Fans during the territory days

[BigBadZ]

I was just watching the Mid-South dvd and during the JYD/Butch Reed section, Jim Ross was interviewing JYD and they spoke of his leaving to go to the Memphis territory and then he planned to head to the Carolina's to take care of Ernie Ladd. My question is, did fans know about other territories or have access to information on them besides magazines? They were talking about how over JYD was and if I were a fan of his, I'd want as much access to his work as possible.

Also, would referencing going to work for other territories kind of be promoting the competition? They are all under the N.W.A. umbrella but a fan on those borders could potentially give their money to another territory. Or was it the lack of access to the other territory make it irrelevant. If someone on the western side of Mid-West hears their favorite guy was going to World Class and decide to take his business there (obviously an extreme, but you understand what I'm saying).

Pardon my ignorance on the subject.

[cabbageboy]

Yeah it wasn't a big issue back then because fans didn't really have easy access to other regional promotions. This stuff was a way of writing a guy out for a while. And also keep in mind that these promoters cooperated with each other a lot, hence the use of Memphis footage on Mid South TV. Michael Hayes pointed out the beginning of the of this type of thing on a Legends round table one time. I think it was when the Freebirds were leaving Mid South for Georgia. The problem was that Georgia Championship Wrestling was on TBS and quite a few people in the Mid South area had the station, so it was obvious they were leaving (Hayes also mentioned some wacko being arrested with bullets that had "Freebirds" carved into them, this was on the last night they were there).

[Deleted]

I became a fan when the AWA, UWF, etc. still existed, but my only access to anything outside of WWF and NWA/WCW was through magazines.

[BigBadZ]

Most of the things I had heard when guys leave territories, it would be "loser leave" stipulation or some kind of injury. Was there ever any competition to the NWA as a whole before Vince started buying up the territories? Growing up with the WCW/WWF wars, it's hard for me to grasp all these promotions working together so seamlessly.

[Todd Pettengill]

Oct 3, 2013 14:20:45 GMT -5 BigBadZ said:

it's hard for me to grasp all these promotions working together so seamlessly.

Rarely did they ever work "together so seamlessly." Most promoters hated each other. But wrestling is a business where you keep your enemy close as you can. If you didn't cooperate with other promotions, your gate would likely suffer as the other promotions wouldn't be sending talent to your region.

[Joe Neglia]

Oct 3, 2013 14:56:06 GMT -5 Todd Pettengill said:

Oct 3, 2013 14:20:45 GMT -5 BigBadZ said:

it's hard for me to grasp all these promotions working together so seamlessly.

Rarely did they ever work "together so seamlessly." Most promoters hated each other. But wrestling is a business where you keep your enemy close as you can. If you didn't cooperate with other promotions, your gate would likely suffer as the other promotions wouldn't be sending talent to your region.

Pretty much. Plus, for a long time, it was just win-win situation. So long as promoters stayed out of each others' areas, they had the ability to dump stale talent on each other and get fresh talent back in return. The partnership also helped for when the dissenters *did* come out; occasionally there would be a promotion breaking away from the NWA, or an outlaw promotion start up, and the NWA promotion could rely on the NWA to send what/who was needed to put the competition down.

To answer the original question, most people who weren't rabidly reading the mags were at least vaguely aware of the existence of other promotions ("This man's wrestled all over the world!"), but rarely got specific (unless it was taking a poke at "New York"). Truth is, people can blast McMahon for killing the territory system all they want, but in reality, it was cable TV that did so.

[Todd Pettengill]

Oct 3, 2013 19:33:44 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

Oct 3, 2013 14:56:06 GMT -5 Todd Pettengill said:

Rarely did they ever work "together so seamlessly." Most promoters hated each other. But wrestling is a business where you keep your enemy close as you can. If you didn't cooperate with other promotions, your gate would likely suffer as the other promotions wouldn't be sending talent to your region.

