Original subtitles

On July 14th, 1984, millions of loyal viewers tuned into cable channel WTBS

to watch its most popular program, World Championship Wrestling.

Thank you so very, very much. But instead of a live broadcast featuring

South's most popular wrestlers, fans were shocked by the surprise appearance

New York promoter, Vincent McMahon Jr.

Thank you. It is indeed a pleasure to be associated with WTBS. And everybody's

mouth dropped open.

It seemed like the world of wrestling stopped at that time.

I was watching the TV. I had no idea it was coming.

Nobody knew why.

You know, the fans of that promotion were furious.

It was a day that would live in infamy, forever known as Black Saturday.

Vince McMahon's first step toward his goal of total monopoly, he had a vision.

that wrestling should be national under one person.

Far more than the tale of one man's ambition, Black Saturday is the story of

epic behind -the -scenes showdown between titans of the industry.

They kind of hoodooed him and snuck it out from underneath him more so than him

giving it up. Oh, he said, let's do a blood oath. The first one to break that

oath was not us.

So my father, he gets a call. They've stolen the company.

A high -stakes power play that set Vince McMahon on the path toward building a

billion -dollar wrestling empire.

It was all the beginning groundwork of future warfare.

Vince McMahon was a caster on the wrestling business.

Vince won. He was the best at it. He was the most vicious shark in the sea.

Welcome to WrestleMedia!

For over 40 years, the wrestling business has been dominated by World

Entertainment under the singular control of its owner and mastermind, Vince

McMahon Jr.

But in the early 1980s, McMahon is just beginning to stake his claim on an

industry divided into regional promotions known as territory.

In 1983, most wrestling fans saw Vince McMahon Jr.

as the announcer of the WWF television program.

Now, everybody in the wrestling business knew that Vince was Vince McMahon Sr.'s

son and was the guy who had just bought...

the WWF, the World Wrestling Federation, from his father in 1982.

Let's meet Jimmy Cornette and his dynasty of wrestlers. That's exactly

Let's meet me. Where did you get that tie, Freddie Miller? I'm Jim Cornette,

through my 40 -year career in wrestling, I've been an historian. Specifically,

I've studied Black Saturday and its effects on modern -day pro wrestling.

When Vince McMahon Jr.

bought the WWF, the business in that part of the country had almost never

stronger.

Since the 1940s, regional promoters like McMahon Sr.

did business through a governing body called the National Wrestling Alliance.

Well, the NWA, they made these bylaws and they had territorial boundaries

you've got this territory and you've got this territory.

My name is Dave Meltzer and I'm the editor of the Wrestling Observer

and I've been covering pro wrestling since the early 1970s.

In the NWA, there was always wars and fighting and things like that.

Wrestling has always been kind of like the mafia without the cement overshoes.

Nobody ends up at the bottom of the river, just a few black eyes every now

then.

Every year the NWA had a meeting, all the promoters came.

It was like the Gambinos and the Bananos and there's the Gottis. And it was all

the families that came together once a year and decided the major decisions for

wrestling in the United States for the following year.

The other promoters looked at Vince Jr.

like an upstart kid. They didn't realize he wanted to be the Walt Disney of

wrestling. They didn't understand not only the plans that he had, but the

that he was willing to go to to have those plans come to fruition.

While some territory showed signs of struggle, Georgia Championship Wrestling

was thriving, thanks to the shrewd leadership of Jim Barnett.

Barnett was one of the great minds in wrestling as a promoter. When he needed

charm people, He could charm people, and he had connections outside wrestling.

If you needed to discuss something with a politician, if you needed to talk to a

television executive or a station manager or a big sponsor, Barnett was

that they called to make the connection.

Even in today's business, as off -the -wall as the characters are, Jim Barnett

would still stand out as a very unique character.

I'm Gerald Briscoe, better known as Jerry Briscoe on the wrestling circuit.

Let's go see the world tag team champions Jack and Jerry Briscoe in

brother and I became the only two people ever to hold both the Eastern

Championship and the Mid -Atlantic Championship.

Right, brother.

They say we're wild and we're mean. We're creating a scene. We're going

I got along real well and learned so much from Jim Barnett.

