VIP – VINTAGE NEWSLETTER: Wrestling Forum newsletter (4-30-1987): Death of Mike Von Erich, early Paul Dangerous (Heyman) coverage, Midnight Rockers in AWA, Lex Luger, Dusty Rhodes, Jarrett, UWF-Crockett

I am excited to present event more Wrestling Forum newsletters on the PWTorch VIP website. Before his death, Wrestling Forum publisher/editor Jon Gallagher gave me permission to republish his vintage newsletters in digital format for the first time exclusively for PWTorch VIP members. I had a collection, but some readers have also contributed copies from their collections. (We still have more find, so if you have a complete collection, or even some in storage somewhere, let me know: kellerwade@gmail.com.)

This was the very first insider pro wrestling newsletter I ever received in the mail back in the summer of 1987. Within months, I started the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter. I knew this is something I wanted to be part of.

Please do give me feedback if you are reading and enjoying these as that will motivate me to publish them consistently (and seek out the missing issues, too!).

CLICK HERE FOR PDF – WRESTLING FORUM (APR. 30, 1987 – VOL. 11, ISSUE 13)

•Reaction to the death of Mike Von Erich

•Dusty Rhodes feuding with Kevin Sullivan in Florida

•Jim Neidhart legal update on accusation he struck a flight attendant

•Lex Luger’s WCW push

•AEW update including Col. DeBeers, “Playboy” Buddy Rose, Shawn Michaels & Marty Jannetty

•News of Paul Dangerly (Dangerously) in Memphis managing Austin Idol

•Latest Memphis news with Downtown Bruno, Jeff Jarrett, Paul Diamond

•Mid-South/UWF news including the latest on the Jim Crockett Jr. buyout/merger, Eddie Gilbert as booker, Terry Taylor & Chris Adams, Terry Gordy

•Worldwide match results from the prior weeks

•There’s also a fantasy wrestling tournament written by current Boston Celtics play-by-play announcer Sean Grande

•A “Wrestlers Are People Too” feature with fans relaying what wrestlers are really like off-camera and away from the ring

BACKGROUND ON WRESTLING FORUM

In the 1980s, pro wrestling newsletters, or “bulletins” as they were often called, was the next stage of wrestling coverage, evolving out of fan club bulletins of the 1970s and early 1980s. Wrestling fans started fan clubs for wrestlers and put out semi-regular newsletters detailing what the wrestler was up to, and some of them grew into covering a wider range of topics from the territory the wrestler was in, with newspaper clippings of upcoming show advertisements, results, notes from TV shows, and other interesting items. Before the internet, following wrestling from other areas in a somewhat timely fashion required a paper copy newsletter of some sort sent through postal mail.

A few years ago I reconnected with Jon Gallagher recently, whom I had a friendly relationship with in my early years of publishing Pro Wrestling Torch. I asked if he’d like his work converted to digital media on the PWTorch VIP website, and he granted me permission to scan and republish his content.

Jon had a friendly, conversational approach to covering wrestling that a lot of pro wrestling fans really enjoyed, and you’ll pick up on that when reading his first-person, almost pen-pal approach to documenting the news in pro wrestling that week. The Wrestling Forum was published twice a month and featured a different colored cover each week. The format was 8.5-by-11 sheets of paper folded in half in booklet format.

The reader letters pages of the pro wrestling newsletters of that era were a precursor to the digital message boards and forums of the early internet yfears in the 1990s, which was a precursor to social media and newer formats such as Discord. The names in letters pages would often go on to become well-known semi-celebrities among pro wrestling fans at fan gatherings and wrestling conventions. Some would go on to become columnists with other pro wrestling newsletters. Even AEW owner and president Tony Khan, for instance, was published in the letters pages of the Pro Wrestling Torch Newsletter in the 1990s.

I hope you enjoy these newsletters. We’ll be presenting more in coming months. It’s a cool glimpse into an earlier stage of pro wrestling journalism before the internet. They are only being presented in digital PDF format, but if anyone would be interested in doing a character recognition scan of these (with early access as we can scan more), that’d be great! Just drop me a message if that’s software you are familiar with and you think you could get a good text output from these PDFs.

HELP US GET A COMPLETE COLLECTION

We have over 50 editions, but are still missing quite a few from the complete collection from 1986 through 1991. My collection is not complete in part because Jon lost his hard copies in a tornado many years ago. Let me know if you have a collection of Wrestling Forums in storage: kellerwade@gmail.com

These are the issues we don’t currently have access to, either physical copies of PDF digital copies.

• All of 1986 (it’s first year publishing)
• The first 7 issues of 1987
• June 30, 1987
• Aug. 30 through Oct. 30 1987
• July 15, 1988
• All of 1989 except the Jan 15, 1989 edition
• Feb. 28, 1990 through Aug. 15, 1990
• Dec. 30, 2990 through Mar. 15, 991
• May 15, 1991
• July 15, 1991

READ PRIOR WRESTLING FORUM BACK ISSUES HERE