Pretty much. Plus, for a long time, it was just win-win situation. So long as promoters stayed out of each others' areas, they had the ability to dump stale talent on each other and get fresh talent back in return. The partnership also helped for when the dissenters *did* come out; occasionally there would be a promotion breaking away from the NWA, or an outlaw promotion start up, and the NWA promotion could rely on the NWA to send what/who was needed to put the competition down.

To answer the original question, most people who weren't rabidly reading the mags were at least vaguely aware of the existence of other promotions ("This man's wrestled all over the world!"), but rarely got specific (unless it was taking a poke at "New York"). Truth is, people can blast McMahon for killing the territory system all they want, but in reality, it was cable TV that did so.

Exactly. And, to expand on your point. McMahon did have the perfect storm in his corner. Vince had brilliant business tactics, but he wasn't hurt by "being at the right place at the right time," either. By the 80s, many regional TV Networks had become affiliates of NBC, ABC, CBS (each having a major base of operations in NYC). Madison Square Garden was owned by an entertainment company & the McMahon family had a long history w/ the Garden. Vince had the access to high profile network execs which allowed him to get his product on both National & cable TV. The additional exposure on Network TV gave the WWF a level of credibility & mainstream exposure that other promotions lacked.
Sure, Verne had a contract with ESPN, but that was a fledgling cable network in the 80s.
So, unless you were in with someone like Ted Turner, who privately owned a Cable Network that wasn't based in New York, you were going to be stuck on local networks & local syndication programming.

[saintpat]

For a long time, Superstation TBS ran Georgia Championship Wrestling on Saturdays and a one-hour program on Sundays that featured matches from other territories: the Funks in Texas, Flair and Valentine and Steamboat, etc., in Mid-Atlantic, sometimes the Von Erichs -- oftentimes featuring talent that would show up in GCW in the coming months. So anyone watching this realized there were other promotions.

[Reflecto]

Oct 3, 2013 20:24:27 GMT -5 Todd Pettengill said:

Oct 3, 2013 19:33:44 GMT -5 Joe Neglia said:

Pretty much. Plus, for a long time, it was just win-win situation. So long as promoters stayed out of each others' areas, they had the ability to dump stale talent on each other and get fresh talent back in return. The partnership also helped for when the dissenters *did* come out; occasionally there would be a promotion breaking away from the NWA, or an outlaw promotion start up, and the NWA promotion could rely on the NWA to send what/who was needed to put the competition down.

To answer the original question, most people who weren't rabidly reading the mags were at least vaguely aware of the existence of other promotions ("This man's wrestled all over the world!"), but rarely got specific (unless it was taking a poke at "New York"). Truth is, people can blast McMahon for killing the territory system all they want, but in reality, it was cable TV that did so.

Exactly. And, to expand on your point. McMahon did have the perfect storm in his corner. Vince had brilliant business tactics, but he wasn't hurt by "being at the right place at the right time," either. By the 80s, many regional TV Networks had become affiliates of NBC, ABC, CBS (each having a major base of operations in NYC). Madison Square Garden was owned by an entertainment company & the McMahon family had a long history w/ the Garden. Vince had the access to high profile network execs which allowed him to get his product on both National & cable TV. The additional exposure on Network TV gave the WWF a level of credibility & mainstream exposure that other promotions lacked.
Sure, Verne had a contract with ESPN, but that was a fledgling cable network in the 80s.
So, unless you were in with someone like Ted Turner, who privately owned a Cable Network that wasn't based in New York, you were going to be stuck on local networks & local syndication programming.

More than just the fact that Vince had the NYC territory, the fact that Vince had the "Northeast" territory made it even bigger. Just look through the original territory before WWF went national, and it was almost impossible for any company to compete- the only "huge" media center city that any other promotion had was the AWA having Chicago- and even before Vince took Los Angeles for his own, the Northeast territory had at least four cities [NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington] that would have been the epicenter for any other territory out there, plus at least cities that were either big enough (Pittsburgh, Baltimore) or had prestigious enough arenas in the '80s (New Jersey/Meadowlands, Hartford, Providence, Long Island) so that they could have supported their own territory at the time- and that's before new arenas got built in other parts of the area. When you have that many BIG cities to run out of, it becomes far easier to get the talent needed to get the best stars.

