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00:00¡Gracias!
00:30Thank you. It is indeed a pleasure to be associated with WTBS.
00:34And everybody's mouth dropped open.
00:37It did seem like the world of rising stopped at that time.
00:41I was watching the TV. I had no idea it was coming.
00:44Nobody knew why. You know, the fans of that promotion were furious.
00:49It was a day that would live in infamy, forever known as Black Saturday.
00:54Vince McMahon's first step toward his goal of total monopoly,
00:58he had a vision that wrestling should be national under one person.
01:03Far more than the tale of one man's ambition,
01:06Black Saturday is the story of an epic behind-the-scenes showdown
01:10between titans of the industry.
01:13They kind of hoodooed him and snuck it out from underneath him
01:16more so than him giving it up.
01:18No, he said, let's do his blood oath.
01:20The first one to break that oath was not us.
01:23So my father, he gets a call. They've stolen the company.
01:26A high-stakes power play that sets Vince McMahon on the path
01:30toward building a billion-dollar wrestling empire.
01:34It was all the beginning groundwork of future warfare.
01:39Vince McMahon was a cancer in the wrestling business.
01:42Vince won. He was the best at it.
01:44He was the most vicious shark in the sea.
01:57Welcome to WrestleMania.
02:01For over 40 years, the wrestling business has been dominated
02:04by world wrestling entertainment under the singular control
02:07of its owner and mastermind Vince McMahon Jr.
02:13But in the early 1980s, McMahon is just beginning to stake his claim
02:16on an industry divided into regional promotions known as territories.
02:21In 1983, most wrestling fans saw Vince McMahon Jr. as the announcer of the WWF television program.
02:31Now, everybody in the wrestling business knew that Vince was Vince McMahon Sr.'s son
02:36and was the guy who had just bought the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation, from his father in 1982.
02:44Let's meet Jimmy Cornet and his dynasty of wrestlers.
02:47That's exactly right. Let's meet me. Where did you get that tie, Freddie Miller?
02:49Well, I'm Jim Cornet and through my 40-year career in wrestling, I've been an historian.
02:53Specifically, I've studied Black Saturday and its effects on modern-day pro wrestling.
02:59When Vince McMahon Jr. bought the WWF, the business in that part of the country had almost never been stronger.
03:06Since the 1940s, regional promoters like McMahon Sr. did business through a governing body called the National Wrestling Alliance.
03:15Well, the NWA, they made these bylaws and they had territorial boundaries where you've got this territory and you've got this territory.
03:23My name is Dave Meltzer and I'm the editor of the Wrestling Observer Newsletter and I've been covering pro wrestling since the early 1970s.
03:30In the NWA, there was always wars and fighting and things like that.
03:34Wrestling has always been kind of like the mafia without the cement overshoes.
03:38Nobody ends up at the bottom of the river, just a few black eyes every now and then.
03:44Every year the NWA had a meeting, all the promoters came.
03:48It was like the Gambinos and the Bananos and there's the Gottis.
03:52And it was all the families that came together once a year and decided the major decisions for wrestling in the United States for the following year.
04:01The other promoters looked at Vince Jr. like an upstart kid.
04:05They didn't realize he wanted to be the Walt Disney of wrestling.
04:08They didn't understand not only the plans that he had, but the lengths that he was willing to go to, to have those plans come to fruition.
04:17While some territories showed signs of struggle, Georgia Championship Wrestling was thriving, thanks to the shrewd leadership of Jim Barnett.
04:27Barnett was one of the great minds in wrestling as a promoter.
04:31When he needed to charm people, he could charm people.
04:34And he had connections outside wrestling.
04:36If you needed to discuss something with a politician, if you needed to talk to a television executive or a station manager or a big sponsor,
04:46Barnett was the guy that they called to make the connection.
04:50Even in today's business, as off the wall as the characters are, Jim Barnett would still stand out as a very unique character.
04:58I'm Gerald Briscoe, better known as Jerry Briscoe in the wrestling circuit.
05:03Let's go see the World Tag Team Champions Jack and Jerry Briscoe in action.
05:07My brother and I became the only two people ever to hold both the Eastern Championship and the Mid-Atlantic Championship.
05:14Right, brother.
05:15They say we're wild and we're mean, we're creating a scene, we're going crazy.
05:19I got along real well and learned so much from Jim Barnett.
05:23All the other promoters were ex-wrestlers, or they were loud and braggadocious.
05:29Jim always wore a beautiful suit with a tie and he had the hair slicked back and he had jewelry on.
05:35If wrestling had incurred violins.
05:37I don't think so, no. I never thought so.
05:41He was very different from a wrestling guy.
05:43I mean, he was interested in wrestling, but he's more interested in fine arts, which is kind of unique for a wrestling promoter.
