WEBVTT

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This is WWE Superstar Drew McIntyre,
and you're listening to the WWE podcast show,

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the one that everybody wants. Me's
got I waste sixteen said, I

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just whipped your ass? Is mind? You can acknowledge me? All right?

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Everyone, this is Memphis Mark coming
to you from Mullet Manor with a

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little different interpretation. This week we're
gonna do the Mullet Manner Memoirs, and

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I've got my all star cast with
maintenance Maverick and of course the gardener Michael

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Gross and myself and guys, how
you doing well? I gotta say I'm

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doing really well. I'm getting over
a little bit of sickness, a little

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bit of flu who kind of went
into a respiratory thing, kind of clearing

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out the sinus. Is feeling a
little bit better, trying to enjoy this

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little a little bit of good weather
before the winter really hits hard here in

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Louisville. But I'm really excited to
do this project because you and I go

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back many many years as friends,
but we also go back many many years

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as fans of what we are going
to do the topic on, and I'm

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just really excited to put out a
new thing that isn't just a wrestle magic,

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but it's part of both what you
do as far as NXT and what

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we do as wrestle magic. In
this joint production is going to be so

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amazing. And so without further ado, I'd like to introduce my nephew,

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mister Maverick. Hey, guys,
it's been a good week so far.

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Really happy to be on this project. I mean, as soon as I

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got mentioned to me about it,
I was really excited. So I'm just

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really happy to be a part of
this. I grew up, you know,

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outside of knowing anything about the territories, so I had to do my

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own presearch a little bit and try
to understand some things that were being talked

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about between everybody, and hopefully I've
learned just enough. But yeah, without

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further ado, let's get into it. Memphis Park, Well, I guys,

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what we're going to delve into here
is pretty much the last remaining territory

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that had a chance at money.
Now there's some people that we'll talk about,

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possibly another territory that's still around,
but I'm going to speak of in

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the South, and that's Memphis Wrestling. And with Memphis Wrestling, you got

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to understand, at one point in
time it had a share of seven out

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of ten TV sets. Seven out
of ten TV sets in a city as

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large as Memphis was just unheard of. But where it started was actually in

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the Ellis Auditorium and that goes back
into the fifties in before. I can't

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go any further back because I wasn't
around, but I'll say that it started

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out. It's the house that people
like Spudneck Monroe and Jerry I'm sorry,

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Jackie Fargo and some of these guys
built. Now it was selling out.

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It was selling out, but they
were going to end up tearing the building

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down. So at that time you
had a couple of different promoters that were

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promoting in Memphis, and you know, so you had less Wolf that was

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around here. You had a couple
other guys, but there ended up being

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a split where the Herb Welch family
got involved and they were the big time

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wrestlers here. So with now,
the Welches, if I'm not mistaken,

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were very aligned with the NWA or
were they succeeding Well they were, They

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were, yes, very aligned with
NWA, but they did kind of when

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they started this territory, well when
they started. When they made the move

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to the coliseum, they created their
own entity. You know, they created

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their own NWA per se, if
you know what I mean. They were

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that big. But they did use
them as a governing body for a while.

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You remember the old will have to
get with the president and check on

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the match. Absolutely, there was
a council. And for everybody who doesn't

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know, with the territory system that
you had people like Paul ash you had

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herb Welsh, You had so many
different names, I mean Toully Blancher's father,

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Job Lanchwerd, you had Fritz van
Eric, all these people who were

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part of the National Wrestling Alliance.
And when you succeeded, you created your

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own wrestling champion. So it was
very big with the hotbed and especially the

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biggest hotbed was the mid South,
which is what we are talking about now.

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So I acquiesce, well, I
tell you the biggest of all at

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that time. You got to consider, yeah, there was still segregation in

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the South, so you pretty much
had the black clientele, your your black

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customers up top and your white customers
down on the bottom. Now, a

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lot of times that would cause a
problem, but they had the one thing

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that made them different, made mid
South wrestler or Memphis wrestling different. And

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that was a gentleman by the name
of Spudneck Monroe. And he would tell

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everything that that a bigot or a
white racist would have hated. He liked

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black music. He dressed in a
black mannerism. Uh, he just acted

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different. He had a white streak, bleached blonde whites to reek down the

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middle of his hair like he was
telling everybody he was a skunk and he'd

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spray them. I mean he and
he was tough. He was legitimately tough.

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And to show you the difference in
the times, I don't have the

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exact year. Oh you women,
I believe it's nineteenth January fourteenth, nineteen

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sixty. Rock Em Bumbar twenty seven
of fourteen fifteen. I'm actually quoting the

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Memphis Press Siminar, the local newspaper
of fourteen fifty Spartan Drive. They gave

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his address in this newspaper article,
known in the wrestling world as bud Nick

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Munroe and another wrestler, mister Hickman
twenty seven and again they give his address,

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were charged with disorderly conduct following an
arrest at twelve forty five in the

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morning in a negro cafe on Bill
Street at Hernando. But I think Michael

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used to the blues hall, little
blues hall. I used to rune it

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by the way. Yeah, But
they were arrested at twelve forty five yesterday

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morning in a negro cafe at Bill
and Hernando where they were drinking beer,

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that was, and the judge,
the judge was said that she had never

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heard of any white man being arrested
for that. She find him twenty six

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dollars and he had to forfeit his
his pay for that night. Now that's

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just given you a little bit of
a peak into what these wrestlers were going

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through back then because they worked together. They you know, they the more

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heat one got the other one,
you know what I mean. So it

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was these guys were friends. May
I expand up on that a little bit?

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Please? The fact that spot Mak
sput Nick Monroe, his his persona

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was carried on to the next generation. And you know who that next generation

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person was who embraced uh the so
called color barrier, and that's Dusty Rhodes.

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Absolutely true. Yeah, However Sputnick
Monroe lived, who he who he

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actually was, He was a gentleman
who wrestled during the day and at night

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liked to live his lifestyle of listening
to blues music, hanging out with his

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friends. And because he was a
television persona and an immedia persona and a

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white man, a bleach blonde built
like no one's business, they said,

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you cannot do this. He stepped
in as an adversary to everybody. Now

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they hated that, and they would
always tell him, quoting the movie,

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and this heat if you arrest me, that's fine. I've got the bail

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money in my back pocket. I'll
be back here tomorrow hanging out with my

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friends. So leave me alone.
Now with that being said, Maverick,

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you can take this one. They
said, and this is also quoting the

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movie. What did every African American
house have in their household? So from

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the movie something that I don't believe
I will be able to forget after hearing

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it was every African American had three
pictures in their household. First one was

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of Jesus, second one was of
Martin Luther King, and the third one

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was of spot Nick Monroe. Now, looking at what had happened back then,

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times have changed so much, and
it is just such a difference in

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today's world, because I couldn't imagine
first off, everything being segregated like that,

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and second off, just hang out
with your friends, not being rowdy

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or anything and just getting arrested for
it. Things like that really caught my

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attention while watching the whole documentary,
and that kind of gave me respect for

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the name of spump Nick Monroe,
even though I hadn't heard of him until

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today. So yeah, I'm really
happy that I've gotten to learn about that.

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But let's move on, Mark,
what do you have next for us

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my friends? Okay, well,
real quickly, I do want to add

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it's people like you that are in
the armed services that are Thro're the reason

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that I'm able to sit anywhere I
want to and sit next to whoever I

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want to, So don't ever appreciate
I don't think we don't appreciate that.

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But we will go directly into now
with the coliseum. It's a it's a

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twelve thousand seat arena shaped in a
almost like a bubble kind of. At

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its time, it was pretty pretty
innovative, but they weren't using it during

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the week, so they work a
deal out to pretty much they were getting

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that Arena four Mondays for twelve hundred
dollars a month. Now that would be

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I'm gonna I'm just gonna estimate probably
around seven to nine thousand dollars a month

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nowadays. That's pennies. That's a
great deal, patties, I mean.

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But Okay, so we go from
there. So now you've got you've got

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a couple of different networks going here. They have. Some people call it

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the Chipman circuit. Some people call
it the pork Chop circuit. There's there's

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names where Phil Hickerson or maybe one
of the interns, donn Al Green.

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They would take some of the lesser
known wrestlers and they would hit Jonesboro,

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Arkansas, West Memphis, Bliville and
go around, and then you had your

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main circuit of the wrestlers and Michael, that's the guys that came up into

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your territory. They would hit Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Well, the

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Knoxville was a fighting area with a
couple of territories, but then Louisville,

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definitely, Greensboro, we got to
talk about Evansville. Definitely, all those

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territories they were expanding into. But
it was the most viable product because at

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this point I would say and tell
me if I'm for stepping my boundaries,

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that all these talents started to find
a place where people really believed in k

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fabe. And that's what was the
biggest thing was k fabe. The believability

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that wrestling is not scripted, it's
real was riotous. So these people like

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Al Green and the Dream Machine but
we'll get to him in a bit,

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is the fact that that was what
was sucking in. So we had to

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go to those cities, those major
cities where people still believed absolutely and you

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could get for riding in the car
with your opponent that night, even though

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you're both going to the same city. You could get fired for something like

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that. But these guys, they
started this up kind of you got to

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consider the kahonas they had to have
on them to kind of spit in the

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face of everybody and go that we
can do this. Jerry Jared was a

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young wrestler, a blondhaired guy that
got to beat up every week, but

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everybody loved to watch him, and
you had people like Tojo Yamamoto and all

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of these guys in Tojo was a
small guy from Hawaii, but they put

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him up as a Japanese guy,
and he had these wooden shoes and he'd

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get beat up the whole match,
but as soon as he got hold of

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one of his shoes, bam,
blood come out. Even on Saturday morning

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wrestling, if he hits you with
that shoe, the guy went down and

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he come up bleeding. But you
know, you had some great, great

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talent that was back then, and
it was real because I can remember the

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first time as a kid being able
to go into a restaurant that I had

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to go through the kitchen back to
a meeting room and there was Jerry Jared

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and Tojo Yamamoto after a match.
Oh dear Lord, kunk. My heart

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sunk. But even then they left
through separate doors. You know, I

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had the advantage of restaurant management knowing
me being a kid and let me back

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there. But that's how big it
was. You had to go through the

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kitchen back through a hallway down,
you know, down there, a long

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hallway to see a table in the
back and that's where they were eating.

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But yeah, guys, from there, you've got going into like Louisville.

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Louisville was was the biggest city you
had, Natville, which was drawing good,

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but Louisville And wasn't that in the
little gardens Michael, Yes, it

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was actually I think somewhere off Eighth
Street here downtown. It's still there.

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It's just nothing happens in it.
I took a couple of pictures and I

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sent him to Cornett. He hasn't
responded, but yeah, he's never gonna

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respond. But yeah, the Lousville
Gardens was a major draw. Obviously you

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have Mid South Coliseum, and I'm
trying to think of like the other major

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city draws. But you'd know better
than I would. Well, I mean

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even a city like two Polo would
would would do really obviously, yes,

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so and then you would draw all
through Mississippi and even up from a little

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bit from Alabama. Now they never
went down because that's going into the Mid

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South territory and that Bill Watts.
Yeah, but like I said, you

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know with Buddy Wayne, Now,
Buddy Wayne was the main guy that did

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the port Chop circuit towards the end, he was he was a guy that

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you could throw under a asked.
He was a big guy, he could

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wrestle, but he produced Ken Wayne
and uh and a few other these.