[Deleted]

1) We kinda knew by reading the magazines, but they were so outdated by 3-4 months. By the time we'd find out that a wrestler had jumped to a different area, he was usually right back where he was. Fred Blassie mentioned the infamous iodine incident, with Abdullah Farouk (Grand Wizard) blinding him, was a way to get him to wrestle for the WWWF for a spell. Gets your face off of local TV, gives fans a chance to miss you. Raise hell somewhere else against different guys.

2) Before the days of Jim Crockett Jr. & Bob Geigel as NWA President in the '80s, there used to be a committee put together with a handful of promoters that would have conventions every so often, usually yearly, to cast a vote on who the next champion could be - if they chose not to retain the current titleholder. Now, these promoters can't blindly cast votes on guys they aren't aware of unless they seen them in person (or politicking their way for votes, but let's just forget that for a minute). So, if a wrestler was smart, they would go around from territory to territory, exposing themselves to different audiences and hope to impress their new bosses. They wanted that vote.

Each territory, while at face value may look the same, all catered to different types of wrestling fans. One was hard-hitting and no-nonsense tough guys who brawl, another would pride themselves as the technical mat wrestling capital of the country. This also helped to expand your repertoire by not only working against different styles, but in front of different audiences. (Since you watched that DVD, you'll notice Ted DiBiase touched on how he would go to different places.) Increasing your value as an all-around great performer and possibly be considered to be the next champion.

You didn't want to burn yourself out wrestling in front of basically the same people every week. You had to grow as a competitor. Plus, another thing that Greg Gagne would explain in the AWA DVD, not all wrestling promotions were full-time endeavors. Some of them took breaks to recharge the bookers, the wrestlers, the company. So, while your home base was taking a sabbatical, you could move on for a couple of weeks and make a few bucks someplace else. (Even Baron Von Raschke was no stranger to the Mid-Atlantic area, and that's a guy whom you would think was synonymous with the AWA. Summer to early fall, there was Da Baron in Paul Jones' Army.)

So, in a nutshell, it was good for everybody.

[ICBM]

Thnx all for the perspectives. Right on. As to the OP, as a mark I knew of other promotions only thru magazines or video packages hyping a debut. Rarely did we catch anyone else's show where I lived in Texas. AWA and World Class on ESPN, NWA on tbs, WWF on local, cable and closed circuit. We always go. World Class off the antenna and if you fumbled around with the UHF dial you could get NWA world wide(if you kids know what I just said, I'll be impressed) but otherwise no territories broke thru in my state. Though I'm sure north east Texas prolly got Mid-south/UWF

[Ultimo Gallos]

In 1986 in the area I grew up in on the Gulf coast, with just a rooftop antenna and some rabbit ears I could watch almost 8 hours of wrestling each Saturday.

We got

All 3 WWF syndicated shows
A JCP syndicated show
Championship Wrestling from Florida
Mid South/uwf
WCCW
Glow
Memphis
Continental
And for a few months Gulf Coast Championship Wrestling

So I knew what was happening in most of the major territories back then.

[saintpat]

Oct 5, 2013 13:58:55 GMT -5 Ultimo Gallos said:

In 1986 in the area I grew up in on the Gulf coast, with just a rooftop antenna and some rabbit ears I could watch almost 8 hours of wrestling each Saturday.

We got

All 3 WWF syndicated shows
A JCP syndicated show
Championship Wrestling from Florida
Mid South/uwf
WCCW
Glow
Memphis
Continental
And for a few months Gulf Coast Championship Wrestling

So I knew what was happening in most of the major territories back then.

