Midwest Championship Wrestling History
by Ben Patrick
Chapter 1 - The Beginning
Well I believe it was the winter of 1980 when I attended a wrestling show at Memorial Hall in Lima Ohio, a decrepid old heap of a building to see the first live wrestling I had seen in many years. When I was a teenager I had attended Big Time Wrestling (shiek's promotion out of Detroit) every other Monday night at the local Pan Rec Ice Arena (now a grocery store) in Lima and watched the stars like Bobo Brazil, the Kangaroos, Rhodes and Murdoch:The Outlaws, Stomper and Ben Justice, Tex McKenzie, Flying Fred Curry, Wild Bull Curry, Mighty Igor, Irish Mickey Doyle, Lord Layton, and of course, The Shiek. Well the show I attended in 80 was headlined Flying Fred Curry and a bunch of other guys I had never heard of including Big Jim Lancaster. During intermission I decided to ask Fred Curry for an autograph and found myself looking down on my boyhood idol.
It had always been my dream to be a wrestler so I wrote the promoter Jim Painter, a letter and asked him about being trained to wrestle.
He called me about a week later and said he was getting a class together and that he would let me know when and where.
Chapter 2 - Training with Al Snow
I first met Al and his friend Victor when we met at Lima Senior High School with the other trainee, Herschel Smith and our illustrious instructor Big Jim Lancaster. Al and Victor had arranged for us to use the gym at the high school for our initial workout . . . or so we thought. We arrived and found nobody around to let us in. Thus ended our first workout.
Somebody finally arranged for us to use a small room off the main gym of Bradfield Center in Lima, which was the black equivalent of the YMCA. It was a small low ceiling room with a very thin tumbling mat on the floor. Big Jim began by telling us a little bit about the wrestling business and showing us a few simple holds such as the basic referee's lockup and probably a wristlock and a hammerlock and the reverses back and forth. He emphasized cooperation in that we were just training and didn't want to hurt each other. Even back then Al seemed very talented and very eager to learn. He talked about how he had long wanted to be a wrestler and how he had been ripped off by a training camp run by Gene Anderson. Victor had been his longtime friend. I believe he had accompianied Al to the Anderson training camp. Their idea at the time was to be a tag team called the Soul Patrol Al Snow and Koko Lewis (Victor is black). Herschel was older and kind of a hillbilly biker dude. He showed us all his bridgework made necessary by his many bar fights. Kinda made me wonder what I was doing there.
Al and Victor and Herschel and I trained with Jim for several months. He taught us a lot of basic holds and slowly smartened us up to the business, but not until we all took body slams and hard forearm shots. Body slams on that thin mat were not fun, let me tell you. At one point I remember Al saying he would wrestle for food like the Terry Funk character in Paradise Alley(Is that the name of the Sly Stallone movie?). Jim jumped all over him and said, "Don't ever let any promoters hear you say that, because there are some who would take you up on it." But it just goes to show that Al had a big desire even back then to make it in the wrestling business.
We all even travelled down to Springfield Ohio to work out with another group in a boxing ring. I can't remember the names. The head guy was a minor promoter in Springfield and he was kind of a jerk. His one trainee that made it to the session looked like Abe Lincoln and dressed all in green: green sweats, green tank top, green knee pads, etc. Only problem was they were all different shades of green. We nicknamed him "The Pickle". Later Al got his first match from this group.
Matter of fact we all thought we were going to get our first break. We were all scheduled to be in the Battle Royal. Jim had a regular match scheduled. The show was in Springfield in some (seems like) huge hall. This local promoter was using a lot of guys from Kentucky on his show. I remember Wayne Ferris (later Honky Tonk Man) coming down some stairs in a towel, not recognizing me, and him and I having a hilarious conversation that went something like this:
Wayne: Kay Fabe?
Ben: No
Wayne: Huh?
Ben: I'm not Kay Fabe.
Wayne: Kay Fabe?
Ben: I'm a wrestler.
Also working was Jackie Ruffin (before he was killed), Jeff Sword, and a bunch more. Matter of fact the dressing room was packed. Even "The Pickle" was there. The promoter came in and took one look at Herschel, Victor, and I and mumbled to himself and left and came back and looked and left, came back again and talked to Jim over in the corner. Ended up with only Al working in the Battle Royal. I think he got thrown out first.
Sometime before that we must have driven to Columbus to visit the wrestling supply company Karl and Hildegard (still in business today) and bought tights, trunks, masks, ring jackets, etc. Jim said we should all buy masks so we would be versatile. On the way back from Columbus we all put the masks on and hung our heads out of the car window, scaring people. We thought it was funny at the time.
For some reason even though Al and Victor wanted to be a tag team Jim seemed to book Al and I together a lot. My first ever professional match was on Windsor tv against my boyhood idol, Bobo Brazil. I was so starstruck I stood in the middle of the ring dumbfounded. He coco butted me and pinned me then helped me up and brushed me off. How humiliating! Anyway another early match had Al and me against Jim Lancaster and his baby brother (only 320 lbs.) Rick. I made the mistake of inviting my whole family including my mother so they could watch Big Jim (365 lbs.) come off the second turnbuckle and squash me.
Chapter 3 Texas Chain Gang
I can't remember who's idea The Texas Chain Gang was, but it was another tag team featuring Al and me. (See the pictures). At the time Jim was working with Dr. Jerry Grahm Jr. from Toledo. They had worked some matches against each other and now it was time for the perennial favorite the six man tag team match.
