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memories of studio wrestling

C

chris12

Guest
What are some of your memories from the days of pro wrestling in tv studios. For me, one of my fond memories is of the old wrestling shows out at the WTBS 17 studio on Peachtree Street Atlanta. I thought it was neat having the action right there in the studio. Whether it was Georgia Chamopionship Wrestling or Crockett promotions, they always provided great action with Tommy Rich, Ole Anderson, wrestling 1 and 2, Four Horsemen, Dysty Rhodes and the anouncing of Grodon Solie and Freddie Miller Saturdays at 6:05 ET. I believe that studio is now used as warehouse space.
 
Actually, i meant to say the old TBS studio was out on Techwood Drive.
 
i do remember the wrestling show they had, pretty good, if i rememeber right they had roddy piper and the other wrestlers you named. i really like the the wrestling show way back then. another two of my favorite's was southwest championship wrestling out of san antonio,tx and saturday night wrestling from dallas that featured the von erichs. the wwe is not wrestling.
 
...Verne Gagne's AWA was taped at WTCN-TV/11 Minneapolis for decades -- http://www.thedestroyer.com/images/drx9.gif shows Dick "Dr. X" Beyer at the controls of a WTCN camera -- until 1979, when WTCN took over the Twin Cities NBC affiliation and KMSP/9 lost its ABC affiliation to KSTP-TV/5. The AWA then started using KMSP's facilities until the AWA folded eleven years later...
 
Dayton, Ohio TV had several versions of a live in-studio 'rasslin exhibition.

One in the early 60s aptly entitled "Studio Wrestling" was aired for about a year on the former WLWD(now WDTN) Channel 2 and had Dayton's Dean of Sportscasters Omar Williams as host..He did an awesome job...even when he got bullied by "Magnificent Maurice" while promoting the local 'rasslin' card at Troy's Hobart Arena(roughly about 5 years before Hara Arena was built)

The other in the late 60s was "Arena Wrestling" eminating from the studios of the former WKTR-TV (now public station WPTD) when its studios were located in the Cassano's offices on Stroop Rd in Kettering...essentially a live version of the otherwise videotaped "Big Time Wrestling" based out of Michigan. Ernie Roth...without his greasepaint mustache as alter ego "The Weasel"(Sheik's "manager") hosted most of the live episodes usually with his announcer's desk trashed every other week by "The Sheik" or The California Hell's Angels. Bob Finnegan later hosted the program. The program's obviously misleading title was to promote the Friday evening card at Hara. This was the best wrestling program around....lots of slapstick too! (Ironically it came on Friday evenings right after the Three Stooges.)
 
In Los Angeles, televised wrestling mostly took place from the venerable Olympic Auditorium, still standing at 18th & Grand in Downtown L.A., and it's now used mainly for film shoots and is owned by a Korean church.

Among the many ring stars seen were Freddie Blassie (who at one point nearly owned L.A., he was so huge), the Destroyer, Lou Thesz, Don Leo Jonathan, Bobo Brazil, Bearcat Wright, the Torres Brothers, Cowboy Dick Hutton, Gorgeous George, Iron Mike Mazurki, Count Billy Varga, Mr. Moto, the Great Togo, Tricky Ricky Starr, Hard Boiled Hagerty, who acted in films and TV shows under the name H.B. Hagerty, and the midget legend Sky Low Low, among many, many others I could name.

I admit it - I was big fan.

The announcer was the legendary Dick Lane, who created the exclamation "Whoa, Nelly!". Keith Jackson admitted he "borrowed" the phrase from Dick Lane. In an interview after he retired, Lane explained that Nelly was a roller derby skater who once had trouble keeping her balance after being whipped too hard out of the pack in a match he was broadcasting. As she was desperately trying to stay upright and flailing her arms, Lane instinctively said "Whoa, Nelly!", and a catch-phrase was born!

After wrestling moved from KTLA, channel 5 to KCOP, channel 13 around 1971, they stopped televising from the Olympic and moved it to the channel 13 studios on La Brea. The main stars at the time were Blassie (still), Victor Rivera, John (the Golden Greek) Tolos, and a young villian named Roddy Piper, who loved to torment Freddie Blassie.

FYI: KTLA's coverage of wrestling was awarded the very first sports Emmy in 1948.
 
kirkiefan said:
Dayton, Ohio TV had several versions of a live in-studio 'rasslin exhibition.

