What I Got For Christmas

Happy Christmas everyone!

I hope everyone had a fun holiday with their family and loved ones. Here at the CCHQ (Cardboard Clubhouse headquarters for short), my family came over last night for Christmas Eve and we exchanged presents with them. I would share what I got but I've already put all of that away. Plus, my mom was sick so they didn't stay but a few hours. It didn't help either that the kids were sick, my wife was sick, and I was starting to get sick as well. 

Anyway, this morning the kids woke up to a giant haul from Santa complete with Paw Patrol toys, Peppa Pig toys and other things that we'll have to find room for. My wife then went to the kitchen and starting making lunch which consisted of a giant ham, mashed potatoes, roast potatoes, corn, baked beans, dressing, mac and cheese, carrots, and gravy. It was a good thing too because my stepmom and her friend/neighbor/handyman came by to visit for an hour or so. We hadn't seen them in a while so it was good to catch-up.

After lunch we did presents amongst ourselves (me, my wife, and the kids).

This may seem a bit odd for a Christmas present but my son actually picked it out for me from the Santa Shoppe at his school. He knows how much I like breakfast sandwiches so while I'm off work for the holidays, him and I will give it a try.

I always lump my blogger Secret Santa package in with the family gifts. I won't give away who my Secret Santa was quite yet but it was a very neat haul with a very nice notes which I'll devote a post too soon.

Now I'll dive in to what my wife got me ...

I got a new blu-ray player from my aunt so naturally I asked for some blu-rays to add to my collection which I'm trying to build up. These six should definitely keep me entertained for a while. 

I ordered some cards from COMC over Black Friday weekend which I saved for Christmas so I could have some cards to open up under the tree. I could have opted to have gotten blasters and packs from Target but I figured it'd be a better idea to use the money set aside for that to use on cards I actually want. Again, I'll cover these in a separate post later.

Pop Funkos!! The Big Boy Funko I wanted because in the Cincinnati area, Frisch's Big Boy is an institution. Some Big Boy chains do theirs with red relish but Frisch's does theirs with their own trademark tartar sauce. The Lindor Funko was on my list because he's one of my favorite Indians players to watch. It's nice to see MLB getting into the Funko game finally.

I got these awesome new shirts as well from the Cincy Shirts website. I was kind of amazed they had a Cincinnati Stingers shirt. The Cincinnati Gardens shirt I just had to have because of my love of that historic arena.

I told my wife about the $9 DVD sale at Cornette's Collectibles so she told me to order what I wanted from there. So I did. These were the DVDs I wanted most from the sale (and yes, the 5-disc set was included in the sale) and they came autographed which is super cool as well! I'm really looking forward to diving into these.

Finally, I got some more books to add to my library. I've already read "Up Up and Away" and I highly recommend it if you haven't read it before. The "Nitro" book was voted the best wrestling book of 2018 by the readers of the POST Wrestling website and "Death of the Territories" was runner-up (I think, regardless it's new as well). The Golden Seals book I heard about during an episode of a podcast I listen too and I thought it'd be a fun read.

So that's what I got for Christmas. What about you? 

RIP Cincinnati Gardens 1949-2018

Just a quick post tonight ...

I've mentioned in this space before about my love of the Cincinnati Gardens, the dilapidated old arena in the Bond Hill section of Cincinnati. When the building eventually outlived its usefulness, it was purchased by the Port Authority of Greater Cincinnati to be demolished. That sale pretty much signaled the death of the old arena. 

Earlier this winter, the contract was signed with a local demolition company to begin the process of razing the old building, over a year after the Cincinnati Rollergirls, the arena's last official tenant, left. The demolition process started with some of the outbuildings and annexes, the arena's signage was removed and donated to the American Sign Museum, and the bas relief sculptures on the front of the building were removed and preserved as well.

All that was left was time. And now, time is up as the wrecking ball has found the old arena. 

I would attempt to write a eulogy for the arena but my words wouldn't be able to do justice to the place. However, local writer and photographer Ronny Salerno, author of the fabulous Queen City Discovery blog, was granted access to the arena one last time for a photo shoot. Earlier today, he wrote and posted a perfect eulogy to the Gardens with some amazing pictures he shot along the way.

