My Take On 7.21.09: Black Saturday
Posted by Larry Csonka on 07.21.2009
July 14th was the anniversary of Black Saturday. With the “Rise and Fall of WCW” DVD coming out, there have been many questions as to what exactly this day was, and why it is often talked about. Check out the latest edition of My Take On for a short history lesson in “Black Saturday”…
WELCOME
Welcome back to another edition of MY TAKE ON! Due to my 411 responsibilities, I don't get to write that often, but this week I felt inspired to expand on something I talked about more than a year ago. With the "Rise and Fall of WCW" DVD coming out, there has been a lot of talk about "Black Saturday". Many new wrestling fans are asking what this exactly means. They want to know what the big deal is and why they should care about it. Let's discuss this subject. Before we start, the first thing you have to understand is that the account of this tale from the Vince McMahon DVD is, well, fiction at best. It is a revisionist history type of thing. This is the real deal.
Black Saturday
The tale starts with Jack and Jerry Brisco being majority owners of Georgia Championship Wrestling, with Ole Anderson as their head booker (and running the business aspect of the company.) They had national cable with WTBS at the time, and technically more exposure than anyone else. Their goal was to promote nationally, but Jim Barnett refused. As part owner, he wanted no part of this due to the old boys network, and thinking he would offend his friends, the other promoters.
The truth of the matter was that Barnett was embezzling funds from the company. He was pulling in a cool $200,000 a year from the company, while charging all kinds of miscellaneous expenses (gifts, reimbursements for personal expenses and the like) to the company. Barnett would eventually be forced out of the company, and later revealed to have signed with the WWF; which is important as the tale unfolds.
Now as mentioned, Ole was ruining the business end. He was sending the major talent to work what were refereed to as the "Northern Tours." They were trying to use WTBS to expand into Ohio and Michigan. This was because The Original Sheik had gone out of business, and they were trying to strengthen GCW through expansion. Unfortunately this caused the company to be spread too thin, and thusly the former strong hold towns in Georgia that had kept the company alive for years began to falter. There was also internal strife because Jack and Jerry wanted larger dividend payments for their ownership, but Ole continually claimed that they needed the extra cash flow for operating expenses. And as it always does, fighting over money caused heat in the relationship.
And this is where the story takes an interesting turn, through a simple ask of kindness. Up is McMahon-Land, Roddy Piper had recently been injured and Jack, being a friend, called the office to see how Piper was. He ended up on the phone with Vince, and a SUPER SECRET MEETING was set. Jack and Jerry would fly up to meet with Vince, and in this meeting would sell their shares to McMahon. They would then broker a deal for McMahon to buy the shares of two of the other minority owners in GCW, Paul Jones and the gentleman Jim Barnett had sold his shares to, Jim Oates.
The above deal gave McMahon 51% ownership of GCW, and the right to run the promotion as he saw fit. It was then that it was revealed that Barnett had signed to work with WWF. Jack and Jerry Brisco would also sign with McMahon, and they would go onto feud with Arian Adonis and Dick Murdoch for the tag titles. Jack would retire from the ring, the story goes that he did not like or couldn't handle the harsh northern weather. Jerry as we all know went on to work in the office in STOOGE capacity.
BLACK SATURDAY now comes into play, July 14th, 1984. Vince McMahon heads to the WTBS studios, supposedly flanked by Gorilla Monsoon as a body guard because, as the story goes, McMahon was afraid that Ole would attack him. He would then announce the sale to the employees, and offered the current talent work. The Spoiler, Les Thornton and Mr. Wrestling II accepted the offer. Vince McMahon would then appear on WTBS, introducing what were pre-taped WWF matches, ones that had already aired in syndication. The matches were:
-WWF Tag Team Champions Adrian Adonis and Dick Murdoch vs. SD Jones and Nick DeCarlo (FINE EXTENDED SQUASH)
-Jesse Ventura vs. Chris Curtis (HORRIBLE)
-The Iron Sheik vs. Ron Hutchinson (SQUASH)
- Big John Studd vs. Bobo Brazil (HORRIBLE)
The shit then hit the fan. Seriously. Fans would flood the WTBS switchboard and as reports go, and actually asked the question, "WHERE IS MY GORDON SOLIE WRSTLING?" The ratings would go into a downward spiral, down the shitter if you will and the show was doomed. Ted Turner, who loved his wrestling, went into action. He would place two shows on the network. One was an early Saturday Morning show at 7:05am, which was run by Ole Anderson. Championship Wrestling from Georgia, as it was called, struggled to say the least and was in trouble, due to a poor timeslot and due to a shallow talent pool. Ole tried to broker deals with Memphis and Mid Atlantic (Crockett) for talent exchanges and such, but it would fail and he would sell the show to Crockett. Turner's other plan of action was giving Bill Watts a Sunday timeslot, which was a huge hit and climbed to #1 in the ratings, crushing the WWF ran show.
