Author: Pete Moon (Assistant Editor)

It is Saturday, July 14th, 1984, a day that will go down in the annals of Pro Wrestling as ‘Black Saturday.’ You are a pro wrestling fan living in the US Mid-Atlantic. For the past 12 years, you’ve tuned into Superstation WTBS at 6:00 on Saturday for the weekly 2-hour broadcast of Georgia Championship Wrestling. This particular Saturday, you turn to WTBS to watch NWA World Championship Wrestling, and almost immediately, you can tell something is wrong. Black Saturday: The Prelude To The Monday Night Wars Instead of being welcomed by nationally renowned pro wrestling commentator Gordon Solie, you are…

May 5th, 2002, was an important day for the WWE with a plane ride from hell. They had just concluded their 2002 British tour with the taping of Insurrextion. It was also the first Raw-branded PPV, and the first event to be held under the new WWE banner. But none of those are the reason we remember that date, which now lives in infamy. What followed was a flight described by Jim Ross in his now-defunct Ross Report column as “about seven hours in length and low-lighted by a handful of people who consumed too much alcohol and consequently acted…

As Paul Heyman said in a 2022 interview with Fox Sports, Professional Wrestling in the 1990s needed disruption, and Heyman was willing to be the disruptor. When last we left the tale of Heyman’s career in professional wrestling, he had done just that. After becoming sole creative director of Eastern Championship Wrestling in 1993, he began shifting the promotion’s image to line up with the grittier, edgier styles that had come into the mainstream with the rise of Alternative Rock and Gangsta Rap just a few years earlier. As we will continue to chart Paul Heyman’s legacy of hustle, as…

In a 2022 interview with Ryan Satin, Paul Heyman said of his life that he’s never held a real job. Whether it was selling sports memorabilia from his family home, taking pictures of local wrestlers in the New York area, producing events at Studio 54, or booking for the 3rd biggest pro wrestling promotion in North America, Heyman never thought of his work as a “real” job. “I worked around people who had real jobs,” Heyman told Ryan Satin. According to Heyman, the people who did lighting for Studio 54 or the camera operators at WWE events were the people…

On April 3rd, 1908, Gotch Vs Hackenshmidt was the most important match of the turn of the century. Professional wrestling was very different at the turn of the century. The sport caught on in America after the Civil War, where the soldiers took to grappling as a form of entertainment. The soldiers who were best at wrestling would go on to perform for audiences at circuses and carnivals. From there, it grew into a spectator sport. However, it wasn’t a very profitable spectator sport. It lacked the excitement of boxing or the freshness of baseball or football. Wrestling matches were…

Most pro wrestling historians will tell you that Ron Simmons defeated Vader on August 2nd, 1992, to become the first black World Heavyweight Champion. Dissenters, what few there are, will point to Bobo Brazil’s victory over Buddy Rogers on August 18th, 1962. But it’s Reginald ‘Regis’ Siki who deserves his accolades. Brazil reigned unrecognized as NWA World Heavyweight Champion for 73 days. But there is one champion the history books leave out, whether by design or by accident. Nat Fleischer mentions him in passing in his exhaustive 1936 history “From Milo to Londos” and Marcus Griffin fails to mention him…

In the history of professional wrestling, there are thousands of competitors who came to the squared circle from other athletic backgrounds. For example, Kevin Nash and The Undertaker both played basketball before stepping between the ropes. Macho Man Randy Savage and Sycho Sid had promising careers in baseball. Jim Neidhart, Goldberg, and Roman Reigns were professional football players. When you look at all the stories of pro wrestlers from different sports backgrounds, they tend to carry a common trait. They all failed to impress at the highest level of their sport. Ernie Ladd, however, is a different story. __________________ Ernie…

The January 31st episode of RAW is WAR began with a pyrotechnics display followed by the entrance of The New Age Outlaws as The Radicalz debuted on WWF Raw. Road Dogg gave a typical spiel about how great it is to be tag team champions and how he and Billy Gunn were bound to beat anyone who came to the ring. After a commercial break, Al Snow and Steve Blackman came out for a WWF World Tag Team Championship match. The result seemed a foregone conclusion, with The New Age Outlaws as part of the recently reunited D-Generation X and…

Following Jesse “The Body” Ventura’s floundered comeback bid in 1986, he had some tough decisions to make. The blood clots in his lungs severely impacted his wrestling ability, but Jesse Ventura was still one of the best promos in the business. Putting his mic skills to use, The Body would move behind the desk, co-hosting WWF programming alongside the likes of Vince McMahon and Gorilla Monsoon and becoming one of the most iconic heel commentators. During this time, he also hosted The Body Shop, an interview segment akin to Piper’s Pit. “Many people have asked me, how did I become…

Yeah, you read that right. In the world of professional wrestling, Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope of the Insane Clown Posse are unsung heroes, and we challenge many to deny it. “But Violent J and Shaggy 2 Dope can’t wrestle!” fans might be ready to retort. Well, ECW, WWF, and WCW certainly didn’t see things that way. ‘But JCW is nothing but some backyard trashbag league,’ I hear you typing in the comments section. The Insane Clown Posse – We Need To Talk About The Greatest Show If Juggalo Championship Wrestling truly was a backyard league, why have wrestlers…