WWE this past week finalized a deal to purchase the much sought after Mid South Wrestling tape collection from Ene Watts, the
ex-wife of Cowboy Bill Watts.

Ene Watts and son Micah had been selling DVDs from the collection for years through a web site, but it was inevitable that
market was going to dry up at some point. It’s probably at that point now.

WWE had been after the collection for years and the family’s price to sell was deemed way above budget, until now.
What was sold is not the complete collection of the Watts promotion, which ran from 1979 to 1987, and promoted originally in
Louisiana and eventually expanded to Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas, most notablyHouston for several
years working in conjunction with Paul Boesch. During its heyday, the show did unbelievable television ratings on a local basis,
generally the best of anywrestling show in the countrywith the exception of the Jarrett promotion.

The promotion was super successful in its early years, peaking in 1984. But a number of factors destroyed it and it was losing
money like crazy by late 1986, and was sold to Jim Crockett Promotions in March, 1987, for $4 million. Bill Watts actually only
got a fraction of that money (about $1.2 million). Crockett, who purchased the promotion more for its syndicated television
network than anything else, took on debt that put him out of business and he sold his promotion to Turner Broadcasting in late
1988 for $9 million, which his family did get.

In hindsight, the turning point was in 1985. Several months earlier, Vince McMahon had purchased Georgia Championship
Wrestling for $750,000, primarily to get the valuable Saturday and Sunday time slots on TBS. At the time, the TBS wrestling and
USAMonday night slot (which eventually became Raw) and a weekend slot were the biggest national outlets for wrestling other
than the occasional Saturday night special on NBC. The purchase gave McMahon a monopoly on the strongest time slots,
although the AWA did eventually get on ESPN, but ESPN then wasn’t what it is now. But Ted Turner and McMahon could never
get along as McMahon would send in tapes of arena shows and TV taping footage to air in the time slots instead of doing a
local TV studio show as had been the tradition. Ratings for the time slot were falling, although not off the cliff or anything.

Turner made a deal with Watts in 1985 where he would put Mid South Wrestling on television and would also get into the
wrestling promotion business, becoming partners with Watts in shows outside ofWatts’ initial territory. During its short run on
TBS, even when put Sunday afternoon time slot that had never aired wrestling, Mid South Wrestling averaged a 5.3 rating,
making it the highest rated national wrestling show in the country. The number was at the time an embarrassment to McMahon,
who had bragged about being the only guywho could draw big ratings on a national basis, who had the familiar time slot on the
same station and was doing considerably lower numbers. But everything unraveled quickly. Turner was attempting to get out of
his contract with McMahon and putWatts in the familiar time slot. McMahon was able to block the cancellation because of the
contract, but knew his days on the station were done as soon as the contract was over. Jim Barnett, who at the time was still
working for McMahon, put together a deal with Crockett, where Crockett would payMcMahon $1 million for the time slots. In
exchange, Crockett agreed to tape shows in Turner’s studios like the old days. At that point, Turner had the wrestling show he
wanted. Crockett and Watts worked together a lot.Watts used Ric Flair as world champion, and would bring in the top names
from Crockett’s promotion for his big shows. The two continued to work together until Watts sold the promotion.Watts’ final
episode on TBS saw him mention how the station now was going to be airing great wrestling in the regular time slotand
publicly endorsed the deal.

I could write a ton about what killed Mid South Wrestling. But the real thing was simply inevitability. Theywere too big to be
small, and pay guys $25 a shot and survive, which is how Jerry Jarrett survived. But their base markets couldn’t gross the kind
of money either McMahon or Crockett could. Theymay be able to equal the booking and produce television that got bigger
ratings, but they didn’t have the star power and couldn’t keep their stars from wanting to leave because there was more money
in the other groups.

Watts himself saw the future and believed territorial wrestling was dead.While the whole business was super strong in 1985,
by 1986, almost every territorywas struggling, as fans went from being fans of their local wrestling to being fans of either the
Crockett product with Flair, DustyRhodes and the Road Warriors, or the McMahon product, with Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper,
Andre the Giant, Junkyard Dog and so many others.When ESPN wanted to get into wrestling, it came down to the AWA and Mid
South, and the people at ESPN who knew Sgt. Slaughter was, and didn’t know who Ted DiBiase and Jim Duggan were. The
local ratings books didn’t play a factor in decision making.

