Hogan became one of Japan’s top gaijin (foreign) performers, and he worked high-profile matches with Bob Backlund, Andre the Giant, Dusty Rhodes, and New Japan founder Antonio Inoki. In June 1983, he defeated Inoki by knockout to win the first ever IWGP championship, and five months later, he teamed with Inoki to triumph in the annual MSG Tag League tournament.136 Reportedly, it was around this same time in Japan that Hogan was approached by Vince McMahon Sr. about defecting to the WWF. Hogan was dismayed by his recent problems with Gagne, specifically over money relating to his New Japan deal and regarding the sale of merchandise.137 Gagne’s failure to push him over the top to the world title was another slight. The WWF offer came at the right time. His commitment to the AWA ended in mid-November 1983, and he was free to accept McMahon’s proposal to return.
On December 27, 1983, before a sold-out audience at the Chase Park Hotel in St. Louis, the Incredible Hulk Hogan emerged from the dressing room in his trademark yellow outfit to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” the theme of Rocky III. As the crowd cheered, he stepped through the ropes and locked up with prelim wrestler Bill Dixon. The match lasted only three minutes and two seconds, but Hogan displayed his strength and charisma, and briefly flashed a working knowledge of ring science. Put over by the commentators and adored by the audience, Hogan was right in his groove, landing his legdrop and scoring a pin in quick time. After the bout, Hogan spoke with “Mean” Gene Okerlund, who had also defected to the WWF from the AWA, and hyped up a future live event in St. Louis. Before the interview was over, though, Hogan said he wanted a future shot at the world champion, who by that point was the Iron Sheik.
Hogan was ushered into a prominent role on WWF TV in January 1984. He teamed with Bob Backlund to defeat Tiger Chung Lee and Mr. Fuji on an episode of Championship Wrestling, and it was clear he was as over in McMahon’s promotion as he had been in the AWA. Backlund was in line for a rematch with the Sheik at Madison Square Garden on January 23 but was forced to pull out because of “injury.” Hogan was given the match in his place, and after five minutes and 40 seconds of grappling, the Hulkster pinned his foe and captured the WWF belt for the first time. The throng of 22,000 fans at the Garden went nuts, and it really felt like it was the dawn of a new era.
Gagne missed the boat. Hurt by Hogan’s defection, he called the Iron Sheik, whom he’d helped train back in the early 1970s, and asked him to “punish” Hogan in their Garden bout as a measure of revenge, according to Hogan’s 2009 autobiography.138 But the Sheik passed on the idea. The loss of Okerlund was painful to Gagne as well. He had been the voice of the AWA’s All-Star Wrestling program and interviewed stars prior to big shows. Gagne later told a reporter that he had offered to match Okerlund’s WWF salary to keep him in the AWA, and the latter agreed. “The next day, he was announcing for the WWF,” Gagne added. “He’s an ass.”139
Okerlund, like Hogan, had seen the writing on the wall. The WWF, he believed, was the better opportunity. “The local [AWA] show here on Channel 9,” Okerlund explained to a Minneapolis reporter in 1984, “has left-handed matches in a garage in front of 85 people.” In contrast, Titan was “a first-class operation . . . Everything’s totally professional. It’s network-quality programming. [We have] 12 or 15,000 people for the shows that we air on television.”140 Mean Gene couldn’t have been more right; the WWF’s TV production was light-years ahead of the AWA’s. Gagne had been running TV tapings for years from the KMSP studios, and his program was arguably one of the most technologically challenged and uninspired wrestling shows of the time. Vince McMahon Jr. took great pride in his TV superiority and worked overtime to expand the distribution of his product. As it broke down, his plan essentially encompassed four tiers of broadcasting: network TV, syndicated TV, basic cable, and pay cable. But going into 1984, his focus was on the expansion onto stations in non-WWF territories, in another bold move against established rival promoters.
“My major step was television on a local basis,” McMahon told Sports Illustrated in 1991. “We already had our network in the Northeast and we started selling these shows to stations in other fiefdoms. In Chicago, in Los Angeles, the WWF brand of wrestling was something new. We had better athletes, more upscale and more charisma.”141 While cable programs reached a great number of people across state lines, the local broadcasts honed in on a specific market and could be utilized to promote live events. And with Okerlund on board, he became the primary interviewer to advertise these shows, speaking with wrestlers and managers and customizing the content for each market. It was a critical job, and Okerlund often did several hundred interviews a week.
