One of the things I loved most when I was a kid watching wrestling was when they would show a taped interview of a wrestler sent in from another territory's TV show. For some reason this was always very cool to me. It was a glimpse into another territory's TV studio, their announcer, their studio backdrop - - anything that gave a little of the flavor of that territory and their program.
Usually it was a tape of the reigning NWA world champion who was getting ready to tour the area and would send in a tape from where ever he happened to be at the moment. All of the NWA promotions cooperated with each other and would send tapes to each other in this regard. Other times it would be of a new or returning wrestler getting ready to come into the territory and he was sending in an interview from the territory he was getting ready to leave.
However, I never really thought about then that there were tapes recorded in our studio (Mid-Atlantic area) that were being sent to other territories, too. It obviously makes sense, but I just hadn't ever really thought about that side of it.
This image of Rich Landrum interviewing Dusty Rhodes is a great example of that. This was likely during the time Dusty was NWA world champion in 1981, and he was taping a promo while in the Mid-Atlantic area that would be sent to air on "Georgia Championship Wrestling" to promote a world title defense at the Omni in Atlanta.
The studio backdrop you see in this image was one of my personal favorites, and was used on "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" in the 1970s until it was replaced in 1977. But it was maintained for use during the local promotional spots taped the afternoon before the Wednesday night WRAL tapings until Crockett relocated their studio television tapings to Charlotte in August of 1981. One of those local promo taping sessions would be when this would have been taped. Rich Landrum wore a suit for those tapings, but would change into a tuxedo for the taping of the "World Wide Wrestling" show that he hosted from 1978-1982.
