Feedback From A Friend
An addendum
to "My Secret Charlotte"
Return to the Mid-Atlantic Gateway
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RELATED
ARTICLES ON THE GATEWAY
Classic
Venues:
Park Center &
Memorial Stadium
Charlotte
Coliseum
(Independence Arena / Bojangles Coliseum)
Jesus, Elvis, and All-Star
Wrestling
One Amazing Week at
the Charlotte Coliseum in 1972
Full Circle: A Wrestling Journey
Begins and Ends in Shelby
South 21 Drive -In: A Charlotte
Wrestling Tradition
The Chicken Coop
Levine
Exhibit
The small exhibit on
Charlotte's wrestling history in the Levine Museum of the New South.
Levine
Website
Celebrating
Wrestling's most celebrated championship belt!
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I live in Charlotte now. I just moved here after having
spent most of my life in Pennsylvania. During repeated
visits over recent years I slowly fell in love with
Charlotte's tree-lined streets, distinctive neighborhoods
and New South charm. But what drew me here initially and
continues to captivate me is wrestling - the gritty,
compelling wrestling of Jim Crockett Promotions from the
mid-1980s.
I discovered Crockett wrestling one Saturday
morning in Pittsburgh in the summer of 1985 when I was 8
years old. Immediately I became hooked, captivated by what I
now understand to have been the perfect mix of athleticism,
drama, and charismatic personalities working together to
near perfection. The result was wrestling so gripping and so
real that people truly believed. I certainly did. I believed
in the hatred between Tully Blanchard and Magnum T.A. I
believed that the Four Horsemen were trying to permanently
maim Dusty Rhodes. And I believed without question that Ric
Flair was the best wrestler alive in what he always referred
to as the "greatest sport in the world".
I quickly became an avid fan and was even able to see
wrestling in person when the NWA came to the Civic Arena in
Pittsburgh. But they didn't come to Pittsburgh very often,
and it didn't take me long to realize that the wrestling I
loved was centered in the faraway and, to my young mind,
exotic states of the Carolinas and Virginia. As a 4th grader
in 1985 my knowledge of United States geography was
undoubtedly broader than that of my classmates because each
week I watched as Tony Schiavone promoted upcoming shows in
places like Greensboro, Raleigh, Richmond, Norfolk and, of
course, Charlotte. The names of these cities - and their
venues - took on an almost mythical status for me. But
Charlotte - home of Charlotte Coliseum, Memorial Stadium,
Jim Crockett Promotions and the "Nature Boy" himself - was
clearly the center of it all.
That, though, was all decades ago. The Charlotte of 1985
could scarcely have imagined its present-day self. The Queen
City has grown exponentially in the years since Jim Crockett
Promotions grossed millions of dollars working out of a tiny
office on Briarbend Drive. Charlotte is now the country's
17th largest city. It is home to professional sports teams,
a vibrant cultural scene and a continually growing and
diversifying population. Charlotte is a modern boomtown that
continues to carefully craft and cultivate its burgeoning
identity as a cosmopolitan New South city. But professional
wrestling is no longer part of Charlotte's reality or
self-image. Although it was a mainstay of the city for
decades, wrestling simply slipped away. Jim Crockett
Promotions was sold off, the wrestlers left town, and
Charlotte didn't look back. These days, the only official
recognition of the importance of Mid-Atlantic Championship
Wrestling/Jim Crockett Promotions is located at the
exceptional Levine Museum of the New South in uptown
Charlotte. There, as part of the main exhibit, a small
display educates visitors about the storied history of
Mid-Atlantic wrestling and its cultural significance to the
city and the region. Beyond that, there are sporadic
references in the local media to the glory days of Charlotte
wrestling. And the city still has a healthy independent
wrestling scene. But that grand tradition - the sold-out
arenas, the white-hot feuds, the rabid fan base - seems to
have been relegated to a footnote in the story of Charlotte.
The Grady Cole Center, once known as the Charlotte Park Center, home
to weekly Monday night Mid-Atlantic Wrestling cards from the late
1950s through early 1980s
And so there are no physical markers here, virtually nothing
to indicate the hold wrestling once had on this place. But
if you know where to look, reminders of Charlotte's rich
wrestling heritage are all around. In a city that often
seems to demolish rather than retain its history, the key
venues are, incredibly, still standing. Memorial Stadium and
the adjacent Park Center (now Grady Cole Center) are both
still in use and appear largely as they did during their
wrestling heydays. I am not old enough to remember the days
when Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling filled the Park
Center every Monday night. But I do recall the sight of
Memorial Stadium in 1985 and 1986 when it hosted the Great
American Bash. I only got to see clips of the Bashes on
television, but that was enough for me to sense the magic:
stadium lights blazing against a velvet Charlotte sky... tens
of thousands packed into the bleachers... and at the center
of it all, the ring, bathed in light, with the wrestlers
giving it all they had on those hot July nights. Even
through TV the excitement was palpable. As for the other
primary Crockett venue, the old Charlotte Coliseum (now
Bojangles Coliseum) still proudly stands on Independence
Boulevard. Instantly recognizable by its silver roof and
glass façade, the Coliseum somehow remains in operation,
though long gone are the days when it hosted all of the
city's major events. Because of their historic and cultural
importance to the city, both Charlotte Coliseum and Memorial
Stadium have been designated as historic landmarks by the
City Council of Charlotte. In all of the documentation that
accompanied those designations I found only one reference to
wrestling. But it made me smile. Buried deep in the lengthy
historical essay which was prepared for Charlotte Coliseum
as part of the designation process was the following
elegantly understated sentence: "Professional wrestling also
flourished." And so it did.