One in the early 60s aptly entitled "Studio Wrestling" was aired for about a year on the former WLWD(now WDTN) Channel 2 and had Dayton's Dean of Sportscasters Omar Williams as host..He did an awesome job...even when he got bullied by "Magnificent Maurice" while promoting the local 'rasslin' card at Troy's Hobart Arena(roughly about 5 years before Hara Arena was built)

The other in the late 60s was "Arena Wrestling" eminating from the studios of the former WKTR-TV (now public station WPTD) when its studios were located in the Cassano's offices on Stroop Rd in Kettering...essentially a live version of the otherwise videotaped "Big Time Wrestling" based out of Michigan. Ernie Roth...without his greasepaint mustache as alter ego "The Weasel"(Sheik's "manager") hosted most of the live episodes usually with his announcer's desk trashed every other week by "The Sheik" or The California Hell's Angels. Bob Finnegan later hosted the program. The program's obviously misleading title was to promote the Friday evening card at Hara. This was the best wrestling program around....lots of slapstick too! (Ironically it came on Friday evenings right after the Three Stooges.)
Click to expand...

I remember "Arena Wrestling" with the Hells Angels shoving a cocanut cream pie in Barry Lillis' face while doing a live commercial for a local supermarket........and Thunderbolt Patterson doing a Moe Howard-type manuver poking his two index fingers at his opponent's adams apple...Funny!!! Thunderbolt was booed by the studio audience but I loved the way he spoke late 1960s jive! (hey, it was his trademark)

Bobi Brazil,Haystacks Calhoun,Iron Mike Loren, Kojika, Mighty Igor,Guy "The Stomper" Mitchell, Jack "The Rebel" Murdock,"Wild Bull" (and son "Flyin Fred") Curry Baron Von Rashke and I can go on all day. Them dudes make me laugh when I was a kid!
 
KML-224 said:
WMC-TV (NBC) channel 5 of Memphis has had a show at their studios for years.
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For a long time NOTHING came before rasslin' on WMC. Any kid's shows that were on NBC at the same time were dropped, and when NBC carried early Major League Baseball games, they would be joined in progress after rasslin' was over. ::)

And yes, Memfus Rasslin' still exists on WLMT CW 30 in the same time slot on late Saturday mornings.
 
For two years Freedom Communications' Lansing,Michigan's ABC/CW station WLAJ was the studio home of the revival of BIG TIME WRESTLING (run by Ed Farhat's sons Ed And Tom) and it was amazing to see folks like Balls Mahoney, Kevin Sullivan, Disco Inferno,Mr. Hughes and some faces of the future like Jimmy Jacobs, Chris Sabin, Monty brown and Sabu!

The one thing was just how unpredicatble the show was...especially if a wrestler lost, one such wrestler was the champion, until he lost during a TV Taping, and he got so mad he ripped out the cable from the Hand Held camera
 
WCPO-TV, Channel 9, in Cincinnati had "Big Time Wrestling" beginning in 1958. In 1958 and 1959, the station held live matches right in its large studio complete with a small number of fans on hand. The show first appeared on Saturday nights following the late news. Colin Male of the WCPO-TV staff was the ringside announcer. A short time later, Male left the station to work in California and Ken Linn took over those duties. Linn had been a longtime radio and then TV announcer in both Cincinnati and Indianapolis. The shows later moved to Friday nights after the late news. Wrestlers came from the Jim Barnett promotion out of Indianapolis. Among them were: Wilbur Snyder, Angelo Poffo and his manager Bronco Lubich, Dick the Bruiser, Johnny Weaver, The Shire Brothers (Roy Shire and Ray Stevens) and Boris Volkoff (Francis Edward Zela) and Nicoli Volkoff (Steve Gobb) as The Volkoff Brothers. The program was sponsored by Rinks Bargain City, area discount stores featuring The Bargain City Kid (Hy Ullner) and Willie Thall. At times, the two pitchmen for Rinks would be subjected to threats from the heel grapplers. Matches and incidents in the TV studio helped promote matches at the nearby Cincinnati Gardens.

