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PRESS ROOM - STATESVILLE RECORD &
LANDMARK
SEPTEMBER 15, 2006
RECORD & LANDMARK, STATESVILLE NC
"Wrestling isn't South's only love. He loves his wife and five kids; he
loves the Dallas Cowboys; and as the T-shirt that often hangs around his
neck advertises, he love's Jesus."
- Daniel Goldberg, Statesville Record & Landmark
Mr. No. 1: George South Takes Wrestling Back To
It's Roots
By Daniel Goldberg
dgoldberg@statesville.com
from the September 15, 2006 edition of the
Statesville Record & Landmark
Few people derive as much pleasure from being hated as George South.
With his long graying hair and the beefy
235-pound frame of a man intent on withstanding a few hundred more body
slams, South likes strolling to the center of the wrestling ring,
scowling at the masses and doing the most improbable of things for a
“bad guy”: he threatens to take the most vocal booing fans “to church.”
That really drives them nuts.
“When I see someone get so mad that they want to kill me, then I’ve done
my job,” South says.
For a guy who makes his living wailing on people for the Exodus
Wrestling Alliance (EWA), South is a good guy in person. Not to ruin the
illusion of his arrogant “Mr. No. 1” ring persona, but South is the kind
of guy who litters his sentences with “buddy” and punctuates his e-mails
with “God bless!”
George South is as aware of the balance between ring attitude and
out-of-the-ring reality as anyone.
South, a 26-year veteran of organizations that include the National
Wrestling Alliance (NWA), has taken it upon himself to preserve aspects
of the sport that he sees being swept under the historical rug by the
fuzzy forces of time and the soap opera-ish World Wrestling
Entertainment (WWE) juggernaut.
Mr. No. 1 needs to go no further than the garage of his Concord home for
a reminder of his purpose in life.
South’s parents died when when he was a boy. Raised by siblings near his
hometown of Boone, he was already starting to find enough trouble by age
nine that he was sent to live with another brother in Gastonia.
At that time in the early 1970s, professional wrestling was the only
game in Charlotte, and in an era when regional grappling circuits
thrived, the stars of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling were
superstars.
South was quickly hooked and Mid-Atlantic champ Paul Jones became
something of a father-figure from afar. Once, when Jones lost an
important match, South was so distraught that he stayed home from school
for three days.
That might not have been the most productive response, but even before
South turned his life over to Jesus, professional wrestling was his
savior.
“If I didn’t behave, I couldn’t watch Mid-Atlantic Championship
Wrestling,” South says. “I behaved after that, buddy.”
His dream was clear and at age 18 South had his first professional match
against a man named Blonde Sweetheart. By the mid-1980s South had carved
out an important niche for himself in the NWA.
He refers to himself as “enhancement talent”: his job was to make other
wrestlers look good, often in a way that ended with South flat on his
back in the ring.
“You had to have a guy that was the star and the guy that wasn’t the
star,” he says. “I made a great living taking a guy that was a so-so
wrestler and making him look like a million bucks.”
No matter the outcome, South is clearly honored to have been in the ring
with many of the legends of the era: Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes, Sting,
Ultimate Warrior, Tully Blanchard and Arn and Ole Anderson.
South estimates that he has lost 3,000 of his 4,000 matches, including
dozens featuring he and partner Gary Royal as masked duos such as The
Gladiators.
Losing had its privileges. Although South never got his push to
championship stardom in the NWA, he did manage to acquire hundreds of
more lasting mementos.
The garage of South’s one-story home along a residential street in
Concord is crammed beyond capacity with one-of-a-kind memorabilia
donated by the wrestlers who appreciated South’s enhancement services.
“A lot of this stuff you will never find again. I’ve got this Ric Flair
bubble gum; I don’t think that sold too well.”
In addition to the myriad novelties, action figures, cereal boxes and
virtual hall of fame of signed glossy photos, South has snagged the
crown jewels of wrestling royalty.
Shortly before dying, Chief Wahoo McDaniel gave South one of his rare
head dresses. Ricky “The Dragon” Steamboat allowed South to help himself
to the original sign from Steamboat’s Gym. It’s the centerpiece of the
rambling collection, marking the top of a wall where there used to be a
garage door.
In a case near the floor there’s a gold bobby pin that 1950s icon
Gorgeous George threw out to the audience; in the rafters are the scraps
of clothe Shawn Michaels tore from Flair during a 2003 telecast.
Blackjack Mulligan and Paul Jones stuff is everywhere.
South has a brick from the an old wrestling hotbed in Greenville, SC and
a bench from the departed Sportatorium in Dallas. He has the shattered
halves of a coconut that “Rowdy” Roddy Piper broke over the head of
Rikishi in 2003.
It’s all a part of South’s reverence for an institution that is being
pushed to the margins as those wrestlers become fewer and the racy
storylines surrounding Vince McMahon’s WWE begin to out-number the
minutes spent wrestling.
“People can turn on the TV and they see violence. When they see us, they
want to laugh. They want to cheer the good guy and boo the bad guy.
That’s never changed.”
Wrestling isn’t South’s only love. He loves his wife and five kids; he
loves the Dallas Cowboys; and as the t-shirt that often hangs around his
neck advertises, he loves Jesus.
And that’s where the Exodus Wrestling Alliance comes in. South has
fronted the EWA for about eight years. In addition to driving audiences
crazy as Mr. No. 1, the EWA gives South the opportunity to train a
stable of young wrestlers in his old-school fashion and share his faith
with fans.
“George always says, once you learn how to wrestle, nobody can take that
away from you,” says Jake Manning, a rising EWA star.
The elder ringsman is determined to instill his reverence for the sport
in his wrestlers, teaching them humility along with ring skills
sharpened by the occasional 60-minute slugfest.
“George just reminds us that we’re all people and we put our wrestling
trunks on one leg at a time,” Manning says.
South says that humility and faith guided him relatively unscathed
through the infamously tempting life of a professional wrestler, the
same gauntlet of women, travel, injury, ego and drugs that contributed
to the early deaths of friends like Curt Hennig and Eddie Guerrero.
“I always knew God was there,” South says. Now, with the EWA, “All I’m
doing is telling people what the Lord allowed me to do, and that’s pro
wrestling.”
* * * * * * * *
Special thanks to Daniel Goldberg and the
Statesville Record & Landmark for permission to post this article
on GeorgeSouth.com
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