19 - Wrestling is Work, part 2 - The National Wrestling Alliance vs Labour Rights

Transcript

Speaker: camera Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Wonder Camera. Are you ready to rumble? That's boxing. We're getting sued for that.

Speaker: What? Yeah, that that's boxing. Let's get ready to rumble. Actually, ah what happened is that ah Michael... God, who is that? ah Buffer. michael Michael Buffer has actually ah trademarked that. i don't think it's working anymore. But he was hired by WCW, the top competitor to WWF at the time in the 90s, to do the Are You Ready to Rumble?

Speaker: and But this was a boxing call, and he was famous as calling it for boxing matches, but because it was a pre-fight call, it was briefly used in wrestling. However, I will still give you a a D on that wrestling reference because it's really a boxing reference.

Speaker: Well... Also, he's he's quite litigious. Dave, don't sue me. I'm just kidding. If you want to sue Jen, contact at thewondercamera.ca. But I don't read those emails because too afraid of criticism. Yeah. So it'll just go back to Tracy and Dave.

Speaker: i'm But it's a great introduction, Dave, because I had no idea about that. Of course, I'm a dilettante. So I assumed Let's Get Ready to Rumble was pure, unadulterated wrestling, but it's not. We are the Wonder Camera. We are three dilettantes who are sometimes experts, like my friend Dave Powell and Tracy Anderson Powell. Don't even get to say my own name. here with... I know, but... Okay, say your own name. I'm here with... Dave Powell.

Speaker: And we're here to continue Dave's delightful tale of wrestle wrestling mania. Is that a thing? ah Wrestling mania? Oh, well, you have some kind of wrestling mania, I think. ah There was a a meme I quite like, which is where ah the writer says, as a child, I was a gigantic fan of w WWE.

Speaker: But now, with my bipolar diagnosis, it is I who must wrestle mania. but Brilliant. And I bring this up because you're clearly an expert. You're not even a dilettante in this, Dave. i am.

Speaker: i actually thought Riddled to Rumble was from wrestling. How dare i Dave's the fount of knowledge here. Well, i'm a I'm an enthusiastic fan, but let me put it this way. I know enough to know how much I don't know, which does indicate a level of expertise. It does. And I don't know a lot. But wrestling, that is the bedrock of your marriage, so...

Speaker: You better know. Yeah. better know Nothing without wrestling. It's true. It is. It's true. And on that note, where are we at today? Where did we wrap up last time? Where did we go? we ended at the end of the 1930s, moving into the 1940s, as I went through a a historical overview of wrestling where Which was leading to the point of why and did wrestlers never get a union?

Speaker: Some of you may ask, Dave, you've barely talked about unions at all. What's the deal? To which I say, shut up and let me cook you jackals, you fiends. Everyone is saying Dave always needs to be talking about unions. When Dave's not talking about unions, we've got to be saying, why isn't Dave talking about unions? Anyone who's met me will know that not case. then check his pulse. I know.

Speaker: We're moving out of the nineteen thirty s into the 40s. And for this period, we're going to focus on the Midwest, a little less than New York, which was sort of the center point of most of our discussions.

Speaker: Wrestling was down down during the war for obvious reasons, but it was still good business. And business was goodest in St. Louis or St. Louis ah under promoter Tom Pax. Pax had transformed St. Louis into a wrestling juggernaut and could pull in crowds of 10,000 to the envy of everyone.

Speaker: Tom Pax was also a notable asshole. Well... He was a wrestling promoter. There seem to be a lot of these. I know, I'm like, well, straight line from him to Vince McMahon. Not quite, but we are going to start talking about that straight line very shortly.

Speaker: Pax had a rough wrestling syndicate, basically a network of deals with nearby promotions, sort of spanning the area and going up into Canada with Toronto and Montreal. He was also in charge of booking the National Wrestling Association title, the championship set by state athletic commissioners, to try and clean up the problem of 80 million people claiming to be world champion.

Speaker: Having a promoter with strong regional self-interest is not a good way to do this. He was a heavily influential with his own state athletic commission, and I cannot stress how much any business wants the regulator in their pocket.

Speaker: Under Pax was Orville Brown, the hottest talent at the time, who was this sort of right mix of dynamic, relatable, good wrestler. Midwesterners love the dude. Normally, I don't think of hottest and the name Orville in the same sentence, but hey...

Speaker: There was no sluttier name. Orville Redenbacher. It's because the Orvilles I can think of are Redenbacher. Right. Right. In the 1940s, Orville was the sluttiest name anybody could have.

Speaker: Woo. So. I guess there's Orville Peck. Yeah. See? I mean. Also, ah yeah with an incredibly slutty name and persona. I love Orville Peck. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: So Brown got sick of PAX bullshit and went into business for himself. Now, in wrestling, that is actually a slang for unintentionally or intentionally sabotaging the card within your own self-interest.

Speaker: In Brown's case, he did this literally after capturing the Midwest Association title. He split from PAX and partnered with the promoter to just run the territory. So Orville was the champion and kind of the promoter and sort of the booker, which is sort of frowned upon. stuath Some state athletic commissions outright barred it. So he kept it on the down low.

Speaker: So Orville splits from Tom Pax and what happens next gets complicated. So buckle in.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: Virag goes to Iowa and promoter Pinky George goes, Gadzooks, what a great name. And as Virag heads off, Pinky George declares this guy, Ray Steele, the National Wrestling Alliance champion, which is distinct from the National Wrestling Alliance that Brown just started with Billy Sandow and his brother, Max. So now we have the National Wrestling Association, the National Wrestling Alliance, and then the other National Wrestling Alliance. NWA. Confused? Yes. I was like, that's a bunch of words, Dave.

Speaker: Good. P&Ps and alliances and wrestling. The short version is there are three NWAs. Yep. ah Yeah. there's the On purpose. On purpose. Yes. There's the one which is run by state athletic commissioners in a failed attempt to declare a single world champion.

Speaker: There is one which is named very similarly in order to, I think, just get some of that grease on it. run by Orville Brown and Billy Sandow, who used to manage Ed Stetcher, sorry, Strangler Lewis of the Gold Dust Trio. And then Pinky George, yeah who is running out of Des Moines, goes, I love the name National Wrestling Alliance. I'm going to declare my own champion in the newspapers despite him not having beat anybody.

Speaker: You know, it it baffles me the degree to which in this world you can just say stuff. You can just say shit. It's all. You can just say stuff. It's all the work. You just make stuff up. Yeah. Yep.

Speaker: You can say stuff. You can come up with your own new identity. And it's like nobody can stop. So I'm the wrestling champion right now. I can just say it. but I'll put in the paper, though. I'll try get some of the newspaper to put that next Festivus. I am pinning Jen and taking the title.

Speaker: No. Fair enough. You said it. Now, this actually works out all right because Orville Brown didn't seem to mind what Pinky George was up to and in fact toured into his territory. And Pinky George was a newer promoter who was very enthusiastic. And he saw these dudes could make money together.

Speaker: So Pinky George got the and NWA title. his NWA title onto Orville Brown, which kind of unified those two national wrestling alliances.

Speaker: And Brown ah starts making a bunch of money in Des Moines with Pinky George. And what they're starting to build is a kind of a wrestling syndicate. Meanwhile, Tom Pax is kind of the major regional guy, and they all hate Tom Pax.

Speaker: So more promoters start joining on. Tony Stetcher is the next one to show up, and he's the brother of Joe Stetcher, who I talked about a decent amount last episode, who was this supernaturally, well, not supernaturally, um just gifted athlete. ah who unfortunately was plagued by mental health issues. And his brother, Tony, managed him, took care of him, kind of kept his life stable. and But unfortunately, Joe had a major breakdown and was hospitalized for the rest of his life.

Speaker: And Tony would visit him regularly and even bring in people to wrestle. And although Joe was a shell of a man, he was still one of the greatest legitimate wrestlers ever.

Speaker: And his mind would like snap into old skills and he could like stretch anybody who showed up, even if they were young and very talented. So this like genuinely like fallen apart guy in his late 40s would just immediately take out this, you know, hot upcoming 25 year old. And that was sort of one of the ways they, you know gave him some better quality of life. But the end, Joe's end was pretty sad.

Speaker: And, you know, you were describing that. I'm imagining a man in his 70s. You said he's his late 40s and he's a shell. Yeah. Because this is how rough this trade is. And again, how rough a complete mental breakdown is. We're not sure what the diagnosis was because this was an asylum in the 40s. Yeah, his his mind just shattered and it was not an easy business, even with his brother taking care of him.

Speaker: Mm hmm.

Speaker: but then the most vital piece of this comes when back to tom pax in st louis his right hand quits and we introduce sam muchchnik who is going to be very important sam decides screw you buddy he feels ah he was cheated out of some money he's going to compete directly against pacs in st louis And he runs afoul of the State Athletic Commission, who is the regulator that issues promoter licenses. And Tom Pax is best friends with the State Athletic Commission. And they block out Sam Muchnick.

Speaker: Sam actually goes to multiple court injunctions to get his wrestling promotion started because the athletic commission is clearly kind of crooked at this point. There's a brief break as much Nick goes overseas for World War Two because that's going on during all of this. Right. Yes, it is. And then he settles back and gets his territory up and running.

Speaker: And because everybody hates Tom Pax, they're loaning talent to Muchnick. And he's tapped into this Pinky George, Orville Brown, these other people. So these ah collaboration of promoters. And then there's one where Tom Pax is a kind of dictator working with other promoters to trade talent around.

Speaker: All of this takes place over the 1940s, and it leads us to a meeting. But it's an important meeting because you'll notice in all of this chaos about promoters, I'm not talking about meetings a lot.

Speaker: So a few promoters had created a boxing syndicate because boxing is another rabbit hole that's probably twice as deep. I'm not touching it. But they created their own boxing syndicate. And Pinky George calls a symposium in Waterloo, Iowa, July 1948.

Speaker: The attendees were Pinky George, Max Clayton, Orville Brown, Sam Muchnick, and then a stand-in for Tony Stetcher. This meeting settles their bullshit and then cements the National Wrestling Alliance as a real thing.

Speaker: Just one of them. Just one NWA. Well, technically, the National Wrestling Association exists, and this is going to go into competition with it. But the National Wrestling wrestling Association?

Speaker: Oh, that's not confusing. Oh, God. Well, it's WWF, and they had to go w WWE because the wildlife. I'm for wildlife in that case. There is a great picture or t-shirt of the WWF panda. Oh, with the chair? Holding it. yes i'm holding Awesome.

Speaker: Yep. and Yeah, I want that. they And the key difference here is the National Wrestling Association is regulators. It's government regulation establishing who the world champion is.

Speaker: The National Wrestling Alliance, who's formed of people who are sick of dealing with government regulators saying, fuck you, we're going to set the world champion. So it's going into competition competition with what's established by the government and governments because it's all at state level.

Speaker: classic tale of industry trying to regulate itself bingo let me guess it's probably not gonna work is it well i guess we'll find out you'd be surprised so mean it gone works in that you make a bunch of money does it work in not hurting and killing people Well, ah in in the latter, well, let's just say that's not in their interest. ah They love.

Speaker: ah Well, it's true They love making money, ah hurting and killing people. Yeah. Secondary, whatever. Casualty business. They still like it, but it's not their main. It's not the raison d'etre, but, you know, consequence of doing business. So ra here's the thing that of event really matters about this meeting.