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I think he's even got a grandson
that's out there. I'm getting ready to

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start up. But they took it
well. They took people like a cop

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from up in Tennessee that was bald
headed and he was like six six,

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great shape, ex military guy,
and he wanted to get into wrestling.

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And Lawler was at that time.
Lawler was becoming such a big talent.

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You know, he had gotten the
push. He was an artist that showed

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his artwork to some guys and they
started letting him sell his artwork. And

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the next thing, you know,
he got into the wrestling and he went

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through the small circuits and he built
himself up and at that time one of

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his biggest finds that I think was
the Mongolian Stomper. The guy was a

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cop the time and then he wrestled, but I mean he was great.

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But these guys could find talent.
Plowboy Frasier just a big, heavy set

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guy from down to Mississippi. But
he just fit the part. Uh you

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know now that it was Plo plow
Boy, the same guy that was in

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Hee's Big Adventure. I don't know. If he I'm not up, he

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might have been Plowboy. And if
I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I mean,

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come on, guys, there's forty
years of wrestling memories in the spring.

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But uh, I know that plowboy, he had quite a quite a

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bit. Moncoline Stomper actually well he
he was green in Memphis and they sent

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him over to Canada and he wrestled
for STU for a while and then came

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back after actually learning how to do
drop toe hold for a second. Yes,

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which would that be up in the
Stampede sort of leagues or what exactly

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did STU own at the time Stampede? Yeah, it was. It was

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all the Calgary That's that's what you
call it Stampede because apparently up in Canada

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being a cowboys bigger and rodeos are
bigger supposedly than in the South of America.

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Yeah, it's very very interesting culture. But getting back to it,

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the Mongolian Stopper, the guy actually
was legitimately taller than Andre the Giant,

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but they would never put them together
and do it back to back. Very

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interesting, Yeah, I mean,
but you would have. We had a

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young tag team come through in the
early seventies there, Ricky and Robert Gibson

213
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brothers. Yeah, a great tag
team. But you know, you've got

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Robert or the Ricky that gets hurt, and then Robert goes on and meets

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up with this guy, this other
guy, and there again Lawler and Jared

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00:18:49.000 --> 00:18:55.000
and Memphis Wrestling says, hey,
let's put him in some tights, let's

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00:18:55.240 --> 00:18:59.359
put some band Danons on them,
bring him out to some music. And

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Memphis Wrestling was the first to do
music videos to add like a music.

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I mean, as simple as as
that sounds, that was a big,

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big deal. And with the Rock
and Roll Express later on with another tag

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team that the two guys couldn't draw
any kind of crowd, but you put

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00:19:22.160 --> 00:19:26.039
him together, put fancy coats on
him and call him the Fabulous Ones,

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00:19:26.519 --> 00:19:32.440
and he'd just come out and bam, they're selling out arenas you know,

224
00:19:32.640 --> 00:19:42.240
and it's just a Tommy rich guy, looks like a bullfrog. He's fired

225
00:19:42.319 --> 00:19:48.839
up. Though he farred up with
Dundee, Bill Dundee that comes over from

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00:19:48.920 --> 00:19:52.119
New Zealand, but he has everybody
thinks he's from Australia, and he takes

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00:19:52.160 --> 00:19:56.480
on the Australian side of things,
and to this day, most people still

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think he's from Australia. Paul Orned, I mean, it goes on,

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he ends up breaking Lawler's nose,
and then Lawler ends up breaking his nose

230
00:20:07.680 --> 00:20:15.240
when he returns. Yeah, nice
little receipt. The original kind of the

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00:20:15.359 --> 00:20:19.920
Midnight Express, not with Cornett,
but Dennis Condrey found his success with Phil

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00:20:21.000 --> 00:20:26.160
Hickerson. They were the biggest thing
at the time, going against like a

233
00:20:26.279 --> 00:20:30.279
Dundee and Jimmy Valiant, which Jimmy
Valiant couldn't wrestle a lick, but man

234
00:20:30.400 --> 00:20:34.519
look great going to the ring.
Don't talk that way about boogie woogie.

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Okay, he did that lick the
thumb and stick someone in the neck thing,

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which later became the the what Asian
spike, So come on, yeah,

237
00:20:45.480 --> 00:20:51.240
oh it to be called the boogie
woogie spike. But back then he

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00:20:51.359 --> 00:20:55.960
was handsome Jimmy by the way,
Absolutely, I've got a wrestling card from

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00:20:56.480 --> 00:21:02.720
September eighteenth. This is of course
they didn't put the years on this,

240
00:21:02.880 --> 00:21:07.079
but this is a Monday night.
No increases in the price for a triple

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00:21:07.440 --> 00:21:15.960
main event. The a w A
World Champion Nick Bockwinkle going against handsome Jimmy

242
00:21:15.039 --> 00:21:22.160
Vayan. Now listen to these other
to uh you got Joe LaDuke and John

243
00:21:22.240 --> 00:21:27.920
Louis going against Sarry Lawler and the
Mongolin Stomper that's a blood beth uh.

244
00:21:29.000 --> 00:21:33.680
And then you've got mister Wrestling going
against Terry Sawyer. Uh. And you

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00:21:33.759 --> 00:21:44.200
know, I mean at the first
match is Tommy Gilbert versus Louthu's Wayne Wayne

246
00:21:44.279 --> 00:21:47.720
Ferris, the Hanky talk Man's on
this card. I mean, you know,

247
00:21:48.400 --> 00:21:52.640
and then this is just an average
week, so you can see where

248
00:21:52.680 --> 00:21:56.839
the Memphis Wrestling had such a draw, uh, and to where you get

249
00:21:56.880 --> 00:22:00.559
guys like Maverick that are going back
and looking at some of this stuff and

250
00:22:00.960 --> 00:22:03.640
I send them old tapes and I
know he probably gets tired of it,

251
00:22:03.720 --> 00:22:07.680
but you watch some of that.
The next thing you know, you've watched

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00:22:07.680 --> 00:22:11.759
the whole hour show. And that's
what we got. And I don't think

253
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any other wrestling show back in its
day put out the product that Memphis Wrestling.

254
00:22:19.359 --> 00:22:22.039
And now, Michael, you got
to see, you know, the

255
00:22:22.480 --> 00:22:27.000
second version anything I saw on Monday. You saw what day did they come

256
00:22:27.079 --> 00:22:36.000
through Louisville. Well, see,
as far as wrestling went, I would

257
00:22:36.039 --> 00:22:41.200
get to see whatever you saw on
ESPN, Okay it will be yeah.

258
00:22:41.559 --> 00:22:45.799
So I always got the lidder carbon
copies because while we're a few years different.

259
00:22:45.559 --> 00:22:48.839
I also lived in Cleveland, Ohio, which was hard word for cable

260
00:22:49.279 --> 00:22:56.000
much before many other people. So
when I was seeing stuff that you had

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00:22:56.160 --> 00:23:00.119
seen. Sometimes they would show us
reruns that we knew were reruns from reading

262
00:23:00.240 --> 00:23:03.799
dirt sheets or mags or anything like
that, and it's like, Okay,

263
00:23:03.799 --> 00:23:07.079
I already know who's going to win
this. That's kind of what also hurt

264
00:23:07.119 --> 00:23:15.359
the territories too, was bad syndication. But when Memphis had the ESPN slot

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00:23:15.480 --> 00:23:19.759
after World Class had lost it,
when it was CWA before it became USWA,

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00:23:19.799 --> 00:23:22.480
and I was watching a lot of
it, I was really entrenched in,

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00:23:22.680 --> 00:23:26.960
like loving the characters. But of
course with everything and the death of

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00:23:27.000 --> 00:23:30.279
the territories, you start to see
stars go away, who's a star,

269
00:23:30.400 --> 00:23:37.240
who's left over? Things like that. But there is a special match to

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00:23:37.400 --> 00:23:42.079
you, and you know what I'm
talking about that makes Memphis wrestling, the

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00:23:42.200 --> 00:23:51.599
CWA and what everything that was Memphis
as a territory, the match that put

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00:23:51.720 --> 00:23:56.920
them on the map, that made
everybody in the whole world stop and say,

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00:23:56.359 --> 00:24:03.039
this is a match. And that's
why Andy Kaufman said in nineteen eighty

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00:24:03.079 --> 00:24:07.279
three that this is the wrestling capital
of the world. What is that match?

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Oh man, you're you're throwing me
in, You're throwing me under the

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00:24:11.920 --> 00:24:15.240
because there's so many that I could
go back. It's your favorite match of

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00:24:15.279 --> 00:24:18.440
all time. Well, you know, I'll sit there and talk with you

278
00:24:18.599 --> 00:24:23.160
so many nights back in the day
when you were still bartending back in the

279
00:24:23.279 --> 00:24:27.759
day. Uh man, you go
back with lawlor Man, you could go

280
00:24:27.920 --> 00:24:32.640
with man. You know, you
had your Dundee matches of course, and

281
00:24:32.839 --> 00:24:37.400
you had your all of his championships, the Kurt Hennings, the Bockwinkles,

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00:24:37.480 --> 00:24:41.119
the Mark. It's the match,
the match, the match that made you.

283
00:24:44.640 --> 00:24:47.759
Oh you're killing me, You're killing
me. Come on, just come

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00:24:47.799 --> 00:24:52.240
on with it, Just come on
with it. Oh well, okay,

285
00:24:52.640 --> 00:24:56.000
there we go. Now, okay, I apologize folks. He is correct

286
00:24:56.519 --> 00:25:03.640
and and what we were referring to
is to me, it is the cinematic,

287
00:25:03.559 --> 00:25:10.920
it is the it is the epitome
of Southern wrestling, the whole thing.

288
00:25:11.039 --> 00:25:15.920
You'd have to watch the whole clip
from Lance Russell putting on a show

289
00:25:15.039 --> 00:25:22.160
saying literally literally smoking a cigarette,
which you know, I just and I

290
00:25:22.279 --> 00:25:27.000
know people that's far fetched, the
people that understand. But smoking a cigarette

291
00:25:27.000 --> 00:25:32.160
and saying what they're fighting. They're
fighting where Come on, grab a camera,

292
00:25:32.680 --> 00:25:34.640
get that cable. Come on,
we'll edit it later. We'll edit

293
00:25:34.720 --> 00:25:41.359
it later. And they go down
a stairwhale and there are four guys tearing

294
00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:48.279
it up in the concession stand,
and that's Jerry Lawler, Bill Undie,

295
00:25:48.920 --> 00:25:53.920
Wayne Ferris and Larry Latham the Holly
where they called the Hollywood Blonds. Wasn't

296
00:25:53.960 --> 00:26:00.680
that I think that they were going
under that moniker then, But but the

297
00:26:00.799 --> 00:26:06.759
fight was just freaking great. But
I found out years later, years later.

