June 9th in the Tunnel:
Happy Birthday to those who have passed on and to those great wrestlers still with us:
In Memoriam:
Jim Barnett 1924
Johnny Rougeau 1929
"The Bearman" Dave McKigney 1932
Don Manoukian 1934
Dutch Savage 1935
Happy Birthday:
Mando Guerrero (75)
Thomas Clifford\Tyson T-Bone (44)
Tay Melo Conti Guevara (30)
Tony D'Angelo (30)
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.
Ivan Kalmikoff 6-9-1996 at the age of 78
Select Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Match Flashbacks
50-Year Flashback: 1975
6-8-1975: The Kelly Twins (Pat & Mike) defeated The Masked Crusaders (CH) (Dewey Robertson & Billy "Red" Lyons) to win the International Tag Team Championships at the Maple Leaf Gardens in Toronto, Ontario Canada
Dewey Robertson was a phenomenal athlete who broke into professional wrestling in 1961. He ventured outside his native Canada in 1973 to work in the Southern United States and for World Championship Wrestling in Australia. In Australia, he worked with the world's best talent at the time, and it sharpen his work every night in the ring. He returned to Canada in early 1974 as The Masked Crusader with his manager John St. John.
He wrestled as a do-gooder babyface who wanted to make sure wrestling was always wrestled scientific and on the up and up. He was a more built and muscled version in concept of Mr. Wrestling (Tim Woods). Having a much better chiseled body than Woods, but not near the working ability in the ring, he still pulled the gimmick off and got over. After having a really good program with the evil Original Sheik, he was unmasked in the blow-off match.
Pictured: The Masked Crusaders, International Tag Team Champions
After he was gone for a while, he returned with a partner (Billy "Red" Lyons) calling themselves The Crusaders. On June 23rd, 1974, The Crusaders won the International Tag Team Titles from the much-hated Love Brothers, Hartford and Reginald. Robertson would receive some noteriety in the 1980s as The Missing Link character in World Class Championship Wrestling.
It was a very successful program with The Love Brothers, as the Loves regained the titles in September. After more back and forth, twists and turns and really good matches, The Masked Crusaders finally triumphed and got the Tag Team belts back on December 29th, 1974. The Crusaders would then defend and hold the tag straps for six months until our match today at the Maple Leaf.
The Kelly Twins broke into the professional wrestling business ten years prior to this match in 1965 working out with another brother tag team, Chris and John Tolos. It is believed the Kellys debuted as a copycat version of the Hillbilly act, The Kentuckians wearing overalls and flannel shirts exactly like Grizzly Smith and Luke Brown. They spent a large part of 1969 in LeRoy McGuirk's Oklahoma territory in a feud with the masked heel team, The Blue Demons. The also wrestled in the Tennessee territory being programmed with another brother team, the local legends in the East Tennessee area of Ron and Don Wright. In 1970, they returned to home to Canada and wrestled Jos LeDuc in a series of handicap matches. Their big break came in 1971 when they were booked for Eddie Graham in the Florida Territory at the time when it was taking off, mostly due to their huge babyface star, Jack Brisco. Watching the Brisco Brothers work every night was like going to finishing school for tag team wrestling.
Pictured: Pat and Mike Kelly
This led to a stint in neighboring Georgia in 1972, followed by Ohio in 1973. In 1974, they worked for the outlaw promotion of Ann Gunkel in the Georgia Wrestling War having a successful program with the legendary, Royal Kangaroos tag team. After the All-South Wrestling run was over, they returned to Canada once again. First working in Montreal, then for Stu Hart in Calgary for Stampede Wrestling. They arrived in Stampede in August of 1974 and stayed there until February of 1975. During their run there in January, one of the Kellys receives a warning and a reprimand by the Edmonton Boxing and Wrestling Commission. This period of time was a wild and crazy time in Stampede as Mark Lewin was the booker and his crew contained his regular crazy bunch of King Curtis Iaukea, Big Bad John, Big John Quinn, as well as babyfaces Larry Lane and the Kelly Twins. Mike Kelly got a reprimand for striking a fan who was attempting to enter the ring during a card at the Sales Pavillion in Edmonton.
