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Post by TTX on Jun 9, 2012 19:34:59 GMT -5
According to Pwinsider.com, WWE has acquired the Bill Watts video library. The library includes Mid-South Wrestling, Mid-South's Power Pro Wrestling TV and the original Universal Wrestling Federation.
The library was one of the largest known video collections not owned by WWE, and was actually owned by Bill Watts' ex-wife Ene as part of a divorce settlement. There had been numerous meetings and attempts to purchase the library by WWE but the two sides had been unable to come to terms. With the WWE planning the launch of the WWE Network, WWE was trying to acquire the footage to add additional material for air. WWE will officially take control of the library this week.
A source within WWE has noted that there are already discussions internally to do a DVD documentary on the promotion as well as DVDs on Ted DiBiase, Junkyard Dog and Hacksaw Duggan. All three men were huge stars for the Watts territories.
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Post by Vegas on Jun 9, 2012 19:41:37 GMT -5
According to Pwinsider.com, WWE has acquired the Bill Watts video library. The library includes Mid-South Wrestling, Mid-South's Power Pro Wrestling TV and the original Universal Wrestling Federation. The library was one of the largest known video collections not owned by WWE, and was actually owned by Bill Watts' ex-wife Ene as part of a divorce settlement. There had been numerous meetings and attempts to purchase the library by WWE but the two sides had been unable to come to terms. With the WWE planning the launch of the WWE Network, WWE was trying to acquire the footage to add additional material for air. WWE will officially take control of the library this week. A source within WWE has noted that there are already discussions internally to do a DVD documentary on the promotion as well as DVDs on Ted DiBiase, Junkyard Dog and Hacksaw Duggan. All three men were huge stars for the Watts territories. That's awesome news! I am really looking forward to seeing some UWF on the upcoming WWE Network. And I hope those DVDs (I remember at one point the WWE was recently planning a Ted DiBiase DVD anyway but it got shelved at least temporarily) discussed above indeed get released- especially the one on JYD! |
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Post by LWPD on Jun 10, 2012 8:03:42 GMT -5
The library was one of the largest known video collections not owned by WWE, and was actually owned by Bill Watts' ex-wife Ene as part of a divorce settlement. There had been numerous meetings and attempts to purchase the library by WWE but the two sides had been unable to come to terms. With the WWE planning the launch of the WWE Network, WWE was trying to acquire the footage to add additional material for air. WWE will officially take control of the library this week. Ene held out for a while, and to her credit, she was one of the few who put extensive time into digitizing and marketing the content. If she's finally selling now, its probably reached a saturation point. Good pick up for Vince either way. |
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Post by pikemojo on Jun 10, 2012 14:29:04 GMT -5
I imagine if they do finally launch their own network it will help to have an even more extensive library to pull from. It would be pretty cool some night where you can't sleep roll down and flip on WWE network at 3:00 in the morning to watch old NWA, WCW, AWA, WWF, Mid-South, UWF, WCCW. Then of course you would end up awake the rest of the night.
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Post by LWPD on Jun 16, 2012 8:31:28 GMT -5
This week's issue of the Wrestling Observer provided a comprehensive breakdown on WWE's recent purchase of the Mid South/UWF tape library, along with an overview on the history of the promotion. Dave Meltzer also walked through some of the other existing wrestling collections that are not currently available to the public. I don't know how much market value content from the Savoldi Family or Paul Boesch would have (or how much material would ever air even after a purchase) but it would probably be in the best interest of preserving history for the content to be archived into the WWE library.
Courtesy of Wrestling Observer Newsletter
"WWE this past week finalized a deal to purchase the much sought after Mid South Wrestling tape collection from Ene Watts, the ex-wife of Cowboy Bill Watts.
Ene Watts and son Micah had been selling DVDs from the collection for years through a web site, but it was inevitable that market was going to dry up at some point. It’s probably at that point now.
WWE had been after the collection for years and the family’s price to sell was deemed way above budget, until now.
What was sold is not the complete collection of the Watts promotion, which ran from 1979 to 1987, and promoted originally in Louisiana and eventually expanded to Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma and parts of Texas, most notably Houston for several years working in conjunction with Paul Boesch. During its heyday, the show did unbelievable television ratings on a local basis, generally the best of any wrestling show in the country with the exception of the Jarrett promotion.
The promotion was super successful in its early years, peaking in 1984. But a number of factors destroyed it and it was losing money like crazy by late 1986, and was sold to Jim Crockett Promotions in March, 1987, for $4 million. Bill Watts actually only got a fraction of that money (about $1.2 million). Crockett, who purchased the promotion more for its syndicated television network than anything else, took on debt that put him out of business and he sold his promotion to Turner Broadcasting in late 1988 for $9 million, which his family did get.
