Most territories at any given time?

[Dylan Waco]

This came up on the latest Karl Stern audio over at the Observer site and he did a pretty poor job answering the question. So let's try it here. At what point were there the most territories in wrestling (including outlaws), and how many total operations are we talking about?

[JerryvonKramer]

My guess would be around 73-5 around the time Dory and Brisco were feuding over NWA title, before Detriot went bust, when IWA was in operation, that other North Eastern territory around Buffalo, Funks in Amarillo, SF and LA still fully operational. That weird Johnny Powers promotion (NWF) was active, Dick the Bruiser's WWA in Indianapolis, Gulas in Memphis, the Fullers in Knoxville, Hawaii under Lord James Blears, plus all the territories we know from the 80s.

 

But ...

 

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NWA_territories#Defunct_and_former_NWA_member_promotions

 

Looking at that it seems like there might have been even more in the 60s. Also, remember all those completely forgotten about outlaws you, me and Kelly came across in those old newsletters?

 

Best guess thinking about that is 1963-4.

[Bix]

Probably best to start with the NWA membership history listing on Hisa's site and work from there?

[KrisZ]

Yeah the early 60's would be my best guess

[Indikator]

The 1930s are just miles ahead of everything. With the help of Don Luce we have close to 400 shows in NYC in 1934 alone. Just check out Prowrestlinghistory.com to see how many shows were hold in Ohio back then.

[JerryvonKramer]

One figure I was interested by in that great resource Bix posted, was Fred Kohler in Chicago. He was the man behind wrestling on the DuMont Network as many of you probably know, but what I didn't know is:

 

1. That Kohler had heat with Sam Muchnick and it seems the two of them were trying to pull the NWA in different directions in the 50s.

 

2. That Vince Sr. more or less poached the DuMont TV spot in 1955. I've read accounts of Vince Sr. before that claimed he promoted Chicago at some time or another, but that doesn't seem to be true. Essentially, he took the TV spot and made bookings for Buddy Rogers around the country (he'd also book Rocca in a similar way, and later Andre of course), meaning that in some convoluted way he was involved in the promotion of the big Rogers vs. O'Connor match from 1961, but that was a Fred Kohler card and he is generally credited with the gate. I'd always been confused by the Vince Sr - Chicago connection, but it seems that's all there is.

 

3. He sold his wrestling promotion to Wilbur Snyder and Dick the Bruiser in 1964 and that went on to be WWA. I didn't realise that the WWA had such long roots and that WWA's promotion of Chicago had a direct lineage back to Kohler.

 

I think a guy like Kohler does raise an issue though: do you count his "Fred Kohler Enterprises" as a territory or not? I think the pre-NWA landscape is too scattershot to call anyone who was promoting shows a "territory"

[Ricky Jackson]

Reading Tim Hornbaker's new book, Capitol Revolution, and according to him Vince Sr formed a partnership with Kohler in 1959 in which Vince Sr would supply talent and TV for Kohler in return for a cut of the profits, much like the arrangement Crockett had with Toronto in the late 70s/early 80s.

 

Also, Vince Sr's original plan in 1963 was an organization called the WWWA (World Wide Wrestling Association) that was to stretch from New York to Chicago with stops in Detroit, Cleveland and Pittsburgh. However, Kohler pulled out and formed an independent group, so Vince Sr decided to just focus on the New York area and the name became WWWF

[Strand Peanut]

Vince Sr "poaching" the Dumont TV spot is a bit off. The network was dead in the water at that point. Wrestling At The Marigold still continued locally in Chicago until '57 ('58?)

 

Vince Sr may have cared more about being on Dumont's flagship NYC station, but he wasn't trying to crush Kohler. Kohler was sending talent to Vince Sr to help him start out.

 

It's instructive to remember Vince Sr is starting out in the business at this time.

 

When Eddie Quinn begins his war with Kohler in Chicago, Vince Sr sends talent and TV (Heavyweight Wrestling filmed in CT) to Kohler.

 

NY pulls out in 63-64, and Kohler starts working with Pfeifer, and it's pretty much the end.

 

Lou Thesz forum, and combing results, should give a more clear picture.. most of this is from memory.

 

It's always appeared to me that Kohler and Vince Sr had a good working relationship. Vince Sr sent talent, but Kohler's office made the matches and booked them.

