Wrestling Review: Central States All Star Wrestling January 7th, 1984

RIP Roger Kirby

Bob Geigel’s wrestling promotion, often referred to as Central States, is long past its commercial peak even before Hulkamania sweeps modern wrestling to a higher level in 1984. Even during the territory’s salad days under Geigel’s control, the Kansas City circuit never rewards workers at the same level they enjoy with, for example, Eddie Graham’s Championship Wrestling from Florida or Bill Watts’ Mid South Wrestling. Geigel exerts uninterrupted control of wrestling promotion in Kansas City for over twenty years but, a little over three years removed away from the death of his promotion, his champion as 1984 dawns is “Avalanche” Buzz Tyler with Hulk Hogan days away from capturing his first WWF championship.

Five years before mat luminaries like The Assassin (Jody Hamilton), The Turk, and Ron Starr, among others, held the Central States Heavyweight Championship. Sentimentalists litter classic wrestling forums online and often sing the sad refrain “what could have Promoter X done to save their territory” in some iteration. By 1984, Geigel can do nothing to save his Midwestern fiefdom except close earlier than he does in the end. Save himself grief and money if nothing else.

Little else dates the January 7^th, 1984 episode of All Star Wrestling like its introduction. There is a smattering of Atari style graphics of two men grappling, the show’s sole concession to then-modern technology, before announcers Rick Stuart and Kevin Wall open the show. Despite the inferior ring product they are asked to call, Stuart and Wall are one of the era’s more unheralded territory announcing duos, particularly Stuart’s conveying the action and drama with authority and coherence it neither merits nor deserves. Wall runs through some recent territory history recapping conflict between Sheik Abdullah the Great (a Midwestern knock off staple), Triple 6, and MEB. Stuart relays news of Les Thornton’s recent victory in a Junior Heavyweight World Championship tournament in Manila. Rio isn’t exotic enough for bogus title wins, I guess. Beats some town in Tennessee or Georgia.

Other performers are announced. Ron Ritchie, King Cobra, and Tiger Mask (Ken Wayne) will appear headed by a main event between Kamala the Ugandan Giant and, as Stuart calls him, “King Kong Bruiser Brody”. We’ll just go with Bruiser Brody. The card opens with six time Central States Heavyweight title holder Roger Kirby, working a “turncoat” gimmick as “Honorary Sheik” Roger Kirby.

Kirby was a territory “homesteader” in many respects, but he ventured as far as Indiana and Chicago, among others, over the course of a long career. Despite being relatively long in the tooth by 1984, Kirby is in superb shape. Ritchie and Kirby wrestle a vigorous old school match with the latter dominating much of the action before they transition into Ritchie’s babyface comeback, but Kirby soon cuts him off. He comes charging towards Ritchie off the ropes, but Ritchie backdrops him and Kirby takes a mammoth bump over the ropes and out to the floor. Kirby beats the count back in and they have another brief back and forth exchange before another brief Ritchie comeback. The finish has an attempt to break a Ritchie sleeper backfire on Kirby and gives Ron Ritchie a roll up for the clean pin.  Solid match, but it’s Kirby all the way, really.

Central States legend Sonny Myers referees the next match and actually garners some crowd heat with his introduction! The bout is between Tommy Rogers and heel Grizzly Evans. Stuart and Wall push Rogers hard, throwing him into the mix for Junior World title conversation, and keep the hard sell up throughout with only cursory mention of his opponent Evans. Evans moves decent for a cookie cutter rugged 80’s territory heel and works a number of elementary big man spots. He does sell well, arguably better than Rogers. The match gets a little sloppy near its end as a potential backdrop spot delivered by Rogers goes wrong and ends up with both wrestlers scrambling to their feet and the finish has an attempted double underhook suplex awkwardly transition into a small package pin for Rogers.

The promotion’s unabashed attempt to promote their “Tiger Mask” as the legendary Japanese wrestler of the same name amuses me. They aren’t the first to try such low rent chicanery, but Geigel demonstrates enough good judgment to recruit small Southern high flyer Ken Wayne to don a mask and play the role for Central States Wrestling. He works with Bob Orton Jr.’s younger brother, Barry Orton, and the two put on the show’s best march so far. Wayne takes some big bumps at the right times and Orton plays his heel role to the hilt, The energy level outstrips anything thus far and Stuart breaks out some Gordon Solie level vocabulary for the television audience. Orton is, essentially, a middle of the road talent and the match is acceptable at best.

“Avalanche” Buzz Tyler and Stuart appear in a cutaway promo pushing an upcoming 35,000 battle royal scheduled for St. Louis’ Kiel Auditorium. He has some fire, but doesn’t do anything that leaps out as a quality suitable for headlining a territory. Bulldog Bob Brown follows him and pushes the battle royal as well without neglecting to push his return from a six week hiatus. The promised Les Thornton appearance comes courtesy of a short Stuart/Wall introduction to Championship Wrestling from Georgia footage. Gordon Solie and Ole Anderson are on commentary for a vigorous and competitive bout between Thornton and enhancement talent Jason Walker. Thornton is a machine at this point in his career, carved from granite, and Solie and Anderson inflate his bonafides with the same Manila puffery we heard from Stuart and Wall. They follow the match with a short and standard Solie/Thornton interview.

Stuart returns for another interview this time with Central States’ then-booker “Colonel” Buck Robely and he does a quick heel promo foe the aforementioned 35,000 battle royal. The unlikely team of a pre-Four Horsemen Tully Blanchard and “Crazy” Luke Graham offer up paint by numbers promos of their own. King Cobra versus Scott Ferris is next. Briefly over in Watts’ Mid-South territory, Central States opts to position Cobra as a face against a heel Ferris, a former champion in Don Owen’s Portland territory, and it pays off with a solid but unremarkable march. Cobra clumsily reverses a backdrop into a sunset flip for the finish. Stuart and Wall push the victory as an upset but it is obvious the promotion intended to push this young performer. A short cutaway follows with Stuart once again pushing the upcoming 35,000 dollar battle royal with Harley Race providing his typically plain-spoken promo,

The main event of King Kong Bruiser Brody squaring up against Kamala is what you hardened wrestling fans might expect. Billed as “Giant Kamala” and accompanied by the venerable masked Friday, Brody and Kamala, aka “Sugar” Jim Harris, exchange countless volleys in a bloody paint by numbers brawl that extends beyond the allotted tv time. A brief graphic informs audience Brody eventually lost by disqualification for disobeying the official’s instructions. We’re bookended with the same amateurish graphics that opened the show as it concludes. The show has warts galore and discerning viewers will discern the promotion’s trajectory from this point forward, but the final days of Buck Robley’s reign as booker still delivers some hard hitting action – the Colonel, however, had precious little to work with at the dawn of these waning days.