If you are so inclined, I encourage you to go check out the article, if nothing else, for the pictures of the arena he took while he was there.

"Goodbye to The Gardens": https://queencitydiscovery.blogspot.com/2018/03/goodbye-to-gardens.html

Rest in peace Cincinnati Gardens. You will be missed.

Thanks old girl. You deserved a better fate. 💔 pic.twitter.com/5xxQy69qW4

— Cincinnati Gardens (@CincyGardens) March 7, 2018

 

And In This Corner #2

Thanks to the deluge of old school footage recently uploaded on the WWE Network over the past few weeks, I've been binge watching a lot of it, from early 80s World Class to WWF house shows from the mid-1980s, there's been a lot to take in. Watching all that old footage though made me realize that it's been a while since I've dug through the old clippings I scanned in last fall. So I dove in and found a few more interesting scans that I think would be pretty fun to explore.

This particular card I believe was from 1960 as most of these clippings were in chronological order in the scrapbook. Previously, I talked about Magnificent Maurice but the person he's facing on this card, Oyama Kato, is someone I'm definitely not too familiar with. I was able to find some basic information on him but unfortunately my normal places where I dig info up from were little to no help. Kato was a former MWA Junior Heavyweight champion beating Frankie Talaber in January of 1954 and holding the title for only 27 days until Talaber beat him to reclaim the title. He also teamed with Danny McShain, winning the Ohio version of the American Tag Team titles and also won the San Francisco version of the NWA World Tag Team titles with Karl von Schober. Just under a year after this card occurred, Kato passed away at the age of 42.

Don Eagle was the son of wrestler Chief War Eagle and won a Golden Gloves title in the Cleveland area before getting into wrestling. Debuting in 1945 in the Indianapolis territory, by the time he wound up in Cincinnati, his career was nearing its end. During his career he fought the likes of Buddy Rogers, Antonino Rocca, Gorgeous George, and Hans Schmidt. During a match with Schmidt in 1953, he severely injured his back and went into semi-retirement and popped up in various territories until 1963 when he officially retired. During the course of his career, he held the Boston version of the AWA Heavyweight Title twice, was the last person to hold the MWA Heavyweight Title, and trained the likes of Billy Two Rivers and Chief Jay Strongbow. On March 17, 1963 it was reported that Eagle had committed suicide because of recent business failures and still dealing with the pain of the back injury ten years prior.

The Brunetti Brothers were a team I've never heard of but it turns out they were one of the top teams of the 1950s, holding the regional versions of the NWA World Tag Team titles in the Upper Midwest. Over the border, they also held titles in the Toronto and Vancouver areas and the Stampede International Tag Team titles. The caption of this clipping reads that on this particular card, they'll be facing the Shire Brothers, Roy and Ray. Roy Shire would later go on to open up the San Francisco territory and run cards at the legendary Cow Palace while Ray Shire would become Ray "The Crippler" Stevens and have a long run as a tag team wrestler with Pat Patterson and Nick Bockwinkle.

Judging by the caption, Gene Kiniski was facing Yukon Eric, most notable for having his ear ripped off in a match against Killer Kowalski, in a return match as their previous encounter ended in a draw. Kiniski was known as "Canada's Greatest Athlete" and after leaving the Cincinnati area, went on to capture titles in every major territory he competed in, including winning the AWA and NWA World Heavyweight titles.

This scan isn't the best but it's a picture of Dick the Bruiser, who at this time was involved in a feud in the Detroit region with Cowboy Bob Ellis. Before wrestling, Bruiser played 48 games over three seasons in the NFL as a guard for the Green Bay Packers. Bruiser would buy the Indianapolis region from Jim Barnett in 1964 and ran until 1989. His territory spawned many stars but most notably gave Bobby Heenan his start in pro wrestling. Newer fans may recognize Bruiser as the guest referee from the Starrcade 1990 main event between Sting and the Black Scorpion, in what would prove to be his final televised appearance.

Hope everyone enjoyed this dive through wrestling history, back to cards soon (I promise!) as things at work are finally starting to settle down.

And In This Corner ...

