This is WWE Superstar Drew McIntyre, and you're listening to the WWE podcast show, the one that everybody wants. Me's got I waste sixteen said, I just whipped your ass? Is mind? You can acknowledge me? All right? Everyone, this is Memphis Mark coming to you from Mullet Manor with a little different interpretation. This week we're gonna do the Mullet Manner Memoirs, and I've got my all star cast with maintenance Maverick and of course the gardener Michael
Gross and myself and guys, how you doing well? I gotta say I'm doing really well. I'm getting over a little bit of sickness, a little bit of flu who kind of went into a respiratory thing, kind of clearing out the sinus. Is feeling a little bit better, trying to enjoy this little a little bit of good weather before the winter really hits hard here in
Louisville. But I'm really excited to do this project because you and I go back many many years as friends, but we also go back many many years as fans of what we are going to do the topic on, and I'm just really excited to put out a new thing that isn't just a wrestle magic, but it's part of both what you do as far as NXT and what we do as wrestle magic. In this joint production is going to be so amazing. And so without further ado, I'd like to introduce my nephew,
mister Maverick. Hey, guys, it's been a good week so far. Really happy to be on this project. I mean, as soon as I got mentioned to me about it, I was really excited. So I'm just really happy to be a part of this. I grew up, you know, outside of knowing anything about the territories, so I had to do my own presearch a little bit and try to understand some things that were being talked about between everybody, and hopefully I've learned just enough. But yeah, without
further ado, let's get into it. Memphis Park, Well, I guys, what we're going to delve into here is pretty much the last remaining territory that had a chance at money. Now there's some people that we'll talk about, possibly another territory that's still around, but I'm going to speak of in the South, and that's Memphis Wrestling. And with Memphis Wrestling, you got to understand, at one point in time it had a share of seven out of ten TV sets. Seven out of ten TV sets in a city as
large as Memphis was just unheard of. But where it started was actually in the Ellis Auditorium and that goes back into the fifties in before. I can't go any further back because I wasn't around, but I'll say that it started out. It's the house that people like Spudneck Monroe and Jerry I'm sorry, Jackie Fargo and some of these guys built. Now it was selling out. It was selling out, but they were going to end up tearing the building
down. So at that time you had a couple of different promoters that were promoting in Memphis, and you know, so you had less Wolf that was around here. You had a couple other guys, but there ended up being a split where the Herb Welch family got involved and they were the big time wrestlers here. So with now, the Welches, if I'm not mistaken, were very aligned with the NWA or were they succeeding Well they were, They were, yes, very aligned with NWA, but they did kind of when
they started this territory, well when they started. When they made the move to the coliseum, they created their own entity. You know, they created their own NWA per se, if you know what I mean. They were that big. But they did use them as a governing body for a while. You remember the old will have to get with the president and check on
the match. Absolutely, there was a council. And for everybody who doesn't know, with the territory system that you had people like Paul ash you had herb Welsh, You had so many different names, I mean Toully Blancher's father, Job Lanchwerd, you had Fritz van Eric, all these people who were part of the National Wrestling Alliance. And when you succeeded, you created your
own wrestling champion. So it was very big with the hotbed and especially the biggest hotbed was the mid South, which is what we are talking about now. So I acquiesce, well, I tell you the biggest of all at that time. You got to consider, yeah, there was still segregation in the South, so you pretty much had the black clientele, your your black customers up top and your white customers down on the bottom. Now, a lot of times that would cause a problem, but they had the one thing
that made them different, made mid South wrestler or Memphis wrestling different. And that was a gentleman by the name of Spudneck Monroe. And he would tell everything that that a bigot or a white racist would have hated. He liked black music. He dressed in a black mannerism. Uh, he just acted different. He had a white streak, bleached blonde whites to reek down the middle of his hair like he was telling everybody he was a skunk and he'd
spray them. I mean he and he was tough. He was legitimately tough. And to show you the difference in the times, I don't have the exact year. Oh you women, I believe it's nineteenth January fourteenth, nineteen sixty. Rock Em Bumbar twenty seven of fourteen fifteen. I'm actually quoting the
Memphis Press Siminar, the local newspaper of fourteen fifty Spartan Drive. They gave his address in this newspaper article, known in the wrestling world as bud Nick Munroe and another wrestler, mister Hickman twenty seven and again they give his address, were charged with disorderly conduct following an arrest at twelve forty five in the morning in a negro cafe on Bill Street at Hernando. But I think Michael used to the blues hall, little blues hall. I used to rune it
by the way. Yeah, But they were arrested at twelve forty five yesterday morning in a negro cafe at Bill and Hernando where they were drinking beer, that was, and the judge, the judge was said that she had never heard of any white man being arrested for that. She find him twenty six dollars and he had to forfeit his his pay for that night. Now that's just given you a little bit of a peak into what these wrestlers were going
through back then because they worked together. They you know, they the more heat one got the other one, you know what I mean. So it was these guys were friends. May I expand up on that a little bit? Please? The fact that spot Mak sput Nick Monroe, his his persona was carried on to the next generation. And you know who that next generation person was who embraced uh the so called color barrier, and that's Dusty Rhodes.
Absolutely true. Yeah, However Sputnick Monroe lived, who he who he actually was, He was a gentleman who wrestled during the day and at night liked to live his lifestyle of listening to blues music, hanging out with his friends. And because he was a television persona and an immedia persona and a white man, a bleach blonde built like no one's business, they said,
you cannot do this. He stepped in as an adversary to everybody. Now they hated that, and they would always tell him, quoting the movie, and this heat if you arrest me, that's fine. I've got the bail money in my back pocket. I'll be back here tomorrow hanging out with my friends. So leave me alone. Now with that being said, Maverick, you can take this one. They said, and this is also quoting the
movie. What did every African American house have in their household? So from the movie something that I don't believe I will be able to forget after hearing it was every African American had three pictures in their household. First one was of Jesus, second one was of Martin Luther King, and the third one
was of spot Nick Monroe. Now, looking at what had happened back then, times have changed so much, and it is just such a difference in today's world, because I couldn't imagine first off, everything being segregated like that, and second off, just hang out with your friends, not being rowdy
or anything and just getting arrested for it. Things like that really caught my attention while watching the whole documentary, and that kind of gave me respect for the name of spump Nick Monroe, even though I hadn't heard of him until today. So yeah, I'm really happy that I've gotten to learn about that. But let's move on, Mark, what do you have next for us
my friends? Okay, well, real quickly, I do want to add it's people like you that are in the armed services that are Thro're the reason that I'm able to sit anywhere I want to and sit next to whoever I want to, So don't ever appreciate I don't think we don't appreciate that. But we will go directly into now with the coliseum. It's a it's a
twelve thousand seat arena shaped in a almost like a bubble kind of. At its time, it was pretty pretty innovative, but they weren't using it during the week, so they work a deal out to pretty much they were getting that Arena four Mondays for twelve hundred dollars a month. Now that would be I'm gonna I'm just gonna estimate probably around seven to nine thousand dollars a month nowadays. That's pennies. That's a great deal, patties, I mean.
