Building a Book on Alabama Pro Wrestling History (Part 4)

    Back in Montgomery, at the Archives, trying to knock out the last years of Birmingham I need to get rolling on the writing part of this project.  I will be mighty glad to get to that.  Today, I knocked out the rest of what I was missing from 1931, and picked up January through August of 1936, which leaves me a day and a half to try to get as much of the remaining 52 months as I can.  I don't think I'll quite make it, but having wrapped up 1931, at least I can get started writing as I now have the beginning of the wrestling boom in Alabama.

    It would appear that what Chris Jordan ultimately built into a multi-state territory by 1940 began with a man by the name of Curtis Sanford, who began promoting boxing for the American Legion in Birmingham in February of 1931.  This was specifically the Gorgas Post No. 115, that got the ball rolling.  The first wrestling card was held on April 6th, and deadlined by Ernie Dusek vs. John Katan with an undercard of Homer Smiles vs Billy Edwards and three boxing matches.  Smiles would go on to be a very popular football coach (there is a stadium named after him in Leeds), and Billy Edwards would soon be better known as Bad Bill Edwards, one of the more prominent heels to work cards mostly around the Birmingham area.

     The State of Alabama had recently reorganized its athletic and boxing commission, and under the new rules, only American Legion posts were to be issued promoting licenses for boxing and wrestling, so that the Legion could use the proceeds from the events to continue their community and charitable work.   By 1930, Birmingham was large enough that it had two Legion Posts, typically referred to as Post No. 1 and the Gorgas Post (No. 115).  Almost instantly, there was contention between the two posts, that would take a couple of years to shake out.  In the years and decades to follow, Post No. 115 would merge into Post No. 1, and the name of General Gorgas would be retained, and the Disabled American Veterans (DAV) organization would be given equal footing with the American Legion in the state, as far as promoting sporting events.

  By April 16th, Sanford stepped aside when the American Legion (Post No. 1) brought in Sam Siegel, along with his connections to Rudy Dusek, and thus the talent pool of Jack Curley of Jim Londos, Jim McMillen and the Duseks, all the way down to "Rubber Man" Sol Slagel.  Siegel wrote a series of articles for the Birmingham News from mid-April to June, explaining the "new style" of wrestling, introducing many of the wrestlers that would be coming to Alabama, as well as some brief history of the last few years and how he came to be in Birmingham.

  Most of the towns that began running wrestling over the following years seem to have begun as boxing towns.  In the first few years, mixed boxing and wrestling cards were common, and in a couple towns, like Sheffield and Huntsville, boxing was often the more popular, resulting in extended periods with no wrestling.  Battling Bozo was probably the most popular draw in boxing in the state in the early 1930s, both for his comedic boxing stylings, as well as his frequent appearances as a special guest referee.

   The American Legion post in Tarrant City began holding boxing cards in May, and by August, had appointed Kid Lott as their new boxing and wrestling promoter, and held their first wrestling card on August 11th.  The snowball effect kicked in, and shortly thereafter, American Legion posts all over the state wanted in on the action, promoting their own boxing and wrestling events, and thus the Alabama wrestling boom of the 1930s was born.

Archives of the Alabama Boxing & Wrestling Commission (1939-1980)

     I recently got it in my head to start working with a couple of the online pro wrestling database sites to help populate their event databases with old shows from Alabama.  I'd noticed that a lot of attention had already been given to the hot beds of wrestling (Georgia, Texas, Chicago, St. Louis, Florida, New York, etc.), but no one seemed to be working on Alabama.  Or at least not Northern Alabama, from Birmingham up. In the course of researching my family history, I'd become very familiar with researching newspaper archives and noticed that Google's Newspaper Archives included several papers from smaller towns in Alabama where wrestling was a weekly event.

     The more I read these old articles and event results, the more I realized I didn't know who most of these people were, either the promoters or the wrestlers.  So after piling about three years worth of results in to WrestlingData.com for Florence, Alabama in the 1930s-1950s, I thought I would see what might be available at the Alabama Department of History and Archives in Montgomery.

     This past Friday, I spent the whole day at the Alabama Department of Archives & History photographing records from the old Alabama Boxing & Wrestling Commission (and the prior Alabama Athletic Commission) that existed from about 1927-1980.  It was a fascinating experience for anyone interested in the bureacratic side of the wrestling business.  I'm just going to ignore the boxing part of that from here on out so I don't have to qualify anything as I go.

      The Commission was established primarily as a body to regulate (read: tax) boxing and wrestling events in the state.  Under that guise they issued licenses for promoters, match makers, time keepers, ticket takers, managers, wrestlers, referees and inspectors.  The inspectors were basically part-time employees of the commission whose job was to attend the shows, verify the wrestlers and promoters were licensed, assess the gate receipts and report everything back to the commission.  Inspectors were also used to investigate claims of outlaw shows running without a license and, if need be, bring in local law enforcement to shut down the shows and report back to the commission.   The representatives of the Commission even had badges!

