck with a swinging neck breaker and he was putting all kinds of preliminary wrestlers on the disabled list with that move.
[00:55:08] Speaker B: All right, so now where do we go, Steve?
[00:55:16] Speaker C: We've covered pretty much everything. I will I was telling Tony earlier that there was a another HBO show. I had seen another live card that they did in July of 76 headlined by Bruno and Monsoon against the two executioners, which was John studded Killer Kowalski. And that was a really, really good card. I mean HBO really enjoy putting on these wrestling shows and I know Tony is aware of this, but there was a one show where Vince McMahon Jr. Is in the Omni with Gordon solely and they're going to have an NWA show and that has not seen the light of day since it originally aired. Hopefully it will make its way out someday.
[00:55:57] Speaker B: It's in the vault somewhere and I think so it needs to come out.
So after Bruno's big blow off match with Hanson, a couple things you mentioned. The Executioners are actually stripped of the tag titles in October after they used Nicola Nikolai Volkov during a match against Strongbow and Billy White Wolf. So we're going to have a tag team tournament which is kind of interesting for the WWF that tag teams always seem to be kind of just an extra whatever. But they're going to focus on it here at the end of the year by having a big tournament. And as you mentioned, Ken Patera makes his debut around October.
The tag tournament runs what, Steve, October, November and then first part of December. I think Strongbow and White Wolf won the tag titles in the, in the.
[00:56:52] Speaker C: Yeah, it really.
And John McAdam said this a few times. It just, it just seemed like overkill. It seemed like them getting the title belts, it took like forever and a day for them to get the title belts. And by the time they won, people were losing interest.
You know, these teams only have such a shelf life and I guess the WWF was just never really a great tag team scene until the George Scott era, the mid-80s. But I will tell you one funny aside and this is something I always brings a smile to my face during the tag team tournament grill. A Monsoon sometimes would act like an agent of the office and he would come on the TV show with Vince and he'd say, hey, we're give you an update on the tag team tournament. And he would say things like, well, the team of, of Dick the Bruiser and the Sheik lost a match in New Orleans against so and so and, and he said like the, the Kangaroos tried to try to, you know, make a go of it, but they got eliminate tournament. And so he was giving these like little tidbits.
[00:58:07] Speaker B: Tarzan Tyler and Dr.
Luke Graham. Yeah, I believe, I believe those were the New Orleans match. You know, one, one time it wasn't Rio de Janeiro, it was.
[00:58:21] Speaker C: Right, that's right, New Orleans.
[00:58:23] Speaker B: So, so let's just talk a little bit about the Ali Inoki thing. Where did that take a left turn and where did that go wrong? I mean, evidently, I mean, everybody talks about how bad the match is, but that wouldn't have influenced you buying a ticket? I mean, you, you know, if you bought a ticket and you were there, you would have seen the match. But did, did something go wrong before they had the match that caused it to be a bust?
[00:58:54] Speaker C: Well, I think, I think you'd have to say that there really wasn't enough interest in this to make it a profitable venture. I mean, everybody likes to say that, you know, in the Northeast, the Bruno thing is what saved Shea Stadium from being a complete loss.
And they did have the closed circuit in the Northeast, which I guess did well because they had the Bruno match on there. But, you know, the rest of the United States, people didn't know who Anoki was. I mean, yeah, they, they.
It wasn't uncommon for people to buy a closed circuit to see Muhammad Ali face his latest boxing foe.
I can remember being a kid and my dad or whoever was interested in seeing that, and they would go to a theater or go to a place and watch those closed circuit boxing matches. But now he's facing this completely unknown entity, a professional wrestler from Japan who essentially no one knows of. So.
[00:59:50] Speaker B: Well, I've mentioned this before, but there were two different business models. I mean, the WWWF had a different business model than most of the NWA territories. And the difference in the business model was that the WWF was monthly shows in big towns.
And so they ran big towns usually Thursday, Friday and Saturday. They ran some other towns in their territory earlier in the week.
Sometimes the New York show was on a Monday night or Tuesday night, but the NWA territories were in the same town every single week.
And I think somewhat, if I'm a promoter and I'm sitting there going, okay, I got 52 shows.
Am I going to give up one of my 52 shows to have people come in and watch something on a screen from somewhere else, I probably wouldn't do that. But it's amazing. They all did it.
I think everybody except Crockett maybe did that. And that's what Roy Shire where he was talking about he lost a lot of money is because his fans did not want to come and sit and watch something on a screen from somewhere else. They wanted to sit and watch Pat Patterson, and at the time, he had the great Fuji as the US champion, who was Mr. Fuji. And they wanted to come see that program, which they did do a match that night, and it was a really bloody match, from what I understand.
But it still didn't. It didn't sell out the Cow Palace.
They had, like, three matches and the closed circuit.
So I'm really surprised that the promoters of this day gave up one of their weekly nights for this. And then how they would have been surprised it didn't go over, if that makes sense. Yeah, it's just.
[01:01:39] Speaker C: I mean.
[01:01:40] Speaker B: I mean, there was just no. It's like Jerry Jarrett said it best. Personal issues draw money.
Well, it's hard to create a personal issue between a boxer that you're familiar with through the newspaper and a Japanese wrestler you've never heard of in your life.
I mean, that's kind of hard to really magnify that into a main event that you're going to watch on a screen instead of your favorite. You know, instead of watching Jerry Lawler in the ring against somebody, or Jackie Fargo in the ring against somebody, or Mr. Wrestling number two in Atlanta or Dusty in Miami, you're gonna watch the boxer and the unknown Japanese guy.
[01:02:25] Speaker C: And along with what you're just saying there, it's just like a major miscalculation to think that, okay, just to see Ali against a professional wrestler in a match is enough for me to buy a ticket. I mean, that's really asking the people to kind of go above and beyond.
I mean, yeah, the tickets weren't as expensive as they are today, but you're still paying money to go somewhere to watch something. And. And like you said, I mean, if these NWA Cities, for the most part, are having weekly shows, and I'm sure there's many times where they have a real hot issue with the. The top baby face against the top heel, and you can watch them go at it live. Yeah. Compare that to watching these two, like, one famous guy, I guess, a not so famous guy on a closed circuit. Like, why would you want to see that? So that was a major miscalculation. And then the other major miscalculation was just the idea of, let's send everybody to Japan, and once they get there, they'll work all. They'll work out all the details. We'll have a good ending to the match. It'll be entertaining. And, and it's like, it's like sending great actors and great directors to Hollywood to film a movie. But your script isn't done yet. It just, it just, it doesn't work that way.
[01:03:39] Speaker B: I've got it in my brain, but I don't know if I can make it come out of my mouth and for it to make sense. And I don't read anything into what I'm saying, but I think the WWF booking was event to event to event.
The NWA booking was more deeply intricate stories because we got to come up with something every week to bring this fan back every single week to this, to this building. And this Anoki Ali thing was just a major interruption in that flow. And it just, it, you know, what here doesn't fit. And it just didn't fit. Now, one other thing I want to ask you about, because you got deeply into the book and read the, read the book and sounds like you really enjoyed reading it.
[01:04:32] Speaker C: Yes, I did.
[01:04:33] Speaker B: Ali's biggest fear actually comes true. He actually did legitimately get hurt, right in the match.
[01:04:40] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah. Inoki and I, I saw a little bit of the match. Inoki is kicking at him constantly, and that gave him blood clots in his legs.
[01:04:53] Speaker B: And these were not worked kicks. These were shoot kicks, right?
[01:04:56] Speaker C: Very stiff, very stiff kicks. And, and he did get blood clots in his legs. And, and I guess it did, as the years went on, it did really create a health issue for Ali. I didn't, you know, didn't make him die younger like that, but it definitely affected him.
[01:05:14] Speaker B: And is, is a noki the only person that came out the winner in all of this because, I mean, in Japan it really boosted him in big time because it took a little while.
[01:05:28] Speaker C: I mean, it took a little bit.
There was kind of, there was kind of an odor that came off this match, I think. And I don't think his, the rub that he got initially made him come out smelling like a rose. I think it did take a year or two, but once he starts beating like this, the karate guy and beating Leon Spinks and then beating other guys and then of course, being the wrestling champion on top of all that, his, his, his, his stock really begins to rise. And of course, you know, the new Japan of the early 80s, he's bringing in all this talent, including the future Hulk Hogan, which he had a real famous match with in the early 80s, Hogan and him in Japan. But yeah, his, I mean, when he died, I mean, he was so revered. I mean, Dave Meltzer and other people have said that his. The way people revered Inoki was on a much higher plane than the way people thought of Hogan and our biggest stars over here.
[01:06:28] Speaker B: Well, one of the things I wanted to mention too, is this match, the Ali Andoki match, took place in late June, and Ali has a boxing match in September. And these shoot kicks that he took to these get these blood clots in his legs really affected his mobility, and I guess he just barely beat Ken Norton in the September boxing match.
[01:06:52] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:06:53] Speaker B: And so it did take time.
But now this Anoki and Ali thing is the beginning of the shoot work hybrid that really, I mean, in MMA's development overall to what it is today, it's sort of like the seeds for that foundation. It's looked at as a historical benchmark kind of thing, even though it sucked in 1976. As time has gone by, it's sort of become like a legendary kind of thing, if that makes sense.
[01:07:25] Speaker C: Yeah, yeah, it's. It's interesting how these things are looked at differently through the.
The passage of time, because at the time, I mean, it's really, really was considered a stinker.
[01:07:38] Speaker B: And.
[01:07:39] Speaker C: And another thing that I will post to your group is I found on YouTube there, there's audio footage of a young Bill Apter with Bruno Sammartino at Shea Stadium. They're announcing the match into, like, a tape recorder. They're watching the Ali Inoki and talking about it, and both of them are just in shock that this is so bad. And Bruno, who never liked Inoki, was saying at the beginning, you know, I. I don't really like Inoki, but I think he'll. He can definitely beat Ali. And then. And then as time goes on in the match, you can tell he's really disappointed with how the match has gone, and he really thinks both of them did a great disservice to the audience and they should give their money back.
[01:08:22] Speaker B: Essentially, Bruno has a very tight relationship with Baba. Very close, very close relationship. And they had some historic matches together as Baba is building all Japan. So I could see that affecting his endorsement of Anoki as well. And Anoki was. I mean, you can just tell I never had opportunity to meet the guy. So I'm speaking based on anecdotal evidence that I've seen that he did think a lot of himself, for sure. But that sort of comes with the territory. When you build something like that around yourself.
