http://placetobenation.com/titans-of-wrest...ouis-wrestling/

 

Join us as the Titans pause their ongoing journey through 1980 WWF to explore the world of classic St. Louis wrestling and the iconic Wrestling at the Chase TV show! Kelly assumes the hosting duties, and he is joined by Parv (for the first time in a non-hosting capacity) and lead analyst Pete for an interesting look at wrestling from what was known as the "crown jewel" city of the NWA.

 

On the docket tonight:

1962 Footage from the original Wrestling at the Chase show hosted by Joe Garagiola, featuring:

-JOHNNY VALENTINE vs BILL FRAZIER

-PAT O'CONNOR vs LORENZO PARENTE

1979 A feature on the "Giants of Wrestling"--Andre the Giant and King Kong Brody

1979 Two interviews with King Kong Brody

1979 DICK MURDOCH vs PAT O'CONNOR Missouri State Title match

1979 A look at NWA World champion Harley Race from around the world

1978 HARLEY RACE & BULLDOG BOB BROWN vs TED DIBIASE & PAUL ORNDORFF (JIP)

1979 Highlights of the Dick Murdoch/Kevin Von Erich feud, featuring:

-DICK MURDOCH & BULLDOG BOB BROWN vs GENE KINISKI & KEVIN VON ERICH

-DICK MURDOCH vs KEVIN VON ERICH

1979 HARLEY RACE vs DAVID VON ERICH & FRITZ VON ERICH Special 30-minute Gauntlet Challenge

 

Also on tonight's show:

-A brief look at the history of St. Louis wrestling, featuring an extended discussion of the "philosophy" of St. Louis wrestling

-The interesting career of Joe Garagiola (that's a mouthful)

-The pros and cons of Larry Matysik

-"Grandma St. Louis"!

-Thoughts on Brody, Race, DiBiase, Kiniski, Brown, Murdoch, Valentine, and O'Connor, as well as extended analysis of the Von Erich's by Pete.

Congrats on making the Observer's daily update again boys.

First question: Is Joe Garagiola as big a cultural icon as Molly Ringwald since you talk about him being a well known announcer?

 

Second question: Do you think that Terry Funk is the "bridge" guy from the technical NWA style world champion to the Race/Flair workrate, full on heel, action packed style champion?

I'd say Joe Garagiola was kinda like a Ahmad Rashad type. Where he could do game shows, public interest stories, and other things. On the show that got cut I said I don't want Joe G to be our Lyle Alzado . LOL Terry Funk could be a good bridge guy. Also I mentioned Kerry/Buzz on the show I meant Kerry/Borne.

I was floating the idea of Terry as a "bridge" guy between the two styles, but in practice I think he played it more like his brother than like Race. I get the impression that Race was a radically different style of champ from the Funk-Brisco era and, from what I can tell, the champs of the 1950s and 1960s too. Race seemed to invent what I called before "NWA champ style".

Race is the Gene Hackman of NWA champs.

Wanna explain that one Matt?

 

I know that Race was active in the 60s, especially in the tag team with Hennig, but I really associate him with the 1970s and there are things I specifically associate with the 1970s (having been born in 1981), such as Welcome Back Kotter. For 1970s tough guys though, I think of Harley Race and I think of The French Connection, and I think there's a lot of overlap there. There's some between Race and Dirty Harry too, I guess, but definitely more so with Hackman in French Connection.

 

And pfft. I forgot there was an actor/wrestler note and the original post in that is someone saying "I always thought gene hackman could do harley race." I hadn't looked at it til now when I googled the two names together.

 

I just think that was the sort of persona Harley was trying to put forth. Tough, gritty, but not a roughneck idiot. He knew how the world worked and he'd seen a lot of things and there was an element of world-weariness to Harley Race, World Champion. The world was a sick, sour place, and he'd crawled up to the top of the heap because he understood it better than anyone else.

I was floating the idea of Terry as a "bridge" guy between the two styles, but in practice I think he played it more like his brother than like Race. I get the impression that Race was a radically different style of champ from the Funk-Brisco era and, from what I can tell, the champs of the 1950s and 1960s too. Race seemed to invent what I called before "NWA champ style".

 

I have seen very little of Terry as NWA Champ but from shoot interveiws I have heard a few wrestlers say that he brought in that showmanship that previous champs didn't have. I know Harley said something to that effect. Harley also said that one of the reasons Murdoch wasn't made champ was because at some point in the evening (outside of ring) he would turn into a clown. I guess at that time they wanted someone who carried himself well outside the ring as well as inside it.

"showmanship" meaning within the ring as far as his wrestling style, I think it may have been Harley that said "cartoonish" or something along those lines.

For my taste, Kiniski and O'Connor were too damn old to be in the ring even if they could go. They both just looked awful visually and I know that during the 70's that was one of the knocks against the business was that there were too many old guys on top. I'll give the Dick the Bruiser a pass as he was still a big draw.

regarding Kevin's age, he was born in 1957.

This was awesome.

