Weaver and Landrum on World Wide Wrestling

By Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

Many of today's fans associate Johnny Weaver's broadcasting career with the Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and NWA Pro Wrestling shows that aired in the 1980s, primarily as a result of Johnny's national exposure on NWA Pro when it was syndicated to markets all around the United States as Jim Crockett Promotions began to expand nationwide. 

But long time fans in the territory might best remember him with his first broadcast partner, the host of World Wide Wrestling from 1978-1982, Rich Landrum. 

Landrum worked in Richmond VA as the ring announcer for Jim Crockett Promotions/Murnick Promotions shows in Richmond and the surrounding area going back to the late 1960s. He took over television host duties for the re-vamped World Wide Wrestling in 1978. Landrum made the weekly trek each Wednesday from Richmond to WRAL TV studios in Raleigh NC. He originally hosted the show solo with occasional guest co-hosts, and then took on Weaver as a regular partner in late 1979, even though Weaver continued wrestling a near full time schedule through 1981. 

They became a very popular broadcasting duo over the next four years, and are still remembered today, especially for one of their signature spots where Johnny would offer his rendition of "Turn Out The Lights, The Party's Over" at the end of a match each week, as Landrum then reviewed the match's finish on instant replay. 

 In 2007, Landrum appeared on a Burlington, NC, wrestling event and briefly reunited with Weaver to introduce the finals of the Johnny Weaver Cup Tag Team Tournament. (Landrum wrote about that reunion here.) Johnny passed away just six months later, and in November of 2008, Landrum made a second appearance at a tribute show for Johnny Weaver in Rocky Mount, VA, along with Johnny's daughter Wendi. The show also featured wrestling legend Jim Nelson/Boris Zhukov in action, who was one of Johnny's last tag partners during the last years of his career in the ring in 1983.

Special thanks to Wendi Weaver for providing the photograph above from her father's personal collection.

Related feature: WRAL Studio Wrestling
Mid-Atlantic Gateway Interviews with Rich Landrum | Johnny Weaver

This post was edited from an original post on the Johnny Weaver Blog in January 2009.

Jim Cornette Explains All About the TV Distribution Process for JCP in the 1980s

Crockett TV Production / Local Promos

Arcadian Vanguard

 

 

The following is a transcript from a brief segment of the popular "Cornette Drive Thru" podcast where Jim Cornette shed light on the process Jim Crockett Promotions went through to duplicate and distribute their TV shows in the 1980s, and also how they inserted the local TV promo segments each week. 

The discussion took place on Episode #261 of the podcast, about 55 minutes in:

"The way they duplicated their television shows, now this is primitive, but remember this is 40 years ago, and it is actually the way that, you know, small budget promotions operated like this in house up until the times that the territories went away. 

Let's say we go to Gaffney, SC, on a Tuesday night and we'd do the syndicated television taping at the college gym there in Gaffney. It's 60 miles from Charlotte, so it's about an hour drive. They owned their own television truck, the NEMO truck - - National Electronics Mobile Operation. They'd drive the truck an hour down to one of these high school or college gym around Charlotte. They'd set up the lights, they'd wire everything, they'd run the cables - - they shoot two hours of television: NWA Worldwide and NWA Pro. And that goes from 7:30 to 10:00. And each show they role live-to-tape, and you know they're gonna put a VTR in, they roll it in the truck. They leave black holes for the commercial spots and for the local promos.* 

Then they'd drive the truck back to Charlotte and they'd park it back behind the office at Briarbend. And they'd take the two master tapes in, and - - remember ol' Leonard? The guy that did the night work there that alerted me that they were throwing away the entire film archive of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling when Turner broadcasting took over and bought everything.** Leonard would put the dadgum tapes on, and I don't know how many they could make at the same time, and this was the old one inch video reels, right? So you can imagine, you gotta unroll those and put them on the spool, and get 'em all synced up and everything. And then he would hit the button and they would make multiple duplicates of that master tape at one time. And then he'd do nothing all night but just run 'em back and copy the tapes over and over - - however many they could make at a time times however many, because Wednesday morning about 9:00, Gene Anderson would be in there with Jackie Crockett on the camera and all the top babyfaces and heels would come in and do local promos, from 9:00 in the morning until 3:00 or 4:00 sometimes. And then you'd immediately hop in the car and drive three hours to Raleigh or go to the airport to fly somewhere, whatever the case. 