You might recall that eons ago I found a mysterious black book at the local card shop which then lead me to write probably the best article I've ever written for this blog. If you haven't read it yet, I'll briefly sum it up. I bought a mysterious black book that was filled with newspaper clippings from the late 1950s and early 1960s of pro wrestling in Cincinnati. A while back I scanned them in and I've been sitting on them since. 

This first clipping highlights Mitsu Arakawa, who was in the early years of a lengthy career. He debuted in 1953 and was billed as a someone who survived the Hiroshima bombing and had a grudge against the United States. It was simple but it worked for the time, especially for someone who was a heel (wrestling lingo for a bad guy). In the 1960s, he worked mainly in tag teams with such people as Kenji Shibuya and Dr. Moto, winning numerous tag team titles throughout the Midwest and in Stampede Wrestling in Calgary. In the fall of 1966, he beat Dick the Bruiser for the WWA World Heavyweight Championship, a title which he held for nearly a year before losing the title to Wilbur Snyder in September 1967. Perhaps his biggest claim to fame though came in 1969 when he and Toru Tanaka were crowned the first WWWF International Tag Team Champions in June of that year. They held the titles until December when they lost them to Victor Rivera and Tony Marino. Arakawa would continue wrestling until 1973 when he retired. Arakawa passed away in 1997 at the age of 69.

The two clippings about highlight at November 21, 1959 card form the Cincinnati Gardens. Shows at the Gardens were promoted by legendary promoter Jim Barnett and featured some of the biggest stars of the day such as Wilbur Snyder, Pat O'Conner, Angelo Poffo, and Bronco Lubich to name a few. The thing I'm most interested in though is the opening bout between Joe Blanchard and Nick Bockwinkle. Blanchard wrestled mainly in Hawaii and Texas, winning titles in both regions, but ultimately became known as the promoter for Southwest Championship Wrestling. An interesting trivia note, SCW was the first wrestling promotion ever on the USA Network and featured Adrian Adonis as its top star in the early days of the promotion. Blanchard's son, Tully, became a star in the 1980s as a member of the Four Horsemen in Jim Crockett Promotions and teamed regularly with Arn Anderson in both the NWA and WWF.

Bockwinkle became one of the biggest stars of the AWA, debuting with them in 1970 and staying with them until 1987. During that span he had won the AWA World Tag Team title three times with Ray Stevens as his partner and the AWA World Heavyweight Title four times. He also fought the likes of Hulk Hogan, Verne Gagne, Jerry Lawler, Curt Hennig, and Billy Robinson among others. He would later join the WWF as an announcer for a brief period and resurfaced in WCW as the figurehead commissioner in the mid-1990s. 

Competing against Barnett's cards in the Cincinnati Gardens was Al Haft's Midwest Wrestling Alliance cards held in Music Hall. The wrestlers on his cards weren't exactly household names but he did manage to secure stars like Lou Thesz, Karol Krauser, and Ruffy Silverstein. The International Championship had an interesting beginning as Thesz was awarded the title on November 1, 1957 by Houston Wrestling promoter Morris Siegel following a controversial finish to a match against Antonino Rocca, which means this particular match again Krauser had to be one of his first title defenses. Thesz would go on to hold the title for 503 days before losing to Rikidozan in Los Angeles. The title would continue until 1988 when it was unified with the PWF Heavyweight Championship and the NWA United National Championship to form the Triple Crown, the top title for All Japan Pro Wrestling which is currently held by Kento Miyahara.

The final clipping I'll show here is one that features a headline match between Magnificent Maurice and Sweet Daddy Siki. I should note that the photos are reversed in the clipping, Maurice is on the right will the top hat and Siki is on the left, staring into the camera. Siki spent the majority of his career in Canada in a regular role with Stampede Wrestling and headlining cards at the Maple Leaf Gardens. While working for Stampede Wrestling, he held their version of the Canadian Heavyweight Championship and the North American Heavyweight Championship. In cards at the Maple Leaf Gardens, people came to see him by the busload and earned upwards of $3,000 per match. He would continue to headline cards in Toronto until 1980. 