05:49For a while, they wouldn't let Jim in the NWA until, geez, like 70.
05:54Because they didn't want somebody gay in their old boys club.
05:58Behind the scenes, he was a cutthroat.
06:02He had the ability to cut your balls off and shove them down your throat and you'd thank him for it.
06:09Known as a powerful liaison to TV executives, Jim Barnett is close to media tycoon Ted Turner, who airs Georgia Championship Wrestling nationally on his cable network, WTBS.
06:24Wrestling was the first hit on cable television. It was Georgia Championship Wrestling.
06:28Turner just took his local Atlanta Channel 17 TV station and put up on a satellite and everybody thought he was nuts.
06:34Who's going to want to watch a local Atlanta television show in San Francisco, right?
06:38There wasn't so many options for TV, so it was one of the stations you got.
06:41So you could watch the Atlanta Braves and Andy Griffith was big.
06:44But wrestling was the biggest show on the station. You know, that was like must see.
06:47Coming up next, Georgia Championship Wrestling.
06:50All the stars of the National Wrestling Alliance
06:53Surprise!
06:54Flew into Atlanta every weekend to appear on the two-hour television program.
06:59A severe amount of punishment to the head.
07:04It was the number one TV show on cable TV. That's how hot it was.
07:08I mean, what made it so hot was the unique combination of Gordon Soley, the voice of championship wrestling.
07:14I'm Gordon Soley, your host.
07:16And the available talent.
07:18There's so many Hall of Famers on that original list of talent that it's mind boggling that that kind of group of talent could assemble in one small territory like Georgia.
07:29I think what made it so special is it was TBS, first TV station to go all over the country.
07:36And I got to wrestle the best of the best. I mean, the cream of the crop.
07:41My name's Tommy Wildfire Rich, former NWA World Heavyweight Champion.
07:46Come on, Tommy. Thank you very much, Gordon. You're okay?
07:48It was crazy. A lot of times you sit back and watch the people and it would be as big a show watching them as it would be watching the wrestling, you know.
07:57Oh, Lord, yeah, the Georgia Peaches and the grannies love me too.
08:02I see grannies take their cane and beat Ole Anderson up with it because he's beating me up, you know.
08:07I put the TV ring up every Saturday at the TV station.
08:11It was cramped. The studio would only hold 100 people.
08:14And you packed them in like sardines to get 100 in there.
08:17Boy Scout groups, Girl Scout troops, church groups, just fans that love to come every week.
08:23My name's Bobby Simmons.
08:25Started working for ABC Booking when I was 14 years old running errands and then went to work for Georgia Championship Wrestling.
08:32We had good crowds and we did sell out a lot of arenas.
08:35The day-to-day operations are handled by matchmaker Ole Anderson.
08:39Ole Anderson.
08:41A veteran wrestler who rules Georgia Championship Wrestling with an iron fist.
08:46Ole suckered him that time.
08:48Ole was very intelligent. One of the most intelligent guys, one of the most well-spoken guys.
08:53He was loud. He was opinionated.
08:56Why don't you be quiet for about two seconds and let me talk at Facebook.
09:00But Ole was a great wrestler.
09:02And he had also gotten quite a reputation as a matchmaker and a booker.
09:07Either you hate him or you love him or, well, you don't love him.
09:12But either you hate him or you like him.
09:14He's kind of hard to love.
09:16My name is Joe Hamilton Jr.
09:19I refereed and wrestled as Nick Patrick throughout my entire career.
09:23I stopped the match myself.
09:25To Nick Patrick Barrett.
09:28I heard Ricky Morton one time say, I don't think Ole Anderson even likes ice cream.
09:32You know, it's like, and I agree, he probably didn't, you know.
09:35He was just so old school and grouchy.
09:37But a lot of the old timers back then were like that, you know.
09:40They were being hard ass on the young guys and making them learn.
09:44He was what you saw.
09:46My father was very no-nonsense.
09:49I think the guy that you saw on the screen was very much the same guy that ate breakfast with me the next morning.
09:54And I think that's really part of the reason he was successful.
09:57It was because people could believe what they were seeing.
10:00My name is Bryant Rogowski and I'm the oldest son of Ole Anderson.
10:04My father obviously spent years bumping in the ring and suffered a lot of physical injuries.
10:09And some years ago he was diagnosed with MS.
10:13And right now he's just in a state where he can't really do a lot for himself.
10:18I think he was all about business.
10:20It wasn't long into his wrestling career that he began to think about being in charge.
10:26Eventually he bought into the Georgia company.
10:30Ole isn't the only wrestler looking to increase his fortunes by getting involved in the financial side of the promotion.
10:37I started buying my stock in small increments where it built up to over 10%.
10:44And the same with my brother.
10:46In 1983 the stockholders in Georgia Championship Wrestling were the original promoter Paul Jones.
