Who was (insert masked wrestler's name here)?

This list covers the masked men who appeared in World Class between 1982 and 1990.

Who was (insert non-masked wrestler working under a gimmick name here)?

...Ten Gu?

The sinister Japanese heel seen teaming with Frank Dusek and Bill Irwin against the Von Erichs in WWE's The Most Powerful Families in Wrestling DVD was played, for most of his time in Dallas-Fort Worth, by Kazuo Sakurada, who was best known as Kendo Nagasaki in the Florida territory.  He had worked as Mr. Sakurada (partner of Mr. Hito) a year earlier in Texas, and would come in again for a short time in 1988 as manager of the Super Black Ninja (Keiji Mutoh, aka The Great Muta).

Sakurada was not the first wrestler to portray the character, however.  In his TV debut on KTVT in mid-1981, the role of Ten Gu (who was heavily hyped prior to his arrival in the area by manager Gary Hart as being even more dangerous than the Great Kabuki) was played by a worker who was in no way convincing, either as a person of Japanese heritage or as a martial arts master, and in fact, appeared to be somewhat elderly.  It's not known exactly how or why this happened, but the match (a squash) came off so poorly that, immediately after the commercial break, Bruiser Brody interrupted a promo by Bill Mercer for an upcoming card to declare that the man fans had just seen in the ring was an impostor.  The identity of this "fake" Ten Gu, who appeared only in this one bout, remains a mystery.


...Richard Blood?

No, this wasn't Ricky Steamboat, nor was it Tito Santana.  This Richard Blood, who performed in D/FW rings from late 1981 through mid-'82, was Tommy Wright, an undercard worker in the Florida and Mid-South territories.  Frank Dusek, posting at Wrestling Classics, fills us in:

Gary Hart just loved the name "Richard Blood."  In fact, he liked it so much he wanted to have a "Richard Blood" on the cards in Texas.

For several weeks, all he told Bill Irwin & I was that we were going to get a new tag partner & we were going to call him "Richard Blood."  We knew it wasn't Tito Santana or Rick Steamboat, but Gary assured us he would be a "player" who would live up to the name "Richard Blood."

Believe me, after all the build up we gave the fans on camera (& all the build up Gary Hart gave us in the dressing room), no one was more surprized that Bill Irwin & me to see Tommy Wright.

The 2nd week in the territory we "turned" on Tommy, discharging him from our army.  That led to the infamous headline in a Dallas program that read, "Dusek Discharges Blood!"

You gotta love Texas "Rasslin!

...Koko the Clown?

The jolly, dancing pie-thrower who appeared briefly as Bugsy McGraw's "manager", after he turned babyface in 1982?  None other than WCCW TV producer Mickey Grant, who thought donning the clown suit would be fun when the angle was mentioned to him by Bugsy (whose idea it reportedly was).


...Mike Sharpe, Ben Sharpe and Tom Steele (who lost to David Von Erich, Michael Hayes and Terry Gordy at Christmas Star Wars '82)? 

Mike Sharpe was in fact the real "Iron Mike", on loan from Mid-South.  On the other hand, the guys he teamed with may have later had WCCW fans wondering where they'd seen them before: "Ben Sharpe" was actually Kelly Kiniski, while "Tom Steele" was veteran grappler Gene Lewis, who would return to World Class a few months later as The Mongol.


...The Thing and The Real Thing?

The long-standing mystery of the wild monster heel with the rainbow 'Fro, who wrestled in WCCW briefly during the fall of 1987, appears to have finally been solved.  Online World of Wrestling, at which this pic was first posted, identifies him as Brian Carriero (that's Phil Apollo, AKA Playboy Vince Apollo, on the right); he apparently worked as enhancement talent in WCW circa 1990 under the name Brian Carr, but not much else seems to be known about him. 

In the storyline, manager Killer Brooks offered to sell The Thing's contract to the highest bidder, with New Age Management (Apollo and Gary Hart) vying with Percy Pringle for his "services".  Percy won when New Age withdrew their bid at the last minute, on the grounds that Brooks was offering what announcer Marc Lowrance called "a bogus Thing" (never mind the fact that he had been utterly annihilating every opponent he faced).  It turned out that Apollo and Hart, while traveling around the world in their constant search for new talent, had been able to locate the genuine article in New Zealand.  So, out went the "bogus" Thing (after doing a quick job to the returning Kerry Von Erich at Thanksgiving Star Wars), and in came Rip Morgan as -- what else? -- The Real Thing.


...P.Y. Chu-Hi?

Memphis fans, no doubt, had little trouble recognizing Phil Hickerson as the none-too-convincing "Japanese" monster heel.  Note the similarity to the name P.Y. Chung, which Hickerson's manager Tojo Yamamoto used in the Carolinas during the early '60s.


...Taras Bulba?

