Issue 82 (July 6th, 2025) Flashback 1985: The 40 Year Anniversary of the First Great American Bash

Welcome to the Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Daily Chronicle. The daily habit for an injection of significant events that happened on this day and relative time frames in Pro Wrestling History.

July 6th in the Time Tunnel:

Happy Birthday to those who have passed on and to those great wrestlers still with us:

In Memoriam:

Vince J. McMahon, Sr 1914

Ray Mendoza 1929

Happy Birthday:

Dylan Miley\Lars Sullivan (37)

RIP Memorial: We stop & remember those who have passed on this day and gave themselves to the business for us, the fans. We salute you and thank you.

Masaru Charles Iwamoto\Mr. Moto 7-6-1991 at the age of 76

Phyliss Burch/Moondog Fifi/Diane Von Hoffman 7-6-2017 at the age of 55

Select Pro Wrestling Time Tunnel Match and Event Flashbacks

40-Year Flashback:

7-4-1985: The first Great American Bash, Charlotte Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina

1985 was a pivotal year for Jim Crockett Promotions. As John Ringley and booker George Scott had done in 1973 by consolidating the television tapings into one in Raleigh, North Carolina, re-branding the territory as Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and introducing a new singles heavyweight focus rather than a tag team focus with a large investment into a star, Johnny Valentine, Jim Crockett, Jr saw himself doing the same thing now ten years later in 1983 with his father's company.

One key thing he did was to purchase a mobile recording truck to take the syndicated shows, Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling and Worldwide Wrestling out of the studio in Raleigh and into some of the smaller, weekly arenas like Spartanburg and Rock Hill, South Carolina. Moving into the arenas gave the shows a live event big time feel. He had purchased an old c-store on Briarbend Drive and renovated it for offices and headquarters for the booking and administrative offices complete with a warehouse behind the building that was remodeled for use as an interview stage for the local inserts for the syndicated television shows going out to all the stations and towns. He had a goal of having four big spectacular events a year, four supercards that could be held in his biggest arenas and shown around the territory to fans by closed circuit. He had done that by enlisting the Tampa, Florida booker, Dusty Rhodes to create the Starrcade concept, which was employed in 1983 and 1984.

By mid-1984, he was dissatisfied with the creative direction his company was going, feeling like it was a repeat of what Ringley had felt and seen with George Becker & Johnny Weaver, longtime tag team guys were taking the creative. Looking at Dory Funk, Jr a former NWA World Champion, owner of the West Texas booking office in Amarillo, Texas and talent coordinator for All Japan Pro Wrestling in the United States, with all those credentials and experience, Crockett just didn't feel the creative was going in the right direction. Looking to the guy, who had brought in the Mid-Atlantic area to sell tickets for big events and short tours, as well as what had happened in the Florida territory with "Last Tango in Tampa" and "Battle of the Belts", Crockett made an offer to Dusty Rhodes, the booker for Eddie Graham and one of the biggest box office draws of the 1970s to come and work alongside him to guide the creative.

After establishing Starrcade in 1983 & 1984 as the main blockbuster show of the year on Thanksgiving, Jim Crockett Jr is working toward his goal of having four big spectacular shows per year to build around. Beyond creating Starrcade, Dusty had a couple of attempts before hitting on the Great American Bash.

Boogie Jam '84

One was Boogie Jam '84, built around the Jimmy Valiant and Paul Jones feud and taking place in March of 1984, While he was not yet the booker, it was Dusty's concept on a sub-contract type creative deal and with Rhodes appearing in Valiant's corner in a Mask vs Hair Match against Assassin #2 (Hercules Hernandez) in the main event and Ric Flair defending the NWA World Title in a one hour draw with Ricky Steamboat at the Coliseum in Greensboro for an extra brand shine on the big regular monthly show in Crockett's big home base territory town to try to carry the big event feel over from the past November's Starrcade '83 and create momentum through the year toward Starrcade '84. Looking back, it was too long a stretch between the two Starrcades and a mistake to brand it around a wrestler if the intention to create an event that is evergreen for years to come.

