These are the days of Bill Dundee wailing away on the Fantastics with Dutch Mantel’s bullwhip, Shoo Baby. These are the days of the concession workers, wearing their white paper hats, walking through the crowd with their metal buckets of food and drinks. These are the days when Skandar Akbar and Hacksaw Jim Duggan furiously tore at the ropes tying them to opposite turnbuckles, keeping them from ripping each other apart. These are the days when Hector Guerrero snatched a billy club from one of the police officers working the Coliseum, then waved it like a baseball bat to ward off “Dr. Death” Steve Williams and Ted DiBiase. These are the days when Terry Taylor caught Ric Flair in a sleep hold, with the crowd “exercising their vocal preference as loudly as it is possible to imagine,” per Mr. Boesch.

There are days even further gone by: the days of Playboy Gary Hart, of Karl Von Krupp, of Maniac Mark Lewin, of Sweet Leroy Brown and Dusty Rhodes, of tigers Conway and the Man of A Thousand Masks. There are the days of Danny McShain, of Johnny Valentine, of Bull Curry.

If I’m a wrestling historian, I’m what I call a fledgling. But I’m learning as I make this journey back through wrestling’s past, and I’m documenting it here. I hope you’ll join me for what promises to be an interesting time.

Son, this isn’t your mama’s Houston Wrestling… it’s so much, much more than that.

NEXT MONTH:

We'll look at one of the most popular tag teams who wrestled in Houston in the '80's... The Rock N' Roll Express.