Episode 134 - Yippy-Yo Yippy-Yeah

Michael Hayes blinds the Junkyard Dog with the Freebird Hair Cream in 1981.

It’s WON Hall of Fame season and this is the first of our shows examining this year’s candidates. We’re happy to welcome back Greg Klein (@jydbook) to discuss his advocacy of two people in particular, the Junkyard Dog and Houston promoter Morris Sigel. We go over both candidates in detail, including JYD’s drawing power in Mid-South and New Orleans in particular, his time as a main eventer versus his later career, the cultural implications of JYD’s push and his feuds, comparing him candicacy to Paul Orndorff, Sigel promoting Houston for 40+ years, the scope of the Texas wrestling office and how that compares to Roy Welch in the Southeast, wrestlers who got their break in Houston, the Texas Wrestling War and more.

We also go over the rest of the ballot discussing things like “should tag team longevity count in dog years,” lack of footage for pre-territory wrestlers, voting for still-active competitors on the ballot and comparing candidates to their baseball equivalents.

Be sure to check out Greg on some other wrestling podcasts this HOF season. The more discussions on worthy candidate, the better.

Episode 131 - Old Lady McDuffie

The One Man Gang runs Jim Duggan into the ringpost during the UWF Title Tournament in May 1986.

We are happy to welcome back Greg Klein (@jydbook) to the pod for another deep dive involving Mid-South Wrestling, only this time it’s the newly renamed Universal Wrestling Federation and the May 30, 1986 UWF Title Tournament held in the Sam Houston Coliseum in Houston, Texas.

We talk about how we found out about the results originally, watching the UWF TV show in Baltimore. Although Greg spend part of the year in Houston, he wasn’t there for this event.

The entire card and all the matches get discussed, even the ones where we don’t have film. We discuss some of the booking choices and match-ups and who we might have been wanting to back when it happened in 1986.

There’s lots of other stuff in this marathon episode, including other eras of Mid-South, when was the high point of the UWF and we talk about the one time World Class ran Houston. Also, anti-star rating filibustering, Morris Sigel’s Hall of Fame credentials, underrated wrestlers and so much more.

It’s always a great show when Greg is on. If you’re in upstate New York, check out the Cooperstown Christmas concert they are putting on as a fund-raiser to make the movie of the same name.

Episode 105 - Tyger, Tyger

A 1912 T202 Hassan Triple Folder tobacco card featuring Hughie Jennings and Ty Cobb.

We’re happy to finally have filmmaker, journalist and author Greg Klein (@JYDbook) on the pod for a chat his new book, his old book and more..

To start, we discuss Greg’s new book, The Paper Tigers, a fictional account of a real-life incident in baseball history. After Ty Cobb was suspended in 1912 for going into the stands and attacking a fan, his teammates refused to play a game in Philadelphia, leaving manager Hughie Jennings to find replacement players. The novel tells the story of some of those players, including two con men and a seminary student., with the central character being a local barmaid who was the sister of one of the con men and married to the other. We talk about how Greg got the idea for the book, which was originally a screenplay, balancing facts and historical fiction, the truth behind Cobb’s attack on the fan, the connection to the 1919 Black Sox Scandal, baseball movies and more.

(22:20) - From there, it’s mostly wrestling chat. We talk about Greg’s book The King of New Orleans about the Junkyard Dog, Sylvester Ritter. We talk about Greg’s fandom growing up in suburban DC but also getting to see Houston wrestling, the rise of JYD in Mid-South Wrestling for Bill Watts, his popularity in New Orleans and the rest of the territory, his leaving for the WWF, Watts trying to replace him with other black wrestlers, Greg meeting JYD in later years and more. We also talk about our shared love of Mid-South as a whole, some of its more famous angles, the transition to the UWF, studio wrestling vs arena wrestling and lot of other wrestling topics.

There were a lot of planned topics left on the table, including Greg now living in Cooperstown and how the Baseball Hall of Fame was effected by the pandemic and past and present work stoppages in the sport, his wrestling career and being trained by Adrian Street and lots of other fun stuff, so we will definitely try to get Greg back on in the future.

Note: We had some Skype issues during recording, so hopefully the editing was not too egregious and the flow of the conversation was maintained.

Thanks for listening.

Episode 103 - Blood Will Have Blood

Ric Flair vs Ted DiBiase, 1985 Mid-South TV. Thanks to Dick Murdoch, one of the best angles in wrestling history. It’s also one of the 100 Greatest Bloody Matches in Way of the Blade by Phil Schneider

We’re joined on the podcast by Phil Schneider (@philschneider) from DVDVR and Segunda Caida to discuss his new book, Way of the Blade: 100 of the greatest bloody matches in wrestling history.

We talk about how he came to write the book and some of the nuts and bolts behind it: how did he pick the matches to include and not include, wanting a wide geographical and historical spread without overloading one particular time and place and such. We talk about a good number of the matches in the book and many of the names you would expect in this type of project; Ric Flair, Terry Funk, Jerry Lawler, Abdullah the Butcher, the Great Muta and many more. We also talk about the companion podcast to the book, where Phil has had both wrestling writers and well as wrestlers themselves on discuss matched from the book, including Steve Keirn and Dustin Rhodes.

There’s also chat about the differences between watching wrestling live versus on tape or television, the greatness of Eddie Kingston, Negro Casas and Black Terry and all that French Catch Wrestling that Phil and his crew watch on Segunda Caida.

You can find Way of the Blade in print and digital at your favorite bookseller and the Way of the Blade podcast where you get your shows.

Episode Eighty-Four - Splendid Isolation Number Three

They Buried The Cowboy Under the Russian Flag!

We’re back with an extra-special edition of the new Splendid Isolation podcast series, as we welcome back Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) from Wrestling Observer Live and the Mid Atlantic Championship Podcast (@midatlanticpod).

We kick if off with a long chat about Bill Watts and the UWF, discussing how hot the promotion began after the name change from Mid-South Wrestling and its expansion outside its home region into places like Baltimore, where young Mike and slightly older Mark watched it in the spring of 1986. We reminisce about the initial title switches, promoting the Jim Crockett Sr Memorial Cup and one of the greatest angles of all-time, one so good we named a spin-off magazine after it: Eddie Gilbert and the Russians burying Watts under the USSR flag. We bracket that with the UWF TV show after the promotion was bought by JCP and just how quickly the show changed.

One of the other big topics covered is Mike’s new Mid-Atlantic Championshop Podcast, which he co-hosts with Roman Gomez. We talk about how the show started, why they chose 1982 as a starting point, some of the main players in the territory at the time and plenty of other JCP topics, including the Final Conflict show in 1983 and play WHAT IF? with various wrestlers (What if Gino had come in 1986? What if Buddy Landell had shown up for that TV taping?).

There’s plenty of other chat for the rest of the podcast, not limited to: the state of the territories by the mid 1980s, the hidden gem that was Southeastern Wrestling, the greatness of Ron Fuller’s Studcast podcast, classic 1980s TV and a brief chat at the end about sports uniforms.

Mike is always a great guest, so big thanks for him for giving so much of his time. We have more shows planned for the future, branching out in topics, so keep an eye out for them. Thanks for listening.