How come there's never been a big promotion in California?

[Jingus]

To answer JVK's question: no city in America even comes close to NYC's population. The next-biggest is Los Angeles, with four million fewer people than New York (and I'd guess the gap was much bigger back in the 60s and 70s). All the others are half of NYC's population or less.

[NintendoLogic]

It's not just the population. It's the cultural cachet as well. If something happens in the BosWash region, the important decision makers and the major news media are going to be aware of it, making it a bigger deal than stuff that happens elsewhere.

[jdw]

Three possibilities:

 

* New York based territory

* California based territory

* Chicago based territory

 

New York to a degree was lucky (or made its own luck) by pulling in the other major markets in the region: Boston, Philly, Baltimore/DC. New York alone was a major market, but when you made it NY+Philly+Boston, you're talking massive with Baltimore/DC as a bonus. It was also so much strength that it obvious your get cities like Providence that in size would be major in say the JCP territory.

 

Chicago because it would allow you to do the same thing that NY did: as base to build outward to gobble up all of IL, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Minnesota. The AWA got some of that, but not all because Detroit had its own territory, Indy did, Ohio was it's own and messy. But if they could have pulled all off similar to how well Vince Sr. pulled all of the northeast into the WWWF, then this would have been a mighty territory. It's not like the AWA was a lightweight anyway.

 

Of course California would be the other. Largest state in the country at the time and still growing, while NY is stagnant. There are three significant metros in CA (LA, Bay Area, San Diego) along with additional not-so-small cities outside those metros (Sacramento & Fresno)... and that's not even getting into Stockton, Riverside, San Bernardino, Bakersfield, etc. As we talked about earlier in the thread, a strong base to build from similar to NY: Arizona has several major cities, and several decent sized ones. Vegas isn't a bad town. Washington and Oregon aren't massive states, but there are some major cities and second tier ones. And pulling in Denver would add another major growing city.

 

The problem as we mentioned was that the west coast had a trio of successful promotions: SoCal, NoCal and Owens in Portland. There was no incentive for them to get together in the 60s and 70s when they were all doing good business. By the time SoCal and NoCal hit the wall in the mid/late 70s, it was too late for them to get together. Perhaps is a visionary bought out NoCal before it was totally in the tank, and somehow got to the Labelles in SoCal as well, with the entire state they might have turned things around. Given how well the WWF eventually did in CA, that's possible. Then expand into AZ and NV. I don't think Owens ever would have sold out, so the question would be if you could put together WWF-style production and expansion to get into WA/OR and steal them. Dittos taking on the AWA in Denver.

 

Really the place where a visionary would have done well was taking over for Verne while Hogan was still there, expanding into the open / semi-open areas in the Midwest to create a firewall (Ohio and Indy while consolidating IL & WI) against WWF expansion, being much more focused in adding California firmly before someone else got it. Also... get a major working deal with WGN as they and cable were expanding across the country.

 

John

[Dylan Waco]

I'm of the opinion that if Verne had "taken" Detroit (which was a dead territory, that likely could have been revived easily with a quality product), the Bruisers old Indy hub and maybe eventually picked up Montreal the course of wrestling history could be very different. I actually think if that had happened there is a fair chance that it is Verne who takes St. Louis and not Vince as he had points there anyhow and geographically it made sense. It's conceivable that Verne could have taken LA too I guess, though the AWA was never strong in Cali so I'm not sure it would have been worth it.

[JerryvonKramer]

See, if someone could have taken Cali, surely there are benefits to having LA and Hollywood in particular closeby, no? Just think of all the ad agencies and washed-up TV and movie stars there. Think of how easily they could have plugged in with big national promotional campaigns.

 

I'm convinced being based in Charlotte hurt Crockett and being based in Atlanta hurt WCW in the longrun.

