A Short History of Professional Wrestling Territories in America

[@SteveHill0528]

Verne was so good, he was listed three times😂

[@whathedoug]

Needs his own video of just being listed over and over

[@thegunslinger8806]

By the way other than Piper in Portland you had some other guys like Buzz Sawyer, Raven when he was Johnny Polo, Jerry Lynn and Sean Waltman apparently came through and of course the one guy i dont think people talk about enough pre and post WWF which is Matt Bourne, i loved the hell out of Matt Bourne in portland when he played that tough guy persona, its just a shame he went nuts.

[@captaincarl8230]

Raven, at one time, was also known as Scotty the Body while in Portland. Portland was also the home of Billy Jack Haynes.

[@TheImapotato]

Just a quick correction. NWA Hollywood was really in its heyday under Mike LaBell's mother Aileen Eaton. Once she passed Mike started to interpromote with Vincent K McMahon & later sold it to him. The Phoenix territory was named something else and it, the WWA in Indianapolis (sister company of AWA some would say) and NWF were not NWA affiliated. Also, the rarest promotion was Gulf Atlantic Corporation run by paul Boesch in Houston. He was good with NWA, WWWF and AWA. Some classic matches never seen anywhere else happened at the Sam Houston Coliseum. I just loved the whole idea of the territories, damn cable and PPV lol

[@whathedoug]

Eventually I’ll compile everything people say in the comments into a way better video

[@TheImapotato]

@@whathedoug Hey no worries, these are ALWAYS great videos. Love hearing everyone's takes on the territory days of wrestling! Al Getz has a great podcast called Charting the territories that I listen to and he has some great books as well.

[@dangoldenberg704]

Houston was kind of confusing because they weren't really a booking office. They used talent and storylines from Dallas, then San Antonio, then Mid South. Though, I do believe that at one point they (not Dallas) were the booking office for East Texas.

[@russblack443]

​Actually there were two NWA Booking offices in Texas. The Amarillo office owned by Doc Sarpolis and Dory Funk Sr and the he Houston booking office owed by Morris Siegel and Paul Bosch. When Morris Siegel passed away Ed Maclamore and Fritz Von Erich stole the booking office out from underBosch and started to run it out of Dallas.. they had more power in the NWA than Paul so he basically could either keep Houston,use NWA talent and keep his mouth shut,or try to fight it and get put out of business totally r@@dangoldenberg704

[@Bazzeboy]

Great story!

[@MisterBeauJanGels]

Were you begging or challenging people to correct you there at the end? Here we go: * St. Louis was a local promotion, not a separate territory. Sam Muchnick was heavily dependent on Kansas City to fill out his cards. When he retired and Bob Geigel took over the promotion, Geigel tried to make it more like a run-of-the-mill territory stop. The fans saw through that, leading to the town's decline and henceforth easy pickings for the WWF's national expansion. * The "New York territory" only came into its best-known form around 1973/4. Boston and Pittsburgh had autonomous local promotions before that, which booked a lot of New York talent. * Much of Ohio, excepting the area around Toledo and the area between Cincinnati and Columbus, was part of the NWF. Following its demise, The Sheik tried to muscle in on those towns as Detroit and Toronto started dying as a result of him having been on top for too many years. After his territory died, Crockett had eyes on both Michigan and Ohio before the Georgia promotion moved in. * There was a Mississippi territory. It lasted a little more than a year, from late 1977 to early 1979. Its promoters, the Culkin family, filed an antitrust lawsuit against Leroy McGuirk. The lawsuit led McGuirk to desire to wash his hands of the Culkins, which was a key factor in allowing Bill Watts to split from McGuirk and start Mid-South. * As for the dark space out West? ** Salt Lake City became part of the AWA circuit as it expanded. ** Nevada was promoted by both California territories before being taken over by the AWA. ** Southern Colorado had shows with talent booked out of Amarillo, not AWA shows. ** Idaho saw shows when Seattle promoter Harry Elliott was active. After he retired, it was a desert for many years until Sandy Barr started promoting in the latter days of PNW. With the logging industry falling victim to changing times, PNW had to expand beyond Oregon in order to survive, and their former arrangement in Washington state fell by the wayside when Dutch Savage parted ways with Don Owen. ** That leaves Wyoming. There was a short-lived territory towards the end of the 1970s called Rocky Mountain Wrestling, which was NWA-affiliated. Their main eventers were guys like Bill Ash and King Parsons, who at the time were strictly jobbers everywhere else they worked. Like with Stampede, making ridiculous drives over that kind of terrain made it a tough sell to attract drawing wrestlers.