All the other promoters were ex -wrestlers, or they were loud and

Jim always wore a beautiful suit with a tie, and he had the hair slicked back,

and he had jewelry on. Is wrestling in current violence?

I don't think so, no. I never thought so. He's very different from a wrestling

guy. I mean, he was interested in wrestling, but he's more interested in

arts, which is kind of unique for a wrestling promoter.

For a while, they wouldn't let Jim in the NWA until...

Geez, like 70.

Because they didn't want somebody gay in their old boys club.

Behind the scenes, he was a cutthroat.

He had the ability to cut your balls off and shove them down your throat and

you'd thank him for it.

Known as a powerful liaison to TV executives, Jim Barnett is close to

tycoon Ted Turner.

who airs Georgia Championship Wrestling nationally on his cable network, WTBS.

Wrestling was the first hit on cable television. It was Georgia Championship

Wrestling.

Turner just took his local Atlanta Channel 17 TV station and put it up on a

satellite, and everybody thought he was nuts. Who's going to want to watch a

local Atlanta television show in San Francisco, right?

There wasn't so many options for TV, so it was one of the stations you got. So

you could watch the Atlanta Braves, and Andy Griffith was big. But wrestling was

the biggest show on the station. You know, that was like must -see.

Coming up next, Georgia Championship Wrestling.

All the stars of the National Wrestling Alliance flew into Atlanta every weekend

to appear on the two -hour television program.

A severe amount of punishment to the head. It was the number one TV show on

cable TV.

That's how hot it was. I mean, what made it so hot was the unique combination of

Gordon Soley, the voice of championship wrestling, and the available talent.

There's so many Hall of Famers on that original list of talent that it's mind

-boggling that that kind of group of talent could assemble in one small

territory like Georgia.

I think what made it special is it was TBS, first TV station to go all over the

country, and I got to wrestle the best of the best. I mean, the cream of the

crop.

My name's Tommy Wildfire, rich, former NWA World Heavyweight Champion.

Come aboard, Tommy.

Thank you very much, Gordon. It was crazy.

A lot of times you sit back and watch people, and it would be as big a show

watching them as it would be watching the wrestling, you know.

Oh, Lord, yeah, the Georgia Peaches and the Grannies loved me too.

I seen Grannies take their cane and beat Ole Anderson up with it because he's

beating me up, you know.

I put the TV ring up every Saturday at the TV station.

It was cramped. The studio would only hold 100 people.

and you packed them in like sardines to get 100 in there. Boy Scout groups, Girl

Scout troops, church groups, just fans that love to come every week.

My name is Bobby Simmons.

Started working for ABC Booking when I was 14 years old, running errands, and

then went to work for Georgia Championship Wrestling.

We had good crowds, and we did sell out a lot of arenas.

The day -to -day operations are handled by matchmaker Ole Anderson.

Ole Anderson!

a veteran wrestler who rules Georgia Championship wrestling with an iron

Ole was very intelligent. One of the most intelligent guys, one of the most

-spoken guys.

He was loud. He was opinionated.

But Ole was a great wrestler, and he had also gotten quite a

reputation as a matchmaker and a booker.

Either you hate him or you love him.

You don't love him, but either you hate him or you like him. He's kind of hard

to love.

My name is Joe Hamilton, Jr. I refereed and wrestled as Nick Patrick throughout

my entire career. I stopped the match myself.

I heard Ricky Morton one time say, I don't think Ole Anderson even likes ice

cream. And I agree, he probably didn't.

He was just so old school and grouchy.

A lot of the old -timers back then were like that, you know? They was being hard

-ass on the young guys and making them learn.

It was what you saw. My father was very no -nonsense.

I think the guy that you saw on the screen was very much the same guy that

breakfast with me the next morning. And I think that's really part of the reason

he was successful, is because people could believe what they were seeing.

My name is Bryant Rogowski, and I'm the oldest son of Ole Anderson.

My father obviously spent years bumping in the ring and suffered a lot of

physical injuries, and some years ago he was diagnosed with MS, and right now

he's just in a state where he can't really do a lot for himself.

I think he was all about business. It wasn't long into his wrestling career

he began to think about being in charge.