Maurice formed a regular team with Johnny Barend throughout the 1960s, holding numerous tag team titles across the Midwest. He also held the MWA Ohio Heavyweight Title defeating Leon Graham for the strap in December of 1961. He also competed for the WWWF facing the likes of Haystacks Calhoun, Pedro Morales, Bill Watts, and even challenged Bruno Sammartino for the WWWF Championship. Sadly, Maurice was killed in a plane crash in 1974.

That does it for this round of clippings. I'll post some more of these soon and talk about some of the other wrestlers I didn't cover here such as Chief White Owl, Bronco Lubich, and Yukon Eric. 

68 Years Ago

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

 I've mentioned this before but the Cincinnati Gardens is inching ever so close to becoming a distant memory. After the initial shock of the sale last summer and the announcement that it'll be shuttered as an active arena, I'd finally made peace with the fact it will no longer be around. Then today on Twitter I saw that it was the 68th anniversary of the Gardens opening and nostalgia came flooding back.

68 years ago today, February 22, 1949, The Cincinnati Gardens opened to the public for its first-ever event. pic.twitter.com/NgZK2AF2uQ

— Cincinnati Gardens (@CincyGardens) February 22, 2017

Photo Credit: Ronny Salerno
http://www.queencitydisco.com

The picture above was taken by local photographer Ronny Salerno of the awesome Queen City Discovery site as in a great shot of the interior of the old hockey barn out on Seymour Avenue is a less than desirable part of town. The reason I chose to use this picture to show the inside is because 68 years ago, the Gardens opened with an exhibition hockey game between Montreal and their farm team, the Dallas Texans. That first week saw both an University of Cincinnati and a Xavier University basketball game, and a boxing match featuring Ezzard Charles but hockey is really what made the Gardens.

Over the years, numerous teams played there, the Mohawks, the Swords, the first iteration of the Cyclones, and the Mighty Ducks just to name a few. Once the Mighty Ducks left town, the Gardens was left without a pro hockey team for the first time in its history. There was a team that was supposed to replace them, the Railraiders, but they never took the ice.

Today, the dasher boards have been pulled up, the scoreboard has been lowered, the seats and memorabilia have been auctioned off, and the last fans have long ago exited the building. As I mentioned in my post back in the summer, I'm going to miss the old place, despite the fact the last event I went to there was in 2011. I only went to three events there, all pro wrestling events, and I still have the ticket stubs as proof that I set foot in the legendary venue.

Now, even though the wrecking ball is imminent, the memories will remain. All that's left for now is to turn out the lights ...

Final day of moving out, 8/17/16. Thanks for the memories old girl. Last one out, turn off the lights... pic.twitter.com/DKpmQS0bjC

— Cincinnati Gardens (@CincyGardens) August 18, 2016

Good bye, old friend, it's been fun.

Save the Gardens

Photo: Wikipedia

The Cincinnati Gardens is on its death bed.

I was stunned today when I heard the news that the Port of Greater Cincinnati Development Authority had entered into an agreement to purchase the Gardens and demolish it to make room for future development. The old arena in the Bond Hill section of Cincinnati would be no more. After I heard the news, I took to Twitter and tried to find out more info but all I found was articles from different local news outlets with the same story. I did however find one random tweet that was a petition to keep the Gardens open.

Help keep the Gardens open https://t.co/WsfHXM6FA2 pic.twitter.com/iulP13c0fK

— Cole Carle (@Cole2Carle) June 15, 2016

I was thrilled to find someone who cared about the venue as much as I did. I immediately signed the petition and retweeted it.

But why do I love this venue so much? What makes it so special?

The Gardens is 67 years old and the first event there was an exhibition game between the Montreal Canadiens and the Dallas Texans on February 22, 1949. The last event would have been a Cincinnati Roller girls game earlier this month. In between, it hosted concerts, political rallies, boxing, pro wrestling, circuses, numerous sports teams, and thousands of other events both big and small throughout the years.

