Episode 110 - Million Dollar Bash

The Great American Bash issue from Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

We’re happy to welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) for another marathon pod. The main focus of the episode is the first Great American Bash in July 1985. We go over the show match-by-match, what was going on for each person at the time going into the show and where things were going after the show on the road to Starrcade 1985. We also talk about the other JCP show that night in Columbus, Georgia. There’s also discussion of both the magazine coverage of the show and the video tape, put out in conjunction with Pro Wrestling Illustrated.

From there, it’s a free for all, as we talk about tape trading, not only in wrestling but also hockey fights and old television shows, running shows in high school gyms and armories, which led to a discussion of the 1993 film Blue Chips, hockey road trips, the usual discussion of 1980s wrestling TV in the Baltimore/Washington area and much more.

As with most people these days, you can’t talk this long without some coughing fits. We tried to edit them out, but may have missed some, so please accept our apologies.

Also, our new podcast The Plot, done with When It Was Cool, now has two episodes:. The first is about the Mission Impossible TV show and the second is about the heist comedy The Lavender Hill Mob. You can find it in this podcast feed or over at the When It Was Cool Website. .

Thanks for listening.

Episode Ninety-Seven - Nothing Could be Finer

Jim Crockett Jr shakes hands with Paul Ellering at the 1986 Crockett Cup as Bill Watts and Elizabeth Crockett look on.

We’re happy to welcome back Beau James (@kingofkingsport) to the show for another history lesson.

First, we discuss the recent passing of Jim Crockett Jr, who ran Jim Crockett Promotions from 1973 until selling the company to Turner Broadcasting in 1988. JCP promoted in the Tri-Cities, when Beau saw his first live shows in the early 1980s. We talk about how Jim Crockett Sr promoted there before moving to North Carolina in the 1930s, the history of the Crocketts promoting the area off and on over the years, including once the Knoxville War ended in 1979 and eventually taking over the territory when it was sold by Ric Flair and Blackjack Mulligan. We also talk about them running in the late 1980s there, including a record-setting show in Kingsport in 1987.

After that, we spend a good while talking about Ron Fuller’s Southeastern Wrestling in Knoxville and Pensacola and Continental Championship Wrestling., including the 1977 time period Ron is currently discussing on his podcast and the 1980s stuff that will be part of the It’s A Family Affair project, which you can find elsewhere on the website. All the names you would expect to hear are brought up: Ron Wright, Robert Fuller and Jimmy Golden. Ron Garvin, the Mongolian Stomper and many more.

Of course, plenty of other stuff too, as you would expect when Beau is on the show, including some baseball chat and an update on Beau’s health issues. It’s always great to talk to the King of Kingsport.

Episode Eighty-Nine - The Force of July

The 1986 Great American Bash program cover

We look back at a special wrestling event that took place 36 years ago as we write this, the first date on the 1986 Great American Bash tour, held on July 1, 1986 at Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia. The Winter Palace host was at the shot and has a couple guests to look back at the show.

First up is one of the hardest working man in the podcast business, Kris Zellner (@kriszellner), co host of Between the Sheets (@BTSheetspod) , Exile on Badstreet, Cover 2 Cover and more. We go over the card, match-by-match and talk about some of the infamous stories that happened backstage. We also talk about the 1986 Bash tour as a whole, where it was successful and where it was not. We also talk about a bunch of other subjects including the logistics of watching wrestling in the 1980s, the days of tape trading, how Kris managed to find the time to do all those shows and some recommendations of classic matches to watch online.

(52:18) Also on the show is Mark’s high school friend Jim, who, to protect his real identity, we will call Jim K. Fabe. Jim and Mark were impressionable 16-year old wrestling fans who attended that Bash show in Philadelphia. We talk about what we remember about the show live, other wrestling shows we attended back in the 1980s, favorites then vs favorites and more. We also talk about the current problem in popular culture of separating the art from the artist, centering about Jim’s teenage fandom for Jimmy Snuka and reconciling that with what we know about the death of Nancy Argentino. That branches out into the same problems effecting creators in film and tv, sports, comics and more. It was Jim’s first podcast appearance and we think he did a bang up job talking a trip down memory lane.

Check the show notes below for The Final Best of 7 match between Magnum TA and Nikita Koloff for the Unites States Title from JCP TV and Jim Cornette’s podcast where he discusses the Great American Basn tours.

Episode Eighty-Four - Splendid Isolation Number Three

They Buried The Cowboy Under the Russian Flag!

We’re back with an extra-special edition of the new Splendid Isolation podcast series, as we welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) from Wrestling Observer Live and the Mid Atlantic Championship Podcast (@midatlanticpod).

We kick if off with a long chat about Bill Watts and the UWF, discussing how hot the promotion began after the name change from Mid-South Wrestling and its expansion outside its home region into places like Baltimore, where young Mike and slightly older Mark watched it in the spring of 1986. We reminisce about the initial title switches, promoting the Jim Crockett Sr Memorial Cup and one of the greatest angles of all-time, one so good we named a spin-off magazine after it: Eddie Gilbert and the Russians burying Watts under the USSR flag. We bracket that with the UWF TV show after the promotion was bought by JCP and just how quickly the show changed.

One of the other big topics covered is Mike’s new Mid-Atlantic Championshop Podcast, which he co-hosts with Roman Gomez. We talk about how the show started, why they chose 1982 as a starting point, some of the main players in the territory at the time and plenty of other JCP topics, including the Final Conflict show in 1983 and play WHAT IF? with various wrestlers (What if Gino had come in 1986? What if Buddy Landell had shown up for that TV taping?).

There’s plenty of other chat for the rest of the podcast, not limited to: the state of the territories by the mid 1980s, the hidden gem that was Southeastern Wrestling, the greatness of Ron Fuller’s Studcast podcast, classic 1980s TV and a brief chat at the end about sports uniforms.

Mike is always a great guest, so big thanks for him for giving so much of his time. We have more shows planned for the future, branching out in topics, so keep an eye out for them. Thanks for listening.