Blood-Soaked Canvas

PROLOGUE

The Struggling 1970's Pro Wrestling Landscape of the American Territory System

The year is 1978 and the state of the Professional Wrestling Industry in the United States is in dire straits, public interest has been waning over the last few years, ticket sales are down and the last time a venue sold out for any wrestling event was almost 7 years ago! Promotions from around the country are beginning to shudder and close down, if changes aren't made from within, then the business could very well be on the verge of a collapse!

The landscape of the Pro Wrestling Territory System in North America at the end of the swinging Sixties, had been enjoying an incredible wave of popularity, not to mention an era of Professional Wrestling that'd been the most profitable in decades! The state and well-being of the Wrestling Industry, as a whole, looked nothing short of being incredibly bright and positive for the impending future. The 1960's, as a decade, had not only reinvigorated the sport, but created a groundswell of public interest so great, it had also created incredible growth! The Industry had been so profitable during this period, that it ushered in the introduction of nearly a dozen new upstart Wrestling Promotions and Companies, desperate to get in on the action!

As the 1960's came to a close though, something happened around the turn of the decade. While the 1970's played out, the public perception had somehow turned sour on the Wrestling Industry, fan interest started to wane and would slowly develop a bad taste in its collective mouth, certain perceived frustrations had begun to crop up consistently. Subtle hints were getting noticed more and more by a steadily growing number of frustrated Pro Wrestling Fans that were tired of the recycled presentation, which always seemed to utilize the same suspicious group of aging veteran wrestling stars. Fans had eventually reached a breaking point where they were now offering their honest and unapologetic opinions, with a vast number of them sharing the same sentiment, something needed to be done. A drastic change in the booking needed to happen, many fans went so far as to present solutions on a written list of what they considered reoccurring problems and concerned issues, many of these concerns had arisen over the past few years and then went to great lengths mailing these lists to the various promotion's around the country. At least a dozen or so promotion's had received similar letters bearing these lists of common complaints.

But when the series of written documents, pleas and requests spurred on by the fans would continue to fall on the deaf ears of numerous Wrestling Promoters, as well as a large group of entitled veteran wrestling stars, who were absolutely refusing to even budge on sharing the spotlight, let alone relinquish that same spotlight. Fans had become disillusioned with most of the television product that was being presented to them on a weekly basis and when younger wrestlers weren't given a proper 'push' to the upper card, along with other changes that never came to pass. It caused a nationwide fan uproar and an immediate wave of backlash, as hundreds of fans started changing channels or tuning out in droves, live event ticket sales swiftly dropped and along with it came event attendance rates that were steadily dwindling. As the cold and dreary month of December finally came to an end, along with the entire year that'd been mired in even bigger mistakes and misery, of which left a stinking rotten cloud of controversy in its wake. The year was riddled with mishap after mishap and in retrospect, would encapsulate Wrestling for the year of 1977, a calendar year where many high-ranking officials within the business had given comment and boldly stated 1977 as "by far the worst year in Wrestling history" is now, thankfully in the rearview mirror.

With the dawning of a new year came some much-needed enthusiasm on the parts of some of the Promoters, encouraging staff and backstage crew members to rally behind their respective companies and get the word out, hold ticket giveaways on local radio stations, coordinate with business owners of clothing stores and food markets to hold Wrestling Star autograph signings, spread flyers in parking lots, advertise upcoming events on picket signs. Doing anything and everything they can to just organically create some kind of momentum. As the first few months of 1978 whimpered by, many of the wrestling journalists and commentators claimed that the Industry was experiencing a traumatic downturn, with the decade being recognized as a turbulent period of the 1970's Pro Wrestling scene, a very forgettable period of time that'd been seemingly trapped in a sad, disheartening state of supposed denial.