10:53A Columbus promoter Fred Ward his son-in-law Ralph Fried.
10:56Jim Barnett's business partner Jim Oates.
10:59Jack and Jerry Briscoe.
11:01And Ole Anderson.
11:03Although Georgia Championship Wrestling is turning a profit, Ole Anderson begins to question whether all the live show earnings are being accurately reported.
11:12Wrestling had always been a very cash heavy business and money had always probably been siphoned off the top to some degree.
11:19You know we had to pay off the politician or we had to give some money to the commissioner or whatever it was.
11:24And I think surely there was some truth to some of that.
11:28But when my dad started to really pay attention in Georgia and realized that it wasn't only him bringing Barnett a few bucks after this show.
11:35But it was seven or eight other guys all doing the same thing.
11:38He realized that that amount of money surely couldn't all be used for those purposes.
11:44I had tremendous concerns, you know, because I wasn't getting a dividend and I'd invested tens of thousands of dollars.
11:50We finally got Jim to expand into Michigan, Ohio and West Virginia, part of Pennsylvania.
11:56And we started selling out right and left.
11:59And I was actually doing the settlement at the shows at the time.
12:03So I personally know the amount of cash that I was taking back to Georgia.
12:08And that wasn't getting in anybody else's pocket but Mr. Barnett's.
12:15Ole was the first one, maybe the only one at the time, to question Jim Barnett.
12:22The story went around that while Barnett was in Hong Kong making his annual trip,
12:29because he liked to go to Hong Kong and get all his new suits made,
12:32Ole either kicks the door in or busts the door in,
12:36whether the accountant was in the office or not, but Ole got into the books.
12:40It was like Fort Knox trying to get to a box office statement,
12:44because he had them on the lock and key,
12:46and the people working in the office were instructed,
12:48don't let anybody in my office, it was actually padlocked, shut.
12:52Ole, you know, started examining the books and everything,
12:55and he saw, like, Jim Barnett spending all kinds of crazy money on phone bills,
12:59$3,000 a month phone bills, and he had a personal chef and he had a personal driver.
13:06So Ole just thought that, you know, Jim was embezzling money from the company.
13:11They had a meeting of the Georgia Championship owners at a hotel south of Atlanta in a conference room.
13:17And Jim handed out the checks from the proceeds of the calendar we sold.
13:23Supposedly when Jim left, that's when Ole came in and addressed the owners.
13:32Ole had rallied the troops and gotten the majority of the other stockholders on his side.
13:44When I get to the office, Jim's doors open, lights on, I thought, what is this?
13:51And I heard Ole go, Bobby, come here.
13:54And Ole handed me all the checks that I had written for the proceeds of the calendar.
13:58He said, put this back in the bank.
14:00And he told me that day, he said, you don't work for Jim Barnett no more, you work for me.
14:05Ole told me, he says, I'm not out to hurt Jim, I'm not out to put him in jail, whatever that meant.
14:11He said, I think I can run this company, and we're going to do it my way.
14:15He thought everything was black and white, there were no gray areas, that it was just business.
14:20You acted like business people.
14:23Well, he found out very quickly that it didn't work that way.
14:30Hell hath no fury, like Barnett scorned.
14:41After reviewing the accounts for Georgia Championship Wrestling, park owner Ole Anderson tries to convince his fellow shareholders
14:50that manager Jim Barnett is embezzling funds from the company.
14:54Ole would call me and say, well, Jim's stealing all this money.
14:57Ole, is he stealing it?
14:58Well, yeah, he's using it for his limousine, he's using it for this.
15:01And nobody approved those expenditures, which was true.
15:04Jim would just explain it off its cost of doing business.
15:07We had both sides of the story.
15:09Ole and Jim were not the best of friends.
15:12They were not even good partners most of the time.
15:15They were always at one another's throats.
15:18I'm Louise Cochran, formerly known as Louise Bennett, in Georgia Championship Wrestling.
15:23We were in a lot of debt because Jim had promised the buildings and the TVs so much per week or per month,
15:31and it didn't matter if we didn't make money.
15:33That was a power play for Ole to move in.
15:36I think it was more just of a money power thing than a Jim is tanking us with his spending thing.
15:42My dad and Ralph, another stockholder in Georgia Championship, went downtown to Barnett's penthouse apartment, and they had a talk with him.
15:51I think my dad probably did most of the talking and explained to Barnett my dad was going to be elected president of Georgia Championship.
15:58That's the way it's going to be.
16:00And if you don't like it, I'm going to toss you over your railing.
16:04Here you are, a 285-pound monster, and you're bullying this old man.
16:11You did not want to get on the bad side of Jim Barnett because he could actively with you in your wrestling career.
16:19Now, Ole has taken it to a whole new level.
