Rob Faint
It’s 6:05 on a Saturday (6:05? What a weird time to start) and 11-year-old Rob is sitting in front of the TV waiting for his favorite show to start. The familiar music starts and wrestling suddenly we are transported by the Dean of professional wrestling Gordon Solie to another episode of Georgia Championship wrestling. For the next 2 hours we watched some of the greatest action that wrestling had to offer and some future superstars as well.
There were some legendary matches and feuds. We experienced the unending hatred between ‘Wildfire’ Tommy Rich and Buzz Sawyer. The debut of arguably the greatest tag team of all time, the Road Warriors. The battle of masked men, the Superstar and Mr. Wrestling II. Jake “The Snake” Roberts and Ron Garvin battling over the TV title. Add in a strong dose of the Freebirds, Roddy Piper, Dusty Rhodes and the world heavyweight champion Ric Flair and you’ve got a recipe for excitement.
I would be remiss if I didn’t talk about the greatest announcer of all time (sorry Jim Ross and Lance Russell) Gordon Solie. His gravelly voice and unique lingo lead to the nickname “The Walter Cronkite of Wrestling”. The coined the terms “Pier-Six Brawl” to describe a wild brawl, and “wearing a crimson mask” for a bloody wrestler. His other famous call of a suplex as a “su-play”. He always gave wrestling a sense of seriousness and his professionalism was 2nd to none. He always did his homework, whether it was knowledge of the human body or an interesting anecdote about a wrestler.
GCW was also the place where wrestlers from other promotions would make their national debut. (WTBS was broadcast over cable to most of the USA) Wrestlers like Gino Hernandez (from Southwest Championship Wrestling), Jerry Blackwell (AWA), the Junkyard Dog (Mid-South) and Jimmy Valiant (Mid Atlantic) all made appearances, making each week a unique experience. Many times, a wrestler that appeared here would go on to make a bigger name somewhere else (Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff come to mind).
To me GCW was the greatest alternative to WWF programming (All-American Wrestling or Championship Wrestling aired on Channel 9 on Saturday and Sunday morning where I lived). I remember how upset I would get if GCW was pre-empted by the Atlanta Braves game. It is one of my fondest memories of childhood and one of my biggest regrets is that I never got to see it live.
Rob Faint is a long time fan of wrestling. He greatly misses the territory days. It’s “still real to me, dammit!”
He was born in Brooklyn, NY but now lives in NJ. He loves ECW, the Crockett years, World Class and especially Georgia Championship Wrestling.
He can be found at Instagram @itsrealtomedammit1969.
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What are your personal thoughts about Ole’s style of booking & the Brisco Brothers selling their shares of GCW to Vince?
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Hey Dale,
No one had a kind word about Ole’s booking style. He seemed like a tough man to work for. Tommy Rich said he would get fired every other week for one infraction or another.
The Briscos were fortunate that no one decided to take their revenge on them for selling out to the “enemy”. If I can recall the last place they worked was the WWF before retiring so they must have known what they did essentially blackballed them from any other territory. It was a sad day for sure.
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I could’ve sworn they said they were warned by the Road Warriors to watch their backs, but as far as I can find, yeah, no one really decided to actively go after them despite what they did.
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Roddy Piper’s face turn on GCW was one of my most prized childhood memories. I became a huge Piper mark strictly from his mic work with Gordon Solie.
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