When the territories died

[marrklarr]

For those who remember or who have read WON and other sources from that era, what was the general mood when the territories started folding and selling out to Vince and JCP? Were their demises mourned and lamented? Or were some of these promotions so feeble and pathetic by the end that the feeling was more like GOOD RIDDANCE? Were there any voices rooting for national promotions to take over?

 

The reason I ask is that I know I have a tendency to idealize and romanticize the territorial era, and rightly so for the most part. Clearly something special was lost when they went away. But is this just hindsight? What did people think at the time?

[gingears]

In what I've read of the WONs from the era, Vince's national expansion was THE big story, so the smaller groups were just covered in a blurb. Blurbs eventually got to something like "not much news out of ___ this week" until finally their section was no more. I don't think there was any real opinion thrown onto it because so much attention was paid to the WWF's takeover. The opinion on that seemed rather negative IIRC with many dismissing "cartoon wrestling" as a fad. I think a lot of them expected something (maybe Hogan falling out with Vince?) to derail that train before long. I remember reading a line like "Vince McMahon and the WWF are here to stay" that came long after I thought Meltzer should've known that. It might have even been in reference to WrestleMania III.

 

In contrast to the more modern WCW/ECW/possibly TNA soon collapses, I don't think most of the territories had that sort of spectacular failure that merited deep consideration like that. I don't imagine a lot of people that attended these promotions' final cards actually knew it was the final card. At least not at the time or for a long while after.

 

Wade Keller of the Torch posted some episodes of a weekly radio show he did around the early '90s that chronicled immediate post-mortem AWA pretty well. They tried in a lot of cases to promote local cards, but most callers only wanted to discuss the identities of that week's WWF and WCW TV debuts or "whatever happened to ___?" Some weeks there'd be an update on a Verne Gagne-helmed project that I don't think ever came to fruition, with the tone of it evolving from "hey, maybe this thing can compete" to eventually the occasional wry mention.

[Happ Hazzard]

In the case of territories that Crockett took over it wasn't such a big leap as the local NWA promotion just got absorbed into the national NWA promotion. A lot of the time the seperate TVs continued for a while, as did the titles. I can't imagine that many people in Kansas City mourning the loss of Central States, and Georgia and Florida were shadows of their former selves when they merged with Mid Atlantic. Those two promotions were heavily affiliated with the Crockett promotion well before the takeover anyway. The UWF was a different matter entirely. And of course territories that were apart from that such as Southeastern, World Class, Portland etc just died slowly on the vine. The AWA was kind of directly replaced by the WWF with so many of their top stars and on air personalities jumping in 1984. I don't think it's that far of a leap to say that the expansion WWF resembled the AWA of years previous as much as it did the pre-expansion WWF.

[marrklarr]

I don't imagine a lot of people that attended these promotions' final cards actually knew it was the final card. At least not at the time or for a long while after.

Yeah, most of them seemed to go out not with a bang, but a whimper.

 

The UWF was a different matter entirely.

What made the dissolution of the UWF so unique? I know it wasn't an NWA affiliate (had it been in the past?) and wasn't closely associated with JCP. And I guess its death was much quicker and more decisive than what happened to the companies that slowly faded away. Were there other features that made the UWF a special case?

 

Some other questions (I'm still new around here, so I hope these aren't dumb questions): Was Memphis the last traditional territory to fall? Would anyone consider ECW or Smokey Mountain to be a "territory" in the traditional sense, or was that just an outdated concept by then? My guess is that by then all promotions, no matter how small or niche, had national ambitions and weren't content to hunker down in one region forever.

[thebrainfollower]

Yup Memphis was the last. I consider SMW a territory but not ECW. ECW ran in too many places. It went from an indy federation to something bigger than a territory pretty fast.