I mean, you sort of got to have that. And he ended up being a successful politician and senator in Japan before he passed away. And like you said, his funeral was a big, big national deal in Japan was as well. Both of these guys, when they passed away, they were revered. Still are revered figures.
[01:09:18] Speaker C: Yeah. And wrestling was looked at so differently in Japan. I mean, they love baseball, too. In baseball, it was.
They put those athletes on a pedestal, but the wrestlers were on a very high pedestal as well, and they were looked at as very mainstream stars over there.
[01:09:37] Speaker B: I think it's interesting that that same thing happened in Mexico, where they have, you know, El Santo is a huge, revered cultural hero in Mexico, and you got the two guys, Baba and Anoki in Japan, and that just never was the case here in America. Why do you think that is? Why. Why didn't we have that kind of cultural impact?
[01:10:02] Speaker C: Just because the way wrestling was regarded in our culture, I think wrestling was always thought of as this kind of secondary form of entertainment, like a lower level of entertainment. And, you know, again, the legitimacy of pro wrestling matches, that. That plays a lot into it, too. But I mean, you know, if there were wrestlers that died that were very, well, you know, revered, I mean, people like Lou says, Jack Briscoe, Bruno, just not to the. To the high level of saying Inoki and Baba over in their country.
[01:10:40] Speaker B: So they had. I mean, Inoki is bringing in later, he bringing in Luthes, he's bringing in Carl Gotch and all of these perceived very legit guys. I mean, New Japan was sort of the shoot company with combat sports. And when you go back and look through the cards of the 70s, I mean, just all of these different international.
I mean, he brought in Steve Vidor from England, and he brought in the judo guy and all these different people to.
It was almost like he was doing on a national level in Japan what maybe a Jerry Lawler was doing in Memphis, where there was a monster heel every month that he had to slay, he had to kill the dragon, you know.
[01:11:25] Speaker C: Right.
[01:11:25] Speaker B: And Inoki was doing it with the shoot guys.
[01:11:29] Speaker C: That's a very good comment. And Baba was much more of the nwa. He was much more of the tradition of wrestling. And he was so tight with the Funks and Bruno and Kowalski and the wrestlers of his era.
So. So it was. I can see why Inoki, who's like a young entrepreneur, fledgling, he reaches out to the wwf. He'll never. He'll never have Bruno working with him, but all the future WWF stars, the Backlins and the Hogans, would be working for him.
[01:12:03] Speaker B: So I was just. This morning, I was having my coffee, which is usually my morning reflection time, and I was Sitting there thinking I get to do a show with Steve today and talk about all this stuff, like how grateful am I that I get the privilege of doing this. And so thank you so much for coming on and all you do for the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel and you help with the Facebook page and you help me here with the show and you always email me every Wednesday after you listen to the show and you give me feedback and you're just, you're so valuable as a partner here in our little family and I really appreciate it.
[01:12:39] Speaker C: Thank you, Tony.
[01:12:40] Speaker B: I really appreciate you. Thank you for.
[01:12:42] Speaker C: It means a lot to me. And knowing that you're going to be going to the hall of Fame very soon or I don't know when this.
[01:12:48] Speaker B: I will have, I will have stood up in my suit and tie and done my thank yous by now. So.
[01:12:55] Speaker C: Well, I won't be able to be there. But you know, my heart is there with you and I'm really proud and happy for you and it's going to be an awesome event. I know that for sure.
[01:13:05] Speaker B: All right, man, thank you so much. Have a wonderful day. And Steve will be back for. He might be back before, but I know he'll be back at the end of September for our next mailbag show and we may have him back to if we have an occasion to talk about something interesting. So Steve, thank you for coming.
[01:13:23] Speaker C: Thanks, Tony.
[01:13:29] Speaker B: All right, everybody. Well, hopefully you enjoyed that trip back to 1976 and the WWWF with Steve Giannarelli, that amazing program that's underway with Stan Hansen and the breaking of Bruno's neck and the follow up of the, the big blow off in the cage.
Just fantastic stuff. And also our discussion about Ali and Anoki.
Gosh, I remember as a kid how big that was blown up.
I didn't know it was a bust, you know, I didn't know that it didn't work. I just thought, wow, it's kind of cool, you know, Muhammad Ali and Antonio Noki in a, in a mixed match. We're going to get to George Shire coming up on the show in just a second and he's going to give us his top five AWA World champions of all time. But first, let me tell you a little bit about the Grizzly Up Soap Company who is our sponsor here on the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel History Show. If you're going to step into the ring like an old school legend, you better smell like you belong there. This week, the Grizzly Up Soap Co. Out of Hopkinsville, Kentucky is a family owned small batch handcrafted goat milk soap company that's made for real people that actually do real things.
Whether you're using Totally Savage Fierce with Grit or cooling off with Arctic Breeze or keeping it classic with the tobacco and bay leaf or oatmeal and milk and honey, these bars hit different all natural ingredients, long lasting scents and tough enough for the grind, but gentle on your skin. And I have told you my bathroom here at the Richards Ranch smells like Kentucky Bourbon or at least the Kentucky Bourbon scent from the soap.
And I also use Loaded Weapon, which is fantastic also. So those two soaps and I've got a whole bag of all the ones that I've been telling you about. But I just keep going back to that Kentucky Bourbon and Loaded Weapon and I don't know, I just like those. I need to get off on some of these others though, so I can tell you about those. But my bathroom smells fantastic because I use these soaps from the Grizzly Up Soap Company. Their motto says it best, if you're going to be a bear, be a grizzly and smell good while you're doing it. Shop the full lineup at their website grizzly up soapco.com or go by their store at 200 East 9th street in Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Grizzly Up Soap Company. Get clean, stay savage and be a grizzly.
All right, so we're going to be talking about Dorie Funk Senior and his year of 1966 in the West Texas wrestling territory. And for those who are unfamiliar about the territory, let me just walk through and I've been talking about this on the stories with Briscoe and Bradshaw, history of Texas Wrestling. We just talked about amarillo in the 30s.
For those who may not know, Amarillo is where the original booking office was through the whole history of the territory. And that was because Cal Farley and Dutch Mantel set up wrestling there in Amarillo and then began to send talent out to other towns. They had promoters in these other towns. They had Sled Allen in Lubbock. They had a promoter in some of their other Borger and Hereford. And some of these other towns started having wrestling and they sent the talent there until they started forming and Abilene was one of those towns. I think 1936, the West Texas Loop really started taking shape.
So by 1966, this is 30 years later, the Loop is very well established with Amarillo. Doc Sarpolos is the majority owner of the company.
He has cut Dory Funk Senior in on some ownership and he's also been mentoring Dory for at least let's see, Doc bought Amarillo in 1955. It's now 1965 or 66.
So he's been mentoring Dorie now for 10 or 11 years on his booking philosophy.
And so he's, he's starting to turn some of the booking and matchmaking.
Excuse me, excuse me. Over to Dory.
And we want to review what things look like at the end of 1966.
Well, in the national wrestling landscape. And I've told you guys that I think this period of time, so in my seven stages of the Territory Era framework, it goes in 10 year period starting in 1925 through the end of the territories around 1995.
And each 10 year period there is an environment going on in the territory era. And in 1965-1975 those were the greatest, best drawing, most fantastic talent.
All of that was that 10 year period from 1965 to 1975.
And so that's the time period that we're dealing with here.
So as we go into 1966, we're going into the second year of this fantastic 10 year period. I mean we're ending, we're going to be ending the Lou Thes World Championship era. Lou is going to be dropping that title as we hit the beginning of 1966. We're going to have rookies coming into the business like Jack Briscoe. We're going to have Terry Funk making his debut in 1965. We're going to have all of this fabulous talent that we've come to know that are going to be coming online in this 10 year period.
And also we're going to have the exit of some of the classic wrestlers out of wrestling in this 10 year period. All right, so television in 1965, television has become a very hot thing in the 50s. For primarily half of the 1950s, wrestling was a syndicated product that you could watch from Chicago or you could watch it from Los Angeles, or you could watch it from Dallas with the Texas wrestling.
Otherwise you didn't really have access. There wasn't really local wrestlers unless it was in your newspaper.
But 1955, promoters and booking offices started producing their own local television shows and they started presenting that. Well now we're 10 years into that in 1965 and television has become this amazing, important, integral tool for these people to promote wrestling in local towns and do local angles and gear the product toward the people in that territory. That's why it was called a territory because it was the geographical footprint of television and usually the limitations of wrestlers being able to drive from town to town, usually somewhere around 300 to 400 miles was used, the typical limitation, because usually the wrestlers lived in the booking office town. So in other words, in West Texas, a lot of the wrestlers lived in Amarillo, and they would go to, let's say, Abilene on Friday. They'd have. Usually every wrestling territory had a short trip town, and that was Hereford, or in this particular era, in 1965, 66, it was. They also ran Littlefield, Texas, on Saturday night. Mondays were El Paso or Albuquerque. At this particular time, Albuquerque is being integrated into the West Texas office, and it's still under the booking office of Mike London. Now, Mike London would eventually turn over the town for booking to the Amarillo office, and he would be the local town promoter for Albuquerque.
But they're still going to Albuquerque. Now, even though it's primarily run by Mike London and then El Paso on Monday, Odessa on Tuesday, and Lubbock on Wednesday, that was typically the loop for Amarillo. And that's the loop we're going to be dealing with here in 1965. 1966. So in retrospect, at the end of 1965, in November and December, it was a closing chapter of one period of wrestling and the opening chapter of another. And it's going to be a very opening, interesting opening chapter for the funk family, because 1966 is going to be the last full year that Carl Docksarpolis is going to be the majority owner of the territory.
He bought the Territory 1955. He. He bought it from Dorie Denton, and it came with 18 towns. So he had 18 towns that had been developed that were running out of the Amarillo booking office that he necessarily owned. Okay? He is going to pass away in 1967.
And in my Dorie Funk Senior book, that chapter is called When West Texas becomes totally funked. Because then the funk, Dorie Funk Jr. Will buy the remaining shares of Doc Sarpolos, making him a partner and giving the Funk family the total ownership of West Texas. But here in 1965, at the end of 65, going into 66, and for the entire year of 66, Sarpolos is still the majority owner, and he is the primarily driving force behind the booking.
Now, looking ahead to 1966, I just want to set the stage here for us a little bit.
Western States Sports is the name of the company that runs wrestling, and that typically, when people thought of that company, they thought of a respected veteran. They've got Dorie Funk Senior as their primary lead babyface.
They've got the guidance and wisdom of Doc Sarpolos, who's been around since 1933 or so in the state of Texas. He was a partner in the Texas Wrestling Agency, which pretty much controlled talent and wrestling in Texas for decades. He worked in the Dallas office with, booked for Ed McLemore. He worked in Houston and booked for Morris Siegel.
