Black Saturday | Moments That Changed Wrestling Forever

Black Saturday is a situation that simply couldn't occur anymore. Never say never in wrestling and all that, but Black Saturday left deep wounds with a particular subsection of wrestling fans, and could never happen again because the world has changed beyond recognition in ways that render those wounds redundant. 

The events of July 1984 required wrestling to have geographical, televisual and philosophical home bases. A certainty, rocked to the core. In contrast, almost all programming in the present day is on demand, changeable on the whims of a billionaire and permanently up for sale to the highest bidder. Professional wrestling is merely a product competing in that oversaturated market like all the rest. Network competition comes not just in the form of other wrestling shows, but everything available on every screen. Live television shows, pay-per-views and Premium Live Events still have some currency because they're the last thing to replicate sport on linear cable, Otherwise though, nothing's off the table, because just about nothing seems certain. 

There have been some dark days in pro wrestling history. Really dark. Devastatingly dark. So dark that a different show appearing unexpectedly on a television network seems rather trivial. But context is everything, and in order to fully understand just how devastating a simple Saturday evening was to so many fans, it's important to note how many years of commitment those same fans had put into a product before it was ripped away from them without warning... 

Wrestling on television has changed in such a way that it's near-impossible to replicate the outrage of 1984 in the fragmented, disconnected and disillusioned present day. The world itself felt exponentially bigger but frames of reference were substantially smaller without the internet or even much access to a world beyond the one outside the window, or on the television screen. Like any longstanding institution, wrestling contributed to that fabric before Vince McMahon attempted to tear it up and re-stitch it in his own image. 

Georgia Championship Wrestling first appeared on Ted Turner's WTCG (later WTBS) station out of Atlanta in 1972. The show rapidly became a success story - a Saturday night fixture, airing iconically at 6:05pm to a loyal and dedicated audience that were mostly content with the closed shop service. In 1976, WTBS expanded nationally as a cable "superstation", with GCW becoming the first National Wrestling Alliance territory - in an era where the NWA still had dominion over most territories across the United States - to secure such a valuable nationwide cable television contract. In 1982, GCW rebranded the weekly show as World Championship Wrestling, a name that soon became synonymous with the promotion itself and would famously last beyond this entire debacle years later. The company was co-owned by brothers Jack and Gerald Brisco and Jim Barnett, with Ole Anderson as head booker. Beloved longtime NWA announcer Gordon Solie hosted the show, giving it credibility and continuity with other NWA-affiliated broadcasts whilst also securing it as the jewel in the Alliance's crown. It was real-feeling, rugged and fiercely rooted in the kayfabe competitive elements of pro wrestling. Or to put it another way, not philosophically aligned with how McMahon saw the business. 

The story of McMahon's war on territorial pro wrestling changes per whoever's telling it. A man desperate to one day monopolise the product on a worldwide scale for his own enormous gains? Somebody who saw wrestling as worldwide family entertainment that could be scaled beyond its somewhat parochial surrounds? An evil greedy prick with disdain for what fundamentally drove the business he bought from his father? 

It's all of the above really, and though the expansion across the 1980s was aggressive, there was really no other way to go about his business. In '83, his biggest win came thanks to the purchase of Southwest Championship Wrestling’s USA Network slot on Sunday mornings. That became All American Wrestling, and the World Wrestling Federation suddenly stood to make good on McMahon's ambition. This extended to the product itself - in 1984, the Vince-fronted Tuesday Night Titans debuted, showcasing wrestlers in a talk show setting alongside Lord Alfred Hayes. Various skits and bits typically took up the rest of the time, in what was realistically a Sports Entertainment transition checkpoint - TNT was unapologetically a show about wrestling rather than simply being a wrestling show. 

McMahon's next move was obvious to him if not other wrestling observers - more national cable. Georgia Championship Wrestling's aforementioned Saturday night position wasn't an option, unless McMahon could somehow surprisingly wrestle control of it. With that, he'd have near-total dominance over the United States televised scene, but he hit an immediate wall when, Turner simply refused to sell him the slot. He subsequently went around the houses, secretly negotiating with The Briscos and Barnett to buy their stakes in GCW and turn over control of the the WTBS show to him. Ole Anderson (more on him later) was deemed surplus, as was, as it turned out, most of what had made the show a staple. The final World Championship Wrestling broadcast under the old GCW management aired on July 7th, 1984, marking the end of an era in wrestling history, and the beginning of a new one that became historical, if for all the wrong reasons. 

The stage for "Black Saturday" was morbidly set.