That reminds me of another thing -- depending on where you lived and where your family vacationed, you might come across other territories.

Where I grew up it was the Gulas territory (Randy Savage, Tojo Yamamoto, Dutch Mantel among the regulars) and a local sub-territory that did TV tapings in our small town and rotated shows at the local fairgrounds and some surrounding armories in very small communities. Of course there was also the Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS and the Sunday show, which featured a lot of Mid-Atlantic and some other territories.

But in the summer we'd go to the beach on the gulf coast and catch two different territories on TV down there -- the Florida one and the Gulf Coast one. So sometimes you'd see a guy on TV while vacationing in the summer and then some months later he might move on to the Gulas territory or GCW.

[Todd Pettengill]

Oct 5, 2013 2:47:10 GMT -5 Reflecto said:

Oct 3, 2013 20:24:27 GMT -5 Todd Pettengill said:

Exactly. And, to expand on your point. McMahon did have the perfect storm in his corner. Vince had brilliant business tactics, but he wasn't hurt by "being at the right place at the right time," either. By the 80s, many regional TV Networks had become affiliates of NBC, ABC, CBS (each having a major base of operations in NYC). Madison Square Garden was owned by an entertainment company & the McMahon family had a long history w/ the Garden. Vince had the access to high profile network execs which allowed him to get his product on both National & cable TV. The additional exposure on Network TV gave the WWF a level of credibility & mainstream exposure that other promotions lacked.
Sure, Verne had a contract with ESPN, but that was a fledgling cable network in the 80s.
So, unless you were in with someone like Ted Turner, who privately owned a Cable Network that wasn't based in New York, you were going to be stuck on local networks & local syndication programming.

More than just the fact that Vince had the NYC territory, the fact that Vince had the "Northeast" territory made it even bigger. Just look through the original territory before WWF went national, and it was almost impossible for any company to compete- the only "huge" media center city that any other promotion had was the AWA having Chicago- and even before Vince took Los Angeles for his own, the Northeast territory had at least four cities [NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington] that would have been the epicenter for any other territory out there, plus at least cities that were either big enough (Pittsburgh, Baltimore) or had prestigious enough arenas in the '80s (New Jersey/Meadowlands, Hartford, Providence, Long Island) so that they could have supported their own territory at the time- and that's before new arenas got built in other parts of the area. When you have that many BIG cities to run out of, it becomes far easier to get the talent needed to get the best stars.

I absolutely agree & meant to include that in my post. When Vince started moving in on California... It was all over for most of the other territories.

[Deleted]

I'm sure some of us are kicking themselves that they forgot "Pro Wrestling This Week", hosted by Joe Pedicino & Gordon Solie, which was like a one-hour episode of "SportsCenter" for wrestling fans. (Think it was on at 9 or 10pm Saturday nights here in the Chicago area.) They'd update us on goings-on in a lot of territories, usually had the obligatory "bloodbath from the WWC" and might have a clip of something from Calgary or Japan.

There was also a sort of "Scouting Report" hosted by Bill Apter (taken from the magazine feature) on the NWA program (usually aired on Sunday), where Bill would have Ric Flair or some other star and they'd profile a couple of the top contenders, even guys who were rumored to be heading in. (Terry Taylor was a guy I remember them talking about. But at that time, Mid-South still recognized the NWA as their World champion.)

So, like I mentioned in my original post, this being 1985 and the NWA no longer really voting on the next champion, just booking title changes as they felt like it, you'd know who might be coming in or where Ric was going soon.

[BigBadZ]

Appreciate the info. I like seeing perspectives on how the territories were outside of WWE's. It's interesting to me because it was before my time and outside of WWE dvds and shoot interviews, fan perspectives (pun possibly intended) seem to have the least amount of bias. Watching pro wresting jumped a few generations in my family as I found out my great-grandfather was a fan and my grandmother told me he watched Jerry Jarrett and Danny Hodge.