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.

Episode 133 - Legend of a Mind

Kevin Sullivan, King Curtis Iaukea and Mark Lewin. Sullivan passed away on August 9 at age 74.

Before we start, an apology for no podcasts during or after the Tragos/Thesz Hall of Fame a few weeks ago. During the travel to the event, we had some weather-related issues at home that necessitated putting any recording plans on hold. But we are now back, although we were it were under better circumstances.

We’re very grateful to Mike Sempervive (@sempervive) to take some time to discuss the recent passing of the great Kevin Sullivan at age 74. There’s no rhyme nor reason for how we talk about the great man’s career: We go from Florida to Knoxville (all six more or times he worked there) to WCW to ICW to Hawaii and all points along the way. We discuss our favorite angles, try to place the Prince of Darkness gimmick in historical context, our favorite angles and promos, including The Dream Mike Davis, the Slaughterhouse, the Varsity Club, the third Head Hunter, the Sheik, Mark Lewin, King Curtis and so much more.

It’s great when Mike has time to fit us in. If we had him on more often, maybe the shows wouldn’t be as long, but the winding road takes us to where we want to be, in the end.

Episode 111 - Let's Go to the Videotape

The American Ninja from Texas Championship Wrestling.

We’re happy to welcome for the first time to the show, Kris P Lettuce (@krisplettuce), the man behind the Armstrong Alley You Tube channel. We discussed the treasure trove of found footage he has been posting on his channel featuring independent wrestling from the 1980s., 1990s and 2000s.

First up, we talked about his channel and the origins of all this footage, including a subject we’ve been talking a lot lately on the show, tape trading. Just how big was the list of footage from which he was choosing?

From there, we talk about a number of short-lived promotions, including: Austin Idol’s 1993 USA Wrestling, the 1987 Alabama promotion World Organization Wrestling, the 1990-91 Texas Championship Wrestling, the 1991 Nashville International Wrestling Alliance, the 1990 Arkansas International Pro Wrestling, The 1990-91 North American Wrestling Assocation/South Atlantic Pro Wrestling and more. There’s a littany of people we mention here: Idol, Junkyard Dog, the Bullet and the other Armstrongs, Bob Holly, Bill Ash, Stunning Steve Austin, Paul Jones, Robert Fuller, Willie the Wrestling Clown and even Nick Gulas.

There’s also chat about Southeastern/Continental, missing and found footage, Ron Wright and Ron’s Championship Wrestling, wrestling fan subcultures, Kris’ new Patreon, wrestling books, what footage he hopes to get next and more.

Note: The next episode of The Plot should feature two spy-themed Silver Age comics and should be out in a week or two. Thanks for listening.

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.