Anyone who has followed my website will already know that I’ve had an off and on fascination with professional wrestling. I loved it as a little grade-school kid, then enjoyed it fleetingly as a teenager, and returned to it in my late twenties. While I haven’t followed the current goings-on in the ‘sport’, I’ve never lost my fascination for the old days. The athleticism. The drama. And mostly the comedy. But if I had to pick my favorite era, it would undoubtedly hearken back to the early 1980’s when I first got hooked into those wonderful weekend broadcasts of Georgia Championship Wrestling on channel 17 TBS hosted by the fabulous Gordon Solie. Even my parents knew that the best punishment they could deliver me when I screwed up regularly was to take away my wrestling for the weekend. When that happened, I’d lay next to the TV so I could hear it, even if I couldn’t watch.
Since I’ve been doing the celebrity circuit, I’ve met lots of wrestlers, but finding these Georgia wrestlers hasn’t always been that easy. Many of them never ventured beyond Georgia and thus never became quite well known enough to be beckoned to celebrity shows. Or they’re simply dead. Among those names I’ll never get the chance to meet: Gordon Solie himself, Buzz Sawyer, Dusty Rhodes, Andre the Giant, Brad Armstrong (although I did actually meet him at one of the wrestling matches I attended), Bad Bad Leroy Brown, Big Red, Gary Hart, Big John Studd, Road Warrior Hawk, and Terry Gordy.
But the good news is that I’ve also been crossing some off my list as I go along: Ric Flair, Roddy Piper, Tito Santana, The Iron Sheik, Tom Pritchard, and George “The Animal” Steele. And then came WrestleCade on Saturday, November 28, 2015, which had more wrestlers in one place than anywhere I’ve ever been. And that meant more Georgia wrestlers too. Here are four.
We’ll start off with The Masked Superstar simply because he is the only one of the four that I had met before. I first encountered him on April 26, 2014 when he was at the Chiller Theatre event in Parsippany, New Jersey. Had I not done my research beforehand, he would have slipped right by me too.
I most closely associate the Masked Superstar as being the partner of another masked wrestler known as The Super Destroyer. Back in those days I had no idea what their real names were and no idea what they really looked like. I just know that they were nice and hated in Georgia. I never saw them live wrestle as partners, but at one event at Hara Arena, Superstar wrestled Tommy Rich, who at that time was in an arm cast, and utilized it fully against the Superstar.
Superstar held the title of NWA Georgia Heavyweight Champion, NWA National Heavyweight Champion, and the National Tag Team Champion with Super Destroyer and later King Kong Bundy. He was one of the first wrestlers to body slam Andre the Giant. Although I don’t recall it, he then went directly to the WWF.
I also recall that Superstar at one point turned to a babyface and teamed with the ‘good guys’, but beyond that I have no recollection of him in the wrestling world. And one of the reasons for that was that in 1987, he took off his mask and became one half of the tag team Demolition, now portrayed as “Ax.”
At Chiller, he was there with one his former demolition partners, Barry “Smash” Darsow. I had little interest in that team, but I did approach Ax – aka Superstar – aka Bill Eadie, his real name. We had a nice conversation, and he told me about his former partner Super Destroyer, aka Scott Irwin, who had passed away in 1987 at age 35. Another one I’ll never get to meet. He recommended some upcoming wrestling shows for me to attend, and I found him to be a very warm and nice guy. And I finally got to see what he looked like without that mask, albeit with a bit of Demolition facepaint. I didn’t bother with an autograph since he didn’t have any Superstar photos, but I gladly shelled out $10 for a photo with him. He posed for free with Carolyn too.
When I saw Bill Eadie again at WrestleCade on November 28 the following year, this time he was wearing his Masked Superstar mask, presumably because he was better known as the Superstar with the Mid-Atlantic crowd in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Again he was nice, and I mentioned meeting him when he was “Ax”, and he made a joke about that guy owing him money, and that he never seems to be around when the Superstar was around.
This time I did get an autograph on one of my Ringsider programs that I used to obsess over in 1982, the souvenir program that was sold for a buck at the wrestling events at Hara Arena. The autograph was $5, and I gave him another $5 for a picture of him with the mask. He posed for a freebie with my Dad this time.
Next up was one of Superstar’s other former partners. Although both Superstar and Stan Hansen has been primarily bad-to-the-bone for the time period I watched Georgia wrestling, at one point both of them became faces. My fondest recollection of Stan “The Man” or Stan “The Lariat” Hansen was when he was teamed with Ole Anderson, and they were generally booed out of the studio.
