Charting The Territories

For the week ending December 1st, 1968: Jack Donovan returns from injury, Chief Big Heart debuts, Danny Hodge feuding with Ronnie Reed & more!

For the week ending November 30th, 1975: Sweetan feuds with Killer Karl Kox, Hodge still chasing Matsuda & more!

For the week ending December 2nd, 1979: the debut of a young rookie who would later become a "Doctor" & more!

For the week ending December 2nd, 1979: Murdoch pops in for a few shows, Freebirds & JYD move up the SPOT ratings chart & more!

For the week ending November 28th, 1982: big Thanksgiving weekend includes a huge card at the Superdome, Kamala moves up to main events & more!

In the final week of November 2019, we introduced a second statistical metric into our analysis of wrestling in the territorial era. It's an attempt to measure feuds, ie when two wrestlers (or teams) wrestle against one another frequently over a short period of time. We have named this statistic Frequent Encounters Using Data, or FEUD for short (see what we did there?) The FEUD score is a positive integer; the higher the number, the more "intense" the feud is at the time. Due to many factors (listed at the bottom of this post), it's hard to say what a "good" number is; as a loose rule of thumb, a FEUD score of 25 and above is a good indicator that the match in question was indeed a "feud". Many of the matches listed in the FEUD charts aren't actually "feuds"; they are merely matches that happened frequently at the time. The higher the FEUD score for a given match relative to other matches over the same time period, the bigger the fe...

For the week ending November 24th, 1968: Hodge returns from injury, mid-card heels jockey for position and try to move up the cards & more!

For the week ending November 23rd, 1975: Watts moves back up into the main events with Murdoch in Japan, the Hollywood Blondes move up the cards & more!

For the week ending November 25th, 1979: top babyfaces Jim Garvin and Brian Blair fend off challenges from Akbar and his heel stable & more!

For the week ending November 25th, 1979: two youngsters named Michael and Terry make their debuts, a look at some absolutely LOADED Thanksgiving weekend lineups & more!

For the week ending November 21st, 1982: JYD morphs into Stagger Lee, Gino Hernandez comes in as a semi-regular, Matt Borne moves up the cards & more!

One of the most important features of my research into pro wrestling in the territorial era is the development of the SPOT rating. SPOT is an acronym for Statistical Position Over Time, and it measures a wrestler's average spot on the cards over a fixed period of time as a number between 0 and 1. The highest possible rating is a 1.00; this would mean that a wrestler was booked in the main event of every card they were booked on during that fixed time period. Here is a sample SPOT rating chart. In this column, I will go into a little more detail about how it's calculated and how it should be read. Much like other statistics, the period of time used to calculate a SPOT rating can be different. In baseball, you generally see a player's batting average listed for the current season to date. But sometimes they give you their batting average for the last week, or month, or for a three year period or even their entire career. The most frequent usage of the SPOT rating o...

Our coverage of 1968 continues with a look at the week ending November 17th: the heels get their hands raised more often than usual, the Blue Demons are unmasked, a rookie named Robley pops up in Louisiana & more!

Our coverage of 1975 continues with a look at the week ending November 16th: Jack Brisco comes to town, Hiro Matsuda suffers a surprising loss but a technicality allows him to keep the Junior Heavyweight title, Murdoch heads to Japan, a match between two future legends in Fort Smith & more!

Our coverage of Tri-State in 1979 continues with a look at the week ending November 18th : Haystack feuds with Blair, Garvin feuds with Shikina, Ron Starr may or may not have turned heel, Sugar Bear heads to Texas & more!

Our coverage of Mid-South in 1979 continues with a look at the week ending November 18th: the tag team titles change hands, Watts in bunkhouse matches against Mosca, Stan Hansen returns, it's the beginning of the end for the JYD-Cook feud & more!

Our coverage of 1982 continues with a look at the week ending November 14th: JYD "finishes up" here, The Grappler probably loses his mask in several towns, newcomers include a former Olympian and a future Enforcer & more!

Our coverage of 1961 continues with a look at the week ending November 12th: McGuirk pulls out of (most of) Louisiana, The Great Antonio returns and is featured in several battle royals, a note about our coverage of 1961 going forward & more!

Our coverage of 1968 continues with a look at the week ending November 10th: Danny Hodge returns, I namedrop George Wallace, looking at how several finishes set up rematches a week later with added stipulations, Big John gets a little buddy & more!

Our coverage of 1975 continues with a look at the week ending November 9th: Andre competes in some battle royals with varying stipulations, Murdoch tries to find a partner to battle Kox & Robley, Sonny King does a SPOT rating flip-flop with Pork Chop & more!

Our coverage of Tri-State in 1979 continues with a look at the week ending November 11th : the tag team titles appear to have changed hands in Tulsa, Haystack is back (but as a heel) & more!

Our coverage of Mid-South in 1979 continues with a look at the week ending November 11th: Mike George is scheduled to defend the North American title against Dick Murdoch but instead faces Bill Watts and the newspaper says Watts wins the title but I don't think he really did & more!

Our coverage of 1982 continues with a look at the week ending November 7th: JYD faces Kamala in Baton Rouge in what may be their first-ever match against one another, Brad Armstrong comes in for the week, someone may have lost their mask in Shreveport & more!

Our coverage of 1961 continues with a look at the week ending November 5th: Danny Hodge works the "B" towns, don't be the first person eliminated in a battle royal this week, why Mighty Bolo may have left the territory & more!