Redd Reddick checks in with his first column of the New Year.  Fasten your seatbelts, folks, it’s going to be a bumpy ride!

“Redd” Reddick — The Other Side of the Ropes

New Year, Same Song?

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“the revolution will not televised…”  Gil Scott Heron
“the revolution will be synthesized…”  Sascha Konietzko

Happy 2008 and welcome to the year’s very first edition of The Other Side of the Ropes. After resisting the urge to write again just before Christmas rolled around, I’m grateful that I waited. During that particular interim, I turned around cracked open a book of profound wisdom of the darker side of my hometown’s recent history. The name of this book is Black Brothers, Inc., and it pertained to the period of time in Philadelphia where a group of hardened criminals-turned ‘Black Muslims’ began a short but poignant era of violence and terror as a disciplined, well-oiled machine before collapsing into a spiral of in-fighting inspired by greed and ambition. Sounds familiar? For those readers who were previously unaware of this column or the history of pro wrestling prior to the 90s, probably not. For the rest of you, you know where this may head. Read on, if you dare…

For the group of black men from Philly’s inner-city who were dubbed the ‘Black Mafia,’ the reign of terror they ensued gave them access to money and fame, as they also had the opportunity to rub elbows with some of the movers and shakers of that time as well as many celebrities prior to their downfall. Much like the promoters who ran the Territories, who unlike the Black Mafia, managed their operations with a net of roughly 8 figures a year, including timely payoffs of key officials in the Department of Justice.  And you wondered how they never had issues with state athletic commissions. Promoters also held meetings in Vegas to maintain that the boys in the respective territories never knew how much someone got paid somewhere else. Would explain why everyone gets an envelope instead of just hard currency, right?

If anyone ever wondered what happened to those supposed halcyon days of Old School lucre, well here are a few factors to chew on: just like the Black Mafia had in-fighting, so did the promoters, and like any business, there’s always cut-throat activity. Members of the Black Mafia either put hits out on each other or got incarcerated. Promoters just tried to undercut each other some kind of way or some other design. I know it sounds vague, but I won’t lie and say they tried to kill each other literally. They were still wrestlers, after all. Another factor that led to the demise of the territory was the overall effects of Reaganomics, which pretty much screwed the entire country. Thanks to then-President Ronald Reagan’s economic edicts which lined the pockets of the wealthy even more by killing everyone else’s in the process, people could no longer afford to go to wrestling shows as much, and promoters couldn’t afford to keep their venues or advertise, and the Territories soon dried up. Notice I haven’t even mentioned a certain promoter’s son yet…

What does any of that have to do with today’s scene? Everything and more than people would know or appreciate. Say what you want about 20 or 30 years ago, but there’s no comparison to how it was run compared to now. Crooks or no, those guys were organized enough to net millions of dollars long before Vincent Kennedy McMahon could totally turn the wrestling industry on its head and give it a makeover like no one had ever conceived of. You won’t see that kind of sophistication ever again. The Black Mafia had a short but significant run just by what they did, and it’s been replaced by kids with chips on their shoulders, who shoot each other over what corner the other one sells weed or crack on, never mind the fact that the quality of either product isn’t much to fight over, but it’s more about false pride. Sounds a lot like Indy scene by comparison, does it not?

Titles, titles all the way…

While I’m on the subject of comparisons, my tag partner just asked me literally hours before I started writing about the comparison of titles now and then, and he brought up an interesting point. Up until the mid-to-late 80’s you had what were known as ‘Regional’ titles: the Mid-Atlantic title, Southern, Florida, Texas, Georgia, Mid-South and World Television titles, and while they weren’t world titles, they played a key role in the race for the fabled Ten Lbs. of Gold, as the holders of these belts gave them the right to vie for contention THE title held at the time mainly by Ric Flair. Those titles were the smaller ‘wheels’ of the ‘Wheels Within Wheels’ of heavyweight championships that loaned prestige to the NWA Heavyweight title itself; even if the holder of the Regional strap never beat Flair or whomever held the title, the fact was that a match with the NWA champion gave that person credibility automatically. Was there any mystique about Flair? Not really. What made him great wasn’t just his matches, but his schedule; when he held the NWA title, it wasn’t just his notorious lifestyle that made him great, but it built his reputation of being a classy, dignified champion, but what made him stand out even more was where and when he defended the belt. Men who came before Flair couldn’t handle the grind of a schedule that the NWA board had for whomever held the belt, but Flair took that schedule then raised the bar. One night he’s in Charlotte, Puerto Rico the next, then he’s over in Japan, then Australia. Regional champions only had to work the loop of towns where their titles held their respective sovereigns and nothing more, but nowadays, there really isn’t a regional title per se.

The typical template for an Indy promotion’s pecking order for titles usually goes Heavyweight (presumably World, but we know better), (insert extravagant division here, usually Openweight), Cruiserweight/Lightheavyweight/Jr. Heavyweight/etc., Tag Team, Women’s (optional), and for giggles, there may even be some form of Hardcore title. Notice the lack of a geographical region? some promotions may do that, but most are now following the plait du jour of the recent years, which was to phase out their ‘regional’ titles for a title of no particular weight class or geographic affiliation.  In the US scene, it makes sense not to have a region one hand if the promotion is limited in range and does not have multiple venues, but it would work if it’s the main title. The issue of the Title of Miscellaneous prestige is more challenging; you’re forced to devise match stipulations to keep things interesting without resorting to too much brutality and then you just have a Hardcore match. The thing about ‘Hardcore’ is that it’s a generic term for what was called a ‘bunkhouse’ match, where you come as you are and bring what you want to the ring outside of firearms, and go for broke. For cities that didn’t have cowboys and bunkhouses, they would just call them ‘Streetfights’, now every match of this caliber is called ‘Hardcore’ by those with no sense of history or are just plain lazy to call it anything else. No real prestige here, just pride and insanity, right?

Hey, What’s on TV?

Another thing that changed was television. Not just the programming itself, but the networks. While everyone was distracted by cable and the internet, at least on the East Coast (but imagine everyone else got hit the same way) local syndicated networks gradually fell to the wayside. In fact, one of Philly’s stations, Channel 48, which gave us ECW at its height, NWA Wildside, Combat Zone Wrestling’s Fake U TV, Ring of Honor, TNA Impact and a couple other promotions who miraculously managed to get the funds to have their product televised, no matter how underproduced it was (remember, we’re all running on shoestring budgets, in case anyone starts to bitch about their paydays. That’s what full-time jobs are for!) before being bought out by religious cable network Trinity Broadcasting Network. Now instead of seeing a random suplex or dropkick at midnight, we have to speed past a channel pertaining to our pending salvation, not that anything’s wrong with that that, but now there’s no chance of watching grassroots wrestling on TV anymore, since all the other networks are now corporate-owned, so unless you have very deep pockets, don’t even think you can get your footage to replace those infomercials at 1am…

Anyone’s best bet at this point would be to do the equivalent of what rappers who don’t get airplay do; go to the streets and put out mixtapes. About 15 years ago, wrestlers that didn’t work for Vince or WCW got recognition via tape traders. Those networks may have dried out but now you have the technology of DVD burning to replace the tapes. Failing that there’s always YouTube and the like.

That’ll do it for me. I’d write more, but I’ve probably baked enough noodles as it is with what’s here, so I’ll wait until before my next trip in a couple of weeks. I’m out…

Redd

shaka57@hotmail.com

1/14/08