Imagine it's Saturday night. You are sitting in the bleachers of an old bowling alley surrounded by thousands of rabid fanatics. You look up to the caged off area to your left and see Frank Bonama and wrestling legend Dutch Savage sitting at the announce booth taping the openings for the KPTV "Portland Wrestling" broadcast and the syndicated "Big Time Wrestling" broadcast. Next you see an elderly man in a bright green suit enter the ring and stumble through the ring introductions. This man would be Don Owen, the man responsible for over 60 years of wrestling in the Pacific Northwest.

If you see all this, it might just be the beginning of another big night of Pro Wrestling at the Portland Sports Arena in Portland, Oregon.

Growing up in San Jose, CA in the early part of the 1980s, I watched "Big Time Wrestling" on a one week delay every Saturday night with my dad. My earliest memories are of "Rowdy" Roddy Piper and Rick Martel battling the Sheepherders and "Playboy" Buddy Rose. Back then they were merely the wrestlers I watched every week, but little did I know they would go on to become major players in the business.

The Pacific Northwest is often overlooked by fans and people in the business alike. Even back in its heyday it was the most underrated territory in the country. The alumni reads as a who's who list, with such grapplers as "Rowdy" Roddy Piper, Curt Hennig, Rick Martel, Chris Adams, the Sheepherders, "Playboy" Buddy Rose, Governor Jesse Ventura, Stan "the Man" Stasiak, Tommy Rogers, Billy Jack Haynes, Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka, Scotty the Body (Raven), Scott Norton, Brian Adams, and so many others.

Much like the Memphis Wrestling program, "Portland Wrestling" was filmed and produced by a local station, KPTV 12 in Portland. The weekly Portland Sports Arena shows were filmed live to tape and then aired on a delay later that night on the 90 minute "Portland Wrestling" broadcast. KPTV would then syndicate a one hour version of the show entitled "Big Time Wrestling" to stations around Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, Alaska, Idaho, and even parts of Montana and California.