Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives!
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Where Wrestling's Regional History Lives! |
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- Jason Hess Hello Kayfabe
Memories fans and readers!!!
Welcome to the next installment of
Houston Wrestling, and I hope you enjoy it.
In this edition of our journal, we will
take a look back at my first trip to the home of
Houston Wrestling, the Sam Houston Coliseum.
June
1984: In Houston, summers are very very hot to say the
least. And
with the oil bust having just hit, the summer of
1984 was hotter than ever.
However, Mid-South Wrestling was still
drawing fans despite the economic crunch that
had hit Houston, and later the entire state of
Texas and Oklahoma.
In fact, for Bill Watts to last as long
as he did in the Houston market back then,
(which wouldn’t recover until the late 80s)
was amazing.
But June 1984 saw Mid South at the
Coliseum, with a near sell out crowd. My mom and sister had gone to great lengths to
surprise me with tickets to the matches.
I was having my 11th birthday,
and was a big fan of Mid-South.
So the three of us packed into my mom’s
Mazda RX7, and headed off to the Coliseum.
There was a traffic jam outside the
Coliseum, something my mom and sister did not
expect. They
really didn’t think wrestling would pack the
Coliseum like it did that night.
We were a bit late, and missed the opening bout
with mid-card jobber Mark Ragin.
We settled into our seats, in the second
deck of the Coliseum for a night of action.
Let me say that my mom and sister were
not avid fans of wrestling, and were basically
afraid for their lives.
I was having the time of my life.
This was my first wrestling card ever,
and I was going to remember everything I
possibly could. The
Shifts: What I didn’t know at the time, was that there
were some major shifts going on backstage behind
the scenes. Gone were some familiar faces, like the Junkyard Dog, and
Butch Reed (Reed would return for another long
stint in 1985-6).
And, instead of the Dog as the lead face,
that responsibility was shared by Hacksaw Jim
Duggan and Magnum T.A., with Duggan carrying the
lion’s share.
Bill Dundee was now the head booker for
Mid-South, although he had yet to make his on
screen debut.
He brought with him (as noted in Tim
Dills’ excellent Memphis 1983 and 1984
columns, and with Max Levy’s column on
Mid-South itself) two tag teams that would
change the face of Mid-South Wrestling forever.
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