298
00:26:07.920 --> 00:26:11.440
The key thing that I was able
to enlighten people too that now when

299
00:26:11.480 --> 00:26:15.839
they go back, it's extremely funny
to go back and watch. They were

300
00:26:15.920 --> 00:26:18.119
told it was the end of the
season, so they were going to throw

301
00:26:18.200 --> 00:26:22.799
out all the condiments and all the
stuff. So they didn't care about anything

302
00:26:22.519 --> 00:26:29.440
that was in there. But there
was one important piece of equipment. It

303
00:26:29.599 --> 00:26:33.319
was their moneymaker. All right,
Let's see if Maverick knows what it is?

304
00:26:33.440 --> 00:26:36.920
What is it math? All right, Let's see if I can do

305
00:26:37.039 --> 00:26:41.400
the voice quite as good as Memphis
Mark does it. Do not touch the

306
00:26:41.519 --> 00:26:49.960
popcorn machine? Yes, to do
whatever you want. I don't care whatever

307
00:26:51.240 --> 00:26:57.359
you want, Just do not touch
the popcorn machine. And anybody that goes

308
00:26:57.440 --> 00:27:00.720
back and watch the full video,
I suggest you watch the full, not

309
00:27:00.839 --> 00:27:04.279
the edited, the full video so
you can get Lance Russell in there.

310
00:27:04.799 --> 00:27:08.519
And Lance Russell was such, Oh
god, he was amazing. He was

311
00:27:08.599 --> 00:27:14.279
such an important He was our version
of a Gordon Solely or or whatever.

312
00:27:14.400 --> 00:27:18.000
If you travel around the different territories, you'd have a voice that you knew

313
00:27:18.160 --> 00:27:25.960
and Lance Russell and we had a
local the station, the actual wrestling left

314
00:27:26.119 --> 00:27:30.200
one station in which this is the
only wrestling show in the country that's getting

315
00:27:30.400 --> 00:27:37.559
paid the wrestling. The TV state
is paying them to produce. They're doing

316
00:27:37.759 --> 00:27:41.640
all the editing, They're doing all
the production out of their end. That's

317
00:27:41.720 --> 00:27:48.920
how big wrestling was. But they
went from they changed stations and the local

318
00:27:49.079 --> 00:27:55.519
weather man, Dave Brown came on. So you had is Lawlor would put

319
00:27:55.559 --> 00:28:00.200
it, you had Lance Russell Banana
nos and then you had Dave Brown,

320
00:28:00.319 --> 00:28:06.680
the straight guy, and uh,
they were great. They were just freaking

321
00:28:07.799 --> 00:28:11.079
great. And uh and Maverick,
I did want to say something I didn't

322
00:28:11.119 --> 00:28:15.839
know when Michael mentioned earlier that Cleveland
was hardwired. I didn't even know if

323
00:28:15.880 --> 00:28:21.200
you understood what that meant. Because
it's a year and I was just thinking

324
00:28:21.240 --> 00:28:25.920
about that I got cable. And
when we got cable in Memphis, one

325
00:28:26.039 --> 00:28:27.920
side of the street got it and
the other side didn't. For like two

326
00:28:29.000 --> 00:28:36.480
months, it was we had three
channels, man, three channels. Then

327
00:28:36.559 --> 00:28:40.000
we get cable and the world opens
up. And now look at the you

328
00:28:40.119 --> 00:28:44.480
know, I don't even know if
anybody uses cable anymore. I think everybody's

329
00:28:44.480 --> 00:28:51.759
streaming so well with this infancy of
cable. The biggest angle of all time

330
00:28:52.200 --> 00:28:56.960
is starting to bloom. Now that
Lawler has become something. Fargos are starting

331
00:28:56.000 --> 00:29:03.640
to get a little elder. Jimmy
Art is becoming one of the biggest heal

332
00:29:03.759 --> 00:29:07.440
managers of all time in history.
We have a person like the dream machine.

333
00:29:07.759 --> 00:29:11.680
Yes, Michael, let me add
Jimmy Hart at the time is a

334
00:29:11.839 --> 00:29:17.920
local musician with Jimmy Hart and the
Gentries. He was a friend of Lawlor's

335
00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:22.880
and when Lawler got into doing some
music, Jimmy Hart was like the backup

336
00:29:22.960 --> 00:29:26.680
band and helped him write the songs
around or change the words around in a

337
00:29:26.759 --> 00:29:32.599
popular song to make it towards him. But Lawlor brings me hard on.

338
00:29:32.920 --> 00:29:37.480
Now please continue on, Michael,
as I was saying, see, you

339
00:29:37.559 --> 00:29:44.839
have quite a glut of popularity in
wrestling as far as we're Memphis is the

340
00:29:45.000 --> 00:29:49.960
territory is growing and growing and it's
the biggest thing, especially their timeshares that

341
00:29:51.039 --> 00:29:53.519
they have. Like you were saying, like a seven seven out of ten

342
00:29:55.039 --> 00:29:59.279
in Memphis, Well that's a million
viewers versus you know, the outskirts.

343
00:29:59.319 --> 00:30:03.839
But the fans were rabid, they
were crazy, they were insane, and

344
00:30:03.440 --> 00:30:08.200
you can cite many books. I
like to cite Death the Territories by Tim

345
00:30:08.279 --> 00:30:11.720
Hornbaker, which is really good.
They would talk about some of these matches.

346
00:30:12.559 --> 00:30:15.359
If Jerry Lawler had his head shaped, there was a riot, They

347
00:30:15.519 --> 00:30:19.839
actually had a riot, there were
arrests, and they did it for fun.

348
00:30:21.279 --> 00:30:23.359
They didn't do it for fun.
They did it because they believed in

349
00:30:23.440 --> 00:30:27.480
what they were doing. Now you
look at everybody who was in wrestling,

350
00:30:27.559 --> 00:30:32.160
you say that they're a stage actor
and everything else to some degree, you

351
00:30:32.200 --> 00:30:37.519
could say that, but they don't
get SAG. They don't get SAG benefits,

352
00:30:37.559 --> 00:30:41.720
and that's really sad. However these
people should and the fact that they

353
00:30:41.839 --> 00:30:44.960
got their tire slash, they got
beat up, they got jumped, they've

354
00:30:45.039 --> 00:30:49.559
gotten knife, they got stabbed.
You know, I hated villains and movies,

355
00:30:49.640 --> 00:30:53.240
but if I ever saw the actor, I didn't knife them. And

356
00:30:53.400 --> 00:30:57.960
that's what Memphis was in nineteen ninety
one, or excuse me, nineteen eighty

357
00:30:59.000 --> 00:31:04.599
one to nineteen eighty four. Yea
was the most hot bed of any kind

358
00:31:04.640 --> 00:31:12.799
of interactual interacting, actual wrestling.
You have to pardon my stuttering, that

359
00:31:12.920 --> 00:31:18.440
you've ever seen in your life,
riots, cage matches, that people,

360
00:31:18.920 --> 00:31:23.880
fires, infernos. I mean,
we're talking about anything that you'd think is

361
00:31:25.119 --> 00:31:33.640
crazy and extreme. Today was born
right over by the Liberty Bowl, and

362
00:31:33.799 --> 00:31:38.599
it was at the Mid South Coliseum, and every Monday night served to make

363
00:31:40.000 --> 00:31:45.440
the pay per view, or excuse
me, every Saturday morning studio wrestling served

364
00:31:45.920 --> 00:31:49.160
to make every Monday night just that
much bigger of a sellout. And that's

365
00:31:49.200 --> 00:31:55.359
what happened. But now let's talk
about that wrestling boom infancy, Yes,

366
00:31:55.519 --> 00:31:59.559
mister Maverick. So I wanted to
ask you guys about something else that had

367
00:31:59.559 --> 00:32:01.400
to do with the belief in k
fabe and how it was so heavy back

368
00:32:01.440 --> 00:32:08.759
then. So there was a certain
match that had happened that involved the Rock's

369
00:32:08.799 --> 00:32:15.279
father, Rocky Johnson and Jerry Lawler
where they were almost trying to make it

370
00:32:15.920 --> 00:32:21.400
less of a wrestling match and trying
to promote Rocky Johnson at the time more

371
00:32:21.440 --> 00:32:25.039
as a boxer and that he was
legitimate in this fight was going to be

372
00:32:25.720 --> 00:32:30.880
some sort of hybrid of wrestling and
boxing at the time. Can you guys

373
00:32:30.119 --> 00:32:32.960
elaborate on that and explain a little
bit, because I know that had to

374
00:32:34.119 --> 00:32:37.599
have helped out with the belief of
k fabe and made the audience really feel

375
00:32:37.640 --> 00:32:39.839
like, Wow, this is actually
going on and really would have swayed anybody

376
00:32:39.960 --> 00:32:44.240
thinking, oh, maybe this is
fake at the time. Oh yeah,

377
00:32:44.440 --> 00:32:49.200
yeah, they put the gloves.
Lawler said that he could fight, and

378
00:32:49.759 --> 00:32:54.200
he starts naming like he was this
type boxer and that type christ yeah,

379
00:32:54.400 --> 00:32:58.680
and going into it. So they
put the gloves on them both, and

380
00:32:58.920 --> 00:33:05.079
of course Rocky wears him out.
But just like the scene and and in

381
00:33:05.359 --> 00:33:10.079
Rocky to where hul Cogan or whoever
it was, I can't remember where Rocky

382
00:33:10.119 --> 00:33:15.480
had the gloves on, Lawler got
the gloves off and jump Rocky after,

383
00:33:15.799 --> 00:33:20.119
you know, after the match,
and of course that creates more heat on

384
00:33:20.319 --> 00:33:24.519
him because Rocky's shown everybody how talented
he is because he's jabbing him, and

385
00:33:24.960 --> 00:33:30.119
just you know, Lawler can't do
anything. But when those gloves come off,

386
00:33:30.200 --> 00:33:34.200
he snuck up behind him. Bam. I think he even piled driving,

387
00:33:34.440 --> 00:33:39.240
which at that time was just that
was that was the illegal move if

388
00:33:39.279 --> 00:33:43.079
you pile drive it. And you
got to remember at the early some of

389
00:33:43.119 --> 00:33:47.119
those stages you couldn't knock or you
could knock somebody over the top rope,

390
00:33:47.160 --> 00:33:52.079
but you couldn't throw them over the
top rope. So a different time in

391
00:33:52.160 --> 00:33:59.680
wrestling back then. And and Michael
mentioned Lawler getting his haircut. Now,

392
00:33:59.759 --> 00:34:06.440
when you're the biggest star of your
era, I mean he's drawing big houses

393
00:34:06.599 --> 00:34:09.760
every time, and when Lawler touches
something, that's gold for him to get

394
00:34:09.800 --> 00:34:15.679
his haircut. That showed. Now
prior to that, he was in a

395
00:34:15.840 --> 00:34:22.239
feud with Bill Dundee, and Bill
Dundee gets his hair cut. So now

396
00:34:22.360 --> 00:34:23.960
this is the way. It was
explained to me by a short guy from

397
00:34:24.000 --> 00:34:30.920
New Zealand and a bar outside of
Pickwick that he owned that it was the

398
00:34:30.000 --> 00:34:34.360
most money he had ever made in
a couple of weeks time, Bill Dundee.

