CHOKEHOLD: Pro Wrestling's Real Mayhem Outside the Ring by Jim Wilson Weldon T. Johnson

Author:Jim Wilson Weldon T. Johnson [Johnson, Jim Wilson Weldon T.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vl-wrestling
ISBN: 9781462811724
Publisher: Xlibris
Published: 2004-03-29T07:00:00+00:00

A year before, Muchnick and four other NWA promoters and one state athletic commissioner narrowly escaped an embarrassing Federal antitrust trial in Kentucky. The Kentucky lawsuit was brought by Joseph Donald Pruitt, better known to southern wrestling fans as Don Pruitt or Don Baker or Mr. X, when he wrestled under the sock. As discussed earlier, Pruitt tried to promote in competition - opposition - to the NWA, and it was Pruitt who went to the Kennedy Justice Department in 1961, blowing the whistle on the Gulas-Welch wrestling syndicate, athletic commission corruption and bribes to U.S. Senator Estes Kefauver. After Senator Kefauver died in 1963, Pruitt’s future as an independent promoter was no brighter. In 1973, ten years after asking the Justice Department for help, Pruitt decided to prosecute the wrestling syndicate by himself. The target of Pruitt’s suit was the regional wrestling monopoly controlled by Nick Gulas and Roy Welch in Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky and Indiana in alleged combination with NWA president Sam Muchnick, Indianapolis promoters Dick The Bruiser (Richard Afflis) and Wilbur Snyder and Kentucky Athletic Commissioner M. Robert Evans. Pruitt alleged that Gulas, Welch, Muchnick, Snyder and Afflis illegally monopolized wrestling in the four-state territory by boycotting competitors, blacklisting wrestlers and bribing arena managers, television stations and state athletic commissions.

Pruitt’s lawsuit got the NWA’s immediate attention when he started shooting from the witness stand at a long list of The Business’ dirty laundry: about the NWA’s organizational purpose (“It is protection, sir”, said Pruitt); about how NWA world champions are selected (“somebody they can control”), bribes to TV stations (“ Nick Gulas paid $375 a week to WDRB-TV in Louisville to keep me off”); about exploiting Mexican wrestlers by paying them $10 a show and getting their work visas revoked when they complained; about stretching (“they broke a boy’s leg and arm - Kid Scotty Williams, his real name was Donald C. Scott”) and about how NWA promoters controlled and corrupted state athletic commissions in both Kentucky and Indiana.

In Kentucky, Pruitt revealed, “You just didn’t get a license in Kentucky unless it was okayed through Gulas and Welch. I have been in the [Nashville] office of Gulas and Welch when an applicant has applied for a license in Kentucky and the Commissioner would immediately call them and tell them what had happened. And he would ask them if they knew the man and if they wanted him to have a license in the state of Kentucky . . . I have also heard Gulas make the statement ‘We have The Man in our pocket. We control him.’ Nick Gulas made the statement that they delivered thirty-five hundred dollars in cash under the table to control the man [ M. Robert Evans, Kentucky Athletic Commission chairman].” One of Pruitt’s witnesses was Wee Willie Davis, a six foot-ten inch former wrestler and wrestling promoter whose real name was William Grundy Davis. At 67, Wee Willie had been around pro wrestling since the 1930s, had appeared in 40 movies and achieved national prominence in 1956 when he won $32,000 on TV’s $64,000 Question.

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