This photo of U.S. Heavyweight Wrestling Champion Ray Stevens was taken at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium in late 1970 or early 1971. In Sacramento, and most of the smaller cities, the babyface usually came out a minute or two earlier than the heel to sign autographs in the ring. Heels ignored the fans in their corner or would take an autograph book just to throw it down, etc. He was probably about to wrestle Pat Patterson, Stan Stasiak or The Masked Gladiator (Ricky Hunter.) I will correct this when I locate the other negatives from this match.
This was the card at the San Francisco's Cow Palace on September 23, 1972. After I decided to print one edition of the program for every city, I inserted a separate page with each night's card in the programs. Please note, I never said "Wrestling will return three weeks hence." John Swenski did that in his programs. I hated that phrase! I saw that phrase discussed on the message boards somewhere and did not want to be held responsile for that!
This is what Action Wrestling looked like, which replaced "Big Time Wrestling." The color on the cover changed every month, every issue was not purple! After a while I noticed that sales were always better when a babyface was on the cover. Whenever a heel was on the cover, sales were down even at shows that were a sell-out! So when you saw a heel on the later covers, you knew I really liked the guy. Toward the end of my program career, The Great Mephisto was the only heel to make it to the cover. I never really understood why that would make such a difference, but they say the same is true today with People Magazine or The National Enquirer.
I also learned later that Wrestling was in competition with Roller Derby when it came to getting the best dates for their shows. Which dates were considered the best? The closer the date was to falling after the 1st and the 15th of the month, the better the gate would be, when wrestling fans still had some money. When a show was held on the 14th or the 29th of the month, I knew crowds would generally be smaller, and people would buy fewer programs.
To get the current U.S. Champion to put up his belt in a title match, The Mighty Brutus (Mike Davis) had to put up his hair in a match. If he lost the match, he lost his hair. Antonio Parisi, Peter Maivia, Rocky Johnson and Pepper Martin had to hold him down after he lost because Brutus kept trying to get away. They shaved it all right in the ring in Sacramento, and the fans went crazy! What a night! I could have sworn he was crying, but the next night at Channel 40 he seemed to liked it, because he posed for a whole roll of film so he could order new publicity photos. He was another really nice guy. (I have to look and see who he wrestled that night. I don't remember, but it was April 1, 1972.) I never heard if Roy took the cost of the barber out of Brutus' payoff that night or if he got the haircut for free. The barber who had the honors was named Al Tirapelli who had a shop on Stockton Blvd.
Those are my fingers on this poster from one of Louie Miller's shows in Stockton. I saw it in early September, 2002 while looking through Duff Johnson's collection and had to take a picture of it. I want to buy a poster from someone! If you have one, please email me. I had a whole stack of them back in the early 1970's but they were either lost in my mom's garage during a bad storm or I haven't found them yet. I know there is still some stuff hidden in there somewhere! I took two of the photos on this poster -- the one of Mr. Paul DeMarco on the lower left and The Great Mephisto (Frankie Cain) on the right.
Posters were often used in the cities that did not have their own TV show promos. All of Louie Miller's cities used them except Sacramento, because Sacramento had it's own TV show. People in Stockton receive KTXL Channel 40, so they viewed the Sacramento version of Big Time Wrestling. Sometimes Hank Renner would mention that Stockton had a show on a certain date during a TV match, but the main advertising was a newspaper ad in The Stockton Record and these posters.
True story: The man who posted all the posters in store windows for Louie Miller did not know how to read. He just looked at the pictures and hung the posters up so the wrestlers were not standing on their heads. Well, of course one time the poster printing company printed all three pictures upside-down and every poster in town was hung upside-down! Really! And no, I am not going to tell you who it was. I will tell you if you will sell me a poster though!
This is the Great Mephisto (Frankie Cain) and his wife. They are two of the best people I have ever known. I became good friends with them and we carpooled to many shows together. Frankie told me so many stories about people he has known and all the funny things that had happened to him during his career as a wrestler I could have written a book if I could remember them all.
