Sunday, May 07, 2017

From the Archives: A Blooper Classic

The following is a re-post of one of our favorite newspaper ad bloopers, the very first one we posted back in 2015 in this series.

Over the years, the newspaper ads for local wrestling events would frequently have mistakes or errors related to the names of the wrestlers. Sometimes these were simple "typos", other times there is simply no explanation for them! Some are mildly humorous. Some are downright hilarious. This was especially true in the 1970s and early 1980s before the promotion became a bit more professional in how they put their ads together.

The newspaper ads are a big part of history features on the Gateway, but we are going to occasionally post some of the ads with the crazy mistakes in them in a semi-regular feature we are calling

http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/p/newspaper-bloopers.html

We kick things off with one of the funniest bloopers we've ever come across.


Wahoo McDaniel and Paul Jones fought Gene and Ole Anderson in one of the fiercest and most memorable rivalries in Mid-Atlantic Wrestling history. In late May 1975, the two teams prepared to battle at the Scope Exhibition Hall in Norfolk, VA. So imagine opening your newspaper and seeing and ad for a world's tag team title bout where the team of Wahoo McDaniel and Paul Jones were fighting Gene and OLD Anderson!

We've laughed at this one over the years. We're guessing a simple typo; the "D" key on the typewriter keyboard is right below the "E" key. However, many of these ads were pasted up at the time, not typed, which would mean someone had to intentionally put the D in line with the other text when pasting up the ad.

Add to that the transposing of the "A" and the "N" (McDNAIEL) typo in Wahoo's last name, and it's a "twofer!"

But the real gem here is OLD Anderson. It is one of the great wrestling newspaper bloopers ever, and a great rib to this day on the Minnesota Wrecking Crew.

Our friend Peggy Lathan, a mutual friend of Ole's, will make sure "the Rock" sees this!

More Bloopers to come.




8/17/15 Edit: Peggy Lathan sent us this photo taken by David Cooper, who wrote:

"I took this picture a few weeks ago because I thought Ole might get a kick out of it. Also, when I took it, I had no idea that there was an old wrestling poster shown on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway website last month that listed Ole as Old Anderson!"

Photo by David Cooper


Thanks, as always, to Mark Eastridge for sharing his amazing collection of newspaper ads with the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.

Check out all the bloopers here.

http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/p/big-gold.html