Denton was also very successful at getting Steve Doll and Scott Petersen even more over as The Southern Rockers. It would have been very easy to dismiss and pigeonhole the rockers as a typical pretty boy tag team, but they were somehow a little more. At one point in their run he went away from the tried and true pure heel antagonists for the Rockers and brought in Scotty the Body, the future Raven. Scotty looked like he could have been a third rocker, but his attitude was one of a spoiled, pampered pretty boy, and he became a great heel foil for Doll and Petersen. Of course, Denton was not without his faults. In my opinion he booked himself and Top Gun, (David Sierra) on top too much when there were others who were, while not better workers were much better draws, i.e. Doll and Petersen who were both over in a Piperesque manner, and they had the approval of Hot Rod himself who was often hanging around the Sports Arena. 

Most of the top veteran hands worked in the heel camp. Buddy Rose and Al Madril were masters of their craft and although Buddy was at the time Blow-Away diet huge he could still get his story across. And Madril, he was the master at getting and keeping huge hunks of cheap heat, he did after all hate kids. The faces tended to be the younger guys, Styles after his split from The Grappler, a young, and pudgy, Brian Adams, Doll, Petersen and Beetlejuice. In the PNW, and most of the regions of the time, this was the way it was the heels really ran the show, therefore it made sense to have your veterans doing so.

What Denton was able to do was get a show that was handcuffed and hamstrung by an over regulating commission that did not understand just what it was that was being regulated. They forced all advertising to use the word exhibition, yet they regulated it as a sport and a contest, look up the definition of hypocrisy and see if THAT would fit, and he was also semi-hindered by Owen himself. At the time the WWF was the biggest game in town and it was, with the exception of a few performers, like a cartoon.

Owen performers were wrestlers doggone it and that is what they were going to portray come hell or high water. Some may argue that the cartoony shtick of the time would not have gotten over in the area but Art Barr sure got the Beetlejuice character WAY over.

I suppose that this is sort of a rant, and if it is I apologize, but I still think the point is valid. In the bleakest of times, economically things were not good in Oregon, the WWF was taking whatever wrestlers they wanted, a strict commission, Len Denton was able to put on an exciting wrestling show that was successful in the bottom line-drawing fans.

And, he did it by going back to basics, are you listening NWA-TNA??? Can you hear me Vince McMahon??? The emphasis was on wrestling, the storytelling, the angles came from what happened inside the squared circle and not what happened in people's private lives. The one cartoon character who got over just happened to be one of the best performers of his generation, the rest of the boys had to prove themselves in the ring and that is what got them over. For my money, it is a crime that someone has not hired a man like the Grappler to work behind the scenes on the creative end of the business. I have seen the man's work and it is much more compelling then anything we are presented with today.

Grappler, from one fan, and I know there are others, thanks for the memories, you kept kayfabe hope alive at a time when it was going down for the last time.

NEXT MONTH:

Ten Great TV memories