Speaker: Prior to this, promoters were all setting up ah handshake deals and these networks of different ah negotiat like negotiated deals for talent sharings that have talent under contract, loan them out. And it was a huge mess. They always betrayed each other.

Speaker: And nothing ever lasted. There were like two wrestling trusts. There was the one I spoke about last episode as well as a second one in the 1930s. But they were relatively short lived and the promoters could never keep it together for very long.

Speaker: They just all were competing too seriously. The NWA recognized something really fundamental, which is that if they were in different territories, they were not in competition. They were in symbiosis.

Speaker: They could cooperate. And importantly, they could agree to a set of rules. So they set a charter rather than just a bunch of handshake deals by these gangster like promoters. And the charter has a bunch of rules in it. i'm going to list a few key ones here because these will matter.

Speaker: Run your territory as you please, and nobody pays booking fees to each other. yeah We're supposed to share talent, and we have to collaborate to stop outside invasion of any member.

Speaker: Meaning, fundamentally, if this is your territory and somebody else shows up, we're going to group together and help you protect your territory. Hmm. Interesting. There is one heavyweight and one junior heavyweight champion.

Speaker: Never going to talk about the junior heavyweight champion, but there's always one going on. Neither gets more than the usual 10% of the gate. So there's a pay cap set. And the champions must also put up their own money in escrow to ensure that they respect the title, meaning that ah in order to become the NWA champion, you have to give ah the promoters a bunch of money in trust.

Speaker: Because that way, you're not going to say refuse to lose or take a booking because they've got some money and you get the money back when you're done as champion. It's all majority vote. No consensus.

Speaker: The 10% the champ gets is for the champ. nobody can take any ah Nobody can take additional fees out of the champion after that 10%. The champion must be fairly allotted among all the territories, no playing favorites so that Orville Brown is obviously going to be their champion. He needs to share his time across the ah mostly this is Missouri, Iowa, Ohio, that kind of area.

Speaker: He doesn't just stay in and in Des Moines so he can make Pinky George all the money is the top draw. He has to move around. And the organization will police wrestling. If a wrestler is out of line number and a promoter suspends them, the rest of us uphold the suspension.

Speaker: This was revolutionary. I cannot stress how it completely and permanently changed the wrestling business. because they wrote it down. This is a basic rule of governance and organizing where you need some bureaucracy.

Speaker: You don't need too much, but without some bureaucracy, nothing is going to work. You have to, like, have documents, charters, minutes, votes. You have to. hu And I say this as a dyed-in-the-wool anarchist.

Speaker: A good anarchist is a good bureaucrat. So... gotta join my team. Team Commie, Dave. We're all about bureaucracy. Oh, well, we'll have a argument about that like of at a later time, Stalinist. So I'm avoiding. I'm not a Stalinist. I'm a Marxist. Robespierre. Fair information.

Speaker: You should see the expression on my face. OK, um we'll park that. That will be a different podcast. It'll be the great Jen and Dave debate over political ideology. um That one I'm hoping to put off for as long as possible because I like you and you're my friend. Excellent. And you know what? It's our flaws that make us beautiful.

Speaker: that's right So that's why i embrace your flaws and find you beautiful. So six weeks after anyway six weeks after the NWA is founded, Tom Pax, he's done with wrestling. He'd been ruined not by the competition, but because of some bad investments. He just capitalisted ah too hard.

Speaker: So he sells his territory to a team within it that includes his own top wrestler, Lou Fez. Is this a name familiar to either of you? yeah. Yes. Okay. Tracy knows a little bit more about wrestling. but Obviously, she's seen more of it.

Speaker: Lou Fez is the biggest name in wrestling prior to the Lou Fez? F-E-Z? P-H-E-S-Z.

Speaker: Okay, thank you. That helps. Well, Frank Gotch was the first true national wrestling star, and Jim Londos was the first major draw. It was Lou Thez who defined what it meant to be a champion. He was a proper Midwest boy, and he came up learning the dying art of catch wrestling. So Thez was born in 1916, I think. I didn't write it down. And catch wrestling was kind of going out in 1916, but he learns it.

Speaker: but he learns it Meaning that he is in this generation where almost everyone he's facing is not a legitimate wrestler. They are athletes who are trained to become professional wrestlers. That means that Fez is a hooker.

Speaker: He can protect himself against a double cross, which we saw multiple times last episode. hmm. Fez was every promoter's dream wrestler because he was loyal and he was tireless.

Speaker: John Cena might be the modern wrestler who could match Luthez for being the ideal employee, although wrestlers are not technically employees. Rant for a later episode.

Speaker: up But John Cena was famous as putting in unbelievable work nonstop, tirelessly. He did 80 billion make-a-wishes. He did every media promotion, and he wrestled, and he wrestled, and he wrestled, and he never complained.

Speaker: But Luthez was also, unlike John Cena, an unbelievable in-ring competitor. ah Bret Hart or Bryan Danielson are in his league in terms of raw in-ring skill. He is considered a legitimate contender for the best wrestler to have ever lived.

Speaker: Really? Luthez, very big deal. But from the 1950s and wrestling, I'll get into the mythologizing of things in a bit. But this means that Luthez was the NWA champion in St. Louis.

Speaker: association champion and Orville Brown was the NWA alliance champion also in St. Louis. So there's two NWA titles in St. Louis at the same time. And the fans, ah if you're in the modern world of the smart fan, this is the kind of thing we would salivate for.

Speaker: In the 1950s, the fans were just confused and pissed off. How can there be two? What are you talking about? They just didn't know what the hell was going on. They go to see the NWA champion and like, who's this Orville Brown asshole that was here to see Thez?

Speaker: So Thez was a good promoter and a hell of a wrestler, but he was just out-politicked. He did not have the time to play the games that ah his opponents did, and particularly Sam Muchnick was a very savvy political operator.

Speaker: So promoters around the country see this alliance come up and just laugh at it because this shit always fails. And the NWA grows. The NWA even gets Thez's own top heel to jump ship. ah Nature Boy, Buddy Rogers, a bleach blonde, arrogant heel and exceptional wrestler whose gimmick was genuinely handed to Ric Flair decades later.

Speaker: I was going to say, didn't just... No, it was genuinely handed to Ric Flair in 1978 rather than most wrestlers just steal gimmicks outright. No, yeah Nature Boy gave it to the next Nature Boy.

Speaker: And both of them were, I'd say, like good fits for this entire thing, which is an arrogant asshole who is also an incredibly gifted wrestler. I see no indication how Ric Flair is any good with nature at all. It's like, Ric, take my precious wrestling thong. It is yours now. Now you must take on the mantle of nature, boy. It was a robe, actually.

Speaker: I like the idea that it's a thong and that wrestlers don't ah don't wrestle in frunks. They wrestle in thongs with their whole ass hanging out. Well, yeah, I don't know. I don't know the lingo. I'm just going with what's on the system. I think you know what a thong is. I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. Well, I do. It's a wrestling thong. Just cheek clapping all night long. This could be such a business.

Speaker: I'd actually watch it more. So, I'm just kidding. Probably not. ah there are There have been wrestlers who have wrestled in a thong, but that's a ah different story. Fez is... Next episode. Grannies loved it. That's why my granny, great granny, watched wrestling. Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Clap and cheeks? Just clap and cheeks? So to the thunderous applause of the wrestlers' asses, Thez realizes that he's done. you ah he He's losing this fight. And so he sets the deal for the territories to merge. And this establishes the NWA versus the NWA unification title. Because one of the key things about the athletic missions...

Speaker: is because they're very sympathetic to the promotion that Thez is now running. They just want consistency, and that's the entire reason they existed. So if it's that NWA instead of our NWA, they don't really care. Imagine if you showed up at a show thinking it was one NWA and it turned out to be the other one. Well, there were three at one point. What the hell? I'd be so annoyed. That must have happened.

Speaker: It must have. Oh, genuinely. This is why fans were pissed off, right? So this massive marquee match to unify and NWA titles between two major wrestlers would be the best match ever, except that Orville Brown got in a massive ass car accident.

Speaker: He survived, but his wrestling career was over. Really? yep And so the NWA, trying to grow and solidify itself, had another big conference. And they said, well, Luthez is the obvious champion.

Speaker: The title goes on Luthez and the consolidated NWA is across the Midwest and they're set. And this kicks off what is commonly called to as the wrestling golden age.

Speaker: Not the or 90s. Wrestling goes through boom and bust periods and it's called the golden age. But you could say there's multiple golden ages. I'd say we're in one right now. The NWA worked like none other. And I mean, worked as in, well, worked in all um senses ah of the meaning and other promoters wanted in.

Speaker: More and more joined either either as dues paying members or affiliates. Everyone followed the rules and the world champion toured, was shared around, and soon the NWA within a couple of years was coast to coast.

Speaker: Starting with six promoters, it had 21 territories by 1950. h While Pinky George was the dealmaker who got this all started, Sam Muchnick could operate a governance board above everybody else and was the president 1950.

Speaker: Although there were holdout promotions throughout the and NWA's run, at its peak, it controlled almost all wrestling in the United States, Canada, and Mexico. Oh, wow. This was fantastic for fans. The matches were better because when you consolidate like this, the top stars are then shared and travel around.

Speaker: So your regional hero suddenly gets to face Luthez and you get to see some of the best wrestling you've ever seen in your life. So the events are just better. Yeah. that'd be pretty sweet. The golden age of wrestling saw the rise of major famous territories that live on in the hearts of wrestling fans today. Many of which still exist.

Speaker: Klondike wrestling starts in Edmonton, Stu Hart, and then moves to Calgary and becomes stampede wrestling. Uh, EMLL now CMLL out of Mexico city. Uh, had started in the thirties, but then joins in the 1950s.

Speaker: Capital wrestling in New York with their brilliant promoter, Vincent McMahon, the father of Vince McMahon jr. Uh, Oh. And ah Jim Crockett promotions in Carolina, which was the home territory of wrestlers like Ric Flair and Dusty Rhodes. It goes on and on.

Speaker: This was the advent also of television in every house. That changes everything. Right. vital part of why wrestling is so damn successful is it's cheap to put on TV. Right. Right. Yep. The amount of money to produce a wrestling event.

Speaker: And that includes booking an arena, getting all the staff there, shooting off a bunch of pyro and doing all the all the ballyhoo is still cheaper than it is for an hour of scripted programming.

Speaker: Interesting. ah So wrestling... When you're bringing in revenue, if you have an audience well. That's exactly it. And so wrestling shows up in television sets everywhere. And this also exposes people who don't want to see wrestling to wrestling.

Speaker: And this is where, although wrestling was always considered disdainful, and the earliest newspaper accounts are of people sort of treating it as, and we'll talk more about this later, um just distasteful, just like beneath us, lowbrow and low class. It's really when the lip curling and the sneering at wrestling, it really kicks off in the 1950s. I mean, and you can kind of see why that makes sense. And the fact that it is starting off as like a working class sort of. Oh, yeah.

Speaker: sport pastime. And so when it gains in popularity, it's seen as like, well, and they're, they're starting to blade now and it's violent and it's crass. And my God, the racial stereotypes they're using and everything. And yeah, no wrestling has always had a very, very low brow element to it, which I'm never going to shy away from. And yeah it is what it is. Yeah, is exactly. And it is, i think fundamentally a kind of, uh, working people's kind of entertainment. Mm-hmm. And it's also very broad, right? Which is where it borrows from those older traditions of theater, like melodrama or like a British panto has a lot in common with wrestling, um which ah for those who don't know, is a tradition of a kind of sort of working people's theater that is a

Speaker: Retelling usually of like children's Christmas stories with a lot of drag and audience participation and broad, obvious jokes and people redoing the same bits over and over. And it's very fun because you're participating. That's very similar to wrestling in my mind.