Eventually he bought into the Georgia Company.

Ole isn't the only wrestler looking to increase his fortunes by getting

in the financial side of the promotion.

I started buying my stock in small increments where it built up to over

the same with my brother.

In 1983, the stockholders in Georgia Championship Wrestling were the original

promoter Paul Jones, a Columbus promoter Fred Ward, his son -in -law Ralph

Freed, Jim Barnett's business partner Jim Oates, Jack and Jerry Briscoe, and

Anderson.

Although Georgia Championship Wrestling is turning a profit, Ole Anderson begins

to question whether all the live show earnings are being accurately reported.

Wrestling had always been a very cash -heavy business, and money had always

probably been siphoned off the top to some degree.

You know, we had to pay off the politician, or we had to give some money

commissioner, or whatever it was.

Surely there was some truth to some of that. But when my dad started to really

pay attention in Georgia and realized that it wasn't only him bringing Barnett

few bucks after this show, but it was seven or eight other guys all doing the

same thing, he realized that that amount of money surely couldn't all be used

for those purposes.

I had tremendous concerns, you know, because I wasn't getting a dividend, and

I'd invested tens of thousands of dollars. We finally got Jim to expand

Michigan, Ohio, and West Virginia, part of Pennsylvania, and we started selling

out right and left. And I was actually doing the settlement at the shows at the

time. So I personally know the amount of cash that I was taking back to Georgia,

and it wasn't getting in anybody else's pocket but Mr. Barnett's.

Oli was the first one, maybe the only one at the time, to question Jim

The story went around that while Barnett was in Hong Kong making his annual trip

because he liked to go to Hong Kong and get all his new suits made, Oli either

kicks the door in or busts the door in, whether the accountant was in the office

or not, but Oli got into the books.

It was like Fort Knox trying to get to a box office statement.

Because he had them on the lock and key, and the people working in the office

were instructed, don't let anybody in my office. It was actually padlocked shut.

Ole, you know, started examining the books and everything, and he saw, like,

Barnett spending all kinds of crazy money on phone bills, $3 ,000 a month

bills. And he had a personal chef, and he had a personal driver.

So Ole just thought that, you know, Jim was embezzling money from the company.

They had a meeting of the Georgia Championship owners at a hotel south of

Atlanta in a conference room.

And Jim handed out the checks from the proceeds of the calendar we sold.

Supposedly when Jim left, that's when Ole came in and addressed the owners.

Ole had rallied the troops and gotten the majority of the other

stockholders.

On his side.

When I get to the office, Jim's doors opened.

Lights on. I thought, what is this?

And I heard Oli go, Bobby, come here.

And Oli handed me all the checks that I had written for the proceeds of the

calendar. He said, put this back in the bank.

And he told me that day, he said, you don't work for Jim Barnett anymore. You

work for me.

Ole told me, he says, I'm not out to hurt Jim. I'm not out to put him in

whatever that meant.

He said, I think I can run this company, and we're going to do it my way.

He thought everything was black and white. There were no gray areas, that it

just business. You acted like business people.

Well, he found out very quickly that it didn't work that way.

Hell hath no fury.

Like Barnett scorned.

After reviewing the accounts for Georgia Championship Wrestling, part owner Ole

Anderson tries to convince his fellow shareholders that manager Jim Barnett is

embezzling funds from the company.

Ole would call me and say, well, Jim's stealing all this money. Ole, is he

stealing? Well, yeah, he's using it for his limousine. He's using it for this.

Nobody approved those expenditures, which was true.

Jim would just explain it off as the cost of doing business.

We had both sides of the story.

Ole and Jim were not the best of friends.

They were not even good partners most of the time. They were always at one

another's throat.

I'm Louise Cochran, formerly known as Louise Bennett, in Georgia Championship

Wrestling. We were in a lot of debt because Jim had promised the buildings

the TVs so much per week or per month, and it didn't matter if we didn't make

money. That was a power play for Rolly to move in. I think it was more just of

money power thing than a Jim is tanking us with his spending thing.

My dad and Ralph, another stockholder in Georgia Championship, went downtown to

Barnett's penthouse apartment, and they had a talk with him.