16:22He didn't just no-show Barnett or stand him up or hold him up for more money for a main event or whatever.
16:28He's run him out of the company.
16:31Barnett knew that he might not be able to do anything about it then.
16:36You just know that he definitely knew he was going to do something about it eventually.
16:42While Ole reorganizes the company under his own management in early 1983,
16:48Vince McMahon has been quietly strategizing to expand his own promotion into other NWA territories.
16:55When Vince bought the company from his father,
16:58at first everything maintained a status quo.
17:01He had plans, but he didn't start putting them out front of everybody where they could tell what he was doing.
17:07But, behind the scenes, Vince Jr. has these plots in mind before even the other promoters know that he's going to do it.
17:15And the first thing that he's thinking about is television.
17:18Vince McMahon's scheme to steal the airwaves from other promoters begins by hiring an unlikely ally as his director of operations, Jim Barnett.
17:31In 1983, they have the annual meeting. All the promoters are there.
17:36Barnett comes in. So does Vince McMahon Jr.
17:40And they both give their resignations.
17:45That couldn't be good. What the f*** is going to happen?
17:50They were all blindsided, for sure.
17:53When they resign from the NWA, that would mean they're either going to get out of wrestling or they're going to run opposition.
17:59That's the only two things it can mean.
18:01And that seems to indicate that they're going to go into business for themselves, with themselves, in some other fashion.
18:08Oli smelled it. He said, OK, then the gloves are going to be off.
18:13Well, the problem was, you couldn't handle the wrestling business in 1983 and 84 like you handled it in 1953 and 54.
18:22And secondly, Vince wasn't going to play that game.
18:26He had one of the most powerful wrestling personalities of the last 30 years in his corner who knew absolutely everybody.
18:36Barnett hated Oli. Barnett also was looking at survival.
18:40He was getting up there in age, but he needed to keep working.
18:43He needed to keep that income coming in to maintain the facade that he was a millionaire.
18:49I had Bob Roop, 13-year amateur wrestler, 15-year professional wrestler, five-time Hall of Fame member.
19:00So, Vince Sr. asked Oli to come up and meet with Junior and see if they could make some kind of arrangement.
19:05And Oli said, no, he said, no, absolutely not.
19:09You know, he's trying to steal my territories and stuff.
19:12There was this unspoken agreement that people honored each other's territory.
19:16I'm sure Barnett was talking to McMahon right away and starting to sabotage Georgia Championship.
19:25Things started to happen around that time that had never happened before.
19:28McMahon would go to a station that we were on.
19:32We had a show running and offer them 2,000 bucks a week to take his show.
19:38But they had to get rid of Oli's show.
19:41Nothing on paper.
19:42There was no contract.
19:43Nothing said that they had to honor a championship wrestling from Georgia.
19:47So the station would say, okay.
19:49Next, you start losing buildings.
19:52You called a check on the building and see how ticket sales are going.
19:55They said, well, we stopped selling them.
19:58Bunch of police cars roll up outside the TV station.
20:01Take somebody away.
20:02They got an anonymous tip that he's dealing drugs.
20:06Or they're searching the guys at the airport.
20:08Things that just had never happened before that were just a constant thorn in his side
20:12and making things difficult to operate more so than usual.
20:18Is it certain that this was all Vince McMahon Jr.'s doing?
20:21I don't think he ever had any proof and I don't know how he would.
20:24But like I say, it was stuff that never happened until then.
20:28Vince was infiltrating everybody's territory.
20:31Vince got the USA Network time slot from Southwest Championship Wrestling.
20:38Another regional promotion out of San Antonio.
20:40Ladies and gentlemen, the Southwest Tag Team Champions.
20:43They couldn't afford the slot anymore.
20:45Vince jumped in and took it.
20:47And all American wrestling debuted on the USA Network.
20:51He would call different promoters and say, hey, I've got this cable show now.
20:55If you'll send me tapes, then I'll put your wrestlers on it and I'll get them over to a whole new audience.
21:01But the people that he was getting the tapes of and showing are people that he wanted to sign for the WWF.
21:09He gets the Junkyard Dog from Mid-South Wrestling.
21:13He gets Steamboat from the Carolinas.
21:15He got Kerry Von Erich in Dallas.
21:18He was buying out talent from other areas.
21:22You know, Hulk Hogan was on top in the AWA for Vern and all of a sudden he went to New York.
21:28Hulk Hogan shows up to win the WWF Championship from the Iron Sheik in Madison Square Garden.
21:38Now, Vince has the superhero on the top of his cards that he wants to put in every arena in the country and all over television to lead his national expansion.
21:50He knew that if you controlled television, you would control the source of distribution for all the wrestling programs and all the top wrestlers.
22:01Oh!
22:03And that's what he wanted to corner.
