Jim Cornette on St. Louis Wrestling History
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- Опубліковано 5 вер 2024
- From Episode 388 of the Jim Cornette Experience
Artwork by Travis Heckel!
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Wrestling at the Chase is what my dad and I bonded over in the 80s. Best time of my life.
That's awesome!
I majored in history, and am somewhat inspired by Jim to take my discipline and apply it to wrestling. Someone has to carry the sticks when these guys aren't around anymore
Godspeed if you do. Cause youre damn right
Godspeed to you my friend! We need more true proper historians like you to keep these times and spirits alive…this isn’t just history it’s important history
Ohhhhh man, as an STL guy, I’m reeeeally gonna enjoy this.
Watched St.Louis wrestling since 1969. Never missed a Chase show on TV From 1969-1983. St. Louis was once the capital of Pro Wrestling under Sam. Was an honor to meet Sam in person as a child.
Same here started watching around 68 or 69 wrestling at the chase,
Your the man still nick
St. Louis City is an independent city, which means it's not part of a county. It is adjacent to St. Louis county, though.
The Lou and Jim talking about it's wrestling history? Instaclick...
I live almost smack dab in between St. Louis and Memphis. This is absolutely fascinating as I grew up a Memphis wrestling fan...even before Jerry Lawler was king.
Jim talking about old wrestling = better than any modern wrestling.
You got that right
I watch wrestling on UA-cam on those 20 minute supercut videos by 'wrestling reality's and watch cornette videos for hours. 😅
Yea as a black urban kid teen in STL the county is wayyyyy larger then the city, it’s completely different as wel
I asked him to cover STL wrestling, specifically Wrestling at the Chase, a long time ago. I’m glad to see he’s finally covering it.
Jim remembers The CheckerDome!!
He's The Man!!
I was born in 1975, so I at least got to see the tail end of the golden era of St. Louis wrestling. Ric Flair, Ted DiBiase, Harley Race, King Kong (Bruiser) Brody, man, St. Louis wrestling was f**king epic back then.
Ric Flair loved wrestling in St. Louis especially at the Kiel Auditorium
My hometown. started Watching Wrestling at the Chase in 1975.
Stl represent
With the NWA returning to my hometown later this year, this was fantastic to hear. Thank you for everything you do in teaching us about the history of wrestling that often get overlooked!
NWA end of next month in STL. Can't wait til tickets go on sale.
On the topic of the population "swap" between St. Louis City and St. Louis County that you identified between 1940 and 1980: There was no redistricting of any kind involved. Instead, the biggest factor for that change may have been the Interstate Highways that started being built in the late 1950's and through the 60's and 70's. When these modern highways started being built, great numbers of people left the city and started living in suburbs that were popping up through St. Louis County (which, before the start of the interstate system, had been a mainly rural area...but once this transportation upgrade happened, the County became wall-to-wall suburbs over the next 40 years, which it remains today). Add to this the fact that St. Louis City cannot physically expand--it is surrounded on three sides by St. Louis County and on one side by the Mississippi River, and there's no way in Hell the County would ever say, "Here, take some of our land here in the County!". In the 1940's, it would have been very difficult for someone in the St. Louis Metro to live out in the County and work in the City--you really only had U.S. Highway 40 and U.S. Highway 66 that could get you from the county into the city, and those roads certainly weren't "Interstate quality" in those days. But during the period between 1940 and 1980, living in the suburbs (or even as far away as St. Charles County or Jefferson County) and commuting to the City became the norm. Basically, when people finally had a chance to live someplace that was less crowded and that had less crime--they did so.
City and county were separated long before that
@@jackkottwitz5236 Yes, they were separated long before that...as I said, there was no redistricting of any kind that led to the population swap. But the swap in population--where the county's population rapidly went up and the city's dropped like a rock, as it continues to do so to this day--began happening once the interstates started being completed.
Was gonna say something similar to this effect. Same thing was happening in major cities all over the Midwest.
@@jackkottwitz5236 he’s right , there were talks I remember when I was around 12 4 or 4 years ago about combining the city and county , very blasphemous idea didn’t get very far
Not to mention the Illinois side...
Before Memphis and Atlanta, there was Wrestling at the Chase in St.Louis. The History, Tradition, and Legacy of Wrestling at the Chase and St.Louis Pro Wrestling in General is priceless. Without St.Louis, there is no Memphis Wrestling, No JCP in Atlanta, No Starrcade, and definitely No Wrestlemania. Wrestling at the Chase and St.Louis Pro Wrestling started a whole new stratosphere of Pro Wrestling.