Frankie taught me a lot about the business and about ring psychology, like why the boys should not use "cheap heat" in their matches, -- all kinds of things that make a guy top-of-the-card star. (Cheap heat is getting the crowd mad at you by yelling insults at them, as opposed to getting them mad by the way you act and things you do in the ring.) I seriously doubt anyone alive knows more about the wrestling business than Frankie does. No matter what territory he went to, he drew standing room only crowds. When we drove to different cities he talked a lot about angles, and how things should be done. It was fascinating and I felt like I had to keep pinching myself to see that I was really hanging out with this guy and learning all this stuff. I wish I had kept a daily journal and written everything down back then. But in the days of kayfabe, you didn't do that kind of thing. This was definitely one of the best times of my life.
I had been a wrestling fan for several years by now, and had also been reading all the wrestling magazines to read about what was going on in other territories. I also bought lots of old magazines, so I thought I knew a lot about recent wrestling history. I will never forget one night I rode with Frankie and his family to a show in Reno, Nevada shortly after I got to know them and Frankie told me about what he had done in the past. He had never told me too much until then, and I could not believe it when he told me he was one of the masked Infernos, who were managed by J.C. Dykes. I had read so much about the Infernos and seen so many pictures of them in magazines, I was totally in awe of Frankie. He pulled out a bunch of old photos and programs and his mask and they told me all about the Infernos, his partner Rocky Smith, big matches they had, etc. It was an evening I will never forget.
I quit publishing the programs because Frankie asked me if wanted to move to West Virginia with them and help them open a new territory in West Virginia and Kentucky. He had talked with Jim Crockett (the old one) and he was going to book some of Crockett's boys from his NWA promotion in Charlotte, North Carolina. Crockett had been sending his TV tapes to a station in Charleston, West Virginia, so his boys were familar to everyone there even though they were not promoting any house shows.
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This is me and The Great Mephisto in 1972 taken at Lake Tahoe. His wife took this photo the day after the show in Reno, Nevada when he told me about being one of the Infernos. I was giving their family a tour of the tourist sites at the lake on the way back to Sacramento. I was really happy to find this photo. Because I am always the one taking pictures, I rarely remember to ask someone to take my picture and I was afraid I may not have had one photo of us together from those days.
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I moved out to West Virginia a month before Frankie, and Jim Crockett died about the time Frankie finally left Roy's promotion. In the chaos of Crockett's untimely death, it didn't lok like the people in the Charlotte office wanted to jump into any new projects so Frankie sold the promotion (we already had our ring, bleachers, and scouted out arenas, etc.) to Promoter Phil Golden, Saul Weingroff and Angelo Poffo. (No one knew Saul and Angelo were also owners since they were wrestling.) Their All Star Wrestling was running an opposition promotion against Nick Gulas.
A few promotions wanted Frankie to move to their territories. Frankie finally moved to Florida to headline for NWA Promoter Eddie Graham. I decided to stay up in West Virginia and work with Promoter Phil Golden in the new office they opened in Huntington, West Virginia. I worked in the wrestling office and sometimes acted as the ring announcer. Other times I was the referee when we needed one. During that time we hired Sheriff Buford Pusser to be a Special Guest Referee for a few shows. He was the Sheriff that was imortalized in the Walking Tall movies. He had worked as a wrestler before becoming Sheriff in his county. He was murdered shortly afterwards by organized crime hoods who ran him off a road.
Our TV show, All Star Wrestling was shown on (I think) five or six TV stations in West Virginia, Kentucky, and Tennessee. The shows were taped in Paduca, Kentucky and promos were taped for the other cities much as Roy Shire did in California. My friend Bobby Cartago flew out to visit me in West Virginia for a couple of weeks in June, 1973 and was with me on my 18th birthday. To this day I cannot stand the smell of bourbon. (The drinking age was 18 then and I had my first legal [and lethal] drinks that night in Huntington.
