Before Vince McMahon debased professional wrestling by creating a circus of steroid-enhanced clowns and stamping the sport with mass appeal, wrestling once had a dignity capable of mesmerizing fans into suspended disbelief. There were no fireworks or guys swinging on ropes like Tarzan on a vine. The plots were simple and frills non-existent, with wrestlers sporting briefs, wrestling boots, and perhaps a mask if they were playing a “heel” (bad guy).

Prior to McMahon, professional wrestling thrived in territories scattered across America. Former wrestler and promoter Jerry Jarrett, founder Total Nonstop Action Wrestling, ruled the legendary Memphis territory in the 1970s. Memphis’s rabid fans rendered it among the country’s most exciting towns for wrestling in the 1960s and ’70s, as crowds of more than 10,000 routinely sold out the city’s Mid-South Coliseum.

On Friday, August 5, the film Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’, will be shown at the Alabama Theatre downtown. The documentary highlights the glory days of Jarrett, Jerry Lawler, Andy Kaufman, Tojo Yamamoto, Sputnik Monroe, and other stars who sparkled, strutted, and slapped one another shamelessly in the ring. Sherman Willmott, the film’s producer, began the endeavor in 2009 to publicize his friend Ron Hall’s coffee-table book Sputnik, Masked Men, and Midgets: Early Days of Memphis Wrestling, which features some 300 images of heroes and villains. Willmott recently shared his opinion regarding what made Memphis wrestling unique: “You had some really creative minds, with Jerry Jarrett at the top,” he explained. “You had one of the greats of all time—Jerry Lawler—who was great at being a heel but also great at being a good guy. It was a great combination of story lines and talent. The main thing was having a TV show that they could send out to all the territory. And in Memphis, because there was no major sports team, wrestling kind of took over.”

	Wrestling pre-WWE: Jerry Jarrett and Tojo Yamamoto. (Photo courtesy of Chris Swisher) (click for larger version)

Birmingham’s Nick Gulas, arguably the Southeast’s leading wrestling promoter, hired seven-year-old Jerry Jarrett to sell programs at wrestling matches in the late 1940s. In 1956, at age 14, Jarrett promoted his first bout. He went on to referee and eventually became a wrestler himself at the insistence of Tojo Yamamoto, his tag-team partner. Perhaps the best known of Jarrett’s promotional feats was comedian Andy Kaufman’s foray into wrestling. Kaufman refused to wrestle men, instead wrestling women. He was never beaten and declared himself the “Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion of the World.” Jarrett spent a recent afternoon discussing the good old days of wrestling; Andy Kaufman; and the renowned Sputnik Monroe, a white wrestler who is considered by some to be the real guy who broke segregation in Memphis when he refused to wrestle unless black patrons at his matches had access to the same seats as whites. Jarrett has been quoted as saying that black Memphians had three portraits on their living room walls: Jesus, Martin Luther King, and Sputnik Monroe. &

The film Memphis Heat: The True Story of Memphis Wrasslin’ will screened at the Alabama Theatre, 1817 Third Avenue North, at 7 p.m. For details, call 252-2262 or go to www.alabamatheatre.com. Jerry Jarrett will be on hand to sign his autobiography Jerry Jarrett’s Story: The Best of Times. Admission is $8.

Black & White: Working in the wrestling business as a kid must have been pretty exciting.
Jarrett: I was seven or eight years old when I started selling programs and then I went from there to taking up tickets. That was my beginning in the business. When I was 14, I got a license to drive on a hardship license case, and Nick and Roy started letting me promote the little country towns. If you can just picture a kid in the late ’50s walking around with a couple hundred dollars . . . I was a wealthy guy. [laughs]

How did the setups work, planning out rivalries ahead of time?
There was a period that was called ‘kayfabe’ where we allowed the fans to suspend their disbelief so that they could enjoy like they would when they go to the movie. [Note: "kayfabe" is defined as the portrayal of professional wrestling, in particular the competition and rivalries between participants, as being genuine] But today everybody realizes that it’s choreographed completely. Yeah, you worked out tight spots and moves and where do you go into the finish of the match. Today they go even farther. The guys get to the arena early and get in the ring and actually go through the spots, which I think hurts the business because it takes away the spontaneity of it . . .Today, it’s pretty much choreographed like a script.

Did anybody ever really get mad and tempers flare, where wrestlers were really out to get one another?
Yeah, on occasion. It didn’t happen much; about like it would in your business if you were able to fight and not get fired. I’m sure there’s some people at the office you’d like to bust. [laughs] So on occasion that would happen.

