@@DaveKnowsWrestling Have you thought of What If Series in Wrestling? Like What If Magnum TA never had that car accident & beat Flair for the NWA title What if Chris Benoit never killed his family & wrestled at the PPV against CM Punk
@@lambert581 If you like that sort of series you should check out Pllana Productions. This is about a week late, so sorry for the comment, but he does a series like that and a few other videos on his channel so if you're into that check it out.
@@lambert581 I think Chris was at the end of his career by then anyway. His neck surgery kinda took a lot out of him. However, if he hadnt gone nutty, I'd like to think he'd be running NXT and be the head trainer, and Lance Storm. Half the wrestlers today would be all doing Canadian Strong Style.
Even though the UWF was short lived, it was a fun program. My first time seeing Sting and his tag team partner who would later be known as the Ultimate Warrior, the Blade Runners. UWF was the first place I saw Jim Ross. Good ole days
I called The Blade Runners The Junior Version of The Road Warriors back then. Sting was a lot more willing to learn new wrestling moves and work a match than Rock aka The Warrior was. Rock was content to do Power Moves and beat the crap out of you.
As I was raised in the south and watched wrestling a LOT back in the day (late 70s and in the 80s), I grew up with JCP. Crockett was great wrestling. I remember Magnum TA really well. He was a great wrestler who had the fans in the palm of his hand.
@@DaveKnowsWrestling he is I couldn't believe that when I found out because he definitely doesn't have a southern accent. I think he probably resents it because he hated Jim Ross's and others accents.
I'm born and raised in NC and I must say that. NWA had the best wrestling and promos.. Without NWA and WCW there wouldn't no 4 Horsemen and nWo period..
Vince had a terrible childhood and he’s lived and worked on the Northeast for decades. It doesn’t surprise me that he’d want to distance himself from his Southern roots. Also WWE was the big Northeast promotion under his father as well.
Unfortunately, Crockett (through his booker, Dusty Rhodes) had a tendency to simply bury the wrestlers in the territories he bought up during that era (Mid South/UWF, Central States, Florida). It seems like he bought up the territories with no actual plan for what to do with them once he made the acquisitions.
Thing is when Crockett bought the UWF it inherited it's television time slots giving JCP round the same station mark as Vince and it strengthened JCP's reach and exposure.
The problem was that they didn't need to as UWF was basically bankrupt. Crockett could have just let UWF die and pick at the dead corpse. Instead, he allowed himself to be played by BIll Watts. Watts was desperate to sell to avoid losing his shirt entirely. He first went to Vince with an offer to sell and Vince passed. So, he decided to use that to convince Crockett into buying by claiming that VInce was ready to buy. Crockett fell for Watts's ruse and ended up buying UWF himself, and as mentioned, all the debt. If he had simply let UWF die, he would have been able to get the TV and the talent without the debt.
I live and grew up in Charlotte NC. As a kid I worked as part of the Ring crew traveling from city to city setting up and tearing down the ring, Helping with the interview set and during cage matches carrying out and assembling the Cage before the final match. Some great memories and funny times..... especially of the Road Warriors torturing us every chance they had
I went to see the tv tapings at the WRAL studios twice, before they had the tapings at big arenas. As noted here it was on Wednesday night. They taped 2 shows, Mid Atlantic, which would air at 11:30 on Saturday nights, and World Wide Wrestling, which was syndicated but was usually Saturday afternoons. Mid Atlantic was hosted by Bob Caudle and David Crockett and World Wide by Don Kernoodle and a variety of co-hosts. We saw Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, Jay Youngblood, Gene and Ole Anderson, Greg Valentine, Ivan and Nikita Koloff and the very under-rated Dewey Robertson, who held the NWA Junior Heavyweight title for years, and mainly kept it in Canada. The great thing was the tickets for the tv tapings were free, you just had to send in a 3×5 postcard to reserve your space.
Yes as a NY, wrestling fan I agree. One Saturday in the 80's, I was working with a friend on a school project. My friend had cable, I did not. "I am going to provoke you mind." He said. Huh? Was my response. He puts on tbs at 6:05 PM. Wow! The floodgates were opened. WWF was considered corny and cartoonish, sometimes. We also got worldwide, on ch 11, the WB, in the 80's Then worldwide on ch 2 cbs. For the pre NWO and the NWO WCW.
