In Search Of.....The AWA

And now let's talk about something near and dear to my heart. The old wrestling league, the AWA. The American Wrestling Association. Run by Verne Gagne. That came to Winnipeg every third or fourth Thursday night in the '70s and the first half of the '80s. Their TV show was on CKND on Saturday night, replayed early Sunday afternoon.

And then the AWA lost Winnipeg after the AWA's last card here, on January 16, 1986, which featured NWA champion Ric Flair defending his title against former AWA champion Nick Bockwinkel. WWE took over the AWA's time slot. I'll get more into that at the end of this.

At that point, those of us living on the west side of the Red River in Winnipeg would not be able to see the AWA on our TV screens again until September 1987. That's 1.5 years. That's because our mandated cable company, Videon, could not provide TSN (The Sports Network), which aired the AWA's ESPN show, until that time.

When all of this stuff with the Rock And Wrestling Connection started happening in WWE in 1984, I was ecstatic. Celebrities like Cyndi Lauper getting involved in wrestling! National American media covering it! Ex-AWA wrestlers like Hulk Hogan becoming national media stars because of it! This was the greatest thing to happen since sliced bread! All Winnipeg was missing was a WWE TV show.

But not at the expense of the AWA!

I didn't want the AWA to be removed from our TV screens for us to get WWE in place of it!

I wanted both!

And we kind of didn't even get WWE. 

Prior to this, another Winnipeg station, CKY, aired a WWE show, or tried to, on Saturdays at 2:00 p.m. But it was mostly pre-empted for sports. I didn't get my first VCR until 1985, so that time slot was an incredibly difficult one to be home for. So I rarely saw the show. It was called Maple Leaf Wrestling (without mention of WWE, or WWF at the time) and it was hosted by Gorilla Monsoon and Jesse Ventura. This was the show that moved over to CKND a few weeks after our last AWA card in January 1986. This show was a real head-scratcher. They didn't bother to cover most goings-on in WWE. It was just squash matches with Gorilla and Jesse on commentary. And Jesse did his show, The Body Shop, but it seemed to be evergreen: nothing was said that referenced current storylines. Only a little bit was said in the commentary during the matches by Gorilla and Jesse about current storylines. The show was boring! And I wrote a huge letter to WWE's Stamford offices complaining about it.

I eventually found out this was a secondary show filmed in Canada for CRTC Canadian content regulations. The same regulations that were tightened up in 1984 that caused the AWA to start Winnipeg TV tapings, first at Norberry School, then Holy Cross School. In Winnipeg, later in 1986, we started to get the Detroit network affiliates on cable instead of the North Dakota ones (except one) and one Detroit station on  Saturday morning aired WWE's main show, WWE Championship Wrestling. Okay! HERE'S where everything happens! Hosted by Vince McMahon and Bruno Sammartino. Filled with clips of the goings-on. Eventually, in Canada we stopped getting the other show, Jesse Ventura joined the main show which was renamed WWE Superstars Of Wrestling in the United States, but still had the name Maple Leaf Wrestling in Canada for some reason, Bruno left soon after, so it became just Vince and Jesse, and the show we stopped getting, I read through magazines, replaced Jesse with Bobby Heenan and started airing in the U.S. as WWE Wrestling Challenge. (AI tells me parts of the Gorilla/Jesse version did air in the U.S., especially Jesse's show The Body Shop, on WWE Championship Wrestling and WWE Prime Time Wrestling on USA Network.)

Now, back to the AWA.

I tried doing lots of things during this 1.5-year span to try and see the AWA.

1) I subscribed to Verne Gagne's Pro Wrestling Report. I actually did this while we were still an AWA town. I only saw the TV commercial once and thought, "I've got to have this!" and frantically wrote down the address and pricing. This was during a time when you couldn't rewind broadcasts on your TV or press pause, and it must have been before I bought my first VCR in 1985. This publication was a Godsend, and helped me immensely as I tried to follow the AWA without television.

