Hello and welcome to Sunday, June 28th, 2025, today is a super large Sunday end of the month edition of the Daily Chronicle, we are going to cover 20 years of huge events, angles, matches and business, so let’s hit the tunnel and travel back in time to review some events in June!
June 29th in the Time Tunnel:
Happy Birthday to those who have passed on and to those great wrestlers still with us:
In Memoriam:
Johnny Saint 1941
Leo Burke 1948
Happy Birthday:
Steve Cepello\Steve Strong (76)
Serena Deeb (39)
Arianna Grace (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.
Primo Carnera 6-29-1967 at the age of 60
Matt Cappotelli 6-29-2018 at the age of 38
Select Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Match and Event Flashbacks
60-Year Flashback
6-19-1965: Bob Orton Sr defeats Joe Scarpa in the Tournament Finals to win the NWA Southern Heavyweight Championship at the Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida
Pictured: Jacksonville Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florda
I wasn't able to write about this tournament in the Daily Chronicle on the day in history that it happened, but I did want to cover it for you, so I'm placing it in today's issue. Eddie Graham, now involved, at least in part with the Florida office booking, was heavily influenced by the booking of Doc Sarpolis while he was working for the Amarillo office from 1955 through 1958. Graham was NWA World Tag Team Champions while he was a hell with Art Nelson. Eddie wrestled under the name of Rip Rogers. After he turned babyface, he captured the World Tag crown with Dory Funk Sr. Sarpolis and Funk thought Eddie had huge potential, so in his three-year run, they wanted him to be able to work both sides, heel and face while he was there. He was a great student, taking in every component of Sarpolis' philosophy, particularly the complex finishes the good Doctor would employ and also the Lights Out matches.
One of the reasons I bring this up here is that Sarpolis often used tournaments to further stories and crown new champions when had title vacancies. These tournaments typically took place in the two biggest towns in the territory, either Lubbock or Amarillo. The other thing that is notable is another of the Sarpolis' disciples in Amarillo and one of Graham's biggest money-making opponents, Don Curtis, is about to permanently relocate to Florida and take over local promoters' duties in Jacksonville. I do know Curtis moved to Florida in August, so I'm not sure of his involvement here in the second half of June, although it's entirely possible, Graham and Curtis discussed this card by phone prior to booking this night's action.
Following one of Doc's tactics (just one, he utilized a couple when booking tournaments), but the field started with six wrestlers, who all came to the ring at the beginning of the card. Numbers from one through six were placed in a box that a ringside official was in charge of safekeeping. One by one each wrestler would draw a number out of the box, which determined who would wrestle who in the bracketing. The six wrestlers were Professor Boris Malenko, Bob Orton, Sr, Jow Scarpa, Danny Miller, Tony Ballargeon and Eddie Graham.
Another interesting thing about this tournament is that there was a mini faction within the National Wrestling Alliance called the Southern Wrestling Association. The Southern Wrestling Association was an idea of Jim Crockett, Sr in the early 1950s and he recruited Roy Welch in Tennessee, Paul Jones in Georgia, Cowboy Luttrall in Florida and I'm not sure about Mississippi, but without checking closely perhaps Sam Avey & Leroy McGuirk in Arkansas and Lee Fields in Alabama to all join this coalition within the NWA. Its purpose and function is not clear but it did have frequent communication among the Southern booking offices, and they did have meetings.
After the opening match which saw Buddy Fuller defeat Billy Strong. Imagine having Buddy Fuller, who also was buying ownership points in the Tampa office at the time, as well as being a partner in Georgia, in your opening match for your card? The way the numbers were drawn then Orton got Bellargeon in the opening first round match, which Orton won. Then, Miller defeated Graham in the next first round match. Next, Scarpa, the consummate babyface at the time won his match over Malenko, the consummate heel at the time by a disqualification with Malenko taking some liberties and shortcuts as he was oft to do.
This set up a semi-final contest between Orton and Miller with Scarpa receiving a bye to the finals match.
