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ORIGINAL HEADLINE: Night of the Legends
By Bruce Mitchell, Torch columnist
Originally Published: August 30, 1997
Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter #455

"Nostalgia ain't what it used to be."
-- Anonymous.

A while back I went to a Senior PGA golf tour event. I'm no golfer, but over the years I've come to appreciate hanging out on a bright green course under a clear blue sky with a hundred thousand or so like minded fans. I can't tell the difference between a nine iron and a putter, but I do know the regular PGA tour is filled with a bunch of blond-haired, blue-eyed, blow-dried clones so I was kind of jazzed to see some real golf personalities like Lee Travino or Chi Chi Rodriguez.

I was particularly excited by the chance to see Arnold Palmer. Arnie's Army galvanized a generation of golf fans the way no one, not even the "Golden Bear Jack" Nicholas, could. Until Tiger Woods. Palmer is, to borrow an overused phrase, an icon.

So my friends and I camped out under a tree to await the landing of Arnie's Army. Sure enough here comes Palmer, trailed by hundreds of over-aged admirers. This is what we waited hours in the hot sun to see. All of those clips of Palmer, all of those Penzoil commercials, the Sports Illustrated covers flashed through my skull.

Then Palmer triple bogeyed the hole.

It figured...

Several years later I'm running the Monday Night Marathon and watching Nitro. Suddenly there's this bizarre commercial on, so weird it must be some sort of fever dream.

It's Stan Lane, late of the Fabulous Ones, Midnight Express, and the Heavenly Bodies -- not to mention the pro wrestling business as a whole. He's standing outdoors at a ballpark.

Man, there's Ricky Steamboat, gray around the temples right behind Stan's right shoulder. But who are those other two over Stan's left shoulder? Stan, in a smarmy, golden oldies DJ voice, tells us it's Gene Ligon... (Oh, Gene Ligon -- he was a jobber in Jim Crockett's NWA days, one of the Thunderfeet tag team. He also used to run a gym in Concord, N.C. with Nikita Koloff. Not exactly anyone's idea of a big wrestling star.)... and the Big Cheese. (Who?)

Ol' Sweet Stan says, "The IWA (the what?) returns to the Fieldcrest-Cannon Stadium (where?) on Aug. 15 with the "Night of the Legends."

(Yeah, like who? -- the Big Cheese?) Stan lists the line-up. The Masked Superstar vs. Greg Valentine for the IWA Hvt. Championship. The Wild Samoans (huh?), Disco Inferno (huh?), "Superfly" Jimmy Snuka (sheesh), Vladimir Koloff & Nikolai Volkoff (he's still alive?), The Road Warriors (no way).

And Johnny Valentine (Bingo).

My phone started to ring.

For the past two-and-a-half years I have been a weekly guest on a Greensboro, N.C. radio station's sports talk show running down that week's wrestling news and taking calls. Whenever listeners reminisce about the old days inevitably the talk turns to Johnny Valentine.

Johnny the Champ. Before there was Ric Flair, or Ricky Steamboat, or Dusty Rhodes, the NWA Mid-Atlantic Territory was elevated to major league status by Johnny Valentine.

Valentine, already a national star -- particularly in Texas and the Northeast, settled in the Mid-Atlantic (North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, parts of Georgia) for a permanent run as the lead heel. He changed the territory in the early '70s from a dull tag team base (Johnny Waver & George Becker, Paul Jones & Nelson Royal, Rip Hawk & Sweed Hansen) to one centered around Valentine's U.S. Title defenses against the likes of Harley Race, The Funks, and most memorable Wahoo McDaniel.

Valentine was legendary for stiff, tough work both in and, reputation has it, out of the ring. Johnny and Wahoo slapped the hell out of each other for years all over the area. More than 20 years later Valentine is still remembered by the longtime fans in the territory as the Champ.

And champ he was. Until one rainy night in 1976. Maybe you know this part of the story. Scott Hudson even talked about it on a recent edition of WCW Pro. There was a plane crash outside of Wilmington, N.C. with Bob Bruggers, David Crockett, Johnny Valentine, and Ric Flair. It's part of the legend of the Nature Boy, one that every Ric Flair fan knows.

Flair broke his back. He recovered to become the best wrestler in the business and one of the bigger stars of one of wrestling's most lucrative eras.

Valentine broke his neck. He has lived from that day forward in a wheelchair. Because of problems with insurance and because of other reasons he is destitute. Soon after the accident he left for Texas.

