Welcome to the latest project from Odessa Steps Magazine and the Winter Palace Podcast: It’s a Family Affair, an examination of Continental Championship Wrestling, from the company’s transition from Southeastern Championship Wrestling in June of 1985 through to its ending. Our initial goal is to look at the company’s evolution, primarily through watching the promotion’s weekly television show. This will be supplimented along with the way with additional material, be they print, broadcast or a combination of the two. The plan is also to do the Family Affair Podcast (@familyaffairpod), a place to discuss the promotion’s place in wrestling history with not only great wrestling researchers and historians, but also the talented men and women who worked for the company, in and also out of the ring. Hopefully, the first episode of the podcast will be going up a few days after this post.

So, why Continental? Its predecessor, Southeastern Wrestling, was once regarded as one of wrestling’s “forgotten territories,” overshadowed by its neighbors in Memphis, Georgia and Mid-South. That seems to have changed in recent years, largely due to the prominence of Ron Fuller’s podcast, the Studcast. Wrestling historians have probably learned more about the Knoxville and Pensacola territories since Ron started the Studcast than in the decades since their operation. While folks like Beau James and Karl Stern were seen as knowledgable experts on the promotions, it’s hard to beat having the promoter himself telling first-hand accounts of what happened on a week-by-week basis.

Of course, as of November 2020, we’ve had the occassional story from the Continental era of his history, mainly on the Super Studcasts, when guests like Kevin Sullivan, Jerry Stubbs and Tom Prichard go over events from their time working the territory. If Ron keeps on this current pace, it will still be years before he even opens the Pensacola branch of Southeastern Wrestling, let alone it becoming Continental.

If you want a sample of what we hope to do on the show, check out our podcast with Ron Fuller himself from a few months ago talking about his novel Brutus as well as his memorites of Bullet Bob Armstrong or our episode from earlier in the year with Beau James talking a wide variety of topics, including some great Buddy Landell stories.

I'd also recommend tracking down the Continental episodes of the Exile on Badstreet podcast hosted by Kris Zellner, where he, Beau and Carl discuss the promotions history.

Thanks for your interest. You can get in touch with us at familyaffairpod at gmail dot com or on Twitter @familyaffairpd.