“The ability to tie things on TV in with local shows and somehow make the wrestlers seem a part of the community is a key,” Dave Meltzer of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter explained in 1990.142 That was the principal function of Okerlund and localized programming. They wanted to connect to and draw in regional fans. Basil DeVito Jr., the vice president of marketing for Titan Sports, told a reporter in 1991 that the WWF was a hybrid organization, “national in scope, but local in impact.” He explained: “The same TV stars you see on the tube come right to your hometown. Vanna White doesn’t come to Peoria. The NFL doesn’t come to Peoria. But Hulk Hogan comes to Peoria, in person. And unlike big league stars, WWF wrestlers are never in an off-season. Those guys are performing 350 nights a year.”143
The great TV expansion of 1984 began on January 14, when the WWF’s newest program, Superstars of Wrestling, made its debut in Chicago (a longtime AWA–WWA city) on WFLD-32 on Saturday mornings at 8:30. Over the next two months, the WWF secured television spots for Superstars in Louisville (WDRB), Nashville (WCAY), Little Rock (KLRT), and New Orleans (WNOL) as McMahon’s sales team reached out to many upstart independent stations. They were warmly received by the TVX Broadcast Group, an eastern North Carolina outfit, and expanded onto a number of their stations, including Norfolk (WTVZ), Richmond (WRLH), and Memphis (WMKW). On April 7, 1984, McMahon gained ground in another big market, Dallas, and Superstars began broadcasting on Saturday mornings at 9:00 on channel 21, KTXA. In the span of four months, the WWF encroached on the territories of Verne Gagne, Jerry Jarrett, Bill Watts, Jim Crockett, and Jack Adkisson, among the most powerful promoters in the world.
In looking for support in these towns, the WWF imperiled the stability of the local promoters. McMahon was now in a fight for talent, ratings, and, most importantly, the interest of fans. It was just a matter of time before he added these cities to his national circuit and challenged his rivals head to head. Jim Crockett, whose Mid-Atlantic territory was just down the coast from McMahon’s northeastern lair, was well within striking distance. Crockett dealt with the threat of outside competition by proactively strengthening his promotion. In July 1983, he did away with canned studio TV tapings and moved his made-for-television matches into arenas, improving his company’s image. The effort was costly, upwards of a million dollars for a new TV truck, but it was a necessary investment.
After Crockett’s top star Ric Flair lost the NWA title to Harley Race during the summer of 1983, a perfectly executed booking plan played out over a series of months building up to Crockett’s biggest show ever, Starrcade, on November 24 (Thanksgiving night) in Greensboro, North Carolina. People wanted to see the 34-year-old Nature Boy regain the championship, and his popularity throughout the region soared. He feuded with Race, Bob Orton Jr., and Dick Slater, and called upon Roddy Piper and Wahoo McDaniel to help even things up. By Thanksgiving, fans were eager to see their hero achieve retribution on Race in the confines of a steel cage.
Starrcade ’83 lived up to the hype, both in the ring and at the box office.144 The Greensboro Coliseum was packed to the rafters (15,447) and tens of thousands — estimated between 30,000 and 80,000 — watched the show on closed-circuit television. The event was wrestling’s first million-dollar gate and a huge boost to Crockett and the anti-WWF movement. In the ring, Flair emerged victorious, as anticipated, winning the NWA belt
in a bloody bout. Roddy Piper beat his longtime foe, Greg Valentine, in another violent epic, this one under dog-collar chain rules. The popular Ricky Steamboat and Jay Youngblood also triumphed, winning the world tag championship for the fifth time with a technical win over the Brisco Brothers. While there was room for trivial complaints, Crockett’s great storytelling made history, and Starrcade would become an annual event, continuing for the next 17 straight years.
But a month later, on December 25, 1983, Steamboat, one of Crockett’s top fan favorites, retired from wrestling and vacated his claim to the world tag title. Piper, another hero in the Mid-Atlantic region, was scooped up by Vince McMahon Jr. in what would be the latter’s second major talent raid. Crockett spent time turning Valentine babyface to make up for the losses, and then McMahon grabbed him too. With Flair on the National Wrestling Alliance circuit defending the world title, and criticism that much of the upper roster of JCP was too old, Crockett needed to bring in talent. Promoters in Georgia, Mid-South, and San Antonio helped him out with the deficiencies, and the Road Warriors, Junkyard Dog, Stan Hansen, and Tully Blanchard made their local debuts.