[@whathedoug]

Not so much challenging people to correct me as … inspiring people to put better information out there than this. So … if you want to write a script correcting this video in detail, go right ahead. And if you don’t want to make the video for it, email me the script and I’ll make it 😂

[@TheImapotato]

St Louis WAS a territory, technically. It was called the St Louis Wrestling Club. It had its own territory rules and specific matches. They had an in with the local TV station and got free shows in the Chase Plaza with monthly shows at Kiel Auditorium. Yes, it grabbed talent from Central States, WWA in Indianapolis, Detroit and Memphis, but it was its own standalone entity with the NWA Missouri title which many have stated was the 'can he be world champion' test belt. It only faltered when Munchnik retired. i think there is leeway to say WWWF was the NY territory. By 1970, they had the MSG monthly gig even if they still went to Philly, D.C. and Boston. Pittsburgh was Bruno's Studio Wrestling which was a promotion in the fact Bruno got paid and does anyone remember Boston's AWA? By the time wrestling had its territories in place, WWWF was running the Boston Garden. Never knew about Rocky Mountain wrestling, who was the promoter? I remember Canadian Rocky Mountain Wrestling he did forget about Kovacs and later Al Tomko in Vancouver, believe it was called All Star Wrestling? A lot of non Moolah women came from there IIRC

[@whathedoug]

What he said.

[@jimmiepiranah]

Portland Wrestling every Sat night. Benny Hill M-F. To be 13 again. 1st Portland Wrestling Expo is in Feb.. It's gonna be a happening.

[@whathedoug]

Portland is a great place to have a wrestling expo!

[@jimmiepiranah]

@@whathedoug This is PNW centric. But Bishoff is booked to be there. Odd.

[@SirManfly]

@@jimmiepiranah Love the fact that there was talent swapping occasionally between Portland Wrestling and Stampede Wrestling. Dr. D. David Schultz and the Dynamite Kid were legends in Stampede but also wrestled in Portland while Stampede welcomed the likes of "Mean" Mike Miller.

[@jimmiepiranah]

@@SirManfly Theres a vid from Florida, from '80 with a couple Portland guys, that must have been going back in forth. Wild. Buddy Rose was in Georgia, and Florida for a cup of coffee. Probably doing shots for WWF at the same time. I know those guys put in major miles.

[@chrisbolton6598]

29th century.

[@whathedoug]

Video Boy

[@whathedoug]

Boy

[@redbandsteve6115]

Did he say 29th Century? Bro can see into the future.

[@whathedoug]

I stand by my statement

[@redbandsteve6115]

@whathedoug your in the wrong business then. Stop making content and Start cashing in on the lottery or something. Lol. With your power you can do better.

[@DougHudson-k4c]

I miss the territorys, wrestling was so much better

[@whathedoug]

Everything always “used to be better” so I guess we better find the things around us NOW that we appreciate that way we know what to complain about missing in thirty years … gonna be hard to find things that are good right now though 😂

[@TheImapotato]

Yeah, wrestling was made for local TV, where good heels could have a nice year run and then go to another promotion and be the 'unbeatable' heel again. In the 80s when One Man Gang or Kamala went to WWF, you already saw both lose to lesser babyfaces than Hogan.

[@lalosalamanca6936]

Make wrestling great again

[@Edwards-Videos]

12:05 You had me until you called the Hart Family Territory redundant.

[@whathedoug]

Bret Hart is the greatest to ever lace them up … but there’s plenty of videos about it already

[@SirManfly]

@@whathedoug Not to mention that Keith, Smith and Bruce Hart were all born in Great Falls, Montana!

[@paulschaefer5485]

I think AI made this video but still mildly educational. Good job AI.

[@whathedoug]

It wasn’t AI. I made this video almost ten years ago and just got around to re-recording the audio. Hi, that’s me talking.

