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Never heard of most of those wrestlers and I watched for most of the 60s. There must have been separate North/South circuits. Bruno Sanmartino, Sgt. Slaughter, Haystack Calhoun, Prof. Toro Tanaka, Chief Jay Strongbow, Gorgeous George. Those are ones I can think of off the top of my head.
Never heard of most of those wrestlers and I watched for most of the 60s. There must have been separate North/South circuits. Bruno Sanmartino, Sgt. Slaughter, Haystack Calhoun, Prof. Toro Tanaka, Chief Jay Strongbow, Gorgeous George. Those are ones I can think of off the top of my head.
All pro wrestling was compartmentalized into independent regional organizations before the 1980's. There was movement of the stars from one region to another as contracts expired, but for the most part the people in one region knew next to nothing about the wrestling in the others. My first realization that I was watching a fixed game came when I was ten years old and my grandfather took me to New York City. I had been watching the CWF circuit my whole life, where Eddie and Dr. Jerry Graham were the ultimate hero good guys. In New York there was some wrestling show on tv and I was shocked to see the Graham brothers fighting against some squeaky clean guys and getting the crap booed out of them by the crowd. They had torn one of the ring ropes loose and had wrapped the middle around one of their opponent's necks, and were pulling on the ends in a choke tug of war. Eddie and Jerry Graham! Saints in Florida! In this circuit it turned out that they were high ranking villains.
It was Vince McMahon, who by taking the SE regional wrestling that he controlled and putting them on national cable TV, who upset the apple cart and overturned the old regional system.
During the 70's we had Big Time Wrestling in the Pacific Northwest. Dutch Savage, Buddy Rose, Stan Stasiak and Gene Kiniski were some of the regulars. I seem to recall Roddy Piper and Jimmy Snuka showing up from time to time. There was a lady around 70 years old that always seemed to be in the audience every Saturday. She really got into the matches. If the ref missed seeing one of the wrestlers doing something that was considered illegal, this lady would really get mad and would start yelling at the ref. While she was just one of the audience, the promoters ran with this and went so far to give her a badge to wear. Once in a while the ref would break a hold based on what this lady told him.
Last edited by Alaskan Mutt; 07-29-2014 at 04:44 AM..
I was such a stupid kid that I was wondering why the police weren't called when they beat up Magnum T.A. in a parking lot.
I got one better for you , my younger brother got up in church and asked the congregation to pray for one of the wrestlers in sunday morning service , oh the look on my mother and grand mothers faces LOL ...we all had a good laugh about that a couple of Christmases ago when everyone was still alive sadly some of those faces are no longer with us .
I got one better for you , my younger brother got up in church and asked the congregation to pray for one of the wrestlers in sunday morning service , oh the look on my mother and grand mothers faces LOL ...we all had a good laugh about that a couple of Christmases ago when everyone was still alive sadly some of those faces are no longer with us .
"Dear Lord, please help heal Wahoo McDaniels after his barbed wire match with Abdullah the Butcher. It was a rough one. Also, please look out for those Von Erich boys. They are having a tough time lately."
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