2) There was a bar that still exists today on the east side of the Red River that my friends and I went to a lot called The Marion. The cable company on the east side could provide TSN. So sometimes on Friday/Saturday nights we'd see the AWA's ESPN show on TSN on the big huge TV screen they used to have on the one wall. But there was no audio. This was a bar with music and bands playing. Hey, just the picture was better than nothing. (This also applied to Canada's music video channel Muchmusic, which started in 1984. We couldn't get that, either. Sometimes the TV was tuned to Much, again, without the sound. When our cable company on the west side could provide TSN in September 1987, they also could now provide Muchmusic, too.)

3) A new concept bar called a "peanut bar" opened up in the St. Vital suburb where I grew up, on the east side. My friend and I went on AWA night. We got them to change the channel to AWA and I saw a Stan Hansen promo, but the bar switched to a game a bunch of people at another table wanted to see. Oh, well.

4) In the summer of 1986, I went with a friend to Minneapolis to see the AWA. My first plane ride! Not my first time in the United States, as I had been to Grand Forks, ND before by car. The show was at the St. Paul Civic Center. The main event was Nick Bockwinkel vs. The Barbarian with Sheik Adnan Al-Kassie at ringside. I also saw one of those classic matches between The Midnight Rockers and Playboy Buddy Rose & Doug Somers with their manager, Sherri Martel! 

5) In 1987, I drove to Minot, ND to see the AWA at the North Dakota State Fair. But I only saw the last two matches because Michael Dukakis was having a rally when he was running for president, and his rally blocked the way into the community centre! Lots of people couldn't get in. But the card went on in the building, anyway. I don't know why they didn't just hold on. I think it was because of the fans that did manage to get in before the rally started. At least I can say I saw a presidential candidate live.

6) Also in the summer of 1987, I saw the AWA at a high school gym in Roseau, MN! Here's the story on that: There was a station in Pembina, ND, right across the border, called KNRR that is still there today. We don't get that station on cable. At the time, I could just remove my cable from the TV and KNRR would come in via antenna on channel 12. Well, sort of. There was too much snow to watch anything, but the audio came in perfectly. They aired an AWA show Saturdays at noon. One day Larry Nelson was running down upcoming cards, and he announced Roseau, MN on June 30. June 30? That's the day before Canada Day, a holiday, so I wasn't working that day. And Roseau is only 30 minutes away from the border. I also looked up when that border crossing closed. It was midnight. Good. So I went! I saw Sherri Martel, Curt Hennig, and The Nasty Boys. The card ended earlier than I thought it might, so I had plenty of time to buy stuff at a convenience store and drive to the border.

So many great memories from all of the above. 

Now let's explore why the AWA left Winnipeg.

Jack Lanza retired from wrestling in mid-1985 and stepped into a backstage producing and agent role. During late 1985, while still handling promotional duties for the AWA in Winnipeg, Lanza was approached by Vince McMahon to join WWE as a roadmap agent and road producer. At the time, Lanza had been working on securing a broader national TV deal via Winnipeg's production setup at Holy Cross Gym for TSN. However, when negotiations broke down between Verne Gagne and TSN over distribution fees, Lanza recognized the AWA's declining leverage. Lanza formally accepted WWE's offer around late November/December 1985, and Vince McMahon handed Lanza the local promotional role and operational control of the Winnipeg market. Because Lanza held the keys to local venue scheduling and station relationships in Winnipeg, his departure left the AWA without Winnipeg TV time, as Lanza had now effectively made Winnipeg a WWE town. However, he let the AWA have one last show on January 16, 1986, probably because he didn't want the Christmas season to interfere with his WWE plans in Winnipeg. Without a local point-man right before the planned December TV tapings, those tapings were cancelled. For the last AWA card, the AWA brought in Ric Flair to defend his NWA title against Nick Bockwinkel. Stan Hansen had just defeated Rick Martel for the AWA title, so their planned match had Hansen defending. The TV show consisted of longer promotion segments with Ken Resnick and Wally Karbo sitting at a table, since there were no new TV matches and they had to rerun old matches and use matches that had been taped but never aired.