[stomperspc]

Some other questions (I'm still new around here, so I hope these aren't dumb questions): Was Memphis the last traditional territory to fall? Would anyone consider ECW or Smokey Mountain to be a "territory" in the traditional sense, or was that just an outdated concept by then? My guess is that by then all promotions, no matter how small or niche, had national ambitions and weren't content to hunker down in one region forever.

I think there is a difference between "territory" and "local/regional promotion" in the way each term is generally used. To me the word territory specifically refers to the regional set-up before WWF, JCP & AWA really started expanding and before cable TV brought wrestling television national. Territory is a time/era-specific concept. Once promotions went national and once WWF was successful in doing so, the territory concept was gone. Promotions like Memphis continued to exist as a local promotion in the sense that they only promoted locally, had local TV, ect. It was not a territory in the old sense because that system was obsolete and the National promotions did not respect territorial boundaries. WCW and WWF ran Memphis as national promotions and Memphis continued as a local promotion in a way not really all that different from the way most independent promotions exist today.

 

Anyway, Memphis survived every being taken over as most territories were and continued on as a regional promotion. SMW was a local or regional promotion since it came after the dawn of national promotions. Any independent group out there today running one localized area is a local or regional promotion. ECW started as a regional promotion but expanded nationally even though those efforts were a mixed bag and contributed to their eventual demise.

[jdw]

The AWA never really expanded all that much in the Expansion Era. They moved into San Fran in 1982 when the local promotion went belly up. They were across the bay in Oakland the year before. Las Vegas was theirs in early 1983. It's likely that both were approved up by the NWA in general: they were open cities, and San Fran had a semi-loose affiliation with the AWA. KHawk can correct me, but I don't think the Expansion Era saw them make any major expansion by the AWA, and instead over time they contracted.

 

The primary expansion promotions were the WWF start largely in 1984 with Hogan, and JCP in 1986. You'll find some JCP expansion in 1985, though more than half of that was simply adding the GCW areas. Their major push was 1986, which was also the peak of their expansion.

 

As far as how the Sheets felt about the death of the territories, the fans in them weren't terribly happy. The vast majority of readers of the sheets in the 80s had grown into wrestling in the territory era. Over the course of the decade, they got to watch their local promotion decay and/or die. Those that remained by the end of 1989 were a shell of what they were before.

 

My thought is that if one wants a feel for how people looked at it, recall what fans of ECW and WCW were thinking in 2000 and 2001 as their promotions were falling apart and then were just falt out dead. There are a fair number of fans of those two who quickly moved on from wrestling, and if they were sucked back in it was usually by something that played to their old fandom (such as folks who got into ROH and other indies).

 

Of course that doesn't see like all those long ago to me... but looking at those years, I do see it was 12-13 years ago, and we're rapidly entering into an era where a lot of fans came into their fandom after WCW and ECW were dead. A bit like eventually hitting a point where the majority of fans were Post-Expansion Era with very little reference points to the Territorial Era.

[khawk20]

KHawk can correct me, but I don't think the Expansion Era saw them make any major expansion by the AWA, and instead over time they contracted.

I'd maybe count their foray into New York and the surrounding region with Pro Wrestling USA as it ended up being mostly AWA wrestlers...their mysterious foray into Alaska of all places might have lasted long enough to count, too.

 

Indianapolis in 1984 might be worth counting as well, they tried establishing a monthly show to be part of their loop but it didn't draw well at all.

[BrickHithouse]

...their mysterious foray into Alaska

Hell they would have had to draw 50,000 just to cover expenses, right?

 

How did they do up there?

[WingedEagle]

I'm glad someone asked. What was the thinking on an Alaska tour?? Has anyone else even tried to run a show there?

[BrickHithouse]

It's definitely weird. You've got 3 "big" towns in AK capable of putting 5k in an arena and they're not exactly short drives in between and I can't imagine they'd go to all that trouble for a single show. The only way it would be worth it is if someone in Alaska sent Verne a large guarantee check in advance and paid the trans.

 

WWF ran in Fairbanks IIRC in '89.

