Tuesday, October 16, 2012

Saturday Morning Ringside: Golden Age of Wrestling

I regret that I cannot provide a specific starting point for ESPN Classic's Golden Age of Wrestling anthology series, which encompasses primetime wrestling action from the 50's & 60's, long before wrestling devolved, if you will, into sports entertainment.

The series started when the network was known as Classic Sports Network, which was later acquired by Disney and added to the ESPN family of networks. This serves as a primer for wrestling fans who'd read and heard of earlier stars like Mark Lewin, whose career extended all the way into the 80's, and into runs with the NWA & World Class Championship Wrestling, and "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers, whom a lot of today's fans probably only know from a short-lived interview segment he did on television for the then-World Wrestling Federation (1983 or thereabouts).

The following video presents an interview with Lewin, then-tag team partner Don Curtis, and manager Mighty Atlas, originally recorded in 1962 in Chicago.



Currently, ESPN Classic is now a premium channel in some markets, including mine (Boo! Hiss!), and at last check, the network was rerunning AWA tapes from its run on ESPN in the late 80's. Golden Age of Wrestling either is stuck in the vaults, or ESPN dropped it altogether, I'm not sure which is the case.

Rating: B.

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