For the better part of the preceding century, wrestling fans have had to make do with multiple concurrent "world" champions. In the kayfabe era, the debate always raged as to who was the better man. Later on, as the mystique of legitimate individual competition faded, the big arguing point was over which promotion was better than the other. On rare occasions you might see two competing champions square off against each other but those matches were always inconclusive and were never given the full-blown promotional build-up they deserved.

When Vince McMahon acquired the last burning embers of World Championship Wrestling in March of 2001, it seemed as though the dream of a once unthinkable inter-promotional storyline between the remaining "Big Two" North American companies was finally going to take place. Purists might have objected that the concept was tainted since both brands were now under one roof but the fact of the matter is that the sole ownership scenario was the only way such a storyline would ever have happened in the first place.

But why?

Surely the prospect of WWF vs. WCW superstars facing each other in the ring two years earlier back in 1998 would have meant the biggest box-office and pay-per-view revenue in wrestling history, so how come it could never have happened? The answer to this conundrum lies in the ruins of numerous attempts at inter-promotional angles, both national and regional, over the past several decades.

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Compared to the very public promotional shenanigans that have been going on over the last twenty years, it all must have seemed so simple back in the days of Eddie Quinn - at least on the surface. The legendary czar of wrestling in Montreal ruled the rings here unopposed from 1939 to 1964, right up until his death - so much so that his enormous success and reputation would have automatically rendered any thought of incoming competition absolutely unthinkable. Most of the disputes between promoters that did crop up were fairly minor and were always thrashed out behind closed doors, something those who were raised on the Internet would find completely incomprehensible nowadays. However, the major blow-ups invariably surrounded disputes (either legitimate or orchestrated) concerning the integrity of the world heavyweight championship. 

Since title matches were the major fan draws, one champion was simply not enough to share between dozens of money-hungry promoters. Therefore, it stands to reason that a single undisputed champion may have been in the interest of the fans, but certainly to no one else. The solution to this was to split up the heavyweight title so each territory involved could eventually have their own champion who could at least make some claim of legitimacy and lineage to the world belt. But to do this, the world title must be unified in the first place in order to give the championship (and champion) credibility.

In 1936, three years before Quinn arrived on the scene, such a scenario developed that had enormous ramifications for both the local and North American wrestling centers. Additionally, it provided a veritable promotional blueprint which Eddie Quinn would utilize some 21 years later. The previous year, in 1935, Danno O'Mahoney had defeated Ed Don George in Boston to become the undisputed National Wrestling Association world champion. Already recognized as such in Boston and New York, the Montreal Athletic Commission quickly followed suit and the title was unified. That all came to a quick and abrupt end a little over seven months later when O'Mahoney dropped a "disputed" decision to Dick Shikat in New York on March 2nd, 1936. According to plan, the title switch was not recognized in both Montreal and Boston and the old NWA world title was splintered almost as soon as it had been united. On July 13th, O'Mahoney lost his belt to Quebec's own Yvon Robert in Montreal. A year and a half later, Robert was stripped of the Boston portion of the title on February 11th, 1938 - ostensibly for refusing to wrestle Lou Thesz - and now the major centers of New York, Montreal and Boston all had their own champions who could lay some claim to the once-unified world title.

And all was right in the universe.

One year later on August 8th, 1939, Eddie Quinn arrived from Boston promoter Paul Bowser's office and began to build his own promotional powerhouse with Yvon Robert leading the way as the babyface-supreme in Montreal. During the 1940's, Quinn and Robert, along with a cast of regulars that included Thesz and Bobby Managoff, drew steadily increasing houses at the Montreal Forum. Robert even managed to sneak in an NWA world title reign when he defeated "Wild" Bill Longson at the Forum on October 7th, 1942. For almost two months, Robert was a dual champion as he also still held the Montreal championship. He dropped the NWA belt to Managoff on November 27th in Houston, Texas, but continued to rule Quebec for the rest of the decade. When the 1950's were in full swing, Eddie Quinn made what was, for him, a seemingly strange move. Independently-minded, with a heavy reliance of establishing his business relationships on an individual basis, Quinn decided to join the four-year old National Wrestling Alliance cartel of promoters in 1952. On the surface, it appeared to make sense. Robert was beginning to wind down as Montreal champion and a new local hero had not yet been lined up. 