I think my dad probably did most of the talking and explained to Barnett my dad

was going to be elected president of Georgia Championship.

That's the way it's going to be. And if you don't like it, I'm going to toss you

over your railing.

Here you are, a 285 -pound monster, and you're bullying this old man.

You did not want to get on the bad side of Jim Barnett because he could

actively...

with you and your wrestling career.

Now, Oli has taken it to a whole new level. He didn't just no -show Barnett

stand him up or hold him up for more money for a main event or whatever.

He's run him out of the company.

Barnett knew that he might not be able to do anything about it then.

You just know that he definitely knew he was going to do something about it

eventually.

While Ole reorganizes the company under his own management in early 1983, Vince

McMahon has been quietly strategizing to expand his own promotion into other NWA

territories. When Vince bought the company from his father, at first

maintained a status quo.

He had plans, but he didn't start putting them out front of everybody

could tell what he was doing.

But behind the scenes...

Vince Jr.

has these plots in mind before even the other promoters know that he's going to

do it. And the first thing that he's thinking about is television.

Vince McMahon's scheme to steal the airwaves from other promoters begins by

hiring an unlikely ally as his director of operations, Jim Barnett.

In 1983, they have the annual meeting. All the promoters are there.

Barnett comes in.

So does Vince McMahon Jr.

And they both give their resignations.

That couldn't be good.

What's going to happen?

They were all blindsided, for sure. When they resign from the NWA, that would

mean they're either going to get out of wrestling or they're going to run

opposition. That's the only two things it can mean.

And that seems to indicate that they're going to go into business for

themselves, with themselves, in some other fashion.

Oli smelled it. He said, okay, then the gloves are going to be off.

Well, the problem was you couldn't handle the wrestling business in 1983

like you handled it in 1953 and 54.

And secondly, Vince wasn't going to play that game.

He had one of the most powerful wrestling personalities of the last 30

his corner who knew absolutely everybody.

Barnett hated it early.

And Barnett also was looking at survival.

He was getting up there in age. But he needed to keep working. He needed to

that income coming in to maintain the facade that he was a millionaire.

I'm Bob Roop, 13 -year amateur wrestler, 15 -year professional wrestler, five

-time Hall of Fame member.

So that senior asked Ole to come up and meet with Junior and see if they could

make some kind of arrangement.

And Ole said, no, he said, absolutely not.

You know, he's trying to steal my territories and stuff.

There was this unspoken agreement that people honored each other's territory.

I'm sure Barnett was talking to McMahon right away and starting to sabotage

Georgia Championship.

Things started to happen around that time that had never happened before.

McMahon would go to a station that we were on. We had a show running and offer

them $2 ,000 a week to take his show, but they had to get rid of Ole's show.

Nothing on paper.

There was no contract. Nothing said that they had to honor a championship

wrestler from Georgia.

So the station would say, okay.

Next, you start losing buildings.

You call to check on the building and see how ticket sales are going. They

well, we stopped selling them.

Bunch of police cars roll up outside the TV station. Take somebody away.

They got an anonymous tip that he's dealing drugs.

Or they're searching the guys at the airport. Things that just had never

happened before that were just a constant thorn in his side and making

difficult to operate.

More so than usual.

Is it certain that this was all Vince McMahon Jr.'s doing?

I don't think he ever had any proof and I don't know how he would.

But like I say, it was stuff that never happened until then.

Vince was infiltrating everybody's territory. Vince got the USA Network

slot from Southwest Championship Wrestling, another regional promotion

San Antonio.

Ladies and gentlemen, the Southwest Tag Team Champions. They couldn't afford the

slot anymore.

Vince jumped in and took it. And All -American Wrestling debuted on the USA

Network.

He would call different promoters and say, hey, I've got this cable show now.

you'll send me tapes, then I'll put your wrestlers on it and I'll get them over

to a whole new audience.

But the people that he was getting the tapes of and showing are people that he

wanted to sign for the WWF.

He gets the Junkyard Dog from Mid -South Wrestling. He gets Steamboat from the

Carolinas. He got Kerry Von Erich in Dallas.

He was buying out talent.

from other areas.