399
00:34:35.079 --> 00:34:38.519
He got paid a big chunk of
money from Mid South Wrestling for some

400
00:34:38.719 --> 00:34:42.679
booking he did down there, he
comes up to Memphis, he gets his

401
00:34:42.840 --> 00:34:46.360
hair cut. So what are they
going to do to top that? Because

402
00:34:46.440 --> 00:34:50.360
they thought that that would be the
end of the feud, everybody'd be done

403
00:34:50.440 --> 00:34:52.519
with it. But the crowd,
Jerry Jerried said, he walked out into

404
00:34:52.559 --> 00:34:55.280
the crowd and he was like,
oh no, we're not done with this.

405
00:34:57.719 --> 00:35:05.400
So they cut Bill done thees wifes
his wife's hair. Yeah, that's

406
00:35:05.559 --> 00:35:07.920
that's a big one. Yeah,
that was But he said he made five

407
00:35:08.079 --> 00:35:13.320
that Jery Jarrett, Now Jerry Jared
was known as one of the worst payers

408
00:35:14.159 --> 00:35:19.400
in the business, but he said
he made five thousand dollars back and then.

409
00:35:19.480 --> 00:35:22.960
Now I'm not sure the equivalent of
it today, but that I mean

410
00:35:22.119 --> 00:35:25.760
for ten thousand dollars, you can
shave my head. So we'll nothing shoot

411
00:35:25.800 --> 00:35:32.519
for five hundred. But well,
I find it very interesting, like what

412
00:35:32.760 --> 00:35:38.079
they innovated at that time. So
let's talk the seventies to eighty four.

413
00:35:38.239 --> 00:35:45.079
Let's talk to before the event's expansion. So everybody who is anybody in the

414
00:35:45.119 --> 00:35:50.480
wrestling industry at that point had passed
through Memphis. If you did not pass

415
00:35:50.519 --> 00:35:55.440
through Memphis, you didn't cut your
Chops, Rick Flair, Memphis, Magan

416
00:35:55.519 --> 00:36:00.880
te and Memphis everybody unique. You
put a person up, and I'm going

417
00:36:00.920 --> 00:36:05.960
to tell you they passed through Memphis. That was a testing ground and it

418
00:36:06.079 --> 00:36:12.079
was it was truly the king of
where you were supposed to be as far

419
00:36:12.239 --> 00:36:17.000
as going forward in your life as
being a wrestling I mean just being a

420
00:36:17.000 --> 00:36:24.440
wrestler. And the fact that like
it got buried eighty five sealed a tomb

421
00:36:27.719 --> 00:36:31.519
and once Vince did the expansion when
it was you know, WrestleMania three whatever

422
00:36:31.679 --> 00:36:38.079
else, like it was buried really
hard. So before that, we had

423
00:36:38.119 --> 00:36:42.119
some of the biggest angles, some
of the biggest things at some of the

424
00:36:42.239 --> 00:36:47.639
biggest superstars that ever came out of
anywhere. So where did the Undertaker wrestle?

425
00:36:50.199 --> 00:36:55.599
Absolutely big Red big Red and Master
of Pain exactly. And Master of

426
00:36:55.679 --> 00:37:00.800
Pain they used that to persona.
Also on this other guy, remember this

427
00:37:00.920 --> 00:37:08.280
guy named Sid, I remember Prank
calling him. He doesn't like you too

428
00:37:08.400 --> 00:37:12.760
much. But all right, so
let's let's dial back a little bit earlier.

429
00:37:13.239 --> 00:37:17.840
So the fargos are going away.
We're talking the early days and a

430
00:37:17.920 --> 00:37:23.840
guy that we're both fans of,
dream Machine. So yeah, let's let's

431
00:37:23.840 --> 00:37:30.039
talk about him, and let's also
delve into what their tag team situation was

432
00:37:30.119 --> 00:37:35.360
in those early eighties before we get
into Kaufman. Well, now, Troy

433
00:37:35.480 --> 00:37:39.719
Graham was he could have gone all
over the country because he was the closest

434
00:37:40.119 --> 00:37:46.400
to Dusty Roads on the stick.
Uh, Troy could come up well,

435
00:37:46.840 --> 00:37:49.880
man, I can't even think of
any of it off the top of my

436
00:37:49.960 --> 00:37:52.440
head, but something about walking through
a graveyard, and I mean he just

437
00:37:53.199 --> 00:38:00.360
he had the gift of gab and
he didn't have the big athletic body,

438
00:38:00.440 --> 00:38:05.599
but he was big. So him
and like Phil Hickerson, which Phil didn't

439
00:38:05.719 --> 00:38:08.639
like to go very far from Memphis
because he had a little bar up in

440
00:38:08.760 --> 00:38:15.519
Jackson, Tennessee. And Troy Graham
was actually taking care all during the late

441
00:38:15.599 --> 00:38:19.679
seventies early eighties, he was taking
care of his mother that was sick.

442
00:38:20.559 --> 00:38:25.679
So he actually and the local you
know, local strip clubs here. So

443
00:38:27.000 --> 00:38:30.880
I mean he was a legit,
you know, a badass. And so

444
00:38:31.079 --> 00:38:35.039
you put two guys like that in. Phil Hickerson wasn't bad on the MinC

445
00:38:35.119 --> 00:38:38.440
either, So those were your good
heels, you know, for them to

446
00:38:38.559 --> 00:38:45.719
bring back occasionally a Jackie Fargo or
bring up some of these guys like a

447
00:38:45.800 --> 00:38:52.119
Tommy Rich because they really beat the
crap out of Tommy's. Those are some

448
00:38:52.199 --> 00:38:57.440
good old days. Man. That's
Saturday wrestling that you just didn't get stuff

449
00:38:57.559 --> 00:39:00.599
like that on Saturday morning. Everybody
say for you to pay for that ticket.

450
00:39:02.519 --> 00:39:06.920
Something that I'd like to throw in
as well was after watching the Memphis

451
00:39:06.960 --> 00:39:10.719
Heat documentary. I have to say, the heels and faces, no matter

452
00:39:10.760 --> 00:39:14.960
who they were, the promos were
just different back then. When they were

453
00:39:15.000 --> 00:39:17.679
on the mic, it seemed so
much more legitimate and so much more real.

454
00:39:17.960 --> 00:39:23.000
It felt like everything that they were
saying almost anybody could really relate to.

455
00:39:23.039 --> 00:39:27.039
Almost anybody could say it, but
you felt what they were saying,

456
00:39:27.079 --> 00:39:30.519
especially when Jerry the King Lawler was
on the mic or anybody. The threats

457
00:39:30.559 --> 00:39:32.880
that they were making. It sounded
legitimate, like anybody on the street would

458
00:39:32.880 --> 00:39:37.159
say it, not just you know
WWE Superstar. Now, who's talking about

459
00:39:37.199 --> 00:39:42.079
you know, Finn Baler and his
demon persona. Nobody talked about anything like

460
00:39:42.159 --> 00:39:45.039
that because there wasn't anything close to
that yet. Everything seemed so much more

461
00:39:45.119 --> 00:39:49.880
real back then, and I think
that also helped out with everything with k

462
00:39:50.039 --> 00:39:52.920
Fabe and everybody believing it so much
more, but please continue, Mark,

463
00:39:52.000 --> 00:39:57.079
this is fascinating. Oh man,
Well, I was just and these guys

464
00:39:57.159 --> 00:40:00.800
back in the days, they had
to deal with politics just like nowadays.

465
00:40:00.920 --> 00:40:09.480
You had a promoter's son, George
Goulis that was a terrible terror. Uh.

466
00:40:09.679 --> 00:40:13.280
And the guys had to carry him, and they knew that when they

467
00:40:13.360 --> 00:40:15.159
had a match with him, they
weren't gonna they were They're not going to

468
00:40:15.199 --> 00:40:19.760
be in the last three matches.
And when the old days, when they

469
00:40:19.840 --> 00:40:23.119
say pay window like you had,
you know, they used to make it

470
00:40:23.280 --> 00:40:28.320
real when they were talking about their
money. Uh. An average person could

471
00:40:28.400 --> 00:40:31.199
relate to when they said that man, that guy jumped in and cast that

472
00:40:31.320 --> 00:40:35.719
guy the match that cost him half
of his purse. You know, it

473
00:40:36.000 --> 00:40:39.840
just seemed real. Uh. And
and and and like you said, Matt,

474
00:40:40.039 --> 00:40:45.280
uh, the the way that they
conducted the interviews. I think that

475
00:40:45.440 --> 00:40:50.280
a lot of younger guys should go
back and maybe watch a little the older

476
00:40:50.360 --> 00:40:53.000
stuff and see a guy that uh, see the guy that gets beat up.

477
00:40:53.480 --> 00:40:57.559
They go to commercial break, you
know what I'm talking about, and

478
00:40:57.639 --> 00:41:00.320
then they bring him back out after
he's cleaned up a little little bit.

479
00:41:00.159 --> 00:41:05.079
That five minutes or three minutes they
give him on the stick to where he's

480
00:41:05.320 --> 00:41:07.800
just just ripping a new butthole out
of something. I mean, that's the

481
00:41:07.960 --> 00:41:13.000
kind of the anger and the fire
that I think some of these younger guys

482
00:41:13.119 --> 00:41:16.440
need. I mean, that's just
my opinion. Old guy talking. You

483
00:41:16.519 --> 00:41:20.000
know, I ain't got nothing but
a mouthful of memories, but I can

484
00:41:20.079 --> 00:41:23.840
tell you I can go through them. But those are great days. Bill

485
00:41:23.960 --> 00:41:30.199
Dundee was a small guy. He
came he comes in with another, uh,

486
00:41:30.719 --> 00:41:34.679
gentleman that speaks like him with that
tone of voice, and George Burns,

487
00:41:35.320 --> 00:41:38.280
and George Burns ends up going back
over across the seas, going back

488
00:41:38.320 --> 00:41:42.159
to the There was a big promoter
over in Australia. Michael, do you

489
00:41:42.159 --> 00:41:45.280
remember that guy's name? It's own? Uh. He was, he was

490
00:41:45.360 --> 00:41:50.199
big man. He was a well
you had the whole country of Australia and

491
00:41:50.280 --> 00:41:52.639
he had no competition over there.
No, honestly, I know what you're

492
00:41:52.679 --> 00:41:58.159
talking about, but I no,
I cannot remember his name at this point.

493
00:41:58.280 --> 00:42:01.199
But but I mean it was a
good promotion. You could you could

494
00:42:01.239 --> 00:42:07.000
feed your good But Dundee takes the
money like that. He takes the money

495
00:42:07.079 --> 00:42:10.119
that he gets off when he gets
his haircut and he buys a house in

496
00:42:10.239 --> 00:42:15.440
Hendersonville, Tennessee, and nobody would
have thought anything about that biggest investment the

497
00:42:15.519 --> 00:42:19.880
man ever made. The man.
You know, the Hendersonville, Tennessee is

498
00:42:20.000 --> 00:42:23.639
like where all the big country stars
live nowadays. So if you bought a

499
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:30.480
house in nineteen eighty two, your
house, well, we won't go into

500
00:42:30.519 --> 00:42:32.840
that side of it. Yeah,
yeah, a good, good investment.

