Whose rep was particularly boosted by the Apter mags?

[JerryvonKramer]

The recent discussion of Santos being undoubtedly the biggest Mexican wrestling star led me to question why Mil Mascaras had that spot for so many years in my mind. Then listening to an old podcast, someone mentioned in passing that few workers benefitted so much as being pushed by the Apter mags as Mil Mascaras.

 

Tommy Rich was also mentioned.

 

The one guy I think about in the Apter mags is Abdullah the Butcher who would seemingly almost always have a big spread of grusome and bloody looking photos in PWI from some promotion I couldn't ever dream of seeing.

 

So who did the Apter mags push big? Whose rep was boosted massively by Apter and co?

[Matt D]

Brody seems like a pretty easy choice here, the Road Warriors as well.

 

I remember when I was reading them as a kid, in 92 or so, the Philadelphia stuff with Gilbert and Cactus Jack would get play and I wouldn't have known about that otherwise, certainly.

[Loss]

Lex Luger got quite a few covers and was pretty heavily promoted by the Apter mags. He was the first guy who came to mind.

[khawk20]

I thought of the LOD first, but Flair was pushed to the moon from day 1 as champ, too. Lots of talk about how spectacular a champion he was, and about all the guys he was beating that they themselves pushed so heavily. That was from the end of 1981, never mind those mags flat-out declaring him the greatest, period, after their WWF war began in early 1984.

 

That was funny as well because Hogan was on their covers a ton, yet they wrote tons of negative stuff about him. The pics they had to use were arena shots and cut-out older pics and stuff. Very funny looking for such a professional set of magazines, but they didn't have a choice.

 

...so yeah, LOD, Flair, Tommy Rich in 80-81, probably Dusty too, would be my choices.

[goc]

I was going to say Brody as well. I think it helped him be able to fuck over every promoter but still be in demand. He just looked good in bloody photos and they liked to put him on the cover because I'm guessing he sold magazines.

[Dylan Waco]

Relative to his actual value as a star, Sting

[khawk20]

...also, regarding my comments about Flair, I wasn't able to see Flair at all until a long time after 1981 as we did not have any TV he appeared on here. In that sense, the Apter mags boosted a lot of guys stock in my mind that I had never seen before. When you read about these guys every month for years without ever seeing them, those mags were a big factor in promoting how much you wanted to see them.

 

Flair was tops in that department for me from reading them, no doubt.

[funkdoc]

dark horse pick: a bunch of the random indie guys WCW signed in 93-94. so many of those were regulars in the apter mags, and i'm almost positive that's the whole reason they ever got a job in the first place. let me list the ones that come to mind...

 

the equalizer

slazenger/pierce

the colossal kongs

charlie norris

the blackhearts

the mongolian mauler

 

there are quite a few others i suspect of being similar cases but am not sure about: maxx payne, RVD, big sky, the wrecking crew, jungle jim steele...

 

that was such a weird period for WCW. heck, JYD & jim neidhart got a cup of coffee as a tag team in 93!

 

also, speaking of guys with native american gimmicks, wasn't chris chavis hyped up a ton in the apter mags? thought he was "Rookie of the Year" there or something, though i'm less sure that was the reason the WWF noticed him.

 

EDIT: i think choices like these, abdullah, & mascaras fit the spirit of the thread far better than a luger or flair. i'm more interested in guys without national TV exposure who were promoted and gained something from the magazines.

[Matt D]

Relative to his actual value as a star, Sting

Wouldn't that be early 90s WCW in general then? Not just Sting?

[goc]

Dylan just can't resist a chance to bash The Man Called Sting.

[Dylan Waco]

Sting was positioned by the mags as WCW's Hogan. That would be like the mags positioning Eric Young as TNA's John Cena and talking about Cena v. Young dream matches.

 

On the issue of the magazines as promoters there is a ton to be written because I think in many ways they are the most important promoters in U.S. wrestling history

[Matt D]

The bigger point is that they were positioning WCW as WWF's equal though. That's a bigger issue than singling out poor Steve.

[Childs]

That's a good way to put it, Matt. The Apter mags had a big influence on me viewing the NWA as equal to or better than WWF, which was of course the only thing most of my friends watched.

 

They were also responsible for me realizing there was a wider wrestling world, populated by Abby, the Von Erichs, the AWA and other stuff I never got to see on TV. I remember being really excited when Luger showed up on NWA TV, for example, because I'd been reading about his exploits in Florida.

