Finally, the long title reign was ended, but not by any strong challenger, or loss of drawing power.  It was ended by a political move from the McMahons (plural because somewhere around here Vince, Jr. joined his father in running the promotion).  Now I don’t want to say I don’t blame Bruno for finally being fed up with their chicanery, but I will say that a friend of mine who wrestles on the indie circuit once talked to a man who wrestled for the WWF, NWA and AWA at various times in his career, and this wrestler (who will remain nameless just in case he should try to find work from the McMahons again) said the WWF had the cheapest promoters he ever worked for in his entire career.  So the relationship between Bruno and the McMahons soured and the bottom line is Bruno wanted out.

The McMahons knew which side of their bread was buttered, so they dragged their feet like hell before letting the “Living Legend” out of his contract.  The fact is they were scrambling to try to find a man worthy enough to fill the tremendous shoes of Mr. Sammartino. Finally, they made Bruno drop the title to Ivan Koloff, but since the McMahon philosophy was that only babyface World Champions draw money, he wasn’t very long for the title, and their real choice was Pedro Morales. 

Morales was already a strong draw on the under cards of WWWF events, and the idea was that New York City, the stronghold of the WWWF had a large Italian population, which always helped Bruno draw big gates in the area.  The McMahons put the title on Pedro Morales thinking lightning would strike twice and they could draw on the area’s large Puerto Rican population.  Perhaps it was due to the fact that draws like Bruno are born not made, or perhaps Puerto Ricans just don’t enjoy wrestling as much as Italians do, or maybe it’s even due to the fact that Morales had even less scientific skill than Sammartino did (my choice), but Morales just never turned out to be the drawing card they had hoped he would.

Getting back Santos (remember Tony Santos, the guy running a competing promotion in Boston), he smelled blood and began putting the pressure on the WWWF since they just lost their biggest drawing wrestler and had a champion the fans just weren’t taking to.  The McMahons felt the pressure, and they had to find a way to compete or be pushed out of the business completely.

Finally, they came up with a solution.  They had to return to the very organization they had to abandon in the first place to compete effectively.  The NWA system provided a safeguard for its members against competition.  If a non-member organization invaded a member’s territory, the NWA board would send the biggest name wrestlers to the territory and run cards on the same nights.  Since they were using bigger names, they would usually draw better crowds and put the non-member promotion out of business.  However, making this move would mean that the WWWF would have to relinquish their claim to World Title recognition.  When placed with the choice of relinquishing recognition or not having a promotion to recognize in the first place, the decision was obvious.

But just because the McMahons decided to recognize current NWA World Champion Dory Funk, Jr. as their champion, was no reason they couldn’t continue recognizing Morales as the WWWF Champion (as long as the word “World” wasn’t attached to it there was no problem).  So the WWWF wound up with the best of both worlds.  They had a title most people associated as a “World” title, although they just couldn’t come out and say that’s what it was, and they had NWA protection.

But protection was not good enough.  The McMahons, with the NWA backing them, wanted Boston for themselves, so went in to take over the territory and put Tony Santos out of business.  They succeeded in their endeavor and from hereafter Boston became another piece of the WWWF territory.  Somehow, the McMahons came out smelling like a rose.

NEXT MONTH:

I’ll look at the day the music died in professional wrestling, the birth of Hulkamania.