PNW #26 Page #2

He says that the kind of people who go to wrestling shows are low class, I guess I better inform President Carter, whose mama goes to the shows about this.  This geek here, he says that he is repulsed by the way the girls scream for Hack Sawyer.  What's the matter Gertrude?  Do you have a problem getting  dates with a hundred dollar bill strapped to your forehead."  Piper concluded his rant by asking the reporter how it felt to have him told how to do his job by a wrestler with an eighth grade education.  Classic stuff with Roddy in full Hot Rod mode. 

Number 7 THE RETURN OF LONNIE MAYNE  

At the time I knew of Lonnie Mayne only from the Apter mags and knew him as a crazy heel who swallowed goldfish and ate glass.  He had been out of the NW for several years and I was unaware that he was a legendary good guy in this territory.  The memories for this are a bit fuzzy because it was so long ago but I will try to reconstruct it the best I can.  For weeks, we had been teased that someone was returning to the area and there was much speculation on who it would be by both announcer Frank Bonnema and the wrestlers.  One week Dutch Savage was doing a promo and he announced that next week there would be a returning wrestler, and he promised that there was going to be 'excitement in the air.' With that quote the audience at the arena leapt to their feet as if they were connected to jumper cables, and the show went off the air with a shot of the audience still on their feet and many of them literally jumping for joy.  The next week I had a bunch of friends over to watch the show and it was obvious that the people at the Sports Arena were in an anticipatory frenzy.  Don Owen was in the ring stumbling with promoting the next weeks show when the entire audience went ballistic.  Lonnie had just left the dressing room.  Hard to put this into words that do it justice, but the energy at that show was such that my mark friends and I, who only knew Mayne from the magazines we were all also hopping up and down with excitement, and well we had not even caught a glimpse of him yet.  Who did he wrestle, didn't matter, although I think it was John Anson, this was a defining moment to me on how powerful and charismatic some of the boys were, their energy came THROUGH the television, grabbed you and made you a believer. 

Number 6 DUTCH SAVAGE UNMASKS DR X 

The mysterious Dr. X had been torturing people with his headbutt for several months.  Of course his headbutt was so devastating because the fiend wore a loaded mask!!!  This was storytelling in its most base form.  Heel cheats and wins using dastardly methods, the hero, Dutch Savage, arrives and promises to get to not only the bottom of X's evil plan, he will foil it, show who the masked man is, and send the guy packing.  X was unmasked on the Seattle TV program for all of the area to see, IIRC it was Frank Monte, but I want to say that announcer Frank Bonnema announced it as being Mike York.  I can still see Dutch taking whatever was in the mask and chucking it up to Frank Bonnema in the 'crow's nest.'  I want to say that is was a round piece of steel but it may have been plastic.

NEXT MONTH:

The top Five

Back to PNW Main