As it tuned out, Vince McMahon had violated the contract he bought into. You see, the deal stated that the show had to be taped from the WTBS studios, which McMahon didn't do. Turner had the right to cancel the contract, and was about too. McMahon, knowing the deal had failed was able to broker a deal with Crockett. He sold the company contract to him for $1-Million dollars. Crockett was then able to broker a deal with Turner that saw Crockett tape in the WTBS studios and move all operations to Atlanta. Turner then cancelled the Watts show and in 1985 the whole wrestling deal on WTBS was Crockett's.
And it is with that the history lesson ends. When you look back on it, it gives the whole McMahon vs. Turner wrestling war a whole new perspective. In Vince's power hungry attempt to control wrestling by buying up territories and TV deals, he grossly miscalculated he southern audience. He ended up failing, and sold to the man that would run the NWA/WCW show. The company would be then bought by Turner, the wars began and as they say, the rest is history. In an odd way, McMahon inadvertently gave birth to his biggest competition, competition that he almost lost to, and competition that he was dead set on not only defeating, but running out of business. A goal he eventually met, because he bought out his competition...
If you haven't already, make sure you bookmark 411 or better yet, set us as your homepage! As always, thanks for choosing 411 for all of you pop culture needs!
thanks for the good read, interesting stuff, can't wait for the dvd to hit
Posted By: Cody (Guest) on July 20, 2009 at 10:59 PM
Why "Black"? Nothing sad in here.
Posted By: who cares (Guest) on July 20, 2009 at 11:42 PM
Who cares: It's been called Black Saturday for years, likely because the WWF tv show was piss poor compared to the AWESOME wrestling at the time coming from Ole's boys.
Posted By: Jason (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:24 AM
Yawnsville. Stop being so lame, lamester.
Posted By: The Burger King (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:25 AM
Ole did succeed in getting a brief working relationship with Memphis & Crockett in late 1984 as Gordon Solie and Lance Russell, which is a commentary dream team, would call matches together. Jimmy Hart had a good run as manager in Georgia during that period.
Unsure what caused the end of that relationship, could have been Memphis changing bookers again as they had often done (I'd be surprised if one guy had a stint of booker for more than 6 months) to rotate talent and keep the territory fresh.
Wonder how different wrestling would have been if Turner gave the Saturday night timeslot to Watts instead of Crockett.
Good overview of the situation
Posted By: CompletePlayer (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:40 AM
"Why "Black"? Nothing sad in here. "
It's "Black" as in evil. Those two stupid drunken Indians sold their shares to McMahon without even telling the other owners what they were doing. Cowards that they were, they did it in a secret meeting, held while Ole Anderson gone home to Minnesota for his mother's funeral. Ole got a phone call from his secretary who was crying and she said "They've sold our company!" The contract stated that if any shareholders wanted to sell, the other shareholders got the first right to choose to buy those shares if they wished, and the Briscos broke that part of the contract. Notice the column says McMahon had 51% of the company with the shares he bought. It doesn't say who the other shareholders were but Ole Anderson was one of the other shareholders who were never informed that the Briscos wanted to sell there shares until it was too late. Besides being an evil, unethical, and gutless move, it was also sad because it was the end of Georgia Championship Wrestling - a great part of Southern tradition. That was the reason that the switchboards at the TV station were flooded with calls when McMahon's show came on. The people loved Georgia Championship Wrestling and despised the new WWF show.
Posted By: Ted (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:43 AM
Or, as the McMahon DVD puts it, WWE put on such great wrestling, ahhhhhhhhhh, sport entertainment, ahhhhhhhhh, hardcore hip hop dancing matches that the show was a success, and Turner wanted to buy the show from him.
Posted By: Guest#6573 (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 07:07 AM
What amuses me is how this was typical Vince back in those days, but as soon as his business was in the shitter ten years later through his own fault, and WCW started acting as real competition and tried to put him out of business, Vince et al painted them then - and now - as evil monsters who were trying to put a hard working, innocent family company out of business. Hypocrisy? Next to Kennedy, it's Vince's middle name.
Posted By: MW (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 07:52 AM
Hold on...hold on.
You're suggesting Ted Turner was a wrestling fan?
