Booking Memphis Wrestling With Jerry Jarrett

We are fired up this week to welcome Wildfire Tommy Rich! Hear hi and Jerry tell all sorts of stories about his career, from him breaking in by doing yard work for Jerry, Jerry sending to him to Georgia to help Jim Barnett and TBS, his wild success in Georgia, the New Fabs, hiding under the ring to interfere in the Idol/Lawler cage match that saw the King's head shaved, their scaffold match with Lawler and Dundee, and so much more!

We celebrate our 40th episode by bringing together over a century of wrestling experience in Jerry Jarrett and our guest Les Thatcher. They have a fascinating discussion on wrestling history, including attempting to clear up confusion over a major event from Jerry's career that happened 50 years ago! They discuss Les's time in Tennessee as well as his multiple other achievements since debuting 58 years ago.

This week Jerry Jarrett takes us deeper into his time working next to Vince McMahon in 1993-1994 WWE, and his thoughts on several of the various talents he worked with. Hear why he loves Scott Hall but threatened to fire him after a match with Jeff Jarrett as MSG, booking the Bret Hart vs Owen Hart feud, his pride in pushing for 1-2-3 Kid and Marty Jannetty to become the tag champs, and all other great names from the era like Randy Savage, Gorilla Monsoon, Bobby Heenan, Howard Finkel, Doink, Lex Luger, Jerry Lawler, and many more.

We are so happy to have legendary Memphis referee Jerry Calhoun join us this week! An integral part of Memphis TV for more than a decade, this is an episode that fans of classic Memphis will love as he has all sorts of stories about the glory days. Hear about him breaking Jerry Lawler's leg and knocking him out of the territory for a year, being in the ring for the Lawler vs Idol match with Tommy Rich under the ring, pranks and ribs on the road, shoots in the ring, violent fans, and much more on all the classic Memphis names!

This week we take a deep look into exactly what Jerry Jarrett has been working on for the last several months - The Jarrett Parsons Wrestling TV Roku Channel! Jerry and Sean welcome Dave and Adam Parsons onto the show, as they all put the channel together. Hear about the background of the channel and how it was formed, what's currently available, and big plans for the future. Jerry says this is the most excited he's been about a project in 40 years, so get insight into why he is so passionate about the project.

This week is one of our most fascinating shows, as we bring together generations with OTT Wrestling owner Joe Cabray and Jerry Jarrett having a great discussion on 2019 pro wrestling. Based out of Ireland, Joe leads perhaps the hottest independent organization in the world right now, with a cutting edge product. Jerry has seen some of his work and is a big fan, and it's so interesting to hear these two men 40 years apart in age have so many of the same beliefs on successful pro wrestling. 

This week we take advantage of Jerry Jarrett's unique perspective as a young NWA member going back to the 70's to get his perspective on all the big names of the era. From Bruno Sammartino, to Sam Mushnick, Stu Hart, Danny Hodge, Wahoo McDaniel, Roy Shire, Mark Lewin, Haystack Calhoun, Freddie Blassie, and so many more.

This week we welcome great wrestling podcaster and Memphis fan Kris Zellner onto the show. He gets the chance to pick Jerry Jarrett's brain for an hour, talking about Memphis's expansion into different areas, the Poffos, music videos, Ole Anderson, and much more vintage Memphis content.

In this episode we bring back one of our most popular formats, the Quick Hits gimmick as Sean throws a variety of random names at Jerry Jarrett from Memphis history and he responds with the first story that comes to his mind. This time, we limited it to just to managers, talking about nearly all of them that came through Memphis and helped make the territory as special as it was. This is our tribute to all of those managers who tortured Lance, got heat, took beatings, and helped make Memphis successful!

This week we're thrilled to welcome Memphis Wrestling Author and Historian Tim Dills to the show. Tim has written several books on Memphis wrestling that can be found on Amazon, as well as tremendous pieces on the territory for Kayfabe Memories. He brings his tremendous historical knowledge to get great insight out of Jerry Jarrett on a variety of topics - from Roy Welch stories, to whether Jerry was ever tempted to book any other territories, to what can be learned from Memphis and applied to modern wrestling. Please join us for this great interview.