22:05Everything had been done a certain way and now everything was different.
22:09And Vince was public enemy number one.
22:11Some of the promoters and they're talking about him.
22:13What if we put a hit on the guy, you know?
22:14And, you know, it's a wild story.
22:17I don't doubt that it's true at all.
22:20Because, you know, like, these are bad dudes.
22:23It's just like, you know, Vince is breaking the rules.
22:26Through Barnett's calculated maneuvering, Vince has seized TV time from promotions across the country.
22:33But one remains for the taking.
22:35Georgia Championship Wrestling and its nationwide slot on WTBS.
22:40And when Barnett comes to him with a grudge against Ole Anderson, who has the widest distribution of any television program in wrestling?
22:51And Barnett says to Vince, I think I can get it for you.
22:55And that's all he needed to hear.
22:57If he could take over and control television across the country, then he could take over every territory in the country.
23:10While Vince McMahon scoops up talent in TV spots from territories across the country, Ole Anderson tries to hold Georgia Championship Wrestling together by any means necessary.
23:24Maybe Ole thought he could do everything at that point in time, but Georgia Wrestling, it still had the reputation, but the product was starting to suffer.
23:33Yeah, I think he was trying to run a business with, you know, second-tier guys, people that weren't going to draw.
23:40I mean, he'd employed just about everybody in the business at one point or another.
23:44And it was those guys who were now working for Vince and WWF and becoming his superstars,
23:50leaving my father just scratching around for leftovers.
23:53And that just wasn't going to sell tickets.
23:55Ole had changed the concept where we weren't bringing in a lot of outside talent.
24:01Our live events were not drawing the money because we weren't spending the money on the talent that we were spending on before.
24:08And the top guys quit wanting to come to our territory.
24:12And we were actually getting phone calls from some of the top talent around the country.
24:17Hey, what's going on? You better watch Ole.
24:20And not only took their word for it, but were up there on several big shows and experienced it.
24:25The payoffs weren't the same.
24:28Frustrated that their investment is no longer paying dividends, the Briscoes decide Ole isn't cut out to manage the company.
24:35But in order to push out Ole, they will have to get their fellow shareholders to agree with a majority vote.
24:42We called a stockholders' meeting because we were going to take over Ole's dictatorship and do it ourselves.
24:49And we flew into town, already met with the lawyers, and the lawyers said,
24:53Guys, you can't do this stockholders' meeting. It's illegal because we didn't state a purpose.
24:57The meeting got put off, of course, so we went back to the hotel and wanted to drown our sorrows.
25:03So we were sitting in a hotel bar. And who, all of a sudden, showed up in this bar?
25:08It's Ole Anderson.
25:10His purpose is to track us down to find out what the hell we were planning on doing.
25:14And we weren't shy. We laid out that we're here to take you out of office.
25:18We want to know how much money there is in the bank. He tells them, Well, why can't you pay it out?
25:27And so I'm sure for the hundredth time, he tries to explain to them how you've got to have some operating capital to run this business.
25:35You know, I've got to pay deposits on buildings. I've got to pay for advertising. I've got to buy plane tickets.
25:41Once we get another hundred thousand in the bank, then I'll write the dividend checks.
25:45Of course I want to. I'll get one, too.
25:49We had done drinking as much as we could drink and argued as much as we could argue.
25:54And, uh, Ole, well, I'll come up to room with you. I got a deal for you.
25:58Okay, we'll listen to one last pitch.
26:00Ole, you know, well, you're going to Godfather. Yeah, I got this deal with you.
26:05If you guys agree, let's do a blood off so we're all on the same page.
26:09The deal was, if anybody was going to sell stock, they had to offer it to the other shareholders in Georgia Championship Wrestling first before they could sell it to anybody else.
26:24My dad has a little pocket knife, sticks it in his head, gigs it down, gets some color.
26:31They look at him like, oh, my God, what's wrong with you?
26:36Only my word means more than blood, I mean, you know, to me. I mean, if I give you my word, I'm going to live up to it.
26:43I don't need these little gimmicks to certify my honesty.
26:49Probably took him about ten minutes to convince Jack and I to do the same thing.
26:56So that was the only solution to our problem. You know, let's cut ourselves and bleed on each other.
27:02My dad was such a man of his word that if he shook your hand and said he was going to do anything, he would do it.
27:09He just, he believed people because, you know, he would never tell a lie.
27:14As part of the blood oath agreement, the Briscoes will focus on increasing ticket sales in exchange for regular payouts.
27:23But the deal doesn't last for long.
27:26The first one to break the oath was only because he quit paying us what he agreed to pay us.
27:30So we felt that we had an open waters there to do what we wanted to do.
27:34That led a fire under us that if we stick in this situation too much longer, we're not going to have anything.
