Hello, and welcome to my first column on Tri-States Wrestling. My name is Paul Weston and I've been a huge fan of wrestling since the mid-70's.Most of my articles on Tri-State Wrestling will be about the company from around 1980 until it sadly went belly up a few years later. Since the last article written on Tri-States said the next would be about the fans, I feel somewhat obliged to make an effort to include this in my first topic, which will be my memories and experiences of the fans.

During this time, I was able to catch the matches live on a weekly basis - with some exceptions, as either a paying fan or pseudo-employee.  In the good ol' days, wrestling was still marketed as a fund raiser for local organizations to raise money.  In Joplin, Missouri, where I attended, the Jaycees were in charge of selling tickets (then $5.00 for ringside,$4.00 for general admission), seating the crowd and watching the fire exit doors.  My aunt and uncle were both members, and the weeks the Jaycees were short on help I worked whatever they needed in exchange for a free ticket. 

I never sold tickets, but did the other two jobs quite a bit.  My usual assignment would be guarding a fire exit.  Sometimes one person would buy a ticket to get in, and then let all his/her friends in through the side doors which only open from the inside.    This was a fairly easy job as only a couple of times did anyone try something.  In fact, the only real problem I ever had with this job came a few years after Tri-States went out of business and Central States took over.  Ring announcer Terry Garvin saw me guarding the doors and accused me of sneaking in.  I explained everything to him and even though I'm sure he didn't believe me I wasn't kicked out. 

Seating fans at ringside proved to be a whole different story.  In Joplin's Memorial Hall, where matches were held each Thursday, the Heels and Baby-faces each entered the ring from opposite sides of the building.  Because of this some fans would only sit on a certain side of the ring and in some cases a very specific seat.  Many of them had sat in the same spot for years, which was fairly easy to do back then as the Jaycees pretty much knew the repeat fans and would reserve the seats for them.  While most fans were a joy to get to know, I quickly learned you did not want to make a mistake - any mistake in seating them.  Fans bought a ticket for a certain spot and had the right to be seated properly.  However, sometimes people are put in the wrong seat by mistake and later have to move to where we should have put them to begin with.  I did my best not to make mistakes, and always apologized if one was made but many times that was not! enough.  My fellow ushers and I were often told to have sex with ourselves or that our mother was a dog or something along those lines - you get the picture.  One irate family even tried to have the police arrest an usher who put them in the wrong spot.  

While many fans loved sitting on the "good guy side" to shake hands or get autographs it surprised me that most fans requested seats on the heel side of the ring.  Fans just loved to boo the bad guy.  General Skandar Akbar, manager of Akbar's Army, always seemed to have the most heat.  I never understood why, since he was supposed to be an Arab that fans would yell, "Heil, Hitler!" at him which he played to the hilt, holding his ears and threatening to hit people with his riding crop.  Akbar always gave the crowd their money's worth and a whole lot more. He could run the gamut from comical bad guy, arguing with an eighty year-old woman at ringside to brutal villain, throwing fire in the face of a young Eddie Gilbert (RIP).  Akbar also must have had a vested interest in the company as he spent as much time counting money in the ticket booth as he did at ringside.  Years later, I worked with an accountant who actually went to high school with good ol' Skandar  in Wann, Oklahoma - a town so small that its major tourist site is "Six Flagpoles Over Wann" - no flags, no park, just six flagpoles. 

One thing the fans and wrestlers of the Tri-States area had in common was both gave 100% each and every time out.  While the crowds at the Memorial Hall only ranged from about 500 to sometimes well under 100, they made as much noise as some of today's 15,000 seat arenas.  More...