 

I know that Race was active in the 60s, especially in the tag team with Hennig, but I really associate him with the 1970s and there are things I specifically associate with the 1970s (having been born in 1981), such as Welcome Back Kotter. For 1970s tough guys though, I think of Harley Race and I think of The French Connection, and I think there's a lot of overlap there. There's some between Race and Dirty Harry too, I guess, but definitely more so with Hackman in French Connection.

 

And pfft. I forgot there was an actor/wrestler note and the original post in that is someone saying "I always thought gene hackman could do harley race." I hadn't looked at it til now when I googled the two names together.

 

I just think that was the sort of persona Harley was trying to put forth. Tough, gritty, but not a roughneck idiot. He knew how the world worked and he'd seen a lot of things and there was an element of world-weariness to Harley Race, World Champion. The world was a sick, sour place, and he'd crawled up to the top of the heap because he understood it better than anyone else.

Makes sense. Before the explanation, I was picturing Harley motivating a small town high school basketball team to a championship.

We should note that Gene Kiniski was a heel champion, but I have no idea how he worked. It's possible that Race learned his style from Kiniski who was around St. Louis a lot then.

 

For my taste, Kiniski and O'Connor were too damn old to be in the ring even if they could go. They both just looked awful visually and I know that during the 70's that was one of the knocks against the business was that there were too many old guys on top. I'll give the Dick the Bruiser a pass as he was still a big draw.

They did really respect a legend in St. Louis, but I'm inclined to agree. At times it looks like a retirement home for former NWA world champions.

Splendid show with Kelly setting the table with the introduction and then Pete and Parv sprinkling in the comments during the matches. Felt like a good overview of the strengths of the city/promotion (I agree its tough to really call what it is).

Yeah I love that they try to portay wrestling as a serious sport and the logic that they put into it. It makes it a lot easier to plan that way when you are only running one town and you can cherry pick who you bring in for your Kiel shows. One key in the WWF getting the KPLR timeslot was Geigel ceasing from taping tv shows at the studios in the fall of 83 and instead showing his less than stellar Kansas City tapes. Ratings took a dip after that and it inclined the station manager to give Vince his ear. I actully thought Matysiks show "Greater St. Louis Wrestling" was superior to the NWA's show at the studios. Matysik also good young talent like Adonis, Savage, Chavo and of course Brody, Volkoff etc. I think Matysik def waxes romantic about St. Louis and from reading his books had trouble coming to grips that the era of the one town wrestling promotion was over. Everyone was going to have to align with someone bigger. Toronto-Crockett then WWF after Crockett starved Tunney out, Houston-Mid South and then of course St. Louis-WWF. Even if Muchnick had stayed the WWF would've have still taken over the town at roughly the same time.

Not to be nitpicky (love all of these shows -- easily my favorite wrestling podcast), but both this show and the Portland show don't have the audio tracks mixed "correctly" for playback. The host comes out of the left channel and all audio from the callers comes in from the right channel, so it makes it impossible to listen to with one headphone in. I like to listen to these shows when I'm commuting or at work, and I always put one headphone in so I can still hear other noises. Not sure what program is being used to edit the show, but you should be able to mix the caller audio so that is coming in through both channels (it is nice to record the host in one channel and caller in the other so you can edit out when someone is talking over the other for example, but you could post-mix the audio before uploading the final show).

 

Only reason I'm even bringing it up is because I love these shows and get bummed when I have to wait until I can listen!

Thanks for the feedback and we are glad you're enjoying the show. It seems like an easy fix.

Thanks for pointing this out. Duly noted and will be fixed the next time I host a show.

It seemed to me that that problem went away on this episode after the first 5-10 minutes. Either that or my brain had been tricked to think it had.

Let's just say there were numerous recording problems during the first hour.

Finished this one up yesterday - fantastic show. Changing up the roles, as well as having a smaller crew, really had this one stand out. I'm tempted to re-dub it Shoe's St. Louis Showcase - I thought Pete was phenomenal given time to fully break down the matches and wrestlers.

 

Hope you guys will put out a couple more off those Matysik discs. I skipped ahead on them to watch the Flair/Brody match and on the 0-10 Guzzling (my new favorite word) Scale, i'd say Brody was really only a 7.5 there. I thought Flair was solid in the second fall but I would have liked a little more from Flair at the end. To Brody's credit, I thought his stuff was really good. The power stuff at the end was great and from watching these discs, I'm a mark for his one-armed slam (although wouldn't he inflict more damage if he used two arms to slam a guy?) and flying knee drop finish. I'll save the rest of my analysis there but liked that one to around ***1/2-***3/4.

 

I thought the Brody and Von Erich discussions were real good supplements to the watched materials. Nice work boys.

Appreciate the kind words Brad. The 3 man band allowed the show to be more how like Parv conceived the original idea of the show. All I can say all the guys I do the shows with are versatile and thus it allows us to do different things like this show. I'm sure we'll be doing more St. Louis in the future.

Parv talked about this around the Brody conversation:

 

Matysik's Top 50 Wrestlers of All-Time - St. Louis Bias Edition

 

#38 Pat O'Connor

#32 Bruiser Brody

#28 Fritz Von Erich

#22 Dick the Bruiser (!)

#12 Harley Race

#9 Gene Kiniski

#3 Ed "Strangler" Lewis