So he's got an amazing amount of experience.
He refereed main event matches that he booked. He was in the ring calling matches with guys and just a tremendous wrestling mind. Just my overall hero in wrestling is Doc Sarpolos. Just how good he was and all the accomplishment, all the innovation. He booked the first tag team match in Texas. He invented and created and inserted the Texas Heavyweight Championship.
He instituted the practice of blading instead of hard ways in matches. He gave wrestlers the ability to bleed in a more simple, more safe way than getting knocked in the head hard way with a chair or getting busted open with a fist.
He has a rising young athlete, Dorie Funk Jr. Here in the end of 1965, going into 1966. And they have begun sending Dorie Funk Jr. Out to other places. He went on a tour of Australia in 1965 to work for Jim Barnett, who's just opened up. Jim Barnett and Johnny Doyle have just opened up World Championship Wrestling in Australia And Dorie Funk Jr. Has been out there on a tour.
So he's starting to develop other relationships. That relationship is going to benefit him in later years. And so he's also working here. He's holding the Southwest States Tag Team Championship with Ricky Romero and they would be a long term tag team championship team in the territory. But they have the titles here at the end of 1965.
They have a promising young prospect in the Funk family in Terry Funk, who's made his debut in December of 1965. And they can see they're going to have another great talent here that's going to be able to be used and they use him in some very interesting ways here. In 1966 they got strong relationships.
Doc Sarpolos was the former president of the National Wrestling Alliance. He has been a key member of the championship committee that decides who the world Heavyweight champion is going to be. He has very strong relationships with Sam Mushnick, the president of the National Wrestling alliance, who has been to Amarillo on several occasions to visit the territory and to attend matches in the sports arena in Amarillo. He's got relationships with most of the other promoters throughout the National Wrestling Alliance. They've got a loyal fan base that are coming back week after Week in all these West Texas towns. They've got a reputation for presenting some of the most credible and technically proficient wrestling in North America.
So when most people think of West Texas and Amarillo, it's a little bit of the way they think about Tennessee. You know, they think it's just all crazy wild brawls and out of control stuff and all that. And there is elements of that because they want it to be authentic. You know, they present wrestling as real, they present it as a sport and they present it with realism, which means there are going to be brawls and there are going to be some out of control things that happen. But they also are presenting some of the most amazing technical wrestling that you can see in the entire world here in West Texas. So no one really knew at the time that here in the closing months of 1965, it was going to mark the beginning of the final full chapter of Dorie Funk Sr's active leadership before they start entering a new era. Dori Funk Sr. Already has realized and he works in January, for example.
I think they put on like something like 30 cards and 30 different towns in January. And I think Dorie worked 10, so he worked 10 matches in January.
He is slowly but surely phasing himself down and he slowly but surely phasing Dory Funk Jr up. And now Terry's going to be debuting. And let's talk about Dorie Funk seniors, major programs and feuds at the end of 1965. The biggest thing that happened in 1965 was the Iron Mike DiBiase program.
Probably the most significant ongoing issue in the closing months of 65 and going into 66, Iron Mike DiBiase, they had the amazing Texas Death Match in July of 65 that went until curfew in Amarillo. They had to shut it down. And Dorie Funk Sr. And Iron Mike Dibiase both had won the same amount of falls. And of course the Texas Death Match is, you know that it's no disqualification, anything goes, falls count anywhere. The match will continue until one man can't answer the count.
And it went on. I think they went like 11 or 12. It couldn't have been 11 because they had the same amount of falls when they had to call it off because of a curfew. And then they came back with Sam Mushnick declaring that they had to have a rematch that could not go more than an hour.
So that that whole feud began in 65. Iron Mike DiBiase has been a major heel in the territory for a few years and he is the Major draw and he's one of the territory's toughest heels. Frequently found himself opposite the Funk family. He's got a manager who for a shoot. In real life, Jack Kane is married to the Dory Funk senior's wife Dorothy Funk's sister.
So He's Dorie Funk Jr's brother in law in actuality, but he's also his main enemy in storyline to the fans here in the mid-60s and you know it's a major rivalry with Jack Kane and Dorie Funk Sr. And they're going to do some interesting angles coming up here in 1965 that I'm going to be really excited to tell you about.
So SR Often wrestled Kane in singles matches to neutralize his influence. The larger program revolved around Dibiase's attempts to establish himself as the dominant force in West Texas.
The rivalry also served to elevate Dorie Funk Jr. Who met DiBiase repeatedly in featured matches. So not only are they using Dibiase to elevate Senior and keep him over as the primary baby face in the territory, they're starting to use that program to elevate Junior as well.
Late in November, Dori Funk Senior defeated Jack Kane and Amarillo while Dori Funk Jr. Faced Iron Mike DiBiase in a two out of three falls match. Illustrating how the promotion divided the feud between father and son while keeping both prominently involved. There's also a three heel faction in the end of 1965. Tokyo Tom, who was a longtime heel in West Texas, Pampero Furpo and Jack Donovan, Dandy Jack Donovan, that whole three man alliance. Doc Sarpolis was the first booker to book a three man heel team.
Iron Mike Dibiase, Bulldog, Danny Pletches and Art Nelson were the first 33 configuration heel team in the early 50s in West Texas.
And eventually I think Art Nelson would lose a loser leaves town match and they would insert Eddie Graham as Rip Rogers into that three man heel team. And Rip Rogers would eventually turn Baby Face before leaving the territory and going off to New York City with Jerry Graham to be the Fabulous Graham Brothers.
The wrestlers in the storyline at the end of 65 with Tokyo Tom Firpo and Jack Donovan.
This group of rule breaking wrestlers then often Pampero Furpo also went under the name Ivan the Terrible during this time. Also they regularly teamed together against Dorie Funk Senior, Dorie Funk Jr, Ricky Romero, Jose Lothario and Renee Goulet. At the end of 1965. Rather than focusing on one individual villain, Sarpolos often presented these men in interchangeable members of a heel unit allowing programs to continue even as one wrestler rotated out of the territory.
This booking philosophy gave fans the impression that Dorie Funk Sr. Was constantly defending the territory against these heel invaders.
So he was the, you know, this was done famously in Memphis in the late 70s and through the 80s where there would always be a heel monster come into the territory. Jerry Lawler. They'd work their way through the other wrestlers until they eventually got to Jerry Lawler and then they beat Jerry Lawler and then Jerry Lawler would have to come back and then, and then have the feud and have the blow off match to finally drive the big Monster heel out of the territory. This is kind of what they're doing in West Texas with Dandy Jack Donovan, Tokyo Tom and Pampero Furpo. But Furpo would be the one who would exit the territory with Dandy Jack and Tokyo Tom staying into the year. We're going to get into 1966. The Kentuckians tag team who were huge in the mid-60s, they were major baby faces at the end of the year. One of the biggest developments during November was the arrival of this tag team.
Jake Smith who was working as Tiny Anderson at this particular time and Luke Big Boy Brown.
They, you know, they worked in the Oklahoma territory, they worked in the Crockett territory, they worked in Florida, they worked in Georgia. They typically worked against the Assassins, but at the end of 1965 they were newcomers in Amarillo in West Texas. They're immediately positioned as fan favorites and frequently aligned with the Funk family against the territory's heels.
Several six man tag matches featured Dory Funk Sr. Teaming with the Kentuckians against combinations of Furpo Donovan and Tokyo Tom.
These matches became some of the territory's strongest drawing cards during the holiday seasons November and December. The alliance between the Funks and the Kentuckians helped broaden the promotions Babyface center and roster while allowing Dory Sr. To share the spotlight with these new wrestlers coming in to refresh the talent pool. So fans always felt like they were seeing something new and something different.
Another thing that started happening around mid-1965 to close out the year was the bigger push of Ricky Romero.
So one of Dorie Funk Sr's most important behind the scenes objectives was establishing Ricky Romero as a major star in the southwestern part of the territory. Romero captured the Western States North American Heavyweight Championship in November of 16, giving the promotion another credible headline. Babyface. Rather than dominating the championship picture himself, Dorry Sr. Increasingly worked alongside Romero in six man tags and other featured matches. This reflected Funk's long term booking philosophy of creating multiple drawing cards rather than just relying on himself as a single attraction. And he learned that and was being schooled and mentored on that from Sarpolis. Dorie Funk senior's ascension so in late 1965, Dorie Funk Sr. Was no longer viewed simply as the promoter's son.
He was constantly featured in main events against experienced veterans like DiBiase, Don McLarety, Pampero Furpo, while teaming with Ricky Romero and his father, Dorie Funk Sr. The father son culmination or combination, sorry, the father son combination becomes one of West Texas biggest attractions. In November, the funks defeated Mike DiBiase and Jack Kane in Amarillo, reinforcing the family's position at the top of the territory.
Also in 1965, Terry Funk made his debut. The most historically Significant event of December 1965, December 9th at the Sports arena in Amarillo. The debut of Terry Funk. Now, he had debuted the night before.
Let's see if I can come up with that here for us.
He debuted the night before. Where did he debut? Tony.
Had it here.
What did I do with it?
Well, it was a. It was a town there in West Texas where he made his debut and I don't know, I've lost it. I'll come up with it for you though. But he debuted at the sports arena there on December 9th. On December 8th, he debuted in another small Texas town, just kind of as a dry run for him to get in the ring and get comfortable. He made his professional wrestling debut by defeating Sputnik Monroe. And Terry has told that story about how Sputnik was taking advantage of him and had him down on the mat and told him to stay down there. He was doing good. Don't move, you're doing good, kid. Just lay there. And Dorie Funk Sr. Came down to ringside and yelled at him and got onto him and told him to get off his butt and start fighting back. And so Terry fought back and won the match.
Dorie Funk senior did not wrestle on that particular card. But the event marked the beginning of a new chapter in the Funk family. From that point forward, Western State Sports possessed three members of the Funk family capable of headlining major events. As a matter of fact, in New Mexico, when they were in Albuquerque, there are some newspaper ads promoting the card that just says the Three Funks.
That's what they referred to them as, the Three Funks. And a lot of times in the newspaper in Amarillo, it would just say Dory Jr. Or it would say Dory or it would just say Terry. It wouldn't say the last name, it wouldn't put funk on it. They were just so familiar to people there that they just call them Terry goes for, you know, this his final match against so and so this week in Amarillo. So Terry's debut represents one of the defining moments in West Texas wrestling history. And that's another reason why this 10 year period will culminate this 1965-1975 will culminate in Terry being world champion.