At that point, because of the moves McMahon made in 1984, where he went all over the country buying time slots, the television
industry viewed wrestling programming as something, like religious programming, where it was pay for play. Ratings didn’t
matter, because they knew the promoters needed the time slots and the idea is the money you paid to get on TV you made
back when you ran house shows in the market. So Watts and Jim Ross put together a strong national syndication package,
figuring they could draw ratings, run house shows in the new markets, and sell advertising, a revenue source McMahon had but
nobody else had, since nobody else had that kind of syndication.

But the cost of that network was more than they could recoup. Theywere not successful in drawing outside their market
because theywere No. 3 in terms of star power, similar to the position ECWwas in during the 90s and ROH would be in
today’s much tougher climate. It didn’t matter about show quality or work rate, they didn’t have the star power to the public as
compared to the other two groups. Their own market was not doing well either. There was a staleness in the sense the talent
was stagnated everywhere due to long-term contracts, and the Watts style of booking worked best with a more free flow of talent
going in and out. Their big years were also built around introducing certain concepts to television, the music videos and the
young hot babyfaces like the Rock & Roll Express, Magnum T.A., and Terry Taylor.While The Freebirds were a great heel act,
the fans in the area had seen them for so many straight years off Dallas TV before they came to Mid South, that theywere no
longer fresh or capable of drawing big. A lot of the angles were great.Watts’ strategy going into the expansion is he believed
he’d lose money at first before establishing his product in the new markets, but believed the hard hitting style and stronger
television would eventually get over. But he counted on strong business in his core cities to offset those losses and keep them
to numbers he could sustain. But when the big markets, Houston, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and New Orleans dropped 70 percent
over a relatively short period of time, that’s not what he was counting on. Nobody can say for sure because it never had a fair
shot at his goals, but I believe as No. 3 going national with less star power, it would be difficult. Jim Crockett was No. 2 and he
was done by the of 1988.

The booking and star power was not as strong as it had been, although the TV show remained doing great ratings.With the
benefit of hindsight, I don’t believe he would have succeeded, at least without a strategic television partner like a Ted Turner.
Had their original deal gone through in 1985 and it was Watts’ booking with Turner’s financial backing on TBS, it would be hard
compete for the top talent, the story of this industry probablywould have been very different.

Short-term, the collapse of the oil business was a big part of the death of Mid South Wrestling. A lot of entertainment died in the
region during that period. The number of concerts in Houston declined by 75% during that time period, and casualties included
Braniff Airlines, one of the major carriers at the time.

A funny story from that period is with the New Orleans house shows being way down, is where he it really hit him about how
difficult running an entertainment business in his core region had become.Watts kept being told the crowds were so down
because the economywas so bad and that there was no disposable income in town. Those in his company gave him the
example that really scared him, that there were no hookers in the French Quarter. At firstWatts thought that was a made up
story, but he went to New Orleans, and looked around, and realized that if the prostitution business in a city like New Orleans
was non-existent, that was not a good sign for being able to turn around the wrestling business at least short-term, because it
spoke of his lower and middle income adult crowd not having anymoney. The combination of all those drove losses far out of
the realm he expected to have to deal with, and he simply couldn’t afford it.

With shows in his home base of Tulsa and Oklahoma City down 70 percent,Watts was losing $50,000 a week between
running his own towns and all the weekly television bills in new markets.While he had made millions in the big years, that
wasn’t the kind of money he could afford to lose for any length of time, and needed to get out.

Still, at least into the 90s, the memories remained. One prominent wrestling personalitywith WCWat the time, and this is when
WCWwas on fire, noted that when traveling through New Orleans and fans would come up and talk wrestling, theywould never
bring up what was going on in WCWor WWF, but it was always the Junkyard Dog, Bill Watts, The Last Stampede (the most
successful run of house shows in the company’s history in 1984), Jim Duggan and things from that era. But that day is long
gone. A few years back, when Jim Ross was on Raw on a show in Oklahoma and asked people in the crowd if they
remembered Mid South Wrestling, expecting a big pop. There was most definitely a reaction, but it was nowhere close to what
you would have expected.