Certainly, regular visits from a strong NWA world kingpin like Thesz could only enhance Quinn's Montreal Forum cards in the interim. In an attempt to prove he was a team player, Quinn even downgraded the Montreal title from its "world" status (at least for NWA board member consumption). Since Robert had vacated the title, a tournament was organized that saw Wladek Kowalski defeat Managoff in the final on April 2nd, 1952 at the Forum. Kowalski was just beginning to cause a stir here as a heel and he seemed a sensible choice to augment Thesz' NWA defenses on Forum cards until a new local hero could emerge.

Then, hot on the heels of this monumental decision, two things happened that would change everything.

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It wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that putting the Montreal belt on Kowalski was still somewhat of a risk. Even though he was the heelish opposite of Yvon Robert, it was must have been a daunting task to have to follow such a beloved icon. Even though his reputation was on headed on the upside, Kowalski really needed a break to put him over the top as a true superstar. Six months after his title victory, that break came. One of the most notorious episodes ever in professional wrestling history (even to this very day) took place in Montreal on October 15th, 1952. A miscued knee-drop from the top rope accidentally ripped challenger Yukon Eric's ear off during a title match at the Forum. The incident made headlines throughout North America and turned a budding star into the legendary "Killer" Kowalski overnight. Although completely unexpected, it was also the type of promotional breakthrough Eddie Quinn himself could scarcely have dreamt of. The ensuing Kowalski-Eric feud was an absolute sensation that drew record crowds in Montreal and in cities all over the continent. Suddenly, neither a local babyface champion nor the NWA world titlist was required to pack the Forum. Kowalski was now "The Man" and would go on to hold the Montreal title a record 11 times and continue to draw huge gates here well into the 1970's.

Historically speaking, it's safe to say that the 1950's truly were the Golden Age of wrestling in Quebec, and one of the main reasons which brought this about was the advent of television in the city. Due in large part to the huge publicity over the Kowalski-Eric incident, live wrestling from the Forum debuted on the french-language Radio-Canada network on Wednesday, January 14th, 1953. The first match? Why, Kowalski vs. Eric of course! Fans could now get their grappling fix on the tube every week. As a promotional weapon, TV just couldn't be beat. Stars could be made in a matter of weeks and house shows could be promoted ad nauseum so that everyone in town knew who the good guys and bad guys were, and that they could be found at the Forum each Wednesday. Generations who had only read about Robert, Thesz, Kowalski and Managoff could now actually see these athletes perform. The timing of these events couldn't have been more fortuitous and by mid-decade, Eddie Quinn was on top of the world. His TV show was consistently in the top 10 most-watched programs in the province while his house shows at the Forum were averaging about 10,000 fans on a WEEKLY basis - absolutely unheard of figures for any other wrestling capital during that era. Business was so good that Quinn even scheduled annual summer outdoor shows at the Delormier Downs baseball park - home of the famous minor league Montreal Royals team - which regularly drew in excess of 20,000 fans. But that's not to say there wasn't going to be any controversy on the horizon. 

In a remarkably similar scenario to that which took place with the old National Wrestling Association in 1936, the ever-independent Quinn was a key player in a series of events in 1957 which deliberately ruptured the "undisputed" NWA world championship claim and splintered the Alliance for decades to come. 

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By that year, Lou Thesz seemingly had had enough of the NWA cartel of promoters - specifically with Sam Muchnick of St.Louis, who was also NWA president. So, plans were formulated for a world title switch. In Montreal, the great Yvon Robert retired and Quinn had finally found a marketable babyface when he anointed popular Edouard Carpentier as the heir apparent. Since Quinn owned Carpentier's contract and was on good, close terms with Thesz, the NWA champ arranged to drop the world title to Edouard in Chicago on June 14th. Carpentier even posted the required $10,000 bond to insure the belt. In order to clear the way, Edouard had dropped his Montreal title to Gene Kiniski at the Forum two days earlier. On the surface (once again), Quinn seemed poised to be THE major player on the North American scene. He would stand to get a cut of Carpentier's title defenses while exerting some measure of direct control over the NWA world championship. Additionally, he had a second ace in the hole for his own shows. Kowalski, who was still drawing huge houses in Montreal since '52, was pegged to succeed Carpentier and return as local champion in Montreal. In fact, he defeated Kiniski for the belt that July 17th before over 21,000 fans at the Delormier Downs stadium.

