Building a Book on Alabama Pro Wrestling History (Part 7)

    Formatting is in the final stages, and everything is still on track to have book in-hand by the end of January 2019.   If all goes to plan, it should be released along with a few other, similar books.

    In the meantime, I have been spending a lot of my research hours on trying to fill out other territories where most of Chris Jordan's roster worked between 1930-1935 on WrestlingData.com.  For the most part, that means filling in the Michigan towns run by Adam Weissmuller and Farmer Nick (Detroit, Battle Creek, Benton Harbor, Jackson, Flint), Mike Meroney's territory that covered the northeastern corner of Arkansas (Blytheville, Jonesboro), southeastern corner of Missouri (Poplar Bluff, Sikeston, Cape Girardeau, Caruthersville), southwestern corner of Kentucky (Hopkinsville, Paducah, Bowling Green, Owensboro) and most of western Tennessee (Dyersburg, Clarksville), a bit of Sam Avey's territory (Tulsa, Joplin, Oklahoma City), Gust Karras early efforts in St. Joseph, Missouri, as well as an assortment of other towns including Evansville, Louisville, Memphis, Chattanooga and Atlanta.  It might take awhile to find the results for Poplar Bluff and Bowling Green, as neither are currently covered in any of the online newspaper archives, but both represent significant towns in their respective territories.

Box ad from the 26 Aug 1934 Battle Creek Enquirer and Evening News

     This effort will greatly fill out the records of Joe Dillman, Freddie Knichel, Jack Purdin, Cecil "Blacksmith" Pedigo, Jack Reynolds, Dale Haddock, Stanley Buresh, Billy Love, Lon Chaney, Jimmy "Kid" Lott and Roy Welch.  After having heard so much about Roy Welch in recent years from reading books published by Mark James, as well as all of the wonderful memories from Ron Fuller's Studcast, I was surprised that so little of Welch's early career had been documented in any detail.  I wish WrestlingData had a way of showing a graph of matches being added by wrestler over time. 

    So once the book comes out, you will be better able to track the various paths taken by these, and many other, wrestlers from 1930-1935.  I will attempt to do the same for 1936-1940 when the second book is ready to go.