But, what they would do, honest to God, is they would sync the tape up for let's say Philadelphia, we got local promos to do for Philadelphia because we got a show coming up at the Civic Center. So whatever tape was going to the TV station in Philadelphia, they would reel it up to the exact point of the babyface interview segment that needed to be inserted and we'd record those interviews right onto the tape that was actually going to the TV station. And as soon as we did that interview then they'd jump ahead to the heel segment, you know, in between segments 5 and 6 or whatever, and they'd do the two minute and twenty eight second interview for them. 

The interviews were 2:28 because they left a second to get in and a second to get out, else wise they're rolling over program***, right? Once the Philly interviews were done, they'd stick it back in the case, put a label on it, and whether it was Klondike Bill or Bunk Harris, whoever that day wasn't going to get chicken at Price's Chicken Coop for lunch****, they would take the tapes to the bus station and put them on a bus to the television station in the city that was going to air it that weekend. 

So it went out on Wednesday evening and it got there on Thursday. A lot of promotions did this, they would put posters and fliers for sponsors in small towns, they'd put 'em on a bus in those days, they'd put the TV tape on a bus. And they used to have a thing called Delta Dash where before these overnight services were just common in every city in America, they would take it and put it in a box, and take it the airport and they would put it on a Delta plane. You could Delta Dash something for something like $99, and it would go on a plane, and somebody had to pick it up at baggage claim at the other end. 

But that's what they would do, they would roll these interviews into the actual tape to the TV station that weekend, there was no post production per se in terms of "OK we're going to shoot all these interviews and were gonna slate them and then were going to go back and insert them, blah, blah, blah." No, that's why the local interviews don't exist anywhere else except in tapes of the television program that aired in that specific market. 

So when you see these local promos with Tony Schiavone and the orange background or sometimes the blue background, they had and the chyron, 'Tonight! Charlotte! Tonight Greenville, Chicago!' or whatever the case from Crockett Promotions, that has to be off the actual air broadcast of that television program that weekend [that was taped at home by a fan on a VCR] because they didn't exist anywhere else."

 

Footnotes:

*This was the big revelation for me: I had always assumed the local promos were sent to stations on a separate tape that would be inserted into the local brodcast by the station like any other local commercial. 

**I'm assuming this actually happened when Crockett and Dusty moved the head office from Charlotte to Dallas in 1987 or 1988 and closed down Briarbend Drive, but perhaps the TV work Jim describes above continued in Charlotte at Briarbend after the move to Dallas until the sale to Turner in late 1988.

***It absolutely now makes sense why there was always this short time gap before and after local interview spots where you would see the show's logo or whatever and could hear the crowd noise in the background of the studio going back to those days. They left room for the local promo to be a second or two early or late when taped directly into the master tape. 

****George South was the one who first told us about the weekly Chicken Coop ritual back in the day, and how he along with Bunk Harris or Klondike Bill, would sometimes make the pick-up, earning more tips from the boys than he made wrestling at the time.

PODCAST INFORMATION

Visit JimCornette.com for complete information including links on both of his wildly popular podcasts on the Arcadian Vanguard Podcasting Network.

WLOS Asheville TV: The Terrible Andersons

From the "Vintage TV & Wrestling Nostalgia" Blog

by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

Carroll Hall posted these newspaper ads from 1974 on his "Vintage TV & Wrestling Nostalgia" blog several months back, but we somehow missed them at the time.

Graphics for the second weekly taping of
"Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling"
hosted by Les Thatcher

I love the reference in the second ad to "the terrible Andersons." Right around this time, the Andersons were feuding primarily with Sandy Scott who was taking various different partners to challenge the Minnesota Wrecking Crew including Bearcat Wright, Bob Bruggers, Danny Miller, Jerry Brisco, and occasionally his brother George Scott (who was booking the territory at the time and not wrestling full-time.)

I love seeing these ads. Growing up, WLOS-13 out of Asheville, NC, was one of the two stations I was able to watch Mid-Atlantic Wrestling on. I grew up in east Tennessee but was fortunate that our cable company carried this station back before cable ops were prohibited from carrying out-of-market stations.