 

I doubt my interest in wrestling would have gone beyond the early WWF fad if not for the mags. They animated the whole landscape for me.

[JerryvonKramer]

When I read the mags as a kid, I remember thinking in my mind that what I was seeing on WWF wasn't the whole truth and that "the real wrestling" was the stuff these magainzes were talking about.

[Matt D]

I thought Vic Steamboat was a big deal because he always seemed to have a belt.

[Johnny Sorrow]

Lex Luger got quite a few covers and was pretty heavily promoted by the Apter mags. He was the first guy who came to mind.

This is the answer. Me and my buddy were already crazy about Luger before we ever saw him on TV. When he showed up on TBS Saturday Night we went nuts.

[khawk20]

Abdullah and Mascaras are also good choices. They made Mascaras sound like the perfect wrestler and Abby sound like he would kill someone without even thinking about it.

 

We should also remember the evolution of the Apter mags while we're at it. The 70's and pre-84 stuff was a lot different than the mags that came after Hogan got the belt, both in tone and style of writing. After 1984, the opinions of the editors in their columns became much less fiction-oriented, and then you started to see more of a bias in who was good and who wasn't in their opinion. That happened rarely before 1984.

[cheapshot]

Thanks to PWI I thought George South and The Italian Stallion were somewhat legit stars.

[PeteF3]

As someone who got into the Apter mags in the early '90s, Memphis in particular seemed like wrestling on another planet to me. The crazy gimmicks, the crazy hectic angles, the weekly title changes, the idea that Kamala could be a Heavyweight champion...and that was before the WWF guys and Vince himself started showing up.

 

I use the "early '90s" qualifier because I think Memphis got far more coverage than it did in the Apter mags' heyday, thanks to the other territories drying up. I could be wrong, as I don't have many early-'80s options to compare it to. The '90s mags certainly started paying attention to Portland for the first time.

[jpchicago23]

For me it had to be Sabu. Seeing him in the mags with all the bloody pics with barbed wire and scarred skin instantly made me think he was something big and drew me to ECW

[Al]

Reckless Youth

[Johnny Guitar]

Like Jerry said. I really think they did open your eyes up to the fact that there was a bigger world in wrestling outside the WWF.

 

I think Loss once mentioned that everyone is taught pro wrestling. And that is what the Apter mags did for me.

 

They ragged on the WWF, but acknowledged that there were some great wrestlers there, who were kind of held back from their full potential. They praised JCP/NWA/WCW, but acknowledged in a kayfabe way, that things weren't run right.

 

So as a kid I was hoping for a meeting of the minds so to speak from both companies.

[Al]

Shoot, I can't believe none of us have mentioned Dean Malenko yet. PWI heavily pimped a pure, mat wrestling style as the ideal of wrestling and Malenko was the poster child for it.

[JerryvonKramer]

I read PWI in 91/92 around the time Flair was in WWF. There was no internet. There were no adults around who knew anything about pro wrestling beyond the obligatory mention of "Big Daddy". Even though I'd watched wrestling since 89/90 sort of time and had tapes going back to 85, it was all WWF, who never mentioned or acknowledged any other promotions or any wrestler's pasts.

 

So PWI basically taught me history. I had no clue about Flair's history before I read about it there. And it was around that time I stumbled on WCW TV showing at 1 a.m. With literally no other resources, the mags filled in so many blanks. Just picking up on comments made about certain guys here and there, I learned about a lot of things. WCW TV was a lot better at talking about history, so I got to know quickly, for example, that Arn Anderson was a legend in the tag ranks. When Flair came back to WCW in 93, I was watching and the mags had given me enough context to understand what a big deal he was.

 

Kids from my school who didn't read the mags and only watched WWF, even to this DAY, only know Flair from that run in 92.

 

Couple of years later, I somehow found this VHS tape in a car boot sale looking at the history of Starrcade. It was presented by Tony Schiavone and has a bit when he's in an empty studio next to a ring talking to Flair. That video was so invaluable to me at the time. I think it's easy to forget what things were like pre-internet. In terms of info, I was completely on an island. I still don't quite understand why the corner store in my town stocked PWI and other such mags, but I'm so grateful that they did.

[Moonsault Marvin]

Jushin Liger was frequently pushed in the magazines, even before he showed up in WCW. They called him Jushin Ryger in the beginning. With his elaborate costume, he was great for photographs.