Now, the AWA could have kept coming here by taking the WWE's now-former CKY time slot. But first we'll discuss the arena situation.

Historically, AWA protected its territory via local arena lockouts - the Winnipeg Arena had an exclusivity clause preventing outside promotions from running 30 days before or after an AWA event. Winnipeg independent promoter Tony Condello worked locally to challenge and reduce that window down to 1-2 weeks, opening the door for WWE to book the Winnipeg Arena. Originally, the Winnipeg Free Press reported that Condello got involved in this because he was planning on bringing in WWE to compete at Winnipeg Arena with the AWA. Condello had already run one WWE card at Winnipeg Convention Centre in 1984 off of TV time he had with a WWE show on CKY Saturday afternoons. It drew 2000 people but that was when WWE was just starting to expand nationally. So the Convention Centre, which had a capacity of between 5000 and 6000 people, was a safe venue at that time. Although what would not change is that his Saturday afternoon TV time slot was poor, due to the show being pre-empted by sports half the time. Condello operated as an independent broker rather than an exclusive agent with a binding long-term promoter contract for WWE. When Jack Lanza resigned from the AWA and jumped to WWE, Vince McMahon handed Lanza the local promotional role and operational control of the Winnipeg market. WWE's agreements with local promoters typically featured flexibility or short-term booking arrangements, allowing McMahon to bypass Condello in favor of Lanza, who had decades of established ties with local media and venue operations.

But that didn't mean Condello could also switch and go with the AWA: The primary barrier to placing AWA on CKY was Verne Gagne's refusal to compromise on syndication rights fees. During 1985-1986, WWE offered TV stations slickly produced content (often at minimal cost or via barter) to secure prime Saturday slots, whereas Gagne consistently demanded higher compensation for AWA broadcasts. As well, the WWE show CKND was to start airing, the same one CKY had aired, was produced in Canada. CKY had no incentive to take on the AWA's cost structure, including worrying about local TV tapings (that might not even air when the show was pre-empted due to sports), or instead having to deal with an old-school show consisting of American TV tapings (no Canadian content except for local interviews) when WWE was dominating TV ratings across Canada.

Also, Gagne viewed Condello’s efforts to lift the 30-day arena restriction as an act of hostility against the AWA. By the time AWA realized it needed a replacement for Lanza in Winnipeg, the bridge with Condello was already burned. Gagne attempted to run the January 16, 1986 show directly without local infrastructure, but after that, without local TV since CKY was not interested, future 1986 dates became financially unviable. (Which means The Midnight Rockers JUST MISSED the opportunity to come to Winnipeg every third or fourth Thursday. And look at the career Shawn Michaels has had. Today, he runs WWE's NXT brand.)

Ironically, Condello DID actually bring the AWA back for two poorly-attended Winnipeg Arena cards around 1988/1989. By then, the AWA was in severe financial distress and willing to accept significantly reduced terms, leading Gagne to finally work with local promoters like Condello. However, by that time, the WWE had already locked down the market and captured the local fanbase. Even with Condello's better CKY timeslot: By then CKY had given Condello a Sunday 5:00 p.m. timeslot for whatever wrestling he was doing. Condello tried nine months' worth of promotion to bring Jim Crockett Promotions to Winnipeg for a show that drew 2000 people. It was after that that he went with the AWA. I can't remember what was on the TV show leading up to the first card, or what could be considered Canadian or American. After the first card, the TV show was heavily local interviews done after that card promoting the next card. The first card drew 2000; the second card drew 800. And that was it for the AWA. Interestingly, a journalism student asked the Winnipeg Free Press if he could do a writeup on that second card. They said yes. That student's name was Chris Irvine. Yes, it was Chris Jericho. After that, Condello used the timeslot for his own promotion, IWA Hardcore Wrestling, which eventually featured Jericho and Don Callis as The Natural.