Episode 449: Pure Soap Opera

Eric, that's a building with a lot of rich wrestling history.

Did you ever -- I know you didn't grow up watching Memphis wrestling, but did you ever watch any Memphis wrestling? I mean, obviously you knew that it was the Jarrett territory and Lawler was the top guy and all of that, but did you ever get a chance to see any Memphis?

Zero.

In fact, I didn't even know about it much until...

Well, my, my first exposure to it would've been back when I was working for Verne, and this might've been 1989.

'88 or '89.

It was shortly after I first started at AWA in '87.

Uh, the Super...

What was it called? SuperClash, I think it was.

Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, yeah.

And, and it was really an interesting idea and pretty cutting edge really at the time because all of the regional promoters like Don Owen, Bob Geigel, Jerry Jarrett, um, wherever, NWA, um, they were all kind of getting hammered by WWE and when Vince went national and kind of cherry-picked all the talent.

Stole them.

Literally stole their talent.

Unbelievable.

But they were suffering from that.

Their business was down, and I th- I don't know, I think it was Verne who had the idea of getting all these regional promoters who, who were on their heels, so to speak, um, getting them together and creating this, essentially a pay-per-view called SuperClash.

And it was then that I was exposed the first time to anything related to Memphis wrestling.

I, I remember, I think we did a show in… Well, we moved around a little bit.

I think we did a show in Nashville, and that's where really for the first time, um, was exposed to a lot of the stars that were from that era.

Like, I think Jeff Jarrett might've been on the card.

He was a kid at the time, young at the time.

It, it was really my first exposure to that territory and, you know, beginning to g- to get an understanding of it.

But here you are now all these years later running the number one show in wrestling, and it's in the Mid-South Coliseum.

When you think about this era, we'll call it fall of 1996, who are your regionalized, localized promoters? Is Zane Bresloff overseeing that entire operation? Or, you know, once you pick a building, who are sort of the boots on the ground folks helping get the word out about a show like this?