by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
It's been awhile since we posted a newspaper ad blooper on the site, and our friend Andy McDaniel recently noticed this one, so I thought we'd post it today.
A word about Bloopers: they aren't just simple typos or misspellings - - in order to qualify they have to result in something unintentionally funny. For example, my personal all-time favorite wrestling ad blooper is this one for Ole Anderson. There are also occasionally wrestler's names that somehow get so changed in the journey from wrestling office to newspaper office, you wonder how in the world they could possibly happen. Like Rufus R. JOYNER.
So in that spirit, we have a great card from Charlotte in the fall of 1981 (37 years ago!) featuring a Texas Death Match main event between Roddy Piper and Wahoo McDaniel.
But it was the second main event that gave us a chuckle. As Andy said in his text message, "I don't remember Sgt. Slaughter being a saint." Yep, this simple typo resulted in the abbreviation for "sergeant" turning the reigning U.S. Heavyweight champion into a saint!
St. Bob Slaughter.
Sgt. Slaughter had just won the U.S. title in a tournament in Charlotte two weeks earlier, defeating Ricky Steamboat in the finals. Now Steamboat was Slaughter's number one challenger for the gold belt.
Certainly fans at the Charlotte Coliseum that October night thought Steamboat was more of a wrestling saint than Slaughter!
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More bloopers to come.