Speaker: h But it's not classy. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So this was also the first rush of gimmicks that really transcended wrestling into the mainstream. Chief among them was Gorgeous George.

Speaker: Have you heard this name, Jen? Ugly, ugly man. I'm just kidding. I don't know know. He looks like. So he plucked the idea of being ostentatious and quaffed from another wrestler and took it to the extreme.

Speaker: So George walked out with elaborate bleach blonde hair held together with Georgie pins while his valet disinfected the ring and referee's hands with challne Chanel number 10, which is twice as good. That is funny. Like that is good.

Speaker: Gorgeous George was hilarious. He was a true motor mouth and invented catchphrase after catchphrase. My favorite being, get your filthy hands off me. but I like this guy. want to see him wrestle. Gorgeous George was incredible. um he He was the first wrestler to really mainstream queer coding as a way to get hated by fans, but was beloved by the industry, and his fingerprints are all over modern wrestling. Muhammad Ali directly credits developing his patter to watching Gorgeous George. Oh, wow. And although the gimmick is entirely unrelated, if you want a wrestler who talks any ah better than anyone else and turns the industry on its head, I think MJF in All Elite Wrestling, ah who Jen has never heard of, but I'm a big fan, is probably the best modern descendant of how important Gorgeous George was. Although the elaborate, coiffed, queer-coded gimmick has shown up in a million other wrestlers like Chief Among them gold Dust.

Speaker: So other major names at the time were whipppo Whipper Billy Watson, a working class hero of Toronto and perhaps the first great Canadian pro wrestler, although Don Eagle is also there. In New York, Antonin Oroka, or I'm not sure if it's Rocco or Roca. I think they called him Rocca.

Speaker: They also called him Argentina, was wildly popular with the huge Latino population of New York and used an acrobatic barefoot style leagues ahead of its time that also pissed off other contemporary wrestlers in a trend of every single outgoing generation of wrestlers thinks the next generation don't look legitimate and they're too theatrical and need to bring it back to basics.

Speaker: Every next generation thinks the next young guy is too frivolous. Every time. People who are... It's like you guys, you're you're wrestling here. Come on Your name is Gorgeous George. You're Jake the Snake. We can chill out a little bit. That's exactly it So this was a boom period like another and another another for wrestling. And I'm going to talk about a couple of controversies that go through this.

Speaker: and the In its early days of the NWA forming, the rules were a little less clear. People didn't always respect them quite well. And this leads to a famous incident called the Chicago Short Count. So we've got three promotions.

Speaker: Al Haft in Ohio, NWA member. Fred Kohler in Chicago, NWA member. And then Fred Schwartz, also in Chicago, not an AW member because he was too lowbrow for wrestling.

Speaker: Oh, wow. Hmm. Schwartz loved the shocking and outrageous and scandalous to entertain the crowd, like the Jerry Springer of wrestling. Okay. Wrestlers would show up doing knockoffs of famous gimmicks. So it would be the equivalent of someone showing up being Hunk Hogan at a local promotion in Boyle or something. Oh, my God. Sounds good.

Speaker: He'd do freak show human oddities, fake ethnic characters doing the most racist things you could possibly imagine. And there's a whole history of this. I'm not touching in this episode, but extensive use of little people, which was a whole thing in wrestling and still is.

Speaker: And ah one of the NWA rules is no women, no midgets. Well, fuck them. Yeah, there was and the whole women thing. That'll be the next episode ah because there's a whole history there.

Speaker: So Fred Kohler is losing his damn mind because Al Haft and the other NWA promotions are helping out Schwartz, who's not an and NWA member. So Schwartz is getting NWA talent and it's helping his competition in the same city with NWA wrestlers, which is directly against the entire point of the NWA. hmm.

Speaker: So this leads to a massive match that Kohler, the NWA guy in Chicago, is doing where he is using a wrestler who is contracted to Al Haft.

Speaker: So again, Al Haft, NWA member, is sending talent to Kohler's competition. Kohler's not happy with Haft. But nonetheless, he's still using some talent. And a guy, Chief Don Eagle, ah arrives. And a Chief Don Eagle was Cherokee. Well, that's good. Yeah.

Speaker: My mistake. He was not Cherokee. My mistake. Oh, no. I misread. Mohawk. ah But he played up his indigenous heritage as much as you can possibly imagine. yeah He was wildly popular andag and again, worked for Al Haft.

Speaker: Don Eagle has a huge match against Gorgeous George, who at this point was a regional star, but TV hadn't quite exploded, which is really where Gorgeous George took off. So he's an up-and-comer.

Speaker: Don Eagle is almost undefeated, like 150 straight wins. George is going to get steamrolled here. That is everyone's assumption. right It's a best-of-three falls match, and it gets weird.

Speaker: So George wins the first pin, which is normal. He'll win the first pin, and then Eagle will make a big comeback with two pins. And then Eagle looks like he chases somebody off camera because this is filmed. And then it cuts back to the ring.

Speaker: Then during a grappling sequence, Eagle's got his shoulders on the mat for a second. And then the referee counts three with one shoulder clearly up on camera. This horrible.

Speaker: obviously rigged and the fans yeah of course lose it they begin pelting the ring with whatever they have while Don Eagle loses his goddamn mind and tries to kill the referee before the ref is scooted through the ropes and runs away around 5,000 fans trash the building and there's multiple arrests including Don Eagle for disorderly conduct ah Wow. OK. Wow. And so Don Eagle was what's called the A.W.A., which is a pre which is a different title than what would later become a different A.W.A.

Speaker: You don't care about a wrestling fan listening might. Although the world title changed hands, it's not seen and mentioned at all in the video. The commentary is dubbed afterwards and it's all just confusing. So they don't mention a title being really changing hands. And everyone leaves claiming to be the AWA champion, which means that the title is diminished in value.

Speaker: Don Eagle is ah diminished in value as a wrestler. And Al Haft, the guy of books Don Eagle, suddenly has damaged goods. In a later Justice Department hearing, Fred Kohler admitted to all of this. And what's gone down is the first wrestling screw job.

Speaker: A term for a promoter tricking a wrestler into a public loss of their title without the wrestler being warned in advance. Right. Yeah. Kohler thought that Don Eagle was too full of himself, unreliable and demanding unreasonable perks. But mostly he just wanted to hurt Al Haft.

Speaker: If Haft was going to do business with an outlaw promotion and double cross an and NWA member, he's going to take out his top talent. Quote, they hurt me. So when I gave them Don Eagle back, he wasn't worth anything to them.

Speaker: That's pretty brutal. because that's a yeah that a guy's whole career. Don Eagle was being groomed to face Luthez, and he's not the name anyone remembers from that match. Nope. wow So, as the 1950s continue, the NWA controls wrestling across the entire United States, and there's a teensy downside.

Speaker: The NWA started for two reasons. The first was the basic principle is that one world title fairly shared across promotions benefited everybody. You get Luthez touring through your territories. Everybody's making money.

Speaker: You're building up your wrestlers. Everyone's doing well. The second is they don't want regulation. They want to set their own damn rules for their own self-interest. If you wanted to set up a rival wrestling company in the spirit of the free market, compete against an NWA affiliate, you're doomed. Your promotion would be blocked and all the important wrestlers locked up on NWA contracts with ludicrous booking fees for non-members. Right.

Speaker: And also in their statutes, the suspension rule meant if you piss off one boss, you don't get to wrestle anymore. There's nowhere else to go. So wrestlers get tied up in contracts and are threatened with things like state athletic commission suspensions if they break ranks. Right.

Speaker: That's not good. It's not. No good for them. ah So the tactics against the outlaw wrestlers and promotions are ruthless. Right. We're talking verbal and physical threats. And as we go further, there are mysterious acts of violence and arson.

Speaker: During 1955 Santa Monica conference, the Alliance promoters dined like royalty and introduced a kind of formal system of a blacklisting. You write a postcard and any wrestlers you want blacklisted, just write their name in red ink. And that's why they want all the control, because then they can exploit these people and destroy their careers at whim and keep them under their thumb. yeah's yes Yeah, Yes. The statute was formally removed a year later due to it being a liability and also the invention of the and also not the invention, but the popularization is the telephone in every home is a way to talk to people.

Speaker: And also there is something at the back end, which is you can only blacklist up to a certain level. No one could ever blacklist a Luthez. He's too popular like you. And so if the wrestler is going to legitimately make money, um they'll book them and put up with a lot.

Speaker: It's everyone one step and anywhere below that. They're vulnerable because there's a million people willing to take that spot. So the NWA ends up in a lot of legal trouble.

Speaker: This leads to a wildly consequential decision of the United States versus the National Wrestling Alliance. Starting in 1953, at the height of the and NWA's powers, the more ruthless business practices started to catch up.

Speaker: Whistleblowers had been coming out to claim the and NWA was a monopoly, such as Nick Lutze, who started a rival of promotion and found NWA affiliates move to blackball as wrestlers, block arena access, and run counter-programming during his TV show. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: Another promoter claimed that our favorite, Toots Mont, as ruthless as ever and working up in New York, was deliberately starving his promotion of talent and enormous financial losses. A testimony from legendary women's wrestler Mildred Burke, who we'll be spoken about next episode, exposed horrific exploitation and death threats from NWA membership. Jesus.

Speaker: But that's, you know, that's how capital works against labor, though. It always is the threat of death, ultimately. oh yeah. And it's sometimes implied, sometimes ah very outright. Yes, especially back in those days. I mean, they still do it today, but, you know, like Boeing killed that guy.

Speaker: He's surprised. Yeah, they did. Yeah. Any lawyers listening to this? Maybe. Okay, so legend returning hero from part one, Stanislaus Abisko publicly broke kayfabe in an eight page magazine article comparing the alliance to the Maybrae gang from the last episode who ran the elaborate con across the country. hmm.

Speaker: The widow of wrestler Babe Zarias, who had died of a heart attack, outright called promoter Nick Goulas the Hitler of wrestling due to his personal grudge against her husband. Ripper Leon, another wrestler, spent years spamming the Justice Department with complaints about the NWA using terms like tyranny and slavery.

Speaker: Ripper Leon was a straight up crank, but nonetheless, gets you get a sense of where the politics are here. hmm. a grand jury is finally commissioned to investigate the and nwwe for antitrust violations the sale of towns discrimination price fixing and blacklisting being the chief allegations sam muchchnick president of the and nwwe handled this brilliantly because he had took an approach of harm mitigation rather than defiance Right. So he welcomes the investigators with smiles, apologizes that the N.W.A. may have strayed from his mission a little bit and worked his political connections. This is a very wealthy man. And his best friend was an influential congressman. Just waiting for it. Yep. Of course.

Speaker: Yeah. Who's his buddy in the government? Yep. I didn't write the name down, but definitely a buddy congressman. He had one. Yeah. Who, according to the primary text I'm using here ah by Tim Hornbaker, the congressman was kind of instrumental in getting the Justice Department to weaken its case. Like, don't go to so hard on these guys. Right. Yeah. And a a former NWA member, Johnny Doyle, resigned in 1954 in the wake of a gigantic fight in California, accused the ah a California Athletic Commission of being directly in the pocket of a promoter. hmm.