This week we take a look at the fascinating long-time relationship between Jerry Jarrett and Randy Savage. We start with the days of the promotional wars with the Poffo family running opposition to Jerry's promotion with ICW, Randy shockingly coming to work an inter-promotional feud with the Memphis territory, them then becoming friends during that time, great stories on time spent together in the WWF in the 90s, and their friendship afterwards.

To celebrate our 30th episode, Jerry Jarrett goes into great detail on one of his signature accomplishments  - the Lawler vs. Dundee feud from 1977 that culminated in both Bill Dundee getting his head shaved, as well as his wife! For 11 straight weeks in the summer of 1977, Lawler and Dundee faced each other in a series of wild stipulation matches. It drew 94.708 people to the Mid-South Coliseum over those 11 weeks, a record that will almost assuredly never be passed. Now hear Jerry Jarrett go into great depth on this historic run.

We start 2019 by welcoming back long-time Memphis veteran Randy Hales! We discuss classic Memphis and Power Pro Wrestling. Hear a never-told story about the time he had to use Kurt Angle's shoot credentials to keep peace during a live TV shoot, rare stories on Daniel Bryan, Jim Cornette's last run as an on-screen manager, and much more!

This week we revisit the topic of one of our most popular episodes - Vince McMahon. We go in depth on Jerry's time working in WWE with him, the details of the creation of the Mr. McMahon heel character and how Jerry produced his very first promos, Vince coming down to the Mid-South Coliseum to get physical with Jerry Lawler, the nervousness in WWE as WCW became more aggressive in the mid-90s, and some thoughts on the present day state of the industry. It's insight into Vince that you won't hear anywhere else.

This week we continue our look at 1977, which is one of the more pivotal and significant years in the history of Memphis wrestling. Hear the story of how Jerry Jarrett built his company after his split with Nick Gulas, getting a new roster, TV show, and arena. Hear stories about a 15 year old Terry Gordy working the territory, a very young and green Junkyard Dog, Dusty Rhodes coming in to wrestle Lawler, Bill Dundee being prepared for historic run against the King, sending Tommy Rich to Atlanta for a huge run with Jim Barnett, and so much more from this massive year.

This week we cover the first few months of 1977 in detail. This was a period where the Memphis territory was on fire and everything appeared to be great, until it all fell apart. Hear a great Mongolian Stomper story, Rocky Johnson working the territory with a young Rock watching backstage, the influence Jerry Jarrett's mother had in turning Bill Dundee babyface, Harley Race coming in as an NWA champion, Tojo being legitimately attacked by another wrestler, the McGuire twins, Bob Armstrong, and much more!

We are honored this week to have two of Memphis Wrestling's Mount Rushmore figures together having a conversation - listen to Jerry Jarrett and Bill Dundee as they tell stories from their decades long history together. Hear great Memphis stories, why Jerry pushed Dundee as a headliner right from the start, a lot on the Lawler feud and Bill's wife getting her hair shaved, plenty of details on the "trade" in 1984 that sent Dundee to Mid-South for Watts, and stories of the two recently visiting the WMC-5 studio in Memphis!

This week, we break down a variety of wrestlers who went through Memphis at a young age and went on to become big names in the industry. We go through a large list of names, including Undertaker, Sid, Kane, Bam Bam Bigelow, and many others. Hear some great stories, like how Jerry had a phone conversation with a young Kane's mom that may have helped save Kane's career!

This week we let you in an a very honest, emotional conversation between Jerry Jarrett and long-time Memphis mainstay and then WWE Hall of Famer - Koko B. Ware. The first half of the interview is very personal, detailing their history together. The second half focuses on Koko's wrestling career, his runs in Memphis and Mid-South, flying to New York and meeting Vince McMahon and pitching the idea of having an actual bird with him at ringside, wrestling at WrestleMania 3, and going into the WWE Hall of Fame. Join us for this authentic chat between two longtime friends!

This week we invite two hardcore old-school Memphis wrestling fans on the show to ask Jerry Jarrett any question they can think of. Our guests hosts are Travis Heckel of @memphiswrasslin1 on Twitter and Rick Crane of 70s-tv.com. We talk about a Lawler promo that almost got wrestling thrown off the channel, the LeDuc blood oath and LeDuc's memorable toss of Lawler over the top rope onto a table. We also discuss the appeal of the Road Warriors and whether talent was afraid to work with them, whether Lance and Dave ever got nervous about all of the bodies being thrown in their direction during TV, and way too many other things to mention!