Episode 138 - Keep Young and Beautiful
Whitey Caldwell and Kevin Sullivan as tag champs in the early 1970s.
We’re happy to have Beau James (@kingofkingsport) back on the pod for a wide-ranging chat about his career and other classic wrestling topics.
First up, we discuss Beau’s start in the business as a teenager, as it is currently Southern States Wrestling’s 44th anniversary month. We hear about going from behind the scenes gofer to referee to running his own promotion while still in high school. Did the kids in school know about Beau’s “after school job?” And since SSW was just getting started in the early 1990s, we talk about what relationship if any he had with Smoky Mountain Wrestling, which started up in Knoxville around the same time. How did Beau get along with Jim Cornette at the time? Did they peacefully co-exist or did things go sour, like another promoter in the area at the time, Terry Landell?
After that, there’s a long discussion about wrestling footage? Beau talks about of the tapes he acquired when East Tennessee wrestling super fan Kenny Short passed away last year and what newfound footage was on some of those tapes. This leads to a chat about “holy grail” footage that may or may exist and what would we most love to find out actually exists. And then we talk about the wrestlers who were known to be tape collectors during their career and what other wrestlers might have had footage squirreled away that we do not know exists.
We also talk about Beau’s upcoming talk in July at the Thesz/Tragos Wrestling Hall of Fame about East Tennessee wrestling and what artifacts he may be bringing with him to Waterloo this summer. Plus some random chat about the recently-deceased Ed Wiskowski, traffic in East Tennessee and just how amazing it is that just how few travel-related fatalities there were during the territory era, given just how many wrestlers were driving thousands of miles a week at high rates of speed before every place in the country had Interstate roads.
As always, a great time talking to Beau. Be sure to check out the From Outlaws to Independents podcast that Beau does with Jon Boucher and Southern States Wrestling content on YouTube and other streaming platforms.