I warn you in advance – this video above is somewhat NSFW.
Some of you may have heard that professional wrestler Ole Anderson (whose real name was Alan Robert Rogowski) passed away a few days ago.
Ole was a wrestler, a booker (the person who coordinates matches for a wrestling card, and comes up with the set of circumstances leading up to those matches called angles that give fans a rooting interest), and was a bit of a commentator at times during his career.
To keep things from getting too tedious, wrestlers usually play practical jokes on each around better known in their lingo as “ribs.” Most of the practical jokes have some sort of humorous ending, although there are also ribs that are done for cruel purposes.
The above video is from an old CNN blooper reel in the spring, I’d want to say based on this TBS set they used – that this was either 1982 or 1983. Gordon Solie is with Ole, and this was probably going to be some sort of filler – my guess is at the top of a show.
They open up the package to find a phallicly shaped piece of chocolate – and of course, Gordon has the perfect line, asking Ole: “Did you model for that?”
A few notes about this clip from 1977, if you please.
First, this was before Channel 10 became WTSP – a name change that would take place the following year in September of 1978. Back then, Channel 10 was not a CBS station as it is now – but an ABC station, which it was up until the “Big Switch” of 1994.
Secondly, and this is mind-boggling to think about these days – one of Channel 10’s popular shows in the mid-1970’s was their wrestling show that aired Sundays at 1pm, often airing in place of whatever news or sports programs ABC had. The big professional circuit of note of that era and area, Championship Wrestling from Florida (CWF), had two locally televised shows in the Tampa Bay market: one would air Saturdays at 7pm on WTOG, Channel 44, and would stay there until the circuit’s demise in 1987.
That show would host matches from the Sportatorium in Tampa where the top talent would be featured against lesser-known grapplers usually there to lose, although that didn’t always happen – and the show was basically an “infomercial” for upcoming cards in the various arenas in Florida, with scripted “angles” taking place on TV so that fans had added incentive to go to the shows. Tampa had a card every week at the Ft. Homer Hesterly Armory, one of many stops during the course of a given week. On most Saturdays, additional cards would be held at either the Lakeland Civic Center, the Bayfront Center in St. Pete, or Sarasota’s Robarts Arena.
The “second show” that Channel 10 had often used different formats and would often air on different channels in that era. For a brief while around 1980, WFLA aired it on Friday nights after Johnny Carson – then WTOG would air the “B-show” on Sundays at 7pm. Sometimes it would just be a replay of the Saturday edition, sometimes it would be repackaged, and other times Gordon Solie would interview someone in the wrestling world for a half-hour or so, then show highlights the rest of the way.
Here, Gordon’s interviewing one Andre Roussimoff, better known to the world as merely Andre The Giant – one of most in-demand performers of the era.
This aired on what was then WTCG in Atlanta, Channel 17, which became WTBS in 1979. Don’t know the exact year this aired or on what show it aired on, but hearing “Gonna Fly Now” in the open, I would guess it was pretty close to 1976, maybe 1977.
This contest took place at the Techwood Drive studios in Atlanta where the wrestling matches for the old NWA Georgia circuit were held. Gordon Solie, who I’ve mentioned in a few of these blog entries (as he’s a big part of my local history and my TV childhood) called the action, with announcer Freddie Miller handling the introductions. I have no idea which burger outlet handled the supply of hamburgers, because Gordon mentions McDonald’s and Burger King’s mottos from the time in his closing.
I also have no idea if the competitive eaters are supposed to be local media personalities in Atlanta, or contest finalists, or what. It’s a good little “slice” of television, though.
I’m not a big fan of Donald Trump, let me say that right off the top. I always thought he destroyed the United States Football League back in the 1980’s by wanting to switch the league from a spring to summer season to a fall and winter season.
Nor was I big fan of his recreation of an old wrestling angle by saying John McCain isn’t a war hero simply because he got caught. This was one of the first wrestling angles I ever saw back in 1976, with Bob Roop playing the Trump role, saying disparaging things about Steve Keirn’s father, who was a real-life POW. All I remember was Keirn LEAPING over Gordon Solie’s podium to attack Roop one Saturday night to get at him! That got the politicians talking about him, but more importantly, it got all of US talking about him.
Yesterday, he gives out Lindsey Graham’s old cell phone number, which may or may not be in use today. Graham couldn’t hide his rage, calling Trump a jackass on TV late last night. But again: look what happened. The politicians started talking about him, and so did we. I heard Art Bell going on about him last night in the first half-hour of his show, saying he’s a forced to be reckoned with, because most of America is fed up with the way things are.
Donald Trump knows what he’s doing, and he’s not afraid to talk about what the other politicians don’t. The media hates him, and wants to keep him out of debates. So what? If they do that, they feed in to exactly what he’s trying to accomplish. At this point, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s on the ballot in November of 2016 as the Republican nominee. If not, I could see him running as an Independent, which could really buck the system even if he wins a state or two and keeps someone from winning the Electoral College.
Gordon Solie and Dusty Rhodes sharing a light moment at the old Tampa Sportatorium.
As I mentioned yesterday, Dusty Rhodes had passed away Thursday at the age of 69 in Orlando.
To understand why my first childhood sports hero was a professional wrestler who appealed to the blue collar fan, you have to understand that in the Tampa Bay area I grew up in, wrestling was not sports entertainment but was presented completely as a sport. Prior to 1975, there were no Tampa Bay Rowdies, no Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and the Lightning and Rays were still way ahead in the future.