[Indikator]

Don't forget that you needed to be a booking office/agency in order to become NWA member (that's why guys like Ed Contos were refused *cough*), so Kohler and probably also Leonard Schwartz are basically territories. It's difficult and takes a lot of time to decipher what happened back then. Originally Schwartz got his wrestlers from Jack Pfefer and then Al Haft , but Luce recently sent around the research for Lexington, KY 1952 and one first and second glance it seems that Leonard Schwarz was the main supplier of talent and I shouldn't say that Lexington was a Haft town. I need to move hundreds of shows anyways and now it seems that Schwartz (Clarks Sports Inc.) will soon be accessible like the aforementioned links. At least there is an upside to this ludicrous amount of work, as I can show you guys stuff like our Pfefer index.

 

Currently for us Detroit is one major pain in the ass (were Harry Light's direct predecessors Eddie Lewis and Adam Weißmüller?), and Kohler likely got his talent from Weißmüller when he first expanded in the mid 30s. Haft was seemingly only part of this alliance, I haven't seen talent sharing between Kohler and Haft yet. Furthermore in regards to 1930s Chicago we can't yet tell where the main promoters like Kohler, Joe Coffey and Doc Krone got the talent from and who had an alliance.

 

New York is not easier, maybe even worse

Early on in my wrestling fandom I got myself the Rene Lasartesse Book, he was the Swiss guy who worked in NY 1957-1958 as Ludwig Von Krupp with fellow neutral Paul Berger. There he stated that they were booked by Kola Kwariani for the whole duration of their stints (Berger left first) and based on their matches I thought that this meant that they worked for McMahon and that Kwariani was McMahons booker. This doesn't necessarily make sense if you have read the new Hornbaker book. I don't want to say that it's wrong and I've only read it once (I will probably have to read it multiple times in order to get all the timelines right) but it does seem that Kwariani was not alligned with McMahon at the time. Yet Berger and Lasartesse were on McMahons Capitol Arena TV show and pretty much every venue in the region as well, so I wouldn't as of now say that Kwariani was boycotted by McMahon back then. As far as I can tell my impression is that NYC had in the 1950 Rudy Dusek, Kola Kwariani, the Johnstons, Pedro Martinez, Jack Pfefer, Vince McMahon & Toots Mondt as big players more or less simultaniously. And I begin to think that from 1940-1960 no wrestlers wrestled exclusively in the NY area for only one of the aforementioned guys/alliances.

 

Edit: Remember that Crockett and Rocca tried to invade NY in 1963? Check out Rocca's schedule and image what McMahon thought once it was clear what Crockett and Rocca were up to. All those other territories Rocca worked might have turned against McMahon! (You need to think like a paranoid promoter - which back then was probably the sensible approach)

[JerryvonKramer]

This is really good stuff indikator.

[Stiva]

Don't forget that you needed to be a booking office/agency in order to become NWA member (that's why guys like Ed Contos were refused *cough*), so Kohler and probably also Leonard Schwartz are basically territories. It's difficult and takes a lot of time to decipher what happened back then. Originally Schwartz got his wrestlers from Jack Pfefer and then Al Haft , but Luce recently sent around the research for Lexington, KY 1952 and one first and second glance it seems that Leonard Schwarz was the main supplier of talent and I shouldn't say that Lexington was a Haft town. I need to move hundreds of shows anyways and now it seems that Schwartz (Clarks Sports Inc.) will soon be accessible like the aforementioned links. At least there is an upside to this ludicrous amount of work, as I can show you guys stuff like our Pfefer index.

 

Currently for us Detroit is one major pain in the ass (were Harry Light's direct predecessors Eddie Lewis and Adam Weißmüller?), and Kohler likely got his talent from Weißmüller when he first expanded in the mid 30s. Haft was seemingly only part of this alliance, I haven't seen talent sharing between Kohler and Haft yet. Furthermore in regards to 1930s Chicago we can't yet tell where the main promoters like Kohler, Joe Coffey and Doc Krone got the talent from and who had an alliance.

