Hometown Indies

[Exposer]

Dylan's massive write-up on Rossville, GA inspired the nostalgia in me. Thanks to his consideration I'm starting this thread and will try to keep up with it as best I can. I'll start tonight with an intro and pick up where I left off tomorrow:

 

I live and grew up in the metropolitan area of Chattanooga, Tennessee. On the surface, it's a beautiful city right smack dab in the center of the south. It's in relatively reasonable traveling distance from Atlanta, Nashville, Knoxville, Huntsville, and Birmingham. We have a newly renovated riverfront with a great Art District, a revered Aquarium, an old but extremely popular walking bridge, a North Shore with tacky shops and restaurants, and a rising University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. We have mountains, rivers, lakes, streams, damns, trails, bluffs, magnificent peaks, and deep valleys. We have TVA, Krystal, Moon Pies, The Chattanooga Choo Choo, Coca Cola bottling factories, the birthplace of tow trucks, Ruby Falls, and Rock City. It's a pretty great place when you visit or have a look around town.

 

But under the surface lies the heart of Chattanooga. The summers are hot. The heat index reaches unbearable heights. The air quality is bad. Imagine standing outside of a warehouse in the summer. The family is along for the fun. The uncle, brothers, cousin, friends, random acquaintances, and sometimes dad. There are grandpas smoking three to five cigarettes while their pants hang from their waist showing their ass. Grandmas round up the grand-kids to give them their money to pay. The grand-kids are wearing Jeff Hardy wrist bands, Steve Austin "What?" shirts, or WWE Raw Live shirts from shows at the McKenzie. Young couples join the crowd with the girl often carrying child. She sometimes takes a cigarette from the grandpas. The boyfriends are all cocky with their SEC football hats, tobacco spit, and bad tattoos. They ramble on about Dawg football, or Bama football, or Vol football. The uncle/dad pulls up with his kid. Then the families come flooding in. The mom who isn't wearing a bra underneath the John Cena shirt. The dad who lost his teeth a long time ago but still manages to give off a great big smile. The teenage girls wear their favorite boy toys t-shirts and gossip about Randy Orton on Smackdown. The teenage boys show up with their girlfriends in arm. They have tobacco in too and talk about Raw, Impact, Smackdown, or the latest local indie news. The dads join in and talk about going to the flea market in East Ridge with the wrestling stand. The wrestling stand guy sometimes comes to shows. He sells all sorts of old VHS DVDS, action figures, and merchandise. Finally, everyone's favorite shows up. The longtime wrestling fan who's been attending these events for years. He, usually, walks up to the door with a car full of nephews or sons following behind. He's wearing an NWO Wolfpac shirt and it's the 2000s. He complains about ticket prices and begs to be let in. After a while the doors open and everyone goes into the warehouse sweating and smelling of tobacco smoke. There is about 100 or so chairs lined up in rows surrounding a ring. A ring crew of one sometimes two or three are checking the turnbuckles and tightening the ropes. Everyone takes their seat but spot their favorite wrestler lurking behind the curtain. They try and get his attention. The ring rats get excited when the young green hands come around for a brief look at the set-up. Grandpa's pants are still not holding up too well. The ring announcer comes out to music and pyro. The fans cheer, some loudly, some half-heartedly. The long time wrestling fan shows everyone pictures he took with Reese from Raven's flock on his flip phone. The ring announcer tries to get everybody fired up. It sort of works. More music hits and out comes an out of shape bald guy with a beer belly, a terrible tribal tattoo, and a bad attitude. Finally, everyone cheered and now we all know what the best part of Chattanooga really is.

[Dylan Waco]

Fuck this is going to be awesome. I can not wait for Crazy Eddie stories, tales of the glory days of Danny Marlow including conspiracy theories about his possible progeny, top five East Ridge workers of all time, details on the day UEW closed down, tales of traveling to "far off" indies in exotic locations like Cleveland, TN, et. I don't even give a fuck if no one else reads this thread, this shit needs to be documented somewhere. My only question is whether or not this thread should be more inclusive, i.e. about other "hometown indies" as well. I don't want to stop your momentum talking about this stuff, so one way or the other keep posting.

[Exposer]

We could probably change it to hometown indies in general. It will get maybe a few more people involved I think.

 

I might throw in a match review every now and then too when discussing a particular worker. It'll be good to bring up examples.

 

Back to inclusivity though. If anybody reading this wants to write their own personal stuff on hometown indies than please do it. I'd love to hear about it. Maybe we can change the title of the thread too.