Then, suddenly, it all fell apart... just like clockwork! On July 24th, one week after Kowalski's Montreal title victory, Lou Thesz scored a win over Carpentier at the Forum, but since it was a disqualification, the NWA world title did not change hands and Edouard continued to be recognized as champion. A short time after that, at an NWA meeting, Jack Pfefer, a notorious and controversial promoter, was invited - for reasons which remain fuzzy to this day. Word got back to Quinn and he exploded with rage. Apparently, Quinn (as well as many others) had some bad blood with Pfefer and Eddie was furious that this man was being allowed back into the sphere of the NWA cartel. As a result, Quinn withdrew Montreal from the National Wrestling Alliance and Carpentier returned the NWA title belt, resigning the championship. The NWA then had no choice but to return the belt to Thesz and strike Carpentier's reign from the books. Quinn then fired off a now-famous letter to Muchnick which was leaked to a New York newspaper. He wrote: 

Dear Sir:

I would like to explain to you again, if it is possible to get the message thru, that for the past twenty years I have been fighting the Cancer of the Wrestling Business, Jack Pfefer. This is the same man that tried to kill the Alliance, and he has loused up quite a few territories of NWA members, including New England, where I have a $25,000 investment. You, as President of the Alliance, know that everybody in it despises Pfefer, and what he stands for. You, as President of the Alliance, trying to play politics with everybody in it, must realize that sooner or later you have to face the barrier. At times you are much weaker than others. If you think it is good business for the Alliance to have Jack Pfefer consorting and in partnership, or in collusion, or working with certain members of said Alliance, I think it is your duty as a man to bring this to the attention of the rest of the members.

Remember, the first thing you asked me before the Alliance meeting is what did I think of the Alliance. I told you all, that business-wise it was no good, as the Government takes care of that. I did express my thoughts that it was a worthwhile social group, but that we should get together more often to become better acquainted on matters pertaining to business. But when you have the bold audacity to inflict Jack Pfefer on the members of the Alliance, socially, it is a little too much for me.

Yes, I did tell Larry Moquin that I was sick. In fact, I was nauseated by your conduct in allowing our common enemy to mingle with the members, thus causing them much embarrassment. I am sure when Lou Thesz hears about this incident, it will only convince him he did the right thing when he left you, and St. Louis and the meeting behind him. The reason I wished to get out of the St. Louis promotions is firstly, the promoter or promoters have shown no ability to promote for the past two years. I know you spend your time knocking Thesz as a poor business man and Longson as a dope, but sooner or later you will have to take the blame on your own shoulders. Another thing I did not like at the meeting was when that loud-mouthed, blatant individual, Cliff Maupin, a garbage collector of the old school, kept knocking Thesz about his forthcoming trip. It struck several of us very funny that you did not stand up and defend Lou, who by the sweat of his brow has been paying your salary as long as he has been champion and was making you money when he was your partner in promotion. Getting back to Carpentier you seem to overlook the fact that Carpentier is my personal property. He does not belong to you or the National Wrestling Alliance. He is not recognized by you and neither does he claim to be NWA champion. He met and defeated Lou Thesz June 14th in Chicago via disqualification. In a return match in Montreal he met and was defeated by Lou Thesz July 24th. You should be able to add two and two. I have consulted my attorney on the matter and they suggested that I write to you and have you return Edouard Carpentier's $10,000. What you are holding it for no one seems to know. If this money has not been returned within ten days from this date, I will have my attorneys turn this matter over to the U.S. Department of Justice and the St. Louis police, c/o the Bunco Squad. My attorneys seem to think this is a combination of blackmail, extortion or grand larceny.

Hope this will clarify everything.