Speaker: So this all led to the N.W.A. being found guilty of a litany of antitrust violations and that they had successfully achieved a monopoly. Oh, wow. But the ruling was a consent decree. So they were not ordered to break up. They were not fined to death.

Speaker: And a consent decree is a promise to do better. Mm hmm. Always works. It works so good. So although conciliatory through the process, the NWA, when it came time to respond, outright denied all the allegations and went immediately into damage control. Yep, sure. yeah So during all of this, a lawsuit from a wrestler, Sonny Myers, started in 1955, alleging that he'd been blacklisted by Pinky George and in a seven-year process of multiple trials had the case cooked by a judge who hated wrestling at first,

Speaker: won a major appeal that would have awarded him hundreds of thousands of dollars, and then lost the Second Eighth Circuit case finally in the 1960s when the judge concluded the NWA did not operate a monopoly. Right.

Speaker: Meyer's blacklisting seems to have affected him temporarily, which is one of the things that confused it, which is he had a period where he was clearly blacklisted and then resumed regular working. Okay. And one thing that's very interesting to me is that there's a ah screenshot of his of a table showing his tax returns. So his and Sonny Myers was a not a top, top, top star, but still somebody who held multiple titles and would wrestle against world champions like that kind of level of wrestlers, sort of one or two steps down. So someone should be making a pretty damn good living considering the millions being made off of the sport.

Speaker: um or industry. I don't want to call it a sport. He made a round, adjusted for inflation, $125,000 before travel expenses and $45,000 after. Ooh.

Speaker: Yeah, that's... There are not many wrestlers who are higher level than him. Damn. imagine the rest of them, they're making nothing. Everyone below that is making nothing. Yeah. So although the consent decree was the best possible outcome for the N.W.A., it was still disastrous. This caused a political tension between Pinky George and Sam Munchkin to completely blow up as Pinky George found himself on the receiving end of big threats from all over the place. For example, as Stanislaus Zbysko's brother, Vladek, was ah making some ominous noises, and Pinky George even received a mysterious phone call saying, quote, Get out of the business, USOB, or we'll deliver your body to your wife some night. Sort of, that was little bit vague, though. I mean, it's hard to tell what they're getting at with that.

Speaker: It could be when he's passed away in his sleep at 80 years old. Who knows? Maybe they mean, yeah, maybe they mean he'll be drunk. That's terrible. Jesus Christ. So the Sonny Myers suit, which again was first judge, just hated wrestling. And so didn't take it seriously.

Speaker: Appeal, huge outcome. Appeal to Eighth Circuit, loss. Pinky then reveals that the Sonny Meyer suit, which was coincidentally at the same time as the NWA antitrust suit, was orchestrated by Sam Muchnick as a larger conspiracy to drive Pinky George out of the wrestling business. um Now, it could be true, all these shenanigans. I mean... It appears to be. possible.

Speaker: Really? Yeah. Okay. h Myers likely had a legitimate grievance against Pinky George because this all came over a dispute over a check and then him not getting booked for a couple of years after that.

Speaker: But the key thing is that he had a lot of money to bring this pretty high up. Right. Orville Brown, who is now operating at a booker, is receiving death threats. And then a Pinky finally, with a giant middle finger in the air, sends a gigantic fuck you letter to the NWA and then writes more letters to anybody who will listen. wow Some quotes.

Speaker: End of quote. Okay, end of quote okay let's review his conscience.

Speaker: One, before the trial here, which was Myers versus the NWA, the St. Louis and Kansas City territories merged. During the trial, Mr. Simpson, one of Sam's partners, appeared as a voluntary witness against the Alliance and me.

Speaker: As promoter on Topeka, Sonny Myers was the close associate of Sam's. What a farce and sham. Read on. During the three-day recess of the trial, Mr. Conscience called a meeting in St. Louis, all of St. Louis and Kansas City partners. In this meeting, he said Wett, I don't care about Pinky George. It's the alliance I want to save. Let him deny this. What alliance was he saving? The Muchnick and Coe alliance.

Speaker: And then in a later level letter, to Man, talk about the Teamsters union. Your monopoly can give them cards and spades. Hmm. Pinky was an odd character in that this guy genuinely had a big heart and he had a dream of the NWA as something much less malicious than it turned into.

Speaker: Now... Like, is he looking... just sort of Just to go back real quick, he's looking towards the Teamsters a potential model for worker power, yes? Or am I... No, what Pinky George is saying is the Teamsters Union are too powerful and evil because this guy's a businessman and you're just like that. understand. Yeah, you're just as bad as the Teamsters Union controlling everything. Yes. And he sees it as worker power, but and that's as a bad thing. and yeah Basically, yes. yeah he And he doesn't he doesn't think of concepts like worker power. He just understands power. yeah And Pinky, nonetheless, had a big heart and was...

Speaker: His legal battles against the N.W.A. never let up, and he filed a massive lawsuit in Missouri in 1963, only to come up against a wall of wrestlers all vowing the N.W.A. would never blacklist anybody.

Speaker: So the N.W.A. went into a downturn in the late 50s after the consent decree signaling the end of this golden age and the rise of what comes next. And this is where Vincent John James McMahon shows up, a sharp minded businessman who had partnered with the brilliant and ruthless Toots to run New York.

Speaker: McMahon really specialized in producing television and was a consistent and ah bold businessman, while Toots was sort of the erratic visionary and just needed somebody saner to keep him on task. Right. With Antonin— It's like me and you guys. yeah There you go. I need someone sane to keep me on task when it comes to writing my scripts.

Speaker: With Antonin O'Rocco as their top star, they blossomed to control the entire Northeast, 11 states in all. So they kind of started to grow out of the need for the NWA. Capital Wrestling specialized also in a larger-than-life wrestling style that was less about realistic grappling between skilled, you know, sort of legitimate competitors and more like smashing action figures together, which continues to this day in the w WWE. Yeah, this is what I think of wrestling as, is this modern spectacle of yes basically that. The spectacle part of wrestling is what w WWE has always been their thing. The spectacle matters more than the content. That's a huge part of it.

Speaker: So I'll talk about a favorite story from the 50s, which is the great Madison Square Garden riot. So it's a little under 13,000 in attendance and a hot crowd was there to see Antonin Oroco in the main event, teaming with Edouard Carpentier, Quebecer, against the deranged Dr. Jerry Graham and the living meat slab of a partner, Dick the Bruiser.

Speaker: Just these names. han Yes. Take a moment to look up Dick the Bruiser. Genuinely, look up an image of him. I'm not sure I want to Google that. You're looking up Dick the Bruiser, not bruised dick. It'll be fine. He looks, yeah, I mean, wow. That's what I would.

Speaker: Put this man in your mind as I tell the following story. but I don't want I'm scared. i'm just So Dr. Jerry, who is just a motor mouth whack job, decided that in this big main event, the fans needed to see some blood.

Speaker: Capital Wrestling and to this day throughout the WWE, wwe they've never used a lot of blood. Blading has never been particularly prevalent in WWE. wwe side That's true. like Let's say a brief period in the late two thousand s Yeah, sure. And Mick Foley was more independent. Well, Mick Foley didn't really blade that much. He just took outrageous bumps.

Speaker: Yes. So he fell on very hard things all the time and was hit with chairs in ways that people should not be hit with chairs. But he wasn't noted for blading. Okay. So Dr. Jerry wants these fans to see blood. And so he blades himself.

Speaker: And then he decides that Rocco, who never bleeds, he needs to bleed too. So he opens up up what's called hard way, which is a special old school wrestler technique. If a correct knuckle punch to the eyebrow will split your eyebrow and open it up. Okay.

Speaker: Rocco is not happy. Well, no, it sounds like that was non-consensual. It was not. He snaps and starts hammering Jerry's head into the ring post. And Jerry turns into a bloody mess.

Speaker: And the fans lose their minds. Paper cups hail down on the ring, and then beer bottles, and then fans. Hundreds charge the wrestlers. Ha ha ha!

Speaker: And what I can't stress is normally the fans, when they go nuts, just start tearing apart the place and fighting each other. No, they're there to kill Jerry Graham. And so the four wrestlers realize, oh, my God, we're going to die. And they stand in the ring back to back, all facing the audience, except for Dick the Bruiser, who charges back into the audience and starts throwing people around like potatoes.

Speaker: Oh, yeah. Yeah. That Mick, I can see him doing that. Yeah. So I'm going to quote director from Dr. Jerry and try to do a Dr. Jerry impression. This is probably not going to sound anything like him, but I think it'll affect the the the spirit.

Speaker: The highlight of my career was undoubtedly the riot at Madison Square Garden. I knew the timing was right. The Puerto Rican people had never seen blood on Rocco and I hit him in the eye, split his eye and they went insane.

Speaker: course, he retaliated, ran my head into the post, and blood was flowing like water. An old-time jubilee right there in Madison Square Garden. My partner Dick the Bruiser was picking up and throwing Puerto Ricans outside the ring like a farmer picking potatoes.

Speaker: Then New York's finest had to move in. They brought the cavalry to close them down, and that dolly was the biggest thing I experienced in my career. I was fined $3,000 for inciting a riot, but it was the first time they ever saw blood on the Latin rocker.

Speaker: Now I have a shot of Antonin Oroko being carried by fans after the riot, which I'll post here because it's my favorite picture ever. ah It's pretty good. That's so good.

Speaker: Yeah, that's great. And I'm seeing presumably more than just Puerto Ricans in that audience. Like, wait, I like... No, but the... It's okay. He just threw Puerto Ricans. I'm just kidding. It was the Puerto Ricans who charged the ring, he stopped and asked. Like, that was a huge... Oh, was it? Capital Wrestling, ah particularly under Vince McMahon Sr., who is this Vincent John James McMahon...

Speaker: very deliberately booked immigrant champions because the major, major name after Antonio Rocco was Bruno Sammartino, who was Italian. Okay. And again, it's a huge mixed crowd, but Rocco was massively popular with the Puerto Ricans. Okay. And so these were the folks charging the ring and they were the... It wasn't just egregious casual racism. No, it was... It legitimately was just all Puerto Ricans. promotion was built and the champion was there specifically because of that audience. Okay.

Speaker: That makes sense. Yeah. Context. So by the end of the 1950s, the NWA is continuing its ways, but is weaker than it had ever been. And an internal political hierarchy was clear with McMahon at the top with Muchnick.

Speaker: And the old ways of sharing the champion were starting to fall apart. And McMahon was influence peddling heavily. And so he got the title on Nature Boy Buddy Rogers, who then just kind of kept him in the Northeast. Yeah.

Speaker: This got so bad that when Buddy Rogers actually went out to Ohio, he was jumped by two wrestlers who beat the shit out of him with a, you know, stay out of Midwest asshole.

Speaker: I mean, you're messing with wrestlers. You got to expect to get beaten up sometimes. Yep. Seems like it's occupational. answer the And so what happens is the NWA just wants the title off of Rodgers and back onto Thez. So ah vince but Vincent McMahon, I'm going to call him Vincent, Vincent to I'll just call him Vince Senior.

Speaker: Vince Senior decides, well, but I like Buddy Rodgers. So he decides to split from the NWA and n w a and ah invent a fake tournament in Rio de Janeiro, which they do again, actually, to invent the ah intercontinental title.

Speaker: Puts the belt on Buddy Rogers. Luthez takes off in the NWA. And this splits Capital Wrestling, which becomes WWWF, Worldwide Wrestling Federation, in 1963. Now, Rogers at this point is being run into the ground. He is riddled with injuries. And he suffered a probable minor minor heart attack in Ottawa in April 1963. This man thinks he is going to die and he's trying to avoid wrestling, but he's the new champion. And they're trying to start this whole thing up, splitting from the NWA.

