Young Vince McMahon interviews Professor Toru Tanaka, WWWF Champion Pedro Morales, and Stan Stasiak with the Grand Wizard. I believe these are local promos for the August 27, 1973 card at Madison Square Garden.
There was no one better during this period on the mic than The Grand Wizard. Ernie Roth brought something special to these promos. There will never be anyone else like him ever.
Pro- Wrestling R... Well Vince currently today is 76 so that means by some deducting he was 27 when he did this interview back in '73 I was only 15 at the time I first heard Vince do wrestling announcing in 1972.
This may well be the earliest footage that exists of VKM working for the WWWF on television. He was only 28 here. If you listen, you can hear signs of his eastern NC accent coming through at times. What a find!
How great it is to watch this promo interview of my childhood hero Pedro Morales🇵🇷. Who still was the WWF Champion.. As a kid I would be glued to the TV watching the WWF hour program. Toro Tanaka a great legend, as also was The Grand Wizard. For me the Best Manager Of All Times.
Man, there's no taking away ,Vinces' ability to announce! Watching this takes me back to when he would call the matches on the main event before he was the owner. I wonder if Shane is upset at the fact that he can't take over the company like his father did from his grandfather.
Vince was, at best, a mediocre interviewer. A great interviewer would pick sides, treating the baby faces like their newborn grandchild and the heels as though they had just murdered that grandchild. Unfortunately, the LA territory re-used (wrote over) their video tapes so there aren't many surviving videos of the man, but Dick Lane was the best at interviewing wrestlers. Lane was a fast-talking actor who played bad guys and cops in 1950's movies, and he also was the wrestling announcer at the Olympic Auditorium during the 60's and 70's. Lane was also a much better match caller than Vince. When Lane left, the LA territory went into its death swirl.
Pedro started as a teen. I think he was at the old Garden around 1965.......Fabulous!!!! Stan beat Pedro in Philly...and Bruno won it back the next Garden card!
What fascinates me so much is that these promos would happen with the opponent literally waiting and watching the other talk smack about the other. A format that lasted until 1987 - 88. After that, they would tape separate promos for the foreseeable future.
I snuck in early one time to the TV tapings in Poughkeepsie and while one guy was getting interviewed his " hated " opponent was standing 6 inches out of the camera shot pulling faces trying to get the guy doing the interview to crack up laughing . That was in 84 ,and shows how Vince didn't really care much about kayfabe as,there were plenty of non employees just wandering about watching as opposed to the nwa where the faces and heels always went to a different bar after the matches
Stan Stasiak reminds me of the Maintenace guy you have at the Factory who fixed the broken machines. He reeks of cigarettes and Vodka from drinking all night at the Ukranian Club. He staggers over with a huge cup of Black Coffee and asks " what's wrong with the Machine?" After he fiddles with the machine for 5 minutes he tells you "I"ll be back" and then you don't see him for the rest of the day!!
He would have been a veteran of the Korean war and thought the music of the day was a bunch of hippy pinko crap. His wife was not a handsome woman but was kind and was estranged from his oldest son because both were to stubborn to apologize.
Wow, talk about priceless footage! I never knew Vince had brown hair! The first time I saw him was around 80-81 on TV when he was announcing with Pat Patterson and he had jet black hair.
Priceless, an interview with Professor Toru Tanaka. This is a man who could do anything in the ring. He was built like a tank. He would have been a great transition champion. Wrestling fans would have paid an unbelievable amount of money to see someone take the belt back from him. Just like Superstar Billy Graham, wrestling fans loved to hate him. The WWWF could have rode on his back for a year putting babyface after babyface up against him trying to get their belt back.
> putting babyface after babyface up against him trying to get their belt back. Not how the WWWF ever worked and STILL not how it worked when Junior took over. Instead there was four solid years of Hulk. Even Graham himself wanted to go face, not spend forever as heel champion. It's okay to have a visiting champion like Harley Race or Ric Flair in that role travelling from territory to territory making every local top star the Nearly Champion, but in a closed territory like the WWF or like what WCW had become by 1990 you need to send the people home happy that Bruno or Hulk or Sting is on top.
I just started watching in 73(4 years old). IMHO 75-85 were the golden years of the game. For ALL of the territories. It’ll never be as good as this. The Monday night wars/attitude era was another great period, but nothing beats this.
This around where I came in. This is the age Vince was when I first started watching. Somehow this time period seems so much better than what we have today.
Crazy to think that 28 year old Vince would take over his father's promotion a decade later. Even crazier to think that Stan's son Shawn and Toru's son Pat would both one day work for the younger McMahon.
Pedro won this matchup in MSG (8/27/73). It was televised on HBO and some matches were released on VHS. Stasiak's title win was 12/1/73 in Philadelphia
I remember watching Stasiak a few years before this when he wrestled in California and had feuds with Ray Stevens and Ciclone Negro. His finisher was the heart punch. Fans loved booing him.
Well the Grand Wizard was off a few hours. It wasn't 48-hours for Stan "The Man" Stasiak, but a little over three months for Stasiak to beat Pedro for what was then the WWWF title. Of all the title-holders, I think Stasiak is probably the most forgotten one, but after only being a transitional champion and holding it for 10 days.
Stasiak looks like he was discovered on Lane 7 at Buzzard Creek Bowl :)...Size mattered in the 70s, but physiques not so much...nonetheless (a McMahon-ism from the 70s :) ) he was a superb and believable heel, even more so with The Grand Wizard by his side...
I remember all of these interviews. The one and only Ernie Roth aka The Grand Wizard. Stan the Man Stasiak with the heart punch. Those Saturday morning promos are priceless. The crap today cannot compare.
This is how baby face champions were put out as. People rag on Backlund's promos but Jack Brisco, Dory Funk Jr and Pedro here were meant to be straight and serious. It was the heels who were the over the top ones.
@@pulsarlights2825 Oh yeah. Dusty was great. It more a good guy world champion thing in the 70's and earlier. Professional wrestling really wanted to be serious back then. I miss those days. We all know it's a work but destroying kayfabe destroyed the business imo.
@@MrAitraining Wrestling has been a work since the Gold Dust Trio in the 1920s. Probably have to go back to Frank Gotch and George Hackenschmidt for a legit pro wrestling match....
@@pulsarlights2825 I understand all that. You're not telling me something I don't know. But there was believability in it 40 yrs ago. Now it's an open circus. Even an 8yr old know it's all choreographed now. An 8 yr old in the 1970's (and I was one of them) saw something different.
Is this how these promos were aired, or were they edited into the programs individually? It seems odd having the heel and face talking shit about one another while in the same room and nobody going "What did you say about me?"
@@SWW72 Thanks. The way Vince used generic introductions for each person, I always figured they recorded a bunch of stuff and put it in where it was needed. It's good to know that even back then the McMahons did stuff that didn't make sense from a production standpoint.
At the time it didn’t seem strange, at least to me. In the context of it being a sport and not a soap opera as today, they were competitors being interviewed about an upcoming match. In boxing, Ray Leonard and Hagler really had it out for each other but there are dozens of examples of them standing near each other when the other was talking on the mic.
@Briguy52748 UHF Channel 47 at this point. WWWF on WOR-TV came in the later '70s after Eddie Einhorn's IWA initially got the midnight on Saturday evening time slot.