But Okay, so we go from there. So now you've got you've got a couple of different networks going here. They have. Some people call it the Chipman circuit. Some people call it the pork Chop circuit. There's there's names where Phil Hickerson or maybe one of the interns, donn Al Green.
They would take some of the lesser known wrestlers and they would hit Jonesboro, Arkansas, West Memphis, Bliville and go around, and then you had your main circuit of the wrestlers and Michael, that's the guys that came up into your territory. They would hit Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Well, the Knoxville was a fighting area with a couple of territories, but then Louisville, definitely, Greensboro, we got to talk about Evansville. Definitely, all those
territories they were expanding into. But it was the most viable product because at this point I would say and tell me if I'm for stepping my boundaries, that all these talents started to find a place where people really believed in k fabe. And that's what was the biggest thing was k fabe. The believability that wrestling is not scripted, it's real was riotous. So these people like Al Green and the Dream Machine but we'll get to him in a bit,
is the fact that that was what was sucking in. So we had to go to those cities, those major cities where people still believed absolutely and you could get for riding in the car with your opponent that night, even though you're both going to the same city. You could get fired for something like that. But these guys, they started this up kind of you got to consider the kahonas they had to have on them to kind of spit in the
face of everybody and go that we can do this. Jerry Jared was a young wrestler, a blondhaired guy that got to beat up every week, but everybody loved to watch him, and you had people like Tojo Yamamoto and all of these guys in Tojo was a small guy from Hawaii, but they put him up as a Japanese guy, and he had these wooden shoes and he'd get beat up the whole match, but as soon as he got hold of
one of his shoes, bam, blood come out. Even on Saturday morning wrestling, if he hits you with that shoe, the guy went down and he come up bleeding. But you know, you had some great, great talent that was back then, and it was real because I can remember the first time as a kid being able to go into a restaurant that I had to go through the kitchen back to a meeting room and there was Jerry Jared and Tojo Yamamoto after a match. Oh dear Lord, kunk. My heart
sunk. But even then they left through separate doors. You know, I had the advantage of restaurant management knowing me being a kid and let me back there. But that's how big it was. You had to go through the kitchen back through a hallway down, you know, down there, a long hallway to see a table in the back and that's where they were eating. But yeah, guys, from there, you've got going into like Louisville.
Louisville was was the biggest city you had, Natville, which was drawing good, but Louisville And wasn't that in the little gardens Michael, Yes, it was actually I think somewhere off Eighth Street here downtown. It's still there. It's just nothing happens in it. I took a couple of pictures and I sent him to Cornett. He hasn't responded, but yeah, he's never gonna
respond. But yeah, the Lousville Gardens was a major draw. Obviously you have Mid South Coliseum, and I'm trying to think of like the other major city draws. But you'd know better than I would. Well, I mean even a city like two Polo would would would do really obviously, yes, so and then you would draw all through Mississippi and even up from a little
bit from Alabama. Now they never went down because that's going into the Mid South territory and that Bill Watts. Yeah, but like I said, you know with Buddy Wayne, Now, Buddy Wayne was the main guy that did the port Chop circuit towards the end, he was he was a guy that you could throw under a asked. He was a big guy, he could wrestle, but he produced Ken Wayne and uh and a few other these. I think he's even got a grandson that's out there. I'm getting ready to
start up. But they took it well. They took people like a cop from up in Tennessee that was bald headed and he was like six six, great shape, ex military guy, and he wanted to get into wrestling. And Lawler was at that time. Lawler was becoming such a big talent. You know, he had gotten the push. He was an artist that showed
his artwork to some guys and they started letting him sell his artwork. And the next thing, you know, he got into the wrestling and he went through the small circuits and he built himself up and at that time one of his biggest finds that I think was the Mongolian Stomper. The guy was a cop the time and then he wrestled, but I mean he was great. But these guys could find talent. Plowboy Frasier just a big, heavy set
guy from down to Mississippi. But he just fit the part. Uh you know now that it was Plo plow Boy, the same guy that was in Hee's Big Adventure. I don't know. If he I'm not up, he might have been Plowboy. And if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. I mean, come on, guys, there's forty years of wrestling memories in the spring. But uh, I know that plowboy, he had quite a quite a
bit. Moncoline Stomper actually well he he was green in Memphis and they sent him over to Canada and he wrestled for STU for a while and then came back after actually learning how to do drop toe hold for a second. Yes, which would that be up in the Stampede sort of leagues or what exactly
did STU own at the time Stampede? Yeah, it was. It was all the Calgary That's that's what you call it Stampede because apparently up in Canada being a cowboys bigger and rodeos are bigger supposedly than in the South of America. Yeah, it's very very interesting culture. But getting back to it, the Mongolian Stopper, the guy actually was legitimately taller than Andre the Giant, but they would never put them together and do it back to back. Very
interesting, Yeah, I mean, but you would have. We had a young tag team come through in the early seventies there, Ricky and Robert Gibson brothers. Yeah, a great tag team. But you know, you've got Robert or the Ricky that gets hurt, and then Robert goes on and meets up with this guy, this other guy, and there again Lawler and Jared and Memphis Wrestling says, hey, let's put him in some tights, let's
put some band Danons on them, bring him out to some music. And Memphis Wrestling was the first to do music videos to add like a music. I mean, as simple as as that sounds, that was a big, big deal. And with the Rock and Roll Express later on with another tag team that the two guys couldn't draw any kind of crowd, but you put him together, put fancy coats on him and call him the Fabulous Ones, and he'd just come out and bam, they're selling out arenas you know,
and it's just a Tommy rich guy, looks like a bullfrog. He's fired up. Though he farred up with Dundee, Bill Dundee that comes over from New Zealand, but he has everybody thinks he's from Australia, and he takes on the Australian side of things, and to this day, most people still think he's from Australia. Paul Orned, I mean, it goes on, he ends up breaking Lawler's nose, and then Lawler ends up breaking his nose
when he returns. Yeah, nice little receipt. The original kind of the Midnight Express, not with Cornett, but Dennis Condrey found his success with Phil Hickerson. They were the biggest thing at the time, going against like a Dundee and Jimmy Valiant, which Jimmy Valiant couldn't wrestle a lick, but man look great going to the ring. Don't talk that way about boogie woogie.