[soup23]

Incredible post Devon.

 

My hometown indy story is very similar growing up in the West Georgia area. The thing that reminds me the most of watching indies around this part of the country is the juxtaposition of everything. You would hope that people are in on the "act", but there is still that glimmer of doubt with folks. Both the patrons and the performers usually lead fairly uninspired and unsuccessful lives based on parameters set by society, yet for a three hour span they feel like a part of something. The cards are filled with a grab bag of raffles, contests, charity handouts, and even offering plates being passed around. There is a smell of concession food that makes me nostalgic and dream of running to nowhere as a kid. It really is an experience unlike any other in life I can think of.

[KrisZ]

When I was a kid in the late 80's we would have shows in my hometown at the high school gym and the guy that promoted the show was a local guy named Wild Bill Smith who graduated from said high school. He would book guys from Deep South and Blackwell's Southern Championship Wrestling so we would get Tommy Rich, Chick Donovan, The Assassin, Mr. Wrestling II, Dick Slater, etc mixed in with a couple of other local guys. Wild Bill was a character though as he was always in the main event trying to make himself look like he was on the level of the bigger stars but he was as good as your standard TBS jobber. Wild Bill though would get his rocks off though by going to the Omni and making grandstand challenges from the seats to the wrestlers as they walked down the aisle. He actually slapped Nikita on the head one time and Nikita stomped him out. Wild Bill also ran in the ring one time the WWF was running the Omni and pulled down Nikolai Volkoff's trunks from behind. I guess he had something against Russians.

[ButchReedMark]

Incredible post Devon.

 

My hometown indy story is very similar growing up in the West Georgia area. The thing that reminds me the most of watching indies around this part of the country is the juxtaposition of everything. You would hope that people are in on the "act", but there is still that glimmer of doubt with folks. Both the patrons and the performers usually lead fairly uninspired and unsuccessful lives based on parameters set by society, yet for a three hour span they feel like a part of something. The cards are filled with a grab bag of raffles, contests, charity handouts, and even offering plates being passed around. There is a smell of concession food that makes me nostalgic and dream of running to nowhere as a kid. It really is an experience unlike any other in life I can think of.

Ugh, the raffle! They still go on during shows over here. Nothing more guaranteed to suck the momentum out of a show than the raffle.

[Log]

I didn't really have any indies running around my area (Southern Illinois) growing up. Poffo's ICW did run my high school's gym once, though. I was too young to have gone, but I was told the main was Lanny vs. Savage. A friend of mine's older brother always told me how he threw a wadded-up paper cup into the ring. He yelled, "USE THE CUP, MACHO MAN!!!" I guess Savage picked it up and rubbed it in Lanny's face. Brush with fame.

 

I got to meet Rip Rogers a couple of years ago. Apparently, he's got a photographic memory. I mentioned this show in my hometown and he was on it, too. He rattled off the date and half the card. Pretty amazing.

[tim]

Haha, great post and am looking forward to this thread taking off. I live about a 5 minute bus ride from Philly, the state of independent wrestling today compared to years ago is like a personal taunt to me.

[Mad Dog]

Columbus, OH has the IWA. They seem to disappear every so often. They never stop running shows as far as I can tell but you kind of have to be in their hardcore fanbase to really keep up with where they're running a show at any given time. They seem to run mostly bars anymore. It's run by a guy named Wild Bull Miller who's biggest claim to fame was doing jobs on TBS in the mid 80s as Aaron Star. This promotion has been kicking around since 1988 and I have no idea how they've pulled that off.

 

My biggest exposure to them was in the late 90s. They ran television on the public access channel here. Just a total low rent deal. They were running a building at one point where they couldn't do top rope moves because the ceiling was so low. They have a fake Doink the Clown.

[Exposer]

It's great to read all of the posts so far. I'm always interested in hearing about other indies from around the States and elsewhere.

 

 

I don't want to flood this thread with too many links but I think this is a great way to kick things off. The above match is about as carny as carny can get. It's "Fly Guy" Cannon vs. "The Element."

