Top Heels In The States From 76-81

[JerryvonKramer]

However, by the period in question (76-81), Baker spent a lot of time in the South East, with runs in CWF and Gulf Coast (later Continental). In CWF he tagged with Billy Graham, but the thing I'd heard about him most was the run he had in Gulf Coast first tagging with and then feuding with the young Hulk Hogan. This is why I put him under "Florida" in the initial list. I remember reading or hearing somewhere that he was particularly over in that area.

 

Digging around, turns out he also had runs in Detroit and Texas during this time too, holding the Texas title as late as 1980.

 

For the purposes of this thread, however, I think Ox Baker was getting on a bit in terms of being a top top heel -- even more so than Ivan Koloff. Also, I can only imagine that some of his late runs must have been as a face.

 

I think you can make a case for Patera over Graham. You could argue that Graham at his peak was better than Patera at any point but here is the thing - Patera was basically the number two heel in the WWWF during much of Graham's run IIRC and was working guys like Bruno on the regular himself in the big cities. Graham would rate ahead of Patera before he dropped the strap to Backlund, but I don't think you can say he was so far ahead of him that Patera may not have passed him on the back end (79-81). To some degree I guess it depends on how you interpret the influence of Graham during the period.

Graham's big claim to fame is selling out MSG 19 out of 20 nights during his monster 77-8 year, plus the match with Harley Race in Miami during that same year.

 

For all intents and purposes, he's pretty much done after that. Although Hulk Hogan would always credit him (and to a lesser extent Ox Baker) for much of his schtick as would Jesse Ventura.

 

It might be a question of how many tickets Graham sold in that monster run. How many times did Patera sell out MSG?

[Dylan Waco]

Patera was never portrayed as an anchor to that end HE never sold out MSG. Did he sellout as an opponent for others? Yes. Some of them don't have figures (for example the three match series with Bruno in 77. He was in the main event at MSG ten times (though that is up for debate, which I will address below) and I think of those ten I can account for two that were most definitely not a total sell out, though pretty close as I recall. So on the high end eight. On the low end probably no less than six if you look at who his opponents were.

 

Which brings me to Graham.

 

So Graham sold out MSG a lot which is impressive but I think we should be really careful about presenting that fact in isolation without context. For example this is Graham's first MSG main event as champ

 

WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - May 16, 1977

Carlos Rocha defeated Jan Nelson

Ron Mickolajoka defeated Doug Gilbert

Baron Mikel Scicluna fought Ivan Putski to a draw

Ken Patera fought Chief Jay Strongbow to a draw

Billy Whitewolf defeated Rocky Tamoyo

Tony Garea & Larry Zbyzsko defeated Stan Stasiak & Nikolai Volkoff

Bruno Sammartino defeated George Steele when the match was stopped due to blood

WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham (w/ the Grand Wizard) pinned Gorilla Monsoon with a knee drop off the top after repeatedly ramming the challenger into the steel barrier on the floor (History of the WWF Heavyweight Championship)

 

What was the big draw on that show, Graham v. Gorilla or Bruno v. Steele? Tough to say. You could probably make arguments both ways, but the point is it's not at all clear.

 

How about this?

 

WWWF @ New York City, NY - Madison Square Garden - August 29, 1977

Televised on the MSG Network and HBO - featured Vince McMahon on commentary:

Lenny Hurst defeated Rocky Tomayo

Johnny Rivera defeated Joe Turco at 10:51

SD Jones defeated Jack Evans at 8:19

Peter Maivia defeated Stan Stasiak at 7:35 via count-out after Miavia avoided the Heart Punch on the floor and Stasiak accidentally hit the ringpost; prior to the bout, Vince McMahon interviewed Miavia on the ring apron

Tony Garea & Larry Zbyzsko defeated George Steele & Baron Mikel Scicluna in a Best 2 out of 3 falls match, 2-0; fall #1: Steele & Scicluna were disqualified after Steele shoved the referee; fall #2: Garea pinned Scicluna with a sunset flip off the top

WWWF World Champion Superstar Billy Graham defeated Ivan Putski via count-out at 18:01 after the challenger was backdropped to the floor; prior to the bout, McMahon interviewed the champion inside the ring; the Grand Wizard escorted the champion to the ring before the match (20 Years Too Soon: The Superstar Billy Graham Story)

Bruno Sammartino (w/ Arnold Skaaland) pinned Ken Patera in a Texas Death Match at 12:13 by kicking off the corner, as Patera had a full nelson applied, and falling backwards onto his opponent; prior to the bout, Capt. Lou Albano escorted Patera to the ring (Bruno Sammartino: Wrestling's Living Legend)

Verne Gagne pinned Nikolai Volkoff at 7:10 with a roll up as Volkoff attempted an over-the-knee backbreaker

Chief Jay Strongbow fought Mr. Fuji to a curfew draw at around the 6-minute mark; prior to the bout, Freddie Blassie & Prof. Toru Tanaka escorted Fuji to the ring, with Tanaka on crutches and announced as being unable to compete

 

Well fuck. Patera and Bruno worked the Garden three straight times earlier in the year and this is a blow off to what was a very successful series. Meanwhile Graham is working Putski. In the run down I did for Patera some time back I called this a co-main event to be conservative. But if you ask me what is the match that was likely the primary draw I wouldn't be arguing for Graham.