Speaker: And if the NWA gets wind that the champion has a health issue, well, the state athletic commissioners are going to find out and bar him from wrestling because they do at least allegedly some regulation. So Rodgers gets pushed into a match that May, a couple months later, that he later claims could have genuinely killed him.

Speaker: And he loses in 48 seconds to Bruno Sammartino, who then becomes the biggest star for the ww WWF of that decade. Yeah. But honestly, why wouldn't you just do that? I don't want to die, so fine. Just do it half-heartedly, as it were. But it's interesting, these these parallels with the VTubers and Kurt Cobain, where it's like, oh... The entertainment industry just, it does, as we know, chew people up and spit them out. Oh, yeah.

Speaker: Oh, no. Don't get clean for yourself. Get clean to do Lollapalooza. Oh, no, no. Don't do the, you know, you this isn't empowering. This is all to make money for your, you know, corpo, right? Exactly. And this is the same thing. Yeah.

Speaker: One of the reasons I got so in on VTubers was the incredible parallels to wrestling. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, yes. Very much so. And also, importantly, how it's not taken very seriously, which allows people to get away with just the worst stuff. One thing I want to stress here is Vince McMahon Sr. is considered to have been a man of unimpeachable character.

Speaker: Wrestlers loved him. Really? Yes. This was the good promoter. He almost killed this guy. Buddy Rogers, again, the 48-second match might have seemed like an easy way to pass the title, but he should not have been in the ring.

Speaker: That's the key thing. It's just the adrenaline getting in there, moving around, doing some grappling. Rogers was clear this could have killed him. Yeah, that's terrible. That's interesting, Dave. You see, yeah, and with other entertainment, too, in sports, it's, oh, well, they're rich. They don't have to do this. Like, oh, like the the abuse of...

Speaker: essentially workers, yeah athletes, entertainers, musicians, all this stuff, their abuse and exploitation is always like, ah, well, it's just music. Oh, it's just this and that. It's like, no, no, no. Or the idea is well, they must be rich secretly.

Speaker: Like with CTE and NFL, people say, ah, well, no, who cares if they get CTE? Because they signed million dollar contracts. Yeah, they don't keep all that money and they have no health care. Like, so it's all these things where it's seen as, in a way, the worker's fault or, well, you should expect that. Yeah. what do you expect? You get paid.

Speaker: And as I'll say a million times over, I don't care that Conor McDavid is making ah at a discount contract $12 million. Daryl Katz is a billionaire. Yes. Yeah. If you think they're getting a lot of money, look at what their boss is taking and how much money they're earning for their boss. But we don't want to question that. Nope. blame the Blame the victim. And so this is a kind of a two-part episode.

Speaker: I'm going to move to part two because rather than dive into the sort of sequential wrestling history throughout the 60s and 70s, I'm going to focus on a specific wrestler.

Speaker: To this date, the stories have been almost entirely about promoters simply because we only have so much to go on from the wrestlers themselves. We don't have a lot of their accounts. Lou Thez wrote an autobiography, which is respected, but kind of a whitewash of ah wrestling's problems, of which he was also kind of part of the top two.

Speaker: I'm less interested in that. The book I have does the opposite. ah Chokehold, Pro Wrestling's Mayhem Outside of the Ring. Have any of you heard of Big Jim Wilson?

Speaker: No, don't believe so. It's a generic enough name that I'm like, maybe a very generic name. You certainly have not. OK, there's a reason for that. ah He's a wrestler who spent a good 20 years trying to unionize pro wrestling. Oh, that's why we haven't heard of him Yep.

Speaker: Gonna bury that. Can't learn about that. Oh, yeah. ah Wilson was an NFL player for the 49ers and Atlanta Falcons who picked up wrestling in the offseason to make extra money in the sort of mid 60s. Because like we say, NFL players, they're all rich. Well, a little less so in the early 60s, but yep.

Speaker: I know. I'm going to have two jobs. The story of what's happened with the NFL Players Association is an entirely different one. But my God, that was a good union that very much is not now. That's too bad. His personal beliefs ah really shine through.

Speaker: And rather than someone who I'd say is ideologically inclined, He's a good all-American boy with a big heart. I would say doesn't like bullshit in a way that makes him very difficult to deal with as an authority figure. Kind of egotistical, which is, you know, a star athlete is what they do, but also really believes in mom and apple pie in a sense of what is right and wrong. These are the fundamental principles that drive him. Okay. He was also not a good wrestler. That's unfortunate. He did all right because he was a tall, good-looking football player.

Speaker: So he's easy to market, right? And so wrestling works out well, and he, i forget if i mentioned this, but leaves football due to injury in 1968. Okay. And so he gets in with the wrestling business and is kind of horrified at what he finds. Yeah, because when you're injured playing football, what else are you going to do other than wrestling? Oh,

Speaker: Can you? Yeah, Jesus. Wrestling is full of football players who got injured out. Full of injured football players. It's a whole thing where a specific injury that prevents you from playing football does let you wrestle because you can move around to deal with the injury and you don't have to run. That kind of thing.

Speaker: So he is kind of horrified by the backstage culture, which is extremely hyper macho. Everybody is drinking obscene amounts. There are a lot of drugs, tons of casual sex with basically anything that moves. And everyone's living off of nothing but bologna sandwiches for weeks at a time. Yeah. just It's like, that who is that new Green MP who was elected in the UK? And she goes into Parliament and it's like, wait.

Speaker: everyone here is drunk all the time. And there is bars in parliament that are subsidized by taxpayer money. And the government's like, yeah shut up about that. This is what we do. We just, we drink all day. Shut up. Don't talk about it. There is so much drinking in politics. My God. Like, it's unbelievable. And everyone's like, ah, she's a killjoy. It's like, works. The big thing that I want to underline here is this a hard partying, hard living lifestyle is a key thing that will catch up to wrestlers later on as it gets worse and worse and worse. I didn't realize was this bad in the 60s. Wilson also has some early stories, which I'm largely glossing over for time, about like unscrupulous promoters ordering

Speaker: new people trying to get into wrestling, being stretched into hooks and like just turning them into a bloody mess with ah with broken limbs on the exit. There was a lot of malice in what was going on. It was really kind of deeply troubling, but he made okay money. Yeah, sounds like it.

Speaker: And ah because he's a he's kind of a local hero, he's an NFL player, and he's in Georgia, you show up in an arena, suddenly the fans are in into you. Didn't need to be that good.

Speaker: He just had to be a football player. OK, so we'll have some charisma and have a maybe a gimmick. Yes, exactly. His gimmick was good old American football player. Charisma, a little less so.

Speaker: Sure. ah Kurt Angle. ah correct Kurt Angle was actually incredibly charismatic. Oh, really? OK. Oh, incredibly charismatic. Yes. ah Who was, ah you know, remember so well, ah minus the entire ah whole family thing.

Speaker: Chris Benoit. He's kind of boring. Not like, not less gimmicky. Chris Benoit was a charisma vacuum. ah yeah He yeah survived on intensity alone.

Speaker: But yeah, up the thing with Jim Wilson, he was just kind of awkward at wrestling. He was big. He was, ah ah there's a term he used in his book that I love called a crowbar. Someone is hard to work with. Sure.

Speaker: And so there's just he's. ah But again, he's big. He's good looking. He's a he's a famous football player. It's good enough to sell tickets. That's what you need to do.

Speaker: Well, TV, not everyone has one. We got to go and do something. Yep. So Wilson gets a tour of Australia. So he heads out to Australia where a promoter had built wrestling out of nothing in Australia into a very viable business. And this is where we introduce another major promoter in our story, Jim Barnett.

Speaker: He is a fascinating character. ah He's an American who's in Australia, openly gay. And he has a lilting, posh voice and a distinct transatlantic accent.

Speaker: Okay. And he lived an expensive life of luxury goods, fine art, and constantly spoke about how royalty and politicians were his friends and confidence. And he was probably right about that.

Speaker: Yeah. ah Jim Barnett did the hoity-toity rich guy. he was he like he worked the wrestlers and cut promos on them as this sort of character of promoter, and everybody did a Jim Barnett impression. he's just like I want to see videos this guy. There is a video of him.

Speaker: ah Well, you know what? We'll take a ah quick second. Let's look at a short video. You can just listen to him speak. It's one of the few times because he hated being on camera and hated being photographed. But he did do an interview in around 1990 or so. Is he as entertaining as Paul Bearer? ah no because Paul... Because ah Percy Pringle, a.k.a. Paul Bearer, was a very charismatic wrestling manager. And Jim Barnett was a behind-the-scenes character. But you just listen to how he speaks and then imagine him upping that a little bit. Sure.

Speaker: Did you find an interview with Jim Barnett, WCW Australia? One second. Didn't get a link. Sorry. Technical difficulties. Please stand by. Thank you. Yeah, the Vintage Wrestling Channel. And just listen for like, you know, couple seconds.

Speaker: And so that's kind of his vibe. But then imagine him sure playing that up. And then he walks into the locker room and it says, oh, boys. And they all flock to like hear what's going on for the card tonight. So he is.

Speaker: And one of the key things about these legendary promoters, also Sam Muchnick was like this, and Vincent McMahon, they all paid the wrestlers on time. okay That was the number one thing and something that every... ah The one rule as an employer, you know, you can't break is don't fail to pay them.

Speaker: Because it's literally the bare fucking minimum. It is. that But that's the line that if you cross, you're done. That's crazy. And wrestling promoters are legendary because they're constantly in financial trouble because most of them are idiots of not paying the wrestlers properly, screwing them over on pay, lying, irregularities, etc.

Speaker: Barnett always paid on time. Same with Sam Muchnick. And ah they ran very, very successful wrestling territories and are considered legends in the business as a result because they kind of are. And again, so Barnett just kind of sounds like a guy with a certain affect, but in this hyper macho world. And he's going, oh, boys. Suddenly you see where this character comes together. This man in beautiful suits talking about dining with kings and queens. like I thought his tie was ugly. I expected in that interview, i expected more. it was like 19. I wanted more. It was 1990. I don't think the ties were hot back then.

Speaker: No, it's true. Was it Paisley? Anyway. So Wilson is doing all right in his Australia tour. The notion is that you come in as a foreign wrestler and you're at the top of the card as a feature. um And you win most of your matches.

Speaker: In this discussion, and he's on a flight with Jim Barnett, and he's sitting beside Jim. And Jim ah Barnett is getting physically close. going to call him Barnett and Wilson because they're both Jims.

Speaker: And he starts rubbing Wilson's leg. That's a salt. And the next day, the following is alleged. I'll quote from Chokehold. Barnett intercepted me in the parking lot.

Speaker: Oh, Jim, my boy, he called. I'd like you to come up to the penthouse tonight. Jim, I want you to come up and I want to see you. You have a great body. I'm in a position to be instrumental in your career and I can make you a world champion.

Speaker: Nobody is safe from anybody. No. Wilson rejects Barnett. And after that, his career collapses. Yep, sure. He loses every match afterwards in Australia, and wrestlers around him strongly imply that they have an idea of what has happened, and Wilson will not say a damn word to them. Because, again, this is a macho football player who has just been propositioned in way he is humiliated by.

