A CHARLOTTE CARD I REMEMBER WELL

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October 24, 1966

CHARLOTTE, NORTH CAROLINA

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45 Years Ago

The very first Monday night after I received my driver's license in September, 1966, found my friend Jimmy and me planted in our ringside seats at Charlotte's Park Center.

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Even though that was a school night, I was permitted to flex my independence somewhat and make my first trip to Charlotte as a licensed driver.

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Once this venture was over, I was informed that wrestling (at least attending live matches) would have to be sacrificed for the time being. I had just started high school, and I was expected to hit the books, make good grades so I could get into a good college, so I could have a brilliant career in...whatever. You know the drill.

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So back to the regular confinement of seeing wrestling only on WBTV and WGHP every Saturday.

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With much begging and persuasion, the ban was lifted six or seven weeks later when I was permitted to return to the Queen City for a "wrestling extravaganza." I was permitted to attend ONLY because the show was at the Charlotte Coliseum, a building I had visited only a couple of times since it opened in the late 1950s. Once was for the Ringling Bros. Circus and the other for some ACC basketball game that I was dragged to by a friend.

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KLONDIKE BILL was in the midst of his big push by JIM CROCKETT PROMOTIONS at this time. He had been "injured" by THE GREAT MALENKO during the summer, building to the Russian's annihilation by the Alaskan on the Charlotte Labor Day card.

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KLONDIKE then set his sights on MALENKO's tag team partner, THE MISSOURI MAULER, who held the SOUTHERN HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP. BILL would take the belt from the MAULER, eventually losing it back to his nemesis.

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The Texas team of TEX MCKENZIE and NELSON ROYAL were working a program with BRONCHO LUBICH and ALDO BOGNI during the Fall of 1966. With nothing really settled, the JCP bookers decided to head this Coliseum show by putting TEX and NELLIE in a match with BOGNI and LUBICH and to toss their evil manager HOMER O'DELL into the mix as a wrestler. To even up the sides, the red-hot KLONDIKE BILL was added to the Texas side of the ledger.

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NELLIE took fall number one over LUBICH with his atomic drop. A triple-team body slam by the villains (with the far-sighted referee missing it completely) put BILL's shoulders down for the count to square the match. Then KLONDIKE's big splash on O'DELL closed the show.

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BOBBY SHANE (one of David Crockett's proverbial young lions) was getting a CROCKETT push at the time. In fact, SHANE would soon be teaming with KLONDIKE in tag team main events. On this night, he faced GEORGE "TWO TON" HARRIS, in his final days as a headliner. Young BOBBY grabbed a DQ victory over TWO TON.

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Girls were featured on the show, and probably for the 500th time, the great PENNY BANNER pinned TAMMY JONES.

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The rugged German duo of KURT and HENRY VON STROHEIM, a B-plus to A-minus team faced another young lion in PAUL DEMARCO and veteran JESSE JAMES. With JESSE involved, it was no more than a TV match. DEMARCO could hold his own, but JESSE's career was dissolving as fast as did Barry Bonds' popularity. The Berlin boys won.

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The match of the card which interested me the most was the semi-final. The SOUTHERN TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS and favorites of most all area wrestling fans, GEORGE BECKER and JOHNNY WEAVER were battling the rowdy duo of the MASKED RED DEMONS, with red-headed TWO TON HARRIS at ringside as their manager.

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BECKER and WEAVER had been feuding with the DEMONS since the summer when the masked men first appeared in the CROCKETT territory. After a short while, the DEMONS added the tutorial skills of TWO TON, who quickly dyed his locks red and obtained a bright red suit, with a belt buckle the size of Rhode Island, which was comparable to HOMER O'DELL's cane, i.e., a weapon.

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I had witnessed these two teams go to a double DQ back in a Statesville, N.C. summer card.

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JIM CROCKETT, for this match, added a stipulation to the proceedings. One of these masked men had to wear a white mask so the referee and participants could tell the ruffians apart. "Too much switchin' goin' on," said the boss. "It's too confusin." TWO TON protested. Too bad.

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Much to my disappointment, when the RED DEMONS entered the ring for war, one wore a white tobagon, pulled all the way down over his face, with eye, nose and mouth holes cut out.

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The championship looked to be in jeopardy when one DEMON pinned WEAVER for the first fall. Between falls, with the referee distracted, TWO TON gave JOHNNY a "big splash" with that giant belt buckle strategically placed on WEAVER's sternum. JOHNNY barely made it to his feet for the second fall.

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BECKER abdominal stretched one of the DEMONS, and the match was even.