[cm funk]

What were the reasons behind San Fran and LA going out of business in the early 80's? It's a little strange that two booming territories would decline that quickly and die before Vince's national expansion even began. Was it just a matter of not being able to replace aging talent like Blassie, Tolos and Ray Stevens and losing talent (Snuka, Rocky Johnson, Superstar Graham) to other promotions, or was there more to it than that? I'd think California would be a place guys would want to go to work.

 

It is surprising that another promotion of good size hasn't sprung up in California at some point in the last 30 years. AAA did really well there for a spell, I guess XPW had a brief period of relevance, PWG has been around for a long time now but hasn't really grown, and then there's all those random lucha shows which a lot of seem to draw pretty well. I liked the concept of Lucha Libre USA and think that is the type of promotion that could succeed in Cali

[Mad Dog]

NWA Hollywood is having a fairly successful television run in California right now as well.

[Dylan Waco]

I really need to get Jeff Walton's books and wish his interviews with Cubeta were still up because he is great on the strength and decline of LA wrestling

[jdw]

I'm of the opinion that if Verne had "taken" Detroit (which was a dead territory, that likely could have been revived easily with a quality product), the Bruisers old Indy hub and maybe eventually picked up Montreal the course of wrestling history could be very different.

We might agree in with the condition of "someone in Verne's position with a Vision". That very much was *not* Verne. If he took those *with* Hogan, but didn't make Hogan the Champ... then Vince would have ended up stealing Hogan anyway. He would have needed the vision to (i) push Hogan as the Anchor Champ, (ii) create a promotion that played towards Hogan, and (iii) had zero fear of pissing everyone off in the NWA and them coming after him. Vince basically called the bluff of that third point and kicked ass. Verne... probably had fear there that wasn't warranted.

 

 

I actually think if that had happened there is a fair chance that it is Verne who takes St. Louis and not Vince as he had points there anyhow and geographically it made sense.

St Louis wasn't terribly important since it wasn't really a "territory": you're just getting one city, and not exactly Los Angeles. It was more symbolic for Vince. Verne going to war in St Louis would have been pointless: take over the open/dying territories would add far more people with less risk of any way.

 

 

It's conceivable that Verne could have taken LA too I guess, though the AWA was never strong in Cali so I'm not sure it would have been worth it.

Again, it's the vision thing. He had the wrestler: Hogan. He had a great core to build off of, and the obvious areas to expand into that were close (MI, OH and Indy) that probably could have been done without setting off alarm bells in the NWA. It probably would have been worthwhile to simply buyout Bruiser if he was willing. Detroit... don't know how he would have gone about that since Sheik probably was suck an egofuck that he might not have sold.

 

If the AWA had added those to his core in the late 70s when the business of each had to suck, then the firewall already existed. Then the expansion with Hogan could have focused on the West: using Denver as a base to go into Cali, the bigger cities of AZ, NM and NV.

 

Real vision might have gone with a split promotion: Mid-Western circuit and Western Circuit. Don't mean that in the sense of two different world champs and tag champs, or a SmackDown and Raw. But a split crew, perhaps a 2+2 level of champs that could be split to anchor the different crews (WT/WTT + 2ndT/2ndTT) and can be mixed and match.

 

To a degree, that's what Vince did... just not explicitly or as clear West/MidWest since he was hitting nearly the whole country.

 

I don't think Verne could have pulled it off. And it would have taken someone pretty sharp and fearless. We do have to give it up to Vince: he was both.

 

John

[KrisZ]

Verne tried to steal LA from LeBell and was killed

[Dylan Waco]

My point on St. Louis was that it might have "fallen" to Verne after the post-Sam breakdown which is basically what happened with Vince - it fell into his lap. It could have easily fallen into Verne - or as jdw points out Verne surrogate with vision - lap instead

[JerryvonKramer]

Didn't JCP end up with a "split crew" after buying out Watts? One HQ in Charlotte and one in Dallas? That almost illustrates my point in a way.