In st louis your a cardinal baseball fan and a wrestling fan it's just the way it is. So many great shows at the keil and the checkerdome, every sunday wrestling at the chase cant ever beat it.
I dunno. You guys got great hockey fans too
I live here in St. Louis, and wrestling is still very popular here to this day
"Still very popular"
Somehow I doubt it's as popular as it use to be.
I been to St Louis. It's one giant depressing slum , the most dangerous city in America and aside from the arch I hope the cardinals move to Arizona or Tampa bay once the new mayor defunds the police 🚔
@@jeffmac9642 Cardinals are St. Louis. They are inseparable. The best baseball town in the country.
@@user-dz4ty5tj7q RnF isn't very bright.
@@maxxdahl6062 Yes but in the glory days of Stan the Man Musial St Louis wasn't a third world city and was a real city. Cardinals are leaving just like the Bears leaving Chicago
Thanks for the history Jim ! And hands down can't go a day without listening to yeah
In my mind, the golden age of pro wrestling was the early 80s. I was spoiled watching Crockett-era World Championship Wrestling on Saturdays, and Wrestling at the Chase Sunday mornings.
The St. Louis scene is still a hotbed for pro wrestling!
Imagine being a fan during those days, and thinking that wrestling is real and seeing Longson doing a piledriver for the first time. They must have thought he killed the guy.
I don’t want Brian to get heated but hearing his squeaky chair again made me laugh.
"Fuckin' chair!" lol
He ripped this gimmick off directly from Conrad “Tiny” Thompson.
@@NobesBLO13 Nah if he were going to do that, he'd just quote meltzer on absolutely every question.
Brian & Corny should return to doing the "In The News" segments they once did!! Those were great!!
So weird, I was literally researching St Louis wrestling when I saw this pop up.
Would love to pick these books up
Jim doesnt realize that st louis city and county have been separate since the Great Divorce of 1876.
I could listen to stuff like this ALL DAY
Fans looking for something historically neat need to check out "Head over Heels: Remembering Wrestling at the Chase" on the Nine PBS UA-cam Channel.
This is bad ass! Gotta get these books.
"The repeat business was just incredible."
I believe that's the first time "repeat business" and "Justin Credible" have been used in the same sentence.
What's wrong with Justin Credible?
@@gaylordfocker7990 A lot of people don't like him, but that's just a testament to how good a heel he actually was.
That’s just diabolical what you said…
Finally St .Louis talk
From St.Louis this rocks
st. louis city is not in any county. it was also forbidden to annex any bordering areas.
St Louis is the capital of wrestling! That’s the only thing good about St. Louis! Rip Wrestling at the Chase & The Checkerdome. 💯
I from St. Louis and I’m campaigning from JC to be president of the world 🌍 in 2024
Weird to see KORN in the thumbnail as a metal fan 😂
All Day I Dream About Wrestling
I associate it more with Hee-Haw and Charlie Farquharson (Don Harron)
Yes, deal it it. 🤘🏻
We are indeed a weirdo city where the county and city are totally separate.
Imos Pizza
NWA is returning to St Luis next month fir NWA73!
Call it what you want doesn't make it so
Interested to see what they draw.
St. Louis is now 300k as of 2019. Like Batimore City it's independent of the county.
Packs was bought out completely by the group of Thesz, Managoff, Longson, Frank Tunney and Eddie Quinn. So Longson was bts WHILE he was drawing. Not just after.
My family is from St.Louis my Grandfather was a major fan of Wrestling at The Chase. I never had an opportunity to meet my Grandfather but my Dad tells stories of how much he loved wrestling at the Chase. The reason the population changed was because of white flight to the county areas
St. Louis is a major exaple of intercity flight. A large section of the population of the city moved out into the suburbs throughout the late 1940s, 50s, and 60s after the War and by even 1970, their population had shrank by over 30% and by 1990 had shrank by 2/3rds.
Would love to watch a video on Stampede wrestling
10:10 I haven't looked at the overall population picture. However, I remember reading a particular book published in 2001. It mentioned St. Louis becoming an independent city in 1876 because they didn't want to pay to provide services to then-rural St. Louis County. It followed up by saying that more people lived in the city in 1876 than in 2001. I would guess there was a slow decline over the decades. Today, it's different because it anchors a major metro area full of suburbs which likely didn't exist in the 1940s.
The artwork is great
Can anyone tell me, who legitimately are the biggest box office attractions in Pro Wrestling History? I've always been curious about this and the history of Wrestling in general, but I don't have a clue where to start
Jim Londos Might have drawn bigger crowds than anyone else in history.
Thanks Corny!!!!
