We’re happy to welcome Al Getz (@AlGetzwrestling) back to the show to discuss a variety of topics, but most importantly his new book, Charting the Territories: The 1971-1973 LeRoy McGuirk Oklahoma/Louisiana Wrestling Almanac.

We talk about the process of putting the book together from all of Al Getz’s into the 20+ year history of the territory and the use of his wrestling statistics to look at where people worked on a card and how prominent their feuds were during a particular time. We look at some of the familiar names in the territory, like Bill Watts and Danny Hodge, superstars working there regularly like Dusty Rhodes and the Spoiler and youngsters in the infancy of their careers, like Bob Backlund and Pez Whatley.

Al also talks about his odyssey this year to visit every Major League Baseball park and some of the minor league stadia as well. We learn what state Al visited for the first time, as well as some of the atypical ballpark food he ate during the course of the year.

We wrap with a cursory look at the new Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame ballot which had just been released when we recorded the pod. Rather than discuss individual candidates, we talked about some of the procedural changes implemented this year, increasing the number of votes and the inclusion of many tag teams and how that could effect people’s voting.

Danny Hodge on the cover of the April 1, 1957 issue of Sports Illustrated.

We’re happy to have the debut on the pod this week of Al Getz (@AlGetzwrestling) from Charting the Territories for a wide ranging conversation.

First, we discuss the life and times of Danny Hodge, who passed away last week at the age of 88. One of Al’s main areas of research is the Leory McGuirk territory, Hodge’s home for most of his career. We discuss Hodge’s amateur accomplishments in both wrestling and boxing, his transition to pro wrestling and his career highlights. Al has a number of great stories about Hodge, both in his younger days and the unfortunate end of his in-ring tenure following a car accident.

After that, we talk about an article Al wrote about the early career of pod favorite Buddy Landell. We talk about his start in Poffo’s ICW and his journey up the card until becoming a main eventer in Memphis, during his infamous run in 1986 teaming with Bill Dundee. We talk about his time in Mid-South, Mid-Atlantic and Puerto Rico. This leads to a wonderful digression about the journey wrestlers go on in finding the right persona to adopt in the ring.

We also talk about the statistical-based Al uses on his website and podcast to evaluate wrestlers, how it was inspired by baseball sabermetrics and the folly of using traditional sports metrics to try and analyze pro wrestling. There are also some fun stories about indy wrestling, involving folks like King Kong Bundy and the Honky Tonk Man.

Thanks for listening. Work is slowly continuing on our new It’s A Family Affair project, with a few weeks of Continental TV recapped on the website. We hope to have the next episode of the podcast up soon with a former wrestler as guest. Stay turned for more information. We hope you enjoy the show.