Every Saturday night at 7pm, if you had a TV on, you were probably watching the televised matches on WTOG Channel 44 that were basically what would be called today an infomercial for the wrestling cards all over the Florida circuit, which was a link in the larger chain known as the National Wrestling Alliance that consisted of many such circuits across the country and worldwide. Gordon Solie, a well known local radio announcer of the era who also did lap by lap reportage over at Tampa’s old Golden Gate auto racing speedway, recapped the feuds, called the televised matches, and ran down the cards that were upcoming in the respective Florida markets the show aired to.
In the early to mid 1970’s, along came this bleached-blond Texan named Dusty Rhodes (real name: Virgil Runnels, Jr.), who may not have been the most technical wrestler who ever existed, but had the gift of gab and charisma that stood out amongst the “bad guys” of the era. Dusty was getting so much cheering from the crowd as a bad guy that the inevitable decision was made to turn him into a “good guy” in the spring of 1974. Five years later, he became the first what I would call “thespian wrestler” to win the NWA title, (five years before Hulk Hogan did likewise in the WWF in 1984), usually a throne that went to guys who could either wrestle and/or fight because the champion traveled from circuit, and one of those circuits just might attempt to go off script against the reigning champ and try and take the vaunted title for their own region.
It was also more of natural thing to give the title to wrestlers who could be both good guys and bad guys at the time depending on the region, because the reigning champion would easily be a platonic villain, and the hometown challenger a platonic hero for attempting to take a world championship. With Dusty as the world champ (winning the NWA belt three times: 1979, 1981, and 1986), the “mold” of the champ having to be a villain was more or less broken.
Rhodes continued his career on and off stage up until this very year, with sons Dustin and Cody taking up his profession. If Hulk Hogan is the Babe Ruth of pro wrestling, Dusty Rhodes would be akin to Joe DiMaggio.
With the exception of MLB’s All-Star game, I often think of all-star games as athletic pornography, a phrase I once heard wrestling announcer Gordon Solie (who would be 86 today, I’d later discover) use to describe the WWF in its “attitude era” of the 1990’s. Must like how porn is a bastardized version of movie making (not that there’s anything wrong with that), all-star games are a bastardized version of sports. Look at all that talent, never mind that the games are a glorified exhibition.
Look at the NHL all-star game last night in Columbus. 17-12?!? You can watch a Stanley Cup playoff series in the spring go the full seven games and you won’t see 29 goals in the whole series. This game alone had 29 goals.
The Pro Bowl has always been one of those events I either don’t watch or watch with the sound down. It’s a meaningless game that someone can only get hurt playing in. Imagine getting a career ending injury in a Pro Bowl? That would boggle the mind, and probably make the afflicted player suicidal.
If the Pro Bowl ever went away, I don’t think I’d miss it. The only thing good about it is it gets us closer to the Super Bowl.
In the middle of doing some research and development this week for future writings, I treated myself to a book I’ve had on my wish list for a while now. The book is called The Solie Chronicles.
I mentioned back on April 25th that when I worked at Sun Radio Network for my last hitch there in 1995 that a host we had at the time, Chris Rathaus, knew Gordon Solie, the longtime professional wrestling announcer who was also the track announcer at Golden Gate Speedway. Golden Gate was the home of what was the predecessor to a Winston Cup race, a Grand National event held there in 1962 won by Richard Petty. It’s the only NASCAR race of significance held in our area since.
Gordon got the most notoriety from hosting wrestling matches on TBS on locally on Channel 44 Saturday nights at 7pm. In fact, I could walk around my childhood home on a Saturday night and see a majority of TV sets showing the matches from the Tampa Sportatorium, or a few on TBS showing the bouts from the Techwood Drive studios in Atlanta. If you watched either channel, Gordon Solie would be calling the action, one of the few sports/entertainment hosts who competed against himself. Curt Gowdy probably being the other.
So I started reading the book Tuesday morning, and I just couldn’t put the darn thing down. Most of the auto racing ins and outs I didn’t know all that well. I do remember watching Gordon getting assaulted by a manager named Sir Oliver Humperdink back in 1980. (It’s about nine minutes into the You Tube clip. Of course, it was a staged incident, designed to get more publicity on “Hump” as a win at all costs bad guy manager, and with the usual rules of Solie not being touched thrown aside, it made the incident look more authentic.) Much like Howard Cosell, Gordon had a roller coaster ride of a career in the winter of his years, fueled by a fondness for booze.
His decline from calling wrestling matches is well missed today. I just can’t get into watching RAW for more than, say, 20-30 minutes at the beginning. It used to be fun to watching how a 225 pound guy with a good amateur background and trying to figure out, OK, now how is he going to beat that 450 pound oaf he’s facing, again? Nowadays, it’s a smaller guy with a bunch of muscles facing a slightly larger guy with a bunch of muscles. It’s just not the same. Plus, I can usually figure out what’s going to happen before it does, especially when a good guy turns bad, or vice versa.
If you’re a fan of the old days of Tampa, wrestling, or auto racing, I can’t recommend this book enough.
I still have my FCC card from 1991, 21 years later, 4/24/2012.
Another new year dawned, and it began to dawn onto me that it was possible that I wouldn’t be spending my seventh straight year working at the radio business at some point during the course of the year. I was working the odd jobs here and there, preparing for a life without this addictive business.
In early February 1995, I get another fateful call from Sun Radio Network operations manager Stan Anderson. Openings were again available at SRN, and I was asked if I wanted to work there for a fifth time. Even though this was making me the Billy Martin of board operators (the late New York Yankees manager that was hired and fired by George Steinbrenner repeatedly), I accepted.
A Slice Of Big Pauly 