Paul Boesch and Houston's wrestling legacy
By GREG OLIVER -- SLAM! Wrestling
Houston definitely does not have a problem when it comes to pro
wrestling. This year's site of Wrestlemania is a city rich in history in
the mat game, and was home to one of the most storied single-city
promoters anywhere, Paul Boesch.
Wrestling in Houston goes back before the First World War, and between
1915 - 1923, there were matches at irregular intervals. In the
mid-1920s, Julius Sigel started Houston's City Auditorium. Soon the top
wrestlers were coming to Houston on steady basis for the Friday night
shows.
Around 1929, Julius Sigel left to promote New Orleans and Shreveport,
La. and his brother Morris took over the promotion. In a 1981 article
for The Wrestling News, the late Paul Boesch described Morris as a
promoter. "Morris' strength as a promoter lay in his ability to bring
good business practices into the world. He paid his bills promptly and
had an unparalleled reputation for honesty. Matchmaking was not his
strong point, but he did surround himself with people who knew the mat
game and could evaluate the wrestlers."
After a serious car accident in 1947, the Brooklyn, NY-born Boesch had
to hang up his wrestling tights, and became one of those people that
Sigel relied on to create a successful promotion in Houston. Boesch was
the radio announcer at ringside and when TV came to Houston in January
1949, he graduated to the boob tube - without ever having seen a
television himself!
"For the first nine months of telecasting we started with the Star
Spangled Banner and wound up when the lights went out," Boesch wrote in
The Wrestling News. "It is difficult to explain, 33 years later, when
people are blase and bored with the miracles the tube produces, that the
early days were exciting. It is hard to explain how people stood in
front of TV sets placed in store windows to watch wrestling; and how
Friday night was wrestling party night in someone's home."
Eventually, Houston wrestling ended up on Channel 39 and lasted there
for more than three decades.
On December 26, 1966, after a long illness, Morris Sigel died. In
January 1967, Boesch bought the Gulf Athletic Club from Mrs. Sigel. "I
had long known the stress of promotion and was well aware of its
possibilities and its promise. For 20 years I had been training for my
new position without knowing it. I was ready. Now I could put into
practice my own ideas and I alone would bear the responsibility for
their success or failure," Boesch wrote.
Billy Red Lyons spent almost five years wrestling in Texas, and
remembered Houston as a "very good" wrestling town. "Dallas, Fort Worth,
San Antonio, Corpus, Houston, they were all great towns for wrestling,"
Lyons told SLAM! Wrestling.
He also thought very highly of Paul Boesch. "I thought he was a good
promoter, very good. And he was honest, an honest promoter. I really
liked him ... Whatever he promised you, you got."
Boesch spent 21 years promoting in Houston, and at various times was
affiliated with Southwest Sports (later World Class Wrestling),
Southwest Championship Wrestling, Mid South (later UWF) Wrestling and
finally a brief affiliation with the WWF.
On the
Kayfabe Memories web site, Charles Laffere
shared his personal memories of the action. "Houston Wrestling was the
best. I was raised on Channel 39 every Saturday night from 10:00 to
11:30 P.M. The Sam Houston Coliseum was a dark, dingy, smelly old
municipal building in downtown Houston used mostly for heavy metal
concerts, religious revivals, second rate circuses, and pro wrestling.
... Paul Boesch was a promoter who would bring in just about any
wrestler if the guy could draw money. I remember seeing Jose Lothario,
Mil Mascaras,
Ernie Ladd (a hero in his hometown of Houston, a mega-heel
everywhere else), the
Funks, and the Briscos. Other stars who came into
the area were Brute Bernard,
Harley Race, the evil Playboy Gary Hart, Red Bastien, Ivan Putski,
Superstar Billy Graham, the late, great Gino Hernandez,
Andre, Tony Atlas and Al "don't call me a Mexican, I'm an
Indian" Madril, just to name a very few. So many stars, all with
different styles. Boesch would have the Mexican wrestlers do their
interviews in Spanish and in English, and while it might seem
condescending today, it certainly drew a large contingent of
Mexican-American fans to the arena. Boesch did the announcing and
interviewed the wrestlers himself and since he was a big man (about
6'5", 300 lbs.), no wrestler would ever try to intimidate him. He would
hold events with AWA, WWWF, NWA,Southwest Championship and independent
stars on the same card."
