It was the regular Saturday night card at the Spartanburg Memorial Auditorium on a cool October night. The main event was one of the hottest matches currently making the rounds in the Mid-Atlantic area: Ole Anderson vs. Thunderbolt Patterson.
In the semi-main event tag match (oddly called the "sub main event" here) the exciting babyface tag team of Jim Dillon and The Avenger (Reggie Parks) were scheduled to meet - - - JEAN Anderson and MASK Marvel.
Not "The Masked Marvel" - - just MASK Marvel.
In the scheduled third match of the night, ROMMIE ARVIN is scheduled to face PONCHO BALDER.
Poncho BALDER?? What the heck?
Lots of odd things about all this - -
First of all, the fact that whoever put together the ad for the paper would spell Gene Anderson's name JEAN had to suggest that the local promoter called the scheduled line-up in to the paper and the person taking it down just spelled it like his mama's name was spelled. No one in the wrestling office would have spelled Gene's name JEAN. That might also explain ROMMIE ARVIN. Maybe a bad connection and the kid at the advertising desk couldn't hear the person calling it in real well. Although you'd think someone would pick up on the fact that ROMMIE ARVIN doesn't even much sound like a name.
But nothing explains PONCHO BALDER!
The wrestler scheduled to face Ronnie Garvin that night was Pancho Valdez. Actually, depending on the source and the territory, his first name was spelled both Pancho and Poncho. But Balder? How in the world the paper wound up with PONCHO BALDER is one of the great mysteries of these newspaper bloopers. Nothing explains that one. It certainly doesn't sound like Valdez that someone simply misunderstood. Even trying to decipher the worst handwriting in the world it's hard to see how you would get BALDER out of Valdez.
Maybe it was a rib.
One other little mystery is Gene Anderson's partner being billed as the MASK Marvel. While there had been a Masked Marvels tag team in the area before, there was no Masked Marvel in the area at present. Gene Anderson's partner this night was actually a masked wrestler named The Menace, who wore a maroon colored mask and was affiliated with the Anderson Brothers in a big angle at that time. The Andersons and their henchman The Menace were often teamed in 6-man bouts around the area at the time.
So just how did The Menace get billed as the MASK Marvel?
All of these things added together make this one of the strangest newspaper ad bloopers we've come across in some time.
The answers to these questions, if there are any, aren't really worth the time it took to wonder and write about them. This stuff just really puzzles me, how an ad department at a newspaper can get something so wrong. What could possibly explain these crazy errors?
There are other misspellings in names, including Jim GRAGMIRE. Given all these crazy mistakes, it's a wonder they got Mike Paidousis' name correctly. That's often a tough one.
The following day, the newspaper had no problem in getting the names of the wrestlers right, although the results show some changes in the card:
- Thunderbolt Patterson defeated Ole Anderson
- Jim Dillon and The Avenger topped Gene Anderson and The Menace
- Peggy Patterson defeated Paula Kay
- Ronnie Garvin defeated Pancho Valdez
- Billy Hines beat Terry Sawyer
- Johnny Heidman downed Jim Grabmire
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