Okay, he did that lick the thumb and stick someone in the neck thing, which later became the the what Asian spike, So come on, yeah, oh it to be called the boogie woogie spike. But back then he was handsome Jimmy by the way, Absolutely, I've got a wrestling card from September eighteenth. This is of course they didn't put the years on this, but this is a Monday night. No increases in the price for a triple main event. The a w A World Champion Nick Bockwinkle going against handsome Jimmy
Vayan. Now listen to these other to uh you got Joe LaDuke and John Louis going against Sarry Lawler and the Mongolin Stomper that's a blood beth uh. And then you've got mister Wrestling going against Terry Sawyer. Uh. And you know, I mean at the first match is Tommy Gilbert versus Louthu's Wayne Wayne
Ferris, the Hanky talk Man's on this card. I mean, you know, and then this is just an average week, so you can see where the Memphis Wrestling had such a draw, uh, and to where you get guys like Maverick that are going back and looking at some of this stuff and I send them old tapes and I know he probably gets tired of it, but you watch some of that. The next thing you know, you've watched
the whole hour show. And that's what we got. And I don't think any other wrestling show back in its day put out the product that Memphis Wrestling. And now, Michael, you got to see, you know, the second version anything I saw on Monday. You saw what day did they come through Louisville. Well, see, as far as wrestling went, I would get to see whatever you saw on ESPN, Okay it will be yeah. So I always got the lidder carbon copies because while we're a few years different.
I also lived in Cleveland, Ohio, which was hard word for cable much before many other people. So when I was seeing stuff that you had seen. Sometimes they would show us reruns that we knew were reruns from reading dirt sheets or mags or anything like that, and it's like, Okay, I already know who's going to win this. That's kind of what also hurt
the territories too, was bad syndication. But when Memphis had the ESPN slot after World Class had lost it, when it was CWA before it became USWA, and I was watching a lot of it, I was really entrenched in, like loving the characters. But of course with everything and the death of the territories, you start to see stars go away, who's a star,
who's left over? Things like that. But there is a special match to you, and you know what I'm talking about that makes Memphis wrestling, the CWA and what everything that was Memphis as a territory, the match that put them on the map, that made everybody in the whole world stop and say, this is a match. And that's why Andy Kaufman said in nineteen eighty three that this is the wrestling capital of the world. What is that match? Oh man, you're you're throwing me in, You're throwing me under the
because there's so many that I could go back. It's your favorite match of all time. Well, you know, I'll sit there and talk with you so many nights back in the day when you were still bartending back in the day. Uh man, you go back with lawlor Man, you could go with man. You know, you had your Dundee matches of course, and you had your all of his championships, the Kurt Hennings, the Bockwinkles, the Mark. It's the match, the match, the match that made you.
Oh you're killing me, You're killing me. Come on, just come on with it, Just come on with it. Oh well, okay, there we go. Now, okay, I apologize folks. He is correct and and what we were referring to is to me, it is the cinematic, it is the it is the epitome of Southern wrestling, the whole thing. You'd have to watch the whole clip from Lance Russell putting on a show saying literally literally smoking a cigarette, which you know, I just and I
know people that's far fetched, the people that understand. But smoking a cigarette and saying what they're fighting. They're fighting where Come on, grab a camera, get that cable. Come on, we'll edit it later. We'll edit it later. And they go down a stairwhale and there are four guys tearing it up in the concession stand, and that's Jerry Lawler, Bill Undie,
Wayne Ferris and Larry Latham the Holly where they called the Hollywood Blonds. Wasn't that I think that they were going under that moniker then, But but the fight was just freaking great. But I found out years later, years later. The key thing that I was able to enlighten people too that now when they go back, it's extremely funny to go back and watch. They were told it was the end of the season, so they were going to throw
out all the condiments and all the stuff. So they didn't care about anything that was in there. But there was one important piece of equipment. It was their moneymaker. All right, Let's see if Maverick knows what it is? What is it math? All right, Let's see if I can do the voice quite as good as Memphis Mark does it. Do not touch the popcorn machine? Yes, to do whatever you want. I don't care whatever
you want, Just do not touch the popcorn machine. And anybody that goes back and watch the full video, I suggest you watch the full, not the edited, the full video so you can get Lance Russell in there. And Lance Russell was such, Oh god, he was amazing. He was such an important He was our version of a Gordon Solely or or whatever.
If you travel around the different territories, you'd have a voice that you knew and Lance Russell and we had a local the station, the actual wrestling left one station in which this is the only wrestling show in the country that's getting paid the wrestling. The TV state is paying them to produce. They're doing all the editing, They're doing all the production out of their end. That's how big wrestling was. But they went from they changed stations and the local
weather man, Dave Brown came on. So you had is Lawlor would put it, you had Lance Russell Banana nos and then you had Dave Brown, the straight guy, and uh, they were great. They were just freaking great. And uh and Maverick, I did want to say something I didn't know when Michael mentioned earlier that Cleveland was hardwired. I didn't even know if you understood what that meant. Because it's a year and I was just thinking about that I got cable. And when we got cable in Memphis, one
side of the street got it and the other side didn't. For like two months, it was we had three channels, man, three channels. Then we get cable and the world opens up. And now look at the you know, I don't even know if anybody uses cable anymore. I think everybody's streaming so well with this infancy of cable. The biggest angle of all time is starting to bloom. Now that Lawler has become something. Fargos are starting to get a little elder. Jimmy Art is becoming one of the biggest heal
managers of all time in history. We have a person like the dream machine. Yes, Michael, let me add Jimmy Hart at the time is a local musician with Jimmy Hart and the Gentries. He was a friend of Lawlor's and when Lawler got into doing some music, Jimmy Hart was like the backup band and helped him write the songs around or change the words around in a popular song to make it towards him. But Lawlor brings me hard on.
