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Located in the center of Virginia, the
state capital of Richmond had a large number of outlying towns that
served as home for spot shows during the Mid-Atlantic era. For our
first spot show locality outside of the Richmond metro area, we will
travel to the south, and discover the beautiful Southside Virginia
town of Lawrenceville, Virginia.
Located 64 miles southwest of Richmond and 75 miles northeast of
Raleigh, North Carolina, is the town of Lawrenceville, the county
seat of Brunswick County. Lawrenceville is the home of St. Paul’s
College, a historically black college established in 1888. Brunswick
County is known for being the original home of Brunswick Stew, and
many people frequent Lake Gaston, on Brunswick County’s southern
border, as a great spot to relax and vacation.
During the Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling days, the stars of
Jim Crockett Promotions would descend upon Lawrenceville several
times a year. Ric Flair, Wahoo McDaniel, Andre the Giant and a host
of others would make Lawrenceville the Mecca of the wrestling
universe for at least a couple of nights each year during the 1970s
and 1980s.
Taylor-Whitehead Gym
The largest venue that Lawrenceville
sported for professional wrestling was the Taylor-Whitehead
Gymnasium on the campus of St. Paul’s College. Normally the home
court for the St. Paul’s Tigers indoor sports teams, the facility
was easily transformed into a wrestling arena. A smaller and
alternate venue for Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling in
Lawrenceville was the Brunswick County Senior High School Gymnasium,
a couple of miles down the road from the Taylor-Whitehead Gym.
The stories from the Mid-Atlantic
events held in Lawrenceville are numerous. Rich Clary, who did a
local radio show in Brunswick County during the Mid-Atlantic days,
has enduring memories of the Crockett shows, where he was the ring
announcer and even refereed the matches on occasion.
Clary reminisced about a unique method he employed to get people to
the matches in Lawrenceville. “Once the station I was working for
sponsored the card locally. On my morning show, I promised that if
there were 500 people there an hour before the show began, I would
wrestle two women who also worked at the station. I clued the girls
in and showed them some moves and we did it. Manny Fernandez,
nicknamed the ‘Ragin’ Bull,’ took exception to this. When I was back
as ring announcer, Manny approached me in the ring and threatened to
‘beat my ass.’ I shrugged it off and introduced him as ‘The Ragin
Fool’! (I survived).”
Brunswick County High School Gym
Chief Wahoo McDaniel was a favorite of Clary. “I also refereed a
card with Wahoo McDaniel on it,” Clary recalled. “The Chief was
terrific. He even covered up for me, when I forgot to count his
opponent out, until I caught up with the match.” And of course,
Clary has a recollection or two about “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. In an
interview with Flair, Clary asked the Nature Boy if he was
wrestling’s Muhammed Ali. Clary recalled, “Without hesitation he
said, ‘No, Ali is boxing’s Ric Flair.’ ” Clary has fond memories of
the days when Jim Crockett Promotions stopped occasionally in
Lawrenceville. “Those were great times,” Clary remarked. “I loved it
and would do it again in a heartbeat.”
The Mayor of Lawrenceville, Douglas R. Pond, also remembers well
Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling coming to Lawrenceville. In the
heyday of Jim Crockett Promotions, Pond was a Lawrenceville Police
Officer, and in 1984 Pond became Lawrenceville’s Chief of Police, a
position he held until he recently ascended to his current position
of Mayor.
“The crowds were big,” Pond recalls. “You got a full little arena up
at Taylor-Whitehead. That was a pretty big event for around here…it
drew a lot of folks, and a lot of people enjoyed it. The majority of
them just came for the f un
of it, but I guess you had to have a few of us there in case someone
forgot how to behave. Those were big events around here…they were
publicized a lot. A lot of people knew the wrestlers and identified
with the wrestlers because they’d seen them on TV. The wrestlers
back then were approachable to a certain degree, because they’d come
to your little community. I don’t see the big wrestling groups of
today coming to Lawrenceville for any matches!”
Pond remembers his amazement at seeing the good guys and bad guys
together on occasion. “I remember one show very distinctly at Taylor
Whitehead; I’ll never forget it. Five or six of the wrestlers came
riding up in a white Cadillac from North Carolina. And Brute Bernard
was with them. Brute was kind of my hero back then. I just kind of
liked the way he chugged around the ring…being ‘Mr. Bad Guy.’
Cauliflower ears, bald head…quite a sight. I would have hated to run
into him in an alley if he was in a bad mood! So, anyway, they all
got out of this Cadillac together talking, and then they went in the
gym and beat the hell out of each other for three hours, and then
three hours later they all came out together and got back in the
Cadillac and rode back to North Carolina! I remember saying to
myself this is great entertainment, because they certainly don’t
dislike each other, because they’re all riding together!”
Keeping some of Lawrenceville’s more enthusiastic wrestling fans in
line also occupied Pond when he was a police officer at the matches.
“I remember having trouble with a couple of people; a couple of
customers that actually had to be restrained because they wanted to
get in there---they were all upset with what was going on and they
wanted to jump up and get even with someone. I remember one great
big guy, I’ll never forget, he was so into it that he almost took it
personally. The officers had to literally hold him back and tell
him, ‘One more time and you’re out of here.’ I was afraid we were
going to have to wrestle him! He was bigger than some of the
wrestlers, so that would have been interesting. There was no mace
and no tasers back then. The best wrestling would have been what we
were trying to do with that guy!”