Then why didn't he step in in 1994/1995 and say to creative..."Hey guys. The shows suck. Hogan will draw on his own, so write half decent stories 'kay"
instead of
"Well I'm earning millions of dollars to add to my billions of dollars, so I don't care that my wrestling program is utter, utter shit."
Posted By: Peter (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 07:55 AM
No Beautiful Sendoff?
Boourns!
Posted By: ROHawkeye (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 09:37 AM
always heard rumblings about "black saturday" but never really knew what it fully was. Seeing Mcmahon in front of that wcw banner was every bit as strange as seeing him and shane on nitro
Posted By: cj (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 09:49 AM
On a note completely unrelated to this article - but since Larry wrote this and might check the comments...
Where was the 411mania wrestling hall of fame this year?
Posted By: BobbyC (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 11:28 AM
Great read - thanks for the history lesson.
It was also 'black' for the fans...because for everyone who was watching Georgia Championship Wrestling, it totally sucked to suddenly have it replaced with some crappy regional promotion from NY. The WWF was just another regional promotion, and a lot of fans knew nothing about it, and only knew that their favorite show was suddenly gone.
Turner made his money on WTBS with wrestling, so yes, he was very attached to it and it was one of his pet projects for years. But by the time WCW started losing big time money, I'm not sure he had the same ownership responsibilities (because of Time Warner's involvement at that point).
I remember watching that Mid South Wrestling show on WTBS for those few weeks...probably the best wrestling show I ever got a chance to watch. It was just high quality and it was a shame they didn't succeed beyond their regional base, because Mid South/UWF was awesome.
Posted By: Doug (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 11:44 AM
Totally agree with Doug in Mid-South/UWF. I grew up in WWF territory, but when the local syndicated station started showing UWF, I jumped ship immediately. Better wrestling, better stories, and no Hogan sealed the deal.
Posted By: Iron Knee (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:28 PM
Wonder how different wrestling would have been if Turner gave the Saturday night timeslot to Watts instead of Crockett.
Good overview of the situation
Posted By: CompletePlayer (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:40 AM
Thx Csonka, I love these articles. But yea, I'm with CompletePlayer. I was only in diapers around this time, and even to this day, cant tell you much about Watt's UWF outside of a few main stars, but from all accounts, it was a solidly booked and entertaining promotion. How weird that the southern territories were being "attacked" by McMahon, yet one of those same southern promotions cost the other top one its time slot, and ultimately bought it out if I'm not mistaken. And then 15 years later, that same company met it's demise at the hands of the original enemy! That's crazy shit that any fan new or old should definitely read up on. Maybe with the good timeslot the UWF could have survived and worked with JCP to battle Vince, unlike the AWA who just sadly faded away.
Posted By: amsuing comments (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 03:38 PM
Oooh, a different font. Shit column.
Posted By: Mil Mascaras (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 06:15 PM
In early 1984 the cable company for city that I where I lived in the Bay Area started receiving USA and TBS so it was my first chance at seeing WWF, which was a buzz in the mags because of the talent build up, and GCW, which had been always well known as a great territory. This was exciting because at this point Roy Shires S.F. promotion and the LeBell's L.A. promotion, which we saw here via syndication on the Spanish language station, were long gone. The wrestling was AWA, which was still very good, and the Poffo's ICW with Macho, etc. I thought that the WWF style was slow and plodding, punch/kick compared to the more mat oriented GCW. That summer, laid up by a back injury, I got to spend more time to watch and WWF started appearing seemingly everywhere on Bay Area TV. Vince got both the AWA's and ICW's timeslots (though by mid-84, the ICW shows were mostly reruns) so when I tuned into TBS at 3:05 PDT and saw Freddie Miller open the show by introducing Vince and the same matches that I'd seen pretty much twice already that day on USA and one of the S.F. stations, I was pissed. I returned to work that fall and working weekends never got to see how this played out the rest of the year. I wasn't able to see wrestling on Saturday again until the Spring of '85. It was great to see JCP on TBS instead of WWF, which I was really starting to feel disdain for because of Vince's style of wrestling and the fact that many of the great stars from the NWA and AWA that had jumped, weren't used the same way they had been in their previous promotions. They moved more towards a family entertainment style whereas JCP stayed with the more intense old school style.
Like Complete Player said, I wonder what would have happened if Bill Watts had been given the opportunity to buy that 6:05 Eastern time slot. I didn't get to see Watts' show until near the end of UWF and eventually on YouTube. I really liked the Ole/Crockett/pre-WCW Turner years of TBS shows but I think that Mid South was amazing, a better overall product (the booker didn't always put himself in the middle of the best storylines), and may have been even more competitive against Vince in the mid to late 1980's. But Watts wasn't any better of a business man than Jim Crockett Jr. though and Vince was far superior to both of them so the results may have ended up the same.
