Feb 23, 2023 2:11:25 GMT Kilgore said:

Was messing with an AWA rebook back in the day

You too? I do this a couple times a year. Different era though. I always start sometime between 87 and 90 with the goal of saving the AWA. 

Last few days have me kicking myself all over again for inexplicably leaving Eddie Gilbert off my list the last time we did a PW Favorite Wrestler Countdown. When did I ever like Edge, Christian & Jericho more than Eddie Gilbert?  April 2020, apparently. Credit to Kilgore for calling me out on it at the time. 

bodyslam the Watts/Gilbert Russian flag angle. I've been waiting for you to chime in. Got any good Houston Wrestling stories?

Wow this turned into an epic thread. I made it to Eddie Gilbert's debut in 1985 and they were doing some great stuff with him running a contest giving away a painting of himself, it was just spectacular heel stuff and he really shined in those segments in a way I had never really seen before.

That's a bummer that it reaches it's prime in 1986, they stopped uploading to the WWE Network with the first show from January 86.

I don't remember us ever digging into Mid-south like this before in all of our years talking wrassling around here. So this is a great thread, my work offseason has come to an end and I'm slammed with work or I would post a lot more this week. I have really loved reading Bake's posts.

I was always aware that UWF was so highly regarded. I remember hearing somebody tell a story on a podcast or something about how Raven was supposedly obsessed with UWF and he would always have tapes of it going in the locker room to get in the zone. Also Austin put it over pretty hard on his podcast if I remember correctly, I seem to remember him telling somebody that if they wanted to learn about booking/the biz sit down and watch some old tapes, watch some Mid-South/UWF. 

So when they started uploading Mid-South to WWE Network a decade or whenever that was I was pretty stoked. But I remember just not being able to get into it. I think they mostly only had stuff from 1981-82, doubling back and checking a few episodes out now I can see why, those were hard to watch. I'm guessing Mid-South kind of caught fire sometime in there in 84?

It just now dawned on me that I've been watching all these on WWE Network with the original music ran over. Now I'm curious about what all music they were using, there have been quite a few music video montages.

It's a beautiful weekly wrestling show there from 84 through 85 that I watched. I said it before but there isn't anything mind blowing about any of the wrestling or storylines or characters(except for some of the racist/sexist angles that would get somebody cancelled today, there are a few moments where the show stopped being background noise and I had to stop what I was doing because it's like oh shit they did that haha).

Trying to figure out why I'm vibing so hard to it, it's just a smaller roster where guys that get focused on and how guys rotate in and out the way they do when shit starts to get old, they way they booked it was just really well done. The key word I keep coming up with to describe what works so well for me is "flow", there is'just a nice easy to follow flow from week to week, it's simple, it's easy to get into, it's a style of wrestling booking I really appreciate. I feel like the key concepts/elements of the way the fed was booked are kind of timeless. I can see why it was as revered as it was for other minds of the biz, guys like Raven, Heyman etc. 

For me Wendell Cooley is the GOAT pro wrestler name. It really is the greatest. I'm obsessed with it like my brother Pi was Brutus.

Feb 23, 2023 2:31:21 GMT Baker said:

Feb 23, 2023 2:11:25 GMT Kilgore said:

Was messing with an AWA rebook back in the day

You too? I do this a couple times a year. Different era though. I always start sometime between 87 and 90 with the goal of saving the AWA. 

I love to do a spreadsheet that plans major events for a decade, think about writing any context whatsoever, then pressing save, Xing out of there, and doing none of that. 

Thanks Neo Zeed . I've brought up Mid South/UWF in passing from time to time, but we've never done a deep dive like this. It's been fun.

Agree with you on the Eddie Gilbert portrait angle being classic pro wrestling goodness.

There's a decent amount of 1986 UWF on Youtube. Not every single show, which is annoying, but a fair amount of stuff is out there should you choose to continue. Here's a playlist www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2tO4ysA5WIYFcC9JuqZOBfSPJx0uqJEp

You're spot on about them catching fire in 1984. That's the general consensus. They had some (allegedly) good stuff* before that, but it was (allegedly) also real samey since Watts favored big brawlers and stacked the shows with them. Business went down in 1983 so Watts brought Bill Dundee in from Memphis to be the booker. They also brought in some smaller guys from Memphis like the Midnight Express, Rock & Roll Express, and Terry Taylor who all got over like gangbusters since their more fast paced style, coupled with Dundee's "Memphis" style booking, had never been seen before in the territory. Always heard 1984 was their most financially successful year. 