Now please continue on, Michael, as I was saying, see, you have quite a glut of popularity in wrestling as far as we're Memphis is the territory is growing and growing and it's the biggest thing, especially their timeshares that they have. Like you were saying, like a seven seven out of ten in Memphis, Well that's a million viewers versus you know, the outskirts. But the fans were rabid, they were crazy, they were insane, and you can cite many books. I like to cite Death the Territories by Tim
Hornbaker, which is really good. They would talk about some of these matches. If Jerry Lawler had his head shaped, there was a riot, They actually had a riot, there were arrests, and they did it for fun. They didn't do it for fun. They did it because they believed in what they were doing. Now you look at everybody who was in wrestling, you say that they're a stage actor and everything else to some degree, you could say that, but they don't get SAG. They don't get SAG benefits,
and that's really sad. However these people should and the fact that they got their tire slash, they got beat up, they got jumped, they've gotten knife, they got stabbed. You know, I hated villains and movies, but if I ever saw the actor, I didn't knife them. And that's what Memphis was in nineteen ninety one, or excuse me, nineteen eighty one to nineteen eighty four. Yea was the most hot bed of any kind
of interactual interacting, actual wrestling. You have to pardon my stuttering, that you've ever seen in your life, riots, cage matches, that people, fires, infernos. I mean, we're talking about anything that you'd think is crazy and extreme. Today was born right over by the Liberty Bowl, and it was at the Mid South Coliseum, and every Monday night served to make the pay per view, or excuse me, every Saturday morning studio wrestling served
to make every Monday night just that much bigger of a sellout. And that's what happened. But now let's talk about that wrestling boom infancy, Yes, mister Maverick. So I wanted to ask you guys about something else that had to do with the belief in k fabe and how it was so heavy back
then. So there was a certain match that had happened that involved the Rock's father, Rocky Johnson and Jerry Lawler where they were almost trying to make it less of a wrestling match and trying to promote Rocky Johnson at the time more as a boxer and that he was legitimate in this fight was going to be
some sort of hybrid of wrestling and boxing at the time. Can you guys elaborate on that and explain a little bit, because I know that had to have helped out with the belief of k fabe and made the audience really feel like, Wow, this is actually going on and really would have swayed anybody thinking, oh, maybe this is fake at the time. Oh yeah, yeah, they put the gloves. Lawler said that he could fight, and he starts naming like he was this type boxer and that type christ yeah,
and going into it. So they put the gloves on them both, and of course Rocky wears him out. But just like the scene and and in Rocky to where hul Cogan or whoever it was, I can't remember where Rocky had the gloves on, Lawler got the gloves off and jump Rocky after, you know, after the match, and of course that creates more heat on him because Rocky's shown everybody how talented he is because he's jabbing him, and just you know, Lawler can't do anything. But when those gloves come off,
he snuck up behind him. Bam. I think he even piled driving, which at that time was just that was that was the illegal move if you pile drive it. And you got to remember at the early some of those stages you couldn't knock or you could knock somebody over the top rope, but you couldn't throw them over the top rope. So a different time in
wrestling back then. And and Michael mentioned Lawler getting his haircut. Now, when you're the biggest star of your era, I mean he's drawing big houses every time, and when Lawler touches something, that's gold for him to get his haircut. That showed. Now prior to that, he was in a feud with Bill Dundee, and Bill Dundee gets his hair cut. So now
this is the way. It was explained to me by a short guy from New Zealand and a bar outside of Pickwick that he owned that it was the most money he had ever made in a couple of weeks time, Bill Dundee. He got paid a big chunk of money from Mid South Wrestling for some booking he did down there, he comes up to Memphis, he gets his hair cut. So what are they going to do to top that? Because they thought that that would be the end of the feud, everybody'd be done
with it. But the crowd, Jerry Jerried said, he walked out into the crowd and he was like, oh no, we're not done with this. So they cut Bill done thees wifes his wife's hair. Yeah, that's that's a big one. Yeah, that was But he said he made five that Jery Jarrett, Now Jerry Jared was known as one of the worst payers in the business, but he said he made five thousand dollars back and then. Now I'm not sure the equivalent of it today, but that I mean
for ten thousand dollars, you can shave my head. So we'll nothing shoot for five hundred. But well, I find it very interesting, like what they innovated at that time. So let's talk the seventies to eighty four. Let's talk to before the event's expansion. So everybody who is anybody in the wrestling industry at that point had passed through Memphis. If you did not pass through Memphis, you didn't cut your Chops, Rick Flair, Memphis, Magan
te and Memphis everybody unique. You put a person up, and I'm going to tell you they passed through Memphis. That was a testing ground and it was it was truly the king of where you were supposed to be as far as going forward in your life as being a wrestling I mean just being a wrestler. And the fact that like it got buried eighty five sealed a tomb and once Vince did the expansion when it was you know, WrestleMania three whatever
else, like it was buried really hard. So before that, we had some of the biggest angles, some of the biggest things at some of the biggest superstars that ever came out of anywhere. So where did the Undertaker wrestle? Absolutely big Red big Red and Master of Pain exactly. And Master of Pain they used that to persona. Also on this other guy, remember this guy named Sid, I remember Prank calling him. He doesn't like you too much. But all right, so let's let's dial back a little bit earlier.
