By James Caldwell, PWTorch columnist

CNN and Turner Broadcasting founder Ted Turner recently released an autobiography detailing his career and life in the TV industry. Turner was instrumental in giving WCW the big budget it needed to buy WWE talent and create production value that challenged WWE, starting the Monday Night Wars.

Curiously, Turner does not deal much with the topic of pro wrestling or chief competitor, Vince McMahon, in his new book, but he offers an interesting story about a PPV wrestling match that nearly occurred against FOX mogul Rupert Murdoch when WCW was at the height of its popularity.

Except from Turner's book: "At the height of this public feud I even went so far as to challenge him to a boxing match in Las Vegas. He declined. (By the way, professional wrestling was popular on our entertainment networks at this time and one of our executives suggested that instead of boxing Murdoch, I should wrestle him on a pay-per-view event. But I passed on this idea. I didn't want to wrestle Rupert, I joked, I wanted to hit him!"

Link: Ted Turner book at Amazon.com.

Caldwell's Analysis: The only other wrestling reference I found on Amazon's feature to search for terms inside the book was an old story about regional wrestling in the 1970s where Turner took pro wrestling from the local ABC affiliate in Atlanta to put on his own WTCG channel. Apparently wrestling just wasn't that big of a deal to Turner in the grand scheme of things reflecting on his life and career, even though TBS and TNT had such a rich history of broadcasting wrestling during several TV eras.

RELATED STORY at PWTorch.com: Recent Eric Bischoff interview on WWE and WCW philosophies.

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