First Person | TV Wrasslin'
By Gene Birke
I directed
Championship Wrestling for several years. We taped
the shows m on Wednesday nights, and most of the time we finished
matches on time. However, to make things look "honest,"
Jim Crockett would have longer bouts occasionally. Before
we started the show series, we flew to Nashville to see
a local bout on WLAC-TV. Bill Ward, Crockett's
guy Leo Voss, and I flew over on the company plane one
weekend. We all agreed we could do a better job
than they did.
Jim Crockett was a wonderful man. Every Wednesday before the show, he would
treat the whole crew to dinner, wherever we wanted to eat. Of course, he
reimbursed me with a wad of cash from his pocket. Every Christmas season,
I would get a call from a salesman at Mellon's. He had instructions to
let me pick anything in the men's clothing department...no limit. I built
up a pretty good wardrobe. Of course, when Baxter's clothing (the sponsor)
made the same offer, it wasn't as easy to find something decent.
During pre-show meetings, we would go over the upcoming matches, and everybody
was very serious. After some meetings, Jim would corner me and say "Gene,
watch out in the main event...there may be some fireworks." Magically,
there were!
Tom Cookerly hated that the show had such good ratings. I'm sure he would
have liked to take it off. It was so successful, Jim filled the
old Coliseum several times as a result of the TV show. His son contacted
me in Nashville after I moved here, because he wanted to do the same show here.
He never followed up.
Jim was hugely overweight, and was hospitalized once because of it. I went
to see him one night, and the door was closed. I knocked, and Leo Voss
opened it, and, seeing it was me, let me in and closed the door. Jim was
lying in the bed, eating hamburgers that had been smuggled in by his guys. I
said, "Jim, what are you doing? You're supposed to be trying to lose weight!" He
said, "I've got to eat something! I could starve to death in here!"
Bill Ward mangled the English every show (i.e. "That's like the devil between
the deep blue sea"). I made a list of them (an 11 x 14 list) and sent them
to Bob Quincy (another nice guy), and he printed the whole list in his column
in the Observer. I felt badly that they had printed the list, and I apologized
to Bill Ward about it. He said "Don't worry about it. It was great
publicity!"
Old news clippings courtesy
Dick Bourne at Mid-Atlantic
Gateway
