Chappell:
Were you ever told by the Crockett’s or the booker,
George Scott for many of the years, what to ask or say to a
wrestler on the air?
Caudle:
No, they never did that. You mention George Scott…George
did a great job. We had a Christmas party every year, and I
remember one year at the Christmas party we all got together
and gave George a Pit Bull for Christmas. (laughs)
Chappell:
Did that present reflect George’s personality? (laughs)
Caudle:
(pause) Well…yeah. (laughs)
I tell you, George loved that Pit Bull!
Chappell:
Did the tapings ever have to be stopped for any reason, or
did you all pretty much plow through no matter what happened?
Caudle:
We pretty much went on through. One time we had to stop
when one of the ring braces broke…it was like the ring was
floating up and down! So we had to stop and get that fixed.
(laughs)
Chappell:
Yeah…it would be pretty hard to do a wrestling show
without a ring! (laughs)
Caudle:
It was very seldom that we would have to stop a taping. If
somebody were to get hurt, they would have to end the match
and we would go into an interview and pick it up from
there…but we didn’t actually stop the taping or anything
like that. When we started taping, we almost always went
straight through with it unless a camera went out or something
like that.
Chappell:
For a time, didn’t you also do the local ‘Matches In
Your Area’ promos that ran in all the local markets?
Caudle:
Yes. When I did them, I did them for all the markets. We
cut those on Wednesday afternoon, before the matches in the
studio on Wednesday night.
Chappell:
I bet that made for a long day!
Caudle:
That was a LONG session…it really was. Those promos took
several hours to do. When I started doing that on a Wednesday
afternoon, Gene Anderson would have queue sheets written out
like, ‘Friday In Richmond You’re Going To See So And
So,’ and I’d read the matches off from that sheet he had
right beside the camera. And if it was Flair I’d say, ‘Now
here’s Ric Flair…Ric what do you think about that match
against so and so?’ and then he’d go into it. If Flair was
wrestling [Ricky] Steamboat, for instance, then we’d cut the
same thing again, and Steamboat would come out and say
something. That was a long afternoon. We cut those for all the
markets.
Chappell:
With those tremendous number of promos to cut, it must
have been tough to make each one come off sounding unique and
special.
Caudle:
It was a long drawn out session…it really was. We
started about one o’clock, but they’d bring in a bunch of
sandwiches for lunch and the guys would eat and hang around as
they were waiting for their turn to come. It was tough, but
the same type of thing went on for many years. It carried on
over, even when Crockett sold it all out to Turner
[Broadcasting System]…they did the same thing. When Turner
went into a town, before their matches that evening they taped
all those promos basically the same way.
Chappell:
Talking about doing all those promos for the Mid-Atlantic
markets, tell us about the schedule that the wrestlers had to
navigate back in those days.
Caudle:
I can’t remember all the exact days and towns, but they
had matches Monday night in Charlotte. Then they would wrestle
on Tuesday night in Raleigh. They would stay over Tuesday
night in Raleigh, and we would cut the promos and tape the TV
shows on Wednesday. After the matches in the studio on
Wednesday night, they would all get in their cars and leave
and head to Norfolk. They’d wrestle Thursday in Norfolk, and
then they’d head over to Richmond to wrestle there on
Friday. Greensboro, North Carolina ran on Saturday a lot. And
so on…they just had a circuit that they worked every week.
Chappell:
And they had the series of towns farther south that sort
of made up a second circuit.
Caudle:
That’s exactly right. The guys were on the road all the
time…they really didn’t have a home life.
Chappell:
In a sense, you hit the road as well when the promotion
started taping the TV shows for good in the arenas in the
summer of 1983. Why the switch from the studio wrestling?
Caudle:
[
Jim
Crockett, Jr.] had always wanted to do the TV shows from an
arena. I think he felt like, ‘Hey, we can tape a show at the
arena, have an arena show and have some income coming in while
we’re taping the TV show.’ Rather than doing it from the
studio where there was no income coming in…the studio
seating was limited and there was no charge to get in. I think
that was one reason for the change.
The
other reason was that it was much more realistic to be in an
arena, than it was to be in a television studio.
Crockett
for a long time wanted to get his own mobile unit, so he hired
an engineer from WBT in Charlotte to help put it together.