 

New York is not easier, maybe even worse

Early on in my wrestling fandom I got myself the Rene Lasartesse Book, he was the Swiss guy who worked in NY 1957-1958 as Ludwig Von Krupp with fellow neutral Paul Berger. There he stated that they were booked by Kola Kwariani for the whole duration of their stints (Berger left first) and based on their matches I thought that this meant that they worked for McMahon and that Kwariani was McMahons booker. This doesn't necessarily make sense if you have read the new Hornbaker book. I don't want to say that it's wrong and I've only read it once (I will probably have to read it multiple times in order to get all the timelines right) but it does seem that Kwariani was not alligned with McMahon at the time. Yet Berger and Lasartesse were on McMahons Capitol Arena TV show and pretty much every venue in the region as well, so I wouldn't as of now say that Kwariani was boycotted by McMahon back then. As far as I can tell my impression is that NYC had in the 1950 Rudy Dusek, Kola Kwariani, the Johnstons, Pedro Martinez, Jack Pfefer, Vince McMahon & Toots Mondt as big players more or less simultaniously. And I begin to think that from 1940-1960 no wrestlers wrestled exclusively in the NY area for only one of the aforementioned guys/alliances.

 

Edit: Remember that Crockett and Rocca tried to invade NY in 1963? Check out Rocca's schedule and image what McMahon thought once it was clear what Crockett and Rocca were up to. All those other territories Rocca worked might have turned against McMahon! (You need to think like a paranoid promoter - which back then was probably the sensible approach)

 

What a great post. I'd love to know more about Crockett trying to muscle in on McMahon turf in the 60s, is there any articles/books to dig into it?

[Ricky Jackson]

As mentioned before, Tim Hornbaker's Capitol Revolution is a history of the pre - Vince Jr New York wrestling scene. His take on Rocca and Crockett is that Crockett initially supplied Rocca with talent for his New York promotion but backed off when " pressure from backstage channels cooled his intetest"

[KrisZ]

Here is some more info about the Rocca/Crockett deal

 

http://wrestlingclassics.com/.ubb/ultimatebb.php?ubb=get_topic;f=9;t=015328

[Johnny Sorrow]

As mentioned before, Tim Hornbaker's Capitol Revolution is a history of the pre - Vince Jr New York wrestling scene. His take on Rocca and Crockett is that Crockett initially supplied Rocca with talent for his New York promotion but backed off when " pressure from backstage channels cooled his intetest"

Nice way of saying "the mob".

[Strand Peanut]

I've always thought NYC was pretty open until Vince Sr consolidated with his superior TV and prominent placement on the old DuMont station.

 

I know there's spikes here and there, but NYC could also be considered a dead town/territory for wrestling during that time period.

 

Vince Sr wasn't walking into anything near what was to come under his leadership.

 

As an aside to the larger discussion.. When we talk about booking, offices, promoters, etc.. I'm not always sure it's always applicable for certain eras. Most modern fan knowledge of how the business was run starts with the TV era. By the time some wrestlers are sorta opening up, we're looking at what.. late 80's? Early 90's? Some of what we know isn't always applicable for every era. I wouldn't refer to the WWE booker in 2015, maybe it's not so easy to apply to 1952. Does that make sense ?

 

Really need to get those Hornbaker books..

[JerryvonKramer]

My understanding was that New York was dead before Rocca, and he brought back the big gates. Speaking of which, was my claim that Vince Sr made bookings for Rocca around the country not quite right?

[Strand Peanut]

Vince Sr may have taken a cut of Rocca's earnings (?) and handled calls about using Rocca. But more likely it was Mondt.

 

I'm hardly any authority on Rocca tho..

 

If Rocca was performing outside of NY, the other promoter would be "booking" Rocca. Not the NY office. But given the time period, I'm still not entirely sure. Mondt was from a previous era, when boxing and wrestling rose hand in hand in NY. With the lack of wrestling success in NY, it's possible they were running business on a very different model during Rocca's time ? When terms like booking and offices may not apply or have utterly different meanings.

 

I've often thought the realtive stability of wrestling from the mid 60's - 70's brought the rise and codification of these terms. IE: refering to a 2001 photograph as a "selfie." Contextually now, we know what's being meant. But none would've applied the term in 2001.

 

NY is confusing til Buddy shows up, and gives Vince Sr and Mondt the leg up they really needed to be one of the big boys. Don't over estimate NYC's importance, it's not always held the spot it does in recent memory.