SilverStarr '85

So, after hiring Rhodes in late Summer of 1984 to take over the booking job full time, his next attempt comes in the following year's Greensboro monthly March show. On March 16th, 1985, Jim Crockett Promotions presented another house show branded as a supershow called SilverStarr '85. Silverstarr '85 was promoted as a celebration of the silver anniversary of the Greensboro Coliseum and attached to a series of events that are a part of an overall celebration of Jim Crockett Promotions' 50-year anniversary of business going back to Jim Crockett, Sr founding the company in 1935.

In thinking about the genesis of this creative, I can imagine Dusty, who loved old western movies, probably saw a western-themed movie with a sheriff character or Marshall character with a silver star pinned on his chest running all the villains out of town or killing them off and coming up with this brand name. Dusty loved John Wayne remember. I can only also deduce that the extra "R" in Silverstarr was to connect to the Starrcade brand. At least I would like to think there was that much strategy going on at Briarbend Drive.

This event had on top NWA World Champion Ric Flair vs the top territory singles champion, the US Champion, Wahoo McDaniel in an Indian Strap Match. At the time, Flair was a babyface in Mid-Atlantic and Wahoo was a heel for an interesting role reversal from what had headlined the territory in the 1970s-decade prior. Underneath Dusty Rhodes would be challenging Tully Blanchard for the TV Title with Blanchard's new valet, The Perfect 10, Baby Doll in a shark cage named "Betty Lou" high above the ring suspended by steel cable. Third from the top had Magnum TA, the superstar babyface Crockett and Rhodes envisioned as the lead star to take the company to new heights, teamed with Don Kernodle and Sgt Slaughter against the six-man evil Russian team of Ivan and Nikita Koloff with Khrusher Khrushchev in a flag vs flag match.

After gaining some momentum toward the end of 1984 and coming into the Spring of 1985, the combination of Dusty's fresh booking ideas and Crockett's strategy of new talent acquisition of Tully Blanchard, Nickla Roberts, Magnum TA, Nikita Koloff and Barry Darsow, re-branded as Khrusher Khruschev, along with JJ Dillon and some of the guys Dusty brought from Florida, the new strategy was starting to take hold.

Acquiring the WTBS Time Slot

Working through a former NWA Colleague, Jim Barnett, Crockett was able to make a deal with Titan Sports (WWF) to acquire the contract to the Saturday night WTBS television time slot that had been the home for southern style wrestling since 1972 when Ray Gunkel and Buddy Fuller moved their show from the much larger network affiliated station over to the fledgling UHF channel owned by Ted Turner. After being uplinked to satellite at the end of 1976 to be able to have wide cable access in 1978 and changing the call letters to WTBS, wrestling took on a larger scale to audiences in much of the southern and midwestern United States. Slowly the penetration of cable began to spread over much of the rest of the country, WTBS went with it and so did wrestling. Audiences were accustomed to the "Gordon Solie type of wrestling" and had been plaguing Turner with complaints and requests to have it return since July 1984 when McMahon and company had taken it over on what became known as "Black Saturday". Now it was 9 months later, and McMahon beleaguered from Turner's continued requests and demands for a studio wrestling show and Turner worn out from the viewer complaints, McMahon authorized Barnett to make a deal with Crockett for one million dollars for the contract.

Crockett, in turn, also invested more money in buying out Ole Anderson's "Championship Wrestling from Georgia" promotion and tv slot on WTBS' Saturday morning schedule, then made a demand on Turner that Crockett's product would be the exclusive wrestling product on WTBS forcing Turning to drop the popular Mid-South Wrestling show produced by Bill Watts and featured on Sunday afternoons. If I had spent a million bucks, I would have wanted exclusivity as well, and that's what Crockett got, WTBS all to himself. This also meant another 2 to 3 hours of television booking and taping that had to be done each week in addition to the 2 hours of syndicated shows they usually did on Tuesday nights at an arena show. Crockett and Rhodes settled on flying into Atlanta on Saturday morning or on Sunday morning and taping that day's show for broadcast or if on Sunday, the following week's show. They were slotted to broadcast the first show during the first weekend of April of 1985.