 

 

Look how far Dallas is from Charlotte and they still had USWA / CWA / WCCW stuck in between their major territories. Just must have been a logistical nightmare.

 

Looking at that what Dylan and jdw are saying about Verne makes a lot of sense. But there are a lot of kinda "nothing" states between the core AWA territory and Denver and then the West Coast. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming ... are any of these important wrestling hotbeds? Do they even have decent potential markets outside of maybe cattle markets? What about Utah?

 

In any case, Chicago to Denver is one HELL of a commute. How does Verne break into Denver in the first place before he's able to set up a second base there?

 

Arizona and New Mexico interest me. Who ran Albuquerque and Phoenix traditionally? This is a pretty interesting site: http://legacyofwrestling.com/OtherTerritories.html but it seems to stop in the mid-1960s.

 

Who was running Albuquerque in the 70s and early 80s? I'm assuming it was McGuirk / Watts country -- Dick Murdoch lost the Mid-South title to Jerry Oates in Albuquerque in August 1977. By 86, VERNE was running shows there (on a show in Jan, Jimmy Garvin and Steve Regal lost the tag titles to Scott Hall and Curt Hennig)

 

By the early 90s, it's naturally part of Vince's circuit.

 

But really, it seems like "no man's land".

 

Feels to me like historically there SHOULD have been some West Coast powerhouse based in LA with AZ and NM and maybe NV as key markets. Really weird that there was never such a territory.

[Dylan Waco]

Didn't JCP end up with a "split crew" after buying out Watts? One HQ in Charlotte and one in Dallas? That almost illustrates my point in a way.

 

 

Look how far Dallas is from Charlotte and they still had USWA / CWA / WCCW stuck in between their major territories. Just must have been a logistical nightmare.

 

Looking at that what Dylan and jdw are saying about Verne makes a lot of sense. But there are a lot of kinda "nothing" states between the core AWA territory and Denver and then the West Coast. The Dakotas, Nebraska, Montana, Wyoming ... are any of these important wrestling hotbeds? Do they even have decent potential markets outside of maybe cattle markets? What about Utah?

 

In any case, Chicago to Denver is one HELL of a commute. How does Verne break into Denver in the first place before he's able to set up a second base there?

 

Arizona and New Mexico interest me. Who ran Albuquerque and Phoenix traditionally? This is a pretty interesting site: http://legacyofwrestling.com/OtherTerritories.html but it seems to stop in the mid-1960s.

 

Who was running Albuquerque in the 70s and early 80s? I'm assuming it was McGuirk / Watts country -- Dick Murdoch lost the Mid-South title to Jerry Oates in Albuquerque in August 1977. By 86, VERNE was running shows there (on a show in Jan, Jimmy Garvin and Steve Regal lost the tag titles to Scott Hall and Curt Hennig)

 

By the early 90s, it's naturally part of Vince's circuit.

 

But really, it seems like "no man's land".

 

Feels to me like historically there SHOULD have been some West Coast powerhouse based in LA with AZ and NM and maybe NV as key markets. Really weird that there was never such a territory.

Most of New Mexico got Amarillo tv and that was the only territory I am sure ran the state with regularity.

 

I've asked about Arizona before and it was not really a hot bed. Verne ran there some but not often. Others tried with varying degrees of success but no one broke through. It's important to remember that Albequrque and Phoenix are towns that have exploded in population in the last couple of decades - they were nowhere near what they are now during the height of the territory era.

 

Verne ran the Dakotas some IIRC and Stu Hart occasionally ran some in parts of Montana but really there were no markets in Montana, the Dakotas or Wyoming then that would merit it being worth a major investment. Then again Verne was stupid enough to open up a Western front in Alaska in 85.

 

Omaha had been a very good wrestling town for years and was strong for Verne at points but had tapered off by the time of the expansion era

 

Verne was already in Denver and it was a good town for him.