In hindsight, the turning point was in 1985. Several months earlier, Vince McMahon had purchased Georgia Championship Wrestling for $750,000, primarily to get the valuable Saturday and Sunday time slots on TBS. At the time, the TBS wrestling and USA Monday night slot (which eventually became Raw) and a weekend slot were the biggest national outlets for wrestling other than the occasional Saturday night special on NBC. The purchase gave McMahon a monopoly on the strongest time slots, although the AWA did eventually get on ESPN, but ESPN then wasn’t what it is now. But Ted Turner and McMahon could never get along as McMahon would send in tapes of arena shows and TV taping footage to air in the time slots instead of doing a local TV studio show as had been the tradition. Ratings for the time slot were falling, although not off the cliff or anything.
Turner made a deal with Watts in 1985 where he would put Mid South Wrestling on television and would also get into the wrestling promotion business, becoming partners with Watts in shows outside of Watts’ initial territory. During its short run on TBS, even when put Sunday afternoon time slot that had never aired wrestling, Mid South Wrestling averaged a 5.3 rating, making it the highest rated national wrestling show in the country. The number was at the time an embarrassment to McMahon, who had bragged about being the only guy who could draw big ratings on a national basis, who had the familiar time slot on the same station and was doing considerably lower numbers. But everything unraveled quickly. Turner was attempting to get out of his contract with McMahon and put Watts in the familiar time slot. McMahon was able to block the cancellation because of the contract, but knew his days on the station were done as soon as the contract was over. Jim Barnett, who at the time was still working for McMahon, put together a deal with Crockett, where Crockett would pay McMahon $1 million for the time slots. In exchange, Crockett agreed to tape shows in Turner’s studios like the old days. At that point, Turner had the wrestling show he wanted. Crockett and Watts worked together a lot. Watts used Ric Flair as world champion, and would bring in the top names from Crockett’s promotion for his big shows. The two continued to work together until Watts sold the promotion. Watts’ final episode on TBS saw him mention how the station now was going to be airing great wrestling in the regular time slotand publicly endorsed the deal.
I could write a ton about what killed Mid South Wrestling. But the real thing was simply inevitability. They were too big to be small, and pay guys $25 a shot and survive, which is how Jerry Jarrett survived. But their base markets couldn’t gross the kind of money either McMahon or Crockett could. They may be able to equal the booking and produce television that got bigger ratings, but they didn’t have the star power and couldn’t keep their stars from wanting to leave because there was more money in the other groups.
Watts himself saw the future and believed territorial wrestling was dead. While the whole business was super strong in 1985, by 1986, almost every territory was struggling, as fans went from being fans of their local wrestling to being fans of either the Crockett product with Flair, Dusty Rhodes and the Road Warriors, or the McMahon product, with Hulk Hogan, Roddy Piper, Andre the Giant, Junkyard Dog and so many others. When ESPN wanted to get into wrestling, it came down to the AWA and Mid South, and the people at ESPN who knew Sgt. Slaughter was, and didn’t know who Ted DiBiase and Jim Duggan were. The local ratings books didn’t play a factor in decision making.
At that point, because of the moves McMahon made in 1984, where he went all over the country buying time slots, the television industry viewed wrestling programming as something, like religious programming, where it was pay for play. Ratings didn’t matter, because they knew the promoters needed the time slots and the idea is the money you paid to get on TV you made back when you ran house shows in the market. So Watts and Jim Ross put together a strong national syndication package, figuring they could draw ratings, run house shows in the new markets, and sell advertising, a revenue source McMahon had but nobody else had, since nobody else had that kind of syndication.
But the cost of that network was more than they could recoup. They were not successful in drawing outside their market because they were No. 3 in terms of star power, similar to the position ECW was in during the 90s and ROH would be in today’s much tougher climate. It didn’t matter about show quality or work rate, they didn’t have the star power to the public as compared to the other two groups. Their own market was not doing well either. There was a staleness in the sense the talent was stagnated everywhere due to long-term contracts, and the Watts style of booking worked best with a more free flow of talent going in and out. Their big years were also built around introducing certain concepts to television, the music videos and the young hot babyfaces like the Rock & Roll Express, Magnum T.A., and Terry Taylor. While The Freebirds were a great heel act, the fans in the area had seen them for so many straight years off Dallas TV before they came to Mid South, that they were no longer fresh or capable of drawing big. A lot of the angles were great. Watts’ strategy going into the expansion is he believed he’d lose money at first before establishing his product in the new markets, but believed the hard hitting style and stronger television would eventually get over. But he counted on strong business in his core cities to offset those losses and keep them to numbers he could sustain. But when the big markets, Houston, Tulsa, Oklahoma City and New Orleans dropped 70 percent over a relatively short period of time, that’s not what he was counting on. Nobody can say for sure because it never had a fair shot at his goals, but I believe as No. 3 going national with less star power, it would be difficult. Jim Crockett was No. 2 and he was done by the of 1988.
