Mark: We both grew up pretty close to the same area, same high school, close in age, etc. I've mentioned in my book (as well as in interviews I've given), that my Grandparents were the ones that got me into watching Memphis Wrestling. How did your interest/obsession in wrestling start?
Bowden: My dad is to blame. The earliest memory I have of wrestling is in the mid-’70s, with my dad forcing us to abandon our Saturday morning cartoons to switch the station on our only TV set to Memphis wrestling. I wanted Foghorn Leghorn but had to settle for Lance Russell. My sister and I always protested—quite loudly—to no avail. My dad wasn’t a huge mark or anything, but at that time the show attracted so many casual fans. Slowly, my curiosity developed a little more each time my dad turned the channel to the Memphis wrestling show. I recall seeing five or six wrestlers trying to restrain the Mongolian Stomper, and he tossed them around like they were sacks of garbage. Next to the Incredible Hulk, I thought Stomper had to be the toughest man alive. Jerry Lawler was really coming into his own as a personality around that time. The earliest I can remember actually liking wrestling was the summer of 1977, during the first series of Lawler vs.Bill Dundee matches. That feud really captured my imagination. Every week, it was a different stipulation, along with the NWA Southern title hanging in the balance. Crazy stipulations like Lawler and Dundee putting up their hair, thousands of dollars, their Cadillacs…culminating with Dundee’s wife getting her head shaved. Most of those bouts drew around 10,000 fans, so the area was red hot in the summer of ’77. I was six years old. And I was hooked.
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