Episode 130 - Some Jackets Required

Don Fargo and his new Fabulous Fargos (Ken Timbs and Pat Rose) with host Christopher Love (Bert Prentice) from a 1987 episode of World Organization Wrestling

We’re happy to welcome back Al Getz (@AlGetzWrestling) to discuss the latest edition of his Charting the Territories books, this one covering 1971-1973 Gulf Coast Wrestling. We talk about the main players in the territory at this time, including Cowboy Bob Kelly, Bobby Shane, Don Fargo and Rip Tyler, as well as future stars like Kevin Sullivan, Steve Keirn, Ron Bass and Greg Valentine, wrestling as Don’s brother Johnny Fargo. We talk about the towns the promotion ran and some of the interesting ways they crowned champions there (not with belts or trophies).

Then, as we did recently with Beau James, we talk about the travails of being a wrestling historian, covering a business that’s built on a lie. How hard is it to get “accurate” data on things like shows, box office and the like? And Al talk us through his methodology, both online and boots on the ground research.

We chat about Al being inducted into the Tragos/Thesz Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in Waterloo, Iowa, getting the James C. Melby Historian Award.

The show ends with some quick baseball chat, with the season just a week old and Al’s Atlanta Braves being the only National League East team with a winning record. He also tells us about his first road trip of the year and dealing with weather issues with early spring baseball in the Midwest.

And the next episode of the Charting the Territories will look at Dick the Bruiser’s WWA in Indianapolis coming next week.

Episode 114 - Louisiana Hayride

Al’s new book. Go buy it.

We’re happy to welcome Al Getz (@AlGetzwrestling) back to the show to discuss a variety of topics, but most importantly his new book, Charting the Territories: The 1971-1973 LeRoy McGuirk Oklahoma/Louisiana Wrestling Almanac.

We talk about the process of putting the book together from all of Al Getz’s into the 20+ year history of the territory and the use of his wrestling statistics to look at where people worked on a card and how prominent their feuds were during a particular time. We look at some of the familiar names in the territory, like Bill Watts and Danny Hodge, superstars working there regularly like Dusty Rhodes and the Spoiler and youngsters in the infancy of their careers, like Bob Backlund and Pez Whatley.

Al also talks about his odyssey this year to visit every Major League Baseball park and some of the minor league stadia as well. We learn what state Al visited for the first time, as well as some of the atypical ballpark food he ate during the course of the year.

We wrap with a cursory look at the new Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame ballot which had just been released when we recorded the pod. Rather than discuss individual candidates, we talked about some of the procedural changes implemented this year, increasing the number of votes and the inclusion of many tag teams and how that could effect people’s voting.

Episode 111 - Let's Go to the Videotape

The American Ninja from Texas Championship Wrestling.

We’re happy to welcome for the first time to the show, Kris P Lettuce (@krisplettuce), the man behind the Armstrong Alley You Tube channel. We discussed the treasure trove of found footage he has been posting on his channel featuring independent wrestling from the 1980s., 1990s and 2000s.

First up, we talked about his channel and the origins of all this footage, including a subject we’ve been talking a lot lately on the show, tape trading. Just how big was the list of footage from which he was choosing?

From there, we talk about a number of short-lived promotions, including: Austin Idol’s 1993 USA Wrestling, the 1987 Alabama promotion World Organization Wrestling, the 1990-91 Texas Championship Wrestling, the 1991 Nashville International Wrestling Alliance, the 1990 Arkansas International Pro Wrestling, The 1990-91 North American Wrestling Assocation/South Atlantic Pro Wrestling and more. There’s a littany of people we mention here: Idol, Junkyard Dog, the Bullet and the other Armstrongs, Bob Holly, Bill Ash, Stunning Steve Austin, Paul Jones, Robert Fuller, Willie the Wrestling Clown and even Nick Gulas.

There’s also chat about Southeastern/Continental, missing and found footage, Ron Wright and Ron’s Championship Wrestling, wrestling fan subcultures, Kris’ new Patreon, wrestling books, what footage he hopes to get next and more.

Note: The next episode of The Plot should feature two spy-themed Silver Age comics and should be out in a week or two. Thanks for listening.

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.