@@woady_one So good. I got to see all four of them compete at a house show in Pittsburgh in October of 86'(Andersons vs R-n-R/Tully vs Wahoo/Flair vs Dusty)To this day, it was the best time I've ever had at a live wrestling event. Better than Wrestlemania 24. I miss how invested crowds were in the 80s. If Ricky Morton got beat up, people cried. If Dusty pinned Flair(even though the decision was reversed moments later)the crowd reacted like their hometown team had just won the Superbowl.
John Ringley was Crocket Sr.'s son in law and would have stayed in charge of Crocket promotions had he not divorced Crocket Sr's daughter Frances. Frances ran the family minor league baseball team she a Johm were thought to be the most savy of that generation. After Wringley left Crocket, Jr took over.
Dave Knows Wrestling do you watch his youtube channel at all or listen to his podcasts? He could still be one of the best promos in the business if the people in charge would stop actively hating wrestling fans.
@@DaveKnowsWrestling You know, it really does. But... you can't fault WWF for putting on better shows. Or at least better gimmick shows on those specific dates. If Crockett would have kept it a bit simpler and pushed certain guys a bit more across different territories, Rumble Survivor Series would be afterthoughts. Especially when JCP began airing Halloween Havocs and StarrCades live on TBS for free.
Wrong promotion won. When SCSA & The Rock left, who did WWE turn to for the most part (outside of the OVW big 4 & Taker/HBK)? Eddie, Rey jr, Jericho, Big Show, Benoit, Booker T, Regal, Fit Finlay (06), Helms, tried w/ Goldberg. WCW had the guys to carry them, along w/ Sting & Flair as ur tentpoles, & dropped the fukn ball.
Once again Dave, great video! I grew up during the mid-80s Crockett era and was always a big fan (hence my profile pic) so i'll always have a soft spot for JCP. Honestly always preferred them over whatever WWF was doing. NWA was big in the Philly area where I grew up and even as a kid I preferred that southern style wrestling over Vince's "sports entertainment" cause it seemed more realistic and sports-based.
And that was the draw, WWF made their product for kids, while NWA addressed more adult audiences. The realistic presentation and sports based appearance of the show made it a more complex wrestling product
Growing up in the in the time of JCP l have many memories of going to shows in Wilmington and Fayetteville NC. Watching people like Ivan Koloff, Dusty Rhodes, The Horseman, and many others. At the time l didn't realize how lucky l was but now l wouldn't trade it for anything
im from philly.... all the kids in school watched Jim Crockett Promotions over the WWF 85-88 was magic In an alternative reality, I would have had Piper return to JCP in 87 to fight the horseman. and maybe have valentine and steamboat return too. could have been a huge shot in the arm
This was fantastic. I've been recently listening to a wrestling podcast covering 1985-? in chronological order re: JCP. This piece was amazingly well researched. Thanks!
one thing that is funny, you talked about how jcp did make full use of uwf stars, well a star for the uwf went on to be the biggest star for turner's wcw sting.
Crockett Promotions Produced the Greatest Wrestling there ever was...The then WWF had the bigger budget,but in my mind,the "NWA had the better and more believable talent.
I wonder if Crockett would never have sold to Ted Turner if they would still exist today as an alternative to the WWE. Once I was able to get World Championship Wrestling on TBS and World Wide was syndicated to my area I liked that product better than the WWF at the time.
I remember being young and going to the Dorton Arena in Raleigh seeing Flair, Wahoo, Valentine, steamboat and so many ...also watching Mid-Atlantic wrestling on Saturday night
Flair and Steamboat the Rock-N-Roll Express battles with the Midnight Express Arn and Tully Sting but Eric Bischoff never allowed any one to get over except Goldberg and allowing certain guys to have creative control over the characters spelled doom for wcw........
Brother, like I told ya last night on the Payback chat. You have to do a vid series on the Territory Days. In a way, this was a big chunk of the story. Some of my first wrestling memories was watching "Wildfire" Tommy Rich winning the title from Harley Race. I think that was Georgia Championship Wrestling? The weird thing is, I lived in Michigan, We got GCW, WWF, and I have vague memories of Big Time Wrestling from WKBD50 Detroit. I'm not sure which network carried GCW. It would have to have been TBS. It was a great time to be a kid and a wrestling fan.
I live in Wisconsin. The AWA was big in the midwest. Plus there was Bob Luce in Chicago. Not sure how big he was outside of Chicago. But the Brain, Hogan, Kurt Hennig, the Gagnes, Nick Bockwinkle, Ray Stevens and others were part of the AWA. Of course Henan, HennIng went on to WWE. I was a wrestling fan back then, not so much now.