Coming off that run and back here in Toronto in late March of 1975, the March/April issue of wrestling magazine "The Wrestler" has the Kelly Twins ranked #8 in the Top 10 Tag Teams in The World. In April at shows at the Gardens, they beat the teams with Nick DeCarlo on them, on 4/13 beating DeCarlo and Lyons and then on 4/27 beating DeCarlo and Tony Parisi. On May the 11th, The Kellys went to a time limit draw with Duncan McTavish and The Beast while the tag team champions The Crusaders finished their feud with the Love Brothers defeating them decisively. On the second Maple Leaf Gardens show for May on the 25th, the two teams started their program with each other, with The Crusaders retaining their titles and going over on The Kelly Twins.
On this second matchup today, it's time for the Kelly Twins to get their first victory in over a month and a half, defeat The Crusaders to kick start this program into high gear for the next several weeks.
40-Year Flashback: 1985
6-8-1985 Black Bart defeated Ronnie Garvin (CH) to win the NWA National Heavyweight Championship in a Loser Leaves Town Match at the WTBS-TV Studios in Atlanta, Georgia
Pictured: 1985 WTBS World Championship Wrestling Saturday Night Open
I am almost finished with a second quarter of 1985 article that will be available in The Vault for Paid Subscribers on the happenings in the pro wrestling business. These three months are some of the most pivotal months in pro wrestling history as far as determining the direction of the business all the way up until today. One of the stakes in the ground during this period is Jim Crockett, Jr and JCP buying the WTBS-TV contract from Vince McMahon and Titan Sports for $1,000,000 at around the exact same time as Vince stages the first WrestleMania. That first groundbreaking event took place on March 31, 1985, and JCP’s first WTBS broadcast airs on April 6th.
The story has always been that Vince has almost run out of money with his expansion expenses and cash flow is running negative. If WrestleMania doesn't produce, Vince could very well be out of business or at the very least, severely financially crippled. Jim Crockett Promotions essentially solves Vince’s short term cash crunch issues with a one million dollar check. In exchange for getting Vince off WTBS, Ted Turner agrees for Jim Crockett Promotions to be the exclusive wrestling product on Turner Broadcasting. removing the WWF, the fairly new Georgia show of Ole Anderson's and Bill Watts' Mid-South Sports which had a short three-month deal in place to be on Sunday afternoons.
The premiere of World Championship Wrestling as produced by Jim Crockett Promotions launches on the first Saturday in April and now the pressure is on Crockett and the booker, Dusty Rhodes to write and produce another three to four hours of additional television content every single week. This is in addition to the two hours already being produced with NWA Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and NWA Worldwide Wrestling, Crockett's two syndicated shows that run in towns along Crockett's house show circuit, being the primary driver of ticket revenue each week. One of the conditions Ted Turner was not going to relent on was that the shows for WTBS had to be produced in the studios on Techwood Drive.
There could be footage used from arenas for angles and storylines, but the majority of matches had to take place there in front of the small studio audience that had been coming there for matches since 1972 when Ray Gunkel and Buddy Fuller had changed over to WTCG from WQXI literally in the middle of the night one evening before the next day's tapings were scheduled.
When the pressure to make a splash comes on pro wrestling bookers, sometimes they get the urge to "hot shot" the territory running many more hot feuds and gimmick matches than the fans can possibly emotionally process or sometimes even keep up with and over a relatively short period of time, the "hot shotting" literally "burns out" a market, or town or territory. Professional Wrestling has always been most successful when patience is prescribed along with meticulous attention to detail. The booker is then able to slowly bring the audience up to a certain level and then let them descend, each time going a bit higher and coming down a little lower. When it's a constant high, it is not sustainable.
While I wouldn't consider what Rhodes does here in the opening months of WTBS "hot shotting" in the traditional sense of booking, he does come out with guns blazing. Unless it was the Television title, which its very existence is for the purpose of being defended often on television, most other titles were not defended on television and certainly did not change hands on TV. In this case, the NWA National Heavyweight Championship was going to be defended and change hands here and if that were not enough already (and this speaks to my point about hot shotting) Rhodes adds a Loser Leaves Town stip on top of it.
I will say that in the grand scheme of things I have traditionally been a defender and apologist for Dusty Rhodes’ booking overall. Like all creative directors in pro wrestling, Dusty had strengths and weaknesses. One of his weaknesses was at times, he would "put a hat on a hat". In wrestling vernacular, that refers to already having enough to draw interest in a match and you add something else on top of what you already have, which in this case was a Loser Leaves Town stipulation, which was not very well thought out because of the way it played out. Ron Garvin also comes into the match injured, having to tape his fists because of the fracture he sustained. This obviously is going to give the heel an unfair advantage in the match and provides an out for the babyface as a reason why he lost.