501
00:42:32.920 --> 00:42:36.679
But that's what some of these guys
did. Now a lot of them.

502
00:42:37.239 --> 00:42:40.679
You had guys like right towards where
the end of where you're talking about Michael,

503
00:42:42.119 --> 00:42:47.199
they bring a guy out like Kamala. Oh gosh, so maw do

504
00:42:47.320 --> 00:42:54.920
you know the beginning of Kamala.
I will be completely honest the I believe

505
00:42:55.000 --> 00:42:58.960
one of the only things that I
had really heard about Kamala was that he

506
00:42:59.119 --> 00:43:01.079
was one of the only people who
were allowed to slam Andre. Is that

507
00:43:01.159 --> 00:43:07.239
true? Him? And Harley Rice? Uh, there's been a few,

508
00:43:07.400 --> 00:43:13.760
but yeah, Kamala. His whole
thing is he showed up and he was

509
00:43:13.840 --> 00:43:17.239
in the backyard. The story I
hear is he was just sitting on a

510
00:43:17.320 --> 00:43:25.480
bench and Jared Jarrett and Jeff excuse
me, Jery Jarrett and Jerry Lawler look

511
00:43:25.519 --> 00:43:30.239
at him and say, who are
you? He's I'm sugar Bet. Harris

512
00:43:30.239 --> 00:43:36.559
said, no, you're not.
You're Kamala. And they painted him up

513
00:43:36.639 --> 00:43:40.280
and made him come out of the
pond that came out of their backyard,

514
00:43:40.760 --> 00:43:45.760
out of Jared Jarrett's backyard, Yes, Jared Jared's backyard. Kamala like I've

515
00:43:45.960 --> 00:43:52.960
seen the vineyards. Kamala. I
had never seen anybody from the Memphis territory

516
00:43:52.079 --> 00:44:00.800
get fast tracked that fast to go
up to WWF. He was the first

517
00:44:00.880 --> 00:44:05.000
man. And like me young,
like watching territories and everything, everybody was

518
00:44:05.079 --> 00:44:08.599
usually just a mier bit player.
But it's like Kamala came up fast and

519
00:44:08.679 --> 00:44:13.000
I was like, what the father? And when he came up, I

520
00:44:13.159 --> 00:44:15.960
thought, oh, I hope it's
Abdulla the butcher. And I was like,

521
00:44:15.159 --> 00:44:20.119
no, Hogan's not going to work
out Dulah And I was like ten,

522
00:44:20.880 --> 00:44:24.960
but I was hoping. One can
always dream. Oh, there probably

523
00:44:24.960 --> 00:44:29.000
wouldn't have been. What it was
a Papa Shamonga or what was that guy's

524
00:44:29.079 --> 00:44:35.400
name, Papa Shango Shango. That
was a two point zero version of Kamala.

525
00:44:36.599 --> 00:44:42.119
They were trying to recreate the Kamala
just had they put some little smoke,

526
00:44:42.519 --> 00:44:45.519
like some smoke bombs up and had
him walking into the bushes. And

527
00:44:45.679 --> 00:44:51.440
it was just the fact, you
have to understand how in an infant kind

528
00:44:51.480 --> 00:44:55.719
of stage production, and uh,
but nobody else was doing this. No,

529
00:44:57.000 --> 00:45:00.639
you weren't going to another wrestling show
in Alabama, Florida. They weren't

530
00:45:00.719 --> 00:45:07.320
showing some guy coming through some bushes
with smoke and background music and a guy,

531
00:45:07.199 --> 00:45:10.880
you know, it's sounds as scary
as hell, just running at everybody

532
00:45:10.920 --> 00:45:15.840
and he's a cannibal. Oh my
god, run from him. He's missing

533
00:45:15.920 --> 00:45:19.440
teeth and he he has a handler. Oh the handler had to go to

534
00:45:19.480 --> 00:45:22.599
the bathroom. Oh my god,
he's loose in the stadium. That's what

535
00:45:22.920 --> 00:45:30.639
Memphis did. That was creating so
much excitement without even having anything in the

536
00:45:30.719 --> 00:45:36.119
ring. So you go to the
intermission, did you say, Kamala is

537
00:45:36.199 --> 00:45:45.599
loose? Everybody be careful. He
was brilliance, Brilliance. So everybody's out

538
00:45:45.599 --> 00:45:47.079
there going to buy the merchant,
but they're looking around for him. And

539
00:45:47.119 --> 00:45:52.280
then maybe he ran down a hallway. Everybody would scream because it's a dead

540
00:45:52.360 --> 00:45:58.559
hallway where there's nothing, so they'd
go scream back towards where the merchandize area

541
00:45:58.840 --> 00:46:02.960
was. Oh no, that's brilliant. It seems like genius marketing. You

542
00:46:02.960 --> 00:46:06.880
could probably scar some kids with that. You know, here comes Kamala chasing

543
00:46:06.920 --> 00:46:08.119
little kid down the hallway and then
all of a sudden, he turns and

544
00:46:08.760 --> 00:46:13.920
he's gone forever. Make a complete
memory and some more hallmark moments for everybody

545
00:46:14.760 --> 00:46:19.480
that was Memphis ideas. That's actually
look, I've actually seen them take some

546
00:46:19.639 --> 00:46:22.159
of the wrestlers, kids that were
in the back that knew Kamala, and

547
00:46:22.239 --> 00:46:27.039
of course they knew, but they
would let him run down the hallway like

548
00:46:27.159 --> 00:46:30.840
they were like running from something.
They would literally clear out an area.

549
00:46:31.440 --> 00:46:35.960
But back then, you didn't run
far. You ran like a few feet,

550
00:46:36.039 --> 00:46:38.719
and then you stopped because you wanted
to make sure. Now nowadays people

551
00:46:38.920 --> 00:46:43.840
just keep running. But everybody would
run a little bit and stop and they

552
00:46:43.880 --> 00:46:45.400
would. You would hear voices,
get back, get him back, get

553
00:46:45.480 --> 00:46:50.039
him back. You never saw Kamala. It was like two guys out in

554
00:46:50.079 --> 00:46:52.440
the hallway that were going get back, get back, get him back,

555
00:46:52.480 --> 00:46:54.079
get him back. Come on,
let's get him. And then you know

556
00:46:54.440 --> 00:47:00.920
the people that it echoed through the
Hallway. That's all you needed, brother,

557
00:47:00.440 --> 00:47:05.920
that is all you needed. And
then look, we even had in

558
00:47:06.000 --> 00:47:09.159
those early stages, we had a
couple visits. I only remember too,

559
00:47:09.920 --> 00:47:15.400
from the greatest big man I think
of all time, which was Bruiser Brody.

560
00:47:15.360 --> 00:47:22.159
And Bruiser Brody was such a big
guy in the way the stadium was

561
00:47:22.239 --> 00:47:27.320
set up. When they showed video
of him, he just looked so much

562
00:47:27.400 --> 00:47:30.679
bigger than everybody, and he would
get berserk and go through the crowd and

563
00:47:30.840 --> 00:47:34.880
clear the you know, clear a
whole section out because, believe me,

564
00:47:35.400 --> 00:47:37.559
if you saw Bruiser Brody, and
I don't know how many people know who

565
00:47:37.639 --> 00:47:42.400
that is, but if you saw
him coming at you, I'm not a

566
00:47:42.440 --> 00:47:46.760
small guy, but I'm getting the
heck out of the way. There's always

567
00:47:46.840 --> 00:47:54.440
been like the speculation Bruiser Brody versus
Haku ooh oo. Tell you what,

568
00:47:54.559 --> 00:47:58.880
I don't want to be in between
ones and when it comes time to pay

569
00:47:58.920 --> 00:48:04.840
the tab fair enough. So let's
build up. Let's build up to the

570
00:48:05.280 --> 00:48:10.719
best line, the best storyline of
all time that lasted well over twenty years.

571
00:48:12.679 --> 00:48:17.280
So what's happening in Memphis at this
point is you have a lot of

572
00:48:17.360 --> 00:48:22.079
talent that's being trained, a lot
of talent that is being showcased. But

573
00:48:22.400 --> 00:48:28.519
we have a lot of more what
we call national branded talents or companies excuse

574
00:48:28.559 --> 00:48:31.000
me, promotions. I don't like
to use the word brand. We have

575
00:48:31.159 --> 00:48:36.599
AWA, which is supposed to be
world recognized. We have the NWA,

576
00:48:36.760 --> 00:48:40.880
which is the world standard. We
have the WWF in New York and the

577
00:48:42.639 --> 00:48:46.639
New England States, the blue Bloods
which are taking over. Now you have

578
00:48:49.199 --> 00:48:53.559
what is considered the capital of wrestling, which would be Memphis, and then

579
00:48:53.599 --> 00:48:59.800
you also have Dallas, now the
West coast. The WWA had already given

580
00:48:59.880 --> 00:49:02.480
up. Dallas was also WCCW.
I don't want to give the von Ericks

581
00:49:02.480 --> 00:49:07.000
that they're not due Texas or not
Texas, but Florida at this point was

582
00:49:07.039 --> 00:49:12.239
the Grahams, and they weren't doing
what they needed to do to catch up.

583
00:49:12.679 --> 00:49:16.199
They were just kind of floundering in
mediocrity. They had a lot of

584
00:49:16.239 --> 00:49:21.400
talent, they were training talents,
but they were basically a training ground and

585
00:49:21.559 --> 00:49:27.599
not really giving back or producing anything
that could be national television. All these

586
00:49:27.639 --> 00:49:31.480
other territories I've talked about actually had
television spots that I could see as a

587
00:49:31.599 --> 00:49:37.519
ten year old so all of a
sudden, the biggest angle happens, and

588
00:49:37.679 --> 00:49:45.280
that is Andy Kaufman. So now
talk about it. Yeah, the lead

589
00:49:45.400 --> 00:49:51.639
end of that. Now, Andy
was going around in nightclubs calling himself the

590
00:49:51.840 --> 00:49:58.559
inner gender World heavyweight Champion. He
could fight any woman, and that was

591
00:49:58.639 --> 00:50:01.639
his skit that he was going around
and he was fighting women and uh,

592
00:50:01.920 --> 00:50:07.360
and he would pull some little scamp
or some little deal and always pull out

593
00:50:07.400 --> 00:50:13.199
a win. And and he kept
on, well, uh, eventually he

594
00:50:13.639 --> 00:50:15.719
wants to come in. Uh.
I want to say it was w c

595
00:50:16.000 --> 00:50:22.320
W first, I can't remember it
was. He he tried another company first.

596
00:50:22.920 --> 00:50:25.000
Well, you have to be n
W at that time. It may

597
00:50:25.039 --> 00:50:29.079
have been maybe, yeah, it
may have been. And uh, but

598
00:50:29.199 --> 00:50:30.760
they they didn't want to go with
it. But then he gets a hold

599
00:50:31.119 --> 00:50:37.920
of Lawler and Jared and that's just
right up their alley. I mean.