*JYD was over like rover as their top babyface. His heated feud with the Freebirds drew a huge crowd to the Superdome in 1980 for the big JYD/Hayes grudge match. Butch Reed also got over big time as Dog's primary antagonist. Dibiase was the workhorse of the circuit. He had been a longtime babyface who shocked the region by turning heel on JYD in 82. I've only seen a couple random matches from those early days though. Think the earliest full shows I watched were from late 83.

Aww man. Watching Mid South without the original music sounds gross. Not as bad as ECW, mind you, but at least with one foot in that ballpark. You're still in the earlier days so I think only a few select wrestlers had themes at that point, but they did a lot of music videos featuring popular songs that you're missing out on. I'll rundown all the Mid South/UWF themes I can remember off the top of my head real quick... 

JYD- Another One Bites The Dust by Queen
Doc/Dibiase/Watts/possibly Duggan/possibly Taylor/The Hotdog Vendor/The Peanut Guy/Others- Born In The USA by Bruce Springsteen
Freebirds usually came out to Thin Lizzy's The Boys Are Back In Town but sometimes Freebird by Skynyrd and sometimes Badstreet by...themselves
Eddie Gilbert- Hot Stuff by Donna Summer. Duh.
Blade Runners- Castle Walls by Styx. Hell yeah!
About a year ago I watched an episode of 1987 UWF where they had this random Ninja who used A Passage To Bangkok by Rush. Hell yeah, again!
Missing Link- Bang Your Head (Metal Health)- Quiet Riot. Three hell yeah's! in a row. Only good thing about the stupid Link though.
Fantastics- Sharp Dressed Man by ZZ Top

Feb 23, 2023 3:31:52 GMT Kilgore said:

I love to do a spreadsheet that plans major events for a decade, think about writing any context whatsoever, then pressing save, Xing out of there, and doing none of that. 

I plot out the main Championship for a few years. Sometimes I even make it to the big monthly contenders and the angles that got them there. Promos dance through my head. Once or twice I even made some headway into the tag title scene. But it always ends the same way- me throwing in the towel. Urge comes back a few months later. Cycle repeats. This has been going on for years.

Whoops. Forgot one... 
Lord Humongous- War Machine by Kiss. Another thing Heyman stole borrowed from the territories. Randy Savage also used it in Memphis. Think this was before Humongous came to Mid South. Nightstalker (Adam Bomb) would use the theme in SMW as well.
==========
Brutus Beefcake is still the GOAT wrestler name as it has been since I first thought about the subject some 25 years ago. Pretty sure I'm the one who convinced PI of this. 

Rock n' Roll Express used Rock n' Roll Is King by ELO
Midnight Express used their same song as always Chase from the movie Midnight Express
The Bruise Brothers (Porkchop Cash & ?) used Soul Man by Sam & Dave
The Pretty Young Things used PYT by Michael Jackson

Music videos
RnR Ex - Rock and Roll All Night
Magnum TA - Born to be Wild

Ted DiBiase seeks revenge on Bob Roop for taking the NA title, challenging Roop to a no-DQ war, saying that when he loses, he'll leave town. Things take a dark turn when the people's champ, JYD wins the NA title once again. What starts as a heated, but respectful battle deteriorates into a display of desperation by the normally calm & cool Ted DiBiase.

Did the WWE not make a Mid-South documentary like the ones they did for AWA and WCCW? I could have swore they did but couldn't find it on the WWE Network.

One of my favorite things about watching wrestling from this far back is the crowd reactions, like if you really focus in on how they react during a match or something it's really beautiful. Especially the old ladies.

Feb 24, 2023 2:17:13 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Did the WWE not make a Mid-South documentary like the ones they did for AWA and WCCW? I could have swore they did but couldn't find it on the WWE Network.

They did. Watched bits and pieces of it with my brother one night about 7 years ago. There was a Dibiase/Gang match with a hot finishing stretch featuring some great JR commentary.