Speaker: hmm. Later in the tour, he is losing match after match. He's at the bottom of the card. And one wrestler invites him for a night of what wrestlers do, which is drinking until 6 a.m. and doing speed the entire time.

Speaker: Oh, Wilson's partying. And then when he's coming from the bathroom, he sees this wrestler drop something in his drink. Jesus Christ. He avoids that drink, but he knows something weird. He flips in, misses a flight, yeah and ah and then finally tries to get out of this tour, but he's booked. He wants to honor his bookings because if you fail to, it really fucks your career.

Speaker: And then he's ordered to blade himself. And Wilson ah does not do blood. And then he's flat out told, either you cut yourself or I'm going to.

Speaker: That's insane. Like literal mutilation. that is. And so Wilson, ah the two are ending in disaster, heads back to the U.S. And i want to talk about this allegation because it's a an interesting one.

Speaker: Jim Wilson's allegation that Barnett blacklisted him for refusing to sleep with a promoter as one would not be surprised, is largely ignored by modern wrestling. And most pundits, including some who I would say do not necessarily have a bias for and against anyone here, don't necessarily believe it.

Speaker: Barnett's claim, which he made in later testimony because there's a million lawsuits coming up, was that Wilson arrived late, refused to lose, had an affair with a stewardess, and was just not talented enough to be worth the headache. He was a pain in the ass to deal with. Aren't they all, though? They're all screwing around and doing drugs. Like, I don't know.

Speaker: They do vary. ah There is the notion of a wrestler who, well, like Buddy Rogers was famous as a wrestler who lived a hard lifestyle, but he would always lose when told to.

Speaker: That kind of thing. He was never a problem with that. And that's something they want in the wrestlers for obvious reasons. Now, Jim Cornette, who has an encyclopedic knowledge of wrestling and is a very famous wrestling manager who has now become a pundit. It was Jim Cornette and Jim Barnett. Yes. In fact, cornets and new guy jim Jim's James E. Cornette was when he was a manager was very clearly a kind of a rib on ah the entire Jim Barnett thing. There was a bit of a okay an in-joke there.

Speaker: Oh, OK. Jim Cornette is somebody who you knows more about the history of wrestling than most people will forget. He also has weird ideas about women. ah He has, despite being somewhat liberal, he's collected a very right wing fan base because it makes him money and has his own weird allegations from when he was a promoter.

Speaker: Which was ah it's a it's an entirely different story and I'd have to look them up. But they're weird. So Jim Cornette dismissed this as hard to believe. Why would anyone offer Wilson the world title? He was not a good wrestler and there aren't other allegations about this about Barnett. Hmm.

Speaker: Now, Dave Meltzer, ah who is the wrestling journalist of record, and again, because he is wildly overexposed, every single flaw in what Meltzer does is also very well understood, but he does take this stuff seriously. He takes Wilson's book very seriously, and he says Wilson's research is excellent.

Speaker: But he does know that Wilson was a gigantic pain in the ass and was not a good wrestler, which everyone emphasizes. And also rumors of promoters sleeping with wrestlers is as old as the industry, which either means it happens all the time or wrestlers who are notorious liars make it up in order to explain why they lost.

Speaker: Or it's probably, although the truth is not always in the middle, I think it kind of is here. was going say, little bit of both. It's like a little bit of both. Yeah. It's all very murky and shifty and shady is the thing. So knows? Exactly. When Wilson wrestled his last match in 1985, he was maybe the most hated man in wrestling at that point.

Speaker: And Meltzer doesn't call Wilson a liar, but weighing everything decides that this allegation is as likely as it is not. My view on this is I'm not sure it really matters. Everyone involved instead. Right. And wrestling at this point in the century as a quasi-legal industry run by a mafia-esque clique of promoters with incredible power over their talent. The key thing here is if a promoter wanted to exploit his wrestlers like this and was clever about it, he'd get away with it.

Speaker: Of course. So... Most of them are not going to talk about it. Yes. Again, because this macho atmosphere is all very shameful, they think. yeah Exactly. So ah I am dead certain there is a horrific amount of sexual exploitation in wrestling. Probably less so now than there was, but it's certainly not gone. And as you can imagine, when I speak about women wrestlers in the next episode...

Speaker: Yeah, because we got male employers and female employees and most men are straight. So upon returning to America, Jim Wilson is blackballed from the N.W.A. and affiliated territories, and he spends the rest of his life fighting against it.

Speaker: Most vitally, Wilson goes full in on we need a union. Fuck this. We need to unionize. He was a picket captain for the NHLPA and FLPA. And he realized how important the union was and that he had medical care and a pension when he was a football player. Why the hell don't I have that as a wrestler? And every time he talked to wrestlers, they'd agree and then refused to support him publicly.

Speaker: This remains a trend throughout the history of wrestling, and I'd love to pull a great quote from Dave Meltzer in reviewing Wilson's book in the October 13th edition of the Wrestling Newsletter in 2003.

Speaker: It's an ironic subject as virtually every wrestler, when their careers are winding down or over, regrets that they let the time go by and did nothing about unionizing. Even the biggest stars like Bret Hart, Roddy Piper, and Terry Funk have talked openly about this.

Speaker: But the active wrestlers know they are too easily replaced. And now more than ever, wrestlers have little leverage with only one major company. Although if a top star was fired, he'd be able to make a good living. And I'll interject and say Dave Meltzer ah cannot help but go on tangents. And this was writing in 2003 when the WWE w was almost a monopoly. That's right.

Speaker: Yeah. Cutting off that quote and picking up the important part. In addition, as is a theme throughout the book, wrestlers can't stick together for any cause, whether good or bad. Hmm.

Speaker: Right. Interesting. Now, during all of this... It's maybe a toxic masculinity or toxic individuality, individualism or something. It's...

Speaker: What is it? Either way, it's toxic. It's not the toxic masculinity because let me tell you, those early coal miner unions did not have a shortage of toxic masculinity involved in them. Yeah. no Well, you know what? True. I take it back. Rather, and this is where when I'm trying to summarize all of the reasons wrestlers don't have a union, this is a key ingredient. is the very nature of the industry is wrestlers are looking out for themselves and they're not looking out for a collective good. And so they don't inherently see other wrestlers as, and there's a contradiction, actually. There's a kind of paradox because they wrestlers all call each other brother.

Speaker: They refer to the boys. And there is very much a we're in the industry. We are part of a special club that other people are not in. We are the keeper of the secrets. And because although wrestling has been repeatedly exposed as worked, particularly during this time, there's more of a it feels like there's a resurgence in people really believing in it. And wrestlers are desperately trying to maintain kayfabe.

Speaker: And they have to trust each other with their bodies in the ring. Right. You can you can kill someone in a ring very easily if you just wanted to. So because of this, there is this implicit trust and there's fraternity and sorority among the women. But at the same time, you're all competing against each other. yes And the booker has what Jim Wilson calls the power of the pencil.

Speaker: The booker can write your name as the winner and then erase it with a thought. And so that incredible power over how popular a wrestler is, where unless a wrestler is so popular, they can get push past that, which is not a lot of them, means they are completely at the whim of the promoter. And the notion of collective action is just kind of antithetical to how everything the business is constructed. That's a huge part of this is not only the very makeup of the industry, but the culture and the just the incredible secrecy. Right.

Speaker: That, yeah, is it because yeah, ultimately the whole thing is, where yeah the idea is yeah we're competing against each other to find out who is the one champion. It's, yeah, you're right, at the opposite of solidarity, even though they demonstrate it in so many other ways. And even though you could say it's worked and it's not actually real, it's real in the sense of, Yeah, well, it's it's worked, but it's rigged, right? Yes, exactly. so the top And so the problem is because it's based on intangibles, where who is the best wrestler is a combination of who can entertain the fans the most, who can reliably show up to work, who is good to work with and get along with everything. It's a mix of intangibles. And because it's impossible to actually measure the arbitrary decisions of the booker,

Speaker: and the promoter behind them rule everything because there's no objective way to pick best. Yeah. And the best makes the most damn money. So everyone's climbing over each other to get up and the crabs in the bucket thing.

Speaker: Exactly. mean, what they need to do is just do it like all of them. It would take so much organization too because it has to be a situation where it's in a way all or nothing, I would imagine.

Speaker: if there's so many people, like you say, with the Bret Hart situation or them knowing that, oh, well, there's just a thousand other guys out there. It's, yeah, it's... Has to be oh, nothing in a way. There is... Gotta start somewhere. And the challenges to doing that is something I'll get into more, but absolutely.

Speaker: So... During all of this, when Wilson is back in Georgia, there is a fight going on, ah a battle for Atlanta between an NWA promotion, which Jim Barnett has now gone from Australia to run, and a promotion which is being run by Ann Gunkel, who is the widow of a promoter, Ray Gunkel.

Speaker: And Ray died. And there was a big tug of war over his promotion, which ran the territory. And it wound up with two promotions with the NWA refusing membership to Anne saying, well, somebody else already runs this territory. Wilson in, and this is prior to going to Australia, was sitting in on meetings and learned about the industry technique of blocking. And I've mentioned this casually before, but blocking means that you are politically moving to block access to TV deals, block wrestlers from going to the territory, block licenses from the commission, blacklist the wrestlers, block radio interviews, newspaper articles, arenas.

Speaker: You use your political clout to cut off every avenue of success the wrestling promotion may have. And if they run a show, you're running a competitive show at the same time and flooding it with the top names in the country. And what shocked Wilson the most was that they were not making this up for the first time. This was a recipe. Hmm. They knew exactly how to do this at this point in ah late 60s, early Mm-hmm.

Speaker: So at this point, despite the consent ah decree, the NWA is in a full monopoly because Capitol Wrestling has completely conquered the Northeast, now the WWWF.

Speaker: But it had actually turned into, my eyes, a complete criminal conspiracy, which is absolutely ignored by the law. Wilson's research shows case after case where wrestlers and promoters attempt to prove the NWA was violating the consent decree and they just didn't care. Right. I'll talk more about this at the end of this episode.

Speaker: But back in the 1950s, the NWA did business without law promotions and just extorted money out of them. By the 70s, and again, everyone is dealing with anyone where they can make money, but if they wanted to kill an outlaw promotion, they went at it in every way you could imagine in wildly unethical. It just became crueler is the key thing I see here.

Speaker: So um Wilson goes to work for Ann Gunkel because she's the obvious person to work for as an outlaw. And he teams up with Thunderbolt Patterson, ah who becomes Wilson's best friend through all of this.

Speaker: Thunderbolt Patterson is a black wrestler who has a motor mouth and an incredible gift of gab. And Wilson, the thing I will give Wilson above all else is he immediately saw that the battle for workers' rights and the battle for civil rights are symbiotic causes.

Speaker: ah Yes. They are not the same, but they are also not in competition or they are not separate streams that must be followed independently of one another. They are inherently interlinked and they have the same fight. And that is such a fundamental principle of union solidarity, which can be very difficult for some people to grasp.

Speaker: Yes. Mm hmm. I've seen that. Yeah. yeah we Yeah. Jen and I have stories. um And Thunderbolt ah draws tons of black fans because, again, they're in Atlanta. Right. hmm. And what we see here is black wrestlers can certainly draw money, but they made less. They're forced to perform humiliating racial stereotypes. And the work is routinely ripped off by white wrestlers. Mm hmm. So the person who ripped off Thunderbolt is wrestling beloved legend Dusty Rhodes. Really? Yes. Dusty Rhodes, if you listen to a promo of him, talks like a like talks jive like he's from the Hmm. And he did these amazing electric working class promos. Dusty Rhodes is legitimately like incredible wrestler who pulled crowds like nobody else. But he did it by ripping off Thunderbolt's ah gimmick. And importantly, he was a contemporary. They get booked on the same card. and Well, we don't need Thunderbolt. We got Dusty.