600
00:50:38.039 --> 00:50:43.199
And how did Jerry Jarrett put it? He said that he was told by

601
00:50:43.280 --> 00:50:46.880
his father years ago that when you
go through a stream, you turn over

602
00:50:47.079 --> 00:50:52.239
every rock because you'll find eventually you'll
find a piece of gold under one.

603
00:50:52.320 --> 00:50:57.880
And that's what he did when he
got Kaufman in there. Because it was

604
00:50:57.960 --> 00:51:04.960
a dream of Kaufman was on the
biggest television show at the time, Taxi

605
00:51:05.880 --> 00:51:07.320
and uh there again, and a
lot of people are not going to know

606
00:51:07.440 --> 00:51:10.840
what tax is. But it was
actually a very good, well written sitcom

607
00:51:12.920 --> 00:51:17.840
that was on for several years and
he was the likable, laughable character on

608
00:51:19.000 --> 00:51:24.280
there. So to see him come
out as a villain was just at first

609
00:51:24.320 --> 00:51:29.679
it was a little alarming, but
then you just really started because he did

610
00:51:29.760 --> 00:51:32.199
a great promo where he was like, all you guys down to Mayam,

611
00:51:32.639 --> 00:51:38.159
mayam for staying or see y'all talk
like man, and uh, from then

612
00:51:38.199 --> 00:51:43.639
on it was it was just it
was gold. I mean, I mean,

613
00:51:43.679 --> 00:51:45.239
give me your version because you're seeing
it from a whole other year.

614
00:51:45.559 --> 00:51:49.920
You're a little younger than me now, and uh, he's still got to

615
00:51:49.920 --> 00:51:54.599
get under your skin. Michael.
It was a whole different thing to learn

616
00:51:54.679 --> 00:51:59.360
about what he was doing as far
as wrestling, because I got into it

617
00:51:59.480 --> 00:52:05.599
one year later, So I yes, yeah, eighty four. Eighty four

618
00:52:05.800 --> 00:52:07.360
was my break in year. I
mean I watched a little bit with my

619
00:52:07.760 --> 00:52:15.480
grandfather in uh Niagara Falls. He
would spit at NWATV, which he could

620
00:52:15.519 --> 00:52:21.360
get on, you know, like
base. It wasn't cable like antenna,

621
00:52:21.440 --> 00:52:23.760
and he would just he would yell
at the TV, so I'd watch a

622
00:52:23.840 --> 00:52:28.519
little bit with him. But like, actually, when I got into it,

623
00:52:28.719 --> 00:52:36.559
eighty four and so that ankle had
already passed, just like finding out

624
00:52:36.679 --> 00:52:40.000
like a lot of the Yvon Eyre
situations and everything passed. I was nine,

625
00:52:40.119 --> 00:52:45.239
ten years old, so I'm buying
like encyclopedias about wrestlers and everything else.

626
00:52:45.719 --> 00:52:50.280
So it was a different thing.
They never talked about Andy Kaufman because

627
00:52:50.320 --> 00:52:53.559
he was kind of like blackballed from
the whole situation. However, he did

628
00:52:53.800 --> 00:53:00.960
so much for Memphis wrestling, and
he did more for in putting it on

629
00:53:00.039 --> 00:53:04.800
the map even though it was on
the map, and he was right when

630
00:53:04.840 --> 00:53:10.559
they did Man on the Moon and
they said that Memphis was the wrestling capital

631
00:53:10.639 --> 00:53:15.440
of the world. They were completely
right. At that point in one year.

632
00:53:15.199 --> 00:53:28.280
It was so far down the chain
because it wouldn't evolve. They didn't

633
00:53:28.480 --> 00:53:34.039
evolve, they didn't believe in everything
that could change, and they had so

634
00:53:34.199 --> 00:53:38.400
much nepotism, and you look at
every territory that kept on. It was

635
00:53:38.519 --> 00:53:44.199
nepotism that also held them down,
and the ability to not evolve and not

636
00:53:44.280 --> 00:53:47.800
the ability to have pay per view. But we'll get into that. The

637
00:53:47.920 --> 00:53:57.280
fact was that was that that was
the greatest angle probably in wrestling history.

638
00:53:57.519 --> 00:54:00.880
I don't think there's anything better.
Yeah, and I think the time you're

639
00:54:00.920 --> 00:54:07.840
talking that when Jared Jared left the
promotion, wouldn't that have been when Lawlor

640
00:54:07.400 --> 00:54:15.639
bought him out? That was okay, somewhere in that range. So yeah,

641
00:54:15.760 --> 00:54:17.880
I could, I could I see
your evolving part. I actually never

642
00:54:19.079 --> 00:54:22.960
looked at it like that to take
it, uh, but I mean the

643
00:54:22.159 --> 00:54:29.079
slap on on on David Letterman's show. Yeah, and then the fact that

644
00:54:30.880 --> 00:54:37.440
years later, like throughout history,
they would always say the senior editor of

645
00:54:37.440 --> 00:54:42.679
Pro Wrestling illustrated David Letterman. They
would always say stuff like that. I

646
00:54:42.800 --> 00:54:47.400
always think David Letterman has always had
his hand in wrestling. It's weird,

647
00:54:47.480 --> 00:54:52.000
but something we can also look up. But yeah, that that was the

648
00:54:52.000 --> 00:54:58.320
biggest moment in wrestling me this wrestling
history and wrestling in the world. That

649
00:54:58.480 --> 00:55:02.800
was the shot heard around the world. That is and before before that.

650
00:55:02.960 --> 00:55:07.559
Now am I getting my timeline?
When when was the David Schultz slap?

651
00:55:08.599 --> 00:55:13.199
That would have been years two years
later or a year and a half later.

652
00:55:13.920 --> 00:55:20.480
So what it comes down to is
the fact that they never capitalized on

653
00:55:20.639 --> 00:55:29.119
that more than making it territorial.
They had national exposure, absolutely, But

654
00:55:29.280 --> 00:55:32.119
the agreement, the agreement was,
and we will talk about this in future

655
00:55:32.199 --> 00:55:38.639
episodes, was you never break down
the infrastructure of territorial wrestling. But this

656
00:55:38.960 --> 00:55:45.400
asshole named Vince McMahon came in and
he told his father he wouldn't, so

657
00:55:45.079 --> 00:55:52.199
I digress anybody else. So some
stuff that I knew about uh Andy Kaufman

658
00:55:52.239 --> 00:55:58.199
and everything was going from comedians straight
into professional wrestling and then going straight to

659
00:55:58.320 --> 00:56:02.480
a heel, especially at a time
where Kate Fabe was so big that really

660
00:56:02.639 --> 00:56:06.719
could have gotten potentially murdered. Especially
being in the South, you know,

661
00:56:07.239 --> 00:56:10.599
there's a certain level of respect and
everything, especially towards women and everything down

662
00:56:10.639 --> 00:56:16.280
there that you don't cross the line. That was more the older times where

663
00:56:16.280 --> 00:56:19.840
if you hit a woman you were
probably getting jumped in the parking lot type

664
00:56:19.840 --> 00:56:24.599
of thing. So for that time, that is extremely huge. But I

665
00:56:24.679 --> 00:56:30.840
also digress off the market, Maverick. I was gonna say to go to

666
00:56:30.960 --> 00:56:37.920
your point to how big it was. The Iron Chek was on Memphis Wrestling

667
00:56:37.800 --> 00:56:44.000
on the Saturday show, and of
course he does his spill spit on America

668
00:56:44.119 --> 00:56:49.440
the whole deal. They get a
phone call at the Channel five studios that

669
00:56:49.599 --> 00:56:54.320
our son and his father have gotten
their rifles. They lived close by and

670
00:56:54.400 --> 00:57:01.320
they're walking down to the studio.
So they literally brought leaf into the taping

671
00:57:02.119 --> 00:57:07.960
and put them out behind that.
They had like two little wooden grand stands

672
00:57:07.000 --> 00:57:13.400
that people set on and on that
show, there's cops in the background and

673
00:57:13.519 --> 00:57:15.960
it's because of that called in threat. Now, that's how serious. And

674
00:57:16.000 --> 00:57:25.519
there was a police station right across
the street. They were some serious wrestling

675
00:57:25.679 --> 00:57:30.360
fans, sir. If that's if
they can even make it into your mind

676
00:57:30.480 --> 00:57:36.519
how serious they were. That's how
it was back in the day. I

677
00:57:37.800 --> 00:57:42.480
think. Manthis was also the King
Cape, and so it was just like

678
00:57:42.559 --> 00:57:46.400
the perfect place, like you could
promote anything, you can build anything.

679
00:57:46.559 --> 00:57:54.599
And so as we start to get
closer to the early eighties and we start

680
00:57:54.639 --> 00:57:59.960
to have closed Circuit, which we
all talked about going into pay per view,

681
00:58:00.679 --> 00:58:09.119
we think about the situation where well, what's the next step, and

682
00:58:09.280 --> 00:58:20.400
the overgrown demon of WWEWWF takes that
next step and starts taking over territories.

683
00:58:22.000 --> 00:58:27.440
However, can you take over every
territory, that is a question. So

684
00:58:28.280 --> 00:58:36.079
that well, to a certain extent, you can. But there's always going

685
00:58:36.159 --> 00:58:40.599
to be outliers, and there still
is one that being Puerto Rico, that

686
00:58:40.840 --> 00:58:45.559
is I believe the last one standing
at this time. And it's impressive to

687
00:58:45.599 --> 00:58:49.559
see that they still have not been
bought out or anything and that they're still

688
00:58:49.639 --> 00:58:53.880
going. But that's realistically the only
one that I can think of that I

689
00:58:54.079 --> 00:59:00.880
know is still going to this day, the death place of Bruiser Brodie.

690
00:59:01.960 --> 00:59:06.800
Yes, yeah, that's that.
You want to know how tough it is

691
00:59:06.880 --> 00:59:12.519
there. They actually the wrestlers kill
all the wrestlers there, exactly. True.

692
00:59:13.400 --> 00:59:17.000
It's a rough place. I've heard
of some disagreements down there because the

693
00:59:17.119 --> 00:59:22.719
law would only go so like security
and those events would only go so long.

694
00:59:22.880 --> 00:59:27.239
So if the matches went long,
you could have the last match,

695
00:59:27.320 --> 00:59:30.119
which would be the biggest, and
you wouldn't barely have any security there.

696
00:59:31.280 --> 00:59:36.320
So I mean, uh, and
I'm not sure how big about an arena

697
00:59:36.360 --> 00:59:38.920
they're playing in front of, but
can't be good. Can't be good because

698
00:59:39.079 --> 00:59:44.400
in the mid South Colissem, I've
seen them almost have to fight their way

699
00:59:44.440 --> 00:59:49.239
to the back, you know,
So and I know in Tupelo there was

700
00:59:49.320 --> 00:59:52.800
some rough occasions like that, and
and I've heard of stories in Louisville gardens

701
00:59:52.960 --> 00:59:59.880
the same way. So yeah,
it's a it wasn't just a local thing.

