I thought I would open up this article talking about Memphis Wrestling since that is supposed to be the core of this website. I do recognize that Corey Maclin has a successful business model for himself and Jerry Lawler. That business model, for the most part, works for the same reason the US Dollar carries any clout. It is all based on the faith of the people. In this case “the people” are the talent that he uses. It is a well known fact that many of the talent make very little money. The talent, for the most part, is paid based on the dollars generated by the house (ticket sales). This was how all wrestlers were paid back in the day. It is still a fair model if all revenue is coming in that way. However, there are other streams of revenue that Corey has for each show whether it’s a paid show or not. Corey has advertisers/sponsors behind every show he does. It is generally a significant amount of money that the wrestlers do not share in. One could ask yourself "why do guys and or girls that are making nothing and in some cases losing money continue to work for Memphis Wrestling"? I can only hypothesize that they believe this exposure could potentially get them to the WWE. Another possibility is that if Jerry Lawler saw someone that he really thought could help WWE he would try and open a door for them. Well when was the last time that happened? The names that immediately come to my mind are Stacey Carter and Brian Christopher totally different motivation in those cases. Is it that everyone on Memphis TV is incapable of even being a mid-card player in WWE? I don’t believe that to be the case. I would love to see Derrick King super kick Shawn Michaels. How about Tatt2 going around with Rey Mysterio? Could Too Kool2 compete in the tag team division? I personally tagged with Derrick against Picture Perfect. Ask yourself "if the Majors Bros. can get a push couldn’t Picture Perfect make it also"? You have to ask yourself what Jerry Lawler’s motivation would be to recommend anyone to WWE? If you were Lawler, and you had decent talent, would your motivation be to send them to the big time or keep them where you are to help make you money?
I do not begrudge Corey and Jerry making money. As a matter of fact, I respect the fact that Corey has taken two companies and used both of those companies to generate a profit. What I do mind is not sharing some, and I do stress "some", of that money with the people risking their health for you. It has been rumored that Corey also tried to present the recent show at the ballpark like it was TV and not pay people for it. He was paid by the park to put that show on. I have put on these ballpark type shows before. You are always paid for them. On top of that, with all the TV promo that the Redbirds got from Corey’s TV shouldn’t they have paid something? Why would Corey give them all that publicity for nothing? His behavior is totally unacceptable and he should be ashamed of himself if that is true. The days of slavery went away with Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. The guys need to get paid for the work they are doing. I can tell you from experience that you can waste a lot of time and money chasing this business. It’s ok to do that but at some point that you predetermine in your mind, you have to walk away. If you just can't totally walk away then get a career and treat this as a part time job on weekends. If you do that consider this point how many part time jobs would you do for nothing? So before you take your next booking think about that.
I do find it sad that a wrestling company like Corey’s can not run one or two weekly shows if not three with the TV that he has. How can Derrick King outdraw Corey Maclin with the shows that he runs? If Memphis Wrestling was my company I would use someone like Derrick to locally promote the towns and run three towns a week. When you have a TV program there are many avenues that you can use to make money. Also, has anyone noticed that the one media outlet that Corey refuses to take advantage of to promote his company is the internet? How can this be good business in 2007? What is even more ridiculous is that Corey’s advertising company builds websites. The internet impacts Corey’s business there is no way to avoid that. Why not take advantage of the benefits that the internet can provide and help promote the talent that you are using? It makes no sense to not have a website and use that website to promote your company and your shows. There are several ways that Memphis Wrestling is different and unique. I am just not sure that any of those things are positives. What I do know is that they are easily changeable now we just have to wonder is anyone willing to make the changes?
FLASHBACK: We were on tour in Qatar in the city of Doha. I had just taken my first airline flights. Little did I know that twenty five years later I would have logged a few million miles. It was a different crowd over there. One thing I noticed was a tremendous amount of crowd support for “The Unpredictable” Johnny Rodz who was working babyface. Johnny was in a program with Prof. Toru Tanaka. Everyone knew of Prof Tanaka’s reputation ... it was worldwide. The only TV that they had over there at the time was WWF and Georgia Championship Wrestling tapes. It was good timing since the tapes that were playing were from back in the days that the Wild Samoans were appearing on them. I found it to be strange. I was new in the business but I did know one thing, Johnny Rodz hadn’t won a televised match that I could remember. Even with that being the case the people cheered for him like he was a top guy. I went to talk to Charley Fulton about it. If you don’t know who Charley was, he was one of the best enhancement talents there ever was. When talking to Ricky Steamboat about Charley he said “Charley is the type of guy that will blow you up and than let you beat him”. When I brought that up to Charley (who was a very shy guy), he said "did he really say that?" I said "yes he did". Charley got real embarrassed and said" I hadn’t done that to anyone in years". He is also the guy who found Rick McGraw when he overdosed. He was a pleasure to work with and could make a broomstick look good. I asked him "why would the people support a job guy like he was King Kong?" He said "Johnny may not have won many matches on TV but no one ever pushed him around in the ring even Andre The Giant." It was my first exposure to a different type of audience but it was a good learning experience. It showed me that the overseas audience in those days could appreciate talent and good workers.
The picture for this article was my first day meeting the guys who eventually would become my mentors Afa and Sika The Wild Samoans. At the time they were holding the Georgia National Tag Team Titles. They came to Allentown, Pa. to do TV for Vince. My friend Mike D’avanzo took me to the George Washington Lodge to meet them. He had known the Samoans well from their last run through the territory. It had only been a few weeks before that I went to Mike’s house and he had a letter from Afa telling him that they would be the team to replace Fuji and Saito. Little did I know what a life changing moment that would be for me. After their TV debut the intention was that they would go back to Georgia to drop the belts. I do not believe that things went as expected though as they never dropped the belts. I do recall Gordon Solie announcing on TV that The Samoans were being suspended for actions taken in The Omni. Of course they had no tape of anything to show. As the story was told to me The Samoans told Ole to tell The Moondogs (Rex and Spot) to take the belts if they wanted them. I want to make it clear this was nothing personal. It had to do with the office not with The Moondogs. I did confirm this story with Spot one day as we were driving to a town. His words to me were we had no intentions of fighting those boys.
In another interesting quote, I was sitting with Stan Hansen in Charleston, SC, it was a strong card put together by Clement Fields who used to do TV for Jim Crockett Promotions. I told him that I had been broken in to the business by Afa and Sika and all he said was those are rough boys, rough boys. I guess I found it funny because you just didn’t find Stan Hansen recognizing too many other people’s level of toughness very often. As most people know Stan had quite his own reputation. I remembered The Samoans had run a program in Georgia with Ole and Stan Hansen. I'm sure that they were some interesting matches. In a future article I will tell you about the match that Hansen had that night with “The Russian Nightmare” Nikita Koloff who was my roommate at the time. It was my wildest match ever. It is also a night that my friends and I still talk about for reasons I will save for another article.