Hulk Hogan was on top in the AWA for Vern, and all of a sudden he went to New

York. Hulk Hogan shows up to win the WWF Championship

from the Iron Sheik in Madison Square Garden.

Now, Vince has the superhero.

On the top of his cards that he wants to put in every arena in the country and

all over television to lead his national expansion, he knew that if you

controlled television, you would control the source of distribution for all the

wrestling programs and all the top wrestlers.

And that's what he wanted to corner.

Everything had been done a certain way and now everything was different.

And Vince was public enemy number one.

Some of the promoters, and they're talking, what if we put a hit on the

know? And, you know, it's a wild story.

I don't doubt that it's true at all because, you know, like, these are bad

dudes. It's just like, you know, Vince is breaking the rules.

Through Barnett's calculated maneuvering, Vince has seized TV time

promotions across the country.

But one remains for the taking, Georgia Championship Wrestling and its

nationwide slot on WTBS.

And when Barnett comes to him with a grudge against Ole Anderson, who has the

widest distribution of any television program in wrestling, and Barnett says

Vince, I think I can get it for you. And that's all he needed to hear.

If he could take over and control television across the country, then he

take over every territory in the country.

While Vince McMahon scoops up talent and TV spots from territories across the

country, Ole Anderson tries to hold Georgia Championship Wrestling together

any means necessary.

Maybe Ole thought he could do everything at that point in time, but Georgia

Wrestling, it still had the reputation, but the product was starting to suffer.

Yeah, I think he was trying to run a business with second -tier guys, people

that weren't going to draw.

I mean, he'd employed...

just about everybody in the business at one point or another, and it was those

guys who were now working for Vince in WWF and becoming his superstars, leaving

my father just scratching around for leftovers, and that just wasn't going to

sell tickets.

Holy had changed the concept where we weren't bringing in a lot of outside

talent. Our live events were not drawing the money because we weren't spending

the money on the talent that we were spending on before.

And the top guys quit wanting to come to our territory.

And we were actually getting phone calls from some of the top talent around the

country. Hey, what's going on? You better watch Oli.

And not only took their word for it, but were up there on several big shows and

experienced that the payoffs weren't the same.

Frustrated that their investment is no longer paying dividend, The Briscoes

decide Ole isn't cut out to manage the company. But in order to push out Ole,

they will have to get their fellow shareholders to agree with a majority

We called a stockholder meeting because we were going to take over Ole's

dictatorship and do it ourselves.

And we flew into town early, met with the lawyers, and the lawyers said, guys,

you can't do this. The doctor admitted it's illegal because we didn't state a

purpose. The meeting got put off, of course, so we went back to the hotel and

wanted to drown our sorrows. So we were sitting in the hotel bar, and who all of

a sudden showed up in this bar?

It was old Anderson.

His purpose was to track us down to find out what the hell we were planning on

doing.

And we weren't shy. We laid out that we're here to take you out of office.

They want to know how much money there is in the bank. He tells them, well, why

can't you pay it out?

And so I'm sure for the hundredth time he tries to explain to them how you've

got to have some operating capital to run this business.

You know, I've got to pay deposits on buildings.

I've got to pay for advertising.

I've got to buy plane tickets.

Once we get another $100 ,000 in the bank, then I'll write the dividend

Of course I want to. I'll get one too.

We were done drinking, much of it we could drink, and argued as much as we

argue.

I'll come up to the room with you. I've got a deal for you. Okay, we'll listen.

One last pitch.

You were going to God, Father? Yeah, I've got this deal with you. If you guys

agree, let's do a blood oath so we're all on the same page.

The deal was, if anybody was going to sell stock, they had to offer it to the

other shareholders.

Enjoy your championship first before they can sell it to anybody else.

My dad has a little pocket knife, sticks it in his head, digs it down, gets some

color.

They look at him like, oh, my God, what's wrong with you?

Only my word means more than blood. I mean, to me, I mean, if I give you my

word, I'm going to live up to it. I don't need.

these little gimmicks to certify my honesty.

Probably took him about 10 minutes to convince Jack and I to do the same

So that was the only solution to our problem.

You know, let's cut ourselves and bleed on each other.

My dad was such a man of his word that if he shook your hand and said he was

going to do anything, he would do it.