Sincerely yours,

Eddie Quinn

That last paragraph signaled a potentially astonishing play by Quinn. An important note to keep in mind here is that the NWA cartel was under investigation by the U.S. Justice Department around this period. If Quinn was aware of this, his threat over the return of Carpentier's deposit was ruthlessly cunning. Since his promotional base was in Canada, any Justice Department probe in the States wouldn't have affected him greatly. And even if he didn't know what the Feds were up to, the tone of his letter suggests that he at least anticipated that any formal "cartel" would be doomed because of American antitrust laws outlawing such activities. In any event, it's clear that any such legal threats would have sent shivers up the spine of Muchnick and the NWA board for fear of having their business practices exposed and potentially destroying the kayfabe notion that wrestling matches were legitimate sporting contests. Naturally, Carpentier's deposit was returned, but that wasn't the end of the headaches for the National Wrestling Alliance. In fact, it was only the beginning.

Immediately following the return of the money, Edouard Carpentier set about on a tour through some of the major U.S. wrestling capitals. The problem was that he continued to be recognized by many promoters as the "world" champion because, in their eyes, he hadn't lost cleanly to Thesz. To make matters worse, in what must have been the ultimate nightmare at NWA head office, Carpentier set about losing his "world title" to just about every territory's top man that he could match up against. In a veritable orgy of championship switcheroos, new "world" titlists started popping up all over the place during the course of the next few years in places like Omaha, Los Angeles, Boston, Indiana, Minneapolis, and probably even Kuala Lampur, if Carpentier could have been able to make it there. Thanks to the actions of Quinn, Thesz and Carpentier, the true territory system that most fans identified with before the WWF expansion of the 1980's was spawned on June 14th, 1957.

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The whole Thesz-Carpentier affair of 1957 has led to a lot of head-scratching and speculation by historians and/or completists ever since it occurred, even morseo now that kayfabe has been broken thanks to the Internet. I don't claim to be any sort of expert insider and I'm sure this essay is by no means a definitive research of those events. That being said, the information that has been culled raises many significant questions. 

Judging by what I've analyzed, it is my opinion that Quinn, Thesz and Carpentier all knowingly participated in a devised scheme to split apart the National Wrestling Alliance controlling cartel in order to give the territories more power, and the star wrestlers a better bargaining position. 

Just look at the results. Who was the big loser? The Sam Muchnick faction of the NWA cartel. Muchnick had worked hard for years to keep the world title united under Thesz since the NWA's formation in 1948, and that gave him quite a bit of power. It is generally believed that Thesz also bought into this concept and would certainly have been the man for the job. However, Thesz' relationship with NWA head office was pretty low by '57 and he apparently wanted out. Given that it was on Thesz' back that the world title was unified in the first place, he couldn't have been too pleased about handing over the fruits of his labour to a group which he was on the outs with. Additionally, it wouldn't have been in his or his fellow wrestlers' interests for so much booking power to be controlled by one small group. 

For Eddie Quinn's part, he never really needed the NWA in the first place as he was already making truckloads of money in Quebec. But joining the NWA, at least for a while, kept him in close proximity to the other promoters while facilitating booking dates with the popular Thesz, who was always a big draw in Montreal. Once he learned that Thesz was going out on his own, NWA membership was no longer of any value. However, exiting the group while leaving centralized control of an undisputed world championship in the cartel's hands made little sense to a man who had built his business reputation on a one-to-one basis. He also needed an excuse to leave, and that excuse came in the form of one Jack Pfefer. 

And that's another puzzling aspect.

What was such a controversial figure like Pfefer doing at an NWA meeting in the first place? Who invited him? Claims have been made that Pfefer said he was there at the behest of Lou Thesz, but I find it hard to believe that Thesz would have made such an intensely divisive move - unless it was deliberately planned as such. By allowing Pfefer in, Sam Muchnick not only pissed off a lot of the other promoters, but he also provided Eddie Quinn with a gold-plated reason to withdraw from the Alliance and take Carpentier with him.

As for Edouard, he drew as a performer much like Antonino Rocca and Buddy Rogers, and did not need a championship belt in order to make big money. He was an international superstar who could work anywhere he wanted to and returning the NWA belt not only failed to damage him but it actually freed him up to score even bigger paydays by entering different territories as champion, and exiting with a big bag of cash.