The Charlotte Coliseum in the early 1960s. The facility was known as
Independence Arena during the 1980s heyday for Jim Crockett
promotions. It is now known as the Bojangle's Coliseum.
It is not, however, only the venues which serve as
connections to Crockett Era Charlotte. There is Price's
Chicken Coop, where George South was once a regular
customer, buying up boxes of the legendary fried chicken; he
bought it not for himself but for the Four Horsemen, among
others, who were stuck at the Crockett office on Tuesdays
during marathon taping sessions for local promos. And there
is the classic South 21 Drive-In on Independence Boulevard,
just down the road from the Coliseum and a long-time
wrestling program sponsor. Obscure as they are, these
connections evoke a time when wrestling was a fixture here,
part of the fabric of Charlotte. And there is one other
location of note, the aforementioned Crockett office.
Although the building has long since been demolished, its
place in wrestling history is secure for what happened there
on an overcast fall day in 1986. It was there, of course, in
the parking lot, that the Horsemen cornered and attacked an
unsuspecting "American Dream". It was shocking, and it was
perfect, and it is now the stuff of legend.
Ric Flair and Nikita Koloff square off at the Great American
Bash at Memorial Stadium
I encounter at least one of these history-laden sites on an
almost daily basis, and each time it is a thrill. Charlotte
is a magical place for me. When I drive through the city, I
feel like Charlotte and I share a secret. I live in and
enjoy the Charlotte of the present, but I also see a
Charlotte most people don't. When I drive the same stretch
of road that the Horsemen did as they followed Dusty that
day, I imagine his little red sports car up ahead,
delivering him to that masterful ambush. When I pass
Memorial Stadium at night, I see it with the lights still
blazing and the World Champion making his triumphant
helicopter entrance. And when I ride by Charlotte Coliseum,
I hear the echoes. The echoes of a wild "Rock-and-Roll!"
chant; of the majestic 2001 theme; of the gasps as Baby Doll
turned on Dusty.
When I come across native Charlotteans - which is not the
common occurrence one might think here in Charlotte - I
always try to work wrestling into the conversation, just to
see if they remember. They usually do. They remember and
they smile and then casually toss out a memory of the Bash
they saw at Memorial Stadium, or nonchalantly recall how
they used to live on the same street as Ricky Morton. I
listen, and I wonder all over again what it must have been
like to live here then, when wrestling was so much a part of
this city.
Much has changed, but wrestling will always be part of the
story of Charlotte. And for those of us who listen - for all
who remember and all who believed - the whispers of magic
will never cease.
Charlotte's
Memorial Stadium in the distance, much as it might have
looked on a hot July night in 1985 at the Great American
Bash.
(Photo credit - Flickr:
Compulsive Collector)
Feedback
From a Friend
A good
friend of ours, Linda Ostrow, gave Kyra Quinn (the author of
the above article) some positive feedback on "My Secret
Charlotte" that I thought I would include here. While Linda
is admittedly not a wrestling fan, she has a strong
connection to wrestling, Charlotte, and to the Mid-Atlantic
Gateway as well.
Linda
wrote Kyra:
"So moving
and touching. Your writing brought tears to my eyes. I was
taken back to what I thought was a great movie about second
chances...Field of Dreams. If only to go back to that time,
even for just
a
day. But dust is slowly covering memories and nothing seems
as
glorious. Even though I never got
hooked,
wrestling touched everyone [in Charlotte] and I think it had
a lot to do with putting Charlotte on the map. Thanks for
the trip down memory lane. - Linda"
Linda has been a
good friend of Ric Flair's ever since the "Nature Boy" moved
to Charlotte in 1974. She is the person to whom he
entrusted the original 1973-1986 NWA world title belt that
Ric maintained possession of, after it was retired, from
1986 until it went to the WWE Hall of Fame in 2011. (It
current hangs in the office of WWE executive Paul Levesque,
a.k.a. "Triple H.") She designed a custom frame for it, and had
always been the person responsible for removing and
replacing it in the intricately designed custom case when
Ric would need to have it with him on WCW or WWE television.
The belt today is still in the frame she made as it hangs on
the wall at WWE headquarters.
Her story, as it
regards that wrestling connection, is documented fully in "Ten
Pounds of Gold", the book written about the history and
construction of that belt.
When I first
took Kyra by to meet Linda years ago at her Queen's Gallery
studio in Charlotte, we learned Linda is originally from
Pittsburgh as is Kyra. The two immediately struck up a
friendship and have enjoyed occasional visits now that Kyra
has moved to the Queen City.
Linda Ostrow's
art gallery and frame shop are located at 1212 The Plaza,
Charlotte, NC. For more information, visit
www.thequeensgallery.com
- Dick Bourne,
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
Photograph by
Dick Bourne from the book "Ten Pounds of Gold"
Copyright ©
2013, 2014 Kyra Quinn and the Mid-Atlantic Gateway
Originally Posted
12/14/2013, Updated with additional content 1/27/14
Additional
resources provided by Dick Bourne of the Mid-Atlantic
Gateway. For further information on places mentioned in Kyra
Quinn's article, visit the links on the left side of the
page.
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