Baker by the time I started watching and fallowing wrestling Houston was basically all Mid-South. I don't really know what might have been Houston only and not Mid-South. I hear things now that Boesch being known as a good guy and good payer was able to bring in big names to Houston that Watts was not able to in other areas.

The only story I can think of was when Jake was scheduled to face Dick Slater for the North American title. A Houston newspaper writer found out that Roberts had signed with the WWF. I never saw the article but it seemed like an attempt to expose the business saying something like don't expect Jake to win since he is heading to the WWF. Watts found out and put the title on Jake. Only for him to lose it back days later.

Watched such an interesting match a couple of nights ago I believe from early 1985(I've just been skipping around the episodes on the Network at this point).

It was the debut of The Barbarian taking on a some chump jobber named Shawn Michaels, looking like a 16 year old kid. The ladies in the building popped huge for him and I noticed through the show there are just a ton of young babes in the crowd for these shows, and they all pop for their guys. But usually the guys they pop for get destroyed and it's the big ugly muscled up motherfuckers that get pushed in mid-south, dudes the girls don't pop for. But what a different era when it was so cool to be a corny ass looking white dude with a name like Wendell Cooley you could be a pro wrestler at the Irish O'neal Boys Club(or whatever it's called) in Shreveport on Friday nights and have huge crowd of beautiful young ladies flock to the shows lining up at the guard rail for a kiss ha!

This Barbarian doesn't look like the one I grew up with that tag teamed with Meng and Warlord(and remember when he was a Headhunter? I just now remembered that I REALLY liked that version of the tag team back in the day).

He's a different Barbarian, and really fucking jacked here. The 15 year old looking Shawn Michaels takes about as stiff of a beating as any jobber I've seen take. Really nasty. Very interesting.

FYI Baker I wrote Bill Watts a letter about the wrestlers kissing the girls ringside during their entrances, completely inappropriate and needs to be stopped. I think he must have read it because now they just give them hugs.

Neo Zeed the Mid South Barbarian was The Berzerker/John Nord. Don’t feel bad. It confused me back in the day as well.

Be back later to tell you the famous Blowjob Story.

Damn did not even cross my mind that that was who that was, should have known from his elbow drop though. He's fucking JACKED in his debut, probably near 260 real life weight looking like he just walked to the ring from hitting a full body workout at the gym. HBK got wrecked.

Feb 26, 2023 11:38:00 GMT Neo Zeed said:

FYI Baker I wrote Bill Watts a letter about the wrestlers kissing the girls ringside during their entrances, completely inappropriate and needs to be stopped. I think he must have read it because now they just give them hugs.

Welp. Now we know why they went from the penthouse to the outhouse so quickly. Watts must have taken heed of Nobi's puritanical letter and it ended up driving the ladies away. Dammit Nobi! Way to kill the territory.

Feb 26, 2023 11:32:44 GMT Neo Zeed said:

Shawn Michaels, looking like a 16 year old kid. The ladies in the building popped huge for him and I noticed through the show there are just a ton of young babes in the crowd for these shows, and they all pop for their guys. But usually the guys they pop for get destroyed and it's the big ugly muscled up motherfuckers that get pushed in mid-south, dudes the girls don't pop for. But what a different era when it was so cool to be a corny ass looking white dude with a name like Wendell Cooley you could be a pro wrestler at the Irish O'neal Boys Club(or whatever it's called) in Shreveport on Friday nights and have huge crowd of beautiful young ladies flock to the shows lining up at the guard rail for a kiss ha!

There's a famous story, some of which is apocryphal (yes, I fact checked a joke), that explains all this...

Mid South business was down in 1983 while Memphis continued to boom. Watts invited his pal Memphis promoter Jerry Jarrett over to check out a few shows and offer advice on what could be done to turn business around. The following conversation allegedly took place not long after Jarrett had been in town...