So the fargos are going away. We're talking the early days and a guy that we're both fans of, dream Machine. So yeah, let's let's talk about him, and let's also delve into what their tag team situation was in those early eighties before we get into Kaufman. Well, now, Troy Graham was he could have gone all over the country because he was the closest
to Dusty Roads on the stick. Uh, Troy could come up well, man, I can't even think of any of it off the top of my head, but something about walking through a graveyard, and I mean he just he had the gift of gab and he didn't have the big athletic body, but he was big. So him and like Phil Hickerson, which Phil didn't like to go very far from Memphis because he had a little bar up in
Jackson, Tennessee. And Troy Graham was actually taking care all during the late seventies early eighties, he was taking care of his mother that was sick. So he actually and the local you know, local strip clubs here. So I mean he was a legit, you know, a badass. And so you put two guys like that in. Phil Hickerson wasn't bad on the MinC either, So those were your good heels, you know, for them to bring back occasionally a Jackie Fargo or bring up some of these guys like a
Tommy Rich because they really beat the crap out of Tommy's. Those are some good old days. Man. That's Saturday wrestling that you just didn't get stuff like that on Saturday morning. Everybody say for you to pay for that ticket. Something that I'd like to throw in as well was after watching the Memphis Heat documentary. I have to say, the heels and faces, no matter
who they were, the promos were just different back then. When they were on the mic, it seemed so much more legitimate and so much more real. It felt like everything that they were saying almost anybody could really relate to. Almost anybody could say it, but you felt what they were saying, especially when Jerry the King Lawler was on the mic or anybody. The threats that they were making. It sounded legitimate, like anybody on the street would
say it, not just you know WWE Superstar. Now, who's talking about you know, Finn Baler and his demon persona. Nobody talked about anything like that because there wasn't anything close to that yet. Everything seemed so much more real back then, and I think that also helped out with everything with k Fabe and everybody believing it so much more, but please continue, Mark,
this is fascinating. Oh man, Well, I was just and these guys back in the days, they had to deal with politics just like nowadays. You had a promoter's son, George Goulis that was a terrible terror. Uh. And the guys had to carry him, and they knew that when they had a match with him, they weren't gonna they were They're not going to be in the last three matches. And when the old days, when they say pay window like you had, you know, they used to make it
real when they were talking about their money. Uh. An average person could relate to when they said that man, that guy jumped in and cast that guy the match that cost him half of his purse. You know, it just seemed real. Uh. And and and and like you said, Matt, uh, the the way that they conducted the interviews. I think that a lot of younger guys should go back and maybe watch a little the older stuff and see a guy that uh, see the guy that gets beat up.
They go to commercial break, you know what I'm talking about, and then they bring him back out after he's cleaned up a little little bit. That five minutes or three minutes they give him on the stick to where he's just just ripping a new butthole out of something. I mean, that's the kind of the anger and the fire that I think some of these younger guys need. I mean, that's just my opinion. Old guy talking. You know, I ain't got nothing but a mouthful of memories, but I can
tell you I can go through them. But those are great days. Bill Dundee was a small guy. He came he comes in with another, uh, gentleman that speaks like him with that tone of voice, and George Burns, and George Burns ends up going back over across the seas, going back to the There was a big promoter over in Australia. Michael, do you remember that guy's name? It's own? Uh. He was, he was big man. He was a well you had the whole country of Australia and
he had no competition over there. No, honestly, I know what you're talking about, but I no, I cannot remember his name at this point. But but I mean it was a good promotion. You could you could feed your good But Dundee takes the money like that. He takes the money that he gets off when he gets his haircut and he buys a house in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and nobody would have thought anything about that biggest investment the man ever made. The man. You know, the Hendersonville, Tennessee is
like where all the big country stars live nowadays. So if you bought a house in nineteen eighty two, your house, well, we won't go into that side of it. Yeah, yeah, a good, good investment. But that's what some of these guys did. Now a lot of them. You had guys like right towards where the end of where you're talking about Michael,
they bring a guy out like Kamala. Oh gosh, so maw do you know the beginning of Kamala. I will be completely honest the I believe one of the only things that I had really heard about Kamala was that he was one of the only people who were allowed to slam Andre. Is that true? Him? And Harley Rice? Uh, there's been a few, but yeah, Kamala. His whole thing is he showed up and he was
in the backyard. The story I hear is he was just sitting on a bench and Jared Jarrett and Jeff excuse me, Jery Jarrett and Jerry Lawler look at him and say, who are you? He's I'm sugar Bet. Harris said, no, you're not. You're Kamala. And they painted him up and made him come out of the pond that came out of their backyard, out of Jared Jarrett's backyard, Yes, Jared Jared's backyard. Kamala like I've seen the vineyards. Kamala. I had never seen anybody from the Memphis territory
get fast tracked that fast to go up to WWF. He was the first man. And like me young, like watching territories and everything, everybody was usually just a mier bit player. But it's like Kamala came up fast and I was like, what the father? And when he came up, I thought, oh, I hope it's Abdulla the butcher. And I was like, no, Hogan's not going to work out Dulah And I was like ten, but I was hoping. One can always dream. Oh, there probably
wouldn't have been. What it was a Papa Shamonga or what was that guy's name, Papa Shango Shango. That was a two point zero version of Kamala. They were trying to recreate the Kamala just had they put some little smoke, like some smoke bombs up and had him walking into the bushes. And it was just the fact, you have to understand how in an infant kind of stage production, and uh, but nobody else was doing this. No,
you weren't going to another wrestling show in Alabama, Florida. They weren't showing some guy coming through some bushes with smoke and background music and a guy, you know, it's sounds as scary as hell, just running at everybody and he's a cannibal. Oh my god, run from him. He's missing teeth and he he has a handler. Oh the handler had to go to the bathroom. Oh my god, he's loose in the stadium. That's what Memphis did. That was creating so much excitement without even having anything in the
ring. So you go to the intermission, did you say, Kamala is loose? Everybody be careful. He was brilliance, Brilliance. So everybody's out there going to buy the merchant, but they're looking around for him. And then maybe he ran down a hallway. Everybody would scream because it's a dead hallway where there's nothing, so they'd go scream back towards where the merchandize area was. Oh no, that's brilliant. It seems like genius marketing. You
could probably scar some kids with that. You know, here comes Kamala chasing little kid down the hallway and then all of a sudden, he turns and he's gone forever. Make a complete memory and some more hallmark moments for everybody that was Memphis ideas. That's actually look, I've actually seen them take some of the wrestlers, kids that were in the back that knew Kamala, and of course they knew, but they would let him run down the hallway like
they were like running from something. They would literally clear out an area. But back then, you didn't run far. You ran like a few feet, and then you stopped because you wanted to make sure. Now nowadays people just keep running. But everybody would run a little bit and stop and they would. You would hear voices, get back, get him back, get him back. You never saw Kamala. It was like two guys out in the hallway that were going get back, get back, get him back,