He never returned.

And now here was Stan Lane, on this goofy commercial casually mentioning that Johnny Valentine was going to second his son on this indy show.

Actually, it was nice of Stan to mention it, since he forgot to mention what town the show was in. Turned out it was Kannapolis, N.C., a mill town 20 minutes outside of Charlotte. So one brutally humid Friday night we made the hour-and-a-half trek to Kannapolis. Every month or so we do this since there is plenty of independent wrestling action in the area. It takes about a month for us to forget why we don't go more often.

In fact, the night before there was a small New Dimension Pro Wrestling card in Greensboro. NDPW probably runs the most professional indy shows in the area. They've even gotten some local publicity lately when their number one heel, "World's Brass Knuckles Champion" Rick Link announced he was running for mayor of Lexington, N.C. God save the people.

The highlight of that show, for me, was standing by the gimmick table and listening to Bobby Fulton tell a credulous fan that his brother Jackie, standing a few feet away in a goofy red, white, and blue mask and cape, was the real Patriot. "The WWF won't let him use his real outfit when he works these shows," Bobby explained. I went home early that night.

As soon as we got to Kannapolis the next night I knew we wouldn't be going home early. The Fieldcrest-Cannon Stadium, it turns out, is a brand new facility nestled in a small valley, the home of the Piedmont Boll Weevils, a minor league baseball team. The parking lot is actually up above the field where the ring sat.

The first thing a fan saw as he came into the parking lot that night was a long, white limousine. That was, of course, for the Road Warriors. One of the more amusing parts of the show was watching that limo roll up and down the road, presumably to make "soda" runs.

The second thing fans saw was, well, not a lot of other fans. The stadium appeared to hold around 4,000. Despite a bunch of print advertising and three weeks of TV ads, the park looked about one-tenth full.

The problem wasn't just that there is a lot of good wrestling available for free every Monday night. For an independent show, this had a big budget for fly-ins, most of which was spent on wrestlers like the gaggle of Samoans who meant nothing at the gate. The LOD is perhaps the only act that was going to draw fans on its own.

And alas, the first thing we found out was that Johnny Valentine was a no-show. The story was Johnny wouldn't come unless his wife got a plane ticket, also. His son Greg was a no-show, too, so they moved Snuka into the main event.

Gee, a guy in a wheelchair wants his wife to come with him to make things easier. Seems reasonable.

But the promoter Sal Corrente (you guessed it, a/k/a The Big Cheese) had a lot of cronies to take care of so his budget, rumored to be a 10,000 dollar paid show, was all used up. Bruno Sammartino, who meant nothing to this area, even 20 years ago, wisely turned down 400 dollars and a plane ticket to appear as a special referee. But despite the absence of Johnny the Champ, this was one entertaining bad mess of a show. It started, as most ballpark events do, with the National Anthem, sung by some guy they claimed sang "I am 16" in the Academy Award-winning movie, "Sound of Music."

Even as a kid I hated that corny song.

I was too busy looking at the Marv Albert-like toupee on the top of the guy's dome to sing along, though. Which makes this as good a time as any to rate the Celebrity Hair Pieces at the show.

(1) Stan Lane -- Looked like the aging playboy he no doubt is, Lane's plugs seemed pretty natural, unless you were looking straight on at him... (2) Sound of Music Guy -- Looked like a dead animal on top of the guy's head. At least it was thick, though... (3) Chris Cruise -- Cruise, who was there just because he likes indy shows, has, of all things, grey plugs (and not enough of them at that) sprouting on top of his forehead. I don't get it -- grey plugs?...

Nelson Royal, who some may remember as the old cowboy who explained the Bunkhouse Stampede rules ten years ago, used to wrestle a while back in a toupee. He was introduced from the crowd, but he was au natural.

Anyway, after a fat guy in an Assassin suit beat Kevin Kirby in a typically lousy indy match, the goofy stuff started in earnest.

The Metal Maniac, who unfortunately wasn't wrapped in tin foil like I had hoped, and Hunter Thompson, also unfortunately not the one who wrote "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas," faced The Samoan Gangsta Party, who are straight from standing in the aisle staring at Fatu about a year ago in the WWF. Nobody knew or cared who the Samoan Gangsta Party was. The highlight of this dog match was the Samoans trying to do the old Samoan hand signals before the match, and forgetting how to do it.

Then came Ray Apollo as Doink the Clown vs. King Kong Grundy. Now, Apollo may have spent two years in the Whiff, but no one...

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