27:41Desperate to cash out, the Briscoes begin shopping their shares outside of the company, starting with Jim Barnett, who turns them down.
27:50Knowing the Briscoes are looking to sell, Barnett knows someone who wants to buy.
27:55Vince McMahon.
27:57So Vince flew us up to LaGuardia, and still to this day I ribbed Vince about flying us up coach.
28:04We met at LaGuardia Airport.
28:08He said, can you guys deliver me 51% of the territory?
28:12And I looked at him and I said, yes sir, I can.
28:16So I had to make a call to Jim Barnett.
28:19Jim Barnett knew everybody that owned a piece of Georgia.
28:23Jim Barnett knew who they liked, who they didn't like, what they were mad about, what their weak spots were, whatever the case.
28:29All Jim Barnett had to do was point Vince McMahon in the right direction, not only with the Briscoes, but anybody else.
28:36Or talk to them himself.
28:38He could make you do something you didn't want to do, and by the time he was finished, you'd think it was your idea.
28:46In the end of the negotiations and all the transactions, Vince ended up owning 67.5% of Georgia Championship Wrestling,
28:54which of course also held the contract for the television program on TBS.
29:00There was an agreement in the Articles of Incorporation that before anybody was to sell, they had to first offer it to one of the other stockholders.
29:07And he was told repeatedly by the attorneys that that was going to protect him.
29:13Well, it turned out not to be true.
29:23Behind the back of Ole Anderson, the Briscoes aligned with Jim Barnett to give Vince McMahon control of Georgia Championship Wrestling,
29:31a move that will forever reshape the industry.
29:34In March of 1984, my grandmother passed away very suddenly.
29:39My father and I go up to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and take care of their arrangements and family business.
29:45He gets a call from the office. I think it was Louise who called him.
29:49I was in my office and the door opens and Vince walks in.
29:53Good morning. I now own the company.
30:01I called Ole and told him that Vince had sold the company.
30:07I thought it was real sneaky.
30:09It's not that they did it, it's just how they did it.
30:12He and I got on a plane right away. He parked me in a hotel in Atlanta.
30:18He immediately met with the lawyers. They filed for injunctions and they fought for three or four months before it was finally all over.
30:25But he wanted to stop Vince from taking over Georgia Championship.
30:28With Ole's legal efforts to block the takeover thwarted, all that's left for him to do is concede.
30:35There was a deal in the bylaws for our corporation that said if a majority of the stockholders decide to change all the damn rules that are written up here, they can do that.
30:46And they just changed all the rules that we've been going by for years.
30:50So we lost it because Barnett was smart enough to realize that he could have done it and I didn't know.
30:55I can remember the Saturday morning TV at TBS Studios. Vince McMahon is in the building.
31:00It's the only time I've ever been in the same room as Vince McMahon to this day.
31:04But from there the fight was on.
31:06Vince was still at that point trying to talk to Ole because Vince is a guy that used to get in his own way and used to being able to talk people into anything he wants them to do.
31:16I think, you know, Vince would say, Ole, Ole, I'll give you a job.
31:19You know, tried to tell him over and over. It's just business. It's just business.
31:24Vince says, Ole, I'd like you to meet my wife, Linda.
31:28Well, my dad, in a typical fashion, responds, you know what?
31:32F*** you and f*** Linda.
31:37Despite Ole's fury, few outside the company are even aware of the change in ownership until Vince McMahon takes to the airwaves.
31:44So I go in there on this particular Saturday and there's this guy standing there with his arms folded and he's making his face.
31:53As it turns out, the man was Vincent K. McMahon.
31:58None of the talent knew anything. It was all inner office stuff.
32:02Nobody knew who sold to what or who was on what side or nothing.
32:05The camera guys and all of them, they didn't have a clue.
32:07I got a call, was told not to come to TV, that we weren't going to be taping that day.
32:13I didn't go to TV on Saturday, that Saturday, because I'd just gotten fired.
32:18Vince had a meeting with all the talent that was here and he said, none of you have jobs anymore.
32:24He said, if we want to use you, we'll contact you. And that was it. It was over.
32:28The wrestling program on TBS had been an institution for years.
32:34Every wrestling fan that was able to get cable at that point in time was going to watch Georgia Wrestling every Saturday.
32:41July 14th, 1984, they turn on World Championship Wrestling.
32:47And they didn't see Gordon Soley, they see Freddie Miller.
32:51Hello everybody and welcome to World Championship Wrestling.
32:53Freddie Miller introduced Vince McMahon.
32:55Here's Vince McMahon. Vince, thank you very much Freddie. Welcome.
33:00When Freddie Miller introduced Vince and just the silence of the dead air time, you know.
33:07No, no, no crackling fan, no nothing.
33:10Let's take you now to Minneapolis and Jesse DiBotti Ventura.