He just, he believed people because...

You know, he would never tell a lie.

As part of the blood oath agreement, the Briscoes will focus on increasing

ticket sales in exchange for regular payouts. But the deal doesn't last for

long. The first one to break the oath was Oli because he quit paying us what

agreed to pay us. So we thought that we had an open water there to do what we

wanted to do.

That lit a fire under us that if we stick in this situation too much longer,

we're not going to have anything.

Desperate to cash out, Briscoes begin shopping their shares outside of the

company, starting with Jim Barnett, who turns them down.

Knowing the Briscoes are looking to sell, Barnett knows someone who wants to

buy. Vince McMahon.

So Vince flew us up to LaGuardia, and still to this day, I rib Vince about

flying us up coach.

We met in a LaGuardia airport.

He said, can you guys deliver me?

51 % of the territory.

And I looked at him and I said, yes, sir, I can.

I had to make a call to Jim Barnett.

Jim Barnett knew everybody that owned a piece of Georgia.

Jim Barnett knew who they liked, who they didn't like, what they were mad

what their weak spots were, whatever the case. All Jim Barnett had to do was

point Vince McMahon in the right direction, not only with the Briscoes,

anybody else, or talk to them himself.

He could make you do something you didn't want to do, and by the time he

finished, you'd think it was your idea.

In the end of the negotiations and all the transactions, Vince ended up owning

67 .5 % of Georgia Championship Wrestling, which of course also held the

contract for the television program on TBS.

There was an agreement in the Articles of Incorporation that before anybody was

to sell, they had to first offer it to one of the other stockholders.

And he was told repeatedly by the attorneys that that was going to protect

Well, it turned out not to be true.

Behind the back of Ole Anderson, the Briscoes align with Jim Barnett to give

Vince McMahon control of Georgia Championship Wrestling, a move that will

forever reshape the industry.

In March of 1984, my grandmother passed away very suddenly.

My father and I go up to Minnesota, Wisconsin, and take care of the

and family business.

He gets a call from the office. I think it was Louise who called him.

I was in my office, and the door opens, and Vince walks in.

Good morning.

I now own the company.

I called Oli and told him that Vince had sold the company.

I thought it was real sneaky.

It's not that they did it. It's just how they did it.

He and I got on a plane right away. He parked me in a hotel in Atlanta.

He immediately met with the lawyers. They filed for injunctions, and they

for three or four months before it was finally all over. But he wanted to stop

Vince from taking over Georgia Championship.

With Ole's legal efforts to block the takeover thwarted, all that's left for

to do is concede.

There was a deal in the bylaws for our corporation that said if a majority of

the stockholders decide to change all the damn rules that are written up here,

they can do that.

And they just changed all the rules that we'd been going by for years.

So we lost because Barnett was smart enough to realize that he could have

it. And I didn't know.

I can remember the Saturday morning TV at TBS Studios. Vince McMahon is in the

building.

It's the only time I've ever been in the same room as Vince McMahon to this day.

But from there, the fight was on.

Vince was still at that point trying to talk to Ole because Vince is a guy that

used to get in his own way and used to being able to talk people into anything

he wants them to do.

I think, you know, Vince would say, Oli, Oli, I'll give you a job. You know,

tried to tell him over and over. It's just business.

It's just business.

Vince says, Oli, I'd like you to meet my wife, Linda.

Well, my dad, in a typical fashion, responds, you know what?

You and Linda.

Despite Oli's fury, few outside the company are even aware of the change in

ownership until Vince McMahon takes to the airwaves.

So I go in there on this particular Saturday, and there's this guy standing

there with his arms folded, and he's making his face.

As it turns out, the man was Vincent K. McMahon.

None of the talent knew anything.

It was all inter -office stuff. Nobody knew who sold to what or who was on what

side or nothing. The camera guys and all them, they didn't have a clue.

I got a call, was told not to come to TV, that we weren't going to be taping

that day.

I didn't go to the on Saturday that Saturday because I just got fired.

Vince had a meeting with all the talent that was here.

And he said, none of you have jobs anymore.

He said, if we want to use you, we'll contact you.

And that was it. It was over.