Pictured: Bob Orton, Sr NWA Southern Heavyweight Champion
I also wanted to mention that Don Curtis was going to be taking over a very lucrative pro wrestling market by becoming the local promoter in Jacksonville, taking over for Jimmy Murdock At this point in 1965, the Tampa office had drawn an average crowd of 8,000 to the Coliseum each week and year-to-date, mid-June, almost halfway into the year, they had drawn 1,014,953 paid attendance in Jacksonville. If we can assume this trend will continue through to the end of 1965, they would draw 2,029,906 for the town. At an average ticket of 1.25, taking the difference between General Admission and Ringside, we can estimate they drew $3,044,859 for Jacksonville in 1965.
Pictured: Jacksonville Coliseum parking lot and wrestling event interior, Jacksonville, Florida
Bob Orton, Sr, the "Big O", as he was often called, is about to go on a tear here in 1965. This win in the finals of the tournament over Joe Scarpa, gives him the crown and belt for the NWA Southern Heavyweight Championship. Orton is then on track to face a string of challengers and, as local #1 contender, he will be getting a shot at Lou Thesz and the NWA World Championship coming in July. This kicks off Orton, Sr's 4th Southern Title reign and his piledriver was one of the most feared moves in pro wrestling.
50-Year Flashback
6-27-1975: Bob Orton, Jr & Dick Slater defeated Bob Armstrong & Robert Fuller to win the NWA Georgia Tag Team Titles at the City Auditorium in Atlanta, Georgia
The two guys who first met while working in Florida and so young in their careers and would go on to become one the best tag teams in the world in 1984 first teaming up here to win their first major tag titles together in the legendary City Auditorium. Fans would become exposed to Slater and Orton Jr in the JCP Mid-Atlantic Territory in probably the best parts of their stretch as a tag team leading up to the match at Starrcade 1983 with Wahoo McDaniel & Jay Youngblood. They also did an injury angle involving Orton, Jr's use of his father's famous move, the devastating piledriver on Ric Flair, injuring him setting up Flair's revenge matches against the pair and Slater's claiming to have the NWA World Heavyweight Title. This was the replica belt made for the Southwest Wrestling World Title Tournament in Houston, Texas at The Summit.
Pictured: Gary Hart, Abdullah the Butcher, Bob Orton, Jr, Dick Slater, Professor Toru Tanaka with Gordon Solie on Georgia Championship Wrestling, WTCG-TV, Atlanta, Georgia, 1975
Here in the Georgia Territory in the early Summer of 1975, Slater and Orton Jr are under Gary Hart's management and leadership of an amazing group of heels along with NWA Georgia Champion, Abdullah the Butcher, which was in the main event of this card facing challenger Jerry Brisco. Even at this young age and short time in the business, both Orton Jr and Slater showed good competence on the stick and were showing really good work in the ring. Orton had held the NWA US Junior Title and also had been to work for a tour earlier in the year for All Japan Wrestling, which was typically reserved for more experienced guys.
Orton Jr and Slater, as a team, are vicious and exciting to watch. They were taught well in Florida on how to draw heat, they worked a smooth, hard-hitting non-nonsense style with ruthless aggression and slick teamwork as a clock work type of heel team. They would go on to hold the Georgia Tag straps through part of August of this year.
40-Year Flashback
6-28-1985: Magnum TA (CH) NWA United States Heavyweight Champion defeated Ric Flair (CH), NWA World Heavyweight Champion after the referee reversed the decision giving Magnum the win but not the title at the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston, Texas.
I am one of those people who believe Booker Dusty Rhodes and JCP President Jimmy Crockett already have it in their minds at this point that Magnum TA will get the NWA World Title from Ric Flair at their Starrcade event in 1987.