get him back. Come on, let's get him. And then you know the people that it echoed through the Hallway. That's all you needed, brother, that is all you needed. And then look, we even had in those early stages, we had a couple visits. I only remember too, from the greatest big man I think of all time, which was Bruiser Brody. And Bruiser Brody was such a big guy in the way the stadium was
set up. When they showed video of him, he just looked so much bigger than everybody, and he would get berserk and go through the crowd and clear the you know, clear a whole section out because, believe me, if you saw Bruiser Brody, and I don't know how many people know who that is, but if you saw him coming at you, I'm not a small guy, but I'm getting the heck out of the way. There's always
been like the speculation Bruiser Brody versus Haku ooh oo. Tell you what, I don't want to be in between ones and when it comes time to pay the tab fair enough. So let's build up. Let's build up to the best line, the best storyline of all time that lasted well over twenty years. So what's happening in Memphis at this point is you have a lot of talent that's being trained, a lot of talent that is being showcased. But we have a lot of more what we call national branded talents or companies excuse
me, promotions. I don't like to use the word brand. We have AWA, which is supposed to be world recognized. We have the NWA, which is the world standard. We have the WWF in New York and the New England States, the blue Bloods which are taking over. Now you have what is considered the capital of wrestling, which would be Memphis, and then you also have Dallas, now the West coast. The WWA had already given
up. Dallas was also WCCW. I don't want to give the von Ericks that they're not due Texas or not Texas, but Florida at this point was the Grahams, and they weren't doing what they needed to do to catch up. They were just kind of floundering in mediocrity. They had a lot of talent, they were training talents, but they were basically a training ground and
not really giving back or producing anything that could be national television. All these other territories I've talked about actually had television spots that I could see as a ten year old so all of a sudden, the biggest angle happens, and that is Andy Kaufman. So now talk about it. Yeah, the lead end of that. Now, Andy was going around in nightclubs calling himself the
inner gender World heavyweight Champion. He could fight any woman, and that was his skit that he was going around and he was fighting women and uh, and he would pull some little scamp or some little deal and always pull out a win. And and he kept on, well, uh, eventually he wants to come in. Uh. I want to say it was w c W first, I can't remember it was. He he tried another company first. Well, you have to be n W at that time. It may have been maybe, yeah, it may have been. And uh, but
they they didn't want to go with it. But then he gets a hold of Lawler and Jared and that's just right up their alley. I mean. And how did Jerry Jarrett put it? He said that he was told by his father years ago that when you go through a stream, you turn over every rock because you'll find eventually you'll find a piece of gold under one.
And that's what he did when he got Kaufman in there. Because it was a dream of Kaufman was on the biggest television show at the time, Taxi and uh there again, and a lot of people are not going to know what tax is. But it was actually a very good, well written sitcom that was on for several years and he was the likable, laughable character on
there. So to see him come out as a villain was just at first it was a little alarming, but then you just really started because he did a great promo where he was like, all you guys down to Mayam, mayam for staying or see y'all talk like man, and uh, from then on it was it was just it was gold. I mean, I mean, give me your version because you're seeing it from a whole other year. You're a little younger than me now, and uh, he's still got to
get under your skin. Michael. It was a whole different thing to learn about what he was doing as far as wrestling, because I got into it one year later, So I yes, yeah, eighty four. Eighty four was my break in year. I mean I watched a little bit with my grandfather in uh Niagara Falls. He would spit at NWATV, which he could get on, you know, like base. It wasn't cable like antenna, and he would just he would yell at the TV, so I'd watch a
little bit with him. But like, actually, when I got into it, eighty four and so that ankle had already passed, just like finding out like a lot of the Yvon Eyre situations and everything passed. I was nine, ten years old, so I'm buying like encyclopedias about wrestlers and everything else. So it was a different thing. They never talked about Andy Kaufman because
he was kind of like blackballed from the whole situation. However, he did so much for Memphis wrestling, and he did more for in putting it on the map even though it was on the map, and he was right when they did Man on the Moon and they said that Memphis was the wrestling capital of the world. They were completely right. At that point in one year. It was so far down the chain because it wouldn't evolve. They didn't evolve, they didn't believe in everything that could change, and they had so
much nepotism, and you look at every territory that kept on. It was nepotism that also held them down, and the ability to not evolve and not the ability to have pay per view. But we'll get into that. The fact was that was that that was the greatest angle probably in wrestling history. I don't think there's anything better. Yeah, and I think the time you're talking that when Jared Jared left the promotion, wouldn't that have been when Lawlor
bought him out? That was okay, somewhere in that range. So yeah, I could, I could I see your evolving part. I actually never looked at it like that to take it, uh, but I mean the slap on on on David Letterman's show. Yeah, and then the fact that years later, like throughout history, they would always say the senior editor of Pro Wrestling illustrated David Letterman. They would always say stuff like that. I always think David Letterman has always had his hand in wrestling. It's weird,
but something we can also look up. But yeah, that that was the biggest moment in wrestling me this wrestling history and wrestling in the world. That was the shot heard around the world. That is and before before that. Now am I getting my timeline? When when was the David Schultz slap? That would have been years two years later or a year and a half later. So what it comes down to is the fact that they never capitalized on
that more than making it territorial. They had national exposure, absolutely, But the agreement, the agreement was, and we will talk about this in future episodes, was you never break down the infrastructure of territorial wrestling. But this asshole named Vince McMahon came in and he told his father he wouldn't, so
I digress anybody else. So some stuff that I knew about uh Andy Kaufman and everything was going from comedians straight into professional wrestling and then going straight to a heel, especially at a time where Kate Fabe was so big that really could have gotten potentially murdered. Especially being in the South, you know, there's a certain level of respect and everything, especially towards women and everything down
there that you don't cross the line. That was more the older times where if you hit a woman you were probably getting jumped in the parking lot type of thing. So for that time, that is extremely huge. But I also digress off the market, Maverick. I was gonna say to go to your point to how big it was. The Iron Chek was on Memphis Wrestling on the Saturday show, and of course he does his spill spit on America the whole deal. They get a phone call at the Channel five studios that
our son and his father have gotten their rifles. They lived close by and they're walking down to the studio. So they literally brought leaf into the taping and put them out behind that. They had like two little wooden grand stands that people set on and on that show, there's cops in the background and it's because of that called in threat. Now, that's how serious. And there was a police station right across the street. They were some serious wrestling
fans, sir. If that's if they can even make it into your mind how serious they were. That's how it was back in the day. I think. Manthis was also the King Cape, and so it was just like the perfect place, like you could promote anything, you can build anything.
