Saturday Wrestling Smorgasbord in 1974

This TV Sports listing from an August 1974 edition of TV Guide (East Tennessee/Carolina edition) is chock full of wrestling shows from several territories, including Mid-Atlantic, Knoxville, Memphis, and All-South Wrestling.

 

Here are some specifics and context:

At 1:00 PM on WFBC-4 from Greenville, SC it was Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling, hosted by Bob Caudle in the same traditional time-slot in appeared in for decades. Up until recently, the show had been named All-Star Wrestling until promoter John Ringly (a top lieutenant for Jim Crockett, Sr.) came up with the Mid-Atlantic name.

At 2:00 PM on WKPT-19 in Kingsport, TN, was likely an edited version of the Memphis show hosted by Lance Russell, simply titled Wrestling as I believe Kingsport was run by the Jarretts at this time.

At 2:30 PM on WBTV-3 from Charlotte, NC, was Championship Wrestling with Big Bill Ward from the WBTV studios. Just a month or two later, all of Jim Crockett's TV wrestling would be consolidated to Raleigh in the studios of WRAL-5.

At 2:30 on WJHL-11 out of Johnson City was likely the old Knoxville show Wide World of Wrestling hosted by Big Jim Hess, which was promoted by John Cazana, just prior to Ron Fuller's buying of the territory, which was in late 1974.

At 3:00 PM on WRET-36 from Charlotte, it was Mid-Atlantic Wrestling hosted by Bob Caudle, (a rare time when the show was identified as such in TV guide!) This was the Raleigh show, since channel 3 was still producing their own studio show, which, as mentioned above, was soon to end. 

At 6:30 on WTVK-26 from Knoxville was Wide World of Wrestling hosted by 'Big" Jim Hess, the locally-taped Knoxville show promoted for years by the Cazana family until purchased by Ron Fuller in late 1974. It was loosely affiliated with Gulas promotions out of Nashville, from where they booked a lot of talent. Soon after buying the territory, Ron Fuller would move the taping of his show to WBIR-10 in Knoxville, rename it Southeastern Championship Wrestling, and hire Les Thatcher to host.

Also at 6:30 on WRET-36 in Charlotte was All-South Wrestling, the non-NWA "outlaw"show promoted by Ann Gunkle and hosted by Ed Capral, the previous longtime host of Georgia wrestling in Atlanta. All-South would soon go out of business, and Capral was hired by Jim Crockett, Jr. to host his brand new Wide World Wrestling syndicated show out of Raleigh in 1975.

Finally at 11:15 on WLOS-13 from Asheville was Championship Wrestling with Charlie Harville, which was a Jim Crockett Promotions show that originated from WGHP-8 in High Point, NC.  Similar to the WBTV Championship Wrestling show from Charlotte mentioned above, this show was soon to end when all of Crockett's TV would consolidate to Raleigh. At that point, WLOS would switch to the Mid-Atlantic "B" show hosted by Les Thatcher out of Raleigh. This time slot (soon to move fifteen minutes later due to the local news expanding to a half-hour) was the traditional WLOS time slot for many years.  

 

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Studio Wrestling and The Great Bolo

To A Sixth Grade Wrestling Fan, No one Could Top the Great Bolo
by Vince Staten
Kingsport Times News (Kingsport, TN)  April 8, 2007


There comes a time in every young man's life when he falls in love.

With wrestling.

My love affair with professional wrestling came in late grade school when I was too old to play cowboys and not old enough to be interested in girls.

I was reminded of this boyhood fascination when I drove past the Civic Auditorium this week and saw "Championship Wrestling" posted on the signboard. I went home and dug around till I found my old wrestling sheet.

Not only did I live and die with each week's matches that sixth-grade year, I came up with my own highly scientific rating system based strictly on whether I liked a wrestler or not.

The Great Bolo (Publicity Photo)

I had rank ordered 40 wrestlers from Argentina Rocca, Billy "Tarzan" Darnell and Buddy Rogers to my favorite, The Great Bolo. (He was seventh; I was fair and balanced.)

We've had professional wrestling in Kingsport as long as we've been a town. 


I've seen ads for wrestling matches in old newspapers from the 1920s. In the 1950 and 1960s Ron Wright and Whitey Caldwell ruled the ring at the Civic Auditorium.

I wasn't allowed to go - too dangerous, my mother said - so I fell in love with that other form of professional wrestling, studio wrestling.

The "studio" of studio wrestling was the television studio. And because the Kingsport cable system in the 1950s imported stations from Knoxville and Charlotte and Asheville, we had our choice of Saturday afternoon studio wrestling.


There was a filmed show called "Texas Rasslin' " that featured Gorgeous George, a bleach blond who preened as much as he wrestled. (It was my grandmother's favorite wrestling show.) I preferred "Championship Wrestling" from WBTV in Charlotte because it featured the greatest variety of wrestlers, from "scientific" types like George Scott to out and-out thugs like Buddy "Nature Boy" Rogers who had a standing offer of $1,000 for any fan who could break his Figure Grapevine Hold.

And no one ever did.

It was a different era for wrestling. Today wrestling prides itself on being "entertainment," but in those days it called itself a sport, and questioning whether wrestling was fake - a popular question, incidentally - was asking for a poke in the nose.

In my neighborhood, we always made sure our Saturday baseball games were over by 5 p.m. so we could all gather around Mr. Brickey's Philco to watch studio wrestling from Charlotte.


The announcers were just as famous as the wrestlers. Calling the action was Big Bill Ward, a debonair fellow with a mustache in a time when almost only debonair men had mustaches, and the commentator, who was also the promoter, Jim Crockett. He was the one who should have had "Big" in front of his name. 

Each Saturday show had two matches, an individual match and a tag team contest. It was always good versus evil, which is blood-sport for a sixth-grade boy. Evil P.Y. Chung, he of the famous "Claw" hold, might take on good guy Sandy Scott, of the wavy blond hair.

I, of course, always rooted for Good. Except for one, The Great Bolo.

It started with the name. How could you not love a wrestler named Bolo?

And then there was the costume. The Great Bolo was the first masked wrestler I had ever seen. He wore a skin-tight mask that laced up the back. It had dark shading around the eyes and mouth that would have made it almost clown-like if Bolo hadn't been so ferocious.

He could be wrestling along, working his Sleeper Hold on an opponent, when he would hear a disparaging remark from Big Bill Ward, and he would leap the top rope, race over and challenge the announcer. Blows were never exchanged, but it was exciting anyway.


Even that wasn't the greatest appeal of The Great Bolo. No, what we all watched for and hoped for was a Bolo defeat. Anyone who defeated The Great Bolo would get to unmask him. Right in the ring.

And that's what we all really wanted to know: Who was The Great Bolo? Was he secretly a good guy like George Becker who flirted with the dark side? Was it Nature Boy Rogers moonlighting for extra cash? Hmm, you never saw them together.

There were weeks when The Great Bolo's opponent might get his mask halfway off. I seem to recall Mike Paidousis had it up over his chin once. But Mike was too concerned with the mask, and Bolo managed to grab him and do the Pile Driver.

The Great Bolo was never unmasked on "Championship Wrestling.”

I later heard that he had been defeated in Toronto or someplace like that and his real identity was revealed. Some kid had read about it in "Boxing News/ Wrestling Illustrated."


By then I didn't care. I had discovered girls.

Vince Staten's blog can be found at vincestaten.blogspot.com.

 

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