The Georgia territory struggled in 1983, as the company’s focus was on western expansion. But booker Ole Anderson had returned to the basics and put all his energy into his core cities, while still not giving up on progress in Ohio. Unafraid to make a move against McMahon, Anderson sought to advance into Washington, D.C., and Baltimore in addition to Pennsylvania. On his TV programming, he featured brief clips of current WWF wrestlers from old Georgia footage, showing the grapplers being pummeled by prelim-level opponents. Though the full match had always ended with the bigger name winning, Anderson would cut the finish and tell the viewing audience that the preliminary wrestler had won. Smart wrestling fans were not amused by the crude promotional tactic.
Nor were they pleased with the promotion’s show at the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta on November 6, 1983.145 Then NWA world champion Harley Race was slated to appear and defend his crown against Tommy Rich. An estimated 4,000 people turned out, only to be told Race was a no-show and Ted DiBiase was appearing instead. No refunds were offered. Some questioned whether Race had been booked for Atlanta at all. The champ was coming off a tour of Japan and was likely getting some much-needed R&R. Georgia officials could have managed the entire affair differently, but didn’t, and the last minute switcheroo was a big disappointment. Further no-shows in Ohio, including a situation in Columbus where Abdullah the Butcher and Mr. Wrestling II didn’t appear, were also harmful to the promotion’s credibility.
Two weeks before Race’s nonappearance, Anderson had scored a huge hit with “The Last Battle of Atlanta,” the end to the long-running feud between Tommy Rich and Buzz Sawyer. More than 10,000 fans turned out for that event. On Thanksgiving, for the sixth annual holiday tag team tournament, another 12,000 enthusiasts were on hand. But on December 4, Omni crowds dipped to under 2,000, and they were not much better on Christmas (2,500). The overexposure of Rich, plus the high-positioned roles of Ronnie Garvin and Killer Brooks were unpopular, and even Anderson was getting too much air time. The promotion needed new talent and storylines, and Anderson responded. He pushed Ted DiBiase to the National title and Jake Roberts to the TV championship, and he saw gold in the Road Warriors. Both Roberts and the Warriors had been part of Paul Ellering’s Legion of Doom stable, and on camera, they were a major thorn in Anderson’s side.
The massive 6-foot-4, 350-pound King Kong Bundy along with Stan Hansen and Brad Armstrong were top fan favorites, in addition to Tommy Rich. Rich had lost a loser-leaves-town bout to DiBiase on Christmas, but he was still active in the territory under a mask, appearing as Mr. R. The real identity of the shrouded hero wasn’t much of a secret. On February 18, 1984, the hooded grappler received a shot at DiBiase’s National belt, but during the fracas, much to the shock of the titleholder, Rich made an appearance outside the ring. His opponent was really Brad Armstrong, and as the champion reeled from astonishment, he suffered a pinfall and lost the title. Notably, two days before this match, Anderson had run his first show in Baltimore at the Civic Center with a solid lineup. Larry Zbyszko was booked against his mentor’s son, Bruno Sammartino Jr., in an effort to draw WWF fans. But gaining superiority in Baltimore, which had been part of McMahon’s circuit for two decades, was a huge challenge.
To make a point in response, McMahon scheduled nearly every big gun talent he had for Baltimore’s Civic Center on March 3, 1984, and drew a complete sellout. Aside from Andre the Giant, Jimmy Snuka, Don Muraco, and Roddy Piper, his world champion (Hulk Hogan), Intercontinental titleholder (Tito Santana), and world tag champs (Tony Atlas and Rocky Johnson) were all on the bill. It was an extraordinary display of firepower. Anderson refused to give in, and on April 7, he returned to the city with NWA champ Ric Flair defending against former kingpin Jack Brisco. Whereas Baltimore was a battleground city with the box-office advantage going to McMahon, the reverse occurred in Altoona, Pennsylvania. There, GCW made a deal with disgruntled former WWF affiliate promoter Gene Dargan and quickly won over the hearts of local fans.146
In the interest of keeping things fresh, Anderson routinely shared wrestlers with the Mid-South office run by the polarizing Bill Watts. Headquartered in suburban Tulsa, Watts operated in five southern states: Oklahoma, Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, and part of Texas. His promotion drew consistently well in New Orleans and Houston, and although not a member of the National Wrestling Alliance, Mid-South was considered a friendly peer of the NWA. Watts didn’t need membership in a national organization to be successful, having proven to be one of the brightest minds in the industry. He churned out arguably the best wrestling TV show found anywhere on a weekly basis. It was a no-frills production, sans pointless interview segments and wasted time. The show was built around steady action, and Watts, known for his commanding personality, micromanaged the telecast to ensure everything ran according to his vision.