MID-ATLANTIC WRESTLING ON WLOS 
During the time period reflected in these ads, WLOS carried a second, separate version of the "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling" show hosted by Les Thatcher. Just like the primary show hosted by Bob Caudle, it was taped at the studios of WRAL-TV in Raleigh, NC.

Les Thatcher and Bob Caudle
Hosts for the two separate hours of "Mid-Atlantic
Championship Wrestling" in 1974

The Thatcher show had huge ratings in the Asheville market, sometimes garnering a 60-share in the Greenville/Spartanburg/Asheville TV market. This meant that 60% of the televisions that were on during that hour in that market were tuned to "Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling." These were huge numbers for any program at any time in any era.

In October of 1975, that second hour of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling was replaced by a new program called "Wide World Wrestling" that was hosted by longtime Atlanta announcer Ed Capral. This gave that second JCP show a distinct name and identity.

Thatcher also hosted the localized promotional spots that were inserted into the programs in each market that promoted the arena house shows.
 

 Originally published August 17, 2017 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.

There are two more of these WLOS-13 ads on the page on Carroll's blog. Visit this link for the others:
http://vintagetvwrestlingnostalgia.blogspot.com/2017/03/wlos-13-ashevillenc-in-1974.html

For more on these shows and where they were taped, check out our Studio Wrestling feature on WRAL-5 on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway.

JCP Network: 1980

This page from a 1980 issue of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling Magazine lists the local affiliates of Jim Crockett's television network. These stations carried either Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling or World Wide Wrestling.

We actually think this list isn't complete, and may only reflect markets where Crockett was actually running shows and selling this magazine. It has been documented that there were stations in Florida, Texas, Michigan, and perhaps other locations during this era.

Also featured here are some great studio wrestling shots in front of the sets used from 1978-1981 at WRAL in Raleigh where the shows were taped every Wednesday night. Modified versions of the sets were used when the taping moved to WPCQ in Charlotte in August of 1981 until tapings moved into the arenas in July of 1983.

Pro Wrestling's Distant Signals

by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

Some of you old folks out there (like us!) will remember the days when you stayed up late at night and tried to maneuver your set-top or aerial antenna to pull in some distant station that had wrestling.

In this rough image, Mid-Atlantic champion Ric Flair and Blackjack Mulligan talk with Ed Capral on Wide World Wrestling from the WRAL television studios in December 1975. Ric wasn't back to wrestling yet at this point, still recovering from injuries suffered in the October 1975 Wilmington NC plane crash. But he was back doing interviews and color commentary by the end of December.

Kids born in the cable generation don't have any idea what the excitement was like when you manipulated those "rabbit ears" on top of the TV and were able to pick up a distant VHF or UHF signal from some other city. It was a great adventure! Sometimes it was more snow than picture, but you could still listen to the audio.

Folks that were lucky enough to have an outdoor rooftop aerial antenna could sometimes pull in distant signals from hundreds of miles away, depending on the time of day, the weather, and the elevation of the antenna. The only problem was having to run outside and turn the antenna pole so that the antenna would face the right direction. That was later solved with the advent of a motorized rotor that would turn the pole using a control box from inside the house, usually sitting right on top of the television set.

*****

Edit: It sometimes surprises us what reaction little memories like this get on our social media pages at the Mid-Atlantic Gateway. This little graphic at the top of this post seemed to stir up lots of memories about rabbit ears, wire hangers, and "tin foil" from our friends on Facebook and Twitter.

A Look Back: Wrestling on TV in North Carolina in October 1975

TV Guide Memories: 
Wrestling in North Carolina in October 1975
by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

We like to occasionally take a snapshot-look at a Saturday back in the day and see what wrestling was like on TV at the time.

Younger fans may not realize that before all of wrestling moved to cable TV channels, your local channel was where you found your weekly pro wrestling show, and usually always on a Saturday afternoon or evening.

In October of 1975 in the state of North Carolina, all the TV markets in the state aired the local promotion run by Jim Crockett Promotions out of Charlotte. But during this time the Florida show was syndicated broadly in the state as well. This was not an adversarial thing. It was actually another outlet for Jim Crockett Promotions to run spots for shows in that market. JCP ads would run where Florida ads would be seen in the Florida markets.  Stars from Florida would occasionally be booked into Charlotte and more often Greensboro. These included Dusty Rhodes, the Brisco brothers, the Funk brothers, Bill Watts, and others.

