Happy Birthday to those who have passed on and to those great wrestlers still with us:
In Memoriam:
Charley Fox 189`
Ali Bey 1912
Happy Birthday:
Austin Aries (48)
RIP Memorial: We stop & remember those who have passed on this day and gave themselves to the business for us, the fans. We salute you and thank you.
Chief Saunooke 4-15-1965 at the age of 58
Ed Capral 4-15-1997 at the age of 70
Significant Debut:
Greg Gagne 4-15-1973 at the age of 24
Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Wednesday Community Update
One full trip around the sun. Three hundred and sixty-five daily editions. Six hundred faithful subscribers in The Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel.
Today, The Daily Chronicle publishes its 365th issue, and with it we celebrate the one-year anniversary of our mission: to deliver a fresh, meticulously researched slice of pro wrestling territory history straight to your inbox every single day. At the same moment, our parent hub archive—The Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel—crosses the 600-subscriber threshold. These are not merely numbers. They are proof that the old territories still matter, that their stories still resonate, and that a dedicated audience still hungers for the truth behind the curtain of modern wrestling.
When I launched The Daily Chronicle on April 14, 2025, the goal was simple yet ambitious: one short, vivid dispatch every morning about the people, places, and payoffs that built the business before cable television, before the internet, before the Monday Night Wars turned regional territories into a single national empire. We wanted to rescue the memories of the Amarillo loop and the Memphis territory, the Pacific Northwest and the hot Florida nights, the Texas death matches and the Georgia tag-team wars. We refused to let those stories fade into the same dusty filing cabinets where so many old wrestling programs now rest.
And so, every morning at 5 a.m. sharp, a new Chronicle has appeared. Issue 1 told the story of the April 16th, 1960 tag team match where Jerry & Eddie Graham defeated Red & Lou Bastien to win the NWA Northeast United States Tag Team Titles at the Arena in New Haven, Connecticut. Issue 182 recounted the history of the Mobile, Alabama City Championship and the wrestlers who held it. Issue 263 told the story of The Life and Career of Buddy Knox. Issue 319 analyzed the first three months of 1976 in the LeRoy McGuirk and Bill Watts NWA Tri-State Territory. Some days the tale was triumphant; other days it was tragic. Every day it was true.
Special content like The Evolution of Pro Wrestling told the story of the year in wrestling in 1955, the year the NWA was investigated by the US Justice Department. Our 31 Great Television Announcers Series highlighted and gave the career stories of Sam Menacker, Gordon Solie and Lord Athol Layton, our 1975 Territory Review Series went back 50 years each week on the podcast to tell the stories maybe long forgotten and our New Year’s Weekend Countdown Shows counted down the Top 100 Wrestlers of r975.
The numbers tell part of the story: 365 straight mornings without missing a single deadline. On Wednesdays, we releases two dispatches, the Chronicle and the History Show, on Sundays, the Chronicle and the Week-in-Review, but always the Chronicle every day, Sunday to Sunday. Thousands of readers across every time zone in every country around the globe. Hundreds of messages from veterans who wrote in to say, “I was there that night—you got it exactly right.” But the real story lives in the community outlets that grew around the Chronicle and its video counterpart, The Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel YouTube Channel and interactive Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Facsbook Group.
Those 600 subscribers did not appear overnight. They arrived one by one—lifelong fans who remember watching Championship Wrestling from Florida on a 13-inch black-and-white TV, second-generation wrestlers whose fathers once rode the same dusty roads we write about, and younger fans discovering for the first time that wrestling existed before Vince McMahon’s National Expansion eventually consoildated pro wrestling into one empire.
Together, the written word of the Chronicle and the living voices of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel History Show form a single time machine. One you can read at breakfast. One you can watch on your lunch break. Both built with the same obsessive respect for the men and women who bled in high-school gyms, armories, and fairgrounds when the spotlight was smaller and the stakes somehow felt larger.
None of this would exist without you—the readers, the subscribers, the commenters, the tipsters who dug old programs out of attics and sent us scanned Polaroids of forgotten house shows. You corrected our spelling of “Wahoo” McDaniel’s real name. You reminded us that the Sheik once drew 12,000 in Detroit on a Tuesday night in 1968. You shared your own memories of seeing Dick the Bruiser and the Crusher at the Chicago Amphitheatre. You made this project a conversation instead of a lecture.
So today we raise a toast—virtual, but heartfelt—to every territory that ever existed and to every fan who still cares. We celebrate 365 mornings of history delivered on time. We celebrate 600 subscribers who have decided that the past is worth preserving in high definition. And we celebrate the simple, stubborn fact that pro wrestling’s territorial era refuses to die as long as someone is still willing to tell its stories.
The road ahead stretches out like an open highway through the Texas Panhandle in 1974—full of possibilities and a few potholes. There are more territories to explore, more shoot interviews to transcribe, more hidden tapes to restore. The Chronicle will keep arriving every morning. The Time Tunnel will keep uploading new footage and new conversations. And together we will keep the light on for the next generation that wants to know how it all really began.
Thank you for riding along for the first 365 days.
Here’s to the next 365—and to every mile marker in between.
Tony Richards, Curator and Leader-In-Chief
—The Daily Chronicle April 15, 2026, Issue #365
This Saturday Night In Dyersburg Tennessee with Pro Wrestling Mid-South!
I’ll be coming to the town where the Welch Family Dynasty all started, Dyersburg, Tennessee! For years, the hub of the Tennessee Territory, Dyersburg is where Roy Welch and his family set up the original Mid-South Booking Office and sent and booked wrestling talent all over several states.
Saturday Night, I am being honored by Pro Wrestling Mid-South led by Greg Anthony and his group of professionls and they are inducting me into their coveted Hall of Champions for my work on with Gerry Brisco and John Bradshaw Layfield on the Stories with Brisco and Bradshaw Show and our Roy Welch Family Dynasty Series.
I hope if you are in our 6-state area of West Tennessee, Western Kentucky, Southeast Missouri, Northeast Arkansas, Southern Illinois or Southern Indiana or even further away, you’ll come and join us for a night of live, local pro wrestling and fun. I can’t wait to see everyone this Saturday night in Dyersburg!
Thank You for Reading
I’m Tony Richards, Pro Wrestling Historian, Author and Storyteller. I share pro wrestling historical items in each issue of the Time Tunnel Pro Wrestling History Newsletter. Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my information on select events, matches and insights, please share it with folks you think might like to be a subscriber!
Remember, premium investors get access to exclusive and special content such as some special issues including a multi-part deep dives on wrestling territories, wrestler bios and championship title histories, special audio and video interviews on territory pro wrestling and more available in the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel for Premium Investors.
Congratulations! This has been one heck of a rookie year for the Time Tunnel.