So it's the best 10 year period in the Territory era and unfortunately we don't have a lot of video of it, so fans aren't really familiar with it. They think the Territory era was in the 80s primarily because that's where we got the most video.
But the 80s were the disintegration of the territories and the territories were starting to fragment and they were starting to disintegrate and they were starting to fail and would eventually close down as the 80s and the 90s progressed.
So let's talk about setting the stage and this will be our segment on this for this particular show and then we'll come back to it again here and go into 66, but setting the stage for 66.
As the calendar turned over from 65 to 66, there were several major storylines that were already in motion. From 65 carrying over into 66.
Mike DiBiase was still even though he was beat from time to time, we just talked about him losing a match he and Jack Kane lost in December. But he's still such a strong heel that beating him doesn't kill him. He still has heat. So Iron Mike DiBiase is still one of the top villains in the territory as we go into 66 and that feud with Dorie Sr is going to continue with some interesting spins and angles that I can't wait to tell you about next time. Jack Kane, who is his manager, continues to generate heat and like I said in real life, he's Dorie Funk Sr's brother in law. But in storyline no wrestling fans know that.
They just look at Jack Kane as being the major evil heel manager force here in West Texas. Ricky Romero has emerged as one of Amarillo's leading baby faces and he's the North American Heavyweight Champion, which is the number one championship.
For years, the number one championship was the Southwest Junior Heavyweight Championship, but that evolved into the North American championship and sometime around the turn of the decade, around 1969 or 70, they changed it to the Western States Heavyweight Championship. But in this particular end of 65 into 66. It's the North American title and that is being held by Ricky romero. Dorie Funk Jr. Is a legitimate rain event attraction. Now in January, Dorie Funk Jr. Is going to be going out of the territory and be working for the Dallas booking office and he's going to be working on that side of Texas and that's going to set up an interesting thing because he's tag team champions with a Romero and we're going to have an interesting angle that I don't know that you've heard about this before. I didn't realize it until I started doing this research for my book and started going in deeper on these particular years. I did not know this event happened. So I can't wait to tell you on the next segment or the next show about what happens here as Dorie Funk Jr. Is going to the Dallas office.
Terry Funk has made his debut in December and he's going they're going to pair him up with the Big Chief Wahoo McDaniel who's going to be coming into the territory. And there's going to be a tag team of Terry and Wahoo that are going to be stirring things up in the territory. The Kentuckians have become popular additions to the roster, but they're going to be exiting as well. And Doc Sarpolos and Dory Funk Senior were overseeing one of the strongest and most respected rosters and promotions in the National Wrestling Alliance. And the mentorship and the schooling of Dorie Funk Sr. On territory ownership, on booking philosophy, on handling talent, all of that is still going on now. While Sarpolos is for his last full year of being alive here in 66.
So it's going to be an interesting time period and an interesting year.
I'm looking forward to getting into 66 and we will get into January of 66 the next time we come back and talk about Dorie Funk Sr. And his career in January of 1966. But that kind of sets the stage for what was going on. And as we left 65 and going into 66 here on the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel History show where we only talk about territory pro wrestling history and as you can tell, we do some deep dives and that covers the end of 65 in the West Texas territory in the booking office of Amarillo.
All right, let's move on with the show. And now I want to get into my discussion with George Shire.
We had a listener who and a watcher who wrote in and asked who George thought the all time best awa world heavyweight champion was.
And I thought, well, rather than just ask him who the all time was, let's ask George his top five.
So let's get into that discussion here at the Richards Rancher now and my discussion about the top five AWA World Heavyweight champions of all time with my good friend George Shire.
Moving on through the pro wrestling time tunnel this week. And I'm happy to welcome back to the Richards Ranch my good friend George Shire.
George, how's your weather in Minnesota today?
[01:46:33] Speaker A: We have had a stretch of about two weeks of 90 plus humidity, heavy humidity every day.
And it's great. I don't mind it. I like it over winter, but it can get old. I will admit that.
[01:46:46] Speaker B: That's hot in Minnesota, man.
[01:46:48] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Those people that think that Minnesota is, you know, 20 below all year round, they're only, they're only wrong by four months we get, we get about three months where it shapes up pretty damn good.
[01:46:59] Speaker B: Well, I know you know a lot of people in Minnesota, you guys are you like going to the lakes and out to the cabins and things like that. Do you typically have that hot of a summer?
[01:47:12] Speaker A: Typically, Tony. Right now we've got a longer stretch than normal, but typically during, let's say a June to August stretch, Minnesota is good for about anywhere from seven to 14 days of 90 up.
And this one's been a little bit longer, but it's normal. And then Minnesota changes, it'll be 92 and then all of a sudden a week from now it'll be 57 and so.
[01:47:39] Speaker B: Yeah, Well, I wanted to. I wanted to share a photo for those of our listeners who are watching us on video.
[01:47:47] Speaker A: Wow.
[01:47:48] Speaker B: This is from the Pro Wrestling hall of Fame in Waterloo, Iowa. And I have two of my closest friends in the whole wide world on each side.
I'm holding my James C. Melby award that I received that Friday night in Waterloo. And then of course, the guy who introduced me is here with me. George Shire is on one side and the fellow who's the grand poobah of the hall of Fame is on my other side and a close friend of mine, Jerry Briscoe. And it was one of the greatest, most important and wonderful nights of my life, George. And you were a part of it, a big part of it, because you got up on stage and told everybody the things that were in your heart about me. And I just sat there and had to fight back, shedding a tear because I knew I was going to have to talk after you. So it was great. And it was great to have your wonderful wife at my table. We had Steve Varier, who's on the pro wrestling time tunnel with me. We do the Vancouver territory reviews together.
We had Greg Klein, who does the Dallas territory with me on here.
And we had. Who else? We had Charlie Thes, and we had David Sierra, the Cuban assassin and a friend of his who was. Who was driving him. So we had a great table of people. And again, it was a great night for me.
[01:49:20] Speaker A: Well, and, you know, it was a great night for me, Tony, because I did enjoy getting up there and as they would say in the business, putting you over. But I got to tell you, certainly I was under a time limit thing. They don't want us to go on and on and on, which I'm capable of doing.
But I.
I could have definitely given you more kudos than maybe even you think about.
You're just. When I tease, when I say you're the man of the hour, too sweet to be sour, I really mean it.
[01:49:55] Speaker B: That was always one of my favorite dusty interviews, too. So that's very appropriate.
[01:49:59] Speaker A: Yeah. Well. And you know, superstar Graham, he used to do one that I've always loved. He would. He would tell our announcer, Marty o', Neill, he'd say, marty o' Neill with the sunglasses on. I am the reflection of perfection. The number one selection, Daddy, you know, and I. I've always loved that line. But, yeah, it was a fun night, Tony. And we did have a good table and we had a good turnout for the banquet.
[01:50:24] Speaker B: We did.
[01:50:24] Speaker A: I looked across the room and honest to God, it just seemed like a sea of people and so many fun people and renewing friendships. I can't tell you. It's people that don't attend these and people that say they've got it on their bucket list or they got to get there sometime. I say, you know what? Make it happen. You won't be sorry.
[01:50:47] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:50:47] Speaker A: And the hall of Fame is. It's a living, breathing history picture that you can take home with you. When you leave the time you have, you will want to come back next year and you will plan it on your calendar.
And then I'm going to echo this that I've heard others say, support it. Become a. Become a member. Become a life member.
Just.
You're not going to be sorry. You're just not.
[01:51:15] Speaker B: I. You. It was standing room only in your AWA panel and had a room full there. And so let's see, you had Medusa on sitting next to. You had Ken Resnick.
[01:51:27] Speaker A: Ken Resnick.
[01:51:28] Speaker B: You had Jimmy Garvin and who else do you have?
[01:51:31] Speaker A: It was Mick Karch and Joe Cubic.
[01:51:33] Speaker B: Yeah, Joe Cubic, that's right.
[01:51:35] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:51:36] Speaker B: Joe was so nice to me.
[01:51:38] Speaker A: Joe's a good guy. And he was.
He had a short tenor with the awa. He was more towards the end of the last couple years, but Joe was only about 21, 22 years old at the time, and he did all the video work and he did all the production work, and he still does that today. He has a production studio in his home, and he is pretty damn good at putting stuff together, so he is very knowledgeable in that.
[01:52:07] Speaker B: And, yeah, he was extremely nice to me, had very nice things to say, congratulated me, shook my hand. And I've just become very close buddies with Jimmy Garvin. I was, you know, his acceptance speech,
[01:52:22] Speaker A: he couldn't have been nicer. He couldn't have been nicer.
[01:52:25] Speaker B: I was so happy for him. His acceptance speech was so good.
And Medusa is always worth the price of admission. I enjoy her whenever she's on a panel or whatever. And Ken Resnick, too. I mean, Resnick's hall of Fame acceptance speech was.
[01:52:43] Speaker A: Was very good.
[01:52:44] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:52:45] Speaker A: Yes. And, you know, it was rewarding, too, because when we got done with that seminar, we had to run right away to the meet and greet table, set up and everything they had going on.
And.
But Jimmy Garvin was quick to say, hey, man, thanks. You know, really appreciate it. And then I talked with him a little bit later.
Medusa and Ken.
Oh, my gosh, Medusa looked at me at the table under at one point, and she goes, wow, thank you for. For all what. Everything you said, you know, and that means so much when. When the wrestler will say that to you. And of course, Ken was always very, very kind. You know, he.
So it. Overall, it was great. I loved. We had an open session there with some questions, and that's fun to get the fans, you know, we want to engage them.
So all I can say is I'm looking forward to next year.
And I told Lorraine, put that. Put the dates on the calendar, and we're. We're going to be there.
But I want people. I've already heard so many people this week, Tony, they say, well, I got to get there someday, or I, you know, I hope to make it. Well, you know what? You can't. You can't try to plan it a week before. In most cases, put it on your calendar right now that next year, and you will not be sorry. You just will not be sorry.
[01:54:05] Speaker B: You know, that was a. That was A best practice that I implemented, I guess about the time I really.
By the time the company really, really started growing big time. When I was a CEO and I almost, like, lost control of my schedule, you know, my admin assistant would. Would take it over, and I just decided I would take the last week of the year from Christmas to New Year's, and I would get the calendar out for the following year, and I would mark my vacation. Very first thing. I would say, okay, these are the weeks that I am not going to be at work. I'm either going to go on a trip, or I'm going to do this or I'm going to do that. And I would suggest you do that between now and the end of this year.
Mark those dates as soon as we announce them for the Waterloo hall of Fame, mark those dates on your calendar and go ahead and schedule yourself to be in Iowa.
