Friday, March 05, 2021

Classic Audio! Six Man Mayhem at WRAL


Rare audio included below of Ric Flair, Baron Von Raschke, and Paul Jones vs. Ricky Steamboat, Tony Atlas, and Dino Bravo

by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

Recently Mike Sempervive posted an interesting entry to his "On This Day in Mid-Atlantic Wrestling History" series to his Mid-Atlantic Championship Podcast Twitter feed. It involved a wild six-man tag team match on Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling from February of 1979:


Matches like that featuring two main event teams against each other were rare in those days. All six were main eventers and headlining Mid-Atlantic and World Wide Wrestling cards across the territory as well as in Canada. 

Sempervive's description was so vivid with detail that Bruce Mitchell couldn't believe it. "No way in hell," he responded in a quote-tweet. "Did you read that in a magazine?"

Sempervive disclosed his source: the Mid-Atlantic Gateway Almanac entry by David Chappell for February of 1979. He then sent up a Bat Signal to the mighty Mid-Atlantic Gateway. I responded on the twitter thread that if David described the match in that much detail, he would have done it from his audio tape archive, and we'd try to find it post it here on the Gateway. 

Shortly after that, David did indeed dig up the 42-year old audio cassette tape and produced the goods! While video of the match is long lost to the ash-heap of history, this audio lets you relive a little of that magic.

Enjoy the final three minutes of six-man tag team mayhem between the teams of Ric Flair/Baron Von Raschke/Paul Jones vs. Ricky Steamboat/Tony Atlas/Dino Bravo. The audio begins as Ric Flair has the figure-four locked in on Bravo and Steamboat makes the save. (I miss the one-save rule.) 

I don't think David Crockett was ever so excited about a wrestling match.

        
FLAIR-RASCHKE-JONES vs. STEAMBOAT-ATLAS-BRAVO


For the record, here is the excerpt by David Chappell regarding this match from the Mid-Atlantic Gateway Almanac for February 1979:

The Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling television show that was taped on February 21st featured a six man tag team match that was definitely of Main Event quality! The “good guy” team of Tony Atlas, Ricky Steamboat and Dino Bravo battled the “bad guy” trio of Ric Flair, Paul Jones and Baron von Raschke. After getting Atlas outside the ring, the Baron waffled Tony with two brutal chair shots. Then meantime in the ring, Jones put Steamboat in the Indian Death Lock while simultaneously Flair caught Bravo in the Figure Four Leg Lock, slapping Dino in the face as he applied the pressure. Eventually, Atlas got a chair of his own and cleared the ring. The bad guys were disqualified for using the chair first, but clearly Atlas, Steamboat and Bravo got the worst of it despite their win by disqualification.