Clearly I have work to do! I added this JYD book to my audible stack. I’ll come back once I get it in. JYD was my shit as a lil lil kid. And my pops was sure to pump him up to me. There’s no telling what my dad knew about JYD and his drug stuff but whatever he knew, he didn’t clue me in on it. My pops worked for newspapers in Houston and back then, there was still a little bit of the Japan-style ‘covering wrestling like it’s real’ stuff going on…at least for midsouth.

Funny and random as hell aside, years later my pops knew Tony Norris…the dude who gained 40 extra pounds and became Ahmed Johnson for a bit there. He was in great shape before throwing on that ‘look good to Vince’ weight. He randomly called the crib when I was back home from college. Said he was ‘Big Tony’. I recognized his voice somehow so I clowned with him for not using his working name/not protecting kayfabe on the phone and then he came clean! Haha.

And know that you pierced my soul with your take on WWF signing Dog to kill him. They did it with a bunch of folks so I prolly can’t be too salty or hurt just cuz Dog was…err…my dog. Those dudes got action figures and, in some cases, easy ass in-ring assignments (more show than go WWF style vs the southern, more physical style of a UWF or midsouth for instance). But yeah, killing the territories was clearly the goal. Side: if Corny tells stories about Dog being drugged out with Watts, there’s no telling what dude was doing in New York.

SMW on YT? Aight. Good looking out again. I ran myself into the ground over the weekend with rasslin and documentaries..ngl. But I’ll be good by next week to jump back into some rasslin history study. Thanks for this.

>>Yes yes yes. A million times yes. I had them in midsouth
>and
>>those dudes were monsters and menaces straight up and down.
>>And yeah, I was scared of those dudes like Japanese folks
>>looked to be scared of Stan Hansen for years with him
>forreal
>>swinging a bull rope all up into the crowd. When they showed
>>up with the jokes in WWF, it made me lowkey hate WWF for a
>>minute.
>
>ppl whove only ever known them as the BWs would be repulsed at
>how they behaved before WWF lol.
>
>>I also didn’t love that Jim Duggan and JYD weren’t big
>>shit stars in WWF. I still have that big plastic JYD figure
>>tho. That’s fo sho.
>
>as a midsouth guy, if you havent read "King of New Orleans"
>you absolutely HAVE to. its sooooo good, and not very long.
>i listened to the audiobook and im gonna listen again. nice
>dive into why he was the perfect guy for that time and that
>place, and why Watts tried so hard to recreate him. in
>retrospect JYD was kind of a "catch and kill" signing, which
>is too bad.
>
>>And yeah, Smokey Mountain is a real thing..Corny deserves
>love
>>for pulling that off too. I’d figure that Paul E would
>throw
>>some flowers out over that too. Like you, I didn’t see
>much
>>of it.
>
>all of SMW is on Youtube and Im about 8 eps in. fun hour so
>far and stuff hasnt really even picked up yet.
>
>>Side note: I still don’t understand why Dr. Death Steve
>>Williams went to Japan instead of being big shit somewhere
>>here. He was EXCELLENT for hella years. A guy like him now
>>would print money.
>
>id guess it was because of the style and lack of mic work.
>lean hard into what he ws good at, avoid what he wasnt