And the result was unanimous. Viewers in New Orleans delivered better than a 40 share in TV ratings, and Mid-South Wrestling was respected by the wrestling-smart community and average fans alike, an often difficult balance to strike. Watts was a traditionalist, and he preached to his locker room the importance of credibility in wrestling. His roster had to strictly adhere to kayfabe protection, and anything that diminished the integrity of his promotion was dealt with through fines and dismissals. For instance, warnings went out that fan favorites could never be seen in public with villains — not in bars, restaurants, or in the same rental car. A lot of wrestlers were friends behind the scenes, but Watts forbade any public interaction to maintain the illusion of the in-ring feuds.
Watts was an intelligent promoter and knew his audience. He teased their emotions with creative storylines and mixed wrestling fundamentals with wild brawling. Like the WWF’s formulaic methodology when it came to talent, Watts had a blueprint all his own. He filled his cards with edgy heels, personable babyfaces, and general tough guys. The wrestlers he pushed earned his respect and trust, but at the same time, he was keenly aware of the marketing potential of key performers. Junkyard Dog, an African-American grappler with off-the-charts charisma, was singled out because of his immense potential and began his star-making climb in 1979.147 Junkyard Dog became an unparalleled hero throughout the South, and his supporters were as diehard as they came. Watts played his cards right, avoiding overexposure, and JYD was still going strong in 1983–84.
But even his superstar status couldn’t bump attendance for a show at the Superdome in New Orleans on November 19, 1983, and only 8,000 people turned out, the smallest-ever wrestling crowd for that venue. Dusty Rhodes, David and Kerry Von Erich, and Mr. Wrestling II were also on the card, in addition up-and-comers the Road Warriors and Magnum T.A. Mr. Wrestling II and Magnum T.A. were involved in one of early 1984’s hottest feuds, and the slowly developing angle was an example of the consideration Watts put into his booking strategy. The two wrestlers were leading fan fa
vorites in Mid-South, and the veteran masked grappler had taken his 24-year-old partner under his wing. On December 25, 1983, the pair toppled Butch Reed and Jim Neidhart for the regional tag team championship.
In the weeks that followed, Mr. Wrestling II became jealous of his protégé, especially after Magnum was named the number-one contender to the North American title held by the Junkyard Dog. Magnum gave his mentor his title shot, but Mr. Wrestling II cheated his way to a victory, cementing his heel turn. Ultimately, Magnum ended up battling and defeating the man he’d admired for so long in an emotional battle on May 12, 1984. The angle played out in gripping fashion and captured the attention of fans throughout the region.
Watts was fully aware of Vince McMahon Jr.’s manipulations and, in early 1984, the WWF achieved local TV deals in two of his top towns, New Orleans and Little Rock.148 But as far as Louisiana was concerned, Watts was politically protected and unworried about any future invasions. That was because the Louisiana Athletic Commission only issued a single wrestling booking license for the entire state, and Watts had it. Mid-South was the only game in town for live events within Louisiana. In Tulsa and Oklahoma City, Watts continued his business dealings with Dallas promoter Jack Adkisson and booked the Von Erich boys whenever he got the chance. David, Kevin, and Kerry Von Erich were enormously popular and almost guaranteed sellouts. But Watts knew there was a dark side to the Von Erichs, and in June 1983, the public became aware of it too.149 On June 25, Kerry Von Erich returned to Dallas from his honeymoon in Mexico and was found to be carrying more than 300 pills and 10 grams of marijuana.150 He was locked up and charged, and details of his incarceration were revealed by the Dallas media. Kerry’s arrest was representative of a wider drug abuse problem by the Von Erich brothers, and insiders who’d been around the trio knew it to be true. The crippling effects of substance abuse had the brothers headed down a gloomy path.
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