This week’s flashback takes us back to November 1976.
The magazine’s title, “City of Memphis” is somewhat self-explanatory. It was a local, monthly magazine about the city of Memphis. The November 1976 issue features an in depth article on Memphis Wrestling as well as a full page story on Jerry Lawler. To top it off, they put “The King” on the cover. This cover makes mention of Csonka (Larry), Kiick (Jim) & Warfield (Paul). At the time these 3 guys were hugely famous NFL professional football players that had gone to the Memphis Grizzlies of the WFL. The WFL was a new football league that was trying to compete with the NFL. It failed after less than 2 seasons.
Despite the huge reputation of these 3 football players, the Grizzlies couldn’t get the Memphis fans to attend the games at Liberty Bowl Stadium. If you were to walk across the Stadium parking lot, only a few hundred yards away, you find the Mid-South Coliseum. This is where every Monday night, Lawler and the boys were packing them in. Looking at it in a head to head comparison, the weekly matches in an 11,500 seat arena averaged more attendance than the professional football team did at a 50,000 seat stadium. It’s been joked about before, but this is one of the reasons why Memphis was always called the nation’s capital for professional wrestling.
The magazine's main article was pretty standard for 1970’s main stream wrestling articles, “Is it real? Is it fake?”. What I liked about it was they actually talked to Lance Russell, Jerry Lawler, etc and didn’t make fun of it, or rip it apart. They asked serious questions, got serious answers and then printed it. There was the obvious doubts given, trying to figure out how they bleed, etc. Overall it was a positive article.
The spotlight piece they did on Lawler gives us his basic history. It’s pretty good stuff, for being back in the day. To that point, it may have been the first article done that told how Jerry got into the business, (art, deejay, West Memphis matches, etc). One thing that did jump out in the spotlight was that “The King”, was only 26 years old. It’s amazing to me that he was such a huge star in Memphis and wrestling at such a young age.
Overall I’d give the complete article a grade of A-. The only thing I would have liked better would have been some more pictures of the boys (other than Lawler.) The photos included in the article are great and a lot of fun to look back on, as is the article itself.
----The thing that I found most interesting about these photos was that Jerry Lawler was wearing the NWA Title?? Here is what Scott Bowden wrote on the www.wrestlingclassics.com board.
The cover shows Lawler wearing the NWA World title following a bout with Terry Funk. In the weeks after this bout, Lawler was billed as "World title claimant," so I'm assuming it was some of reverse decision. Ever the self-promoter, Lawler managed to get a few shots of himself wearing the strap before returning it to Funk. Given the fact that Terry liked Lawler, I'm assuming he gave the OK. (Hmmmm...wonder if Harley Race would have been so cooperative?)
----Mark James is the author of “Memphis Wrestling History – Cards, Matches, Results, Newspaper Clippings” Vol 1. He is currently finishing up Vol 2 and we will have full details on it here when it becomes available. James also is the webmaster to the BEST Memphis Wrestling site in the area – www.memphiswrestlinghistory.com Take a look at the site!!!