[WingedEagle]

Right if the show is sold to a local promoter I can get it, though I can't imagine anyone plans on turning a profit with the trans expenses and available population bases there. Definitely not part of any loop you'd expect a touring promoter to hit.

[jdw]

It's definitely weird. You've got 3 "big" towns in AK capable of putting 5k in an arena and they're not exactly short drives in between and I can't imagine they'd go to all that trouble for a single show. The only way it would be worth it is if someone in Alaska sent Verne a large guarantee check in advance and paid the trans.

The big three were pretty small in 1980 --> 1990:

 

Anchorage: 174,431 --> 226,338

Fairbanks: 53,983 --> 77,720

Juneau: 19,528 --> 26,751

 

That's the Metro for each, though Juneau wasn't a metro - that's the Borough number, as is the case for Fairbanks. That's too small of a number to put 5K in regularly, as would be the case for Fairbanks unless there was quite a fanbase.

 

Anchorage would be a decent metro in a territory, though not a major one.

 

John

[BrickHithouse]

Would have been fun if Watts ran Alaska and made it a driving territory

 

"If you get in a bar fight with a moose or a grizzly bear and lose, you're fired"

[Tim Evans]

Isn't WWC considered the final territory? They are still running to this day and have outlasted all the other promotions on the Island.

[Dylan Waco]

I should have jumped into this thread earlier. A few things:

 

I think the WWC question is debatable for two reasons. One I think they actually briefly went out of business in the early 90s (93?) so it's a non-continuous territory. Secondly because of the nature of the promotion geographically it's hard to know what to call it. In terms of geographical area covered, it's almost certainly the smallest territory by a wide, wide margin (I don't count one off towns like St. Louis or Houston as territories in any meaningful sense, though they were meaningful cities). Yes they ran multiple shows a week and yes they were wildly successful. Even now there big shows do better than the big shows of any indie promotion, and there regular attendance is better than many promotions that have much higher profiles with "smart" fans. But I don't think they have run anywhere other than PR in years (I know they used to run Trinidad semi-regularly) and it's not like they are likely to in the future. In there heyday I think they qualified as a territory because of how they cycled talent, but it was a really unique place. I guess on some level they still qualify, but it's arguable. Either way I love WWC and want Borique to come in here and set me straight and explain to me the details of the WWC/IWA war, but that's probably best suited for another thread.

 

I also think the distinction between territories and regional feds is interesting. I actually have a hard time disagreeing with it, even though I also struggle with the idea that SMW wasn't a territory since they ran a regular loop, cycled talent to one degree or another and stayed within very narrow geographical limits. ECW is admittedly tougher to nail down, but my thought is that they were never really a territory in any sense of the term.

 

On AWA expansion I have talked at great length in my dreaded threads of doom about how real and stupid the expansion efforts were. It's not just that they idiotically tried to move into Alaska (and Vancouver) of all places, nor is it just that they tried to expand some with shows in Pa and Jersey, nor is it that they did one offs in weird places here or there (I want more details on Phoenix which Meltzer seemed to imply was a regular town in a mini-debate I had with him over the AWA's markets at the F4W board recently). It's that they did this at the worst possible time and at the expense of their own local, far more stable, base areas. What would often happen is they would do split crews, diluting an already weak talent roster in areas where they were needed and in some cases were at least somewhat successful even fairly late in the invasion game. My research seemed to show that shows with Blackwell, Sarge, The Roadies, and a World title defense in some combination could still draw pretty well later than some remember. They had to load up the shows to do decent numbers which wasn't a good sign, but what they damn sure couldnt' afford to do was spread the non-existent wealth around - and that's exactly what they did. Of course we've discussed before how the logic place to move into was Detroit and there was probably a real chance to do it that Verne flubbed, but that's a different matter. It seems weird to say and might come off like pandering to Khawk, but my thought is that the loss of Winnipeg was the absolute death blow, as it killed off a stable town, where they could have potentially worked some decent tv off of TSN and maybe scrambled back into Brandon as another loop town within reach if things continued to spiral in the States. More importantly it just looked really bad. It was late in the game and really past the point of no return already, but I think that really accelerated the decline. It still amazes me that their best city in the dying days was SLC