Besides the weekly TV shows, they also used the truck for the
Starrcades and the Pay Per Views as well.
Chappell:
How was the television production different when you
started taping the shows from the arenas as opposed to the
studio? Of course, one change for you personally was that you
had to travel more.
Caudle:
Yes, that’s true. We would tape in Shelby, North
Carolina. Then we taped in Greenville, South Carolina and in
Spartanburg, South Carolina.
Bob
Caudle and Johnny Weaver prepare to interview NWA
Champion
Ric
Flair (waiting just off camera) at an NWA Pro Wrestling TV
taping in Spartanburg SC, 1987.
(Rocky
King and Tommy Young are in the ring. Jackie Crockett holds
the NEMO camera.)
Chappell:
Those TV shows from Spartanburg in the mid 80s looked
wild! Those teenage girls screaming for the Rock and Roll
Express…I don’t know how you could hear yourself think
with all that noise!
Caudle:
Ricky [Morton] and Robert [Gibson] were really popular for
a time there. (laughs) Ricky could really get around the ring.
If he had been bigger, I think he would have done even better.
There was such a size difference when he was wrestling Nikita
[Koloff] and guys like that…that didn’t make a lot of
sense if you thought about it. That little guy was going to
have a tough time against a guy three times as big as he was.
A lot of times I looked at that and thought, ‘This isn’t
good.’ But they got a lot of mileage out of those matches
with the Rock and Roll and the Russians. The girls really went
crazy over Ricky and Robert.
But
yes, Spartanburg was wild…it was a good town. And Greenville
was too, for a long time. We would also tape every once in a
while at the Dorton Arena in Raleigh—that was a lot of fun.
Of
course at the arenas, the crowds were bigger. I think, when
you come right down to it, the matches were better at the
arenas. The reason for that was, just like everything else, if
you’re going to work before a crowd, you’re going to work
better before a bigger crowd than a smaller crowd.
Chappell:
So the size of a crowd can make a big difference?
Caudle:
It’s something about the crowd…the crowd being bigger
and louder just tends to give you more adrenalin.
Chappell:
As an announcer, did you feed off of the energy of the
larger crowds as well?
Caudle:
Yeah…I think so. I think all of the announcers enjoyed
that aspect of taping the shows from the arenas.
Chappell:
In that time period, Tony Shiavone was involved in the TV
broadcasts, right?
Caudle:
If I’m not mistaken, Tony got involved in [broadcasting]
through the baseball team that the Crockett’s owned in
Charlotte. Shiavone was doing the announcing for that team. In
wrestling, Shiavone came along around the time of the first
Starrcade, and they even had him doing the interviews during
the first Starrcade.
After
that, he worked a little bit with me…but eventually they had
him doing the Wide World [Wrestling] show. We of course
continued to do the second TV show when we started taping from
the arenas.
Chappell:
Any good road stories when you had to hit the road after
the move from Raleigh and WRAL, and later taped at the arenas?
Caudle:
For a long time I would ride out of Charlotte with Sandy
[Scott]. Sandy would drive and Gene Anderson would ride with
us. One day we were going from Charlotte up to Shelby. At that
time, they were building a bypass around Shelby. It was
finished, but it hadn’t opened yet. And so we were going up
through there, and Sandy said, ‘I think I’ll take this
[bypass].’ And we were all saying, ‘Sandy, you can’t do
that…that stretch of road isn’t open to the public yet.’
The barricades were still up! Well, Sandy was determined to
take it, so he gets on there and we’re trucking on down the
road…of course we had the road to ourselves. That is, until
the Highway Patrol showed up, and stopped us! (laughs)
Chappell:
Uh oh! (laughs)
Caudle:
The officer walks up to our car, looked in, and said,
‘What the heck are ya’ll doing on here?’ Sandy told the
officer with a straight face, ‘Well, I just wanted to see my
highway dollars at work.’ (laughs) You know, right at the
barricade there was a [North Carolina Highway Department] sign
saying that bypass project was a result of your highway
dollars being at work…and Sandy went with that! (laughs)
Chappell:
(laughing) That’s a classic!
Caudle:
The cop let us go!
Chappell:
You’re kidding? Did the cop know who you all were?
Caudle:
(pauses) I
think he did. (laughs)
PART FOUR |