Dusty would be wrapping up his long-term program with Flair in late summer of 1986 culminating with Rhodes winning his third World Title, then dropping it back to Flair in August. Rhodes would then re-start his feud with Tully Blanchard, which would take the company through to the blow-off of the Four Horsemen vs Dusty Rhodes story in the Summer of 1987 with War Games, which would also include the re-start of the Magnum TA and Flair program culminating with TA winning the title from Flair at Starrcade, then Flair getting returns through the first half of 1988 and then Magnum getting some unknown new challenger in the Summer of 1988.
If only it had played out that way. It did kind of play out that way as Dusty and Jimmy went forward with the plan except, they had to do it without Magnum, using the Garvin Brothers as replacements, which didn't work as well. Magnum, as we know, had the crippling car accident in October of 1986 derailing his part of the plan.
Crockett had paid one million dollars for the exclusive rights to all professional wrestling on Superstation WTBS Channel 17 to Titan Sports and Vince McMahon who had assumed the contract for the Saturday night slot when purchasing Georgis Championship Wrestling Company from Jim Barnett, Paul Jones and the Brisco Brothers in February of 1984. The WWF began broadcasting its product in July 1984 after purchasing the ownership of the remaining stockholders, but the reaction by southern audiences to the WWF product was not good and ratings declined. After continual pressure from Ted Turner to produce an in-studio product at the Techwood Drive Studio in Atlanta rather than the arena-taped matches, McMahon relented & sold the contract to Turner.
Turner had hedged his bet with McMahon by making another deal with Bill Watts, the owner of Mid-South Sports in Tulsa, Oklahoma to put his Mid-South Wrestling Show in Sunday afternoons and it quickly became ratings wise, the leading show on WTBS. Turner had told Watts, when McMahon gave in, he would partner with Watts in the Mid-South company & Watts would get the contract for the Saturday night slot. However, Crockett, Jim Barnett who brokered the deal and Vince McMahon circumvented the Turner/Watts deal from ever coming to pass by selling Titan's contract to Crockett in exchange for the aforementioned seven figures.
After having invested that lucrative amount of money, Crockett had also bought out in a separate deal, Ole Anderson & Ralph Freed's "Championship Wrestling from Georgia" company and Saturday morning contract. The only wrestling show left on WTBS was Mid-South, which was removed from the air after Crockett told Turner for his big investment & having rid Turner of McMahon's show, he wanted to be the exclusive wrestling product from the station. Once that happened, this informal alliance between Crockett and Watts formed to work together to keep the WWF out of both of their geographies, which this match was one of the pieces of evidence to that cooperation.
Pictured: Ric Flair, NWA World Heavyweight Champion
In the booking meetings between Crockett and Rhodes, they must have discussed the story they wanted to tell with Flair having been the Champion in his fourth year, which was traditionally a little past the time the powers that be would be moving to another champion, and Terry Allen seemed to be the guy, but not quite seasoned enough yet to carry that kind of accountability, albeit the abbreviated schedule the NWA World Champion now had due to the consolidations of National wrestling was once again producing across the world's wrestling sandbox. So, I am speculating the soft target of Thanksgiving of 1987 was chosen as the time, Allen would be ready to ascend to the throne. If Crockett could keep the national wrestling battle close for the next 18 months, that would be the plan. As would be the case several times in the Crockett-Rhodes creative partnership, they would run some "test" programs to see how the fans would respond.
As laid out currently, the "A" program was Flair and Russian powerhouse, Nikita Koloff, keeping Flair a "tweener" in the Crockett house show schedule, which in 1985 was still 80% the old Crockett Carolina-Virginia loop, but now also incorporated in a "C & D town" loop the old Georgia town circuit from the Ole Anderson purchase, which meant also running towns in Ohio, Michigan and West Virginia. Crockett mainly utilized a few of his guys as well as the Ole Anderson roster for that C & D town schedule. After running an angle or two in April and May for Magnum and Flair on TBS and an angle or two for Koloff and Flair on the syndicated show network. One of those was Koloff clotheslining co-owner and color commentator David Crockett during an interview, which caused Flair, out of loyalty to the Crockett Family to take up the honor of the Crocketts and the USA in his World Title defenses against the Russian menace of Koloff.