 

As champion the shows where we can point to Graham drawing without that degree of support were v. Bruno, Dusty, Backlund (when he lost the belt) and Mascaras (and even Mascaras is arguable because Dusty was on at least one of those shows and was very hot in New York). The first two are people you would absolutely expect a top heel of any sort from the era - Patera, Valentine, Jardine, et. - to draw very well with. Mascaras is perhaps more impressive, perhaps not, depending on how you view the novelty/special attraction factor. I would argue that the Backlund title loss is probably the most impressive "single" accomplishment of Graham's reign but that's not really the point.

 

The point is that Graham - while he was admittedly red hot and delivered in the role he was placed in - was not even close to an island unto himself during that run and their are good reasons to believe it's less impressive then he and Meltzer have argued it was for years

[jdw]

Another thing with MACW is that it's not even easy to tell by size of market because the arena sizes in some of the smaller markets were bigger than they were in some of the bigger market areas.

Yep. One of the things I was trying to get across in the Bob-Greg matches: we think of MSG, Philly and Boston as the Trinity, of which MSG is the Father. But the WWF had a fair number of other good sized buildings they ran in. Many of which, unlike MSG and Philly, we don't have full results for... let alone attendance figures for. The Providence Civic Center sat 12K. New Haven Coliseum was 11K. Hartford Civic Center was 15K. I mentioned the Springfield Civic Center was 9K. Cap Center and Baltimore Civic Center were good sized arenas.

 

Some of those are in major major huge cities/metros. Other are in just good sized cities.

 

In contrast, the long time home of pro wrestling in Los Angeles was probably just a shade under 10K in legit real capacity (as opposed to the worked sellout number). Los Angeles was at various times a hot city/territory all the way back to the 20's when the Olympic was built, while LA was a large city going quite a ways back. So sometimes the city doesn't always match the arena.

[jdw]

See that's where the 3 state system comes in as they ran almost every night and Valentine was in a position to be a main eventer most of the time. Yeah those cards you put up where during the period where Greg slid down the card to advance Piper, Andersons, & Ivan.

 

My 70's results are far from being complete as I don't have the time to really devote myself to filling all the holes but I'm fairly solid on 1980 and Valentine was in 101 main events that year and the semi-main event 37 times.

Completely agree.

 

As a side note on something that I mentioned earlier: is it just me, or did the Mid Atlantic Gateway take down or make less easy to find all those clippings and posters they use to have for various arenas? It was the coolest thing on the site.

[JerryvonKramer]

Wonder if that has anything to do with the publication of this: http://www.highspots.com/p/crockett-book-1.html

 

With MACW arena sizes, can't we make an estimate based on the crowd sizes in the typical JCP loop from 85 or so?

[Dylan Waco]

With MACW arena sizes, can't we make an estimate based on the crowd sizes in the typical JCP loop from 85 or so?

I don't understand what you mean.

 

With most of the loop arenas I can tell you roughly how big they were and what they sat for wrestling even if I can't tell you what the average show did. The problem is that sometimes bigger cities had smaller arenas than smaller cities. So it's very tough to decipher anything based on market size alone

[JerryvonKramer]

I'd have thought they'd just run the same venues: that MACW in 78 would be running the same arenas as JCP in 85. Is that not the case?

[Dylan Waco]

I'd have thought they'd just run the same venues: that MACW in 78 would be running the same arenas as JCP in 85. Is that not the case?

I haven't looked at it closely, but in my home town they definitely weren't working the same venue.

 

But again the problem isn't knowing what the venue or venue size is

[jdw]

What Dylan said: it's fairly easy to find out what the top arenas on the circuit sat. There's available sell out info for some from a variety of sources, and a lot of them have wiki pages that also list seating for different type of events. If a place seats 11K for basketball, it wasn't usually going to seat less than that for pro wrestling.

 

I do think market size for a territory is useful because we are talking about the base from which the promotion is drawing.

 

There are some oddballs: Florida in the CWF had good sized cities, but relatively mediocre in terms of good sized arenas that the promotion seemed to run in. That flip by the time the WWF rolled in, as there were good sized arenas for them to run in, which they did. Some of that is that Florida was pretty late to the game as far as pro sports like the NBA and NHL, which are often the drivers of good sized arenas. The state also wasn't much of a big time college hoops area, which is another driver of arenas getting bigger and bigger.