Jarrett: You need more blowjobs.
Watts: Whaddya mean? We already have Missy Hyatt!*
Jarrett: I mean you need more good looking babyfaces to bring the ladies in.**

Watts took Jarrett's advice by bringing in the Rock & Roll Express and Terry Taylor (+Cornette & the Midnight Express who don't really factor in here except as foils for the Rock & Rolls) from Memphis while giving up the brutish Neidhart, Rude (who was still a green underneath heel), and some forgettable lower card guys who never amounted to much in a talent exchange between the two promotions. Legend has it this was the only time Jerry Jarrett ever came out on the bad end of a business deal. Females started flocking to Mid South shows in droves. The Rock & Rolls in particular did record business. 1984 became Mid South's most financially successful year despite losing their long time top babyface Junkyard Dog to WWF and having longtime top of the card workhorse Ted Dibiase spend most of the year in Georgia. Oh, Magnum TA was there as well, though he may have been in the territory before Watts & Jarrett had their famous conversation. 

The Rock & Rolls got so over Watts tried recreating them twice just as he was always looking for that next JYD. First came The Fantastics and only just now did I discover they were a Mid South creation. Furthermore they were created while the Rock & Rolls were still doing record business in Mid South! Guessing they were created as the b show Rock & Roll Express just as the RnR were originally conceived to be the b show Fabulous Ones in Memphis?  Then came Al Perez & your boy Wendell Cooley after the Rock & Rolls jumped to Crockett. Perez & Cooley flopped. Then Watts brought the Fantastics back from World Class with a proper push this time. They did better than Perez & Cooley, but still nowhere near what the Rock & Rolls did in 84. The pretty boy babyface team suffered from the law of diminishing returns just as his countless "next JYD's" did. It's always tough to recreate the magic of the original.

*This is Cornette's version of the story. Unfortunately it cannot be not true. Missy wasn't in Mid South yet. She wasn't even in the business yet! But the meat of the story I've heard so many times from so many people that I do believe it.

**The Fabulous Ones are obvious given their status as the original heartthrob babyface team, but only a few months ago did I learn Lawler & Dundee were also considered dreamboats in their heyday. Was listening to a podcast, I forget which one, where somebody who used to go to Jarrett shows in one of the Kentucky college towns (either Lexington or Louisville) was talking about all these high school and college girls suddenly flocking to the shows when Lawler & Dundee got hot in the mid-late 70s. These girls would inevitably drag their boyfriends along with them and business boomed.

Beautiful context there and so damn interesting, especially the talent exchange deals going on with the territories. I noticed the Magnum TA and Terry Taylor vignettes in 84-85 were really pushing them as ladies men, women all over them, driving expensive cars, getting dressed up and filmed like male models.

80's wrestling is so funny in that you take the ugliest looking man who has ever lived, if that man has blonde hair, he's getting pushed as ladies man. And the ladies will buy it! They'll really be like, "Man, that Wildfire Tommy Rich sure is dreamy."

Feb 19, 2023 1:45:22 GMT Baker said:

Butch Reed with the gorilla press slam and no assistance from the other guy is pretty impressive. The other guy is not small. Makes me wonder just how strong was he?

I hit the fucking mega-jack pot out shopping yesterday, found un-changed Star Wars trilogy on VHS from 1990 without any of the CGI changes and absolutely fucking gorgeous spectacular box art, also found rare made for USA Network original movie Buried Alive(pseudo-horror revenge thriller directed by Frank Darabont) from 1991 like a holy grail VHS tape I been wanting for forever(my grandpa had it recorded to a blank VHS tape when I was little and it was always a favorite of mine).

Among the scores was the 3 disc Legends Of Midsouth collection released by WWF. I watched the first disc and this is really good stuff. There is a lot here, and I like the format where it's just interviews and highlights of feuds/wrestlers/segments in between a bunch of full matches. This is a cool find because this is not on Peacock, I looked everywhere for it. 

I have to say the JYD getting tarred and feathered by Butch Reed may be my new all time favorite segment in wrestling history, I laughed too hard. That was solid fucking gold. Just the way JYD was rolling around then got up with the feathers on and struck that pose to cut the promo, with the feathers on him, the total seriousness of it all, and his voice, too fucking funny.

OK so I made a trip to XWT classics and found the Mid-South mega collection. I have started off by downloading the first few episodes of UWF from Spring of 1986 fucking stoked to watch through this.