On WTBS, Crockett & Rhodes used the previous JCP Flair & Ricky Steamboat program as a blueprint for the other Flair “A-Program” which was Flair/Magnum, using many of the same storyline devices of the contrast of the wealthy man Flair against the common man Magnum and the clothing insults and strippings of Flair with Magnum in Steamboat's role this go round.
The test program for Flair and Dusty had been done for Starrcade 1984 and it was obviously Crockett's biggest money match. Rhodes had been one of the top 3 box office draws in the 1970s along with Andre the Giant and Bruno Sammartino, Andre and Dusty being the two of the three that were legitimate national touring draws in territories across the world. Only the NWA World Champion would tour more than those two. So, the plan for the first 18 months would be Rhodes and Flair, then once that ran its course, a transition to Magnum and Flair would take place in 1987 for the next 18-month stretch. It would have worked nicely too, if not for the car accident, as unforeseen to both Crockett & Dusty, they would have had Barry Windham back in the fold, as well as emerging power players such as Lex Luger and Sting for Magnum's World Title run for 3 years and then a nice success line of talent available. But it didn't work out that way.
Also, what didn't work out was the NWA's succession plan it had in mind in 1983. This included a Title change to David Von Erich, the young Texas Heavyweight Champion, who had as most World Title candidates had done, ventured into Eddie Graham's Florida territory to sit under the Graham and former World Champion & Florida booker, Dory Funk Jr's learning tree as Funk's 'Texas heel partner". Von Erich's performance had been a success and now he was back in Texas and ready to start making the trip up the ladder to succeed Flair, but a trip to Japan led to his unfortunate, wrestling world-shaking death. This took its toll on both Fritz Von Erich, who had used his own career as wrestler and power broker to become the NWA President in 1975 and also his territories' new syndication network on broadcast and also satellite delivery to make his World Class Championship Wrestling to perfect platform to promote his three sons to become nationally known names who could carry the World Title mantle.
Due to David Von Erich's death, all that changed and Crockett saw an opportunity to begin to control the majority of the NWA with both his past NWA Presidency control politically in the world of the NWA booking offices and the strength of his own money-making operation which was rapidly expanding. The Plan A was not Magnum, it was Barry Windham, the son of Blackjack Mulligan, whom Rhodes had groomed in Florida from his earliest days for this moment. However, when Windham made the jump from Florida to JCP with Rhodes in 1984, the territory was down, and the payoffs were not that great. Windham, unhappy with the situation and being immature and impatient, took his brother-in-law, Mike Rotunda and jumped to the WWF to become their World Tag Team Champs.
Pictured: Magnum TA (Terry Allen), NWA United States Heavyweight Champion, 1985
So, the other young up and coming guy Rhodes had mentored in Florida was Terry Allen, who was Bill Watts' North American Champion and was also the guy Watts had been banking on if he had gotten the TBS spot. Allen made his move to JCP in 1984 as part of Rhodes' rebuilding plan of JCP, then Watts who still believed he had a chance at the TBS time slot, switched to Brad Armstrong as his North American Champion and lead babyface.
When Watts had been the booker in Georgia in 1973, Brad's Dad, Bob Armstrong had been one of only two guys who had stuck with the NWA and Bob had helped Watts rebuild the Georgia office in the Atlanta War from nothing to being competitive with Gunkel's All South, so making the move to Brad, who was a great young worker to his lead champion for familiarity to the Georgia crowds and the WTBS viewership made brilliant sense. An eventual national run, without the NWA brand, but with the Armstrong name could work well. Except it didn't, the move to TBS didn't happen.
So, all of this had opened the opportunity for Terry Allen, as Magnum TA, who wasn't the most excellent technical worker in the ring, but he wasn't too shabby either and he made up for it by working extremely hard and he was in excellent shape. While not as tall as a Ron or Robert Fuller, he was made in their body style and worked a similar tough and rugged style in his ring work, which made him attractive for the more assertive, tough Southern style of match Crockett presented juxtaposed against the WWF product.