You are right about them devaluing the UWF talent. Imagine what could have been if they had built to a match between Flair and UWF champion "Dr. Death" Steve Williams. Williams was one of the toughest workers around and was well on his way to really becoming a star. Unfortunately, Crockett decided to undercut his pay and he wound up leaving and the UWF title went by the wayside. Also, interesting to note is that Ted DiBiase was in negotiations with Crockett prior to making his WWF debut in 1987. One of the stories he told was that he was going to get a run with the NWA belt. However, he decided to sign with Vince and become the Million Dollar Man.
His return. Ted DiBiase wrestled for The WWWF in 1979 and won the original InterContinental Championship (then known as The North American Championship) in San Juan, Puerto Rico. Double ironies with that: Almost four years later DiBiase won The NWA UWF MidSouth version of The North American Championship. In New Orleans. Only a few short years ago Adam Cole won a Ladder Match and captured The NXT version. In New Orleans!🤔😉🎤🤼♂️B.W.
@@madbrowniac7871 I forgot Ted was in the WWF in the late 70's. In fact, before he left he put over Hulk Hogan, who had just arrived. BTW, small correction. Mid South was not an NWA member. It was pretty much an independent but still worked with the NWA. In fact, on a few occasions they would bring in Nick Bockwinkel to defend the AWA title.
That is absolutely correct about MidSouth. Houston Wrestling alone was an incredible Showcase for the Greats going back to The Twenties and they brought in AWA, NWA, and WWE (WWWF and WWF before) Champs on a consistent basis.🤔😉🎤🤴🐴🤼♂️B.W.
Kinda ironic that in the end JCP was done in by not utilising and building its midcard talent and paying its big stars more than they could afford, only for WCW to be done in (partially) by not utilising and building it's mid card talent and paying its top guys more than they can afford. Add in the creative control clause and WCW was doomed well before it started to show in 99/00. I guess it's true what they say. Those that don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Really Enjoy the Show.I have followed Georgia Wrestling for over 55 years.And you have some good sources. I would to speak with you one of these days. You will find out I know a little bit too.Keep up the good work. Looking forward to new content soon
You're right. I skipped over him because unlike some of the presenters I did mention, he didn't have another connection to something else later on in the story that I was telling. And at that point in the video I was just name dropping over and over again. So I thought it got a little repetitive and decided to cut the only section I had on him. Plus I didn't see any really good pictures to use of him either.
@@DaveKnowsWrestling No pictures to use of him? at 5:59, you have Caudle interviewing the Andersons No mention of Jim Crockett Sr.'s passing in 1973 which is why John Ringley (Crockett's son-in-law) even got involved in the first place. No mention of the very first Starrcade in Greensboro (1983) or the HQ of JCP being moved from Charlotte to Dallas after the purchase of the UWF. If you're going to get your video past that magical 10 minute mark for monetization, you may as well tell the whole story. I mean, it's all good if you're actually not a wrestling fan and you just cobble these videos together with stuff you found on Wikipedia to make a little bit of income on 10+ minute videos. You'd have to change your username though.
I was big on Jim Crockett promotions and the NWA when I was growing up. I lived on it. The WWF wasn't the same at all. Too bad Jim Crockett JR shot himself in the foot with his bad decisions. It pained me as a growing teen to watch their slow downfall.
While I don't agree with some of his decisions myself, I will say that Hulkamania was just something that no one saw coming. It's so hard to counter something like that
Dave knows he should open a promotion. You know so much about wrestling I believe you could do it like Defiant/WCPW but not have to shut down then I can try out to wrestle. Use my wrestling and Jiu-justu
The national wrestling alliance was great from 1984 until mismanagement happened in 1987. NWA should have kept the UWF and its talent. Steve Williams, Sting, Terry Taylor, Chris Adams, the Freebirds, Iceman Kong Parsons, One Man Gang. Jim Duggan, Ted Dibaise, Shane Douglass, Steve Cox, Sheep Herders, the Terminator, Ron Simmons, Eddie Gilbert the Lightning Express and Rick Steiner etc. Allowing most of wrestlers to leave for WWF and taking money from Florida Championship Westling and burying UWF by spending money carelessly jets, limousines etc was part of the reason why the NWA wrestling began to suffer. May I add some of Dusty Rhodes booking matches and some finishes got burned out too. Last but not least in 1987 pushing Ronnie Garvin no offense, to become NWA champion was not the right call. I felt that Barry Windham or for sure Nikita koloff should have been the NWA champion to take Ric Flairs place. No ones knows the truth but at Starrcade 1987 the main event was suppose to be Nikita Koloff vs. Ronnie Garvin for the NWA title. Why did they change it ? Only the NWA management would know the answers to that. I believe that Nikita Koloff would have finally become NWA champion at Starrcade 1987. RIP DUSTY RHODES Son of a plumber. The match that we never saw on the NWA also was the Road Warriors vs. the Rock N Roll Express that should have taken place back in 1986. They also held the Road Warriors back to long to win the NWA tag team championship. Starrcade 1987 the Road Warriors should have won the belts but instead the Nwa alllowex then to win the belts a almost a year later when the dominant tag teams were completely gone accept for the Midnight Express. The Fantastics were good but not great enough to hang with the Road Warriors.