[Ricky Jackson]

Yeah, Mondt booked Rocca, going back to 1949 I believe. Vince Sr became involved in New York in 1956 when DuMont decided to air McMahon's DC TV in the area, which became a big hit and revitalized the Garden when Vince Sr and Mondt eventually teamed up to run shows.

[Johnny Sorrow]

An HBO drama show about the politics and goings on of wrestling back then, ala Boardwalk Empire would be some cool shit.

[goodhelmet]

And since it is wrestling, it could be 100% fictional and still be believable.

[BigBadMick]

An HBO drama show about the politics and goings on of wrestling back then, ala Boardwalk Empire would be some cool shit.

There's talk of Paul O'Brien's novels becoming a HBO series. That's 70s and 80s behind-the-scenes intrigue though.

[jdw]

This came up on the latest Karl Stern audio over at the Observer site and he did a pretty poor job answering the question. So let's try it here. At what point were there the most territories in wrestling (including outlaws), and how many total operations are we talking about?

 

On the first question, probably the 30s or 40s. Los Angeles alone had two successful promotions at the Olympic and at Hollywood Legion. In addition, there were other operations around the LA metro (LA, Ventura, Orange, Riverside and San Bernadino counties).

 

It's been a long time since I looked up the details, but there was period without one year where we had several out of state World Champs running around: Thesz or Longson with the NWAssoc, Frank Sexton with his, Buddy Rogers had an invented one, and I seem to recall Brown came in with his. Don't recall if Lopez had his local version at that point (end of 1946), or if this all pre-dated it. Those guys weren't all working out of the Olympic, and instead some worked for different promotions.

 

I don't recall San Diego being a really a clear part of the Los Angeles promotion at that point, though eventually they were. Then up the coast, etc.

 

On the second question... it's probably impossible to answer. There was that Omaha version of the World Title that was closely associated with the AWA title, but basically also it's own promotion in the 50s into the 60s before getting merged into the AWA title and put to bed. That's freaking Omaha having it's own promotion. Look at the list of guys who held it:

 

http://www.wrestling-titles.com/us/ne/awa/ne-world-h.html

 

That's some major players... in Omaha. There were probably pissant small promotions all over the place. Not really outlaws, but minor ones that no one cared much about.

 

I wouldn't be surprised if there were 100 operations going on at some point in the late 40s and early 50s.

[Al]

Yeah, I'd think 1930s era, maybe late 40s. Much the way cable television was a game changer, I imagine the interstate highway system changed the way wrestlers could travel from town to town and effectively shortened distances.

[jdw]

I think over time, planes and interstate highways allowed for larger territories. Watts' Tri-State territory might not have been possible in the 30s and 40s, and instead different parts of what became that territory were their own territories. My guess is that we had more territories that were like "Memphis" and fewer that were like the Mid Atlantic or Capital in later days.

 

I recall Yohe doing some research on some city for a period in the late 40s or early 50s where Rogers had a run. I don't recall it being a major city like San Diego sized. Anyway, it looked like it's own promotion, running its own storyline that Buddy airdropped into. It may have had a slightly wider base in other town/cities that created something of a circuit. But it felt like a small pissant promotion that none the less was running it's own business.

 

I suspect there were tons of them. What became Capital and Mid Atlantic were almost certainly a collection of small promotions / towns / cities that eventually came together. Philly was its own strong city under Fabiani for decades. It would work with New York for stretches of it, but there was also a long dry stretch for MSG in the 40s, and it's not like Fabiani want out of business: he was still there when Philly went WWWF in the 60s. That's likely the case further up the East Coast. In turn, Buffalo had it's own promotion, etc.

 

There's tons of stuff that could be researched, if newpapers covered it in other cities like it was covered in Los Angeles in the 30s and 40s. You basically could pop open the US Census data for 1940 and 1950, draw a cut off line of cities to research (say Top 100), pick a pair of years, and have a go looking at the Sports Page of the local paper(s) every day in each city for those two years... and see what you can build.

 

Crap load of work, on a variety of levels: the research, the compiling, the putting it up in a way (like Graham's site) where it can be shared and reviewed.

[KrisZ]

Yeah there wasn't as much territories but all the towns had their own promoters that used talent that was in the area.