[@johngrzegorzyk6236]

Good video, I grew up watching Florida Championship Wrestling. Which used wrestlers from throughout the southeast. The only real competition at the time was the WWWF.

[@whathedoug]

Florida had an AMAZING product

[@Smith-wk6pb]

Is this an A.I. voice or a smug British cigarette...

[@whathedoug]

I’m not British but I did my best horrible fake accent, based on the ONLY text-to-type voice that was available about ten years ago.

[@robertcornelius3514]

And now it is controlled by Oil investors. At least that is what I see walking around Vince these days.

[@mvjr7758]

Cant complain... Ive been watching wrestling since 80's & some of the territories weren't available for watching. Internet has shown alot of what was missed.

[@whathedoug]

It is nice to be able to see old stuff completely anew

[@acourtney4865]

Bravo 👏

[@whathedoug]

Thanks!

[@whathedoug]

Thanks!

[@thegunslinger8806]

So sometimes i sit down to look for old territory tapes and videos that may survive from some of the more obscure territories and i sit down one day to watch Kansas City and its a card with Harley on and then right in the mid card it says "Tiger mask vs Jabroni" and im looking at this like "wtf? Why is he there?" And i hit fast forward to the match, i shit you not they had a guy in a red cat mask they made out of a Bullet Bob armstrong mask and tights and he looked liked shit, he looked like some guy they found at a bar and payed to do shitty stunts in the ring and then he starts wrestling! Oh my god! He was so bad! He tried doing that thing where the guy goes for an up and over and almost fell on his ass. Kansas city territory sucks, its one great thing was Harley and even he didnt wanna be associated with it so he got so good they made him the world champion lmao.

[@whathedoug]

Some things never change - KC is the shits still today.

[@vladpootin5973]

🇺🇸💪👍🏻

[@whathedoug]

Hell yeah borther!

[@dannystaton5386]

Greetings from south Carolina

[@whathedoug]

How’s it going?? I lived in North Carolina for a couple years

[@hitmangfx7162]

So basically, if you were either in Idaho or Nevada, you were either watching potatoes wrestle or slot machines wrestle.

[@whathedoug]

Too busy with potato farming, whores, and potato-farming whores.

[@hitmangfx7162]

@@whathedoug Baked Potato on a Pole match incoming.

[@whathedoug]

You’re making me hungry you gotta stop

[@DarknessTriumphs]

NWA Hollywood ran shows in Las Vegas and Big Time Wrestling ran shows in Reno so Nevada at least had some pro wrestling. Idaho I would imagine had some AWA when they started running shows between Minnesota and California on a circuit, I know they would hit Utah along the way.

[@hitmangfx7162]

@DarknessTriumphs I can see Freddie Blassie being popular in Vegas.

[@dangoldenberg704]

The only thing worse than the AWA was the WWA. So for someone that grew up in the Chicago area (both organizations use to co-promote Chicago cards) in the 70's and 80's, wrestling here wasn't as good as elsewhere but still a lot better than the stuff shown the last 35 years. And we had Bob Luce!

[@whathedoug]

Fortunately Chicago is one of the better spots for modern indie wrestling, if you can stomach it

[@dannystaton5386]

Lol I subbed when you said funk you

[@whathedoug]

Nice!!! I got one! 😂

[@djwrestlinginc-sr2mv]

Hay you got 2 lol my wrestling stuff aka Danny s

[@whathedoug]

Nice!

[@whathedoug]

@@djwrestlinginc-sr2mv not sure what any of that meant though

[@tonyo3544]

If wrestling was as popular as Baseball at the beginning why did it take till the 80's for it to make the mainstream. Good vid tho.

[@whathedoug]

Baseball STAN over here!!!! Get em!!!

[@TheImapotato]

If you look at the greatest money making World Champion of all time, do you think Bruno? Hogan? Flair? Austin? The Rock? Nope...it was Jim Londos in the 1930s

[@whathedoug]

Jim Londos STAN over here!!!! Get em!!!

[@TheImapotato]

@@whathedoug The Greeks will have my back....oh wait, is that a good thing?

[@madbrowniac7871]

​@@TheImapotatoAs long as they're not bearing gifts. That one time didn't end well!😂😏B.W.