This has a lot of good information but the timelines are all over the place as you go topic to topic...still have to appreciate the effort as you are well spoken.
Mangum T.A. accident happen , and JCP had no top baby face, Dusty ran his course , and bought out Watts instead waiting until he folded to pick the wrestlers. Killed off Crockett for good. Also, little part was Flair killing off Luger heat in 88.
Sting''s Squadron v Dangerous Alliance War Games match got a five star rating and it was, to my knowledge, WCW's last FIve Star Match. Plus, seven of the ten combatants are in the WWE Hall of Fame
It does make you wonder that if Jim Crockett had treated talent from non-Crockett territories a bit better while essentially running the NWA, could he have kept guys such as DiBiase and Piper away from the WWF. If not for Piper in 1984-85, Hulkamania never explodes like it did. Without DiBiase in 1987-90, Hulkamania starts to fizzle after just a year or so... and Savage may not have become the draw for Vince that he did. Beyond this, he probably could have kept Steamboat, Jake Roberts, JYD, Duggan, Boss Man, Harley Race from leaving the NWA and going to WWF as pretty much the beef of their midcard that helped support Hulkamania. Every one of those guys have specifically pointed to Dusty's booking them poorly as to why they left. If Crockett would have listened.... But they did run into a lot of bad luck. Jay Youngblood was on fire in the mid 80s when he passed away suddenly in Sept 1985. Add this to Magnum's car wreck a little over a year later, and those are two, young, charismatic babyfaces Crockett could have banked on for years. Not to mention mishandling talents such as Tommy Rich, Eddie Gilbert, and initially Sting... while also letting talent such as Randy Savage, KoKo B Ware, Honky Tonk, and eventually Lawler leave Memphis for New York without trying to keep them in the region... all hurt Crockett big time in the long run. Simply managing his regional talent better while running the NWA, could have killed Hulkamania (or at least contained it) and we could all be remembering the WWF as this promotion that was hot for a year or two in the 80s, but couldn't hold onto that flame...and was extinguished by the 90s.
@@saj8 Yeah, I mean... it was only Dusty who was booking him on a path for Flair in 1987 after finishing up with Tully in 1986. It was Dusty who convinced Crockett that Magnum was the guy. Literally everyone who was involved with JCP at the time has stated this in one interview or another. But yeah, sabotaging him out of the gate was what would have happened..... I guess the "gate" was going to be 3 years into Magnum's run? Dusty had his issues with booking. He's a big reason many guys left NWA territories for the WWF in the mid 80s. However, Magnum TA was not one of those issues.
I was watching the first rumble wishing i was watching that bunkhouse stampede cage match battle royal instead. But, there was no way in hell my momma getting me ppv with other on for free. But that first clash! That was historic. Except for me wanting it to be the rock n roll instead of the fantastics, and Gorgeous Jimmy not winning the T.V. belt, I remember loving every second of that show. Sitting there thinking "you already know hogans gonna win the belt again, what the point." Boy my surprise the next day at school about WM4. That was a the absolute greatest time to be a kid if you loved wrestling like i did.
The first starcade........the best show top to bottom ever...... vince had a long drawn-out idea of how to do this.... Crockett was just crying to keep up.... The sad thing is Crockett and better talent better productions and better shows.... But Vince had his idea thawed out well in advance and was able to execute it and block the competition at the same time
Do you consider JIM CROCKETT PROMOTIONS part of WCW's lineage or a separate entity? Also do you consider Wrestling in NYC prior to Capitol part of WWE's lineage? I ask this because in the 80's the WWF's intro would say "For over 50 years" etc. That would take their lineage at least to the 30's. Great video, just subscribed. Gonna check out more of your channel.