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The winner of the third fall would claim the titles. And for a time, it appeared the masked men would take the crown. But our heroes battled back. Soon the DEMONS were getting thrashed. BECKER tossed the white-clad DEMON out of the corner, and the tobagon came off. Of course, his regular red mask was underneath. Then the hooded duo tried their usual switcheroo, but to no avail. JOHNNY had one of them in the corner and was ripping at the mask. At this point, TWO TON gave the "clear out" signal. But before the DEMON got away from WEAVER, the front of his mask was torn to the point that it flapped open and I remember seeing his face as clear as a bell. Of course, at that time, I had no idea who he was, but I remember this as if it happened this morning. I saw his face.

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The three sped up the aisle and BECKER and WEAVER were awarded the match on a count-out.

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Three months, before JOHNNY passed away, I asked him about this particular match. Was he supposed to tear the mask as he did, or was it an accident? He said he didn't remember what I described to him.

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"You remember lots of these matches better than I do. George and I wrestled these guys so many times in a six-month period, I can't kept them straight."

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That is completely understandable.

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I saw George and Johnny work these guys, maybe four times, out of the probable one hundred matches they had with one another.

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"What I do remember about these guys is that they were both small as wrestlers go, and you could throw them a mile. They took great bumps. Many times it scared me the way they took bumps. I just knew for sure that they weren't going to get back up, but they did. Oh...and they both loved their liquor."

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Another story Johnny told me about the DEMONS...Some of the wrestlers had complained a little about smelling alcohol on the them during some matches. One night, in a small Virginia town, the promoter told IKE EAKINS to watch them like a hawk and make sure they didn't have any booze to drink before their main event. IKE assured the promoter he would take care of it. But when the DEMONS got to the ring, they smelled like a still.

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After the show, the promoter got in IKE's face and chewed him out for not doing as he was asked. "I was with them the entire time in the dressing room before they went out. They did NOT take a drink," IKE replied. "Were you with them the ENTIRE time?" the promoter wanted to know. "ABSOLUTELY, except when they used the bathroom before their match."

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Hearing that, the promoter and IKE went into the bathroom. The promoter found a bottle of booze hidden in the toilet tank.

JUNE 13, 1966

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Maybe you had to have been there.

And I wish you had, as this was a most memorable evening.

Backtracking a bit, I should point out that Jimmy Lewis and I had become good friends, having been in the same fourth grade class at N.B. Mills Elementary School. But the opening of Northview the following school year took care of that, at least for a while. I remained at N.B. Mills, but Jimmy was in the newly-developed Northview district, and off he went. Two years later, because of the Center Street dividing line, we continued apart - - he went to Oakwood and I went to D. Matt.

But the summer before SHS found us reunited in the classroom basement of the high school gymnasium trying to grasp the elusive concepts of Algebra I, something neither of us had accomplished in our final year of junior high. Cutting to the chase, we quickly became good friends once again and remained nearly inseparable our three years at SHS. In fact, Jimmy lived with my mother and me our senior year.

One memorable occurence I clearly recall is the night of June 13, 1966.

I had watched CHAMPIONSHIP WRESTLING most Saturday afternoons on WBTV-Channel 3 for several years, and aside from attending a few live wrestling shows on the rare instances they were held in Statesville, had never been to see them in the metropolis of Charlotte.

Jimmy and I had watched the wrestling show on June 11th and decided we wanted to go to see the live matches in Charlotte which were advertised on that week's TV show. But there was a problem - - how to get there. Both of us were still fifteen, thus no driver's licenses.

So we put our two skulls together and decided to ask my mother to take us. It wouldn't be an easy task of getting her to agree to our request. But Jimmy could be quite persuasive and so could I, and together as a tag team, we liked our chances. So we placed our one-sided proposal on the table, and my mother said yes. It had been much easier than we had expected.

In fact, my mom (Velma) asked a co-worker to go with us, and it became a foursome.

We left Statesville that Monday as soon as she got off work at 5:00 and headed for the "big city." Of course, no interstate to Charlotte then, so we went south on Highway 21 through Troutman (hey, there's the fair grounds), the then tiny hamlet of Mooresville and we eventually came into Charlotte. Our destination for wrestling was the Park Center (now Grady Cole Center). Being close to the then-popular Charlottetown Mall, we went to the S&W Cafeteria for a nice meal. Then off to the matches.

We arrived at Park Center, parked our really hot 1963 Plymouth Valiant (which would go from zero-to-sixty in ten minutes), and bought our RINGSIDE tickets.

