Tri-State Wrestling: 1980 Jan-Jun Recap

Now that we're halfway through the year, I wanted to take a look back at the first 6 months of Tri-State Wrestling (Leroy McGuirk's territory after he and Watts split) in 1980.

I looked at the SPOT Ratings on a week-to-week basis for the full time wrestlers in the territory to put together a list of the top stars for the first six months. As a reminder, SPOT Rating stands for Statistical Position Over Time. SPOT is a numerical representation of a wrestlers' average position (or spot) on the cards and is expressed as a number between .00 and 1.00.

A wrestler with a SPOT Rating of .80 and above is considered a Main Eventer, between .60 and .80 is an Upper Mid-Carder, between .40 and .60 is a Mid-Carder, and .40 and below is a Preliminary Wrestler. Furthermore, there is an additional 'unofficial' category of a .90 and above; we'll call that a Top Draw. 

Here are all the regulars who were Top Draws, Main Eventers, or Upper Mid-Carders at some point in the first 6 months of 1980. I used their highest weekly SPOT Rating to put together this list.

TOP DRAWS

Babyface: Brian Blair

Heels: Jerry Brown, Killer Karl Krupp, Ron Starr, Siegfried Stanke, Steve Lawler

MAIN EVENTERS

Babyfaces: Bruce Reed, Herb Calvert, Tommy Gilbert

UPPER MID-CARDERS

Babyfaces: King Parsons, Koko Ware

Heels: Don Bass, Mr. Pogo

The following chart shows the weekly SPOT Ratings for the above wrestlers. They are sorted by average weekly SPOT Rating from highest to lowest. SPOT Ratings for babyfaces are shaded in blue, heels in orange. The higher the SPOT, the darker the shading. This allows you to see how they moved up or down the cards over time. It should be noted that I added some events to my database since the beginning of the year; as such, some of the weekly SPOT Ratings here don't match up with ones previously published.

	1/6	1/13	1/20	1/27	2/3	2/10	2/17	2/24	3/2	3/9	3/16	3/23	3/30	4/6	4/13	4/20	4/27	5/4	5/11	5/18	5/25	6/1	6/8	6/15	6/22	6/29
Killer Karl Krupp												.85	.88	.91	.96	.97	.98	.97
Ron Starr	.79	.76	.75	.75	.73	.74	.74	.82	.86	.94	.96	.99
Siegfried Stanke	.83	.97	.93	.87	.80	.72	.71	.69	.74	.73
Jerry Brown											.75	.73	.68	.65	.65	.68	.73	.78	.86	.93	.96	.95	.92	.87	.85
Steve Lawler	.76	.88	.93	.92	.89	.86	.83	.79	.77	.79	.78	.76	.68	.63	.64	.67	.72	.76	.79	.83	.83	.82	.79	.78	.75	.73
Brian Blair	.74	.74	.81	.83	.77	.74	.64	.71	.70	.77	.73	.73	.67	.65	.64	.67	.71	.77	.85	.92	.92	.91	.88	.92	.93	.95
Tommy Gilbert			.76	.68	.58	.54	.56	.65	.77	.84	.88	.88	.86	.83	.86	.88	.90	.87	.84	.83	.81	.80	.75	.72	.70	.72
Bruce Reed	.37	.50	.61	.73	.77	.79	.80	.80	.82	.81	.81	.82	.83	.86	.86
Koko Ware																					.60	.66	.71	.73	.76	.77
King Parsons																.66	.65	.64	.64	.66	.68	.67	.64	.61	.56	.53
Herb Calvert	.79	.84	.83	.75	.67	.62	.54	.50	.42	.43	.42
Mr Pogo											.53	.61	.74	.73	.67	.57	.47
Don Bass	.34	.42	.44	.43	.35	.30	.23	.31	.40	.42	.41	.34	.28	.24	.24	.37	.58	.70	.67	.64	.58	.55	.46	.40	.37	.48

In addition to the above full-timers, the following wrestlers had semi-regular appearances here and are considered part-timers. This list does not include special attractions like the World champ or Andre the Giant or women/midget wrestlers.

TOP DRAWS

Babyface: David Von Erich, Jim Garvin, Les Thornton

Heel: Oki Shikina, Scandor Akbar, the Spoiler

In addition to SPOT Ratings, the other statistic we use is called a FEUD Score. FEUD stands for Frequent Encounters Using Data and measures the "intensity" of a feud, taking into account the number of times a specific matchup happens and the breadth of when those matches occur. As a general rule of thumb, a FEUD Score of 25 and above indicates a "feud" while a Score of 40 and above indicates a "major feud". The following chart looks at the top feuds of the first six months of 1980, including all feuds with a FEUD Score of 15 or above for at least three weeks. My records for this period of time are less complete than others; as such, the higher FEUD Scores tend to be lower than we see for other years.

	1/6	1/13	1/20	1/27	2/3	2/10	2/17	2/24	3/2	3/9	3/16	3/23	3/30	4/6	4/13	4/20	4/27	5/4	5/11	5/18	5/25	6/1	6/8	6/15	6/22	6/29
Brian Blair vs Spoiler																								25	32	31
Killer Karl Krupp vs Tommy Gilbert														20	25	28	26	18
Bruce Reed vs Steve Lawler					20	26	26	20
Brian Blair & Tommy Gilbert vs Jerry Brown & Steve Lawler																		15	21	23	20	15
Brian Blair vs Jerry Brown																				18	23	21	15
Brian Blair vs Ron Starr						20	21	22	16