Here is a brief run down of all the wrestling on this particular Saturday in October of 1975:

3:00 PM

36 WRET Charlotte - Super Pro Wrestling with Charlie Babb
This independent didn't last long, only about 6 weeks according to our resident wrestling-on-TV expert Carroll Hall. They were using some of the local guys that had worked for Eddie Einhorn's IWA which had all but closed up shop at this point, and was transitioning to a more local group run by Johnny Powers. They taped TV Saturday mornings in the studio of WRET-36, which later became WPCQ and would host the TV taping for Jim Crockett Promotions for a couple of years in the early 1980s.

3:30 PM

11 WTVD Durham - IWA Wrestling
As mentioned above, the Eddie Einhorn's IWA was closing down and transitioning to a group by the same name run by Johnny Powers. The Einhorn show was still on here in Durham, and Carroll Hall remembers that many weeks they would show re-runs because they had no new TV programs taped.

13 WBTW - Florence (SC) - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
This South Carolina station was listed in the North Carolina Edition of TV Guide because a good portion of the southern part of North Carolina could receive its signal. This was the Mid-Atlantic "A" show taped at WRAL in Raleigh every Wednesday night.

4:00 PM

3 WBTV Charlotte - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
Mid-Atlantic Wrestling had replaced the long running "Championship Wrestling" show taped at WBTV and hosted by Big Bill Ward in 1974 when all the Crockett TV tapings were consolidated to WRAL in Raleigh.

8 WGHP High Point/Greensboro - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Les Thatcher
The Mid-Atlantic Wrestling "B" show replaced the long running "Championship Wrestling" show taped at WGHP hosted by Charlie Harville in 1974. This alternate/additional version of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling was taped each Wednesday night at WRAL in Raleigh. All the Crockett TV tapings were consolidated to WRAL in Raleigh at that time.

7:00 PM

12 WCTI New Bern- Championship Wrestling from Florida with Gordon Solie
Bob Bailey reports to Carroll Hall that the Florida show aired on this station during this time period.

28 WRDU Durham - Championship Wrestling from Florida with Gordon Solie
This was outlet for Florida wrestling in Raleigh, Durham, and the Greensboro market as well as the WRDU signal was very strong and penetrated all through the Piedmont area of North Carolina. A few years later, WRDU would replace Florida wrestling with the syndicated version of Georgia Championship Wrestling out of WTCG (later WTBS) channel 17 in Atlanta.

36 WRET Charlotte - Championship Wrestling from Florida with Gordon Solie
As you can see, Florida Wrestling blanketed the Central and Eastern parts of the state of North Carolina during these years.

11:30 PM

13 WLOS Asheville - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Les Thatcher
WLOS-13 was not included in the North Carolina Edition. It was in the Carolina/East Tennessee Edition of TV Guide and included East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and the upstate region of South Carolina. I've included it here to further accurately reflect TV wrestling in the state of North Carolina.

The B show on WLOS with Les Thatcher dominated the rating as night in the Asheville/Greenville/Spartanburg market, sometime getting 60 and 70% shares. Just weeks later, the new Jim Crockett show "Wide World Wrestling" hosted by former Atlanta broadcaster Ed Capral would replace the Mid-Atlantic B show in all of the markets where it aired (including WGHP-8 listed above.) Should point out that the Asheville market got the Mid-Atlantic "A" show with Bob Caudle on WFBC-4 (now WYFF) out of Greenville, SC.

12:00 AM MIDNIGHT

5 WRAL Raleigh - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
The battleship show on the flagship station. But once WRAL quit taping a local show for Raleigh only in 1973, wrestling got kicked to late at night.

12:45 AM

3 WWAY Wilmington - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle

1:30 AM

10 WIS Columbia (SC) - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
Like the Florence station listed above, this South Carolina station was listed in the North Carolina Edition of TV Guide because a good portion of the southern central part of North Carolina could receive its signal. This was the Mid-Atlantic "A" show taped at WRAL in Raleigh every Wednesday night. Likely had been bumped this late this week because of a sports preemption earlier in the day.

* * *

Thanks to Carroll Hall at the All Star Championship Wrestling website for his assistance with this article.