When I finally left West Virginia, I went to Florida to see Frankie and decide what I wanted to do next. I started college there and worked for Disney in Orlando. (I worked on the Jungle Cruise and did the live narrations through the jungle and shot the hippos and all that.) Later, I decided I needed to see the world and joined the U.S. Navy. After four years underwater on submarines, I returned to California to go to law school.
Frankie writes a column now in Scott Teal's magazine, What Ever Happened to ... Frankie's column always talks about interesting people he has known in the wrestling business and things he saw during his career. It's the first thing I turn to when I receive a new edition. If you want to read a few columns, Scott Teal has posted a few of them on his web site. Click on the banner below. Better yet, subscribe to Scott's magazine. If you enjoyed wrestling the way it was in the 1970s, you will love reading Scott's interviews and stories. Many issues incluse the wrestler's addresses and phone numbers so you can get in touch with them.
My younger brother Erik and my mom produced the programs after I left the area with Mephisto. Erik began losing interest in producing the programs when crowds went down, and he was interested in other things then, too. Toward the end of the summer in 1974, Erik gave the program business to Allan Bolte who lived in the San Francsco Bay Area.
I met Allan while I was making the early Big Time Wrestling programs for the matches in Sacramento. I don't remember if we met at the Cow Palace or if we met through the mail as pen pals first, but Allan was interested in writing and he started interviewing the wrestlers and wrote many of the stories in my programs. We were about the same age and Allan and I became very good friends and sold programs in many of the cities together. One night in Stockton, Louie Miller needed a ring announcer and gave the job to Allan. A star was born that night, and slowly Allan started announcing in other cities, including the Cow Palace after Ken Emery, the previous announcer left. In 1979 he substituted for Hank Renner twice as the announcer on the Big Time Wrestling TV show!
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Pat Patterson is talking to Hank Renner about Lars Anderson, who Pat had just knocked unconcious. I took this photo at the Channel 40 studios. Note the small bell on the table Hank used as the Timekeeper's Bell. When it was time for a match to end for a commercial, Hank slid the bell from one side of the table to the center, where Dr. Richard Russell usually sat. It was one of the world's worst kept secrets -- I think everyone in the studio knew about that "secret" signal after awhile. One of the cameramen would signal Hank that time was up, Hank slid the bell over and suddenly someone was pinned! The ring was at the right edge of this photo.
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As I mentioned earlier, Roy taped his last TV show at Channel 40 in 1979.
Beginning in late 1979 or early 1980, Roy was forced to close most of his territory without a TV to promote it, but he decided to continue promoting shows at the Cow Palace using television tapes and wrestlers he would get from another promoter. Roy first made a deal with Portland promoter Don Owens to air Owens' tapes and to use many of his boys at the Cow Palace.
The partnership with Owens has been described by several people as a disaster and it ended quickly.
Roy next teamed up with wrestler and Promoter Bob Geigel in Kansas City. That, too, was not a hapy relationship and quickly ended, too.
Roy's third try was with ex-wrestler and Florida promoter Eddie Graham. Roy actually ran three shows at the Cow Palace with Eddie Graham.
But just as Roy had done in 1960 to Joe Malcewicz, an "opposition" promoter came into town to run shows against Roy. American Wrestling Alliance owner (and AWA World Champion) Vergne Gagne was able to put his television show from Minneapolis on a Bay Area TV station and started promoting shows right across the bay in Oakland. That was the last straw for Roy who promoted one last show at the Cow Palace, the annual 18-Man Battle Royal which was held on January 24, 1981. Pat Patterson, who had left California in 1975, returned for one night to win the Battle Royal that night and watch one of the most successful wrestling promotions of the 1960s and early 1970s take its last breath.
The program Allan Bolte sold that night touted the next Cow Palace show scheduled for Saturday, February 28th, (four weeks hence) but any fans who showed up that night found the doors to the Cow Palce locked -- almost twenty years to the day Roy promoted his first show there -- March 4, 1961.
