Channel 4 Studio Wrestling:... What A Laugh...

 

By EDUARDO PAZ-MARTINEZ

HARLINGEN, Texas | Who knows what it cost to stage the cheap production, but people at KGBT-TV did set up a makeshift ring to broadcast Studio Wrestling, a Sunday afternoon offering for Rio Grande Valley fans of the corny grappling sport.

The Mexican audience loved it.

Weekly, back in the 1960s and early-1970s, they got to see rasslin' superstars such as Fritz Von Erich, shown in photo above. Von Erich brought his crowd-pleasing "Iron Claw" to subdue his opponents in what always looked like a man in trunks putting another man in trunks to sleep with a vicious clamping of the skull.

"There it is!" the ring announcer would yell into his microphone. "There's the claw!!!..."

And, in seconds, the hulking Von Erich (real name: Jack Barton Adkisson) would descend on his prey as if some giant vulture's claw, there to quickly end the match as the attendant crowd cheered. Studio Wrestling had a small number of chairs set around the ring, usually filled with Mexicans, as that seemed to be the show's principal market in the RGV.

Things would liven up when the Mexican wrestlers took to the ring.

"Ladies and gentlemen," the ring announcer began, pointing at one corner. "El Santo!!!"

The crowd would immediately yell out "Nooooo" and then boo. It was not the celebrated, adored Santo, Mexico's greatest wrestler. "Oh, well, pardon me," the announcer would go on. "It's El Torbelino Blanco!" And it was. El Torbelino Blanco (The White Whirlwind) would drop to a squat and tug vigorously at the ring ropes for effect while some applause filled the small studio.

A popular opponent for the Mexican wrestlers was Kinji Shibuya, a Japanese fighter better known to these fans as "Quince Cebollas," which was a play at the pronunciation of his name, but which means "Fifteen Onions".

Shibuya knew the score and rarely won, especially against a masked wrestler.

Who knows how long it lasted? I was a student at McHi at the time, before leaving to serve in the US Navy. In the school hallways, Mondays were for joking about Studio Wrestling. Von Erich was the big joke, most agreed, but why the short & stubby Shibuya lost most of the time also got some discussion.

Von Erich died in September, 1997 up in Dallas. Shibuya, who later acted bit parts in Hollywood movies (for one, "Kung Fu," starring David Carradine), died in May, 2010.

El Torbelino Blanco, from Monterrey, Mexico, died in 1988. Near the end of his long career, he lost a match where he had placed his mask at risk. Losing meant he had to take it off in the ring. Where that happened, I do not know. I know this: Valley fans of Channel 4's Studio Wrestling never saw him wrestle without a mask.

There were, of course, lesser wrestlers on the show. Mostly, it was less-talented, out-of-shape Mexicans in the ring solely to be beaten up to the utter delight of the fans.

I wish I could tell you when Studio Wrestling went off the air, but I just do not know.

Those were the days when Frank Sullivan and his wife held the station's news anchor seats, and it also was the time it hosted the Moulton "Ty" Cobb talk show, a mellow offering that at times ventured into local, state and national politics.

As for the cheap wrestling ring, well, I can't help but tell you that there was a time or two when the whole shebang collapsed under the weight of the bouncing wrestlers, the ropes and corner stanchions collapsing onto the laps of the studio audience.

Perhaps someone has video tapes of those hilarious Sunday afternoon wrestling shows.

It was a Wide, Wide, Wide World of Sports at the local level, yes...

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