Originally published on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway September 1, 2018

TV Guide Memories: Wrestling in North Carolina in October 1975

by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

We like to occasionally take a snapshot-look at a Saturday back in the day and see what wrestling was like on TV at the time.

Younger fans may not realize that before all of wrestling moved to cable TV channels, your local channel was where you found your weekly pro wrestling show, and usually always on a Saturday afternoon or evening.

In October of 1975 in the state of North Carolina, all the TV markets in the state aired the local promotion run by Jim Crockett Promotions out of Charlotte. But during this time the Florida show was syndicated broadly in the state as well. This was not an adversarial thing. It was actually another outlet for Jim Crockett Promotions to run spots for shows in that market. JCP ads would run where Florida ads would be seen in the Florida markets.  Stars from Florida would occasionally be booked into Charlotte and more often Greensboro. These included Dusty Rhodes, the Brisco brothers, the Funk brothers, Bill Watts, and others.

Here is a brief run down of all the wrestling on this particular Saturday in October of 1975:

3:00 PM

36 WRET Charlotte - Super Pro Wrestling with Charlie Babb
This independent didn't last long, only about 6 weeks according to our resident wrestling-on-TV expert Carroll Hall. They were using some of the local guys that had worked for Eddie Einhorn's IWA which had all but closed up shop at this point, and was transitioning to a more local group run by Johnny Powers. They taped TV Saturday mornings in the studio of WRET-36, which later became WPCQ and would host the TV taping for Jim Crockett Promotions for a couple of years in the early 1980s.

3:30 PM

11 WTVD Durham - IWA Wrestling
As mentioned above, the Eddie Einhorn's IWA was closing down and transitioning to a group by the same name run by Johnny Powers. The Einhorn show was still on here in Durham, and Carroll Hall remembers that many weeks they would show re-runs because they had no new TV programs taped.

13 WBTW - Florence (SC) - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
This South Carolina station was listed in the North Carolina Edition of TV Guide because a good portion of the southern part of North Carolina could receive its signal. This was the Mid-Atlantic "A" show taped at WRAL in Raleigh every Wednesday night.

4:00 PM

3 WBTV Charlotte - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
Mid-Atlantic Wrestling had replaced the long running "Championship Wrestling" show taped at WBTV and hosted by Big Bill Ward in 1974 when all the Crockett TV tapings were consolidated to WRAL in Raleigh.

8 WGHP High Point/Greensboro - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Les Thatcher
The Mid-Atlantic Wrestling "B" show replaced the long running "Championship Wrestling" show taped at WGHP hosted by Charlie Harville in 1974. This alternate/additional version of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling was taped each Wednesday night at WRAL in Raleigh. All the Crockett TV tapings were consolidated to WRAL in Raleigh at that time.

7:00 PM

12 WCTI New Bern- Championship Wrestling from Florida with Gordon Solie
Bob Bailey reports to Carroll Hall that the Florida show aired on this station during this time period.

28 WRDU Durham - Championship Wrestling from Florida with Gordon Solie
This was outlet for Florida wrestling in Raleigh, Durham, and the Greensboro market as well as the WRDU signal was very strong and penetrated all through the Piedmont area of North Carolina. A few years later, WRDU would replace Florida wrestling with the syndicated version of Georgia Championship Wrestling out of WTCG (later WTBS) channel 17 in Atlanta.

36 WRET Charlotte - Championship Wrestling from Florida with Gordon Solie
As you can see, Florida Wrestling blanketed the Central and Eastern parts of the state of North Carolina during these years.

11:30 PM

13 WLOS Asheville - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Les Thatcher
WLOS-13 was not included in the North Carolina Edition. It was in the Carolina/East Tennessee Edition of TV Guide and included East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and the upstate region of South Carolina. I've included it here to further accurately reflect TV wrestling in the state of North Carolina.

The B show on WLOS with Les Thatcher dominated the rating as night in the Asheville/Greenville/Spartanburg market, sometime getting 60 and 70% shares. Just weeks later, the new Jim Crockett show "Wide World Wrestling" hosted by former Atlanta broadcaster Ed Capral would replace the Mid-Atlantic B show in all of the markets where it aired (including WGHP-8 listed above.) Should point out that the Asheville market got the Mid-Atlantic "A" show with Bob Caudle on WFBC-4 (now WYFF) out of Greenville, SC.