Building Toward the Bash

The team of Crockett and Rhodes knew they had a future star in Magnum TA. A handsome and well-liked star from the home territory in Virginia that had been Dusty's protégée in Florida in 1982 and 1983 before leaving to get seasoning in Bill Watts' Mid-South territory where Watts groomed him by putting him in a brilliant "Student vs Teacher" gimmick program with the veteran Mr. Wrestling 2. In the course of the program, Watts went all the way with him, putting his top singles title, the North American Championship around his waist. In one of the "what-if" scenarios of pro wrestling history, fans missed out on a Magnum TA and Randy Savage feud in 1984 due to the timing of Savage staying in Memphis to draw immediate money with Jerry Lawler and TA being offered the #2 babyface spot by Crockett. Magnum was just 25 years old and the management team of JCP was gaining control of the NWA World Title as time marched on and Terry Allen seemed to be a great candidate.

On March 23, 1985, at the home base arena of Charlotte, North Carolina, Magnum TA beat the longtime JCP legend, Wahoo McDaniel in a cage match for the United States Heavyweight Championship, the JCP top singles title for the last 10 years since putting it on their superstar at the time, Johnny Valentine. Immediately, in preparation for the debut show on WTBS, Magnum started doing interviews about wanting a shot at Flair's NWA World Title. The thing was, during this period of time, in the Carolina area, Flair and Magnum were both babyfaces, which was not a problem in the NWA World Title scenario as, at the time, fans were conditioned to seeing all the top contenders, regardless of being babyface or heel, to challenge for the World belt. However, on the heel side, Crockett had brought in a green bodybuilding workout friend of the Road Warriors in Minnesota, Scott Simpson, who they had made Ivan Koloff's nephew from Russia. Koloff was built into a monster heel and despite being super green at the outset, was very much over with the fans as a killing machine with the deadly Russian Sickle finishing clothesline maneuver.

On both syndicated shows, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling and Worldwide Wrestling, the Russians were doing interviews challenging Flair from the work out dungeon Koloff used to both build Nikita's body and mind. For the time, these were amazing segments. The kind of "out of the studio" backstage scenes that intrigued you as a wrestling fan. Seeing the wrestlers, especially the heels in private time in seemingly everyday life was intriguing. Imagining the Russians spending every waking moment away from the rings and arenas with a singular focus of taking down Flair and subsequently with him, the United States, at that time in history was golden. By the way, even though I was thrilled at the time to be getting Crockett product on TBS, I also was frustrated because in early 1985 in Mid-South Watts and booker Bill Dundee had started the Ted DiBiase and Jim Duggan program and when I lost access to that, I had to return to my tape trading network to get the shows. After the amazing run Mid-South had in 1984, they were still rolling in the early months of 1985 on the strength of angles around these two strong performers. Along with that, Dibiase and Steve Williams were just starting a program with the Rock and Roll Express, which added to my frustration of losing that product on TBS.

The debut of JCP on TBS brought us another new imported performer, a wrestler from the Continental Ron Fuller territory who had been a tag team champion, Marty Lunde from Roma, Georgia. We were told his name was Arn Anderson. Dusty's storytelling bounced around in clarity about Arn being a nephew of Ole and a younger brother of Ole. This is just speculation, but I would be willing to bet Dusty wanted to put him over as a nephew and because Arn was in the exact same position Ole was in back in 1967, Ole wanted him to be his brother as Lars and Gene had sold him to fans. Regardless of Arn's position in the Anderson family, in one of his contributions to the booking, Jim Crockett Jr put in a throwback to a George Scott idea and called back to the "Ric Flair is our cousin" from the 1970s that was used to eventually turn into an Andersons vs Flair and Greg Valentine feud. Because of seeing younger brother Arn's rough house tactics and reminding him of the glory days of The Minnesota Wrecking Crew, Ole turned away from his current partner and one half of the National Tag Team Champions, Thunderbolt Patterson and started coaching Arn from ringside.