 

"Fly Guy" Cannon has been a local indie guy here in Chatt for over ten years and maybe more. He's this freakishly muscular and strong black dude who plays the gimmick of an over-the-top asskicker. I first saw him about ten years ago at UEW where he would show up every now and then and have these insane athletic match-ups. There was one match at a benefit show my uncle helped promote where he did a standing shooting star press and the crowd lost their shit. Now this guy is massive. He's got visible acne and an elongated forehead so we can all make our assumptions how that strength and mass came about. He also was a total asskicker in the ring and once tortured a greenhorn so bad with chops that his chest bled and our wrestling buddy Charlie was complaining about unprofessionalism and how "Fly Guy" "went too far." Another story about "Fly Guy" is the time my uncle ran into him at Food Lion of all places and was chatting it up with him in line. I find it hilarious that this gigantic dude with huge arms may have been buying bread or some shit while talking to my social butterfly uncle about independent wrestling in the area. I wonder what the other people in line were thinking?

 

This match took place at AWF. AWF stands for American Wrestling Federation (I believe). It is run in Ringgold, GA, the home of my schooling from second grade to graduation. Ringgold is a pretty small town in North GA about fifteen to twenty miles south of Chattanooga. It's one of those stereotypical southern towns where everyone knows everyone else and three or four families run the town. I'd list the family names but I'm not sure I'd get them all right. So, wrestling was not out of the ordinary. The best part about AWF is that it is run by Paul Lee of SMW jobber fame. This guy is the greatest rip-off of Ric Flair of all-time and it's not even close. His nickname is "The Nature Boy", his finisher is the figure four, he cuts southern style Flair promos, he bumps like Flair including the corner bump and body press bump off the ropes, all of his offense is identical to Flair's, and he bleeds as much as Flair did. Funny enough, he's had Flair in town for several shows over the summer and paid big bucks for it selling out the Colonnade in Ringgold (which is a place where the prom, sports banquets, and small concerts are held in town). I went to school with Paul's second oldest, Lex who now wrestles. Lex and I had weight training together and shared bench press and worked out in the same group. In the locker rooms during changing periods we would chop each other as hard as we could. He nearly collapsed my lung one day as he put his full body weight into it. I was coughing for several minutes and shit. Paul's place is located off of Highway 41 down the road from the high school, past the main strip of town, and by one of the best BBQ places ever. Paul's day job is running a motorcycle/car sales/garage place right next door to the warehouse where the wrestling is held. Therefore this guy is a used car salesmen by day, runs a southern professional wrestling indie fed by night, and his claim to fame is as a jobber to the stars such as Brian Lee and "White Lightning" Tim Horner in Smokey Mountain Wrestling.

 

Then there's "The Element." "The Element" is known by some in Ringgold. He went to the middle and high school there. He was on the soccer, football, and wrestling teams. He was an A and B student. In his glory days he was a backyard wrestling champion in the neighborhood of Smoketree Circle. He won his local neighborhood championship nine times. He brilliantly performed a pedigree to himself onto concrete off stairs at age eleven against an invisible Triple H. He often placed dirty laundry on the concrete of the main wrestling hub/garage in his neighborhood and missed Whisper in the Wind's. The laundry was there to break his fall. "The Element" also goes by another name. His other name is Dustin, Dustin Hales. Dustin is the fortunate sibling and brother of long time internet wrestling poster DylanWaco and recently acquired internet poster Exposer. This is his only match released on video or else he would go down in history as one of the great backyard wrestling heroes of the modern era.

 

To set the stage, we have "Fly Guy" Cannon vs. "The Element." The idea behind this match was that "Fly Guy" is Paul Lee's muscle and he went out every week and picked someone out of the crowd who then signed a waiver and tried to take him down or beat him in a match. If the fan succeeded they would win a prize of money. I don't remember the amount offered but that's nothing to this timeless classic. This is southern indie carnival wrestling at it's finest and it involves a Hales brother too. Shame on you if you don't instantly click on this classic encounter.

[Dylan Waco]

Fucking post of the year right there. I would note that the guy who went before Dustin in that open challenge was taken to the hospital.

[KrisZ]

Check out the last show in my hometown....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIYDjR-Lls

[KrisZ]

And here is Tommy Rich vs. Terry Lawler from a show I went to in 2010.

 

[Exposer]

Check out the last show in my hometown....

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8pIYDjR-Lls

This is awesome! Man, the flyers for all of these indie shows are basically identical but they're great about showing these great photos of scummy workers. Southside trash is the best "trash" gimmick since Tennessee Trash who was a guy who wrestled semi-regularly at UEW in East Ridge here.

[Exposer]

And here is Tommy Rich vs. Terry Lawler from a show I went to in 2010.

 

I'll definitely check this out soon. I've got lots of stories about seeing Lex Luger, Jake Roberts, Scott Steiner, Buff Bagwell, the Naturals, and Terry Gordy shortly before he died. It's always great to catch a legend in your hometown indie feds.