Great questions and thank you so much for subscribing, Welcome to the Know-It-All Nation! Personally, I look at JCP and the NWA as WCW's parents. Sure, there are things that crossover, but by in large, that's how I view it. As for CWC, I look at everything after breaking away from the NWA in the 60's as WWE, nothing before. But that's me. What about you?
@@DaveKnowsWrestling Thanks for the reply. As for WWE's lineage I'm not sure what to think. Maybe the WWE wanted to act as if their lineage was older than it was. WCW did the same thing on Nitro one night when Tony Schiavone said they been around since 1905 which didn't make sense to me. He may have been referring to George Hackenschmidt who won the world title that year, but still isn't their lineage. But regardless, your channel is great and informative. I'm gonna binge watch a lot of your videos today. Keep up the great work.
The lineage traceable to The Thirties in the Sport is The Welch and Fuller Families. They promoted cards throughout The Deep South and it was through NWA Southeastern as a member of The Heel Faction known as "The Stud's Stable" circa 1984 that Arn Anderson received his inaugural push.🤔😉🎤🐴💎👔👞👞🤼♂️B.W.
Danny: Near as I know WWWF is probably traceable to 1957 or earlier. The Graham Brothers Eddie and "Crazy" Luke wrestled a Legendary Two out of Three Falls Tag Match about that time in Washington, D.C. for Vince McMahon Senior's Group.🤔😉🎤🤼♂️B.W.
One of the things one has to bare in mind when looking at any wrestling company during this time period is that lots of them went out of business, and they all had slightly different approaches with the same result. Jim Crockett Promotions was more successful later in the 80's than most other promotions that had been around in the 70's. When Crockett first started expanding, it was successful, as they drew well in places like Philadelphia, Baltimore and Atlanta. They could have stayed regional and lasted a little longer, but then they probably would have faded away eventually like most of the other territories. I can see why Crockett felt he had to expand and that his expansion in 1987 would have been as successful as it had been in 1985 and 1986. Of course, in hindsight we can see that he was overly ambitious and overplayed his hand, but if we put ourselves in his shoes with what he knew at the time, it gives you a different perspective. The approach that promoters like Bob Geigel, Roy Shire and Ron Fuller had were resulting in them going out of business. He felt he needed to have a different approach.
@@chriskay1449 Those towns like New Orleans were hot for a little while in the 80's, but were dead by the time Crockett bought UWF. What he was buying was some of the contracts and contacts with venues, suppliers and media/publicity. If he wanted to run in those towns, it would be harder without those things. He ran shows in some places without buying the territory and in other places, he bought. David Crockett believes his brother should have just ran Louisiana without buying UWF, but I don't know how successful that would have been.
@@seanabbins5481 He bought a lot more than that. By buying the promotion, he bought all the debt that Watts had. IF he had just watied for UWF to fully go under and then pick up what he needed, he would have been far better off and not have any of Watts's debt. Watts played him for a sucker.
In fact for anyone who Dave has interested in checking out out go to this channel right here: ru-vid.com I don't know who this guy is but he's doing good work for the IWC.
Yea, I always believed that if JCP would of stayed between Baltimore and Florida for the most part. They would of lasted longer. Plus from a production view point, they needed to upgrade. That's one of the major problems with old school promoters. They always put production as the third or fourth most important thing and they don't realized that the look on tv is extremely important.
Dave Knows Wrestling I live in a small town called Cheltenham, in an area called The Cotswolds. Look it up, worth a visit if you ever make it over. Thanks for the reply and content you are putting out 👍✌️
From someone outside of the US trying to watch what is under the JCP banner for continuity it can be very confusing as I believe they were running both Georgia Championship Wrestling and Mid-Atlantic at the same time but because they never referenced what happened between the two and the same people could effectively be on both weekly shows. I can imagine it was hard for most people at the time to actually know what was happening with some feuds going into big shows if they didn't get the regional promotion. That is kind of a side effect of just simply buying a territory and trying to just run it on it's own as is while utilising all the same talent. One positive thing about having all your shows under one name and banner and only running shows under that unified branding is much less spreading of resources. Buying all those different promotions was all well and good but trying to run them all from one place at the same time with the same amount of people as you had when you were running just one or two was always never going to be sustainable. I will admit that due to lack of knowledge at one point I simply thought before WCW and Turner owning it that it was just a single promotion called the NWA, that was in the 90s and before the internet. To me the whole NWA overseasing loads of regional promotions was never a good thing when TV came around when it came to people wanting to know what was going on and was always destined to die out.