This evolved into Ole and Arn Anderson vs Thunderbolt Patterson and Manny Fernandez for the tag titles, which the Andersons won in a Greensboro house show, but also the two newly aligned Andersons started interfering in Flair's matches on Flair's behalf slowing pulling Flair toward the heel side but while maintaining his "tweener" persona. It was a total throwback to 1970s Mid Atlantic, and it worked like a charm with the new energy and enthusiasm of the 26-year-old Lunde realizing this was his chance of a lifetime in the wrestling business and he threw himself totally into it, both in the ring and on the microphone. He began working himself into a pivotal spot he would maintain as a special place in booker Rhodes heart for the rest of the life of Jim Crockett Promotions. Crockett and Dusty wanted Flair to continue to ride the line between babyface and heel as they manipulated fans back and forth between cheering and jeering Flair depending on whether he was facing Nikita or Magnum. Even the staunchest Dusty critic would have to admit, it really was brilliant booking.

The House Show Circuit

So, with the acquisition of the Georgia-based promotion from Ole Anderson and Ralph Freed, JCP now found itself with a whole new crop of towns it controlled without having to invade them. The got the old Georgia Circuit of Augusta, Macon, Columbus, Rome, Savannah and most importantly Atlanta as well as the expanded part of the territory that Jim Barnett and the Briscos had begun to cultivate from the old Sheik Detroit territory including Columbus, Cincinnati, Canton, Toledo and Cleveland in Ohio, Some towns in Michigan like Lansing, Grand Rapids, Saginaw and also towns in West Virginia like Wheeling. With the exception of Atlanta, they would make this the B-Show circuit largely using talent they retained from Ole's roster and then the former JCP circuit would be the A-Show circuit with the legacy JCP towns like Charlotte, Greensboro, Greenville, Raleigh, Norfolk with expansion towns they would invade such as Pittsburgh and Philadelphia up further into the East Coast. The majority of the JCP roster would work this loop with a few guys going to the B loop and Flair, as NWA World Champion working both plus his schedule for NWA members and Bill Watts who had resumed using the NWA Champion in some of his select Mid-South shows putting Flair against Terry Taylor, Butch Reed and others.

Combining the strength of the longtime JCP Syndicated Network of stations through the Mid-Atlantic combined with the new strength of WTBS-17's existing cable penetration, which was growing month by month, the Crockett Traditional towns were still strong and the new expansion towns were, well expansion towns. The May ratings for the new Crockett product was staggering in 1985. The Saturday morning show did a 2.6 rating equaling 888,000 homes, the Saturday night 6:05 show did a 4.3 rating and 1,492,000 homes and the Sunday night "Best of World Championship Wrestling" Show did an amazing 3.1 rating and 1,365,000 homes. As far as wrestling product on television, Crockett was now kicking WWF's behind as the numbers on USA Network were not nearly as impressive. On May 26, 1985, they booked a 60-minute time limit draw with Flair and Magnum to gauge an early interest to the possible program, drawing a disappointing 3,961 to the Coliseum. Then, on June 15, 1985 edition of the Saturday night show, they ran an angle with Ric Flair defending the NWA World Title against Magnum TA in an impromptu match where Magnum offered up $1,000 if Flair could beat him rather than Magnum beat Flair and the match went to a 10 minute draw but driving the ratings for June up even more.

