Thank you so much to Reed for sending me a scanned copy of his 1975 Portland Wrestling program. It was great to meet you at the recent Portland Wrestling show!
I love how the programs in the 70s are almost a little magazine in themselves.
If you'd like to help add to this archive, please email me: sunyday76@aol.com
I'd love to share your programs, photos, memorabilia, and stories.
I think this is the oldest program in my collection. Well, it belongs to @classicportlandwrestling now!
But I picked this one up at a yard sale in a scrapbook with the program from 1981 as well. I've been to so many yard sales and estate sales, I'm kind of surprised that I haven't found more Portland Wrestling ephemera over the years. I have nearly 50 programs scanned at this point. I have organized the links for easy viewing on this page, Portland Wrestling Programs.
This video popped up in the Portland Wrestling Facebook group the other day and it piqued my interest about the article that got Roddy Piper all riled up.
It's not a very flattering article about wrestling fans. That paints us in a very low brow, low intelligence, kind of light. Especially near the end, when he talks about a lady who got spit on my Buddy Rose, and will go to the matches next Saturday with an unscrubbed face, to show everyone that she got spit on.
It's always been easy pickings to make fun of wrestling fans. And yes, there were old cars in the lot at the Sports Arena, and plenty of low income folks who spent their hard earned money to get a little release, from their blue collar jobs, at the end of the week. But the article also assumes that these folks are low intelligence, that they(we) believe that everything that is happening in the ring is real. I knew at about 8 that wrestling wasn't real, probably earlier and I just kind of let it go. As a kid you want to believe in Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy and Rowdy Roddy Piper. It's always a little sad when you realize those things aren't exactly what you thought them to be.
Not then, and not now or probably ever, did the fans think that the drama was reality. I don't go to the movies and yell at the screen, "Tom Cruise isn't a pilot. That's so fake!"
The Portland Sports Arena was a special place. Probably much like the Sportatorium in Dallas or some high school gym in Tampa. Sure, it wasn't always the cleanest or fanciest place. There were no golden chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. No waiters bringing caviar to your bleacher seats. Once you walked through the front door, paid your ticket money to Mark Owen, and stopped to grab you Lucky Number program, the atmosphere took over. The smoke in the air, kids running around, people carrying around homemade signs to cheer on their favorites. Your mind allowed you to turn on a willful suspension of disbelief. When the cameras came on, and the music started, and for the next 2 hours it was all real! Buddy Rose was the worst human being alive, and you hoped that Lonnie Mayne would break his leg! Every punch was the hardest you had ever seen, every kick, twist, or elbow, more painful then the last. And the blood was real. (It was, they never used ketchup.)
And at the end of the night, when you walked out those doors, you were back in the real world. A world where you knew that there was some serious choreography happening, or these guys would be badly hurt and not back here week after week. You saw the many short, straight scars, on their foreheads and knew where that blood came from. You would never boo Buddy Rose if you saw him at Safeway. At times, a wrestling fan thinks of how hard these wrestlers work, and what they put their bodies through night after night to entertain us.
Wrestling fans are able to suspend their disbelief long enough to enjoy the show. Steve Duin, and others, don't understand this, or aren't intellectually able to make that leap. That's fine, you go to a play for $75 at the Keller, and I'll go to wrestling for $10. I'm petty sure I know who will have more fun.
And thank you Roddy for defending us, and for giving us everything you had, every night you were out there!