The man who shocked a Sportatorium crowd by beating Kerry Von Erich with a clawhold and sending him to the dressing room on a stretcher (as booked by Eric Embry) was Juan Reynosa, who had previously wrestled and worked as a referee in Joe Blanchard's Southwest Championship Wrestling and other territories.



Who are the wrestlers depicted in the WCCW logo?

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office's record for the logo contains the statement, "The portrait shown on the drawing is merely fanciful and is not the likeness of any particular living individual."  However, according to Kevin Von Erich (via his son-in-law Joey Nikolas at the Heroes of World Class message board), the logo does depict two living individuals -- namely, Kevin (on top, applying the Iron Claw), and puroresu legend Tatsumi Fujinami.



Who was Ed Watt, the man listed as matchmaker on the Sportatorium wrestling programs? Was he a real person?

The "matchmaker" title was more kayfabe than fact, but Edwin Boyd Watt, Jr. -- a former boxer from Chicago who was related to Sportatorium impresario Ed McLemore by marriage -- was most definitely a real person.

Born on April 26, 1919, Watt was first brought to Dallas by McLemore in 1953 as booking agent for the Big D Jamboree.  By all accounts a tough, no-nonsense businessman, Watt's job involved keeping a tight rein on the show's young and often wild talent, including rockabilly legend and Jamboree regular Gene Vincent (on one occasion, when Vincent was threatening his wife with a gun during a drunken argument, McLemore dispatched Watt to the site to defuse the situation), as well as booking package tours featuring the stars of the weekly music showcase.  And according to Stanley Oberst and Lori Torrance in their book Elvis in Texas: The Undiscovered King 1954-1958, Watt stood his ground against one of the most hardnosed, hard bargain-driving carneys of all time: Colonel Tom Parker.  In September 1955, Parker reportedly attempted to renegotiate the contract for the next Jamboree appearance of the young, soon-to-be megastar Presley, demanding a steep increase in pay.  Watt's response?  "Go to hell and take Elvis with you."

David Dennard of Dragon Street Records, however, told the Dallas Observer of a different side of Watt: "...I think that he was the 'bad guy' for McLemore, though he was actually very sweet as a person when you got to know him."

After the Jamboree's demise in 1966, Watt continued to work in essentially the same capacity for Southwest Sports, booking dates for wrestlers.  After McLemore was incapacitated by a heart attack in early 1968, leaving Fritz Von Erich in charge of the company, Watt also served as figurehead "matchmaker", remaining with the promotion throughout the WCCW era.  To the best of our knowledge, he never appeared in public, but was often announced as having "signed a return match" after the initial meeting of two grapplers ended indecisively. 

Ed Watt retired in 1989 and passed away on January 28, 2002.


Wikipedia's entry on WCCW lists Gene Summers as a ring announcer in 1981. Who is he?

Summers (born in Dallas in 1939) is a legendary rockabilly singer who may have become acquainted with Fritz Von Erich via Ed McLemore during the era of the Big D Jamboree (see above). His best known recording is probably "School of Rock and Roll" (1958), which received airplay on the XM Satellite Radio network in September 2006, courtesy of a somewhat well-known chap by the name of Bob Dylan. Summers still performs live worldwide, particularly in Europe where 1950s rockabilly still has a devoted and fanatical following, and is a member of the Rockabilly Hall of Fame.

As evidenced by the photo, Summers did indeed perform ring announcing duties for a short while (the pic is said to be from the Sportatorium, but in fact, appears to be from Will Rogers Coliseum as the Dallas ring would have still had the square blue ringposts at the time). What's not so certain is the timeline, as the article also claims that Summers' single "The Legend of Moondog Mayne", recorded under the pseudonym Ricky Ringside, was released during the same period. Actually, in what may have been one of the first instances of entrance music in the modern era of pro wrestling -- predating even the Freebirds and Leroy Brown -- this song was used by Mayne in the Dallas/Fort Worth area after his late 1976 babyface turn.

Mayne was killed in a San Bernardino, CA car crash on August 13, 1978, nearly two years before Marc Lowrance (for whom Summers is said to have been filling in) began working for the promotion. Thus, it isn't clear exactly when the photo was taken, although it does show a youthful-looking David Manning standing next to Gene. WCM is on the case, however, and if and when we find out more, it'll be posted here.


Who was Betty Ann Stout, the masked columnist who covered WCCW for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram?

The woman under the mask was then-"Startlegram" sportswriter Jennifer Briggs (and no, before anyone asks, she's not related to former Dallas Times Herald drive-in movie critic Joe Bob Briggs; his real name is John Bloom).  Ms. Briggs, the first female journalist to cover the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers, is now a freelance writer and the author of a number of books including Strive to Excel: The Will and Wisdom of Vince Lombardi; Quotable Billy Graham (the evangelist, not the wrestler); Nolan Ryan: The Authorized Pictorial Biography; The Book of Landry; Texas Speak: Advanced Course; and the Brady Bunch Movie tie-in book A Very Brady Guide to Life.