For me, it's the place where I saw my first live wrestling show with my dad and in recent years, I saw a handful of other events there. For many others it's the place where they saw Oscar Robertson play when he was a member of the Cincinnati Royals, it's the old hockey barn where teams like the Mohawks, Swords, Cyclones, Mighty Ducks, and Xavier University hockey played. When you walk into to an event there, you feel connected to the past and it has character.  The lobby, the old ticket windows, the old signage, everything. It's character and it's what sets it apart from its soulless downtown cousin U.S. Bank Arena.

After I heard the news today, I felt like I had to do everything I could to save the Gardens. But now, after sitting on it for a bit, maybe it's good that the old arena sees it final days. Maybe it's good that it gets demolished for more jobs that may or may not ever come. I can't help but think that if the Gardens does get demolished for many it will be like losing a family member. I know it will be for me.

If you want to sign the petition to help save the Cincinnati Gardens from demolition, click here. If you want to share it on social media, please use the hashtag #savethegardens

I feel better for talking about this now. It was just one of those things I had to get off my chest and I appreciate you reading my ramblings on an old, forgotten arena. I sure will miss the old place if it does meet its demise and I'll probably be there the day they drop the wrecking ball on it taking pictures just so I can say I was there to say my goodbyes.

The Mysterious Black Book of Cincinnati Wrestling

    

A few years ago I stopped by the local sports card shop while I was out one day. The place itself is a hole in the wall type place, no signage or anything from the roadway and if you didn’t know it had been there for the last 20 some years, then you would drive right by it. As I was digging through some old baseball cards, I noticed a little black book with the word “autographs” embossed on the front in gold letters randomly sitting on top of a pile of junk underneath the table. Curiously, I picked up the book and thumbed through it not expecting to find anything of much value. However, I found quite the opposite. Inside this book were newspaper clippings of old wrestling results and articles from what had to have been the 1950s. Couple that along with what looked like legitimate autographs from Wilbur Snyder, Hans Hermann, and the Bargain City Kid and I scored a gold mine. I asked the clerk at the counter what the price was. He wasn’t sure so he called the shop owner who threw out a random amount of $20. Twenty bucks for a beat up old autograph book with a bunch of newspaper clippings of old Cincinnati wrestling matches? Sold! I brought my prize home and looked at it more detail.

Looking through the book when I got it home, I discovered that the clippings were from late 1959 and early 1960. I recognized some of the names too. People such as Roy Shire, Buddy Rogers, Nick Bockwinkel, Bronco Lubich, Dick the Bruiser, and Wilbur Snyder among others. There were also a number of names such as Mitsu Arakawa, Bargain City Kid, Fritz Von Goering, Chief White Owl, Don Eagle, and Hans Hermann that I was not too familiar with. Something else that I found interesting it that not only were there shows promoted at the Cincinnati Gardens, but there were also clippings from shows at Music Hall. This was quite the revelation as I had no idea that there were two opposition territories running shows in the same town during the same time. Apparently, Jim Barnett was running one territory and a promoter named Al Haft was running the other. First though, I had to know more about this guy who called himself the Bargain City Kid.

Bargain City Kid (right) and Willie Thall

After doing a quick search online, turns out that the Bargain City Kid was named Hyman Ullner and was the owner of Rink’s Bargain City department stores. The chain was local and had stores in the Cincinnati suburbs of Mt. Healthy and Pleasant Ridge, along with locations north of the city in Milford, Hamilton, Lima, and Middletown among other places. I remember hearing about the Middletown store as my grandmother used to work there as the manager of the fabric department until she retired. In the 1950s and 60s, Ullner was a co-host of Shock Theatre and Big Time Wrestling on WCPO-TV with Wille Thall of Midwestern Hayride fame, who also owned a marine sales business on Route 4 in Hamilton down the street from Rink’s. Thall and The Kid would hock merchandise from Rink’s and do skits with the wrestlers in studio, such as the time when Gene Kiniski broke a fishing rod and reel in half. There was also a notable commercial where Thall was filming a live spot in a boat attached to a truck. As he was talking, Fritz Von Erich climbed into the truck the boat was attached to and drove off taking the boat with him while Thall still in the boat talking.