So it was Jim, his brother (not really) Rick Lancaster, and The Patriot (not Del Wilkes) against Grahm, Al and me. As you can see in the second picture Grahms gimmick was a cowardly one as he refused to tag us all through the match and they ended up beating me I think.
Chapter 4 - Jobbers on TV
Jim ran some shows in Ohio and Indiana. I can't remember all the towns. Sometimes Al and I tagteamed. Sometimes we didn't. Then came the next golden opportunity, "Jobbing on TV". In those days each territory had their own weekly tv show and there was a constant demand for guys who were willing to get squashed on tv. We got "experience", "paid our dues", etc, etc. etc. blah blah blah. It was a very painful set of experiences. Jim booked us into St. Louis for Pat O'Connor, Windsor for George Cannon, and Minneapolis for Verne Gagne. My very first match ever was against my boyhood idol, Bobo Brazil on Windsor tv. I was too scared or starstruck to do anything, so Bobo cocobutted me and pinned me and then picked me up and shook my hand. How embarrassing!
In St. Louis I remember we went to the Checkerdome on a Friday night to watch Jim in a tag match with Mike George against somebody and then tape tv on Saturday. "Wrestling at the Chase" was the famous St. Louis tv show. We went back several times and I get them all mixed up but I know I wrestled Crusher Ayala, Dick the Bruiser, Ken Patera, Crusher Jerry Blackwell, and Bruiser Brody.
Dick the Bruiser just punched me in the head, Ken Patera threw me all around the ring, Blackwell literally tried to crush me with his 400 lbs, making me crawl to the ring ropes with him on my back. Bruiser Brody seemed like a nice guy. He apologized ahead of time for beating the crap out of me. He kicked me so hard in the head I literally saw stars. Anyway Al basically wrestled all the same guys in St. Louis, or at least I don't remember anyone special he wrestled. Big Jim always got to work with the babyfaces who were wrestling Blackwell at the house shows so they could show how strong they were by slamming him.
Chapter Five - One Crazy Dude
One of the guys Al and I met in those jobber days was one crazy dude named Bobby Golden. Bobby and Jim knew each other from way back. We met him on several of Jim's shows. I remember one trip to Minnieapolis to work for Vern Gagne's AWA that Bobby rode along on. Bobby and I sat in the back seat driving Al crazy singing Beatles' songs off key. Bobby was an incredibly nice guy. He ran some shows around Warsaw and Plymouth Indiana and always included Al, Jim, Larry and me. Whoops! I haven't mentioned Larry yet. Guess that is the next chapter.
Guess it was time for me to get in shape. When I was in Minneapolis Vern Gagne took one look at Victor (Koco Lewis) and I and asked us if we were from "Belly City" and told us we needed to get in shape. Belly City?
In Minneapolis I worked a tag match against gasp the Road Warriors and Hawk pressed slammed me. Well I went up fine but didn't realize he was going to do 5 reps and I guess I wobbled. He yelled at me when we got back to the dressing room, but I swear I never saw him do reps on a press slam before.
One time in Ohio somewhere I had a singles match against Bobby Golden. He was always good at picking up some ringside debris to use as a "weapon". Often it was only a napkin or a piece of paper but he made it look deadly. Anyway this time in Ohio he grabbed a corn chip off the floor and scratched and scraped it across my forehead. It was hilarious! Until I saw myself in the mirror later. Big red scratches!!!! Nobody believed me when I told them a professional wrestler had scratched my head with a frito.
Chapter Six - Birth of the Flying Tigers
I worked a lot of little shows for small promoters. Did the tv jobber thing in St. Louis, Minneapolis, Detroit, even went to Louisville once for the Poffos, but it didn't seem like my career was really getting anywhere. I was short and kind of fat and didn't move that well and hadn't really developed a personality yet. Well I went through a divorce and dropped about 30 lbs., started working out harder, running, lifting weights, and kept trying to learn new moves.
Somewhere along in here Herschel introduced me to Larry Coon, a friend of his who wanted to get into wrestling. This guy was my height but built like a body builder. I helped Herschel train Larry. We used to go to Larry's girlfriends house and wrestle on a mattress in an empty room. Later we hung Larry's heavy punching bag up in my garage and taught ourselves to dropkick. I even talked Jim Lancaster into booking us against each other at one of his shows. Then we went to another guy's show under masks as the Mysterions. I remember that clearly because we made the mistake of getting in the end of the payoff line. We got to split $22 and each got a rubber check for the rest. Anyway I realized Larry had a lot of potential and we started talking about forming a tag team. We wanted to pattern ourselves after the Rock N Roll Express we watched every Saturday on Georgia Championship Wrestling on TBS (forerunner of WCW). We kept working on our moves and we were looking for a name. I found an old newspaper that had movie ads in it. There on the page was an ad for an old John Wayne movie "The Flying Tigers". I suggested it to Larry and he liked it so that's what we decided to call the team.
Chapter 7 - Flying Tigers Take Flight
Larry and I bought yellow trunks, and tshirts with the flying tiger emblem on the front and "Flying Tigers" ironed on the back.
We had our first match in Findlay against Jumping Joe Collins and somebody else. It was ok and we did our kamikaze leaps off the top rope and our double dropkick finisher. The kamikaze leap was where one tiger held the opponent's arm in a extended position and the other tiger would drop an elbow onto his shoulder from the top rope. This was a big deal back in 1983 because not as many guys jumped off the top rope in those days. I remember watching the tape later and laughing at Al falling off the ring steps before his match ever started. From the camera angle it looked like he fell into a hole. He just disappeared and then suddenly was back again.
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