     The commission held periodic meetings to discuss various topics like license applications from promoters and match makers, to try and mediate issues between promoters, receive reports from inspectors, to discuss changes in their various fees and just to update everyone on the goings-on in the state since the previous meeting.  The minutes are all bound in three enormous binders.  The binders are the old style that hold 11" x 14" papers and the whole thing weighs like 15 lbs.  As this was one of the last things I photographed, I only had time to get the oldest volume.  I didn't get every page, as some I considered very mundane or only addressed boxing.  Here are the pages of Commission minutes:

https://goo.gl/photos/iCVatFEgCr4gKMQHA

     When it came down to actual records regarding promoters, wrestlers and events, the archive contained mostly records from the 1970s.  Given the 50 year history of the commission, that was somewhat disappointing and I am curious as to what became of all the rest of the records.  Also, the records weren't all that well organized.  Despite how the various boxes of paper might be described in the Archive's catalog, basically every box was an assortment of all of the below records.  The records in question were generally of these categories:

     License applications for promoters, managers, match makers, time keepers, referees and wrestlers; anyone doing any of these tasks was required by law to pay a licence fee to the Commission each year.  The fees varied, and lists were maintained of who was currently licensed to do what, and when their licenses were up for expiration.  This was both a very fascinating and very frustrating set of records due both to the relative sparsity (again, mostly just records for the 1970s), but also because there was apparently no requirement that the wrestlers actually use real names.  Seriously, there is a registration for "Yankee #2" and on the signature line someone signed "Yankee #2".

     The staff at the Archives actually had to review all of the documents in this collection to redact any Social Security Numbers that were included on the forms.  They spent probably two hours scouring through all the forms, covering the SSNs with little Post It notes and the photocopying to the pages so they could provide me with the "sanitized" copies.  I felt bad for the amount of time they spent on that as these records didn't provide anywhere near the information I was hoping.  But they said they would have had to do it anyway whenever someone requested them, so they didn't mind.

https://goo.gl/photos/vxsPfyDAKttoSSHi8

     Event permits;  these listed the date, location and participants.  Sometimes these permits were accompanied by wrestling license applications for any as-yet-unlicensed wrestlers.  Promoters were supposed to supply lists of towns and events they were going to run 7 days in advance.  There are more than a few scolding letters from the Commission to promoters who "forgot" to submit their permits and notices of events.

https://goo.gl/photos/TeHhMzJWeFMbjFr18

     Event reports; I think these were submitted by the inspectors and listed the location, the promoter, the actual wrestlers in the show, the gate receipts and whatever fees were to be assessed.

https://goo.gl/photos/Ahs9PTTt9N3GFmMm6

     Physicians Exams; I didn't request the actual box of these, so the few I have are those that were mixed into the event reports.  Typically the exams just took place at an event.  Exams were required within 90 days of a entering the ring, and were required for any wrestler applying for a license.  Next time I go back, these will be a focus as they seem to give more actual detail than the license applications.

https://goo.gl/photos/sQK9aE4t5X7Fi8vF6

     Wrestling Reports; this was a collection I thought would be very useful, but as it turns out, all it contained were the event dates & locations and the associated gate and fees collected.  Purely financial information that I did not bother to photograph.  For what it's worth, these records correspond with the permit numbers assigned for each show.  So if someone wanted to do some forensic accounting for fun, they could tie all the records together and see how accurate the accounting was.

     Unlicensed show investigations; mixed in with all the various records were the occasional report from a commission inspector who was tasked with investigating a report of illegal shows being held.  This was another area that was rather thin in documentation.

https://goo.gl/photos/ozB64NyrvkjJ1pbd9

     Another area I skipped were all of the bookkeeping records which were mainly things like office equipment and supply inventories and expenses and all of the travel expenses sent in by the inspectors.  Lots of "where's my check?" letters from the inspectors looking for their $5 check.

     Correspondence; there was a ton of correspondance relating to all of the above.  There was an lengthy back and forth between the Commission and various National Guard commanders and promoters regarding the reach of the Commission.  For most of the history of the sport in Alabama, a great majority of wrestling event were sponsored by and held at National Guard Armories, American Legion and VFW halls.  The National Guard held the position that anything occurring under their purview was not subject to the jurisdiction of the Commission.  In some cases, promoters would even argue that any event sponsored by a military or law enforcement organization was excluded from Commission regulations, even of not held on National Guard property.    In a few cases, there were even letters from fans either complaining or praising the quality of the shows they had attended.

https://goo.gl/photos/9VckjmoSZ8kmxxcU7

     Also in the archive were a variety of newsletters and materials from the National Wrestling Association of America, which was an organization comprised of the various state commissions.  This organization was in no way affiliated with the old National Wrestling Association wrestling cartel from the 1930s-40s.  This Association seemed to exist for the purpose of providing an avenue of communication between the various state commissions to keep track of which individuals were licensed, suspended or outright banned from competing or holding events in the various states.  They also existed to hold annual conventions in exotic locations (Panama, Venezuela, Hawaii, Mexico, etc) so the state commissioners could charge their respective states for expensive vacations in the sun during the winter months.  Below are the images from the Association.

https://goo.gl/photos/eSWaHR9kfKNZGmru5

     I intend to go back sometime before the end of the year to get the rest of what I missed, and maybe by then I'll have gone through all of this and worked up some new avenues to pursue.  The staff of the Alabama Department of Archives and History were real troopers and were always happy to help.  I really appreciated their professionalism.  I'm already planning a trip to Nashville to see what the Tennessee Athletic Commission has on wrestling.

Until next time...