 

In turn, JCP had a good number of good sized arenas. Here's VA alone:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roanoke_Civic_Center

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norfolk_Scope

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hampton_Coliseum

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richmond_Coliseum

 

Sizes vary, but they're all pretty decent. But then again... it's not like VA is a small state, nor those metros tiny.

 

1980 Census

1,160,311 Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News, VA MSA

761,311 Richmond-Petersburg, VA MSA

220,393 Roanoke, VA MSA

 

Hampton is also part of the Norfolk-Virginia Beach-Newport News Metro, which is "Hampton Roads" metro. The Metro had two good sized arenas.

 

Roanoke stands out a bit from those four arenas in terms of a smaller metro, but you'll find places like that in some territories.

[jdw]

Wonder if that has anything to do with the publication of this: http://www.highspots.com/p/crockett-book-1.html

 

With MACW arena sizes, can't we make an estimate based on the crowd sizes in the typical JCP loop from 85 or so?

Could be. I don't know if that person is affiliated with the Gateway. If he isn't, they he really couldn't stop the Gateway folks from putting up results and the ads/posters.

[JerryvonKramer]

From looking at lots of JCP cards in the past year or so, it has seemed to me that any crowd over about 10,000 in the Carolinas (or VA) would be considered a really good one and anything over 15,000 phenomenal.

 

The Richmond shows tend to be about 8,000, the Greensboro shows more like 10,000, or 15,000 on a very good night (like Starrcade 83). And that's about where it peaks out.

 

For cards that go much above that, you have to look at shows they ran outside of their traditional stomping ground.

 

I guess the thing I'm not understanding here is why we can't assume we'd see the same sort of numbers in MACW in the 70s. Are you expecting them to be bigger or smaller or just have no idea? I'd have thought they'd be around the same.

[jdw]

As far as venues, I've dropped the Gateway a number of times:

 

http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/resource...venue_index.htm

 

Again, there use to be more info easily to find on the site. It might be worthwhile to look at the Wayback Machine to see if earlier versions of the site have some of that useful stuff.

 

Yep... that's what I was looking for:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20070814211037/...r_promo_ads.htm

 

Now where in the heck is it on the current site...

 

http://www.midatlanticgateway.com/Almanac/...r_promo_ads.htm

 

Looks like it was up on the site until some point in 2012:

 

http://web.archive.org/web/20120320171141/...r_promo_ads.htm

 

Then was removed later in 2012.

 

Of course it's kind of funny that the ads are still on the site:

 

http://midatlanticgateway.com/images/Promo..._Greensboro.jpg

 

Sadly, not as much attention was given to the other cities as Greensboro. You kind of wish that the Gateway people hooked up with someone as "active" as Graham is over on his historyofthewwe.com and related cites, but you could give him a mass of stuff and he'd get it up quick... and then just keep putting up everything else that anyone sent him. :/

[jdw]

I guess the thing I'm not understanding here is why we can't assume we'd see the same sort of numbers in MACW in the 70s. Are you expecting them to be bigger or smaller or just have no idea? I'd have thought they'd be around the same.

Because JCP bounced up and down. People can tell you about a poor year in the 80s. They can also tell you about a hot year. Same happened when they went national: The "core" was hot in 1986, but even the core cooled off in 1987... quite a bit. Even within years. Flair-Lex and Flair-Funk did really good business in a relative sense.

 

So if we're looking at Greg or Patera, they worked in JCP in very specific stretches. It doesn't matter what JCP drew in the years when they were in the WWF: it's not relevant. Nor should we make an assumption that JCP drew the same amount every year.

[JerryvonKramer]

Sure, that makes sense. Thanks for clarification.

[cm funk]

Weren't Grand Wizard, Blassie and Albano essentially the "anchor heels" in the WWWF? They were the constant presence on the heel side while heel wrestlers and challengers were cycled in and out.

[Dylan Waco]

I think it's fair to say the Wise Men were the anchor heels in New York, but they were really different from other top managers in many respects. For one thing there were three of them, whereas the other top managers of the era basically alone as the top mouthpiece role. Also because there were three of them it almost feels wrong to even use the term anchor to describe them because at various points different guys had the challenger. The biggest difference is probably the fact that while the Wise Men can be credited with help establish guys and talk fans to the buildings, barring very rare exceptions there was never going to be any payoff involving them. They weren't taking bumps or being humiliated like Hart, let alone part of the matches with their own money drawing side angles like Heenan (v. Al Hayes, v. Zumhoffe, et). This isn't to say they shouldn't be mentioned in a thread like this, I just think it's really tough to place them, other than noted that they were a core and important institution