by Brack Beasley
Mid-Atlantic Gateway Contributor
Ernie Shore Field in Winston-Salem, NC opened in 1956 and was home to the Winston-Salem minor league baseball team. On occasion this baseball stadium would host concerts as well as professional wrestling, both Mid Atlantic and IWA.
This poster takes us back to the summer of 1980 and promotes a card held on July 25th with the main event being a tag team matchup pitting the Masked Superstar and Greg Valentine against Ric Flair and Sweet Ebony Diamond.
Rocky Johnson entered the Mid Atlantic territory under a mask as Sweet Ebony Diamond and was a superb performer, but probably best known today as father of "The Rock" Dwayne Johnson.
Dewey Robertson was also on this card, having lost the Canadian
Heavyweight Championship to the Iron Sheik a couple of months earlier.
Sheik was on a roll, having also won the Mid-Atlantic Heavyweight
Championship from Jim Brunzell two weeks before this card at Ernie
Shore.
I'm confident it was an exciting Friday night under the stadium lights for wrestling fans with an undercard also featuring Mid-Atlantic greats Johnny Weaver and Don Kernodle.
The poster design itself really draws your attention with black print on a bright yellow background and the date and main event in bold high impact red. It would definitely be hard to miss sitting in the front window of a local business as you're passing by.
NO. 5 IN A SERIES
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Gateway Notes:
Mid-Atlantic Wrestling was also being held that Friday night in Charleston SC and Lynchburg, VA. Charleston was headlined by Blackjack Mulligan vs. Enforcer Luciano in a Texas Street Fight. Lynchburg's main event saw Jim Brunzell trying to reclaim his Mid-Atlantic title from the Iron Sheik.