Saturday, March 29, 2008

From The highest Highs To The Lowest Lows

As I have written before when mom would take me to the store I use to run to the magazine rack read the wrestling magazines. I often read about world class championship wrestling. World Class was based in Dallas Texas and featured the Von Erich family.

While world class wrestling was syndicated around the country (and world) it was not available in the north west. The first time I saw the Von Erich's on T.V. was when they appeared on the George Michael sports machine.

The George Michael Sports machine was an NBC show that showed sports highlights on Sunday nights. They would often show highlights of Pro wrestling and have an occasional feature. They would always cover wrestling as if it was real.

Here are the Von Erich's on the George Michael sports machine in 1985


World Class Championship wrestling was HUGE from 82-86. As is stated in this clip The show was opposite Saturday Night Live in Dallas and almost double Snl's ratings in the Dallas Fort Worth market. I have also read that the syndicate version of the show was out drawing Hulk Hogan and the WWF in several markets including some of the WWF's home bases such as Boston and Philadelphia.

Drug use began to take it's toll on WCCW. several of the performers would end up dying at a Young age.

The biggest toll was paid by the Von Erich boys. They were the stars of the promotion and the son of Fritz. Fritz was a big star in wrestling in the 50's and 60's. Fritz owned the promotion and ran it with the goal of making his sons huge stars. They became matinee idols. Then it all went wrong.

Fritz had five sons who got into wrestling. Tragically four of them died young. The sad story of the Von Erich's led to the death Of world class wrestling.

Personally I can relate to this clip after going to the Portland Sports Arena last year and seeing that the arena that used to hold my childhood T.V. show was now a community center for a church.

We start by seeing the surviving brother Kevin going to the Sportatorium (wrestling arena) just before it was torn down



Here we have wrestling manager Jim Cornette with his view of World Class Wrestling

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