Pictured: Hands of Stone, Ron Garvin
But, again, it’s a hat on a hat because this is not enough. If the match had been booked that the evil, nefarious Bart would have won the match and the title because Garvin was not at his best due to the hand injury, which Bart capitalizes on the entire match, but the courageous Garvin tried to persevere because of his guts and desire to win it for the fans, that would have been enough. Black Bart's finishing maneuver is the Texas Trash Compactor (I always loved that move’s name) which is a leg drop off the top rope. In the finish, he gives a standing Compactor to Garvin's injured hand causing more pain, blues and agony in the words of the Dream.
Even injured and in pain, Garvin can't resist trying to use his "Hands of Stone" to knock Bart out to win the match, only resulting in more pain for himself. Ref Tommy Young counts the KO'd Black Bart down for the three count, realizes Bart has a foot on the ropes and re-starts the match. When Young backs Garvin off of Bart to give him a chance to catch his breath and recover, while Young has his back to Bart, The Perfect 10, Baby Doll comes to ringside to put a roll of quarters into Black Bart's clinched fist, Bart then proceeds to hit Garvin with half of a body block and half a closed fist with the quarters and Garvin goes flying back to the mat out cold. Bart gets the pin and the National Title and Garvin gets a trip out of Atlanta. Why wasn't that enough?
Pictured: Black Bart, NWA National Heavyweight Champion
Well Dusty didn't think so and I don't think we were ever told how long Garvin had to leave town, anyway it doesn’t matter because in just a couple of weeks due to an enormous amount of fan outrage and letters to WTBS, Garvin was reinstated by the National Wrestling Alliance President Bob Geigel. One of the reasons Turner wanted McMahon off TBS was because of the matches not taking place in the studio but another major reason was Saturday night southern wrestling for the 13 years prior to this had monster numbers on Saturday nights, but the audience didn't like McMahon and the WWF and for the previous nine months, ratings had tanked on the Superstation for the two hour wrestling block. Dusty had the accountability to get it back and in the fourth week of the broadcast, this was a way to do it because ratings rebounded substantially. So much so, this will lead to "The Superstation Championship Challenge Series" where a championship would be defended almost every week on the show.
I grew up watching Ronnie Garvin in ICW. He was dark haired then and was known as "The One Man Gang" due to his toughness and street fighting ability. Now here in 1985, he has gone back to his bleached blonde look from early in his career and the "One Man Gang" handle is gone, Dusty having used that for George Gray in Florida two years prior and given Garvin the "Hands of Stone" gimmick putting his knockout punch over. This also breaks the rules of the traditional pro wrestling booking handbook. In the previous era, babyfaces never, ever cheated. Some babyfaces who were super over and if they had been evil heels in the territory before they turned babyface, when the situation called for it, they could fire up and revert back to their old ways for just a moment for the purpose of giving the heels their comeuppance.
But, only after having suffered long and hard before giving in to those natural instincts. Garvin is being booked here with that finisher as his regular finish in every match, he knocks them out with an illegal closed fist move. One of these days I am going to write an extensive series on the psychology of booking, but that day is not today. Suffice to say for now, the rules were in place for a purpose and sometimes bending them, if you had a good enough reason was okay, if you had enough equity with the audience, they would go with you on that ride. But in this case, Dusty is booking Garvin this way breaking the rules for no good reason and I believe it hurts his character overall with the audience. If he can just knock people out with hardly any struggle, reason or effort and the ref will just count the pin with no warning or DQ, then the whole thing becomes meaningless and to me, that's what happens to Garvin's matches over time. We will be following it, and I'll point it out as we go through the time tunnel forward.
One Thing I Learned Today About Pro Wrestling History:
Ivan Kalmikoff teamed with Duke Keomuka to win the NWA Texas Tag Team Championship in January of 1952. He regained the Texas Tag Titles with his kayfabe "brother" Karol in May of 1954. There were four Kalmikoff wrestling "brothers" in all. Ivan, Karol, Nikita and Stan/Igor Kalmikoff. Various combinations held tag titles through 1963.
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, paid subscribers 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 Vault of the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel for Paid Subscribers.