- Background for those who came in after 1995: Bill Watts is one of my all-time favorite wrestling promoters who unfortunately became obsolete in the late-80s and never really came to grips with it. Picture if you will Jim Ross running a promotion by himself and being 300 pounds and pissed off all the time to back up his will, and that’s Bill Watts. I think there’s still a lot to be learned from Watts and his methods of running things backstage, but his promoting ideas went the way of the dinosaur around the same time Cornette’s did, which I think is kind of a shame for those of us who can still appreciate the in-ring, physical style of match that Watts always brought to the table with his shows. Watts ran Mid-South and later the UWF until he went out of business in 1986 and got bought out by Jim Crockett, and then had an (in)famous run as Executive VP of WCW in 1992. And away we go…

- We start with footage from the UWF, as a huge brawl between Eddie Gilbert’s heels and Watts’ faces erupts. 

- Bill went to the University of Oklahoma on a football scholarship, but got killed by the rigorous weight demands that required him to be down around 220 or 215. The university forbade lifting weights because they didn’t understand it (this was the 50s, remember) so after Watts got into a car accident and took time off, he played around with weightlifting and suddenly turned into a 315 pound monster. He signed with the Houston Oilers, but knocked out the coach and needed a new avenue for his aggression as a result.

- His first exposure to wrestling came upon seeing his friend Wahoo McDaniels’ paycheck for one night of working. Bill had never been a fan because all the guys coming through Oklahoma were old and fat, but he gave it a try for the money. I have to wonder if there’s some sort of scam going on with wrestling promoters circulating fake paychecks for show, since every story from the old-timers seems to begin with “I couldn’t believe how much money [x] was making!” and proceeds to “That cheap bastard stiffed me out of all my money and I was living out of a cardboard box for 2 years.”

- He trained under a variety of guys.