The Watts family collection consists of almost every episode of Mid South Wrestling taped at the Irish McNeill Boy’s Club in
Shreveport from December 1981 to December 1985, which was the company’s flagship show. It also had the run of Power Pro
Wrestling shows from 1984 to the end of 1985. Power Pro was the “B” show, with the early shows consisting of what today
would be considered hand-helds of arena shows shot by Joel Watts. Later, it became a regular taping at Gilley’s Night Club in
FortWorth at the end of the run.

There is also house show raw footage from late 1983 through the summer of 1985. There are some UWF shows from 1986
and 1987, but not the complete collection, including a few after Crockett bought the company, which is weird. Many of those
shows are just raw footage of the matches before editing, as they have no graphics or interviews, or vignettes that would have
been on the TV show. They also have the 1970s movie “Wrestling Queen,” which was about the late Vivian Vachon, which has a
lot of footage from the McGuirk territory from that era.

It should be noted that none of the local promos for the arena shows were saved. If there was talk of a JYD tape, and I’ve heard
rumblings they are interested in doing that, that would hurt a lot because his best stuff were his weekly promos for the shows in
the New Orleans market and the rest of the territory.

Micah Watts had told people there was a lot more stuff in the collection but it was one inch and two inch reels and they felt the
cost of transferring it couldn’t be made up with in sales. That would be whatever survived of the McGuirk territory, some UWF
stuff and Mid South before December 1981.

The collection did not include much of the last year which was the UWF year, which I’m presuming was sold to Jim Crockett Jr.
when he purchased the company in early 1987. It also didn’t include any of the 1980 Freebirds vs. JYD feud which was the
hottest angle ever in New Orleans. It didn’t include the period where JYD was built. It does include maybe the last couple of
years of JYD, and a lot of people like Ted DiBiase, Steve Williams, Jim Duggan, Kamala, The Midnight Express, Rock & Roll
Express, Fantastics, Dick Murdoch, Jake Roberts, The Freebirds, as well as some house show main events with The Von
Erichs, Ric Flair, DustyRhodes and others who came in for big shows.

The weeklyMid South Wrestling TV show was arguably the best show of its kind in that era, but I wonder how it’ll hold up with
the tapings before a few hundred people at the Irish McNeil Boys Club in Shreveport. The quality as far as production values
would be nil by today’s standards, but there were a lot of solid matches with very good workers, and in those days, cheaply
produced wrestling that had good matches and storylines were more than enough.

WWE could market a Best of Mid South DVD, but I wonder how well that will do. I always thought a decade ago that they should
have produced it and pushed it in the old market for the people who grew up with it, but it’s just been too long so I question how
well it would do. It may still do okay, and it would make a great documentary, particularly since theywould still have access to
Bill Watts, Ross, DiBiase, Duggan and Michael Hayes, who were the major players.

When Jim Cornette and I did the Wrestling Gold DVDs many years ago, we were in discussions about having Kit Parker Films
lease rights to the stuff and do a Mid South collection where we would do updated commentary on another channel and it was a
project at the time I was pretty excited about. Cornette was probably even more excited, since he cut his teeth there. The real
“heat” of the Last Stampede was Cornette as a rich pussy heel bringing local legend Watts out of retirement for one last go (it
was so successful–in fact the most successful month or so in the territory’s history, thatWatts was lured out of retirement
nearly every year after by a different set of heels, naturally to diminishing returns).

But this was also more than a decade ago. I didn’t know how much national appeal it would have, but felt pushing it hard in the
five-state region where those people had grown up on the product, the timing was right, or perhaps a little late but not too late.
However, the VHS wrestling tapes in the 80s that paid for Parker’s beautiful home in Carmel, CA, did not do well when rereleased
on DVD as too much time had passed and the marketplace for advertising tapes on late night television was no
longer cost effective.