[01:54:59] Speaker A: And I couldn't echo that enough because I know I used to do it. I still do the same thing.
We look at our calendar all the time and put in what we want to do. We don't wait for it to happen and go, oh, my God, I wish we could have done this. No. Because other things get in the way. Life will get in the way and run you over.
[01:55:17] Speaker B: And also, I would want to tell people also that I've watched your panel on YouTube. It's available on YouTube now.
So, yeah, you can see the. The AWA panel that George and Mick Karch were hosting.
So I would encourage you, if you didn't get a chance to go to Waterloo, you need to go and watch that panel, because there were a lot of great questions and a lot of good answers, and it was. It was really phenomenal, George.
[01:55:44] Speaker A: Well, I appreciate that. It was fun. I enjoyed doing them. And I've done a few in the past at the hall of Fame.
We've done them. And it's. They're fun.
Of course, you know, you and me, we like talking wrestling, so.
[01:55:58] Speaker B: We do.
I wanted to mention, too, we got a lot of great feedback on our segment that we did a couple weeks ago on Pat o' Connor and Buddy Rogers.
[01:56:07] Speaker A: Yes.
[01:56:08] Speaker B: And I had a. I had a listener of the show or a viewer of the show write in. Paul Lindstrom wrote in, and he starts out, he says, tony, I love your show. And then he puts the big but in there. Tony, I love your show. But with regard to the mention of the old Comiskey park being sold out in 61 for Rogers and O', Connor, Comiskey could not have been sold out as at the time, comiskey held around 53,000.
I'm a huge White Sox fan. I was in old Comiskey many times.
Later, when the ballpark was remodeled to include luxury boxes, the capacity was reduced to around 44,000.
He said, I went to baseball games there many, many seasons. So, hey, we're just reporting what we have seen reported, George and I. Neither one were there.
We don't know for sure. We just added 38,000 and some odd is the number that has been consistent over the years. And so that's the number we used. Whether or not it was configured for baseball or it was configured for wrestling or whatever, that changes the seating somewhat.
[01:57:16] Speaker A: Yeah.
[01:57:17] Speaker B: You know, Jerry Jarrett used to sell out Rupp arena, but they had a huge divider and they changed the 24,000 capacity to 16.
You know, things like that happen.
[01:57:29] Speaker A: Yeah. Well, and the one thing I would say about that is, you and I, as you mentioned, we've seen the pictures that are available of the stadium the night of the Rogers o' Connor match and the stadium in the pictures, the way they are showing the stadium is full.
[01:57:43] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:57:44] Speaker A: Whatever that configuration was. And I can speak firsthand that we used to have here in the twin cities, Minneapolis, St. Paul, we used to have wrestling cards at the old Metropolitan Stadium, which was home of the Twins and the Vikings back in the day.
And I will tell you that the way they configured it for the ring to be set up on home plate and putting all the chairs, etc.
They would sell that out too, as far as wrestling goes. But in those days for Metropolitan Stadium, which was a smaller stadium and originally meant to be a minor league park for those that don't know, before the Twins and Vikings came, the capacity at Metropolitan Stadium at the time for baseball was probably under 20,000 for a baseball or a football game. But again, it's how it's configured.
[01:58:40] Speaker C: That's right.
[01:58:40] Speaker B: And so, and I don't think, and I could be wrong, but wrestling promoters today conflate numbers quite a bit. You know, when they're talking about. I don't know that they did that as much back in these days. I mean, I believe the number they put out.
[01:58:57] Speaker C: Yeah.
[01:58:58] Speaker A: Well. And let me tell you this. I remember in the days when I would go to, you know, obviously on a monthly, weekly basis, whatever, Minneapolis or St. Paul ran their cards well, in our old auditoriums, if you went to St. Paul the way the auditorium. And you mentioned the cutoff point they have, if you went to the auditorium for a St. Paul card, they would report in the paper that there were 7,000 people. And I can tell you there legitimately was.
And if they had a sell out there, it was 10,000 plus. And that's what it held for a wrestling match. The auditorium itself actually seated more people. But it was the way they had it configured because sometimes if you bought a ticket, you know, you'd be way back in the South 40s somewhere and the wrestlers would be this big.
[01:59:47] Speaker B: And as far as perhaps it could have been one of these things where they only made 38,000 so many seats available.
[01:59:54] Speaker A: Correct.
[01:59:55] Speaker B: And they sold every one of them.
[01:59:57] Speaker A: Correct.
[01:59:57] Speaker B: And then the rest of that balance of seats were just not available. And so they called it a sellout.
[02:00:03] Speaker C: Right.
[02:00:04] Speaker A: Well. And as we talked about that historic card, Tony, for 1961, that 38,000 was a huge number. Oh yeah, nothing, nothing up to that point had been recorded. And again, I just say, you know, if you look at the pictures that are available of the stadium shot, the stadium's full and the ring is there. And they didn't have photoshopping in those days. This isn't something they created. This was real, baby. A picture spoke a thousand words in those days.
[02:00:37] Speaker B: The other thing we had was we had a very loyal watcher and listener of the show, Delbert Prince write in and he says, next time you have George Shire on, I want to ask who was the best heavyweight champion of all time in the awa? And I thought, well, if I'm going to ask George that question, I'm just going to go ahead and ask him, what's his top five?
So George, what are your top five best all time world heavyweight champions in the American Wrestling Association?
[02:01:09] Speaker A: Well, I'm going to tell you this before I start.
Any type of question like this is in a lot of cases subjective because you could line up 100 people and ask the question and you might get several different answers. It depends on whose favorite somebody was, etc.
[02:01:26] Speaker B: Well, Delbert didn't ask me, he said, ask George.
[02:01:30] Speaker A: So, so what I, what I would look at is this.
The AWA ended up having 18 or 19 different world champions in its 30 year run.
And if you look at all 30 of the names or all 18 of the names, 18 or 19 of the names, every one of them, Tony, were huge names in the business. We weren't talking just a nobody. Dick the Bruiser, you know, the Crusher, Igor Vodek, Fritz Von Erich. Fritz Von Erich and Otto Vance, you got to give him a name. Jerry Lawler, Jumbo Ceruta, oh, yes, Subaruta.
And you know, Stan Hansen, you name them. Crusher. And so when you pose this question to me, I, I guess I'm going to think of it this way and I'm going to go backwards on you. I'm going to start with you said name the five.
[02:02:34] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[02:02:36] Speaker A: If I look at it, first of all, I immediately in my head, eliminate what I call the Coffee Break champions between Omaha, the Omaha Wrestling Office, and the Minneapolis Wrestling office. For the first three years of the of the AWA till 1963, there were some Omaha title changes that were not recognized by the Minneapolis office. The official home of the awa, Joe Dusick was known to just pull a switch and then next week have the rematch, and nobody was the wiser. And in those days, with kayfabe and our limited ability to have that knowledge, you know, no Internet, et cetera, they got away with it. And when I mentioned the Bruiser, for example, well, Dick the Bruiser is listed as an AWA champion, but I can tell you the guy had it for just one week. It was basically, he won it from Mad Dog, lost it back to Mad Dog, and what those were, Tony, were just ways to build a house for the next show.
[02:03:43] Speaker B: When I wrote that article the other day about the Crusher winning the title from Verne, that was just a two week, two week thing. I mean, I think Verne won it back later on in July of 63.
[02:03:55] Speaker A: Correct. Well, and since you brought up Crusher, let's mention him.
If you look at the rankings or the official title history for the AWA, the Crusher had three AWA championship reigns as world champion three different times. But here's the deal. For the total three times, he held the title only 69 days.
[02:04:22] Speaker B: Can I ask you one more thing, too? I was listening to another podcast and I don't, I don't correct people like, I don't do gotchas or anything, but I was listening to this podcast and they were talking about Vernon Crusher not getting along. And I, I thought based on what you told me, they were really good friends.
[02:04:40] Speaker A: Here's the deal.
Actually, Tony, it's a little bit of both. Okay.
Vern and Crusher had a very good professional relationship.
Verne realized from 1962 on, when he brought in Reggie Lasowski as the Crusher, that he had a golden goose. And here was the deal with Crusher. Crusher was able to always give what he promised.
If he gave his word to be on a card, he was on a card. I only know One time he missed and it was because his mother passed away and they had Dick the Bruiser actually sub for him.
But the Crusher was, was a main draw. Verne always knew that if he himself was not in the main event, if he had the Crusher on the card, he still had a house.
Crusher was the one that drew the money.
[02:05:31] Speaker B: See, I love that. Like that booking makes total sense to me. The Crusher can't be there. Who else would you have other than his tag team partner, the Bruiser?
[02:05:42] Speaker A: Yep. And I'm telling you this, I was at this match, by the way, the Crusher was supposed to be there. And the night of the match in St. Paul, they announced that we sadly report. And he would. And the Crusher was a heel at the time. This is great.
But we sadly announced that the Crusher's mother has passed away. He's not going to be able to be here. But his cousin Dick the Bruiser has agreed to come in. And I know that Vern put the call out to Bruiser, of course, and said, can you sneak in here and take care of business? And that would. That wasn't planned. You don't plan a death. And his mother really did die. So. But here's the deal.
[02:06:21] Speaker B: It's a logical. I mean, who else would there be? You know, it would be his best friend and so called family member.
[02:06:29] Speaker A: Well, and see, the thing is, what. What longtime fans will remember with every lineup sheet or every program in the.
In the program, they always had those words at the top that the program is subject to change due to. And they'd have in small print something to the effect of due to illness, injury or wrestlers not appearing for whatever.
And so this was one of those nights. It wasn't a he missed his plane in Chicago, which you knew was phony. It was a real deal where the. I think it was the day before or the two days before Bruiser was called in to SOB for Crusher. But the Crusher is this Crusher would take.
He wanted to wrestle when he wanted to wrestle, and he didn't always want to wrestle all year long.
So he and Verd would work it out. And whenever Crusher was going to take a two months off or three months off, they would just announce that so and so has injured the Crusher. The Crusher's out of action, you know, whatever the injury was. But when Crusher wanted to come back or when Vern would call him and say, okay, we need to pop a house here, here.
Crusher would come back and pow. It was box office because he's going to get revenge.
[02:07:49] Speaker B: And since we're doing honorable mentions, just speak briefly about Fritz Von Erich as a champion.
[02:07:57] Speaker A: Fritz Von Erich, first of all, when you talk about guys inside and outside the ring as good friends, Fritz and Vern were good friends.
Vern had wrestled for Fritz in his territory.
Fritz was here and he was working Omaha is what it was.