The booking and star power was not as strong as it had been, although the TV show remained doing great ratings. With the benefit of hindsight, I don’t believe he would have succeeded, at least without a strategic television partner like a Ted Turner. Had their original deal gone through in 1985 and it was Watts’ booking with Turner’s financial backing on TBS, it would be hard compete for the top talent, the story of this industry probably would have been very different.
Short-term, the collapse of the oil business was a big part of the death of Mid South Wrestling. A lot of entertainment died in the region during that period. The number of concerts in Houston declined by 75% during that time period, and casualties included Braniff Airlines, one of the major carriers at the time.
A funny story from that period is with the New Orleans house shows being way down, is where he it really hit him about how difficult running an entertainment business in his core region had become. Watts kept being told the crowds were so down because the economy was so bad and that there was no disposable income in town. Those in his company gave him the example that really scared him, that there were no hookers in the French Quarter. At first Watts thought that was a made up story, but he went to New Orleans, and looked around, and realized that if the prostitution business in a city like New Orleans was non-existent, that was not a good sign for being able to turn around the wrestling business at least short-term, because it spoke of his lower and middle income adult crowd not having any money. The combination of all those drove losses far out of the realm he expected to have to deal with, and he simply couldn’t afford it.
With shows in his home base of Tulsa and Oklahoma City down 70 percent, Watts was losing $50,000 a week between running his own towns and all the weekly television bills in new markets. While he had made millions in the big years, that wasn’t the kind of money he could afford to lose for any length of time, and needed to get out.
Still, at least into the 90s, the memories remained. One prominent wrestling personality with WCW at the time, and this is when WCW was on fire, noted that when traveling through New Orleans and fans would come up and talk wrestling, they would never bring up what was going on in WCW or WWF, but it was always the Junkyard Dog, Bill Watts, The Last Stampede (the most successful run of house shows in the company’s history in 1984), Jim Duggan and things from that era. But that day is long gone. A few years back, when Jim Ross was on Raw on a show in Oklahoma and asked people in the crowd if they remembered Mid South Wrestling, expecting a big pop. There was most definitely a reaction, but it was nowhere close to what you would have expected.
The Watts family collection consists of almost every episode of Mid South Wrestling taped at the Irish McNeill Boy’s Club in Shreveport from December 1981 to December 1985, which was the company’s flagship show. It also had the run of Power Pro Wrestling shows from 1984 to the end of 1985. Power Pro was the “B” show, with the early shows consisting of what today would be considered hand-helds of arena shows shot by Joel Watts. Later, it became a regular taping at Gilley’s Night Club in Fort Worth at the end of the run.
There is also house show raw footage from late 1983 through the summer of 1985. There are some UWF shows from 1986 and 1987, but not the complete collection, including a few after Crockett bought the company, which is weird. Many of those shows are just raw footage of the matches before editing, as they have no graphics or interviews, or vignettes that would have been on the TV show. They also have the 1970s movie “Wrestling Queen,” which was about the late Vivian Vachon, which has a lot of footage from the McGuirk territory from that era.
It should be noted that none of the local promos for the arena shows were saved. If there was talk of a JYD tape, and I’ve heard rumblings they are interested in doing that, that would hurt a lot because his best stuff were his weekly promos for the shows in the New Orleans market and the rest of the territory.
Micah Watts had told people there was a lot more stuff in the collection but it was one inch and two inch reels and they felt the cost of transferring it couldn’t be made up with in sales. That would be whatever survived of the McGuirk territory, some UWF stuff and Mid South before December 1981.
The collection did not include much of the last year which was the UWF year, which I’m presuming was sold to Jim Crockett Jr. when he purchased the company in early 1987. It also didn’t include any of the 1980 Freebirds vs. JYD feud which was the hottest angle ever in New Orleans. It didn’t include the period where JYD was built. It does include maybe the last couple of years of JYD, and a lot of people like Ted DiBiase, Steve Williams, Jim Duggan, Kamala, The Midnight Express, Rock & Roll Express, Fantastics, Dick Murdoch, Jake Roberts, The Freebirds, as well as some house show main events with The Von Erichs, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes and others who came in for big shows.
The weekly Mid South Wrestling TV show was arguably the best show of its kind in that era, but I wonder how it’ll hold up with the tapings before a few hundred people at the Irish McNeil Boys Club in Shreveport. The quality as far as production values would be nil by today’s standards, but there were a lot of solid matches with very good workers, and in those days, cheaply produced wrestling that had good matches and storylines were more than enough.