In speculation, the Fullers had always been able to switch back and forth between heel and face without losing any of their ticket-selling ability, I could see Magnum being able to do that as well, so I don't think a heel run of some description would have been out of the question at some point during his tenure. It could have been in a second title reign or even after his title run was concluded, but his tough demeanor lent itself to that as his iconic "I Quit" cage match at Starrcade 1985 later this year would demonstrate, Magnum TA could be mean and rugged when needed.
At this point Crockett is going with a combination booking of Flair with Magnum in some towns, they had already booked the match for their first show in Los Angeles at the classic pro wrestling venue, The Olympic Auditorium, the very next night after Houston on June 29th. They had run the match twice at The Omni in Atlanta during June on the 2nd and then a return on Sunday, June 23rd. They had the Flair/Magnum match in Asheville, North Carolina, June 2nd as a matinee before the Omni show.
Flair defeated the other "Nature Boy" Buddy Landel on June 8th at the big monthly Crockett Greensboro Coliseum Show and would wrestle Landel again on June 15th in Richmond, Virginia and on June 17th in Greenville, South Carolina as Dusty and Jimmy are trying Landel on for size as an opponent for Flair down the road as no angles have been done on the Flair/Landel front as of yet.
Flair and TA worked a one-hour Broadway at the Civic Center in Philadelphia on June 12th for the NWA Title with Dusty and Tully in a Barbed Wire Match and the Koloffs defending the NWA World Tag Titles on the show as well. Flair is in both Florida for the dying Graham promotion to face Wahoo McDaniel for title and in Alabama for Ron Fuller as well. Flair defends the title for Watts in Jackson, Mississippi against Terry Taylor on June 20th and he's in St Louis the next night against Kerry Von Erich whom he beats by DQ.
Flair wrestles Dick Slater on the Crockett C & D circuit (old Georgia loop) in Columbus, Georgia on June 22nd and then back to Magnum TA at the Omni for the second show of the month before having a tremendous match with Butch Reed at the Superdome for Watts on the next night, June 24th. Flair wrestles Magnum in our Flashback match on the 28th and then again in the aforementioned LA debut of JCP on June 29th.
Regarding this match in Houston and frankly all the title matches between Flair and Magnum TA here in the Spring and early Summer of 1985, Flair should have gone over cleanly around the horn. I point this out because this is a fundamental change in the booking philosophy in the pro wrestling business in 1985. The one-hour draws, such as in Philadelphia are fine, but the win for TA with a referee decision reversal is a finish that more than likely would not have been approved or allowed in the era prior. The NWA World Champion could lose the match via DQ within reason, other wise, the Champion went over or it was a draw. Going to a draw elevated the challenger. Losing clean to the Champion elevated the challenger because it was worked as a competitive match. All of Flair and Allen’s matches I saw during this period were competitive, therefore, it would not have hurt Magnum to be pinned by the champion. Magnum was already over, losing cleam would not have hurt him.
Frankly, I believe the way Vince McMahon and George Scott were booking Hulk Hogan as a Superman who couldn’t lose got into other bookers’ heads in 1984 and stayed in their heads for the rest of other promotions’ lives until Titan Sports owned it all in 2001. Crockett and Rhodes felt they had a competent challenger in the making to not only Flair, but Hogan and the WWF as well and they just couldn’t imagine beating him, even with the champion, but he would have meant so much more if he would have had to climb the mountain only after sliding back down multiple times.
One Thing I Learned Today About Pro Wrestling History:
Primo Carnera was a circus strongman in Italy before coming to the United States in the 1920s. He wrestled in carnivals during the end of the 1920s and broke into boxing in 1928. He came back into professional wrestling following his return from World War II.
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!
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So the "Southern Wrestling Association" division was a proto-WCW with the Carolinas, Georgia and Florida as it's foundation in 1950s NWA. This is way by the 1980s the NWA collapsed due to various promoters having their little divisions within the NWA