About Memphis Wrestling History

As a child in the 1970's, I grew up watching Memphis Wrestling. Every Saturday morning I tuned in to watch my heroes do battle. It was fun. My brother and I would roll around our living room doing the same moves we had just seen on TV.

Jump forward to the mid 1990’s. The territory systems that had cultivated wrestlers for so many years had all but disappeared. Memphis wrestling was still alive but was a shell of its former self. The WWF’s nation-wide push (in the mid 1980’s), was arguably the catalyst in the the deaths of the great regional promotions, (St. Louis, Florida, Georgia, Mid Atlantic, etc.) The once great NWA (by way of Jim Crockett Promotions & Ted Turner), had been left behind for the new, nation-wide promotion, WCW. Except for a few exceptions, small town wrestling was dead.

All I had was my memories of “the good old days”. As the years past, the children of the 1980’s grew up. These were the ones who watched Hulk Hogan as a child. It was a new century and these young adults are calling the WWF-Hulk years the “glory years” of professional wrestling. I can’t deny this bothered me. It bothered me that there were so few that knew the rich history Memphis Wrestling had. As I searched the internet, I saw websites that were for “Old School” wrestling fans. These sites were tributes to the old wrestling territories, (St. Louis, Toronto, Florida, Mid-Atlantic, Georgia, World Class, and many more.) They were good sites (take a look at my links page to find them), but beyond that, they made me want one for my town, Memphis.

If you don’t know the story already, the first thing I did was to try and put out a book. The huge cost involved killed it quickly. Having already started my collection of data, I decided to get it to the fans through a website.

Eventually, the book did happen and I couldn’t be happier with the way it turned out. It was very well received (in reviews & sales). This led to Vol 2 and recently I released MWH Presents 1982, whic has been very successful so far.

So there you are. Feel free to look around the site, because every card/result that’s available is here. I’ve done my best to get as much Memphis wrestling info as I could find. If you’ve got a question, comment, something to donate, etc, please use the contact page and let me know. I’d love to hear from you.

Mark James