WWE could market a Best of Mid South DVD, but I wonder how well that will do. I always thought a decade ago that they should have produced it and pushed it in the old market for the people who grew up with it, but it’s just been too long so I question how well it would do. It may still do okay, and it would make a great documentary, particularly since they would still have access to Bill Watts, Ross, DiBiase, Duggan and Michael Hayes, who were the major players.
When Jim Cornette and I did the Wrestling Gold DVDs many years ago, we were in discussions about having Kit Parker Films lease rights to the stuff and do a Mid South collection where we would do updated commentary on another channel and it was a project at the time I was pretty excited about. Cornette was probably even more excited, since he cut his teeth there. The real “heat” of the Last Stampede was Cornette as a rich pussy heel bringing local legend Watts out of retirement for one last go (it was so successful–in fact the most successful month or so in the territory’s history, that Watts was lured out of retirement nearly every year after by a different set of heels, naturally to diminishing returns).
But this was also more than a decade ago. I didn’t know how much national appeal it would have, but felt pushing it hard in the five-state region where those people had grown up on the product, the timing was right, or perhaps a little late but not too late. However, the VHS wrestling tapes in the 80s that paid for Parker’s beautiful home in Carmel, CA, did not do well when re-released on DVD as too much time had passed and the marketplace for advertising tapes on late night television was no longer cost effective.
Now, this is all stuff 26 or more years ago, and while some super hardcores and older fans who grew up with it would have a lot of interest, it died so long ago I don’t see DVD releases being that big. But even so, the documentary is a natural, and DVDs of DiBiase Sr., Duggan and JYD adding this footage would do at least okay.
But it’s a solid get for the network as far as new footage which for filling time on free TV would be as good or better than much of what they have. That would leave very little in the way of U.S. major territorial stuff that WWE doesn’t own.
According to Dave Bixenspan and what we’ve been able to find out, the most modern major territorial stuff that exists that they don’t own would be the Memphis collection and who knows who owns that with it being sold in parts to so many different people, and the St. Louis collection (which consists of only the last few years of Wrestling at the Chase TV) which is owned by The Fight Network in Canada.
There is also the Ron Martinez film collection, which is where the Wrestling Gold tapes we did came from. Ron died years ago. Todd Okerlund (Gene’s son) bought at least some of that collection for his Classic Wrestling company that used to produce low-priced classic PPVs (which at one time did very well when they were airing AWA stuff with the big names from the 70s and 80s).
The Savoldi family also has a big collection that includes USWA footage from Dallas. Dick the Bruiser’s wife has said they still have some of his old WWA stuff from Indiana, but has never put it for sale and at this point there would be almost no value in it except to sell to WWE.
The family of the late Fred Ward, who did his own TV show in Columbus, GA, using the same talent that appeared on TBS, is believed to have a ton of footage that nobody has seen unless they grew up in that city. For whatever reason, they have never marketed it or sold it. At one point Cornette tried to buy the footage from the family and they had no interest in selling it. The fact WWE doesn’t own it either says it’s not of good enough quality, as the latest would be 27 years ago and you’d think most would be older, or there isn’t much of it. Again, the stuff is of very little value except to sell to McMahon. If you think about it, a lot of the people who owned the tape collections, Mike Graham for Florida and the Gagne family, on a personal level, the last person they would want to sell it to would be WWE based on the history, but it was the right business move. Whatever money there was to be made from those tapes in marketing them was declining and in time would be almost gone. At that point, their only value is to McMahon for DVDs and the eventual network.
Bob Barnett and Dave Bixenspan own whatever was left of the Bill Watts collection that his wife didn’t get in the divorce. Watts sold it to Brian Last, boxes of one inch, two inch, quad, VHS tapes, some Beta tapes and a few 16 mm film reels, most of which were from the last year of the UWF. Last ended up making deals with Barnett and Bixenspan who had most of the stuff converted to DVD. There was some mid-80s stuff as well and some 1986 Crockett Cup footage.
The other major collection that is believed to still exist would be Houston wrestling. Boesch saved a lot of footage, some of which aired at a time for a nostalgia TV show and some was released in VHS form. The production values would be so-so by today’s standards, but no different from most anything else from that era. Houston was one of the major wrestling markets in the country during the entire period Boesch’s stuff would have aired. The bulk of the footage would likely be from the 80s. It’s mostly Mid South Wrestling augmented with guys Boesch would book from the outside before the business changed. But I’ve seen nothing done with that collection in many years. There has also been a question of ownership of the tapes between Valerie Boesch, Paul’s widow, Peter Birkholz, Paul’s nephew, and Nick Bockwinkel, who owned points in the Houston office when it closed.
There are a number of minor collections in existence, as Grey Pierson, who promoted Global Wrestling out of the Dallas Sportatorium in the early 90s has uploaded clips of late to YouTube from what appeared to be his broadcast masters."
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