And so as we start to get closer to the early eighties and we start to have closed Circuit, which we all talked about going into pay per view, we think about the situation where well, what's the next step, and the overgrown demon of WWEWWF takes that next step and starts taking over territories. However, can you take over every territory, that is a question. So that well, to a certain extent, you can. But there's always going to be outliers, and there still is one that being Puerto Rico, that
is I believe the last one standing at this time. And it's impressive to see that they still have not been bought out or anything and that they're still going. But that's realistically the only one that I can think of that I know is still going to this day, the death place of Bruiser Brodie. Yes, yeah, that's that. You want to know how tough it is there. They actually the wrestlers kill all the wrestlers there, exactly. True.
It's a rough place. I've heard of some disagreements down there because the law would only go so like security and those events would only go so long. So if the matches went long, you could have the last match, which would be the biggest, and you wouldn't barely have any security there. So I mean, uh, and I'm not sure how big about an arena
they're playing in front of, but can't be good. Can't be good because in the mid South Colissem, I've seen them almost have to fight their way to the back, you know, So and I know in Tupelo there was some rough occasions like that, and and I've heard of stories in Louisville gardens the same way. So yeah, it's a it wasn't just a local thing. It was a tough time. It was a different time. It was just a different time. Well, so let's talk about then the nineties to
the two thousands, what Meantphis when they merged into the USWA. Now I can tell you what that merging is, so I will speak. It was the AWA dying very hard, and it was Dallas not doing so well, and so the CWA or you know, Memphis, the territory, they all decided that they would band together, and they had so many channels, syndicated and everything else that they would become the next thing to try to conquer. Did make man the WWF at the time, whereas Jim Crockett Promotions were about
to sell to Turner to become WCW. However, this whole thing was a super cluster f and none of it really worked out, And some of the stars were featured on other programs, Like you had people like Black Bart who's a great hand and a great wrestler, but he's jobbing on WWFTV and all of a sudden he's going to come over and be on his pay per view or something like that. And I'm just using him as an example. He's
not the person. But the point is with the expansion happening so fast and it blombed onto so much stuff, I think that what happened with Memphis and going into the whole USWA merger was just the biggest ball of s that I've ever seen in my lives. How would you say about that, mister Mark, Yes, I'd have to agree. You're pretty much your Sonumsens. There
is exactly right. That's the territory were dying. And uh. And I just heard Jared speak on a on one of another podcasts that he was speaking about that Fritz called him and told him that, Hey, you know, I'm about to go into bankruptcy. Do you want to come down here and look? And he reverted back to that same quote I said earlier about his grandfather telling him that. And he went there and he said, I believe it was Eric. What was it Eric? I can't think of the guy's
name that was real big down. But he was actually sleeping in the sportatorium because they hadn't been paid in like four or five weeks. So he goes to speak to Fritz and h and Fritz's calls him to his house and says that, look, you're going into business with Kevin and Carry. Those two drug addicts won't show up. And now this is their father with their mother at the sink in and telling Jared that he shouldn't go into business with his sons. But he did, and he made it kind of successful for a
little while, just for he made his money back. But this is how he did it. At that time, they had a dip company, a tobacco dip company that was sponsoring all the matches called Redman, and they had a shot out. They had a renegade there. So he calls the guy and says, hey, how would you like to be able to give samples out in Dallas? And the guy goes, how much is it going to
cost me? And he goes sixty thousand. So they were one hundred and twenty thousand dollars in debt and that's everything trash collection bill taxes that they were one hundred and twenty thousand dollars. So Jared off that property or brought that territory for seventy thousand dollars and made money for about a year out of it, so you know, made his money back, but it's set up kind
of the angle. You know, Michael kind of set up the angle a little later on for that that deal when they went into the Bengo Hall up and you know up in Philly, Well, that makes a lot of sense. So USWA at this point, and this is what Memphis is has evolved and you have like brilliant minds like Dutch but and you have great tag teams like PG. Thirteen which honestly like I love Wolf the d Jamie is my size, which is not a fire, and you just look at it.
It's like they did the best they could for so long with the USWA, and they scrapped along, scrapped along, and then they started doing like collaborative shows with WWE, which was just their everything that they could do to try to hold on in the nineties and ECW became this underground phenomenon and there's crossover talent with it, and you know, they did the best they could do.
But at that point, you had, as a wrestling fan who grew up and started in eighty four if I still see you know, Dutch, and I love Dutch, like still main eventing, love Dutch, love Dutch, but there's nobody for him to go against. And I'm like, it's time to close the doors. But they wouldn't. And I loved it, But I loved like the kind of cross promotion they did. They involved Cornett, who's a heat magnet. I mean, everybody loves Cornet. If you
don't love him, you're probably Kenny Omega in the Bucks. But I mean it is what it is, you know, brass tacks and baseball bats. When it comes down to it, like things were starting to kind of close, you know, and Vince McMahon did so much work with them as a development's rritory before he started using ECW as a developmental territory. Kurt Angle spent time in both places. There's a lot of people who spent time in both
places. It was just different exposure. It was like, Okay, well let's do promos in Memphis, but let's get hardcore at ECW and let's see if people like you or not because they're going to the ad to era and then it all boils out to the money kind of ran out. Yeah, yeah, I mean, well, you're getting cherry picked anytime you do anything good, even the little deal with PG. Thirteen, it gets cherry picked.