702
01:00:00.079 --> 01:00:02.800
It was a tough time. It
was a different time. It was

703
01:00:02.960 --> 01:00:10.400
just a different time. Well,
so let's talk about then the nineties to

704
01:00:10.599 --> 01:00:20.679
the two thousands, what Meantphis when
they merged into the USWA. Now I

705
01:00:20.800 --> 01:00:24.360
can tell you what that merging is, so I will speak. It was

706
01:00:24.480 --> 01:00:31.320
the AWA dying very hard, and
it was Dallas not doing so well,

707
01:00:31.760 --> 01:00:38.000
and so the CWA or you know, Memphis, the territory, they all

708
01:00:38.079 --> 01:00:43.000
decided that they would band together,
and they had so many channels, syndicated

709
01:00:43.039 --> 01:00:47.400
and everything else that they would become
the next thing to try to conquer.

710
01:00:51.199 --> 01:00:55.679
Did make man the WWF at the
time, whereas Jim Crockett Promotions were about

711
01:00:55.760 --> 01:01:01.840
to sell to Turner to become WCW. However, this whole thing was a

712
01:01:02.199 --> 01:01:08.119
super cluster f and none of it
really worked out, And some of the

713
01:01:08.239 --> 01:01:14.440
stars were featured on other programs,
Like you had people like Black Bart who's

714
01:01:14.639 --> 01:01:20.199
a great hand and a great wrestler, but he's jobbing on WWFTV and all

715
01:01:20.199 --> 01:01:22.199
of a sudden he's going to come
over and be on his pay per view

716
01:01:22.360 --> 01:01:27.360
or something like that. And I'm
just using him as an example. He's

717
01:01:27.440 --> 01:01:34.280
not the person. But the point
is with the expansion happening so fast and

718
01:01:34.480 --> 01:01:39.400
it blombed onto so much stuff,
I think that what happened with Memphis and

719
01:01:39.719 --> 01:01:46.840
going into the whole USWA merger was
just the biggest ball of s that I've

720
01:01:46.960 --> 01:01:51.480
ever seen in my lives. How
would you say about that, mister Mark,

721
01:01:52.840 --> 01:01:57.800
Yes, I'd have to agree.
You're pretty much your Sonumsens. There

722
01:01:57.920 --> 01:02:02.320
is exactly right. That's the territory
were dying. And uh. And I

723
01:02:02.519 --> 01:02:08.280
just heard Jared speak on a on
one of another podcasts that he was speaking

724
01:02:08.320 --> 01:02:13.880
about that Fritz called him and told
him that, Hey, you know,

725
01:02:14.000 --> 01:02:16.440
I'm about to go into bankruptcy.
Do you want to come down here and

726
01:02:16.559 --> 01:02:22.760
look? And he reverted back to
that same quote I said earlier about his

727
01:02:22.840 --> 01:02:27.079
grandfather telling him that. And he
went there and he said, I believe

728
01:02:27.159 --> 01:02:30.599
it was Eric. What was it
Eric? I can't think of the guy's

729
01:02:30.679 --> 01:02:35.679
name that was real big down.
But he was actually sleeping in the sportatorium

730
01:02:36.280 --> 01:02:40.280
because they hadn't been paid in like
four or five weeks. So he goes

731
01:02:40.440 --> 01:02:46.239
to speak to Fritz and h and
Fritz's calls him to his house and says

732
01:02:46.320 --> 01:02:52.039
that, look, you're going into
business with Kevin and Carry. Those two

733
01:02:52.239 --> 01:02:57.599
drug addicts won't show up. And
now this is their father with their mother

734
01:02:57.840 --> 01:03:05.639
at the sink in and telling Jared
that he shouldn't go into business with his

735
01:03:05.760 --> 01:03:09.119
sons. But he did, and
he made it kind of successful for a

736
01:03:09.159 --> 01:03:13.760
little while, just for he made
his money back. But this is how

737
01:03:13.840 --> 01:03:16.199
he did it. At that time, they had a dip company, a

738
01:03:16.320 --> 01:03:22.679
tobacco dip company that was sponsoring all
the matches called Redman, and they had

739
01:03:22.719 --> 01:03:27.880
a shot out. They had a
renegade there. So he calls the guy

740
01:03:29.039 --> 01:03:31.039
and says, hey, how would
you like to be able to give samples

741
01:03:31.079 --> 01:03:35.639
out in Dallas? And the guy
goes, how much is it going to

742
01:03:35.760 --> 01:03:40.119
cost me? And he goes sixty
thousand. So they were one hundred and

743
01:03:40.199 --> 01:03:45.039
twenty thousand dollars in debt and that's
everything trash collection bill taxes that they were

744
01:03:45.079 --> 01:03:50.639
one hundred and twenty thousand dollars.
So Jared off that property or brought that

745
01:03:50.800 --> 01:03:55.920
territory for seventy thousand dollars and made
money for about a year out of it,

746
01:03:57.039 --> 01:04:00.079
so you know, made his money
back, but it's set up kind

747
01:04:00.119 --> 01:04:03.000
of the angle. You know,
Michael kind of set up the angle a

748
01:04:03.039 --> 01:04:06.599
little later on for that that deal
when they went into the Bengo Hall up

749
01:04:06.679 --> 01:04:12.800
and you know up in Philly,
Well, that makes a lot of sense.

750
01:04:12.920 --> 01:04:17.639
So USWA at this point, and
this is what Memphis is has evolved

751
01:04:17.719 --> 01:04:23.920
and you have like brilliant minds like
Dutch but and you have great tag teams

752
01:04:24.000 --> 01:04:30.639
like PG. Thirteen which honestly like
I love Wolf the d Jamie is my

753
01:04:30.880 --> 01:04:35.320
size, which is not a fire, and you just look at it.

754
01:04:35.440 --> 01:04:41.239
It's like they did the best they
could for so long with the USWA,

755
01:04:41.360 --> 01:04:45.440
and they scrapped along, scrapped along, and then they started doing like collaborative

756
01:04:45.559 --> 01:04:51.760
shows with WWE, which was just
their everything that they could do to try

757
01:04:51.800 --> 01:05:00.920
to hold on in the nineties and
ECW became this underground phenomenon and there's crossover

758
01:05:00.079 --> 01:05:05.440
talent with it, and you know, they did the best they could do.

759
01:05:05.559 --> 01:05:11.760
But at that point, you had, as a wrestling fan who grew

760
01:05:11.880 --> 01:05:17.039
up and started in eighty four if
I still see you know, Dutch,

761
01:05:18.719 --> 01:05:24.559
and I love Dutch, like still
main eventing, love Dutch, love Dutch,

762
01:05:25.599 --> 01:05:30.679
but there's nobody for him to go
against. And I'm like, it's

763
01:05:30.800 --> 01:05:33.480
time to close the doors. But
they wouldn't. And I loved it,

764
01:05:33.559 --> 01:05:39.159
But I loved like the kind of
cross promotion they did. They involved Cornett,

765
01:05:39.239 --> 01:05:43.760
who's a heat magnet. I mean, everybody loves Cornet. If you

766
01:05:43.800 --> 01:05:48.280
don't love him, you're probably Kenny
Omega in the Bucks. But I mean

767
01:05:48.360 --> 01:05:51.760
it is what it is, you
know, brass tacks and baseball bats.

768
01:05:51.840 --> 01:05:57.159
When it comes down to it,
like things were starting to kind of close,

769
01:05:57.440 --> 01:06:00.639
you know, and Vince McMahon did
so much work with them as a

770
01:06:00.840 --> 01:06:09.199
development's rritory before he started using ECW
as a developmental territory. Kurt Angle spent

771
01:06:09.440 --> 01:06:13.000
time in both places. There's a
lot of people who spent time in both

772
01:06:13.079 --> 01:06:16.400
places. It was just different exposure. It was like, Okay, well

773
01:06:16.599 --> 01:06:23.840
let's do promos in Memphis, but
let's get hardcore at ECW and let's see

774
01:06:24.159 --> 01:06:28.079
if people like you or not because
they're going to the ad to era and

775
01:06:28.159 --> 01:06:33.960
then it all boils out to the
money kind of ran out. Yeah,

776
01:06:34.320 --> 01:06:39.039
yeah, I mean, well,
you're getting cherry picked anytime you do anything

777
01:06:39.119 --> 01:06:43.639
good, even the little deal with
PG. Thirteen, it gets cherry picked.

778
01:06:43.719 --> 01:06:46.559
Where do you have the Nation of
Domination? You know, they keep

779
01:06:46.599 --> 01:06:50.880
Woofy and Jamie there for a few
weeks and then they whooped the hell out

780
01:06:50.880 --> 01:06:54.920
of them and send them on their
way. I mean, they kind of

781
01:06:55.000 --> 01:07:00.800
kicked their own asses on that one. But that's their good tape to go

782
01:07:00.880 --> 01:07:04.119
back and watch. Well, I
talked to Wolfe sometimes, I'm trying to

783
01:07:04.159 --> 01:07:10.960
get him on the show. So
yeah, yeah, I've got much about

784
01:07:11.079 --> 01:07:15.719
Jamie and we won't go into but
yeah, yeah, but that that's what

785
01:07:15.840 --> 01:07:19.000
you were dealing with. A lot. You had, like Tommy Rich coming

786
01:07:19.039 --> 01:07:24.079
back into the area, and at
that time Tommy Rich was kind of was

787
01:07:24.159 --> 01:07:28.679
kind of done, and and that's
what Memphis became. It became. They

788
01:07:28.760 --> 01:07:32.280
brought in some of the old guys
because they would sell seats, but they

789
01:07:32.320 --> 01:07:36.559
were in their later years, it
was, and that young talent just there,

790
01:07:36.800 --> 01:07:40.760
and if it was, it wasn't
there very long because it was in

791
01:07:41.000 --> 01:07:43.960
you know, up in New York
or up in Connecticut, you know,

792
01:07:44.400 --> 01:07:50.360
soon after that. So that was
pretty much the death of Memphis. Wrestling

793
01:07:50.400 --> 01:07:55.920
and then and territorial wrestling as we
know it. I think it was nineteen

794
01:07:56.039 --> 01:08:00.480
ninety seven, nineteen ninety eight.
It was officially sold to somebody in Cleveland

795
01:08:00.639 --> 01:08:05.280
because for some reason, Jerry Lawler
loves Cleveland. I grew up in Cleveland,

796
01:08:05.960 --> 01:08:12.800
so and he's a big Indians fan. And so when it comes down

797
01:08:12.880 --> 01:08:15.880
to it, it was a bad
sale and everything folded, and then I

798
01:08:16.000 --> 01:08:20.840
think the remnants became Music City Wrestling. But that's neither here nor there.

799
01:08:21.239 --> 01:08:25.159
The point is, when it comes
down to it, it was the most

800
01:08:25.319 --> 01:08:31.199
influential, influential, excuse me,
territory of all time because you name a

801
01:08:31.279 --> 01:08:36.800
superstar besides the last twenty years.
Because when they folded, before that,

802
01:08:38.760 --> 01:08:46.960
everybody came through Memphis. Everybody came
through Memphis, and Memphis was the biggest

803
01:08:47.000 --> 01:08:53.439
deal. And in a year and
a half it became just another territory.

