Indikator

IBV by then was Selenkowitsch. Hannover until 1980 was Schober (Peter William as the matchmaker). Berlin/VDB was Berger. Hannover then got Kaiser, who was more like a money mark. In the end William/Wanz as more or less heads of VDB edged out Selenkowitsch, consolidated power and by that you could say they drove it into the dead end that was Catch. It will take quite a while until all the intricate details of the promotional structure will be shown at WD. Like Berger&Lasartesse copromoting and then being in opposition to each other in Berlin. Then again I am also trying to flesh out the UK and things like figuring out Jack Atherton shows is quite some task. I could live to the age of 200 and never run out of things to do.

Mile Zrno was trained by Michael Ujevic

Read a great line by Andrew Betts on the Stick To Wrestling FB Group: The reality is nobody who wasn't already a fan has ever taken wrestling seriously it's been that way forever

Small correction, he was in Hannover for Edmund Schober, that had nothing to do with Wanz/CWA/VDB. I assume Katsuji Adachi was the middleman, Schober had in the previous year tried to book him as the successor of Kiyomigawa, but I think he didn't get as over as they hoped. Not sure how he got booked in Grand Prix just prior.

Shoots happened behind closed doors. I see coverage of the first euro tournaments and the papers shit on them. "We only had coverage becaue the venue needed the money, otherwise they would have gone bankrupt"-stuff from Vienna 1900. Friendly reminder, that it was the town where the NYC Masked Marvel angle originated from.

As always your posts are very fascinating, we cannot thank you enough. What I would like to know is if there has been information about the shows in Riki Sports Palace. Was it difficult not to run a deficit with those shows? I always thought it might be comparable to a venue like Arena Coliseo, meaning that it was a good way to have placefiller shows and an easy way to get TV footage on a quick notice. So I can totally see the value that Riki Sports Palace could have offered, but at the end of the day the question remains if it just wasn't feasible to have such a venue. Maybe for good reason that approach wasn't used afterwards.

That Urata connection sounds interesting. What else did he do in the business?

I have read such an article from 1912 (should have been an Austrian sports magazine IIRC), it read a lot like those night club "wrestling" deals you had with the women for the longest time. So why you surely can debate if it was professional wrestling, you have to at least admire the ladies because they surely didn`t have it easy.

"Mulligan and referee Rick Hazzard got into it in the dressing room.... Hazzard called him a lousy wrestler and blamed him for the fact his match with Brody drew 200 fans.... Mulligan punched Hazzard out and rammed him into a wall." - July 7, 86 Observer This was likely Fort Worth on 6/23, Mulligan probably left the promotion immediately

Just in case anyone still wants to know the Maritime 1987 guys: Butcher Vachon (Roger Theriault) , Bobby Hart (Shane Bower) , Nature Boy Sweetan (Verne Siebert)

Two commutes later I'm done with the episode. I can't recall where we got the identification of Mighty Sputnik from, but if it was Mike Allen he merely upheld the family tradition of having a Russian gimmick (Russian Wolfman - John Smith) . Doesn't beat "Rapapotsky" though. I really hope that Mike will emerge one day and tell us something about his family history

Nature Boy Sweetan couldn't have been Fred, he died in a fire 13 years prior. It is comparable to a Pretty Boy Hanson in 1975 who was misidentified as Stan Hanson. The only "other" Sweetan we don't know nothing about is a Hoss Sweetan who worked in Detroit in 1974

If Meltzer reads that spoiler sentence he will likely give the first 8 star rating... as he should