Soon after, he realized that local professional wrestling was a huge hit with the area fans, and approached Tampa promoter Cowboy Luttrell about doing some interviews with some of his bigger talent.  He also began to do on air interviews with some of the local racing and boxing heroes. 

In the mid-fifties, Solie was asked to replace the local wrestling ring announcer, and reluctantly accepted the job.  He still did the radio jobs, too, but eventually wrestling became full time as he started to travel with the group for the Olaf Swensen Thrillcade during summer months, as well as working publicity. 

Then, television came to Tampa, and local wrestling had a new medium in which to promote itself to build a larger following.  Luttrell brought in the local sports director from the TV station, Guy Bagley.  Bagley had been a potential major league baseball player, but had moved onto broadcast journalism when his career was over.  He wasn’t particularly interested in wrestling, but the money was good, so he accepted the position and did dual duties for the station for awhile. 

After Bagley left, Bob Jones was brought in as a replacement, but Luttrell would sit in and handle co-hosting duties.  This didn’t last very long either because there was some friction between the two men, and Jones was abruptly dismissed following some disparaging remarks toward Luttrell. 

A local sportswriter Saul Fleischmann, nicknamed “Salty”, was hired to replace Jones as the play by play man, but Luttrell decided to put Gordon into the color commentator role with him.  After a few weeks, Fleischmann walked out because he couldn’t agree with the fact that the Von Brauners, a German tag team, could be realistically managed by a Jewish manager, Saul Weingeroff. 

This left Solie as the solo announcer for Tampa’s television matches.  And he couldn’t have been more prepared. 

He had already learned very much about the sport during the past few years in other capacities, but Eddie Graham, Don Curtis, and John Heath decided to put him in the training ring so that he could gain first hand knowledge of what the athletes endured during a match.  He agreed to go along because he wanted to earn the respect of the wrestlers so that he could develop a rapport with them, which would make his interviewing and announcing segments become more successful. 

The interesting thing to point out here is that Gordon wanted to learn what it felt like to be on the defensive end of a wrestling hold or maneuver, so that he may better explain to the audience exactly what they were seeing.  This approach would work in growing the fan base because they would learn the sport while watching.  He also made a point to never learn a wrestler or manager’s real name because he wanted to avoid making the mistake of calling someone by any name other than the persona in which they were working. 

Gordon continued announcing matches solo until an incident with Weingeroff angered a local fan.  The fan was a retired judge, who sent a letter to the station criticizing the wrestling program for allowing Weingeroff to verbally insult Americans, although Weingeroff was an American born citizen.  The station decided that Solie “lacked control” because he didn’t control Weingeroff’s response to one of his interview questions. 

They decided to keep Solie on, but he went back to color and worked with several different lead announcers over the next few months.  After as many changes as the drummer role in Spinal Tap, the TV station decided that Solie should once again be a solo announcer.  It was agreed that they would not back down to a fan letter expressing anger of something that occurred on their programs. 

Gordon’s role would increase in 1972, when he took a second job in Atlanta as host of Georgia Championship Wrestling for Paul Jones.  Jones had asked Graham if he could use Solie’s services because shortly after Ray Gunkel died, Gunkel’s wife Ann parted ways with Jones, taking long time Atlanta announcer Ed Capral, and started an office in direct competition with him.  Graham allowed Gordon to work in Atlanta since the taping schedules for their respective television programs did not conflict with one another. 

By this time, Gordon’s schedule was such that he was taping in Tampa on Wednesdays, doing interviews and radio spots on Thursdays, assisting with publicity and tape distribution on Fridays, before flying to Atlanta early Saturday morning for the tapings there.  He would take a return flight back to Tampa on Saturday afternoons.  Eventually, he was added to Dothan as well, for the Southeastern Championship Wrestling program, which took place on Saturday afternoons, creating another set of flights for him to work into his schedule.   

Gordon also worked with Joe Pedicino, co-hosting Pro Wrestling this Week, a show that aired clips from matches all over the country, and did short term stints with many different groups throughout the late eighties and early nineties.  Later, he also became a board member with the Cauliflower Alley Club.   

Over the span of his career, he also worked using co-hosts such as Buddy Colt, Ole Anderson, Roddy Piper, Bobby Simmons, Dusty Rhodes, Diamond Dallas Page, Larry Zbyszko, and even other legendary broadcasters, Lance Russell and Les Thatcher.   

After the corporate entity known as the World Wrestling Federation had narrowed job opportunities for most of the legends of the past, Gordon decided to retire, for the most part, and spend the remainder of his life back in Tampa with his wife Eileen.  He still did the occasional spots, but never worked again in any capacity with professional wrestling after 1995. 

Eileen passed away in 1997 after a battle with cancer, and it wasn’t too long after, that Gordon himself, a habitual smoker, would also be diagnosed with cancer himself.  The man often known as the “Walter Cronkite of Wrestling” died on July 27, 2000. 

During his life after his retirement, Gordon rarely spoke publicly, but when he did, he would often denounce the form that professional wrestling had become.  He felt it had become a television show about wrestlers, which destroyed the image he had worked so hard to portray throughout his career.  His opinion was that it had become too degrading to women, cartoonish in nature, and something that could no longer be considered tasteful enough for family viewing. 

Mr. Solie’s efforts to understand the sport and to protect its integrity were traits that many men used to copy into their own broadcasting styles.  Jim Ross and even Vince McMahon have been known to say that he was a big influence on their early announcing skills. 

Unfortunately, in today’s version of professional wrestling, the announcers could be accused of putting themselves over, disregarding the action in the ring.  Gordon was one man who could never be accused of such tactics. 

He had spent his early years in wrestling trying to complement the wrestlers as well as the action.  That announcing style is one that is sorely missing today, and one that will forever be etched in my mind. 

Gordon spent 12 years working as the voice of Georgia Championship Wrestling.  I was fortunate enough to witness many of the great moments during that period, and consider myself very lucky for the experience.   

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