 

Verne was in Utah. In fact Salt Lake City was the last hot town in the AWA, with some really massive crowd even after the rest of the territory had shit the bed. Totally bizarre to me and I don't know if it is really explainable. Maybe it was the lack of other entertainment options in the crowd. Regardless SLC was a money maker for Verne well past the point where other towns were shit.

 

In fact it's a stretch to call the AWA territory at all. It covered a HUGE swath of land geographically. Which is why it was the base of operations best set up to stop Vince and/or do what Vince did before Vince did it.

[Ricky Jackson]

What were the reasons behind San Fran and LA going out of business in the early 80's?

As far as I know TV issues were a major reason for both eventually tanking and going out of business. LA lost its English language TV around 75/76 because of complaints to the FCC that their show was basically a 1 hour commercial for the house shows (which it was, but so were all territory era wrestling shows). This left the territory with only Spanish TV and an increasingly Spanish-only audience, which I guess hurt the business to a degree, but it seems like years and years of subsequent poor booking and a lack of star power are what really killed the area dead. The famous low point was when they basically booked the Frankenstein monster as a top heel around 1982 or so.

 

San Fran lost their TV around 1979, I think because notoriously difficult promoter Roy Shire finally pissed off the wrong people one too many times. Shire continued to book the Cow Palace afterwards (the main arena in the territory), relying on other promoters to supply him talent. A deal with Don Owen fell apart (Buddy Rose cut a shoot promo on Shire at a Cow Palace show calling him out for being a liar and con man) which forced Shire to rely on the mediocre at best KC territory for talent, which proved disastrous, and a switch to Florida and Rhodes was too late to stave off the end. The territory was dead by 1981.

 

This is just based on what I've read here and there over the years, a lot from Meltzer, so anybody with better info feel free to chime in.

[jdw]

Feels to me like historically there SHOULD have been some West Coast powerhouse based in LA with AZ and NM and maybe NV as key markets. Really weird that there was never such a territory.

I think the thread has been clear on this:

 

There was a strong LA promotion.

 

There was a strong Bay Area promotion.

 

CA was essentially split in half, and the two promoters made a good deal of money for themselves.

 

In our wildest fantasies would it have been cool if they merged and there was one California Uber Alles promotion that than expanded outward in the West? Sure. But it also would have been cool if Florida and GA merged and expanded outward into Southern areas that weren't Memphis, JCP and Mid South (which really only leaves Bama, which had an NWA promotion). That's just not how things worked.

 

The WWWF/WWF was a fluke. I think we've tried to get that across in various threads when talking about the base upon which Vince built. The AWA was something of a fluke, but even as "big" as it was relative to other NWA promotions, it didn't take MI or Ohio or Indiana despite those looking like logical places to expand. Why? Because those all were territories at various points while the AWA was getting off the ground and consolidating. I mean... the most obvious place to have long ago expanded was Indy because Verne had a working relationship with Bruiser, but it seems fairly obvious that for a good amount of time that Bruiser was making money off his own territory as well as working in Verne's. There seem to have been very few promoters with the vision to sell out. Perhaps that one reason that Tunney was smart in selling out to Vince: he got something rather than being steamrolled, and actually continued to make some money under Vince. Smart man for seeing the future. Not many did.

 

John

[cm funk]

Yeah, Jack Tunney was real smart in aligning with McMahon when he did. I believe he was used as the main promoter of shows all throughout Canada in the 80's and got a cut of all the gates. Sure he got some nice paydays from The Big Event and WMIII

 

He was perfect for "the WWF President" role too. I wish more modern promotions would look to Tunney or WCW Nick Bockwinkel for inspiration when it comes to writing in authority figures. The less they're used on-screen the better the angles they do work

[JerryvonKramer]

I was just about to make a thread about Tunney asking how much backstage pull he actually had when I clicked on this.

 

I've heard some people say Tunney was an idiot. And it was a favour to his brother.