It was revealed to be his false teeth, which Garvin promptly stomped in several pieces. This certainly got the fans excited, and helped to generate interest in their competition.

In mid May of 82 the ICW announced to fans they were having a voting for the fans "dream match" with fans given an address to send in their ballots. I don’t know if the counts were any more accurate than the Gore/Bush fiasco ,but a winner was quickly declared It was announced the fans had overwhelming selected Baker to challenge Savage for the ICW world title. One such match was scheduled in Frankfort Kentucky on August 4. I’m sure it was an entertaining battle, but I did not get to view it first hand. I have read on the message board or in earlier installments of this column Baker did defeat Savage with the belt not on the line, and I have no reason to doubt this info.

Ronnie Garvin also seemed to garner a lot of television time with his antics during this era. He had exposed (supposedly through a car license check ) that the Miser was Angelo Poffo.  A match was set up between the two with the Miser’s red ,white and blue mask up against Garvin’s southeastern title. For some reason the Miser was continually being scheduled to wrestle the last match of the hour long television taping, and the early matches would go over their allotted time keeping the Miser from performing for the fans. I recall this happening several times ,one specifically against Apache Luis Martinez. It was also contested by several ICW wrestlers The Miser did not have the skills to warrant a title match against the current tv champion, the great Tio .However, the moneyman continued to catch the booking breaks, except in the bout versus Garvin where he was forced to unmask.

NEXT MONTH: 

We will continue to focus on the same time frame –early 82 through mid 82-examining the mid card bouts and their participants. We will also look at the tag wars which were heating up over the US tag belts.