Tracy Rivers Makes a Call...

In 1973 when I was working for Gunkel Enterprises I met a gentleman from Warner Robins, Ga. named Tracy Rivers.

Tracy was a good guy, very athletic and aspired to be a professional wrestler. He was trained and I had the privilege of refereeing his very first match. Along with Tracy was another guy named Bob Hall who was trained and started wrestling at the same time. Bob was a guard at Reidsville State Prison. For those of you not from Georgia, Reidsville was the maximum security prison in our state. It was where the baddest of the bad were sent, so Bob was a pretty tough customer. What he lacked in athletic prowess he more than made up for in meaness. But this story is about Tracy...

Tracy was an athlete. He had played minor league baseball in the Phillies organization and was very talented. An injury forced him out of baseball and his love for wrestling sent him on his new career path. He was about 6'5" tall and weighed around 240 pounds. He was not the weightlifter type but was a good looking guy who had the looks to succeed in our business. The first few matches he had were as you would expect... just so - so . It was obvious to everyone after a while though that even with all his God given talent he was not going to make it as a wrestler. You can have all the ability in the world, but if it does not click between your ears you are not going to succeed in wrestling or anything else you go after.

Tom Renesto was booking and liked Tracy, as we all did. Tom asked him if he would be interested in refereeing. Wanting to stay in the business he agreed to become a referee. His first night of officiating was in Columbus, Georgia at the Municipal Auditorium. Dick Steinborn was the promoter and had come up with the idea of having a tournament for the newly organized Junior Heavyweight Division.

At the start of the evening Dick went to the ring and selected four judges from among the fans. One on the front row of each side of the ring. Dick selected people that were knowledgeable about our business as fans. They were regulars at the matches and always sat in the same seats. The crowd knew them and knew this was a shoot as they were not in the business. Dick chose two black judges and two Caucasian judges. If a match went to a time limit draw, each judge had two discs, a blue and a red. Each judge would throw their winners disc into the ring based on which corner they were announced from, red or blue. In the event of a tie the referee would be the tie-breaking vote.

I refereed the first match which saw Wayne Cowan (later, Dutch Mantell) defeat The Champ (Al Valesco). The second match was Bearcat Wilkerson against Ted Oates. Bearcat was a young talented black wrestler from Statesboro, Ga. while Ted was a young Caucasian wrestler from Columbus, Ga.

The winner of this match would meet Cowan for the new title. The match went to the time limit. Ted was given the upper hand the last two to three minutes of the match so he would be the obvious winner. It had been a very even contest up to that point but was swung in Ted's favor because the final was to be Oates vs. Cowan.

The bell rings and the judges step forward. I don't know whether they voted along racial lines or their personal favorites but you guessed it. Two red and two blue discs hit the mat. Poor Tracy is standing there holding his two discs and the crowd is going nuts. This was a no brainer. He knew the match had leaned in Ted's favor to get him over. He looked at one hand then the other. Tracy had always worked as a baby-face. He had never had any heat with the fans and they were really unloading on him.

I was standing in the back near the dressing room and Tom Renesto walked out when he heard the commotion. I was trying not to laugh but Tracy had been put in the middle and he had to make a call. Tom asked me what the hold-up was and I told him Tracy would not drop a disc. After what seemed like an eternity Tracy did what he had to do. He dropped both disc declaring the match a tie...