33:14They started showing videotapes of matches from other WWF television programs and other WWF arenas and TV shoots.
33:21One of the many stars here in the World Wrestling Federation.
33:26The fans of Georgia Wrestling, they practically rioted.
33:32They were just bombarding the TBS switchboards.
33:35We want our wrestling.
33:36Georgia Wrestling is a lot different than Vince's wrestling.
33:43Vince brought his style down here and I don't think, don't think they bought it or didn't, you know, just didn't like it because it wasn't homeboys, you know.
33:51So I think, I think that they just wasn't buying what he was selling.
33:55He didn't want the Georgia Wrestling territory. All he wanted was that TV.
34:01And I'm getting excited because I'm seeing a new future starting to be made.
34:05I call it Green Saturday because it changed my, my, my fortune.
34:10But obviously a lot of fans that were fans, true fans of Georgia's Championship Wrestling didn't see it the same way I saw it.
34:17Ousted from the promotion he helped build, Ole makes no secret of his resentment.
34:24If Jack and Jerry had agreed with him to wait things out a few more months and then taken advantage of the time when he's dealing with his mother's funeral to sell out behind his back, I think that that would have really impacted his opinion strongly for quite a while to the negative.
34:42And I was pissed at the Briscoes and they got whatever money they got.
34:49Ole had supposedly hired an armed guard to stand there and actually do body harm to us if we tried to get in the office.
34:56Not the promoter, but Paul Jones, the old raster, called and said there's supposedly a hit man out on you guys for two days.
35:04Be very careful where you go and who you associate with because I think it's real.
35:08Ole Anderson is on the hunt for revenge as rumors circulate about a potential plot to have the Briscoes killed.
35:22We waited the two days, nothing happened to us and we threw at one of the biggest parties we ever thrown.
35:28Do you think he would have done that?
35:29No.
35:30First of all, he would have never got rid of the money and stick at me, he would have done it himself.
35:36He would have never asked anybody else to do it. He would have been glad to do it himself.
35:39The only negative way that I think it affected us is the loss of friendship and the negative things that were said about me.
35:47The threats that my brother and I got during this time frame too was phenomenal.
35:51I mean, our families were receiving phone calls, you know, that we were no good, back savered.
35:57It was a very rough deal.
35:59Determined to keep the spirit of Georgia Championship Wrestling alive, Ole sells his shares and starts his own promotion.
36:06Ole was able to work out a deal. He called up Vince and said, Vince, I'm going to sell you my piece too.
36:13Which, you know, I guess, thank you Vince, because Vince could very easily have just said, okay, I'm closing up.
36:20Your shares aren't worth anything.
36:22Ole went to Ted Turner directly and he said, hey, the people want to see the Georgia Wrestling and the Georgia Wrestlers and I've got them.
36:29Give me another time slot.
36:30And when I went to Ted Turner later on, I said, who do you think has been wearing this damn thing for the last eight, nine years? Me.
36:39So he gave Ole Saturday morning at 7.30.
36:42A very spirited crowd here today at the WTBS Sports Arena.
36:47We're very proud to bring you once again Championship Wrestling from Georgia.
36:51While Ole attempts to mount a comeback, Vince is struggling to connect with Georgia viewers.
36:56They were used to seeing a certain style and it wasn't something that they'd seen before.
37:00They didn't know who these guys were. They didn't care. They were looking for the people they knew.
37:05Vince is getting crowded out of the Saturday night time slot.
37:09Turner's on his ass. It's not doing him the good that he thought it was going to do him.
37:13This is one of the first and only Vince McMahon complete failures.
37:17Looking to offload his valuable WTBS time slot, McMahon once again turns to Jim Barnett to land a deal.
37:26Barnett finds a buyer in one of McMahon's other major competitors, Jim Crockett Promotions.
37:32How long did Vince's run last on TBS?
37:34One year.
37:35Turner was going to kick Vince off as soon as he legally could.
37:38And so Barnett opened the door to Crockett.
37:41You know, that TBS time slot, at the time it probably sounded like a great deal.
37:44Vince will sell the time slot on Saturday night on TBS to Jim Crockett Promotions and Vince McMahon would get a million dollars.
37:56And everybody becomes happy with that.
37:59So, with Barnett putting all the pieces together, Vince McMahon temporarily monopolizes cable TV wrestling in the United States,
38:08but is a failure at that, so he uses that flop to make money to finance WrestleMania.
38:17Where he then started on the road to put every other promoter out of business.
38:23The wrestling extravaganza of all time, WrestleMania.
38:27All in that 80's period, that's where he got the big jump.
38:29WWE became the name brand of pro wrestling.
38:32And he's got Cyndi Lauper and he's building up WrestleMania.
38:34Hulk Hogan's getting big.