In short, it was in the direct interests of all three men involved that the NWA world title be splintered into pieces. Since Quinn, Thesz and Carpentier all worked together after all of this went down, it's pretty clear nobody was double-crossing each other here. It had to be a co-ordinated plan between them and the timing of each move combined with the end results leads me to believe that this was something much more than mere coincidence. 

The only question that remains is whether or not any other promoters were in on the plan, or if they were actually the ones to conceive it and merely asked Quinn and company to pull the trigger because the three protagonists were so well insulated from any potential repercussions from NWA head office.

I surmise this because the formations of both the AWA in the midwest and the WWWF in the northeast were either directly attributed to what Quinn did, or at least were greatly facilitated by it. An alternate theory is that the NWA, frightened by the U.S. Justice Department's ongoing investigation of their activities, hatched the scheme to split the title themselves in order to avoid the possibility of getting busted under antitrust violations. Personally, I find it difficult to believe that Muchnick and the gang, after working so hard to unify the championship under their control, would then panic and knowingly cede so much prestige and power to the breakaway blocs of promoters - primarily the group from the northeast. Many point to the fact that the NWA, AWA, and WWWF all continued some varying degrees of relationships with each other as proof that it was all a ruse to get the Feds off their backs, but I don't necessarily subscribe to all of that. Since the wrestling landscape was changing so much, it would have been foolhardy for the NWA or any of the fledgling groups to risk isolating themselves. Even though it was undoubtedly hard to stomach,  it made good financial sense to at least appear to be cordial and friendly. 

In the end, when the dust finally settled, everybody got what they wanted - except Sam Muchnick and the NWA.

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Eddie Quinn kept rolling right along following Montreal's exit from the NWA. A mostly forgotten point is that Quinn actually attempted a little expansion of his own when he moved into Chicago in the summer of 1959. He secured a live TV slot on CBS and immediately began to run shows at the old Chicago Stadium. Utilizing his familiar crew of Kowalski, Managoff, Mighty Atlas, Don Leo Jonathan, Manuel Cortez and occasionally even Thesz, Quinn drew well, sometimes averaging about 10,000 fans per show. He was definitely on a roll. Just one year later, however, Eddie's battleship got torpedoed. In the summer of 1960, CBS declined to renew Quinn's TV contract, thus ending his foray into that city. But the truly crushing blow came when Radio-Canada opted to cancel his Montreal program as well. To say the least, Quinn was devastated. Only three years earlier when pro wrestling was white hot, R-C had been paying him upwards of $4,000 a week in broadcasting rights, and Quinn's empire was pulling in an average annual profit of around $250,000. 

But Eddie Quinn was what many would call a "high flyer". His spending habits were notorious in Montreal and he had a reputation for lavishing his friends and acquaintances with endless gifts, cash and freebies. It is rumored that Quinn once had the largest individual phone bill in Quebec and there wasn't a nightclub, racetrack or sporting event that he didn't frequent, both here and in the eastern and southern U.S. Needless to say, the loss of television ruined his Canadian Athletic Promotions company. Crowds at the Forum dwindled terribly and Quinn had no cash reserves to weather the storm. As a result, his health suffered greatly.

The combination of business stress and fast living triggered several strokes and he finally gave up the ghost and closed up shop in 1964. He died of a cerebral hemorrhage on December 14th, 1965. He was only 59 years old. 

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The upshot of it all concerns money, power, control and ego. Anybody who takes delight in vilifying Vince McMahon as the man who ruined wrestling via monopoly would do well to look back and realize that many men had tried to do exactly what he did decades earlier. What separates McMahon from the others is also what separates success from failure. The key was not so much of "vision", but SINGULARITY of vision. To put it bluntly, the NWA boardroom just wasn't big enough to contain the enormous egos of so many men who each saw themselves as the uncrowned king of their industry. Only one man can sit in the center seat and by the time everybody else finally figured this out, they were all out of business and McMahon had the keys to the castle. 

NEXT MONTH :  

Inter-Promotional Insurrection part 2: All-Star vs. Grand Prix.