Speaker: That kind of thing. Classic. It is the most American story. Yeah, it is. To have that ripped off from the Black entertainer and put on the White entertainer. There's a reason Hulk Hogan called everybody brother, right? Oh my God. Yeah. oh So although wrestling is, I genuinely say this, the great folk art that isn't completely based off of exploitation of Black culture, a lot of the gimmicks sure as hell are.

Speaker: Yep, they don't get away from that. Nope. Can't beat the appropriation charges, that's for sure. And so they get sick of this crap with Anne, and so Wilson and Thunderbolt ah realize Anne is not treating them very well, and so they stage basically a direct action, except it's only the two of them. But still, this shows one of the key things that will drive me nuts...

Speaker: or ah drove me nuts about reading Wilson's book is he understood what worked and did it, but he also did a million things that didn't work and kept doing them over and over and over again. What Wilson and Thunderbolt did is they showed up at the start of a show, called out the locker room and said, if someone doesn't come out to face us, everybody here gets your money back.

Speaker: And of course, it's not a scheduled match. Nobody shows up. They bounce and the fans are demanding the money back. Mm-hmm. Just completely screw them over. Yeah, why not? Yeah. And so Wilson decides, I know what to do. So I am in this territory where Ann Gunkel's promotion is being...

Speaker: horrifically blocked by the NWA. But I really want a wrestling union. I don't want to work for Ann and the NWA won't hire me. And my family's in Georgia, all this kind of stuff. He's, hit by the way, his poor wife throughout and kid throughout all of this.

Speaker: Jim Wilson does his best with them, but my God. um So he has the worst idea I've ever heard. Actually, the second worst. He has a worst idea later on.

Speaker: He decides to start a third wrestling promotion in Georgia and unionize the wrestlers who work for him himself. I mean, what makes him think this is going to work? To honest, I'm like, why don't you start his own? Well, and here's the thing. You can start your own, but but you can't empower workers from the position of a boss. That's not how class relationship works.

Speaker: Exactly. He's not starting his own union. He's starting his own like a promotion where he's the boss. Essentially, yes. Yeah. So he's replicating it. He's the boss and he's just going to be the boss he always wanted to be. Yes.

Speaker: Which has happened a million times. And there is a reason why capitalism isn't all nice now. It doesn't work. Yep. um That's right. And my God, they really did try. So they set up this company, register a union, medical expenses, a pension, ethical contracts, 50 percent of the gate. And the right to collectively bargain.

Speaker: Right. They draw in some disgruntled wrestlers who are either outlaws from various different places because there are successful outlaw wrestlers and promotions around. I'll mention that the traveling Poffo family, although I'm not sure they work for Wilson's company, of which Randy Poffo, Macho Man Randy Savage, um all started as outlaws. Wait, his name is Poffo?

Speaker: Yes. Did not know that. I only knew him as Randy Savage. Nope. i he He and his brother, Lanny Poffo, a.k.a. of The Genius, and his father, Angelo Poffo. And they were like a touring outlaw act. Okay. Did not know that. Yep. But again, if you're good enough, the outlaw thing does not matter.

Speaker: And Randy Savage was, of course, good enough. Right. So they get in some key wrestlers, such as i a black wrestler named Zulu and the Wild Samoans. ah huh Wasn't there like Yokozuna? That was later. was a little bit. ah Yeah, Yokozuna was in the ninety s and he was a Simone wrestler, booked as a Japanese wrestler.

Speaker: Yeah. Also one of the early wrestler deaths. The man the poor man weighed 600 pounds when he died because being fat was his gimmick. Yep. He was like a like a fake sumo wrestler, yes. That's what Farakal... Yes, yeah, he was a fake sumo wrestler, fake Japanese. Yep, damn. So they bring in these wrestlers, and the NWA just fucking crushes them. Oh.

Speaker: don't know Thunderbolt finds out that somebody has been calling up about past criminal records and passing them around. Their arena booking and licenses are blocked. And so what Wilson and Thunderbolt do when they find out that the athletic commission is not giving them anything is they threaten on radio to drive their cars into city hall and set them on fire.

Speaker: Jesus Christ. That gets the attention of the mayor, the first black mayor, because Thunderbolt is openly calling all of this racist. And that actually works because, again, they're engaging in direct action rather than trying to play it the nice way.

Speaker: And so they get the wrestling show. They get their license. But the blocking continues. Thunderbolt starts getting job offers from around the country if he ditches Jim Wilson. Uh-huh. Thunderbolt, however, stays loyal. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: So they get their wrestlers and start touring small towns, building up to a major arena show. And the wrestlers they're hiring tell them, hey, Barnett is trying to find a hooker to like get booked and then completely take you out.

Speaker: But nobody steps up to it because it's not quite what it used to be. We're in the 70s now. But the notion is any one of the wrestlers you step in the ring with could try to break your leg right because there's money going around to do that. And what's happening is people agree to work with them and then suddenly jump ship to the other side.

Speaker: They're distributing leaflets and a Harley Race, who is a famous NWA champion and one of the most terrifying human beings who's ever lived. Like you listen to him talk and you have the the stern dad who will murder you kind of kind of vibe. ah He shows up to probably murder Jim Wilson with his bare hands. And Wilson is smart enough to shout, hey, Harley Race is here to challenge me to a wrestling match. Everyone gather around. We're going to have a bout right now. And Harley's like, ah fuck, takes off. Well, got him. Shortly thereafter, Wilson's woke up to find his family dog had been bludgeoned to death. Oh, oh my God. It's

Speaker: That's again, that's the evil shit they do. Yeah. yeah They finally build into this huge arena show, and it is sabotaged in ways that are just incredible. The arena manager locks the doors like midway through people filing in. And because they're and they're setting everything up, they don't even know.

Speaker: And then he he leaves with the keys. so everyone's locked in the building and just like, yeah, the arena manager said new policy. We locked the doors 830. Oh my God. Like, this is just, yeah again, all this shit is so maddening to hear about. Like, it's... Then the ring falls apart.

Speaker: was that say What are you yeah who believe was there wasn't a fire and everyone got trapped inside and burned to death. I mean, there's a lot of fires in ah in wrestling. And yeah I swear, somewhere in this book, Jim Wilson's house got burned down, but I couldn't find it by the by the time of writing. So... But yeah, the ring falls apart. So the ring is rigged to collapse while wrestlers are on it. Oh my God.

Speaker: Jesus. they let's just They struggle through the event and it's time to pay the wrestlers their promise 50% of the gate. A contractual promise and all the wrestlers are ready for their money because there's still a lot of fans that show up.

Speaker: And the arena's like, we gotta tabulate the gate. Give us a couple days. They take the weekend and then the result is $2,000 total for a gate Like, come on.

Speaker: And ah the arena said, that's how high your expenses were. It took years of court battles, which revealed the arena had worked the books to jack up the expenses to run the show and had a fake tally and then a real tally or a work tally.

Speaker: So they were even worked by the arena. This was later confirmed by a ah sometimes confidante of Jim Wilson's The Sheik, who was a legendary wrestler noted for bringing a million razors into the ring and slicing up his opponents and just being a wild man. ah The Sheik was also the inspiration for a favorite wrestling song, Foreign Object.

Speaker: Gonna stab you in the eye with a foreign object. d de Anyway. Well, it's good. i thought the foreign object had a, by the mountain goats, if you want to look it up. Yeah. I thought the foreign object had a worse destination. No, a foreign object was a term that announced commentators used when a wrestler would, would bring a weapon into a match. So he'd have a, like a ball with a spike, like an astrolabe.

Speaker: And that's the foreign object. And that's the sort of wrestling euphemism for something coming out of, ah like being brought into the ring that shouldn't be there. Sure. But yeah, the Sheik's matches all end up in blood-soaked mayhem and drove crowds wild. Mm-hmm.

Speaker: People didn't really love wrestling him, though. Oh, yeah, I guess not. No, I can imagine. gets sliced to bits. Mm-hmm. Well, paper cuts. Realizing that his hopes were not within the wrestling business, Wilson starts selling real estate, although constantly tries to get booked as a wrestler and even gets to the point where a lawsuit against Jim Barnett. Jim Barnett meets with him and says, all is forgive it all's forgiven, Jimmy boy. Don't worry, you drop this lawsuit. I'll book you and you'll I'll make you a star. Drop the lawsuit. Barnett's like, lol.

Speaker: Because Jim Wilson is a big dumb lug. I can't stress how he tried so hard. He had so so much ethical backing behind what he was doing and had no idea how to do anything right with his stuff.

Speaker: Yeah, not too bad. And so he continues. He keeps some allies within the wrestling business, notably NWA champion Jack Briscoe. Thunderbolt is stalwart, but they also only go so far with him because they have to feed their damn family.

Speaker: And Jim Wilson's name is poison in the wrestling business at this point because he is making enemies everywhere. Right. Rather than allies, which is kind of important for unionizing.

Speaker: So he goes into political and legal battles, which consume the rest of his life. And also becomes a hell of a researcher. Genuinely. Really? He discovers, because wrestlers don't talk about this because promoters erase wrestling history constantly, particularly at this time, the 1950s consent decree. He didn't know about it. Wrestlers didn't.

Speaker: And a quote from Chokehold, the files contain dozens of references to NWA's blacklisting wrestlers, boycotting promotional competitors, illegally allocating exclusive exclusive territorial booking offices, death threats, ordered stretchings, contract beatings, frontmen, bribes to athletic commissions and newspaper editors, and destruction of outlaw arenas and rogue promoters' homes by arson. and But this is every business...

Speaker: Does this? Yes. Essentially on some level. They used to be worse. or pretty well did Anyway, did they? But this is typical capitalist. Every business would if they could.

Speaker: Exactly. This is a key thing. Wrestling can. And this is, we'll get into yeah another thing that, why wrestling is what it is. But I'm building to that. So, okay Wilson documents a fascinating bit of history from 1953 California. where there's this massive promotional war as the NWA tries to take over the state, grab a few promotions and squeeze out the others.

Speaker: A combine of four NWA partners engineered a worked strike. So the wrestlers go on a worked, that is, and I'll use the word fake, a fake strike of television wrestling shows to demand more TV revenue. right The key, of course, is the demand is not only for better pay, but that the competition don't get TV rights.

Speaker: And because I miss that part, who doesn't get TV rights? The the competitors. Oh, right. Oh, OK. okay Yes. Because it's all regional television at this point. Right. Uh huh. I see. And so what that means is that this fake strike shows up where it's the wrestlers working for the promoters. This is very much like a mafia run strike.

Speaker: It's very much the same kind of thing where, no, we're just shutting down this port in order to get a politician to do what we want. It's that kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah. So and this works because strikes work. And the resulting fallout was instrumental in driving promoters to complain to the Justice Department and kick off the United States versus NWA case. Hmm. So there's only two examples of a wrestling strike I'm aware of. The one in Mexico we'll talk about on a part three or four. We'll see where it fits. But yeah, this fake strike absolutely worked. And it shut out the competitors from tv from ah TV access and increased the ah the rates. right Wilson also takes a kind of interesting look at Luthez, who was top NWA champion and thus in on the conspiracy.