Were you afraid when you started wrestling?
Well, yeah, I was real nervous. You know, I had played football, basketball, and baseball—I had played sports. But you work out in the gym on the mat and then all of a sudden you’re in front of several hundred people, it’s nerve-racking. And you know if you screw up, back in those days, your opponent would knock you upside the head and pretty much eat you up, because he didn’t want to expose the business. So it was a lot of pressure when I first started.

Any memories of wrestling in Birmingham come to mind?
Yes, Joe Tennenberg had a pawn shop there. Joe was Nick Gulas’s partner. I bought my wife’s engagement ring from Joe and he was just a really sweet, nice man. I remember the fans were very, very passionate. The Birmingham trips were real fun. One of Nick’s brothers had a hot dog stand and we’d always go over there and eat a good hot dog before the matches when we got to town.

Do you remember Birmingham wrestling television studio announcer Sterling Brewer?
Oh, sure! Sterling was the announcer and Birmingham TV [live wrestling] didn’t come on until 10 o’clock at night. And so we’d usually run down from Chattanooga and make the late night TV [in Birmingham].

	Famed Memphis wrestler Sputnik Monroe. (Photo courtesy Memphis Heat!)

I’m amazed how many times you wrestled in a single day, in different cities.
Yeah, we’d wrestle Memphis TV Saturday morning. Then we would drive from there to Huntsville and wrestle on Saturday afternoon. And then we’d run to Chattanooga, and Chattanooga TV came on at 5 o’clock, we’d wrestle there. Then we’d get to eat a bite and then go wrestle the house show, do one of the preliminary matches in Chattanooga if we were going to Birmingham. We’d get to Birmingham and dress in the car. Sterling would announce, “Well, it’s time for our next match!” and we’d run right into the ring. [laughs]

You were affiliated with the matches in Memphis when Andy Kaufman was wrestling women, declaring himself the undefeated Inter-Gender Wrestling Champion.
Yes, I promoted that series of matches. Andy was extremely talented. And if he had wanted to and stayed in the wrestling business he would have made a lot of money because he had great psychology and he understood the business. And was a really, really nice guy. And, really, the people would hate him because he would make fun of us as southerners. And he knew how to project that so that the people thought, “This son of a gun is not acting. He really feels that way.” And of course, that’s what a great actor does. Andy was great at that.

You gave Hulk Hogan his first break?
A guy named Louie Gillette called me and said, “I’ve got a kid down here that looks like the Incredible Hulk and I think that if you take the time to teach to him to wrestle, he can draw you some money.” So I told him to send him up. And Hulk Hogan came to my house and of course he’s a giant of a man. So I took him to Tupelo, Mississippi, where there was a ring set up and I could be out of the sight of the fans and we worked out. He never was a great wrestler but he had great charisma, and drew a lot of money all over the world.

Did Sputnik Monroe really help to integrate Memphis?
Sputnik was way ahead of his time as far as prejudices.. And he would go down on Beale Street and have a drink at the black clubs—have a beer with the black people. Well, back in those days, they arrested him, said you can’t do that. He went to court, hired the top black attorney in town. They lost. Sputnik paid the $50 fine, went back to the beer joint, and continued drinking. Word spread, and he started drawing a whole lot of blacks. And one night he told the promoter—they had the Crow’s Nest where the black people sat. And the balcony [where white patrons sat] had empty seats. There was no more room in the Crow’s Nest so Sputnik told the promoter, “If you don’t let my black fans sit in the balcony, I’m not gonna wrestle.” And of course, he was the main event, so this forced the issue. And then what they ended up doing, they opened up the upper deck of Ellis Auditorium and they had it half black and half white. The black people respected Sputnik because he was helping their cause.

Can you share some of the tricks wrestlers used to create a badly bleeding wound when they received what might be construed as a less-than-severe blow to the face?
Back in those days we took a little corner of a razor blade and wrapped tape around one end of it where just the point was out. And we’d stick it in our tights or in our jaw—which was quite dangerous ’cause you could swallow it. But anyway, we’d take it out and you could cut your forehead. We had a product called “New Skin” that you would put over it and it would kind of seal it. And then we’d put a Band-Aid over that. Well, back in those days you wrestled one night and another night and another night. So to keep from having to cut yourself again, you could just take the Band-Aid off and when you hit that New Skin, the skin would break open again and you’d bleed again.

Was there any kind of wrestling school in those days to learn the trade?
Well, there is now, but back in those days you had to get a wrestler to break you in. It was kind of a brotherhood—unless a wrestler teamed [up with] you, you didn’t get in. &