Oh man this is awesome getting to finally see the UWF tapes, from the beginning no less. The name change went into effect in March 1986 i've got the first 3 episodes on the thumbdrive. There wasn't much to the first show, it still very much felt like the Mid-South shows I watched through on the Network(1984 to the first show of 1986). They debut a pretty gorgeous new TV title. The North American title they used was pretty awesome too I have to say.

So the name change was to go national did they have a national TV deal to go with it or was this still good ole' channel 3 in Shreveport still?

The fucking licensed music is intact. This is too fucking sweet. There is a pretty epic Bladerunners(Sting and Ultimate Warrior) workout video on the second episode, they look like they could seriously take the Road Warriors they are about as jacked as ever.

Hearing Bill Watts on commentary talking about these wrestling fans are Americans, they don't like people coming over here talking bad about America. I feel like this promotion, as well as WCCW, should really still be going today. What the hell happened? There should still be Mid-South shows at the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium all over here in these little towns like there used to be, there's really no reason they couldn't have kept these promotions going. They all either got old and died(and their families had no idea what to do with it) or got greedy, I mean what was Bill Watts really hoping to do? Put Vince out of business? I really just see no reason that promotion couldn't have lasted forever here in this territory where I live, people here are still simple like the ones in these tapes they are easy to read and work. Guns god and government, black hat-white hat, what part of that don't you understand? If I ever win the lottery I'm booking a new fed on channel 3.

Apr 27, 2023 2:23:35 GMT Neo Zeed said:

If I ever win the lottery I'm booking a new fed on channel 3.

Would watch.

I'm sure it still aired on Shreveport Channel 3 after the name change. They never had a national tv deal. They'd just air on whatever channels they could find in syndication. 

I don't think I've seen a single clip of footage from the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, which is odd to me because of how beautiful the place was for a wrestling venue and how frequently they ran there(like monthly up to a point). There are a ton of house shows on the XWT but it doesn't have details for any of them I'm sure some of them have to be from the Municipal, I'd really like to find that Flair vs Terry Taylor NWA Title match that was there.

Also watching the Mid-South WWE set that I found a few weeks ago I found it really interesting all the workers talking about how far they had to drive to work for the territory, from Oklahoma to Louisiana to Texas and back again that is really brutal. I couldn't imagine. Just living here about an hour from Shreveport it's a major issue all of the driving I'm doing building houses around here(put 90,000 miles on a new truck in 3 years, trade in value on this thing is fucked), everything is way spread out. There are some really loooong stretches of lonely road especially in Oklahoma where there is nothing for hours, with no phones back then that must have sucked. Compared to the east coast like ECW where all those towns were right there clustered together. Ya'll do have some woods up there though right? I seen the Pine Barrens on Sopranos. 

Apr 27, 2023 2:47:17 GMT Neo Zeed said:

I don't think I've seen a single clip of footage from the Shreveport Municipal Auditorium, which is odd to me because of how beautiful the place was for a wrestling venue and how frequently they ran there(like monthly up to a point). There are a ton of house shows on the XWT but it doesn't have details for any of them I'm sure some of them have to be from the Municipal, I'd really like to find that Flair vs Terry Taylor NWA Title match that was there.

Also watching the Mid-South WWE set that I found a few weeks ago I found it really interesting all the workers talking about how far they had to drive to work for the territory, from Oklahoma to Louisiana to Texas and back again that is really brutal. I couldn't imagine. Just living here about an hour from Shreveport it's a major issue all of the driving I'm doing building houses around here(put 90,000 miles on a new truck in 3 years, trade in value on this thing is fucked), everything is way spread out. There are some really loooong stretches of lonely road especially in Oklahoma where there is nothing for hours, with no phones back then that must have sucked. Compared to the east coast like ECW where all those towns were right there clustered together. Ya'll do have some woods up there though right? I seen the Pine Barrens on Sopranos. 

I'd be surprised if any of those Shreveport house shows surface. It was real rare to record house shows in those days. Even WWF only did it in the most major markets. Mid South travel is infamous. Caused lots of dudes to quit the territory. We have a surprising amount of woods up here! Even the most densely populated states in the Northeast have large stretches of emptiness. You can drive for hours in NY/NJ/PA/MD without coming across any major cities.