[King Solomon]

For me it was when JCP sold to Turner that signaled the end of Wrestling as I ahd grown to love it. Even tho I was excited about the prospects of Turner being able to comepte with Vince financially I knew the gritty era of the NWA was over and that Turner would turn the company into a glitzier more corporate product. During my early years as a fan in 1983-86 I had a real feeling of wrestling euphoria being able to watch AWA, JCP, WWF, WCCW and later UWF. It seems to me at the time that these promotions would be around forever but then I noticed reall slippage the AWA once Hansen was stripped then Kerry got in his accident and World Class didn't feel the same. UWF was real good at first but then I noticed Duggan and the Fantastics leaving and Dibiase was in Japan half the time. I know that by Mania 3 it was a two horse race between Vince and Crockett and that the variety that I enjoyed for a few years was coming to an end. I was breifly hopeful with the co op between Memphis, AWA, WCCW and Continental butwhen Lawler got stripped of the AWA title that ended.

[KrisZ]

I should have jumped into this thread earlier. A few things:

 

I think the WWC question is debatable for two reasons. One I think they actually briefly went out of business in the early 90s (93?) so it's a non-continuous territory. Secondly because of the nature of the promotion geographically it's hard to know what to call it. In terms of geographical area covered, it's almost certainly the smallest territory by a wide, wide margin (I don't count one off towns like St. Louis or Houston as territories in any meaningful sense, though they were meaningful cities). Yes they ran multiple shows a week and yes they were wildly successful. Even now there big shows do better than the big shows of any indie promotion, and there regular attendance is better than many promotions that have much higher profiles with "smart" fans. But I don't think they have run anywhere other than PR in years (I know they used to run Trinidad semi-regularly) and it's not like they are likely to in the future. In there heyday I think they qualified as a territory because of how they cycled talent, but it was a really unique place. I guess on some level they still qualify, but it's arguable. Either way I love WWC and want Borique to come in here and set me straight and explain to me the details of the WWC/IWA war, but that's probably best suited for another thread.

 

I also think the distinction between territories and regional feds is interesting. I actually have a hard time disagreeing with it, even though I also struggle with the idea that SMW wasn't a territory since they ran a regular loop, cycled talent to one degree or another and stayed within very narrow geographical limits. ECW is admittedly tougher to nail down, but my thought is that they were never really a territory in any sense of the term.

 

On AWA expansion I have talked at great length in my dreaded threads of doom about how real and stupid the expansion efforts were. It's not just that they idiotically tried to move into Alaska (and Vancouver) of all places, nor is it just that they tried to expand some with shows in Pa and Jersey, nor is it that they did one offs in weird places here or there (I want more details on Phoenix which Meltzer seemed to imply was a regular town in a mini-debate I had with him over the AWA's markets at the F4W board recently). It's that they did this at the worst possible time and at the expense of their own local, far more stable, base areas. What would often happen is they would do split crews, diluting an already weak talent roster in areas where they were needed and in some cases were at least somewhat successful even fairly late in the invasion game. My research seemed to show that shows with Blackwell, Sarge, The Roadies, and a World title defense in some combination could still draw pretty well later than some remember. They had to load up the shows to do decent numbers which wasn't a good sign, but what they damn sure couldnt' afford to do was spread the non-existent wealth around - and that's exactly what they did. Of course we've discussed before how the logic place to move into was Detroit and there was probably a real chance to do it that Verne flubbed, but that's a different matter. It seems weird to say and might come off like pandering to Khawk, but my thought is that the loss of Winnipeg was the absolute death blow, as it killed off a stable town, where they could have potentially worked some decent tv off of TSN and maybe scrambled back into Brandon as another loop town within reach if things continued to spiral in the States. More importantly it just looked really bad. It was late in the game and really past the point of no return already, but I think that really accelerated the decline. It still amazes me that their best city in the dying days was SLC

I got AWA running monthly shows from November 1983-March 1984 and that's it.

