Blooper! Rocky Mount NC

by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

An interesting blooper this week from March 23, 1977 in Rocky Mount, NC, where the team of Wahoo McDaniel and Rufus R. JOYNER is billed to be taking on Kim Duk and Boris Malenko.

Except, of course, Wahoo's partner was the legendary "Freight Train" Rufus R. Jones, not Rufus R. Joyner. Perhaps the person putting together this ad was concentrating on the locations for advance tickets, one of which was JOYNER's Athletic House in Rocky Mount.

Wahoo and Rufus were former NWA world tag team champions a year earlier, having held the title for exactly one week in late January and early February 1976, winning it from and then losing it back to the Anderson Brothers.

Boris Malenko was actually Kim Duk's manager at the time. Duk's regular partner was the Masked Superstar, but Malenko was filling in here.

Mark Eastridge points out that this was somewhat of an an unusual indoor venue for Rocky Mount as most of their shows took place in the local baseball park outdoors.

I always enjoyed seeing the line-ups for these Wednesday night Rocky Mount shows, as it was fun to imagine the guys having to sprint from the WRAL TV tapings in nearby Raleigh to make these show on that Wednesday night double-shot.

Usually the guys in the main event of the Rocky Mount show would wrestle on the first hour of the WRAL tapings in Raleigh, but not the second, to allow for travel time to the Rocky Mount venue. It was about an hour's drive, although wrestlers drove like maniacs most of the time and their travel time between the two was likely a little less.

Thanks to Mark Eastridge for the clippings.