WCPO featured matches from the Barnett-Doyle syndicate based out of Detroit that was run by legendary promoter Jim Barnett and Johnny Doyle, a veteran booker. The first televised studio show from the Barnett-Doyle group in the Cincinnati market aired on December 27, 1958 that featured Angelo Poffo winning the United States Heavyweight Title from Wilbur Snyder. This all built to the first arena show at the Cincinnati Gardens which took place on January 23, 1959. Less that two months later, the all time attendance record for a sporting event at the Gardens was set on March 7, 1959 with 15,299 people and amassing a $25,402 gate with a show headlined by Bronco Lubich and Angelo Poffo teaming against Wilbur Snyder and Yukon Eric, a record that still stands to this day. On August 18, 1961, Buddy Rogers defended the NWA World Title against The Sheik in a match that Rogers won by using his vaunted figure-four leglock. Barnett would later sell his Ohio/Michigan territory to Sheik for $50,000 and move to Australia. Sheik would continue to use Cincinnati as a regular stop in his territory through 1980.

A women's wrestling tournament ad.

At the same time as Barnett was running shows at the Gardens, Midwest Wrestling Alliance promoter Al Haft ran competing cards out of Music Hall. Haft, based out of Columbus, Ohio, was one of the first to enter the NWA and had founded the Midwest Wrestling Alliance in 1931 as a vehicle to promote a John Pesek/Joe Stecher match in Columbus. In the early 1950s, the WLW Television title was established as well as a National Women’s Television title that saw Nell Stewart, Kathy Starr, and Kay Noble as titleholders. Haft’s matches would air on Crosley/Avco TV stations WLW-T in Cincinnati as well as WLW-D in Dayton and WLW-C in Columbus. In Dayton, matches for TV were held at converted skating rink in the suburb of Moraine, and featured a fan called “Bouncing Beulah” who would be ringside cheering passionately and sometimes pounding on the ring apron.

Going back and thumbing through the brittle, yellowing pages of the book, I noticed the amount of talent that was appearing in the area from both promotions. Barnett’s roster consisted of established national stars such as Pat O’Connor, Bronco Lubich, Wilbur Snyder, Dick the Bruiser, and Angelo Poffo along with mid-card stars such as Mitsu Arakawa, The Shire Brothers, and future AWA world champion Nick Bockwinkel. Alternatively, Haft had a roster of mainly younger regional stars like Ruffy Silverstein, Johnny Barend, Chief White Owl, and Magnificent Maurice but occasionally he would also have major stars like future NWA world champions Buddy Rogers and Lou Thesz, whose paths would cross in a controversial match in Toronto in January 1963 where Thesz beat Rogers for the NWA title. Going into that match, Rogers, who was booked out of the WWWF office in New York run by Vince McMahon, Sr., was the NWA World Champion at the time. However, when Thesz won the match and subsequently the NWA title, the switch would not be acknowledged by the WWWF and soon after Rogers was named the first WWWF World champion, the same title which is now known as the WWE World Heavyweight championship.

Roy Shire

Roy Shire popped out to me as one of the most interesting stories. Teaming with his supposed “brother” Ray Shire, known more famously as Ray “The Crippler” Stevens, the two were involved memorable feuds as a team and even won the Chicago version of the NWA World Tag Team Championship from Dick the Bruiser and Angelo Poffo on August 6, 1959 in Indianapolis. In the early 1960s, Roy was sent out to San Francisco by Jim Barnett to open up the territory out there. “Barnett set up Shire in San Francisco and Shire leased his original talent through Barnett's office," according to wrestling journalist Dave Meltzer in an email. "Barnett had the connection to the TV and a sponsor but didn't want to leave his Indy/Detroit/Louisville/Cincinnati base so sent who he thought was his smartest talent in Shire and set him up.” Some of Shire’s original talent would include a number of stars who competed in Cincinnati. The San Francisco territory, based out of the legendary Cow Palace, would become one of the top territories on the west coast for a number of years before closing down in 1981.

Getting towards the end of the book, the clippings suddenly stopped and aged, blank pages filled the remainder of it. It made me wonder what happened to the person who was putting this together. Did he lose the book? Did he lose interest in keeping a scrapbook of clippings? One thing is known for sure, while Cincinnati may not have been a major territory, it certainly has its own sense of wrestling history. A history that should not be overlooked and forgotten.