Return to the Mid-Atlantic Gateway
Return to Smoke Filled
Rooms
Johnny Weaver
Net
Johnny
Weaver Blog
|
|
When I first regularly started watching
wrestling in 1975, a legend in the Mid-Atlantic area had just
returned to action there: Johnny Weaver. For a kid who had only
recently gotten hooked on professional wrestling, this was big. It
was like Bart Starr had just returned to the Green Bay Packers or
Johnny Unitas had returned to the Baltimore Colts.
As a young child, really up until I was
around 10 years old, I was only a casual sports fan. But I had grown
up hearing the names George Becker and Johnny Weaver. Just as I knew
the names of Starr and Unitas in football, Pete Rose in baseball, or
Wilt Chamberlain in basketball, I knew the names Becker and Weaver
and I knew they were wrestling’s greatest tag team. For long time
fans in the Carolinas and Virginia, there were no bigger names, and
no bigger stars. In grade school, my friends would talk each Monday
about the home run Pete Rose had hit, the touchdown pass Johnny
Unitas had thrown, and right in there with all that discussion was
how Weaver and Becker had just won the tag team titles. All of these
guys were heroes.
So in 1975, as a young teenager now
hooked on the weekly exploits of the Anderson Brothers, Wahoo
McDaniel
and Paul Jones, Blackjack Mulligan and a new kid on the block named Ric Flair, I was
delighted to learn that one of the biggest names of them all was
coming back to Mid-Atlantic Wrestling.
What I didn’t know then was that Johnny
Weaver had been away on conquests in other territories, most notably
the state of Florida where he held titles there. Johnny Weaver was
wrestling royalty, and he was treated as such on his return by TV
hosts Bob Caudle and Les Thatcher. It was as if Vince Lombardi had
just sent Bart Starr back in the game to step under center once
again.
And just as Unitas had that great arm,
and Pete Rose had that famous head first slide into base, Johnny
Weaver had the famous sleeper hold. And while there was always a big
pop from the crowd when Wahoo went into the war dance or when Rufus
R. Jones wound up the freight-train, there was no bigger pop than
when Johnny Weaver shot his opponent in to the ropes and then locked
on the sleeper hold. It was something I looked forward to on
television every week.
Yes, Mid-Atlantic wrestling’s biggest
star was back. And as the old saying goes, business was about to
pick up.
- Dick Bourne
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
September 2007
Photo of Johhny Weaver applying the
sleeper hold on Homer O'Dell
by Bill Janosik
© 2007
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
|