10 Ways World Class Championship Wrestling Changed The Business

8. Heroic Bloodshed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvW6iGvoFTI "Texas wrestling was always different from the rest of the world, cause I mean, it was rough and tough here. We had a lot of guys wouldn't even come here to wrestle because, as they said, it was a shoot instead of entertainment. " €“ David Manning, WCCW referee and booker, Heroes of World Class Jack Adkisson's father, a sheriff in Leon County, Texas, used to hang men for a living. Okay, maybe not for a living, but it was one of the job's many perks. He also used to put his thirteen-year-old son in fights with other kids his age. He'd bet on his boy and keep the money at the end of the night. It was, essentially, how young Jack was introduced to professional wrestling. The man who would be Fritz had a style that would be called stiff today, but he was the perfect man to run a promotion that prided itself on realism. The Von Erichs adopted their father's style as their own, but wrestlers like the Great Kabuki, Kamala, Abdullah the Butcher and Bruiser Brody were the real deal. Their scarred faces told stories of bloody battles that, even in a pre-smart mark age, were hard to dismiss as purely "fake." Wrestlers had bled in the ring before, but never like this. Call it "hardcore," "extreme," or even "no holds barred" if you like. In Dallas, they just called it a night at the Sportatorium.