'Playboy' Gary Hart was the booking agent for World Class from 1977 to
1983, based out of Dallas, and would supply talent to Boesch. "I found
Paul Boesch to be excellent in every way. He knew wrestling. He knew his
town. He was very protective of his town. If you have any knowledge of
Paul, he was one of the few promoters that took talent out of the World
Class booking office, he was constantly wanting people from outside. He
would bring in people such as Bob Backlund,
Bruno Sammartino,
Stan Stasiak, Superstar Billy Graham. He was very, very big on the world
champions."
World Class supplied San Antonio, Houston, Lubbock, Corpus Christi,
Amarillo, Midland, Albuquerque -- about 35 towns in total. "Of the 35,
Paul was head and shoulders above everyone," said Hart.
"Houston was probably the jewel of the Texas promotion, second only to
the Dallas / Fort Worth area," Hart said. "Paul consistently drew
capacity, or near capacity houses for the years that I was with him, and
long before."
Having started in wrestling in 1960, and knowing the business from his
uncle, who helped promote in Chicago, Hart has enough perspective to
compare Sigel and Boesch. "I actually believe he did a better job in the
town than Morris Sigel did. Paul was an excellent promoter. He had very
good ideas about what Houston would accept. It used to be that you could
go to Tennessee, and it was silly wrestling. You'd go to Florida or
Texas, and it was more full-contact wrestling. Paul was very big on
that. He wanted top of the line [wrestlers] or he wouldn't use you."
In fact, while Hart would be booking 30-35 wrestlers out of Dallas,
Boesch was picky. "He might use 10 or 15 and then I would grab talent
from the New York office, St. Louis office for him."
The early 1980s were a high point for Boesch and Houston wrestling. The
affiliation with the hot Mid South promotion run by Bill Watts brought
top shows to the area.
Barry Darsow was one of those Mid South wrestlers who had tremendous
success. Darsow, who wrestled as the Russian Crusher Darsow and later Krusher Krushchev during his
time in Mid South, recalls Houston as an "unbelievable" wrestling town.
"I wrestled the
Junkyard Dog there in his prime, and it was sold out.
Jim Duggan in his prime, and it was sold out. Terry Taylor, back then,
we were all in Mid-South. We used to have so many people in, the fire
marshall would have to throw people out -- that's how many people we fit
in that place."
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The old Sam Houston Coliseum.
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Mid South would come through Houston at least once a month. "When you
came into the building, [Boesch would] come back in the dressing room,
he'd sit down and talk and tell all his old stories and all this stuff.
But the payoffs that would be made at that building were better than any
other payoff anywhere else," Darsow said. "So to me, Paul Boesch was a
very, very honest man. He treated all the guys with respect ... He made
everybody seem like somebody. What a gentleman."
Mid South became the UWF, and eventually was sold to the NWA in April
1987. Boesch's relationship with Watts had deteriorated over the years,
and instead of going with the NWA, Boesch made a deal to work with Vince
McMahon and the WWF. The relationship only lasted four months, and
Boesch announced he was retiring from promoting and had a show on August
28, 1987 in Houston before a sellout 12,000 fans.
Then U.S. Vice-President George Bush was among those to honour Boesch
via telegram at that final show:
"To All Houston Wrestling Fans,
I'm sorry to miss the gala event in honor of my friend Paul Boesch. Paul
has made a fantastic contribution to American sports. Through his leadership and
foresight, wrestling is now enjoyed by millions of Americans. I treasure my friendship with Paul
Boesch. We have know each other for many years. He is a great guy and wrestling will
never be quite the same without his firm, principled leadership.
Sincerely,
George Bush"
Paul Boesch died of a heart attack at 76 on March 7th, 1989 in
Sugarland, Texas.
In the obituary in
The Wrestling Observer, Dave Meltzer shared a memory
of Boesch. "I recall one time, after a fairly bad house, he called me up
out of the blue. He told me about the house, and then started giving
excuses one after another. The weather was bad. It was the end of the
month and money was tight. The economy is bad of late. The TV show got
moved back an hour the week before the card because the baseball game
went into extra innings. We had to change one of the main events because
a guy got hurt two weeks before the card. He had about 15 of them in a
row. What I'll remember most was his last comment. 'I'm telling you all
these things now so you'll know every excuse I can give you for the fact
that I put together a card nobody wanted to see.'"
Since Boesch got out of promoting, Houston was never more than just
another stop on the cross-country tours for the WWF and WCW. Hosting
WrestleMania XVII will bring back some of the glory.