They ran an angle for the Flair and Nikita program where in the middle of being interviewed by David Crockett, Nikita suddenly used the Russian Sickle on him, knocking him down and injuring his neck putting Crockett out for a couple of weeks but then returning to be named special referee for the Flair-Koloff match at the Bash. The Flair and Magnum program continued in house shows in some cities and for Bill Watts in his June Houston Sam Houston Coliseum show, but for the Bash, Magnum was paired with Kamala the Ugandan Giant, who was imported along with his manager Scandor Akbar to have a match with TA. Dusty, knowing the big money match they had for around a 6 to 9 month run was himself against Flair for the NWA World Title, but he wanted to save that match for Starrcade '85 and also his program should provide the length of time needed to season Magnum up for a potential big show match with Flair in 1987 and a run with the title into 1988. Rhodes put himself with Tully Blanchard in a program for the Television Title at the suggestion of Blanchard. Tully told Dusty nobody on the roster could make him look better than Blanchard himself and he was right in his assessment, as Rhodes would go back to that program time and again the next three years, proving Blanchard's value, along with Arn Anderson's as a snarly, mean big bump taking heel.

The addition of Nickla Roberts, whose parents had been promoters in Lubbock, Texas in the old West Texas territory booked out of the Amarillo office, had gotten into the business much to the consternation of both her parents. But, Dusty, feeling nostalgic to the old West Texas territory where he had gone to college, positioned her well as The Perfect 10 as a valet to Tully Blanchard, also a product of West Texas State, having played quarterback on the football team there in the early 1970s and whose father had promoted San Antonio for Fritz Von Erich's Dallas office, until breaking away on his own in the late 70s. All in all, the plan was working so far, and all was culminating to the second big show success for Jim Crockett Promotions.

7-6-1985: The Great American Bash at Charlotte Memorial Stadium in Charlotte, North Carolina drawing 27,721 in attendance and doing a gross of $264,000.

Ron Bass vs Buddy Landel with JJ Dillon went to a 20-Minute Time Limit Draw

After the match, Bass caught Dillon with the claw until Landel rescued him.

Ole & Arn Anderson (CH) defeated Buzz Sawyer and Dick Slater to retain the NWA National Tag Team Championships.

Ole pinned Slater with an elbow drop to the back of the head behind the referee's back as Sawyer had Arn covered following a flying forearm.

Manny Fernandez, Sam Houston & Buzz Tyler defeated Superstar Graham, The Barbarian & Abdullah the Butcher

Houston pinned Graham with a small package

Jimmy Valiant beat Paul Jones in a Dog Collar Chain Match

Jones accidentally hit Abdullah, who was his second, with an elbow drop with the chain, afterwards Abdullah attacked Valiant until his second, Buzz Tyler cleared things out with a chair

The Road Warriors vs Ivan Koloff and Khrusher Khruschev want to a DDQ

Khruschev hit Road Warrior Animal with a steel chair when Animal was going to powerslam Koloff off the top, both teams brawled outside the ring

Magnum TA (CH) defeated Kamala the Ugandan Giant w/Scandor Akbar for the NWA United States Championship via DQ

Akbar broke up Magnum's cover of Kamala after a body slam for the DQ. Brawl after the match, Magnum hit the belly to belly after the DQ.

Ric Flair (CH) defeated Nikita Koloff to retain the NWA World Heavyweight Championship

Flair held the top rope when Nikita tried to slam him into the ring, with Flair landing on top of Koloff and David Crockett counted the pin. After the match, the Koloffs got their heat back by beating up Flair. Nikita hit a Russian Sickle off the middle rope as Ivan held Flair until help arrived from the babyface locker room to run off the heels.

Dusty Rhodes beat Tully Blanchard for the NWA Television Championship and custody of Baby Doll for 30 days as his valet in a Lights Out non-sanctioned Cage Match

Dusty beat Tully in the cage match for the title after a piledriver. After the match, the babyface locker room emptied to congratulate Dusty and to corral Baby Doll for him.

The fallout of the Bash in 1985 coming in future issues of the Daily Chronicle. I cover not only the history of pro wrestling but the evolution of it as well and the pro wrestling business was surely evolving in 1985. The Great American Bash in the middle of 1985 was a big catalyst for that evolution.

Thank You for Reading

I'm Tony Richards, Pro Wrestling Historian, Author and Storyteller. I share pro wrestling historical items in each issue of the Time Tunnel Pro Wrestling History Newsletter. Thanks for reading! If you enjoy my information on select events, matches and insights, please share it with folks you think might like to be a subscriber!

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