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This photo of Ray Stevens with long hair was taken in 1972 I think, at Channel 40 in Sacramento. The programs I made for Sacramento for several months folded out into what I called "Super Posters" -- 17" x 22" posters that fans loved. This was one of the photos I used for the posters. Those programs were only fifty cents, too!
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Roy Shire Exposes Wrestling's "Secrets"
In early 1984, frustrated and bitter that others continued to promote wrestling after he no longer could, Roy decided he would try to kill wrestling in California by breaking kayfabe and expose the business to the Los Angeles Times. That story was printed by newspapers all over the country. I guess Roy forgot that people had exposed wrestling many times, and wrestling continued to flourish. (Kayfabe was an old carny word used by wrestlers to warn each other to stop talking because someone not "smart" to the business was coming close to hear. Kayfabe was also like a way of life, where you never did anything that might expose the business.)
Roy also talked to Bill Conlin at the Sacramento Bee and talked about even more than he did with the Times. Enough in fact, for Bill Conlin to fill his column for two days! I'm sure Conlin was more than happy to give Roy a soapbox and felt he had won his twenty-plus year campaign against professional wrestling. (Many of his column are available on my web site.)
But Roy didn't stop there -- here is the second installment of Roy's version of the truth behind the business:
The last paragraph really bothers me. All those "suckers" gave Roy the means to live a very good life. Calling his customers "sucker"s exposes Roy a lot more than it exposes professional wrestling! (IMHO)
On September 16, 1992 Roy suffered a mild heart attack which was followed by a massive one four days later. He passed away at the age of 71 on September 20, 1992.
Sacramento Bee Sports Editor Bill Conlin was always looking for an angle to joke about professional wrestling in his columns. Once in awhile he would go through the files at the California State Athletic Commission and copy all of the wrestlers' real names off of their license applications and then print them in his column. (Either that or someone at the Commission just sent them to him. I assume they were public records.) I'm looking for a column I had where he revealed Pat Patterson's and Mephisto's real names among many others.
I'm pretty sure that article came out the same day I met Mephisto and his wife at the grocery store by my house. I had just seen him at the Memorial Auditorium for the first time the night before and I was just blown away when they told me they were living a mile from my family's house. My mother is an aerial photographer and her photo lab was close by, so I took them to her office to see the photos I had taken of them the night before. My mother was really surprised to see them walking into her office. Anyway, I'm pretty sure it was there that I mentioned that he was in that day's newspaper and I showed it to him. He was really surprised (to say the least) that the Athletic Commission would give out information like that. Luckily, no one must have seen that column because I never heard any wrestling fans yell out the names that were printed in that column. Thankfully, the Bee did not print their home addresses. I'm sure Conlin would have liked to.
Creighton Sanders, the Sports Reporter on KXTV Channel 10 in Sacramento was known for making fun of wrestling on TV during the news. I could not stand him and never watched Channel 10's evening news shows because of him. He showed up at the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium with his cameraman one night and everyone booed him. It was great. Of course on the news the next day he did a horrible story about wrestling that Roy Shire and the boys must have seen because they were at Channel 40 that night to tape the TV show. Sometime later, Sanders and his crew came back (when Archie Moore came to referee I think) and Shire threw them out! It was great!
Here is another column that Bill Conlin wrote. I guess he picks on Mephisto in this column because he knew Frankie had already moved away. I have no idea what he was trying to accomplish with the whole item. It's ridiculous.
I am still looking for the other piece to this column. Sorry!
Do you really think anyone called Mephisto "Toodles?" I heard people call him lots of names, but that was never one of them.
This is an article from the Sacramento Union that was printed on October 28, 1977 saying that professional wrestling has never been more popular. It was written by James Warren of the Chicago Sun-Times.
©Viktor Berry
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Illustrated History of Professional Wrestling in Northern California Promoter Roy Shire NWA Ray Stevens, Peter Maivia, Pat Patterson, Hank Renner, Big Time Wrestling, Miki Garcia