During the Mid-Atlantic glory years, current Lawrenceville Chief of
Police Everette Gibson was working the matches in Lawrenceville as a
young police officer, and he has lasting memories of the trips Jim
Crockett Promotions made into town. Gibson explained, “Several
officers would take the good guy side and several would take the bad
guy side. I always requested the bad guy side, because I was a Ric
Flair freak. Flair, Paul Jones, Andre the Giant and Wahoo
McDaniel…all the big names would come to Lawrenceville.”
A Lawrenceville fan of Wahoo McDaniel brought back a vivid memory to
Gibson. The fan in question, who couldn’t get into the sold out gym
to see Wahoo, was willing to take on Lawrenceville’s finest when he
was told he couldn’t get in to see Wahoo. Gibson related, “Wahoo was
one of the featured wrestlers that night. There was one fan that was
very intoxicated, and they didn’t have any tickets left, and he was
determined that he was going to see Wahoo McDaniel. This guy was
adamant, ‘I’M GOING TO SEE WAHOO!’ But he was badly intoxicated, and
we had to take care of our business, so we had a BIG wrestling match
before the real matches started! The people outside had a free one,
law enforcement against an intoxicated fan, and we won!”
Gibson’s dealings with Mid-Atlantic wrestlers in Lawrenceville was
not limited to the nights they came to town to wrestle. With
Lawrenceville situated smack dab on Route 58, a highway that
connects Interstate 95 with Interstate 85, Gibson frequently stopped
wrestlers for speeding as they were passing through Lawrenceville,
racing from one town to the next. Gibson reflected, “It would never
fail, the car I stopped would always be a Cadillac…always a
Cadillac. The wrestlers would be coming from Charlotte, or going
back to Charlotte. We probably pulled a couple of them a month;
stopped them and talked to them. They needed to get to places quick.
Lots of miles under their belts, and a whole lot of speeding tickets
to go with them! But I can safely say that I never wrote a wrestler
a ticket. Most of those guys were really good to get along with.
They were really cool to talk to, and they answered anything you
asked them.”
According to Gibson, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling held a
special place in the farming communities of Southside Virginia.
“When I was a child growing up around here, you thought tobacco 24
hours a day and seven days a week until it was over. But every
Saturday for an hour, it did not matter; we stopped everything we
were doing for my grandfather to go to the house and watch
Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling. It never failed. We always
looked forward to that break on the weekends.”
And that love of watching Mid-Atlantic wrestling on television
translated to lots of paying customers when the wrestlers came to
Lawrenceville. Gibson said, “The Brunswick County Senior High School
Gym at the time held 800-1000 people and it was standing room only,
so you couldn’t even move in there. The Taylor-Whitehead Gym at St.
Paul’s College would probably hold between 2,000-3,000 people, and
they’d turn people away. It was awesome. I wish we would get it
back!”
Spot shows rarely featured championship belts changing hands, as
those momentous events were nearly always reserved for bigger towns,
but the Taylor-Whitehead Gym in Lawrenceville was an exception to
the rule. In the
 spring
of 1982, the fans at the Taylor-Whitehead Gym saw the team of
Private Jim Nelson and Private Don Kernodle defeat Jay Youngblood
and Porkchop Cash for the Mid-Atlantic Tag Team Championship. This
victory was the first Title held by either Nelson or Kernodle in the
Mid-Atlantic area.
Kernodle remembers the Title
change in Lawrenceville clearly, and said that the victory by him
and Nelson had a unique twist to it. “Nelson and I wrestled at that
black college just on the other side of the Virginia
border…Lawrenceville. That’s where me and Nelson won the
Mid-Atlantic Championship for the first time! We won it there…we
beat Jay Youngblood and Porkchop Cash. But…get this, we didn’t even
know we were going to win! We had a finish that we thought we were
doing…to lose [the match]. We hadn’t been champions yet…we were just
wrestling together.”
And then Kernodle flashed back to his memorable three seconds in the
Taylor-Whitehead Gym. “All of a sudden, we were going into our deal
and we thought we were gonna lose…and I covered Youngblood. The
referee counted ONE, TWO and I thought Jay was gonna kick out…and
then THREE!! [We] were supposed to win the belts. They just didn’t
tell us ahead of time. They did it as a joke! We won the damn belts,
when we thought we were losing."
Kernodle still smiles when he thinks back on that night in 1982 in
Lawrenceville. “The first time Nelson and I won the Mid-Atlantic
Championship, we won it there in Lawrenceville, and we didn’t even
know we were gonna win! That was a spot show. That wasn’t a regular
show like Richmond or Lynchburg. It was just a little ol’ spot
show!”
But even ‘little ol’ spot shows created Mid-Atlantic memories for
many that have lasted for decades. Bigger is not always better.
‘Little ol’ Lawrenceville, Virginia surely proves that point.
David Chappell
Mid-Atlantic Gateway
Originally published 7/14/10
Town of
Lawrenceville Website
The Mid-Atlantic Gateway wants to hear
about when Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling ran spot shows in
your home town high school gym or smaller arena in Virginia or the
Carolinas. Send your memories to David Chappell at
DChapp3571@aol.com and they
will be included in future installments of “Hitting The Spot.”
Copyright © 2010 Mid-Atlantic Gateway
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