Episode 105 - Tyger, Tyger

A 1912 T202 Hassan Triple Folder tobacco card featuring Hughie Jennings and Ty Cobb.

We’re happy to finally have filmmaker, journalist and author Greg Klein (@JYDbook) on the pod for a chat his new book, his old book and more..

To start, we discuss Greg’s new book, The Paper Tigers, a fictional account of a real-life incident in baseball history. After Ty Cobb was suspended in 1912 for going into the stands and attacking a fan, his teammates refused to play a game in Philadelphia, leaving manager Hughie Jennings to find replacement players. The novel tells the story of some of those players, including two con men and a seminary student., with the central character being a local barmaid who was the sister of one of the con men and married to the other. We talk about how Greg got the idea for the book, which was originally a screenplay, balancing facts and historical fiction, the truth behind Cobb’s attack on the fan, the connection to the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, baseball movies and more.

(22:20) - From there, it’s mostly wrestling chat. We talk about Greg’s book The King of New Orleans about the Junkyard Dog, Sylvester Ritter. We talk about Greg’s fandom growing up in suburban DC but also getting to see Houston wrestling, the rise of JYD in Mid-South Wrestling for Bill Watts, his popularity in New Orleans and the rest of the territory, his leaving for the WWF, Watts trying to replace him with other black wrestlers, Greg meeting JYD in later years and more. We also talk about our shared love of Mid-South as a whole, some of its more famous angles, the transition to the UWF, studio wrestling vs arena wrestling and lot of other wrestling topics.

There were a lot of planned topics left on the table, including Greg now living in Cooperstown and how the Baseball Hall of Fame was effected by the pandemic and past and present work stoppages in the sport, his wrestling career and being trained by Adrian Street and lots of other fun stuff, so we will definitely try to get Greg back on in the future.

Note: We had some Skype issues during recording, so hopefully the editing was not too egregious and the flow of the conversation was maintained.

Thanks for listening.

Episode Ninety-Four - It's a Family Affair Number One

Ron Fuller on the Continental Championship Wrestling set.

We are happy to debut the first episode of the “It’s A Family Affair” Podcast, the companion piece to the website project of the same name examining Continental Championship Wrestling. And for our first show, it’s great to welcome back Karl Stern (@WIWCool) to the show. Not only is Karl a wrestling historian, but an Alabama native who grew up watching Southeastern Wrestling and saw its transition to Continental.

In a very wide-ranging discussion, we talk about the transition of the promotion in June 1985, the logistics of the change, why they changed names, format and even announcers, bringing in Gordon Solie to replace longtime host Charlie Platt. We talk about where the promotion was in terms of angles they were running at the time and what they did on the debut show, including bringing in world champion Ric Flair to kick off the first episode.

After that, quite frankly, we just all over the place, talking about just about everything related to the company, including their start in Knoxville in 1974, Ron Fuller acquiring the Gulf Coast terrritory and renaming it Southeastern in 1978, the towns they ran and where the TV show was seen in that part of the country. We talk about Ron Fuller’s career as a wrestler and promoter, including whether we think buying Knoxville cost him the change of being NWA World Champion .

And we discuss just about every name you can think of from this era: Robert Fuller, Jimmy Golden, all of the Armstrongs (Bob, Brad, Scott and Steve), Adrian Street, Rip Rogers, Austin Idol, Tommy and Johnny Rich, the Nightmares (Danny Davis and Ken Wayne), Tom Prichard, Tony Anthony, Jerry Stubbs, The Flame (also known as the Assassin), Roy Lee Welch, Bill Ash, Lord Humongous and more.

We also talk about Karl’s When It Was Cool website, a wide ranging popular culture site, very akin to our own. We even find time to talk about Southern Basterds, then now missing in action comic set in the part of Alabama Karl knows very well.

The goal of the podcast is not only have wrestling journalists and historians on the show, but also the wrestlers were that is possible.

Note: You can also hear me on an upcoming episode of Ron Fuller’s Super Stud Cast, where I can to ask Ron about the creation of Continental and hear how it happened from the man himself.

Be sure to check out the It’s A Family Affair section of the website for a look at the Continental television shows and other articles about the promotion. Thanks for your time.