And basically, just to give Fritz a good rub, Verne put the title on him. What I always found weird about it was that Fritz lost the title back to Verne, I believe. And I'm actually going to look at this one. I believe. Yeah, it was Amarillo.
Fritz won the title.
Verne went to Amarillo, and basically Fritz lost it in kind of his home territory back to Verne. But they were friends, and it was only to give Fritz the rub. And that was a favor from Vern in those days.
[02:08:55] Speaker B: They were both partners in the Oklahoma territory for a while.
[02:08:59] Speaker A: They were. Yes. Yeah. And if you go way back to the before AWA days, Verne, who. He didn't have control of the Minneapolis office at the time in 1958, but he had input. His. His opinion and offering was well appreciated. And he was the one that brought Fritz in, along with Wally Sieber. Walter Sieber, and Verne dubbed him Waldo Von Erich, Fritz's brother.
[02:09:29] Speaker B: Wow.
[02:09:30] Speaker A: And that's where that started. They had a Minneapolis. Verne teamed with Leo Nomelini. I. I think it was.
[02:09:39] Speaker B: That's.
[02:09:39] Speaker A: And it was. Vernon and Leo Nomellini was huge. I mean, in the day.
And they went against the Von Erichs, and it was Wally that got the name from there on out. So that was it. It was. It was just a. And the promoters did that back in that day. It was. Sometimes it was to put someone over and bring them a little bit higher up in the fans eyes, but in the Fritz or the Fritz and Verne thing, it was. It was just a. We're going to give you a rub here and go with it.
[02:10:07] Speaker B: All right, well, let's go. Who's your number five?
[02:10:11] Speaker A: I had to think about this for a while, and as I mentioned, all these coffee break champions and the names I rattled off, not that they weren't deserving of a title, they just didn't hold it for more than a coffee break. So my number five, after looking at all of the champions, and I don't know if this will surprise people or not, but I have to go with Rick Martel.
Rick Martel is.
And he kind of was the crossover between the old school and going into the New School era, and he was such a talented wrestler, he was over.
Verne put the title on him. And Rick had the title one reign, just one time, but he held it for a legit year and a half, uninterrupted.
And when you look at the title reigns of some of those others.
[02:11:09] Speaker B: So there's Rick.
[02:11:12] Speaker A: Yeah, there he is with the AWA belt. And I love that picture, by the way, that he wears that belt really well.
So. But yeah, Vern, what Vern did was, in his own way, he was putting the title on somebody that probably 30 years earlier could have been Vern Gagne himself, if that makes sense to you.
Rick Martel was probably the modern day version of a VERNE Back in 1950, 51.
[02:11:41] Speaker B: From what standpoint, George? Just the athletic ability or.
[02:11:45] Speaker A: Athletic ability. The good looking baby face.
[02:11:48] Speaker B: I was going to say good looks.
[02:11:50] Speaker A: Yeah. I'm certainly in the picture you showed. I mean, Rick or Ric Flair. Ricky Martel was a very popular, if you want to say, with the ladies. They were ooh. And over him. And he was just a nice looking guy. He was built nice, he wasn't overbearing.
And he fit the bill more for Verne than. And this is where you get into a debate. But he wasn't Hulk Hogan.
He was a wrestler at that point in his career. And so that was the reason that Verne give him. And let me tell you this. And I had this told to me personally by Nick Bockwinkle. Nick advocated for Rick Martel. He told Verne, he says he's the guy, put the belt on him for a while.
[02:12:38] Speaker B: I always thought he was highly underrated.
[02:12:41] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[02:12:42] Speaker B: Jimmy Garvin said they had fantastic matches together.
[02:12:45] Speaker A: They did.
[02:12:46] Speaker B: He had nothing but great things to say about Rick.
[02:12:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Jimmy Garvin had several title matches against Rick Martel when he was AWA champ. And yes, they were good, good matches.
[02:13:01] Speaker B: Why do you think his reign didn't last longer? Or was that kind of a time where they were just kind of trying to figure out what to do or.
[02:13:11] Speaker A: Well, for those of us that were,
[02:13:12] Speaker B: they never really sold out to anybody in that role at that time. After.
I'm just asking. I don't have any idea.
[02:13:21] Speaker A: You have to start realizing that Again, I mentioned old school, new school. By the time Rick Martel was the champion, we were getting into that turbulence that was taking place with all of the territories, but especially in the AWA with Verne having kind of a revolving door of talent coming and going.
And a lot of it wasn't Vern's fault. It was. Guys would come in and they would be lured away to the east coast for either a bigger guarantee or bigger payday, you know, whatever, bigger push. And so with Rick Martel, he was right in that time frame where Ric Flair was hot with the nwa, Hulk Hogan was running wild, as we know.
And Verne got the. Just the idea that I need to come up with a national name.
I need it. You know, I don't have a Hogan. I don't have a Flair. Neither one of them were going to work for him at that point.
And so he went with Stan Hansen, an international name at that point. Stan was huge in the States, even bigger in Japan.
And so the story on that is that Verne felt that he's got to come up with a draw.
And at that point in time, whether it be Hanson or Bruiser Brody, who was King Kong Brody here. But whether it was one of those two, Verne had to come up with a name that was equivalent in his mind, I think, to Flair or Hogan.
[02:14:55] Speaker B: I tell you, Rick Martel looked good on the covers of Pro Wrestling Illustrated and things like that. I mean, you look like a star champion.
[02:15:04] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. And I couldn't. I couldn't. I was never a Babyface fan, but I can't say anything bad about his work. And he could go with the heels, Tony, you know, he could brawl. That was good, too. Evidence of his matches with both Nick and certainly with Hanson later. And there were.
[02:15:23] Speaker B: There were a couple of really strong Flair and Martell matches in Japan.
[02:15:28] Speaker A: Yes, yes.
[02:15:29] Speaker B: Title versus title. Of course, they were Broadways, but.
[02:15:34] Speaker A: Yep.
So that's where the. That's where the. Martel. And then, you know, he did lose it to Hansen, and Hansen goes into that category of, you know, even though he held the title for a longer period of time, certainly not for a year, two years, three years, or anything like that. But he was a.
For the time he had it, a consistent champion.
But the headaches that were involved with that and the stories, there's a million of them. And Vern finally decided, I can't do this. I got to get it off of Hanson.
[02:16:07] Speaker B: So that's.
[02:16:08] Speaker A: That's really what happened.
[02:16:09] Speaker B: Number five is Rick Martel. So who do you have at number four?
[02:16:14] Speaker A: This one might surprise some people, but after I looked at it and looked at the. The longevity or the reigns, the type, the number of years, etc. Timeframe, my number four is Kurt Hennig.
And Kurt. Now there he is wearing that version of the AWA belt. At the time, he was cool. Kurt in those days, he kind of got his heel Persona going there and. But he was, he was the excellent choice because he was young and he was so damn good.
[02:16:48] Speaker B: I mean, I didn't get a chance to spend any time with his family in Waterloo, but I heard nothing but great things.
[02:16:55] Speaker A: Oh, Lanice, his. His widow, sweetest lady in the whole world. And Lorraine and I just love her to pieces.
[02:17:05] Speaker B: And Hank, they donated some nice things for the silent.
[02:17:09] Speaker A: Yes, they did. And Hank, who is with her, he. He accompanies Lanise, that's Kurt and her son.
And Hank idolizes his dad like you wouldn't believe.
And certainly he idolizes Larry the Axe, who, you know, he probably never got to see wrestle in person, but really knows of his legacy as well. But the reason I chose Kurt was because at the time, in the 86, 87 time period, there he was, he was kind of an heir apparent to Nick Bockwinkle. And let me say that Nick also lobbied for Kurt, but Kurt was caught in the middle at the time because he was blossoming so fast and he was being lured away more than once to the wwf, which it was at the time.
And Vern had some troublesome moments there where. Do you remember the match where there was the coins that were used by Larry Zabisco? Yeah, that was done. That angle was put on because they were. Verne wasn't sure if Kurt was going to stay, that Vince was trying to pull him away and. And so that was filmed specifically for that to explain some things. If they had to. They had alternative finishes done for that match.
But Kurt held the title for a solid 372 days. A year and a week or so, A couple weeks. So yeah.
[02:18:47] Speaker B: Who do you think Kurt's best matches were with?
[02:18:51] Speaker A: Oh, in the awa, I'd certainly say
[02:18:55] Speaker B: while he was with the world champion,
[02:18:56] Speaker A: you know, while he was world champion, I guess I'd go with, I'd say Nick, because.
And there folks can go out there, there's a one hour Broadway out there between Nick and Kurt. And let's not forget to mention that Nick was double Kurt's age at that point in time. And they went back and forth like you wouldn't believe.
And I would say his best matches were with Nick. Nick loved him. Nick said, let me work with him, you know, and Kurt was, you know, and Kurt, let's not forget Vern Gagnya also assisted Vern or Nick. Nick, Kurt with his training.
So he was responsible for both Larry and Kurt coming into the business.
[02:19:42] Speaker B: Right. So we got Martell at number five, we got Henniga number four. Who's number three?
[02:19:49] Speaker A: Well, this one I think shouldn't be a no brainer to most fans of old school.
I have to go with the Mad Dog Vachon.
Mad Dog Vachon. Look at that picture. And this is so perfect. In 1964-1967, Mad Dog had five different title reigns, but he held the title for three solid years. A total of 728 days.
But he had a couple of those coffee break challenges in there with the Bruiser and Mighty Igor where he lost it and won it back a week later.
Definitely a three year period.
[02:20:32] Speaker B: I always make it a point to tell fans especially about Mad Dog Vachon because they did not see him in his prime.
Oh, they only got to see the video of him. You know, he's what, how old is he, George?
[02:20:46] Speaker A: Well, he's close to 60. At 55 and 60 when, when you're seeing him towards the middle end of the AWA there.
[02:20:54] Speaker B: Yeah. On tape. And you know, you cannot imagine the mobility and the energy and the aggressiveness of Mad Dog Vashon. I mean he was, he was quite, quite the wrestler.
[02:21:09] Speaker A: He, he was so explosive, Tony. And, and I guess using the word unpredictable as a fan, if you saw him, and I'm going to ask fans, if you want to check this out, go to YouTube. There is a, a video, a TV match by the way, of Mad Dog wrestling against Paul Caruso on All Star Wrestling. Awa, All Star Wrestling. Now, short note, Paul Caruso was a close personal favorite friend of Mad Dog's And Paul Caruso later went on to become Carl von Steiger in the Pacific Northwest. Okay. But Mad Dog used him. But if you watch that match, Mad Dog is just a fire plug in the ring. And he was, he was quick. He was so deliberate. He was constantly scratching someone's back. He was poking them in the eyes, he would give them the chops and his pile driver and all the things. And his interviews were so electric. The key to his title reign from 1964-67 was that he was the anti Vern Gagna in every stretch of the way.