12:00 AM MIDNIGHT

5 WRAL Raleigh - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
The battleship show on the flagship station. But once WRAL quit taping a local show for Raleigh only in 1973, wrestling got kicked to late at night.

12:45 AM

3 WWAY Wilmington - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle

1:30 AM

10 WIS Columbia (SC) - Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling with Bob Caudle
Like the Florence station listed above, this South Carolina station was listed in the North Carolina Edition of TV Guide because a good portion of the southern central part of North Carolina could receive its signal. This was the Mid-Atlantic "A" show taped at WRAL in Raleigh every Wednesday night. Likely had been bumped this late this week because of a sports preemption earlier in the day.

* * *

Thanks to Carroll Hall at the All Star Championship Wrestling website for his assistance with this article.

U.S. Champion Wahoo McDaniel with Rich Landrum (1981)

by Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway

We love images like this from the studio days of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. This has lots to love about it.

First of all, it's U.S.champ Wahoo McDaniel and Rich Landrum doing a local promotional spot for Houston, TX, which was a rare pairing at that moment in time. More about that in a moment. 

U.S. Champion Wahoo McDaniel with World Wide Wrestling host Rich Landrum

Secondly, it is a good shot of Wahoo with the second version of the United States Championship belt, used from 1980-1982. It is distinguished by the Mulkovich-cast main plate in the shape of the U.S. mainland, and also by the black leather strap. (Learn about all five different versions of the Crockett U.S. championship belt in the book "United States Championship.")

Thirdly, the backdrop in this image is the old "Wide World Wrestling" set that was used for that program from 1975-1978. In the fall of 1978, Jim Crockett Promotions had a new set made for the program, and around that same time is when Rich Landrum became host of the show (replacing Tom Miller) and the name of the show changed from "Wide World Wrestling" to "World Wide Wrestling." The old Wide World set was used for local promos only from that point forward, like the one you see taking place with Wahoo here.

This image actually came from a Houston Wrestling program promoting an AWA World title defense by Nick Bockwinkel against challenger Wahoo McDaniel. Jim Crockett Promotions sent in a tape to Houston which featured Landrum and Wahoo talking about the match with Bockwinkel. As an aside, this was one of the fun things that took place on TV back in the territory days. I always loved it when another territory sent a tape in to your home territory promoting a match. This happened frequently with the world champions who would tape an interview in one territory and send it into the next territory where he would appear in a few weeks. In this case it's Crockett sending a tape of the challenger in to Houston for a shot at Bockwinkel's belt, as Houston promoter Paul Boesch was recognizing the AWA's world championship at that time.

When I first saw this image, I knew it was pretty rare because Wahoo was only U.S. champion once when Rich Landrum was still with Jim Crockett Promotions, and for only 20 days at that.

So I checked some wrestling results, and sure enough that AWA title match in Houston took place on Friday, August 14, 1981. Wahoo had defeated Roddy Piper for the U.S. title just six days earlier in Greensboro, NC, on Saturday, August 8, 1981. He would be stripped of the title less than three weeks later as the result of a unorthodox rematch clause Piper had placed in the original contract. A story for another time (but also in the U.S. book!)

So the promotional spot with Landrum and Wahoo threaded the needle of Wahoo's first brief U.S. title reign. Wahoo would win the same title for the second time in May of 1982 from Sgt. Slaughter. Landrum left the company earlier that year.

Interesting to note, too, that this promo was likely taped on Tuesday, August 11 or Wednesday, August 12, at the studios of WPCQ in Charlotte, NC and would have been during only the second week Jim Crockett Promotions taped their wrestling shows in that studio. They had just moved to WPCQ from the channel 5 studios of WRAL in Raleigh one week earlier.

I just love this image. Wahoo is dressed for the golf course and it wouldn't surprise me at all if he squeezed in a round of 18 holes before that taping session.

Thanks to Chris Bryant for passing along the original image to us on our Facebook page. (We dressed it up in our trademark old-school TV set.)

Great memories on the Mid-Atlantic Gateway!

TV Memories: Tony Schiavone and David Crockett

Happy New Year! 

World Championship Wrestling on SuperStation WTBS (1985)