Good morning from Waterloo, Iowa!
I'm writing today about the 77th anniversary of the NWA formation meeting in this historic town in 1948
I will have my take on this coming up in today's issue of The Daily Chronicle, once we do our daily wrestler tributes.
July 18th in the Time Tunnel:
Happy Birthday to those who have passed on and to those great wrestlers still with us:
In Memoriam:
Dean Ho 1940
Happy Birthday:
Carlos Colon (77)
Dusty Wolfe (63)
Al Snow (62)
Masanori Murakawa\The Great Sasuke (56)
Adam Birch\Joey Mercury (46)
Amanda Saccomanno\Mandy Rose (35)
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.
John Kronus 7-18-2007 at the age of 38
Newton Tattrie\Geeto Mongol 7-18-2013 at the age of 82
Significant Event Flashback
77 Year Flashback
7-18-1948 The First Meeting of the Original Members of the National Wrestling Alliance at the Hotel President in Waterloo, Iowa
I'm feeling pretty nostalgic to be in the town that served as the birthplace to such a pivotal, influential and legendary organization.
It was here, 77 years ago today, that the businessmen gathered and put together the original cornerstone principles that would guide the Alliance for the next four decades. The primary motivation for all the members was to extract themselves from the National Wrestling Association and the control of Tom Packs, the major booker and promoter in St. Louis.
The National Wrestling Association was an early professional wrestling sanctioning body created in 1930 by the National Boxing Association (now the World Boxing Association and formed in 1921) as an attempt to have some governance over professional wrestling in the United States. This group created a number of World Titles as an attempt to clear up wrestling rankings which at one time had a number of different championships promoted as the real-world champion. The Association was comprised mainly of athletic commission representatives who controlled the organization and the sport. Packs controlled them chiefly.
Orville Brown became the booker for Kansas City promoter, George Simpson in 1940. He was a farmer in the Columbus, Ohio area but he wanted to get back home, so he won the Midwest Wrestling Association World Heavyweight Title from Bobby Bruns on June 13th, 1940, at the Memorial Hall in Kansas City as a way to migrate back home. Afterwards, he expanded his booking office's geography to St. Joseph, Missouri then to Topeka and Wichita, Kansas.
Pictured: Orville Brown, NWA World Champion
George's competitors in Wichita, Billy Sandow and Max Baumann had formed their own group called the National Wrestling "Alliance" and were booking their own champion.
Paul "Pinkie" George, after serving some time in the military for the US Army, where an old injury from an automobile accident kept him out of combat. George had opened up his wrestling operations in Iowa in 1943. After several unsuccessful attempts to book Wild Bill Longson, the Association World Champion into his town of Des Moines, George started booking Ray Steele, who had claimed to be the "Alliance" World Champion with no real title lineage for proof. George started using the "National Wrestling Alliance" name for his own promotion without really ever seeking permission from Sandow and Baumann.
No one ever objected.
Pictured: Paul “Pinkie” George
Pinkie George was trying to establish a regular working and credible champion for his operations in Iowa and Ray Steele was losing matches in other parts of the country and George's customers were seeing those in the major newspapers and wondering how he could still be the "world champion" in Iowa? Pinkie George needed a regionally based, credible heavyweight star who could attract crowds to his arenas on a regular basis. That's where Orville Brown was a perfect fit. He booked Brown into Des Moines as the National Wrestling Alliance Champion on November 8th, 1944.
Brown was a great fit for George's territory, and his fans embraced him as their champion creating a lot of enthusiasm for Pinkie's cards and put money in both their pockets. Besides that, Brown and George became very close friends.
This led to a strong partnership between the offices of Brown in Missouri & Kansas, George in Iowa and also Tony Stecher, who owned the booking office in Minneapolis, Minnesota and Max Clayton, booking office entrepreneur for Omaha, Nebraska. This working agreement then enhanced the talent caliber of wrestlers in eight different cities in the Midwest of the United States and formed the initial foundation of the National Wrestling Alliance. The were not yet quite the leaders of wrestling in the country, but they had already formed, through working agreements the fusion which would be a powerful catalyst for what was coming in the evolution of pro wrestling.
Pictured: Tony Stecher
Stecher had severed his ties from Tom Packs in 1943 and had recognized several heavyweight wrestling champions and continued to do that even through the agreement of cooperation with the others in the group. They were all levelheaded businessmen who never let their own ego get in the way of doing what was right for their business and never doing anything to conflict with the arrangement or hurt their promotions of professional wrestling. They were all enthusiastic for making money and protecting their own businesses.
Max Clayton had been the boxing and wrestling booker for Omaha's Grand Island Elks Club since 1926. The next in a long line of successful bookers and promoters in the state from Gene Maledy to Farmer Burns, Clayton was a masterful matchmaker and promoter. Clayton expanded over the years throughout the state of Nebraska and up through both South and North Dakota.
Pictured: Max Clayton
The 5th midwestern wrestling promotion and booking office to be involved independently of Packs' operation was started by Packs' former booking agent, Sam Muchnick.
To read about Muchnick's struggles in establishing himself as a promoter outside of Packs' operations, read my piece "The Origins of Sam Muchnick in St. Louis" in Issue 64 (June 18th, 2025) available here:
Issue 64: The Origins of Sam Muchnick in St. Louis
Tony Stecher from the group was impressed with Muchnick's determination and sent Bronko Nagurski and Joe Pazandak from his talent pool to help put some weapons in Muchnick's arsenal.
Stecher, Clayton and George had met previously in 1948 to put together a boxing agreement which formed a promotional and booking cooperative which they intended to use to bring lucrative boxing matches to the Midwest.
After this concept seemed to be working, doing it for professional wrestling seemed to be the next logical step for the businessmen. They called a symposium led by Pinkie George to be held in the Gold Room of the Hotel President in Waterloo, Iowa, on July 18th, 1948. The participants were George, Clayton, Brown, Muchnick and Wally Karbo, Tony Stecher's booker, this meeting created a new, updated version of the National Wrestling Alliance and changed the course of the sport and business of pro wrestling forever.
Another prominent member was to be included in this initial agreement, Fred Kohler, the owner of the booking office and promoter of Chicago, Illinois. Kohler was not able to be at the meeting, but he agreed to the principles set forth (which there were 9) by the group by sending his consent and alignment in the NWA by telegram.
One Thing I Learned Today About Pro Wrestling History
Even though Max Clayton contributed to the original meetings in Waterloo that formed the Alliance, and he was always considered a "founding member", he did not officially join the National Wrestling Alliance until July 1949 due to politics involving his associate partners in Nebraska, the Duseks who were in with Packs and Thesz in St. Louis.
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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Happy Birthday Al Snow!!