It wasn’t the magic of the old Fieldhouse, but looking back it was just as fitting a place for this type of wrestling, perhaps more fitting.  We had to pick up tickets at a local bar, which only added to the ambiance of old school wrestling.  My grandfather came with us, and we went early because seats were first come-first served.  Unfortunately, we still wound up sitting pretty high up because that place was packed with die-hard fans (mostly high school kids).  Looking down, the ring looked pretty junky.  The turnbuckles were one long piece of foam that covered all three hooks.  I knew instantly “Superfly” Jimmy Snuka, who was scheduled to appear that night, would not do his famous leap.

So we waited in a small packed high school gymnasium on what must have been the hottest night of August.  My grandfather used his hankie as a fan to cool himself.  While we waited, I asked my mom if she ever watched wrestling when growing up.  She said she hadn’t, but my grandfather had.  He told me stories of attending matches at the Gannon Hammermill Center, still standing today, although rebuilt and remodeled, just down the street from the Civic Center.  Some of the shows he attended predated television by a considerable number of years.  I still remember the list of names he told me about included Ed Don George, Man Mountain Dean, Silo Sam, Don Leo Jonathan and probably a few more.

Finally, the first match started.  It was Baron Mikel Scicluna against a TV jobber, I think it was Bill Dixon.  Scicluna was already on his way out as a wrestler in the early 80s, so he mostly stalled during this match (not that he was ever much of a worker anyway), but he still picked up a win here.  Next was Chief Jay Strongbow wrestling Sgt. Slaughter.  Strongbow took most of the offense and beat up on the searge both in and outside the ring.  I still remember him taking a spare ring rope conveniently placed under the ring and lassoing it around Slaughter’s neck as he tried to run away.  Then the Chief pulled the former drill commander toward him for another beating.  Finally, the Indian Chief took an unexpected shoulder to the ribs and went down for the count.  I remember someone sitting behind me complaining, “That’s the same ending I saw the other night on TV!” Oh well, the magic of wrestling being real was already gone long before this night.

Another big match was Tito Santana, pre-Inter-Continental Title years, wrestling George “The Animal” Steele.  It was the usual Steele match from that time.  He stalls and hits Santana with a foreign object every chance he gets then stalls more as the ref looks for the object.  I can’t remember the exact ending, but someone got disqualified.  Tony Garea met Big John Stud, who got his share of cheers.  Garea was pushed around a lot, but avoided a big elbow to get some offense before going for the $10,000 bodyslam.  But he couldn’t hold the big man, who fell on top of him for the 3 count.

When it was feature time, my all time favorite, Snuka was getting his chance at Magnificent Muroco and the Inter-Continental Title.  Snuka and Muroco had the hottest feud in the area at the time, so this was one big main event.  Snuka got the cheers you’d expect, but when Muroco hit the gymnasium floor the crowd went nuts with jeers.  This guy had some serious heat at this time.  Suddenly something like 100 beach balls appeared from everywhere in the crowd and were thrown at the ring as everyone chanted “beach bum, beach bum” at Muroco.  At one point, Muroco threw his body over a beach ball, popping it and tried to suffocate Snuka by applying a camel clutch with the plastic beach ball over Snuka’s face (such was the magic of 70s ‘rasslin’).  There were more near 3-counts in that one match than you find in about six month’s worth Raws today, and blood was a given.  Finally, the match ended in a no-contest as the action got too out of control, but it must have lasted at least 20 minutes.

I went home, knowing this was the start of something great.  I attended every card in Erie from that day until the fall of 1992, when I missed one show because I couldn’t get out of working.  Only one other show would be held at the Tech gym, one month later in September, with mainly the same guys.  The main event of that card was Snuka teaming with Ivan “Polish Power” Putski against the Wild Samoans for the Tag Team Titles in a best-2-out-of-3-falls match (yes they still regularly had best-of-3-falls matches as late as the early 80s).  Putski pinned one of the Samoans for the first fall, but the Samoans got disqualified for the second, keeping the belts on the DQ rule.

After that it was some time before wrestling came back again because they were finishing construction of the new Civic Center.  The first card there was only the second event at the building, and the ring was exactly like what you’d see on TV, so wrestlers could now jump off the top rope if they desired.  The first Civic Center event was the Ringling Brother’s Barnum and Baily Circus, which lasted about five days.  Then wrestling came, and this card was a charity event, which for some reason meant we’d get all the stars on one big show.  The Main Event was scheduled to be a unification match with Bob Backlund’s WWF Title against Magnificent Muroco’s Inter-Continental Title with Special Referee Tony Garea.  However, just weeks before the show, Backlund lost the WWF Title to The Iron Shiek, so we were treated to a double main event of the Muroco-Backlund match for just the I-C Title and, you guessed it, Iron Shiek defending the WWF title in little Erie.  His opponent was Salvatore Bellomo (remember what I said about sub-par opponents in World Title matches in that city).  Muroco was disqualified for applying the old eye-rake on Garea, while the Shiek won with a surfboard, although the newspapers erroneously said it was his famous camel clutch.

At the next show Hulk Hogan defended his newly won WWF Title against the Iron Shiek.  Shiek attacked Hogan from behind to start the match, and choked Hulk with his Arab garb.  Then they basically did the same match as when Hogan won the title, except the Shiek never applied the camel clutch.  It ended when the Shiek tried to run back to the lockers and was counted out. I say tried because Hulk’s popularity was already so immense at this time that when he went out after the Shiek a riot started because everyone wanted to get close enough to touch him (I still can’t figure out why).  The only other thing of note on that card was that Eddie Gilbert wrestled and it was the only time I ever got to see him live.  He lost to newcomer Paul Orndorff.

After that Hogan would not appear in Erie again until close to the end of his first reign, and the Civic Center got better security to handle his popularity.  But wrestling came on a monthly basis then.  I think Snuka appeared on every card for the first few years I attended.  On many cards the matches would change from those scheduled.  We once got Bobo Brazil instead of Tony Atlas, and another time we got the Killer Bees instead of the British Bulldogs (that killed attendance for some time).  Andre the Giant appeared numerous times until turning heel.  As the WWF grew in popularity, however, the shows became more and more sparse.  They had to cover more ground, often with larger arenas, and Erie just wasn’t a priority.  The cards were scheduled every six months, then once a year, now they haven’t come to Erie since ‘97.  But I still remember the magic of monthly cards in my hometown. 

NEXT MONTH:

I’ll look a great year in WWF history, and as I mentioned, the first year I started watching regularly, 1982