Posted By: cabronte (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 06:34 PM
"Oooh, a different font. Shit column.
Posted By: Mil Mascaras (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 06:15 PM"
Another mark who can't handle ANY criticism of Vince McMahon.
Posted By: Hey (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 08:35 PM
If Watts had gotten the timeslot that Crockett got, it would have helped but not enough. Watts' promotion was based in the mid-south area of the country where the economy went dramatically downhill during the oil crunch of the mid-80's. All businesses in that part of the country were feeling the effects - not just pro wrestling - and many went bankrupt. McMahon always had the benfit of the most affluent and highly populated part of the country as the headquarters of his promotion. If roles were reversed, and Watts had a promotion that ran primarily in the Northeast and Vince McMahon's father had the mid-south territory, when Vince took over he wouldn't have been able to compete with Watts and UWF would be the biggest wrestling promotion today. The geographic location of the promotions and their respective economies were what made the big difference. One look at Vince McMahon's ventures into professional bodybuilding and professional football show he isn't necessarily a good businessman. He's never been successful at anything he's attempted outside of wrestling, unlike a businessman like Ted Turner - someone who was successful in all types of fields of business. WCW was a small part of Turner's overall business.
Posted By: Ted (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 09:09 PM
myspace facebook britney woo woo left right left left Boobs beer and asses
See what I typed, now your people reading those words I typed took your mind off how this has anything significant toward wrestling!
Posted By: Guest#6972 (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 09:44 PM
This read like something straight out of Wikipedia. Nonetheless, nice to see something discussed on this site that happened more than five years ago.
Posted By: Guest#8803 (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 10:53 PM
Hey Hey, shut your damn role. The column guaran-damn-sucked.
Posted By: Mil Mascaras (Guest) on July 22, 2009 at 02:42 PM
Thanks for the great comments. And apparently some of the kids need to get back to school, because they can't be left to the computer by themselves. But thanks for the hits Mil.
Posted By: The King of 411~! (Registered) on July 22, 2009 at 02:49 PM
Anytime.
Posted By: Mil Mascaras (Guest) on July 22, 2009 at 08:34 PM
Totally agree with Doug in Mid-South/UWF. I grew up in WWF territory, but when the local syndicated station started showing UWF, I jumped ship immediately. Better wrestling, better stories, and no Hogan sealed the deal.
Posted By: Iron Knee (Guest) on July 21, 2009 at 12:28 PM
..and to me THAT is where TNA misses the boat. They want to prove that they are a world-wide company when they have a southern market that is being totally ignored.
Posted By: Karatgold24 (Guest) on July 23, 2009 at 10:35 AM
One small detail was missing: the WWF did eventually tape a few weeks of shows at the TBS studios, as required by the contract, but the Vince-Turner relationship was already falling apart by that time.
Posted By: HMFiles (Guest) on October 07, 2009 at 10:48 AM
Copyright (c) 2011 411mania.com, LLC. All rights reserved.
Click here for our privacy policy. Please help us serve you better, fill out our survey.
Use of this site signifies your agreement to our terms of use.
The tale starts with Jack and Jerry Brisco being majority owners of Georgia Championship Wrestling, with Ole Anderson as their head booker (and running the business aspect of the company.) They had national cable with WTBS at the time, and technically more exposure than anyone else. Their goal was to promote nationally, but Jim Barnett refused. As part owner, he wanted no part of this due to the old boys network, and thinking he would offend his friends, the other promoters. 
The shit then hit the fan. Seriously. Fans would flood the WTBS switchboard and as reports go, and actually asked the question, "WHERE IS MY GORDON SOLIE WRSTLING?" The ratings would go into a downward spiral, down the shitter if you will and the show was doomed. Ted Turner, who loved his wrestling, went into action. He would place two shows on the network. One was an early Saturday Morning show at 7:05am, which was run by Ole Anderson. Championship Wrestling from Georgia, as it was called, struggled to say the least and was in trouble, due to a poor timeslot and due to a shallow talent pool. Ole tried to broker deals with Memphis and Mid Atlantic (Crockett) for talent exchanges and such, but it would fail and he would sell the show to Crockett. Turner's other plan of action was giving Bill Watts a Sunday timeslot, which was a huge hit and climbed to #1 in the ratings, crushing the WWF ran show.