Speaker: Luthez was part ah was as much about of protecting Sam Muchnick as Sam was about protecting Luthez. A key thing here is the promoters are millionaires. And in 1955, Luthez took in fifty two thousand dollars.

Speaker: Now, in modern money, it's over half a mil, but he wrestled like a hundred seventy four dates that year. but That's absurd. Like he's bringing in the money and he's getting crumbs. And he's paying every expense. Yes. Unbelievable. Right. You're right.

Speaker: So it's probable that the top wrestler ah potentially of all time or one of them was making a couple hundred thousand dollars a year in modern money while his promoter is in the likely tens if not hundreds of millions. Interesting.

Speaker: It's wild how little Fez made compared to the others. i was shocked by that. I mean, it's true. And it still carries on. Of course, you see CEOs making all this money. But i heard somewhere else, too. Somebody's talking about Hollywood. Oh, no. You see all those Hollywood mansions in the hills. You think actors live there? Like, no. It's lawyers and agents yeah and promoters and bosses. It's people who are on the money news side. yeah Yes. theyre The actors are like, no, no. They actually didn't pay that much. Yeah. Yeah. And usually they don't. Well, and they think about Tom Cruise, who is, of course, very, very rich. Yeah. But you never think about Tom Cruise's boss.

Speaker: That's the key thing here. There's a boss behind it all. And that's why solidarity extends to entertainers and athletes. We have the same relationship, even if they're millionaires and I'm not. yeah So it's here. Another thing that Wilson underlines in his research, something that also is just wild.

Speaker: So the rule that is the rule in wrestling, it's the standard rule everywhere is wrestlers get 30 percent of the gate. The champ, at the NWA champion gets the 10 and he's not in every card. You run a show, you get your gate, which is your total gross proceeds. Wrestlers get 30 percent of that.

Speaker: What Jim Barnett testified is that the thing promoters had been doing well before he got into wrestling is they deducted tax, advertising, television, and booking, leaving 15% of the gross gate to the wrestlers.

Speaker: And that's the gross, right? So the wrestlers still get taxed, right? So they dump their operating expense. Same disgusting shit. On to the wrestlers and pocket the change. The wrestlers have been short paid by by like 50% of their promised pay for as far as Jim Barnett had ever known. And they had always covered this up and lied to the wrestlers about it. Yeah.

Speaker: Mm-hmm. but yeah Of course, yeah, that's unbelievable. And they're making all the money in there. Yes, they're not the ones putting like their literal bodies on that line. Yes. Yeah. And Barnett also divulged, and this was much earlier that he when he was hitting on ah or allegedly hitting on Wilson on the concept of cutting back the gate, which is various tricks to disguise actual ticket revenue by reselling already sold tickets.

Speaker: The spectator count doesn't match the total ticket sold. And thus they can lie about what the gate was. Right. Yeah. Because if you resell a ticket, you sell it twice, but the wrestler only gets the proceeds for one.

Speaker: That kind of thing. Unbelievable. you Well, no, it's not unbelievable. It's totally believable. This is what capitalism is. is Yeah. And another keynote from Wilson was on the use of Mexican wrestlers. This one, I'm convinced, still happens today.

Speaker: The Mexican wrestlers would get paid 10 bucks for working a show. And if they complained, your work visa is gone. Back to Mexico. Yep. Disgusting. And visa troubles yeah are a constant issue for internationally touring wrestlers. Now, and like it's a serious thing where you expect somebody to show up for a show and they can't because of visa issues. Happens all the time.

Speaker: And now I'm wondering, and because I'm certain there are legitimate visa troubles, but can a promoter just strong armor wrestler a negotiation? Sure as hell can. Yeah. They control the the work visa.

Speaker: Right. So what Wilson really uncovers through countless lawsuits as well is that the Justice Department refused to investigate professional wrestling after the consent decree. This is through Justice Departments under Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, Ford, Carter. And Carter's mother, by the way, massive wrestling fan, like one of the granny wrestling fans who just went nuts. Huge wrestling fan.

Speaker: um And Reagan, in my absolute favorite moment from this book, Wilson's big, dumb, tireless heart attempted to hail Mary.

Speaker: he's goingnna He's got an idea because he knows a favor he can call in because the then president had been a successful politician during Wilson's football career. And he said, well, Jim, if there's any way I can be of help, please get in touch with me.

Speaker: And Wilson knows that every single powerful man is good on his word. And so he sends a letter. Dear President Reagan. Oh, I don't even need to read the rest.

Speaker: He gets a form letter back. He wrote Ronald Reagan, the greatest union buster president who has ever lived. as He's to blame for yeah almost everything happening right now. Yes. Yeah, like neoliberalism and its collapse leading to Trump. yeah's that's yes Yeah, that's ah that's Reaganomics, baby. and That's what we're living in the the consequences of.

Speaker: And yeah, he wrote Ronald Reagan saying, can we have a union, please, sir? Yeah, this guy's instincts are bad. Like, Jesus Christ, Jim. What the hell, man? i like Jim Wilson died in 2009. And my God, man, if I could find your ghost, I would shake you by the lapels. You went about this all wrong and you had all the right instincts in terms of what needed to be fixed.

Speaker: Just didn't to have the political... he didn't He didn't know how to do it. Ideology. Well, he was... And it's beyond ideology, although the ideology kind of helps. I don't think it's as necessary. That's true. The framework. Legitimate unions also wanted nothing to do with wrestling.

Speaker: So we went to SAG after I went to the SAG and then after, which were separate at that time. And they just had no interest. And there's so much more I could talk about here, but I'll sort of close off the chapter on Jim Wilson. He spent the rest of his life trying to bring attention to the abuses of wrestling through the rise rise of the ww WWF in the mid to late 80s. He was a regular feature on salacious TV talk shows of the 90s, but nobody ever took him seriously. He tried to start a wrestling union and never once got even remotely close, aside from the union, which technically existed for his doomed wrestling promotion.

Speaker: He passed away in 2009 from cancer, six years after the publication of his book, which became his true passion project and is genuinely a hell of a book. the remarkable Good. Yeah. And so the book. Good for him. I mean, what's it called again?

Speaker: ah the The book is called Chokehold. The something, something, something. One moment here. I'll actually cite my sources as I get into the end of this episode, which, of course, I have directly in front of me.

Speaker: Always. Chokehold, Pro Wrestling's Real Mayhem Outside of the Ring. Okay. Sounds interesting. And the other source I relied very, very heavily on was by Tim Hornbaker, who is kind of the wrestling historian.

Speaker: National Wrestling Alliance, the untold story of the monopoly of the strangled professional wrestling. Uh-huh. That sounds good, too. Labor POV, kind of? Mm-hmm. Um, no, no.

Speaker: Jim Wilson is the only person who has ever written on wrestling from a labor point of view, as far as I can tell. Right. OK. It's one of the reasons I wanted to do this. Nobody talks about wrestling as labor in a worker employer kind of sense. What ah Tim Hornbaker talked about was how the promoter starved out other promoters and also treated the wrestlers like crap. He definitely cared about that.

Speaker: But like the concept of labor unions have like come up nowhere. Right. Maybe ah the a casual mention. um So I want to close off here with something really fundamental that's come out of Jim Wilson's book and the other books I've read.

Speaker: and one of the reasons why wrestling got away with this. Wrestling is fundamentally shading in its character and from its early days, as we know, began as a ripoff and a scam.

Speaker: And although it beloved into kind of a sort of folk performance art before turning into a huge business, through all of it, wrestling has had a criminal character to it, more so than other businesses. This is a key thing.

Speaker: Promoters made so much fucking money and the business was so distasteful, it was almost always beneath the attention of the law. Right. When the state regulators started up, they cared about boxing. The only reason they cared about wrestling is that I think his name was Muldoon, legitimate wrestler got on the New York Athletic Commission.

Speaker: But wrestling is like it's legal, but it's treated as if it is illegal, like an industry of sin, like gambling or sex work. Right. That's right. one wants touch it. Yeah. Right. And the only reason the consent decree came about is because the N.W.A. became so powerful so fast, it was impossible to ignore. It went from nothing to taking over the country in three years.

Speaker: And once the N.W.A. was established in a part of the framework, Justice Department after Justice Department refused to look into what resulted everyone doing private civil cases. Right. And so it was too silly to take seriously distasteful, unwelcome in the newspapers. And the promoters are all millionaires with very powerful friends.

Speaker: And that is a fundamental reason why wrestling was never able to get caught by all of the laws that it violated. Because although, again, every business probably violates some laws, some of them horrifically. It's why I'm a union guy.

Speaker: Wrestling got away with it to an extent so many other places didn't. It went so much farther. Yeah. Like, I haven't heard of any houses being burned down over a few car dealerships recently. Yeah. It's wild, too, because, again, the trickiness of this is that sort of meta aspect of the kayfabe, wherein you can just, oh, no, we're going to, they the fake strike, like, they're operating on something of a meta level. Yes. I don't know, we're going to fake strike that people are going is real, so it looks like we're on the side of labor, but we're not. A very, very tricky...

Speaker: capitalist thing to do is infiltrate every aspect and take over every aspect of everything and then co-opt the elements that seem progressive in a fake way. And this is kind of doing that in a sort of quite obvious manner and thats sit's in in that scenario. Yeah, exactly. But it's like typical. It's wild how, ah and one of the things, i just to close off, I really want to stress, and I mentioned before, the National Wrestling Alliance is beloved by modern wrestling fans. It is considered one of the peaks of, like, great wrestling with great champions, an absolute peak. And when WWF came in and wiped out the NWA,

Speaker: um something magical and precious was lost. And from a fan perspective, that is absolutely true. But from a wrestler perspective, and the WWE is a monkey's paw thing, because now we just have one giant company run by a deranged demon of a man.

Speaker: Yes. And his deranged demon wife. Oh, God. Yeah. edge The McMahon's wild. the Where was I going with this? But yeah, the NWA, for all the good it did on the outside as entertainment, was basically a criminal conspiracy to fuck over the wrestlers. Yes. And the bosses unionized first.

Speaker: That's one of the fundamental reasons why ah unions were never within a dream of the wrestlers throughout all of this. And notably, i can only find record of one guy really trying.

Speaker: That's wild. Because again, they crushed him. Yeah. At least and until modern times. There's stories later. But yeah, one guy. So interesting. I'm going to close off here because there is an absolutely vital part of professional wrestling history. I have deliberately left off discussing, which is strange because it's my favorite part of wrestling. So next episode, I'm going to discuss the parallel history of women's wrestling. Interesting. Spoiler, it gets dark.

Speaker: I was going to say, it's probably pretty bleak, though. Oh, yeah. Like, I know how, unfortunately, how China passes away. It's very sad. That's about all I know about women's wrestling. Oh, boy. You've got... It's going to be fun. Great. But that's... Yeah, it's dark. If they treat the men like this, you know they're going to be really chivalrous with the ladies. Oh, yeah. It's fantastic. They're going to be super nice. Treat them really well. Yeah.

Speaker: My God. Hey, this is our show, though. We love to bring you down. Just kidding. That's the spirit. This is fascinating, Dave. It's actually very interesting. And we can take it as a hopeful thing in terms of inspiring us ourselves to get jobs that don't involve wrestling. Or take over the jobs you have and make them good.

Speaker: Anyways. Exactly so. You can do it, people. Take care, everybody. Goodbye. Bye. Bye.

Speaker: Thank you for listening to The Wonder Camera. Find us under The Wonder Camera on Blue Sky, YouTube, and Instagram.