Charting The Territories

In many ways, I view Charting the Territories as an ongoing beta test of the statistics I have created. I look at it as hey, I invented these stats...now follow along with me as we see if they *work* . With the SPOT Rating, I've actually been quite surprised at how well it measures what it is supposed to measure (a wrestler's average position on the cards expressed as a number) across different territories and different time periods. I first debuted the FEUD Score in November of 2019. It's an attempt to measure how "big" a feud was based on how many times it occurred on house shows, and how clustered those matches are over time (if they're wrestling against one another once a week for five weeks, that's different than if they wrestled each other five times in one week). The idea being that if a particular feud between two wrestlers or teams is received well by the fans (i.e., it draws money), the booker/promoter will continue to run it around the horn, wit...

Every month, Jon Boucher and I create a podcast that discusses a wide range of topics related to what is covered on this blog. I thought it would be helpful to create a 'companion piece' that goes along with each episode. We often reference web sites, books, YouTube videos, etc., on the podcast, and this companion piece will provide links to many of those materials so that you can see what Jon & I are discussing.

Welcome to Chapter 19 of The McGuirk/Watts Wrestling Almanac, an in-depth data-driven look at the wrestling territory run by Leroy McGuirk (and later, Bill Watts). The territory is most commonly known as Tri-State Wrestling and/or Mid-South Wrestling, though neither of those names were actually used until September 1979 when Watts split from McGuirk.

In the 2nd quarter of 1973, Dory Funk Jr.’s last successful World title defenses, Grizzly Smith steps up to fill Watts’ boots, newcomers include a Tarzan, a Butcher, a Gypsy, a Lumberjack, and the future SHEIKY BABY!