Vern, as I've always described him, was mom's apple pie good guy. And then you had Mad Dog, who in those years was hailed from Algeria where he boasted that he had to fight and claw as a kid to get food and he'd eat out of garbage cans and, and he was going to win the title and he was going to be champion Forever. And go back to Algeria, wherever Algeria was in the 60s, you know, and so everything Verne was, the dog was. And then the way they. The way they built him for three years, even though Mad Dog would have title matches with guys like Reggie Parks and Rene Guillet and Art Thomas and you name the babies, Wilbur Snyder, he was always running from Vern Gagnev. Verne couldn't get him to sign the contract.
I chased him all over. That's what was good about it.
[02:23:09] Speaker B: And Mad Dog wrestled a lot in the Omaha side of the iawa, Right.
[02:23:13] Speaker A: I mean, he lived in Omaha.
[02:23:15] Speaker B: He had a magnificent program with Tim Woods.
[02:23:19] Speaker A: Oh, my. And there are even people that have said that Tim woods actually won the title back in that time, but it was never officially recognized by either Omaha or Minneapolis offices. And Minneapolis was the key city. Let's keep that in mind.
[02:23:34] Speaker B: Yeah, that whole Nebraska end of the awa, they had a magnificent run together, title dispute notwithstanding. I mean, they. They had a great, great feud.
So who was Mad Dog as a Mad Dog? Best matches with Verne?
[02:23:52] Speaker A: Oh, I think with Vern and definitely when, you know, in 1965, in. After January of 65, definitely with the Crusher. The Mad Dog and the Crusher. Because Crusher was now the top baby face, and he was, you know, Crusher was feuding with Mad Dog and both Larry Hennigan, Harley Race at that time, our three top heels in that.
[02:24:14] Speaker B: In that first run with the title, when Mad Dog had the title. I know Vern was teaming up with different people against Harley and Larry Harley Racing, Larry Hennig, and they were having cage matches and all kinds of tag team matches. So they were still using Vern in a myriad of ways and keeping Mad Dog on top with somebody else.
[02:24:37] Speaker A: Right? Yeah, we'd have. We'd have Mad Dog against Crusher, and maybe Verne against. With a partner. Could be Wilbur Snyder, Harley Race, I mean, Reggie park or somebody, and it'd be against Hennigan Race.
[02:24:48] Speaker B: Yeah, the matches I remember reading about and whatever he was with Wilbur, but. But the whole angle about Mad Dog wouldn't sign the contract was just awesome.
[02:25:00] Speaker A: And see, the thing is, in those days, Tony, you know, the fans were never privy to the fact that Verne was the. The promoter behind the scenes and the owner of the company. He was the world. He was the world heavyweight champion that they knew of, and he was chasing the Dog who was eluding him. Dog would say, vernon, you have to earn a title match. You know, and it was. It was perfect promoting. So when they would Wrestle it. It popped the house.
[02:25:30] Speaker B: Yeah.
Fantastic. So, yeah, so now we're up to. Now we're up to the top two, and I'm sure fans know who the two are. They just don't know what order you're going to put them in, so.
[02:25:41] Speaker A: Well, I'm. I'm going to be.
If I was to choose my own favorite, I would choose the guy that I'm going to mention to be number one, but he's going to be number two, and that's Nick Bwinkle.
Nick Bachwinkle was Vern G's heir apparent from 1971 on, when he was invited to come to the AWA. They had negotiated, actually, for about a year and a half, and Nick finally came here. And Vern had really intended to put the title on Nick much earlier than he did. But we've talked about this in the past, with the circumstances that took place in July of 71, with Hercules Cortez passing away and Ray and Nick.
Ray Stevens and Nick Bockwinkel teaming up, Verne had the golden goose in that tag team. And Verne realized that by putting Nick in the tag team with Ray and drawing good houses, Verne could still not wrestle as much, which was his plan when he put the title on Nick anyway.
And he could still be champion and draw good houses with Nick and Ray.
So that's really what delayed it. But the bottom line was, is that in 1975, November 8th, when Nick won the title with all but just a short couple of months, Nick held the championship uninterrupted for five years.
That was, like I said, it was a couple of months short, George.
[02:27:19] Speaker B: And yes, I was just going to say, I know you had a good personal relationship with Nick.
I was just curious, did you ever meet Warren?
[02:27:28] Speaker A: Oh, no, no, I didn't.
I had. I did have some conversations with Nick about his dad.
[02:27:36] Speaker B: I was going to ask, did he ever talk about him?
[02:27:39] Speaker A: He always respected his dad.
He. Very much. He had just, from what I could take, he had great respect. And I know when his dad passed away, which, ironically, Warren passed away from Alzheimer's, Nick was very.
He was despondent about that.
Nick had told stories about how he'd go to the matches with his dad in St. Louis, you know, back in the later 40s and into the 50s.
And as a kid growing up, Nick started wrestling in 54, and by that time, Warren's career was on the wind down. There are some early matches where they actually got to team up, and Nick talked about. About that. He said one of his proudest moments was when he was able to climb into the ring for some tag matches with his dad.
[02:28:27] Speaker B: Didn't they move out to the LA territory?
[02:28:29] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, they did. And you know, as far as Nick, he always gave credit to his dad, Lou Fez for and Wilbur Snyder for his personal in ring training. And that's where Nick got his. And he said, how could I not be a good wrestler if I had those three guys?
[02:28:48] Speaker B: And for my trainers, fans who don't know, Warren Buckwinkle is a highly, highly respected name in St. Louis Wrestling. He.
[02:28:54] Speaker A: Yes, he is.
[02:28:55] Speaker B: He was very, very respected by Tragos and Thes and all those guys.
[02:29:00] Speaker A: And you, you could hear.
I actually asked Luther's one time about Warren Bockwinkle and he goes, oh my God, I wished I could have, I could put up.
I wish I could have put the belt on him is what his comment was. So there's high respect there.
[02:29:15] Speaker B: I got another photo concerning Nick that I want to put up here. I just want you to comment on the guys in the photo.
[02:29:24] Speaker A: Wow.
[02:29:26] Speaker B: Of course, you can't hardly mention Nick's title run without talking about the guy who's on the microphone there.
[02:29:34] Speaker A: Absolutely. Bobby Heenan.
And you know, this was kind of a strange partnership, Tony, because in most instances in wrestling in those days, a lot of times a manager was put with a heel wrestler because the heel wrestler was not very articulate on the microphone or allegedly couldn't speak well or didn't speak English or whatever the case was.
And so they would put a mouth with him to be the manager. But in this case, you had Nick who his interviews, I mean, when he came on, you know, the old advertisement about E.F. hutton, you listen. Yeah, well, when Nick came on TV, you turned the TV. At least I did. You turned it up because you wanted to hear him and he would just smoothly rattle off all these big hundred dollar words.
And then you put Bobby Heaton with him who kind of gave the, the more sarcastic side of it. But with, you know, Bobby always, or Nick always saying to Bobby, he'd call him so. Well, so said Sir Robert of Heenan or something like that. You know, he had. They were beautiful together.
[02:30:47] Speaker B: Hey, George, when Bobby left for New York, how did that affect Nick?
[02:30:53] Speaker A: It didn't affect him, as you'd probably think because Nick had already started to wind down his career.
He had reached the point where he was saying, go with a good payday if you're going to do it.
And he only, you know, when Bobby left Nick only, he Was only around about another couple years. And I mentioned that Kurt Hennig match, the One Hour Broadway. It was pretty much after that match, Tony, that Nick, believe it or not, as you got to watch that match as good as Nick was, Nick left that match and said, I'm 57 years old, it's time for me to hang this up.
[02:31:33] Speaker B: I'm gonna watch this afternoon.
Of course, in the center there holding the microphone, you have Marty o' Neill's replacement, the one and only Mean Gene Okerland.
[02:31:43] Speaker A: Mean Gene, yeah. And behind Mean Gene, for those that don't know, that would be the Super Destroyer Mark, who, who under the mask, nobody knew at the time, was Bob Remus, a Vern Gagne trainee. And that was later Sergeant Slaughter and some various incarnations of the Slaughter name too, over the years. But that was Sergeant Slaughter and he became Super Super Destroyer Mark 2. Also on a whim, the Super Destroyer Don Jardine had decided to leave the AWA when Verne asked him to unmask and Jardine didn't want to. And Verne put a call over to Bob Remus, like right now and said, I need you, let's get a mask. And you're going to be Mark 2. And. And originally he was managed by Lord Alfred Hayes. Mark two was. And because Hayes was Jardine's manager and he brought in Mark 2 who he said was bigger and better than the original Super Destroyer. You know, they're putting him over. And of course, if he was bigger and better, he had to be Mark two.
[02:32:51] Speaker B: And of course, since we know who number one's going to be now.
[02:32:56] Speaker A: Absolutely.
Vern Ganya, here's a guy who was, yes, he was a 10 time champion. And for everyone out there that wants to start off, which I, I get frustrated with it when they say, well, Verne was the champion because he owned the company. Verne put himself over.
I got to tell you something that that's just foolish talk because yes, he was the owner and yes, he did put himself over, but Verne put himself over because Verne knew that he could trust Verne. For starters, any promoter wanted to be able to trust their champion, which he had for Nick and Mad Dog, without any hesitation, he trusted them. But with Verne, 10 time champion, and I'm going to tell you this, and I can prove it, with attendance records all through the 50s, the 60s and the 70s and into the very early 80s, when Vern Gagne was on a card, attendance was up.
Absolutely. His name on the marquee was magic. And so Vern was And then you've got to remember Tony Vern Gagne.
I use the term real deal.
You know, we were in the wrestling world, was a business of characters and some guys that had no athletic ability per se, but because they had a character and they could talk and, you know, put help, put someone over in the ring, they got a push. But Verne was real and he stuck to his principles. He wanted real wrestling first, hold for hold, be able to work a technical match.
And yes, it was all work. Let's keep that in mind.
But he.
He stuck to that to the very end, maybe to his own fault at the end. It wasn't the best idea when we see how things went down, but he
[02:34:51] Speaker C: was
[02:34:54] Speaker A: very beloved by the fans. And if you go through the 50s and into the 60s, I can tell you, you know, you talk about merchandising, how it was huge for Hulk Hogan era, when you had Hulk Hogan T shirts and bandanas and mugs and games and whatever it was during the 50s and 60s, Vern Gagne had lots of merchandise that was available. A Vern Gagne game. He was on all the talk shows of the. Of the era.