I was soon sitting in the famous (to me) building, which held around three thousand. By the time the starting time of 8:15 rolled around, I doubt there was a seat to be sold.

I recall really nothing about the preliminary matches, except for the Missouri Mauler being in one of them. Everyone remembers the Missouri Mauler, right?

After an intermission, it was time for the main event match, and it was just not any main event, this match was for the Southern Tag Team Championship, which at the time, I thought, really stood for something, but I later discovered it was just a gimmick.

Up to this time, Jimmy and I had cheered and booed the wrestlers a little, but Velma and her friend sat silently. I assumed they were not having a great time. Mom would probably have been satisfied to be home watching THE ANDY GRIFFITH SHOW and BEN CASEY. After all, she had to go to work the next morning, and with school just out, Jimmy and I could sleep until noon.

The crowd roared with approval when George and Sandy Scott made their way to the ring. They were the "good guys" and were known as The Flying Scotts because they used an arsenal of high-flying maneuvers such as drop-kicks and flying head scissors.

As soon as the crowd's screaming died down, out came the "bad guys," who were also the current champs. Aldo Bogni and Broncho Lubich were their names, and they were not well-respected among wrestling fans. And they also had an ace-in-the-hole. They used the services of a manager. His name was Homer O'Dell. Mr. O'Dell always was donned in a formal tuxedo and was dressed to the nines. He also carried a cane, which he was known to use for everything except walking. By everything, I mean he used the cane to choke, to poke and to outright hit anyone who opposed his charges. O'Dell was easily the most-hated man in Charlotte-area wrestling for the entire decade. Big Bill Ward often said of him on TV that Homer was "so low he'd have to walk on stilts to look a snake in the eye."

The match began.

These four wrestlers were at the top of the business at that time, and they REALLY knew how to get the crowd involved. Ring psychology in wrestling was always a key to being successful in the business, and these guys had masters' degrees in their craft. The crowd was up and down more than a Lutheran church service, screaming their lungs out, cheering and booing. O'Dell used the cane on the Scott brothers, nearly inciting a riot. Fortunately, no one went overboard to the point the Queen City's finest had to get involved.

I looked over at Velma and her friend, and they were going wild just like everyone else.

The full sixty-minute time limit on the match expired, the referee separated the participants, and the villains scurried out of the ring with their championship belts and went to their dressing room. The "good guy" Scott brothers remained in the ring for a while, accepting the crowd's cheers and applause for a job well done, even if they had come up short becoming the new champions.

They finally exited the ring and headed up the aisle back to their dressing room. It happened to be the aisle where we were sitting. Velma was on the end of the row. Keep in mind, these guys had been going at it for a full hour and under the hot ring lights, they looked as if they had been dropped into a well. As the two grapplers passed her, she reached out and patted one of them on the back. The perspiration went everywhere, including all over Velma.

It got her good. But she shrugged it off and we all headed for the parking lot. The show was over.

As we headed out of Charlotte, we stopped for a snack at Krispy Kreme, capping off the evening.

Then the long drive back to the City of Progress.

An evening well spent.

TOP TAG BATTLES KICK OFF NOVEMBER

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November 4, 1967

LEXINGTON, NORTH CAROLINA

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43 Years Ago

Top quality matches should pull in another large crowd for tonight's professional wrestling card at the LEXINGTON YMCA.

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The current SOUTHERN TAG TEAM CHAMPIONS, GEORGE BECKER and JOHNNY WEAVER, will clash with the rugged duo PAMPERO FIRPO and THE MISSOURI MAULER in a best-of-three falls explosion, set for a one-hour time limit.

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Neither the team title nor WEAVER's recently-acquired SOUTHERN HEAVYWEIGHT CHAMPIONSHIP (which he took from the MAULER) is at stake, but exciting action is expected, and a FIRPO/MAULER win would guarantee them a championship match in the near future. Neither team has any positive feelings for one another, so anything could happen.

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Another top tag battle with spectator appeal matches the prize Indian combo of BOBBY RED CLOUD and CHIEF LITTLE EAGLE against super bullies BRONCHO LUBICH and ALDO BOGNI. The Indians are on a current win streak in LEXINGTON, one their opponents would like to stop dead in its tracks. This is two-of-three falls with a forty-five minute time limit.

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Two singles matches are also set for tonight.

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George 'TWO TON' HARRIS hopes to splash young, good-looking ALEX MEDINA and JERRY LONDON challenges the crafty veteran 'BULLDOG' LEE HENNING in the 8:15 p.m. opener.

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