804
01:08:55.560 --> 01:09:00.279
You know, you mentioned who you
were, a spy you were and some

805
01:09:00.399 --> 01:09:03.520
facts out of a book there.
I want to mention Spudnik, the mass

806
01:09:03.640 --> 01:09:09.720
Men and the midgets, the early
days of Memphis. Rest Ron Hall Good

807
01:09:09.880 --> 01:09:13.800
you know of his son worked for
me for years and everybody. He's got

808
01:09:13.840 --> 01:09:17.520
a little quote on the back of
the book that kind of describes the old

809
01:09:17.640 --> 01:09:21.720
days, and it says, if
you grew up in Mid South area watching

810
01:09:21.840 --> 01:09:28.279
these great wrestlers on a weekly basis, revisit the intensity of all these matches.

811
01:09:28.640 --> 01:09:32.359
If you are around during the area, lived by curiously through these pictures.

812
01:09:32.399 --> 01:09:38.079
I mean that shows you know how
big it was. You can just

813
01:09:38.159 --> 01:09:41.720
go back and look at these pictures
and you can turn a page and see

814
01:09:41.720 --> 01:09:45.920
a wrestler and go, I remember
the first time I saw him, you

815
01:09:45.000 --> 01:09:49.439
know. And these are the great
memories that you had in the territorial days.

816
01:09:49.720 --> 01:09:55.039
But now it's kind of shoved down
our faces or down our throats.

817
01:09:56.560 --> 01:10:00.920
Somebody doesn't get the right push or
the right angle there out. You don't

818
01:10:00.920 --> 01:10:03.840
get the storylines, or you don't
get the angles that you did know days,

819
01:10:04.319 --> 01:10:10.600
And it's a shame. But that's
the way I guess modern wrestling is

820
01:10:10.720 --> 01:10:13.960
now. You know. Oh,
guys like me will have to We had

821
01:10:13.960 --> 01:10:15.600
to adapt. But like I said, I got a mouthful of memory.

822
01:10:15.680 --> 01:10:19.159
So as long as I can talk, I can still remember the good old

823
01:10:19.239 --> 01:10:24.359
days. I love this, MAV. Do you have anything to add before

824
01:10:24.439 --> 01:10:27.319
we try to sign off? Kiss? I have some ideas for the next

825
01:10:27.359 --> 01:10:36.920
show. But if you guys are
all words, let's go. So I

826
01:10:38.039 --> 01:10:45.159
believe the last thing that was said
in the documentary was about the final showing

827
01:10:45.359 --> 01:10:51.239
of the broadcasting of Memphis Wrestling was
in two thousand and one before it was

828
01:10:51.279 --> 01:10:58.479
canceled and taken off the air.
But it seemed like where the documentary actually

829
01:10:58.560 --> 01:11:02.279
had ended was when Jimmy Hart had
left as he got his call to go

830
01:11:02.479 --> 01:11:08.920
up to WWF to be at WrestleMania
one. As what I remember it saying,

831
01:11:09.680 --> 01:11:13.039
it just seems like such a different
world from my perspective of what I

832
01:11:13.119 --> 01:11:16.720
grew up seeing rather than how it
used to be, and the way that

833
01:11:16.800 --> 01:11:23.399
we didn't have this empire that is
the WWE with Vince McMahon at the helm

834
01:11:23.560 --> 01:11:31.199
as it was just completely changed everything
where before it was like just so different

835
01:11:31.279 --> 01:11:34.960
and I don't really know how to
put it into words to an extent.

836
01:11:35.039 --> 01:11:40.600
Besides the fact that it was all
different regions, different conferences. You'd see

837
01:11:40.640 --> 01:11:45.840
people pop up in different ones and
just show who they were to potentially try

838
01:11:45.920 --> 01:11:51.920
to make it to nationwide stardom and
become a household name somehow, and WWF

839
01:11:53.000 --> 01:11:56.119
taking it over did ruin that.
But at the same time, something that

840
01:11:56.279 --> 01:12:00.199
was also mentioned at the very end
of the documentary by I believe if it

841
01:12:00.279 --> 01:12:04.000
was Jackie Fargo, he had claimed
that in today's age, with the Internet

842
01:12:04.079 --> 01:12:08.880
and how it is, the territories
most likely wouldn't have lasted and it probably

843
01:12:08.880 --> 01:12:13.039
would have gone the same way merging
into one company or a couple of companies,

844
01:12:13.079 --> 01:12:17.239
as we still do have a couple
larger ones around. But that's end

845
01:12:17.279 --> 01:12:23.439
of my piece, honestly for this
topic. Well, there you go,

846
01:12:23.600 --> 01:12:28.880
and I'll just add thank you guys
for letting me get a chance to run

847
01:12:28.960 --> 01:12:33.399
my mouth a little bit, and
I hope somebody got a little enjoyment out

848
01:12:33.439 --> 01:12:39.560
of their day by listening. This
is just our version of what we saw,

849
01:12:39.880 --> 01:12:45.359
but it is what we saw,
and there'll never be another era,

850
01:12:46.000 --> 01:12:50.600
I think in entertainment other than maybe
the first part of the UFC. You

851
01:12:50.680 --> 01:12:55.399
know, it was kind of interesting
and when it wasn't so big, But

852
01:12:56.560 --> 01:13:01.039
Memphis Wrestling I think was a catalyst
that started some Then it took the wrestling

853
01:13:01.119 --> 01:13:06.199
out of the carnival day like like
Maverick you were saying, three sides with

854
01:13:06.279 --> 01:13:12.159
the curtain. Uh, it took
it from that and uh and and and

855
01:13:12.359 --> 01:13:15.720
help propel it to what it is
today. So I mean you look at

856
01:13:15.760 --> 01:13:19.319
the catalyst to the main catalyst,
Jerry Lawler. Most of the time that

857
01:13:19.439 --> 01:13:25.600
you listened to WWE, some of
the biggest times you hear Lawler's voice that

858
01:13:25.760 --> 01:13:29.199
that's not a coincidence. That's just
how good he was and still is.

859
01:13:29.319 --> 01:13:33.680
God bless him dealing with a heart
attack. Hope he's feeling better and everything.

860
01:13:33.800 --> 01:13:39.000
But he was a he is a
living legend. And him, Jerry

861
01:13:39.119 --> 01:13:43.079
Jarrett and some of these guys were
way ahead of their time, way ahead

862
01:13:43.079 --> 01:13:45.279
of their time. But I'm going
to back out of here, Michael.

863
01:13:45.279 --> 01:13:50.279
I'll let you take it from here
on, and thank you guys well as

864
01:13:50.359 --> 01:13:54.239
being the beast from the East,
the best from the Midwest. And I

865
01:13:54.399 --> 01:13:58.520
love you guys. You know,
I love my nephew obviously unconditionally. I

866
01:13:58.640 --> 01:14:03.159
love you Memphis Mark. I met
you in nineteen There are actually two thousand,

867
01:14:04.119 --> 01:14:09.880
you know three And to have friends
that stand that long in my life.

868
01:14:10.000 --> 01:14:12.359
I love you, guys, and
I think that we can produce a

869
01:14:12.439 --> 01:14:15.600
lot more stuff. I think we
did a great show and we need to

870
01:14:15.680 --> 01:14:20.960
go forward. So the next show, what do you guys think Puerto Rico.

871
01:14:23.560 --> 01:14:26.279
I think we need to throw a
few names in a hat and just

872
01:14:26.399 --> 01:14:30.079
pull it out because they're all great
subjects, all right, sounds like a

873
01:14:30.159 --> 01:14:33.319
planned my man. Aside from that, guys, you can reach me at

874
01:14:33.399 --> 01:14:38.640
one four to four captain on Twitter
x whatever you want to call it.

875
01:14:39.399 --> 01:14:45.279
And I just want to say that
my friend John Watson has been in love

876
01:14:45.319 --> 01:14:47.920
with a girl named Katrina and he's
wanted to be mentioned on this, which

877
01:14:48.000 --> 01:14:51.920
he shouldn't because he loves her.
So I want to say I love you

878
01:14:53.720 --> 01:14:57.279
both. And I want to say
I love you Jennifer because I love you

879
01:14:57.560 --> 01:15:00.359
man Maverick. If you ever want
cousins, you better love her too.

880
01:15:01.199 --> 01:15:05.720
So uh and and Mark, you're
the only girl or the only girl,

881
01:15:05.920 --> 01:15:09.760
the only guy to meet her.
Actually, you're the only guy to meet

882
01:15:09.840 --> 01:15:14.199
my little bait baby redhead. And
she's real. She's actually real. I

883
01:15:14.359 --> 01:15:19.720
checked for batteries and beautiful as shit, yeah, very beautiful. It kind

884
01:15:19.760 --> 01:15:24.079
of it makes you look like when
you walk in the room, everybody goes,

885
01:15:24.439 --> 01:15:28.119
what the hell did he do?
Uh? Thank thanks? Thanks?

886
01:15:28.319 --> 01:15:31.640
Thanks? Yeah, it's that's warted. But anyway, I love you guys.

887
01:15:32.760 --> 01:15:38.880
So mister Maverick, I acquiss.
All right, guys, it's been

888
01:15:38.920 --> 01:15:42.039
a great show. I've really loved
being a part of this. I love

889
01:15:42.159 --> 01:15:45.079
learning more stuff from you, Mark
and Uh as well as you Captain or

890
01:15:45.239 --> 01:15:48.079
my uncle as I can call you
as any day of the week. You

891
01:15:48.159 --> 01:15:53.119
know. Glad that I'm able to
communicate with you more than when I was

892
01:15:53.199 --> 01:15:56.600
growing up. And it's so nice
having social media. But in the end

893
01:15:56.640 --> 01:15:59.439
it did kind of kill a lot
of things, but I diggress on that

894
01:15:59.520 --> 01:16:02.199
anyways. Yeah, if you guys
want to reach me, we can talk

895
01:16:02.199 --> 01:16:05.640
about wrestling. You can give me
a topics for shows, any ideas that

896
01:16:05.720 --> 01:16:11.560
you guys may have. You can
reach me at Maintenan's Maverick or at maintenance

897
01:16:11.640 --> 01:16:15.479
mav on Twitter or x whatever you
want to call it. And yeah,

898
01:16:15.479 --> 01:16:21.199
I mean anything you guys want to
talk about. Like to suggest quick book

899
01:16:21.239 --> 01:16:26.840
to you guys, the book that
is written by Mick Foley about his experiences

900
01:16:27.000 --> 01:16:30.600
and getting up into the wrestling business. I believe it was called The Tale

901
01:16:30.600 --> 01:16:36.199
of Blood and Sweat Socks. I
highly recommend that read with that. Do

902
01:16:36.359 --> 01:16:40.960
something nice for somebody you never know
who needs it. And that's it for

903
01:16:41.079 --> 01:16:48.520
me. I'm out peace. Memphis
mark O g all right, brother,

904
01:16:49.560 --> 01:17:00.600
give it out here we go.
Thanks for listening to the WWE Podcast.

905
01:17:00.920 --> 01:17:04.960
Don't forget to subscribe on your favorite
podcast app so you don't miss a show,

906
01:17:05.239 --> 01:17:11.600
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907
01:17:11.720 --> 01:17:16.560
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908
01:17:16.640 --> 01:17:18.439
see you next time.