Now, this is all stuff 26 or more years ago, and while some super hardcores and older fans who grew up with it would have a
lot of interest, it died so long ago I don’t see DVD releases being that big. But even so, the documentary is a natural, and DVDs
of DiBiase Sr., Duggan and JYD adding this footage would do at least okay.

But it’s a solid get for the network as far as new footage which for filling time on free TVwould be as good or better than much of
what they have. That would leave very little in the way of U.S. major territorial stuff thatWWE doesn’t own.
According to Dave Bixenspan and what we’ve been able to find out, the most modern major territorial stuff that exists that they
don’t own would be the Memphis collection and who knows who owns that with it being sold in parts to so many different
people, and the St. Louis collection (which consists of only the last few years ofWrestling at the Chase TV) which is owned by
The Fight Network in Canada.

There is also the Ron Martinez film collection, which is where the Wrestling Gold tapes we did came from. Ron died years ago.
Todd Okerlund (Gene’s son) bought at least some of that collection for his Classic Wrestling company that used to produce
low-priced classic PPVs (which at one time did verywell when theywere airing AWA stuff with the big names from the 70s and
80s).

The Savoldi family also has a big collection that includes USWA footage from Dallas. Dick the Bruiser’s wife has said they still
have some of his old WWA stuff from Indiana, but has never put it for sale and at this point there would be almost no value in it
except to sell to WWE.

The family of the late Fred Ward, who did his own TV show in Columbus, GA, using the same talent that appeared on TBS, is
believed to have a ton of footage that nobody has seen unless they grew up in that city. For whatever reason, they have never
marketed it or sold it. At one point Cornette tried to buy the footage from the family and they had no interest in selling it. The fact
WWE doesn’t own it either says it’s not of good enough quality, as the latest would be 27 years ago and you’d think most would
be older, or there isn’t much of it. Again, the stuff is of very little value except to sell to McMahon. If you think about it, a lot of the
people who owned the tape collections, Mike Graham for Florida and the Gagne family, on a personal level, the last person they
would want to sell it to would be WWE based on the history, but it was the right business move.Whatever money there was to
be made from those tapes in marketing them was declining and in time would be almost gone. At that point, their only value is
to McMahon for DVDs and the eventual network.

Bob Barnett and Dave Bixenspan own whatever was left of the Bill Watts collection that his wife didn’t get in the divorce.Watts
sold it to Brian Last, boxes of one inch, two inch, quad, VHS tapes, some Beta tapes and a few 16 mm film reels, most of which
were from the last year of the UWF. Last ended up making deals with Barnett and Bixenspan who had most of the stuff
converted to DVD. There was some mid-80s stuff as well and some 1986 Crockett Cup footage.

The other major collection that is believed to still exist would be Houston wrestling. Boesch saved a lot of footage, some of
which aired at a time for a nostalgia TV show and some was released in VHS form. The production values would be so-so by
today’s standards, but no different from most anything else from that era. Houston was one of the major wrestling markets in
the country during the entire period Boesch’s stuff would have aired. The bulk of the footage would likely be from the 80s. It’s
mostlyMid South Wrestling augmented with guys Boesch would book from the outside before the business changed. But I’ve
seen nothing done with that collection in many years. There has also been a question of ownership of the tapes between
Valerie Boesch, Paul’s widow, Peter Birkholz, Paul’s nephew, and Nick Bockwinkel, who owned points in the Houston office
when it closed.

There are a number of minor collections in existence, as Grey Pierson, who promoted Global Wrestling out of the Dallas
Sportatorium in the early 90s has uploaded clips of late to YouTube from what appeared to be his broadcast masters.

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Was hoping there'd be more UWF in the collection. That was a lot of fun to watch back in the day.

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The motto of the B&B section:

I honestly don't listen much-Reared On The Score Thu Jan 28, 2016 9:38 am

I love how Ene sold those things: by the episode. As if I'd show up with $450 and buy a few months of shows.

But they *did* have the two consumer products: "Giants, Midgets and Miscreants." (Alright, not its exact name, but close)

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Middle Aged Crazy, like Uncle Terry