By late 1959, the local studio matches ended. These were replaced by matches from Indianapolis picked up by Channel 9, first live and then later on video tape. For a period of time, the show was on WKRC-TV, Channel 12. The shows featured some of the same wrestlers along with the introduction of new ones. When this occured, Rinks Bargain City remained the sponsor and commercials were done live from the studios during breaks in the feeds from Indianapolis. It also gave time for local interviews with wrestlers to promote matches at the Gardens. It also was the opportunity for inter-action between the wrestlers and The Bargain City Kid and Thall. Among other things, this involved a heel wrestler breaking the the rod of a rod & reel that was on sale at the store or another heel being threatened from entering the set by starting a power lawn mower (again, an item shown as being sold at Rinks). For a time, Thall was replaced by Bob Shreve who joined forces with The Kid. By 1964, the station started showing video tapes of matches from the Detroit-based promotion of Ed Farhat (The Sheik) and using breaks from those to do the Rinks commercials and local interviews with the wrestlers to promote Gardens matches. This lasted to the end of the 1960's.
 
I remember Pittsburgh Championship Wrestling on Channel 11...Bill Cardille hosted but, beleive it or not Vince Mcmahon was there for awhile...Former pro wrestler Antonino Rocca co-hosted. Used to watch Bruno Samartino, Superstar Billy Graham, Ivan "The Polish Hammer" Putski and Dominck Dinucci.
 
In the Maritimes, Grand Prix Wrestling was done out of ATV Moncton for many years (ATV is still in the same buidling, but with centralcasting out of Halifax, they're not using as much of their buidling with part of it used by the regional milk marketing agency). In the last few years of its TV run, they changed over to TV tapings at the Cocagne (NB) Arena (near their home base) and at least one taping at the Amherst (NS) Stadium (Amherst is about 40 min from Moncton) :)
 
2MANYHATS said:
I remember Pittsburgh Championship Wrestling on Channel 11...Bill Cardille hosted but, beleive it or not Vince Mcmahon was there for awhile...Former pro wrestler Antonino Rocca co-hosted. Used to watch Bruno Samartino, Superstar Billy Graham, Ivan "The Polish Hammer" Putski and Dominck Dinucci.
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Ah, yes, Studio Wrestling with Chilly Billy Cardille. Wedged into a studio in the old Channel 11 building in Fineview.
We kids all kept writing trying to get free tickets. Also featured ex-Pittsburgh Pirate great Pie Traynor, who could never get his lines right when he read that ad for American Heating.
 
2MANYHATS said:
I remember Pittsburgh Championship Wrestling on Channel 11...Bill Cardille hosted but, beleive it or not Vince Mcmahon was there for awhile...Former pro wrestler Antonino Rocca co-hosted. Used to watch Bruno Samartino, Superstar Billy Graham, Ivan "The Polish Hammer" Putski and Dominck Dinucci.
Click to expand...

...sounds like Vince Jr. got sent on one of his woodshedding gigs by his WWWF-owner Dad ;-) ...
 
...CFTO-TV/9 Toronto housed the production for the Toronto and Detroit NWA offices (Ed "The Sheik" Farhat, owner and star) for quite a spell, too...
 
I remember, in the late '60s, turning the corner in one of the narrow hallways of the WTCG W. Peachtree studios and almost breaking my nose on Andre the Giant's chest. (He looked down at me and said, "Sorry.")

But, in the early 60's, I switched on channel 11 one Saturday evening and saw Ed Capral, the host of "Live Atlanta Wrestling", doing an interview with Freddie Blassie - apparently the only wrestler who was not a pencil-neck geek - and I was hooked. I mean, I didn't know this tribe of people ever existed.

So, a bunch of school buddies and I started going to the wrestling matches at the old Atlanta Municipal Auditorium on some Friday nights. At first it was to watch the matches; then to watch the people who went to the matches (I never knew dear old grandmothers to have such vengeance.). It was at one of these matches when I was close to the ring and saw Sputnik Monroe take out a little capsule of red stuff that looked like blood and dab it all over his forehead while the other wrestler was strutting around diverting the audience's and referee's attention (He later got up off the mat with newfound energy and proceeded to clobber the other guy, even though he had lost so much blood. ;D).

At that point, I began to have a little doubt in my mind as to whether or not the matches were real. :D (I think it was the grandmothers that kept me coming back.)
 
Weren't some of the announcers also station employees? From what I understand Dave Brown was a weatherman at WMC as was Bob Cauudle at WRAL. I also believe Freddie Miller was a staff announcer at channel 17 at one point.
 
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