Where do you have the Nation of Domination? You know, they keep Woofy and Jamie there for a few weeks and then they whooped the hell out of them and send them on their way. I mean, they kind of kicked their own asses on that one. But that's their good tape to go back and watch. Well, I talked to Wolfe sometimes, I'm trying to get him on the show. So yeah, yeah, I've got much about Jamie and we won't go into but yeah, yeah, but that that's what
you were dealing with. A lot. You had, like Tommy Rich coming back into the area, and at that time Tommy Rich was kind of was kind of done, and and that's what Memphis became. It became. They brought in some of the old guys because they would sell seats, but they were in their later years, it was, and that young talent just there, and if it was, it wasn't there very long because it was in you know, up in New York or up in Connecticut, you know,
soon after that. So that was pretty much the death of Memphis. Wrestling and then and territorial wrestling as we know it. I think it was nineteen ninety seven, nineteen ninety eight. It was officially sold to somebody in Cleveland because for some reason, Jerry Lawler loves Cleveland. I grew up in Cleveland, so and he's a big Indians fan. And so when it comes down to it, it was a bad sale and everything folded, and then I
think the remnants became Music City Wrestling. But that's neither here nor there. The point is, when it comes down to it, it was the most influential, influential, excuse me, territory of all time because you name a superstar besides the last twenty years. Because when they folded, before that, everybody came through Memphis. Everybody came through Memphis, and Memphis was the biggest deal. And in a year and a half it became just another territory.
You know, you mentioned who you were, a spy you were and some facts out of a book there. I want to mention Spudnik, the mass Men and the midgets, the early days of Memphis. Rest Ron Hall Good you know of his son worked for me for years and everybody. He's got a little quote on the back of the book that kind of describes the old days, and it says, if you grew up in Mid South area watching these great wrestlers on a weekly basis, revisit the intensity of all these matches.
If you are around during the area, lived by curiously through these pictures. I mean that shows you know how big it was. You can just go back and look at these pictures and you can turn a page and see a wrestler and go, I remember the first time I saw him, you know. And these are the great memories that you had in the territorial days. But now it's kind of shoved down our faces or down our throats.
Somebody doesn't get the right push or the right angle there out. You don't get the storylines, or you don't get the angles that you did know days, And it's a shame. But that's the way I guess modern wrestling is now. You know. Oh, guys like me will have to We had to adapt. But like I said, I got a mouthful of memory. So as long as I can talk, I can still remember the good old days. I love this, MAV. Do you have anything to add before we try to sign off? Kiss? I have some ideas for the next
show. But if you guys are all words, let's go. So I believe the last thing that was said in the documentary was about the final showing of the broadcasting of Memphis Wrestling was in two thousand and one before it was canceled and taken off the air. But it seemed like where the documentary actually had ended was when Jimmy Hart had left as he got his call to go
up to WWF to be at WrestleMania one. As what I remember it saying, it just seems like such a different world from my perspective of what I grew up seeing rather than how it used to be, and the way that we didn't have this empire that is the WWE with Vince McMahon at the helm as it was just completely changed everything where before it was like just so different and I don't really know how to put it into words to an extent.
Besides the fact that it was all different regions, different conferences. You'd see people pop up in different ones and just show who they were to potentially try to make it to nationwide stardom and become a household name somehow, and WWF
taking it over did ruin that. But at the same time, something that was also mentioned at the very end of the documentary by I believe if it was Jackie Fargo, he had claimed that in today's age, with the Internet and how it is, the territories most likely wouldn't have lasted and it probably would have gone the same way merging into one company or a couple of companies, as we still do have a couple larger ones around. But that's end
of my piece, honestly for this topic. Well, there you go, and I'll just add thank you guys for letting me get a chance to run my mouth a little bit, and I hope somebody got a little enjoyment out of their day by listening. This is just our version of what we saw, but it is what we saw, and there'll never be another era,
I think in entertainment other than maybe the first part of the UFC. You know, it was kind of interesting and when it wasn't so big, But Memphis Wrestling I think was a catalyst that started some Then it took the wrestling out of the carnival day like like Maverick you were saying, three sides with the curtain. Uh, it took it from that and uh and and and help propel it to what it is today. So I mean you look at
the catalyst to the main catalyst, Jerry Lawler. Most of the time that you listened to WWE, some of the biggest times you hear Lawler's voice that that's not a coincidence. That's just how good he was and still is. God bless him dealing with a heart attack. Hope he's feeling better and everything. But he was a he is a living legend. And him, Jerry Jarrett and some of these guys were way ahead of their time, way ahead of their time. But I'm going to back out of here, Michael.
I'll let you take it from here on, and thank you guys well as being the beast from the East, the best from the Midwest. And I love you guys. You know, I love my nephew obviously unconditionally. I love you Memphis Mark. I met you in nineteen There are actually two thousand, you know three And to have friends that stand that long in my life. I love you, guys, and I think that we can produce a lot more stuff. I think we did a great show and we need to
go forward. So the next show, what do you guys think Puerto Rico. I think we need to throw a few names in a hat and just pull it out because they're all great subjects, all right, sounds like a planned my man. Aside from that, guys, you can reach me at one four to four captain on Twitter x whatever you want to call it. And I just want to say that my friend John Watson has been in love with a girl named Katrina and he's wanted to be mentioned on this, which
he shouldn't because he loves her. So I want to say I love you both. And I want to say I love you Jennifer because I love you man Maverick. If you ever want cousins, you better love her too. So uh and and Mark, you're the only girl or the only girl, the only guy to meet her. Actually, you're the only guy to meet my little bait baby redhead. And she's real. She's actually real. I
checked for batteries and beautiful as shit, yeah, very beautiful. It kind of it makes you look like when you walk in the room, everybody goes, what the hell did he do? Uh? Thank thanks? Thanks? Thanks? Yeah, it's that's warted. But anyway, I love you guys. So mister Maverick, I acquiss. All right, guys, it's been a great show. I've really loved being a part of this. I love learning more stuff from you, Mark and Uh as well as you Captain or my uncle as I can call you as any day of the week. You
know. Glad that I'm able to communicate with you more than when I was growing up. And it's so nice having social media. But in the end it did kind of kill a lot of things, but I diggress on that anyways. Yeah, if you guys want to reach me, we can talk about wrestling. You can give me a topics for shows, any ideas that you guys may have. You can reach me at Maintenan's Maverick or at maintenance mav on Twitter or x whatever you want to call it. And yeah,
I mean anything you guys want to talk about. Like to suggest quick book to you guys, the book that is written by Mick Foley about his experiences and getting up into the wrestling business. I believe it was called The Tale of Blood and Sweat Socks. I highly recommend that read with that. Do something nice for somebody you never know who needs it. And that's it for me. I'm out peace. Memphis mark O g all right, brother, give it out here we go. Thanks for listening to the WWE Podcast.
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