10 Things You Didn't Know About The Honky Tonk Man

8. He Was Present At The Birth Of 'Hardcore Wrestling'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F5wRnB-eDC8 The hardcore style of wrestling, characterised by an excess of weaponry, bloodshed and reckless disregard for one's own wellbeing, began as far back as the 50s and 60s. Chair shots, blood and NoDQ matches (often unsanctioned and taking place after the building's lights had been turned out, for licensing reasons) had existed for years, but in Tupelo, Tennessee in 1979, it was taken one step further. Farris and Latham, as the Blond Bombers, were wrestling Jerry Lawler and Bill Dundee for the AWA Southern Tag Team titles in Tupelo, Tennessee (coincidentally, the birthplace of one Elvis Presley). When the heels screwed Lawler and Dundee to become champions, all hell broke loose. They began brawling down the aisle of the arena into the backstage area. It was treated as totally kayfabe by the production crew, who grabbed handheld cameras and rushed out to the concession stand to find the four wrestlers tearing it apart. Everything they could get their hands on was used as a weapon; stools, mops, jars of mustards, baking trays. Everyone was bleeding and the fans popped huge for it. They had never seen such an intense weapon-based brawl and it stemmed so organically from a controversial title change, they believed it was all real. The footage was replayed over and over, and the brawl was replicated in Tupelo year after year, eventually catching the eye of a Japanese wrestler called Atsushi Onita. He took this 'odd Tennessee-style of wrestling' back to Japan and launched his own promotion, Frontier Martial-Arts Wrestling, which took violence to a whole new level. Barbed wire, fire, tables and glass became heavy features of FMW, which in turn fed back into the US in the form of ECW, (including many FMW alumni like Mick Foley, Terry Funk and Chris Jericho), the popularity of which then bled slowly into WCW and WWF programming. While it may seem a touch quaint to look back on today, the 'Tupelo Concession Stand Brawl' as it came to be known, became a new standard bearer for hardcore wrestling and helped innovate a bloodier style of wrestling that would go from strength to strength. And Honky Tonk Man was there on the ground floor.