I definitely would love to see a movie on Jim's it would be quite entertaining
What happened here in St. Louis was an idiotic shortsighted political decision. The city didn't want to share revenue with the county, so they voted to separate from the county. What happened next was the ability to get autos more inexpensively and people decided to move away from their jobs into the suburbs. Then the money collected from taxes in the county stayed in the county and the city went into disrepair. That's a brief overview of what happened here. Just think, in 1904 St. Louis hosted the World's Fair & the Olympics. We were the 4th largest city in the US.
I might need to get some of these books.
St Louis couldn't handle the original Sheik... LOL
ha white flight was perfected in st louis county
Now we talking business best times of wrestling
NWA wrestling returning to the chase.
Vince Russo wishes he had the sort of Professional Wrestling IQ that Jim Cornette possesses … 💯
Half the I.Q. And not just about wrestling.
Jim couldn't change with the times and still wanted wrestling in 1997 to be like it was in 1977.
Longson is probably the most forgotten champion, even worse than Pat O'Connor. Lewis ruled the 20s, Londos the 30s, Thesz and Rogers the 50s, but ask most fans who ruled the 1940s, their certainty degenerates and you get folks saying Watson or Robert or Managoff or Brown (which completely plays into the fans' regionalistic tendencies), and you have to go and remind them about Longson. Amd that's when they go, "Oh, yeaaaaah...."
Without Longson, Frank Tunney would probably have sold the business and Whipper Billy Watson could have slipped between the cracks of history. Without Tunney, the NWA would have been a very different place (probably nastier than it was even with him in it), and it could even be considered that Vince Jr.'s Expansion of the WWF would never have happened. Nor would the AWA, probably, and it makes you wonder if LA's WWA would have ever stood up.
Longson is a hugely important lynchpin.
That's either a very impressive number 4 longitude draw or it is a scathing indictment against the city of St Louis for not having anything else worth watching live
STL was a bigger deal in 1940. It was the 8th largest city. So I don't think it was a lack of things to do.
There was plenty to do and sports was a major part of it. People just loved their wrestling there.
Vince destroyed wrestling! Old time wrestling will always better than anything going today 🤼🤼
It started when the girl turned out to be a better wrestler than multiple male siblings and became which wrestler child of a wrestler promoter turned out to be a better wrestler than the parent. It was akin to two scientists trying to find another planet with Earth like conditions when a third says Mars and Venus used to in the past. Completely accurate and in no way answers the question. Like two mathematicians trying to find a fourth dimension of space and a third telling them the fourth dimension is time.
Jim has some bold talk about Londos' record will never be dethroned when Kenny Omega is still in his prime.
At the end, I thought Brian was gonna quote Half Baked:
"Fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, YOU'RE COOL, and fuck you. I'm out!"
I love these podcasts but, they do just change history at times, to say he’s one of the biggest draws in history just isn’t true is it. It doesn’t matter if you use Gross, Attendance, Tv draw, every metric would state, Austin and Hogan are the biggest draws in history and it isn’t close
You're comparing national draws to regional draws.
Box office draw. No television, no pay per view, just box office. But if you include television Austin and Hogan still aren't the biggest, especially not if you're including foreign wrestlers in history. If you want to debate that television and pay per view numbers put Austin or Hogan ahead of Londos even with his superior box office, you can try to email Jim Cornette, to email Dave Meltzer. They might be convinced, it might take some debating, but the real change in history being addressed is that McMahon made the wrestling business bigger than it had been in the territorial era.
Maybe Longson's individual drawing doesn't impress you. Let's just say he doesn't compare to any WCW/WWF Monday Night War main eventer, even though it's not true. It's not just Longson here despite it. There's French Angel, there's Lou Thesz, there's a lot more guys alongside Longson making money all over the country, collectively more money than those made by the handful atop two national companies and ECW. But the truth is, Longson does AT LEAST rival any given television star. These figures given for him are just for one city in one territory, not accounting the other cities in territory and the other territories with their own cities that he went to during the other five or six days a week he was working. But let us pretend none of that closes the gap, that he doesn't come close to any television main event wrestler of the Monday Night War. There's still more wrestlers making a living, collectively making more money, by people spending less money but turning out in greater numbers, in the territorial era.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not going to claim Mistico was a bigger star than John Cena even at his peak just because he was the more consistent box office draw at the time. If sold tickets, if butts in seats, were the end all be all ROH would be considered more successful than TNA after the first decade in business and AEW would be more successful than TNA ever was in just one year, but in some cases it actually does amount to a relative or greater amount people seeing the person, to a relative or greater amount of money made, to a more successful business model.
