Charting The Territories

In the 1st quarter of 1974, Ken Mantell supplants the departed Danny Hodge as the top babyface star, Rip Tyler climbs the theoretical ladder, Kroffat and Sweetan try and climb a literal ladder, & more!

In 2021, I spent a significant number of man-hours confirming the identity of a masked wrestler who worked for Leroy McGuirk in 1963 and disappeared suddenly after suffering an injury during a match with Lou Thesz. Shocking new details about that match *may* have been uncovered!

On the latest episode of Charting the Territories, Al Getz and Jon Boucher look at the 1st quarter of 1966 in the McGuirk wrestling territory, looking at how a real-life car accident may have impacted the NWA World Junior Heavyweight title history and how another car accident unwittingly unmasked the Assassins. From there, they go walking in Memphis and look at 11 straight weeks of Jerry Lawler vs Bill Dundee.

This is a special look at the Jarrett wrestling territory in the 3rd quarter of 1977. From time to time, we will look at territories that I don’t normally cover on this blog; think of them as “Uncharted Territories”.

On the latest episode of Stats 101, wrestling historian Al Getz discusses a new stat he created to measure feuds in pro wrestling in the territorial era. Along with explaining the development of the stat, he gives numerous examples of it in action, spanning multiple territories and decades.

In January 2022 we launched a new statistic called FLW, which stands for Feud Length in Weeks. It is an attempt to “measure” feuds in professional wrestling during the territorial era in a way that the output is easily understandable. This post goes into detail about how this stat was created, why it was created, what it can and can’t do, and how to best interpret and analyze it.

Welcome to Chapter 26 of The McGuirk/Watts Wrestling Almanac, an in-depth data-driven look at the wrestling territory run by Leroy McGuirk (and later, Bill Watts).