[jdw]

On the AWA and Expansion, I just don't think there was a major, focused push by them. Their key areas of expansion were places they moved into prior to Vince going national. I don't really see the Pro Wrestling USA as much of an expansion effort since it was multi promotional rather than just the AWA, and their biggest successes were thanks to the NWA participation.

 

JCP's expansion is much more clear.

[Dustys Pencil]

I consider ECW a territory they ran a regular loop in the same area with the same talent and pretty much a small tv syndication deal. yes they ran florida but Georgia also ran Ohio

[jdw]

ECW is really hard to define. Started as a semi-indy, then moved to being a regional promotion, then was promoting pretty much up and down the East Coast and into MI, IN and OH while also having National TV. It wasn't terribly dissimilar from the AWA from 1986 to the end.

[KrisZ]

And I forgot to put Phoenix in my AWA response but yeah 5 months isn't a long run

[cm funk]

Was the AWA on tv up in Alaska? That's like the only reason I can see for them running shows up there, if they were on TV and getting good ratings. That or maybe Verne just wanted to go up there to fish or something

 

WWE ran two SD tour shows in Alaska January of this year, in Anchorage and Fairbanks. Don't know how they drew. I'd think that it's a state that's so starved for live entertainment that running there every couple of years would be profitable for them.

 

As far as the territory distinction goes, SMW and ECW were the closest modern equivalent to territories. SMW had their regional area carved out and ran a steady loop of towns in several states. I think of them as more than a regional promotion, and they were covered in the magazines and the sheets as more than a regional territory. Talent was cycled in and out whether in between WWF/WCW stints or bouncing around the indys, guys would go there for 3 months/6 months/9 months or whatever and then move on. Cornette ran it like it was a territory in the 80's. They were founded right about the time the AWA died, Global started up out of the ashes of the AWA and World Class, and Portland was on it's last gasps. I don't have a problem calling them one of the last territories, even if the territory system was mostly dead.

 

I'm not even sure what to call ECW. They were a mutant hybrid of a promotion that is hard to define. It started as the Tri-State Wrestling Alliance promoted by Joel Goodhart, ran infrequently, and the cards of those shows are really interesting as Goodhart brought in guys like AWA champ Zbysko and USWA champ Lawler. Not sure how legit but most of their shows appear to have drawn in the 1000-2000 range. I think I'd call it a glorified independent at that point, where they're using some local guys and flying in mercenary talent to do their one show every few months. Funk, Abdullah...guys like that. Then Tod Gordon buys it and turns it into Eastern Championship Wrestling and they start running more regular shows, and at this point it's more of a regional promotion, with NWA affiliation (whatever that was worth). Then they do the deal with Douglas and the title and change the name and suddenly they start to feel bigger than regional, even though they still are. They're covered in mags and sheets from this point on as bigger than a regional, and eventually get world title status from PWI. 95-96 they were definitely bigger than a regional, and by the time they get on PPV they're some sort of underground national/regional thing, like a punk band that outgrew their underground status, signs to a major label but is still niche.

 

How do people classify GWF? They had the national TV with ESPN, but I have a hard time calling them a real national promotion. A promotion like Southwest had national TV in the 80's and I would never consider them a national promotion. Like I said before, GWF had roots in World Class and the AWA and the territory system was on it's last legs when they started in 91, so I'd kind of consider them a territory of sorts, or at least a successor of that. They also had the same problem that all the territories had of having all their best talent poached by the big 2.

[BrickHithouse]

maybe Verne just wanted to go up there to fish or something

I totally buy this.

[Happ Hazzard]

Was there any other situation anything like "Black Saturday" with Georgia where WWF TV directly replaced the local promotion's TV and people rejected it?