@@insupportofjunhado I get what you’re saying but in terms of gross Austin made more money even accounting for inflation than anyone in history that isn’t debatable. Hogan’s peak popularity has never been exceeded again I don’t think that can be debated possibly the rock nowadays. In terms of biggest ever audience for wrestling on PPV it’s Wrestlemania 28 and followed by 6 other Manias, I can understand that being a huge territory star maybe felt bigger in that area but if someone 3 states over doesn’t know who you are it doesn’t compare. Again the average attendance was around 10,000 on cheap tickets. I believe the average attendance over a 5 year period from 97-02 was close to 18,000 and tickets were astronomically more expensive. I think it’s night and day, but I still respect the territory generation for being able to make big money predominantly from one area of the country
@@jasonchasney7367 Okay, but you realize that as a world champion the wrestling fans three states over did know Longson right? People read newspapers back then. They read way more magazines than they do now. They listened to their radios. Again, this 500,000+ in three year figure just refers to one city he worked a week, not even a week because St. Louis was an irregular location for him. Pay per view audiences certainly spike the box office for later guys, but that was just a once a month thing, less so when WWF only had four.
Take the population of the U.S. in 1988 and compare it to the TV audience for The Main Event with Hogan vs. Andre. Then do the same with Rikidozan vs. Lou Thesz in 1957 and Jackie Pallo vs. Mick McManus in 1962. The percentage of the country's population watching the latter two matches were larger by orders of magnitude. Books put out by reputable publishers have mentioned that TV audiences for Antonio Inoki's matches put the audiences for Hogan's TV matches to shame.
The Never Angel was here. 🖖🐱⛩🖖🏻🐼
I'm not as cool as Dan G :(
Luv Jim
listening to Jim and Brian get caught up on the county vs city shyte is funny.....the entirety of st. louis is a group of small cities pretending they are self sufficient
Not fair #'s during WW-2. Most all men gone in service. So women vs men in any area was like 10 women to 1 men if not more. Never don't think women don't get wild too. They just more sneeky about it.
ua-cam.com/video/LHYeVSZU-eE/v-deo.html
"Jim Cornette is like a walking wrestling encyclopedia" - Shane Douglas
Sucks that you're just a walking mark. Why can't we give you in exchange for someone who died and that's actually worth something? Too bad can't exchange trash for anything else but more trash
@@kevonf4810 Lighten up francis.
@@maxxdahl6062 maxie pad, stfu
@@kevonf4810 what’s your issue?
@@Sonjacrow How much time you got? lol
Jim Cornette And Brian Last Is The Siskel And Ebert Of Wrestling
You never mention "The Destroyer", the first American Pro Wrestler who wrestle in Japan.
that's completely incorrect. many before him. he didn't put the mask on till '62 or '63. Americans started going over in the '50s. Thesz and others.
@@crimsonmask5217 I read it on Wikipedia
@@AbAiken okay. And? Wikipedia isn't the be all, end all of information.
@@michaelmfwayne Without reading the article I bet it has already been edited and corrected.
@@AbAiken What you meant to say - Dick Beyer was the first gaijin wrestler to live and work full-time in Japan. Since you mention Wikipedia, they have a category collecting articles on the gaijin wrestlers living in Japan. Last I checked, it was full of the Twinkletoes McFingerbangs of the world but didn't include Beyer. Ha! He was there for six years and was a legitimate celebrity outside of wrestling. Shows you how much credibility Wikipedia has.
Come on Jim. You can't give us 90 minutes of texas history and give us a measly 20 on St. Louis.😫😫😫
You are comparing a state to a city, but the rest of the state probably deserves more coverage.
Bret hart is the best wrestler son of a promoter
Him, Macho or a Von Erich maybe
If my daddy gifted me a wrestling company, i would pay Jim whatever he wanted and give him complete creative control. It'd be the only wrestling i could enjoy.
Fak!
3:12 is what you’re here for. Thank me later…
Jimmy is great but he's leaving out the fact that there was next to nothing else to do back then lol
Your weren’t alive back then so you can’t say that
Aside from having a baseball team that won three World Series in five years? It was also a huge bowling town, and the wartime plants were churning out a lot of America's military aircraft around-the-clock. LOL at what you don't know.
Zdx#
second
FIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Cornmeal Cornette now stuck in 43
Low energy attempt.
@@maxxdahl6062 He keeps trying to make "Cornmeal Cornette" happen, but it never will. Sad little man.
Lazy carol just lazy,one day you'll surprise every one with a new comment,f-
I listen to this every week but never watch new pro wrestling...there are many of us who prefer the history stuff
@@HkFinn83 Yep. Same with me. Will watch old stuff all day, and can't be bothered at all with current wrestling.
I watched it every Sunday