Rasslin' the South

If you grew up in the South in the age of television, especially from the 1960s to the early 90s, chances are if
you flipped on the tube on Saturday afternoon you could catch pro wrestling ("rasslin" South of the Mason-Dixon line).
While the fancy rasslin' like WWE was and is still based in the northeast, wrestling was more territorial back then with big name stars making their way to individual promotions throughout Dixie.

To name just a few, Tri-State, Mid-South, Smokey Mountain, Georgia Championship, Global, and USWA are some of the Southern organizations or territories which made national and local stars available to the average viewer.
 
Paul DeMarco, Nick Bockwinkel, Penny Banner, Johnny Weaver, Wahoo McDaniel, the Mighty Infernos, the Torres Brothers, Doug Gilbert and Bobby Shane were just a few of the names Southerners of that era remember.

In these more innocent days of wrestling, local high school gyms were places where people of the communities could meet, socialize,discuss their favorites, possibly get in fights over matches themselves.
 We even know of a husband and wife who met through writing articles to Ringsider, a wrestling magazine popular in the Carolinas and Georgia at the time, based on their shared love of the Assassins-the tag team terrors of Georgia Championship Wrestling, whose Championship belt featured Confederate Flags beside the promotion's logo. 

Sometimes the wrestlers even adopted gimmicks which affectionately poked fun at the local folks. Alabama Championship Wrestling had the "Scufflin Hillbillies", the overall-clad tag-team whose exploits included tearing apart studios on a trip into Georgia.

Not to be outdone, Memphis-based MidSouth Wrestling featured "Captain Redneck"(Texan and future star Dick Murdock) teaming against the Confederate Flag-waving Fabulous Freebirds.

Even as northeast based WWE started to expand in the 1980s, NWA promoter Sam Muchnick declared Atlanta the "leading wrestling city" for its draws at the Civic Center, and later the Omni. The Omni even put on the first "Hell in a Cell"-style match in the Fall of 1983 when Tommy Rich faced off with Buzz Sawyer in a match billed as "The Last Battle of Atlanta".

Later, around the time TBS became a Superstation, Georgia Championship Wrestling folded. After briefly being a WWE satellite, it was taken over by Jim Crockett promotions which was picked up by Atlanta's Ted Turner and rebranded to the country as World Championship Wrestling (WCW),
introducing a new generation of Southerners to pro wrestling through WCW Saturday Night(though WCW would later engage in the infamous Monday Night Wars with WWE).
The early days of WCW earmarked it as a Southern promotion. While the "Power Plant" trained the next generation in Atlanta, the Fabulous Freebirds came to the ring blaring Lynyrd Skynyrd and the "Wild Eyed Southern Boys" tag team came to the ring wearing Southern Cavalry costumes with Confederate trunks.  The early matches of WCW were even called by a friendly familiar face- Gordon Solie, who gained regional fame as the announcer on Championship Wrestling of Florida.

Sadly, wrestling like NASCAR eventually fell to political correctness. But like NASCAR, its origins in the Southern part of America can't be ignored.

Wrestling in North America first breathed life in the back country of Virginia, Kentucky, Georgia and the Carolinas. The Scottish, Scots-Irish and border English settlers to these territories brought with them the feats of strength shows which had been popular in the old country where strength was valued as both manly and necessary to carve a living out of the land-much as they would in the South. The "townball" games of Puritan New England would not become popular in Dixie until the 20th century, when Southern colleges came to dominate College Football.

The Celtic-style games such as hammer throwing, shot putting(sometimes with actual cannonballs!) and running and jumping(track and field) were standard entertainment to the excited and often beery crowds . Before he was ever known as a General or politician, a young Andrew Jackson was impressing his Appalachian North Carolina community with his running and leaping abilities.

But "rasslin" as the back country men called it, stole the show.  It usually began with the two men, after a few drinks, "bragging and boasting" for the crowd-an early version of today's wrestling promos. The two men would be asked if they wanted a "fair fight" or "rough and tumble". When the answer was almost always "rough and tumble", a cheer would go up from the crowd. The two men took hold of each other, as if to grapple, and then quickly turned it into an "Extreme wrestling"event-fingernail slashing, eye gouging, biting of noses and ears and brawling which would make a Celt proud. There were no "pins" like modern wrestling- it was about endurance, continuing until one man either admitted defeat, or was judged too badly hurt to continue.

Thomas Ashe, an early Irish visitor to America recalled a particularly violent match between a Kentuckian and a Virginian which ended only after the Virginian bit the Kentuckian's nose so badly he couldn't continue any longer.

Once the also badly hurt winner had been declared, roaring crowd "chaired him around the grounds", lifting him high above their heads as a local hero.

As early as 1772, attempts were made in  Virginia to outlaw the practice of rough and tumble "wrasslin" that occurred during such events. A Franklin County Tennessee jury in 1800 denounced the practice and demanded that the offenders be brought to justice.  But in the more isolated Southern Appalachians and Piedmont, such "bloodsports" remained as both entertainment and training for a population that had to, as Johnny Cash put it in the immortal "Boy Named Sue"- "get tough or die".