But Hansen most certainly did turn to babyface, as I saw him wrestle live with Tito Santana as his partner on October 22, 1982, when they took on The Wild Samoans managed by Sonny King. You can actually see a photo I took of this match here.
I was quite excited to meet Stan Hansen and even pre-purchased my autograph and photo op for $15. It was quite amazing to realize that the guy standing in front of me was such a badass Texan back in the day, when now he looked just like someone I’d encounter at a Chevy Club meeting. Yes I’m going out on a limb in saying that people really do change over 30 years.
Stan Hansen signed the cover of The Ringsider that he appeared on as part of my pre-purchased ticket. Later after I had Superstar sign a different issue of the program, I decided to go back and give Hansen another $10 so that I could have both signatures on one Ringsider. It was a wise decision on my part methinks.
Kevin Sullivan had briefly appeared on a list of Chiller guests in the Fall of 2014, but ended up not showing up. Somehow he had always seemed like a wild card to me, and I feared I would never get to meet this interesting character. But much to my delight, he was on the WrestleCade list of guests… and he showed up!
Back when I first became familiar with Kevin Sullivan, he was a rather boring wrestler to be honest. Just slightly ahead of the ‘jobber’ rank, he was indeed a babyface, and I vividly recall a match I saw live at Hara Arena when he wrestled Tom Pritchard, who was also somewhat of a jobber, but also a babyface. I remember trying to voice my approval for Kevin to shake Tom Pritchard’s hand, knowing in my heart of hearts that both Kevin and Tom were upstanding guys. Kevin won that match and then went on to make more of a name for himself when he stood up to Roddy Piper and Ole Anderson on an episode of Georgia Championship Wrestling.
But then he left Georgia and became quite interesting indeed, first stopping in Memphis as a heel and battling Jerry Lawler. For the next dozen years, he wrestled almost exclusively as a heel, part of the time using a Satan worshiping gimmick that quite shocked me at the time, especially considering the Kevin Sullivan I had known and loved in Georgia wrestling.
When I tuned back into wrestling around 1997, he was part of the WCW and The Dungeon of Doom, still as a heel, where he both participated in a wide variety of enticing storylines, while also serving as a real-life booker and script writer. In one of the most interesting twists, one of his stories had wrestler Chris Benoit stealing away Kevin’s wife real-life wife Nancy “Woman” Sullivan. In fact Benoit really did steal her away and eventually married… and then murdered her before committing suicide.
And this man was now standing in front of me. I treaded lightly with him, fearing that his character’s antics might have also bled into real life, but I found him quite friendly. He became even more friendly with me when he saw that I had an old Ringsider featuring an article about him called prophetically enough The Many Faces of Kevin Sullivan. (If you look closely, you can see Sullivan confronting Piper and Anderson with a steel chair).
For $10 I picked up the nice signed Dungeon of Doom Sullivan photo, and for $5 more he signed my article, and $5 on top of that he posed for a photo. I considered it a steal, and an essential Georgia Wrestling encounter. He told me privately that Georgia Championship Wrestling owner Jim Barnett had told him that changing GCW to World Championship Wrestling was the biggest mistake he ever made. Kevin, like all the others, recalled his Georgia days as being some of the best of his career.
Finally we get to the “Russian Bear” Ivan Koloff. He returned to Georgia wrestling after they had made the name-change to World Championship Wrestling, which despite the name was really the same show with the same characters, but now on a bit wider scale. In fact he had been in Georgia quite a bit before I had ever tuned in, holding the Tag Team Title seven times, five with Ole Anderson, and twice with Alexis Smirnoff.
I saw him wrestle live during the Cold War when you can bet that Koloff was one of the most hated men in wrestling. He defeated Tommy Rich’s younger brother Johnny Rich to a cacophonous jeering at Hara Arena. The funniest things about Ivan Koloff was that he wasn’t a villainous Russian at all. He was from Canada. But after meeting him at WrestleCade, he did seem a bit like a bear, and a cuddly one at that.
He had no qualms about pitching his wares, autographs and wrestling videos, and I certainly had no qualms about buying one especially for $10. Referring to a verse from the Bible certainly seemed out of character for the ‘evil’ Russian Bear, but not so much when you consider that Koloff is now an ordained minister. One can only imagine the threats to his well-being over the years, and all the time he was just a sweet Canadian playing a role. How about that?
Meeting wrestlers from the days is not only a treat, it’s a slice of my childhood, and that’s probably why it is so much fun. As long as I can continue to track them down, I’ll go after meeting as many as I possibly can.
Wrestlers from the 2015 WrestleCade will continue…
Celebrities form the Spring 2014 Chiller Theatre Show will continue…
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