[KrisZ]

Southside Trash has been around FOREVER.....they worked for Dusty when he would run TCW shows in the area.

 

They are from Thomaston which is 10-15 mins from us and they are total rednecks who have been known to engage in orgies with underage rats.

 

The guy doing the voiceover for the show is a dude named Uncle Jeff who tours all the urban churches in the area with his ex-stripper wife and they have their own like Christian rap/dance show on the local TV station.

[KrisZ]

This is a special match to my heart because I worked with one of the wrestlers here in Derrick Von Erich who is like 30 but looks like he is 18 and one of the strangest cats I've ever worked with. He would piss everyone off and he got thrown in a dumpster once as well as a baler.

 

He went into wrestling just to get his ass kicked and he was trained by Iceberg Slim. He won only one match in his small career and that was because DL Norris changed the finish in the ring because he wanted Derrick to win. Derrick told me that he would get payoffs of mainly gift cards to Applebees, Chick Fil-A, Pizza Hut and shit.....no cash.

 

Derrick of course is the skinny white kid

 

[Exposer]

Southside Trash has been around FOREVER.....they worked for Dusty when he would run TCW shows in the area.

 

They are from Thomaston which is 10-15 mins from us and they are total rednecks who have been known to engage in orgies with underage rats.

 

The guy doing the voiceover for the show is a dude named Uncle Jeff who tours all the urban churches in the area with his ex-stripper wife and they have their own like Christian rap/dance show on the local TV station.

I'm never leaving the south. Ever. This is too great.

[Exposer]

Keep these posts coming Kris. I'm loving them.

 

You mentioned Iceberg Slim. He wrestled in UEW on a regular basis for a few years. He was a really great brawler and bled buckets every night. I believe he had an old manager who went by the name of The Mysterious Benefactor who passed away around that time too.

[Dylan Waco]

Since Devon mentioned seeing Gordy I would note that one of my all time favorite seemingly carny bullshit stories that actually ended up being true was Crazy Eddie - the UEW promoter in East Ridge - being Terry Gordy's uncle. I had thought that was complete bullshit when Devon, Dustin and my uncle Dale would tell me that all the time years ago. Eddie told me the same thing to my face and I figured it had to have been a work and just a way to drum up some cred for whatever scam he was running. Well I am reading Tributes II one day (Meltzer's obit book) and I get to the Gordy obit and I'll be damned if Crazy Eddie wasn't right in there as Gordy's uncle who he debuted with at 13 or 14 years old

[Exposer]

Fucking post of the year right there. I would note that the guy who went before Dustin in that open challenge was taken to the hospital.

Fuck, I can't believe I forgot that. I actually didn't attend this show and was in Charleston watching fireworks with Dylan, his wife, and my niece. Dustin sent Dylan a text or something and then we watched the video when we got back to Dylan's place and nearly shit ourselves.

[KrisZ]

Holy shit I can't believe this is on YT.......here is my boy Derrick Von Erich this time with DWIGHT POWER as his partner against a big mofo named Navy Blue. Nothing like watching two fake Germans working a Neo Nazi gimmick getting manhandled by a large black man.

 

[Dylan Waco]

God damn Southern indies are the best. Devon get off your ass and bring some more stories. This thread needs that youtube clip I found of UEW from the news

[Exposer]

Well, I'm loving this thread for one. All of this nostalgia and other people adding to it is really awesome. I need to study more Spanish via watching the lucha set though

 

I will definitely post a nice big write-up on the incomparable Wez Blaze tomorrow though so be waiting for that. Also, I'll give some of those other vids posted on here a look. I'm excited to check them out.

[ButchReedMark]

I suppose the closest to an Indy we had in North Wales as a child was Orig Williams' promotion based out of Rhyl or somewhere which, of course, was shown on S4C as Reslo. Usually get decent crowds, about 200ish in my local hall, maybe more. He had a WCW ring which they'd wrestle in, and only recently I finally found out why. There was nothing too exciting here really. Just a Doink the Clown, William Regal wrestling as a mute Welshman blue-eye so no-one would find out he was English, Dave Taylor doing a disco gimmick, and a really really ill looking Dynamite Kid in 1994. PN News was up here loads as well. I remember a show and he was against Tony St. Clair when I was about 9, and this kid next to me shouts at News "Fuck off you fat cunt!" to which News replies "I bet your parents are proud of you, huh?!" and the lad's father replies "I am, you fat fucking yank cunt!" to which News didn't look best pleased about at all. I'll see what else I can remember when I'm not half dead.