38:35And he's just shooting way past everybody else.
38:39And they don't have the outlet to compete with him.
38:42Black Saturday forever altered the trajectory of the wrestling business.
38:48Something no one understood better than Ole Anderson.
38:52It was almost like he had just cleared his desk off and scraped everything into it.
38:57Honestly, the state my father is in today, I don't know that he can hate anybody, sadly enough.
39:02But I think he held a grudge against Vince for a long time.
39:05I'm just trying to see what all I got here.
39:08Bill Watts, himself a pioneering promoter in Mid-South Wrestling,
39:13writes a letter to Ole in 1987 reflecting upon the significance of Black Saturday.
39:20Dear Ole, I know actions and words once said or done cannot be recalled.
39:24You were seeing the beginning of the metamorphosis of change of the very fiber of our business,
39:29all precipitated by McMahon in my opinion.
39:32I certainly agree his legacy will be the destruction of an industry as we know it or knew it.
39:39After the Black Saturday incident, Barnett was Vince's right-hand man.
39:46But Barnett was still more old-time wrestling, and Vince wanted to be modern.
39:51And somewhere in 87, they had a difference of opinion, and Vince let Barnett go.
39:58Jim Barnett only worked for WWF for a fraction of his long career.
40:09But his actions during the company's expansion helped solidify a new way of doing business in wrestling,
40:15the Vince McMahon way.
40:17Vince McMahon for 40 years, he made his business based on taking TV time slots
40:25or companies out from under people, doing takeovers, buying stock, issuing stock,
40:33public offering of the WWE that made him a billionaire.
40:37But his downfall eventually came through the same way.
40:41You know, there's an old saying, what goes around comes around.
40:45And or around and around, pretty soon you won't be around.
40:48Well, Vince had, um, it came out in the Wall Street Journal that he had allegations of paying certain women off.
40:55You know, non-disclosure agreements for infidelities and, you know, even worse.
41:00McMahon paid a former employee $3 million to keep her quiet.
41:06You take a picture of Vincent McMahon, and that there is the reason why there is a human resources now in companies.
41:14That is the reason why.
41:16As far as revolutionizing our business, yes, he did.
41:20Is there a dark side and a bad side?
41:22Yes, there damn sure is.
41:24It was enough of an embarrassment to the company that Vince stepped down.
41:28They forced him out of the company because his son-in-law and his daughter and all these people that he's worked with and trusted were saying,
41:36Vince, you got to go.
41:37This is not going to do the stock price any good.
41:39It's not going to do our business any good.
41:41You got to step aside.
41:42And the thing he learned from the Georgia takeover, he still owns 80% of the company.
41:49So, after six months, then he comes back in a whirlwind of action.
41:56Let me just say that I make mistakes, obviously.
41:59You know, both personally and professionally through my 50-year career.
42:02I owned up to every single one of them and then moved on.
42:05And then announces, I'm coming back because we're going to sell this son of a bitch.
42:09And the time is right.
42:12Endeavor announcing WWE and UFC will combine to form a $21 billion global live sports and entertainment company.
42:20And that's what worries all the wrestling fans.
42:22Say what you want about Vince, at least it was the family business.
42:25He's done it for 50 years.
42:27Now, Endeavor.
42:29What mental romantic attachment do they have to the wrestling business?
42:35To its history, to keeping it alive.
42:37We're going to lose a lot of history and we're going to lose the, you know, the last vestige of what old time professional wrestling was for 100 years.
42:47I think Black Saturday was kind of a tipping point in the wrestling business.
42:51That was the moment it started to evolve away from the wrestling business and into show business.
42:57Black Saturday in and of itself wasn't a groundbreaking moment.
43:03It was the canary in the coal mine.
43:06That's McMahon put anywhere from hundreds to maybe thousands of wrestlers out of work.
43:12Didn't Vince make a lot of those guys millionaires though?
43:15Maybe 3% of them.
43:20The other 97% didn't get to work anymore.
43:24That's when all the change is going on and you can't go back.
43:28I mean, and that's life.
43:30Just times change, you know, and I'm just holding on to them 80s.
43:34Do you think guys like Barnett, Jack, Jerry, Briscoe, do people blame them for the demise of the territories?
43:42I don't think they blame the Briscoes, but they definitely blame Vince.
43:46But it was the move.
43:48It was the move to make.
43:50What killed the territories was cable television.
43:52And that would have been with Vince McMahon or without Vince McMahon.
43:55It wasn't Vince McMahon going national.
43:56It would have been Vern Gagne or Jim Crockett.
43:58And they wouldn't have done as well as Vince did.
44:00Somebody was going to be successful.
44:02Wrestling wasn't going to go away.
44:04But would they have been successful as Vince McMahon was?
44:06I'm going to say no.
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