Throughout the 50s and the 60s, he was a household name. Whether you were a fan of wrestling or not. You knew Vern Gagne.
[02:35:35] Speaker B: Every year he's number one. I was going to say every year. Let's back up to the National Wrestling Alliance. Every year, the NWA for a few years put out a calendar, and I've collected most of these. And the calendar for 1954 just has the belt on it.
[02:35:55] Speaker A: Yep.
[02:35:55] Speaker B: And it has the names. The biggest star name is Fez, but then the names underneath it. There are two underneath it. Pat o' Connor and Vern Gagne.
[02:36:07] Speaker A: There you go.
[02:36:08] Speaker B: And then down below you got Ripper Leone, Killer Kowalski, Hans Schmidt and Antonio Rocca in 1954. Now, it's interesting that they don't have Lou's picture, but they have the belt on here and they got Vern. And there's a whole story around that. But then in 1955, the next year, Vern's on the COVID with the United. With the United States title on there.
And so they don't put the heavyweight champion on there, they put the US champion on there. This is how big Vern ganya was in 1955.
[02:36:48] Speaker A: People just don't. You have to understand that obviously the media today and the ability to have yourself showcased all over the place is much better than it was in the 50s. But in the 50s, when in 1955, Tony we're only about five or six years into the television era. And television was very Neanderthal in those ages. Still black and white, small TV screen.
[02:37:14] Speaker B: But wrestling is so hot on television this time.
[02:37:19] Speaker A: Yes, yes. And when you mentioned Pat o', Connor, Luthez and Vern Gagne on the same thing, you have to realize these guys outside the ring, the three of them were friends.
They absolutely, you know, the. Vern Gagne, Pat O' Connor alleged controversy over the AWA championship in 1960.
Luthez always not wanting to put Verne over, you know, and no, he didn't want to. That's a fact. And I've said this before.
Lou said to me at Cauliflower Alley one time about 20 some years back, he said, and I can quote it, he said, you know, I wasn't always very nice to ole Verne, but respect Vern Gagne respected Lou, he respected Pat O'. Connor. And even after Pat was not NWA champion, Verne used him on the AWA cards in the 60s. And I'm telling you, Pat O' Connor was always billed as former world champion. Pat O', Connor, they never put AWA or NWA in front of him in those days.
[02:38:25] Speaker B: And I would tell you, too, in 1954, in New York City, Antonio Rocco was probably the biggest star.
[02:38:35] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[02:38:36] Speaker B: And in Chicago, Illinois, where the dumont network was emanating from, Vern Gagne was the biggest star on television.
[02:38:43] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:38:44] Speaker B: And I'm not trying to take anything away from Lou, but that's just, that's just a fact. And I think that's why they were putting all these guys on here. Hans Schmidt was a huge draw in the 50s. That's why his name's on there.
[02:38:55] Speaker A: The only one that's missing that I think should be included is Buddy Rogers.
[02:39:00] Speaker B: Yeah, he's not on here. Danny McShane's on here.
[02:39:02] Speaker A: Yeah. But when. And you, you mentioned the dumont network.
That is the network that was a national hookup in those days. It wasn't a local town television program or wrestling TV program. And that's where the names of o', Connor, thes Killer Kowalski and Tony Rocca.
[02:39:22] Speaker B: I think the reason that Danny McShane's name's on here is because of Texas wrestling.
[02:39:26] Speaker A: Absolutely.
[02:39:27] Speaker B: Which was a huge program in Dallas.
[02:39:31] Speaker A: Yeah.
[02:39:31] Speaker B: Now, Gorgeous George isn't on here. He was the big Hollywood wrestling star.
[02:39:37] Speaker A: Right. Well, and Danny McShane, he was. He had had a programmer there along the way with Vern Gagne and others as well.
So Vern Gagne, I mean, like I say, if you want to get the number one AWA champion.
I don't think you can be fair and impartial if you say, well, he this old. He put himself over, and that's why he was champ.
You go around the. You and I can do this. We can look at all the other territories, and a lot of times, the promoters were the ones that were putting themselves over. And I could venture to say that not all of them had the credentials and the ability to draw fans like
[02:40:18] Speaker B: Vern Gagne could or the results.
[02:40:22] Speaker A: And I want to point one thing out. You had. We had alluded to a moment ago when you asked me about the Crusher and Verne, you know.
[02:40:28] Speaker C: Yeah.
[02:40:28] Speaker A: The only contention that Vern and Crusher had was it bugged Vern that Crusher, in many times, it appeared he could be more popular than Vern. Verne had that ego, and he.
He realized at times he had to say, okay, I got to call Red she up and get him in here.
And he'd do it because he was promoting a business. He wanted to make money. But that was their only contention, and Crusher knew this. Crusher knew that Verne needed him at times. And the bottom line was Crusher always came in, always with a condition. I don't want to be champion.
And when you look at the awa, we had five reigns, or what did I say for a Crusher? Three reigns.
[02:41:19] Speaker B: Three.
[02:41:20] Speaker A: Three reigns. They were minimal. But how many times was he the tag team champion? And each time, he was the tag team champion because Verne needed a house, needed a favor over a period of months. And Crusher would always tell him, I'll do it, but let's figure out a way to make it off in the future.
[02:41:41] Speaker B: Number five was Rick Martell. Number four, Curt Henning. Number three, Mad Dog Michonne. Number two, Nick Bockwinkle. Number one, Vern Ganya. Those are.
[02:41:50] Speaker A: If you look right behind me, right next to my belt there, you see Bockwinkle, Mad Dog, and Vern.
[02:41:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[02:41:57] Speaker A: And that is. I didn't put that there for this conversation. I did it because of the title belts there. That's the reason I have those three pictures that way.
[02:42:05] Speaker B: Those are the top five AWA champions of the world of all time from George Shire. George, thanks again for this last weekend in Iowa. So thank you for introducing me and into the hall of Fame, and thank you for being my friend.
[02:42:20] Speaker A: I always enjoy coming on with you, Tony, and you make me tear up with the way you put me over.
And I just want you to know, man, I love you. I our friendship to me is so God bless you. I appreciate you and let's keep this stuff alive and factual. Okay?
[02:42:42] Speaker B: Well, that's George Shire and his top five AWA World Heavyweight Champions of all time. What a great show today. We reviewed the end of 1965 in West Texas and the career of Dorie Funk Sr. That recurring segment is got underway and launched today and I'll be going through a little piece of 1966 every now and then. Not on every show, but from time to time we will throw that segment in and we will cover his entire career in 66. And I told you today why that's so pivotal and why that's so important in Amarillo and West Texas wrestling. And we kicked off the show today with Steve giannarelli talking about 1976 www. F.
Steve does just such a great job and I appreciate him so much for being part of our time total family. And of course I appreciate George so much for being part of our family as well. And so great show today. I hope you enjoyed it and I hope you hit that subscribe or like or Follow or plus button to add us to your podcast routine every single week. And don't forget to give us a five star review. I can't leave without telling you about the Daily Chronicle. The Daily Chronicle is a newsletter that I write every single day. And as far as I know, as far as I know, it's the only daily newsletter that covers pro wrestling in the territories. I cover the territory era from 1925 to 1995 and we come out with a feature every single day on Substack and that's also emailed to all our subscribers. It's free if you want to sign up for it. No charge at all. It's my contributing to pro wrestling history and a major reason why I won the Melby Award this year is because of my efforts into multimedia as a historian. Having a podcast, having a YouTube channel, having a daily newsletter, having a Facebook group, all of those things contributed to my award this year and I'm deeply, deeply appreciative. But if you want to contribute to the work I'm doing as a pro wrestling historian covering the Territory era, we have a way for you to do that. And you'll also get something for it. You'll get extra content that I write, including my Family Tradition series, my Evolution of Pro Wrestling series, my Tracking the World Champion series. All of those additional pieces of content will be yours if you contribute $5 a month or if you sign up for for a Year, It's a mere $60. Is that right? Yeah, $50. It's $50. $50. And that saves you $10 a year if you want to become a premium paid subscriber to the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. And that also helps me cover some of our expenses here. Doing, excuse me, doing pro wrestling history can be a little bit costly and expensive at times, you know, because I'm traveling to Waterloo, I'm traveling to St. Louis.
I'm going to be going to the Jack Pfeffer Collection coming up here next month in August with a group of my historian friends. So, I mean, that's going to be a couple of nights in a hotel. That's going to be some gas. That's going to be some stuff. And you all help me do that. When you become a paid subscriber to the Pro Wrestling Time tunnel at just $5 a month or $50 a year. And we've got several people who do that. And I have got unending gratitude. John Bradshaw Layfield is a paid subscriber. He mentioned it when he was introducing me, or it was after. So after my hall of Fame speech in Waterloo, I couldn't have asked for a better endorsement. John Layfield said, I'm a paid subscriber. Tony delivers value. So I really, really, really do appreciate that. Hey, coming up here on the show, we got some really cool things. Randy Hales is going to be a guest on our show coming soon. Rip Rogers, who just won the trainers Award at the Cauliflower Alley, is going to be a guest coming up. So we got Rip coming up. We got Paige Sutherland, who just was elected to the Cauliflower Alley board. She's going to be on our show and we're going to do that.
Excuse me.
As we get closer and closer to the Cauliflower Hourly in August. So that's just going to be coming in a couple of weeks. So we got Roy Lucier who's going to be here, and we're going to cover wrestling in Mexico in 1976. And this will be Roy's first time here in the Time Tunnel. And I'm so glad that he is going to do that. We're working, of course, with our friend Fumi Saito in Japan. We're going to be covering Japanese wrestling. We're going to have a total Canadian show for 1976. So we got a lot of cool things coming up. You want to make sure that you hit that subscribe button here at the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. And next week we're going to cover the Von Erichs.
We're a little late in doing this. The documentary was released some weeks ago, but it's just taken us a little time. Lance Peterson, who is our friend, who is just the ultimate Von Erich and world class historian, is going to be here and we're going to cover the points of the documentary, the curse of the Von Erichs and a whole lot more here next week on the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel. So I hope that you will join us. This is Tony Richards reminding you, if you want better neighbors, start with yourself and be a better neighbor. Live from the Richards ranch in Western Kentucky, this is Tony Richards saying so long everybody. I'll see you next week and go goodbye from the Bluegrass State.
[02:48:37] Speaker A: Thanks for tuning in to the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel podcast. Tune in for another great episode next week, interviewing wrestlers, referees and media personalities that have made the sport of professional wrestling great. We'll release a new episode soon. Don't you dare miss it.
