Category: Wrestling

A coworker who knows that I occasionally watch professional wrestling recently asked me if I had seen a program on the Discovery channel called Big Little Brawlers.  It is a reality series about a little person wrestling organization based in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee.  Next, he mentioned that they were going to do a show soon in Jackson, Tennessee, where I live.  I immediately started doing research and found out that the Micro Wrestling Federation would be doing a show at a bar called the Slide and Ride a couple of weeks later in Jackson.  The Slide and Ride is a large enough bar to host concerts and even weekly bull riding contests on real bulls, not a mechanical bull.  I’ve never been one to go nightclubs, especially country themed bars.  Over the years, the local ones had reputations for being a good place to get your butt kicked if anyone decided you didn’t fit in.  I don’t think I look like I belong in a country bar so the only thing that might be able to get me into one of these places would be a wrestling show featuring little people. 

​I was fortunate to grow up living close to relatives on both sides of my family.  My aunt and uncle on my father’s side of the family lived in the houses next to ours and my paternal grandmother lived around the corner.  Even at a relatively early age, I could walk to her house without getting in the street. My grandmother was a widow and my father’s family spent a lot of time visiting her.  One Saturday morning, my father was stopping by to check in with her and he heard some noise that he had not expected.

In the 1970’s, professional wrestling was supposed to be “real”.  The people involved in the shows never let on that it was anything but a legitimate sport.  The wrestlers would violently angry at the suggestion that it was fake. The was well before they coined the term “sports entertainment” to keep it from being regulated like boxing.  Occasionally, there would be moments that were so ridiculously contrived that I considered it what I called an “insult to my stupidity”.  For example, actor Adam West made an appearance on Memphis wrestling as Batman.  He wasn’t supposed to be Adam West, he was supposed to be the real Batman.  Jerry Lawler had been wrestling in a Superman outfit for a few weeks and “Batman” came on to tell us that he was upset that someone was impersonating his superhero friend. And we were supposed to believe this was real.  This was seven years after the Batman series had gone off the air.  And Adam West wasn’t even wearing his normal Batman outfit.  Even more than the easily distracted referees, this incident confirmed to me that everything wasn’t on the up and up with wrestling.

2015 was the 45th anniversary of Jerry Lawler wrestling professionally.  In the Memphis area, there were several celebrations of this anniversary at various events.  I had been on a business trip but was returning home in time to see the event in Jackson, Tennessee, where I currently live.  It had been many years since I had been to a wrestling match. To my knowledge, there were no wrestling programs on TV that featured the local promotion.  Attending events like this one was the only way to know anything about these wrestlers. During the event, I took notes about many of the things I saw.  My notes started with observations about the people I saw.  I share these excerpts here because they don’t fit in anywhere else in the story but give an idea of the environment I was in:

“People in 4x plus size t shirts

Neon colored hair shaved heads tattoos

Large breasted older women not covering up very well

peroxide blonde men

People in a variety of casts and back braces.

Athletic shorts and buzz cuts

Plumbers crack

Back cleavage

Mentally challenged.

I stand out in this crowd”

In the 1970’s, Jerry Lawler became the biggest name in Memphis professional wrestling.  His impact was big enough on the weekly Monday night live events at the Mid-South Coliseum in Memphis, that having him on the card could double the attendance and guarantee a sellout crowd. This was a time when professional wrestling was made up of small promotions that controlled wrestling territories/ These territories were respected by the other promotions.  There were no national wrestling promotions like the WWE today.  The company in Memphis got attention from the rest of the country because of the success with Jerry Lawler. 

At some point in the 1970’s, the Memphis wrestling promotion introduced a character named Dr. Frank.  Dr. Frank was a wrestler in Frankenstein monster makeup.  When they introduced his character on the television program, Jerry Lawler brought him out in an upright wooden box with padlocks on it.  They referred to this box as a coffin.  The door to the box was in two parts and Lawler would just open the top part to show the audience Dr. Frank.  It seems like it was about a month before they let Dr. Frank out of the box to wrestle.  When they did let him out of the box, he just chased the other wrestlers around the studio.  He would also make his way into the studio audience.  While Dr. Frank didn’t do much wrestling, he did put on a good show.

I have talked about watching professional wrestling from Memphis in previous blog posts.  The Memphis wrestling programs were always on at 11 AM on Saturday mornings.  While I watched these shows practically every Saturday, I never went to a live taping or the Monday night shows they were promoting. I occasionally went to the Thursday night shows at the Jackson Coliseum in Jackson, TN.  In the early 1970’s when they were doing these shows, they would tape a show that would run on WBBJ, the Jackson television station.  That show would air on Saturday evenings at 11 PM.  

I live in Jackson, Tennessee.  There is an arena in Jackson known as Oman Arena that seats about 5,600 people.  It has been used for a variety events over the years including basketball games, rodeos, concerts and professional wrestling.  In the 1970’s it was known as the Jackson Coliseum and they held professional wrestling matches regularly.  I was a big wrestling fan and watched the local program on TV practically every Saturday.  It was a treat to go to the occasional live show at the Jackson Coliseum.  My first trips to see Wrestling were memorable just because I was getting to see these “stars” live.  By the time I was in high school, I had seen enough live wrestling that the wrestlers on the card didn’t make as much difference.  It would take a BIG star to get me to spend extra money for a ringside seat.  Andre the Giant was big enough to make that difference. 

The McGuire Twins were in the Guinness Book of World Records for being the world’s largest twins.  Most of the pictures of them in the record book showed them riding motorcycles.  When I was growing up, we thought they were riding minibikes, but I think they were just that much bigger than the bikes they were riding.  They also worked as professional wrestlers. I saw them wrestle live at the Jackson Coliseum.  There were a couple of differences in their matches and other matches that happened that night.  Most of the time, the wrestlers would get into the ring by grabbing the rope and climbing up the side.  There were no steps to get into the ring.  For the McGuire Twins, they rolled in a heavy duty set of steel steps.  There was no way they would have ever gotten into the ring with out these steps.  They also tightened all the connections holding the ring together.  This was when I first discovered one of professional wrestling’s secrets.  When they assemble the rings, they leave much of it loose to make more noise when the wrestlers stomp.  The wrestlers stomp when they hit each other because the sound makes it seem like the hits are much harder than they really are.  The ring barely made any noise during the McGuire Twins match. When it was over, they removed the steps and loosened the ring back up for the main event.  ​

UPDATE:  I have a friend that read this post that lives near their burial place in Hendersonville, NC.  Here are some pictures he shared with me. Their actual names are Billy Leon McCrary and Benny Loyd McCrary.

When I was growing up, I was a big fan of professional wrestling.  I watched the wrestling program from Memphis every Saturday morning.  At that time, professional wrestling was divided into territories and Memphis was one of the most successful areas.  The star of Memphis wrestling was Fabulous Jackie Fargo.  He was known for his blonde hair, his signature “Fargo Strut”, and calling everyone “pally”.  Over the years he had wrestled with several partners including Don Fargo (supposedly his brother, but actually a wrestler named Don Kalt) and his real brother Sonny, who went by the names “Roughhouse” and “Nuthouse”.