The wrestling program on TBS had been an institution for years.

Every wrestling fan that was able to get cable at that point in time is going to

watch Georgia wrestling every Saturday.

July 14th, 1984, they turn on World Championship Wrestling, and they didn't

Gordon Soley. They see Freddie Miller.

Hello, everybody, and welcome to World Championship Wrestling. Freddie Miller

introduced Vince McMahon.

Here's Vince McMahon.

Vince? Thank you very much, Freddie. Welcome. When Freddie Miller introduced

Vince, and just the silence.

Of the dead air time, you know. No, no, no crackman fan, no nothing.

Let's take you now to Minneapolis and Jesse the Body Ventura.

They started showing videotapes of matches from other WWF television

and other WWF arenas and TV shoots.

One of the many stars here in the World Wrestling Federation.

The fans of Georgia wrestling, they practically rioted.

They were just bombarding the TBS switchboards.

We want our wrestling.

Georgia wrestling was a lot different than Vince's wrestling.

Vince brought his style down here. I don't think they bought it or just

like it because it wasn't homeboys.

So I think that they just wasn't buying what he was selling.

He didn't want the Georgia wrestling territory.

All he wanted was that TV.

I'm getting excited because I'm seeing a new future starting to be made. I call

it Green Saturday because it changed my fortune.

But obviously a lot of fans that were true fans of Georgia's championship

wrestling didn't see it the same way I saw it.

Ousted from the promotion he helped build, Ole makes no secret of his

resentment. If Jack and Jerry had agreed with him to wait things out a few more

months, and then...

taking advantage of the time when he's dealing with his mother's funeral to

out behind his back, I think that that would have really impacted his opinion

strongly for quite a while to the negative.

And I was pissed at Briscoes.

And they got whatever money they got.

Ole had supposedly hired an armed guard to stand there and actually do body harm

to us if we tried to get in the office.

Not the promoter, but Paul Jones, the old wrasser, called and said, there's

supposedly a hitman out on you guys for two days. Be very careful where you go

and who you associate with, because I think it's real.

Ole Anderson is on the hunt for revenge as rumors circulate about a potential

plot to have the Briscoes killed.

We waited the two days, nothing happened to us, and we threw one of the biggest

parties we ever thrown.

You think he would have done that?

No. First of all, he would have never got rid of the money, and secondly, he

would have done it himself.

He would have never asked anybody else to do it. He would have been glad to do

it himself.

The only negative way that I think it affected us is the loss of friendship

the negative things that were said about me. The threats that my brother and I

got during this time frame, too, was phenomenal.

I mean, our families were receiving phone calls, you know, that we were no

backstabbered. It was a very rough deal.

Determined to keep the spirit of Georgia Championship Wrestling alive, Ole sells

his shares and starts his own promotion.

Ole was able to work out a deal. He called up Vince and said, Vince, I'm

to sell you my piece, too.

Which, you know, I guess, thank you, Vince, because Vince could very easily

just said, OK, I'm closing up.

Your shares aren't worth anything.

Ole went to Ted Turner directly. He said, hey, the people want to see the

Georgia wrestling and the Georgia wrestlers, and I've got them. Give me

time slot.

And when I went to Ted Turner later on, I said, who do you think's been wearing

this damn thing?

The last eight, nine years, me.

So he gave Oli Saturday morning at 7 .30.

A very spirited crowd here today at the WTBS Sports Arena. We're very proud to

bring you once again championship wrestling from Georgia. While Oli

mount a comeback, Vince is struggling to connect with Georgia viewers.

They were used to seeing a certain style, and it wasn't something that

seen before.

They didn't know who these guys were.

They didn't care. They were looking for the people they knew.

Vince is getting crowded out of the Saturday night time slot. Turner's on

ass. It's not doing him the good that he thought it was going to do him. This is

one of the first and only Vince McMahon complete failures.

Looking to offload his valuable WTBS time slot, McMahon once again turns to

Barnett to land a deal. Barnett finds a buyer in one of McMahon's other major

competitors, Jim Crockett Promotions.

How long did Vince's run last on TBS? One year.

Turner was going to kick Vince off as soon as he legally could.

And so Barnett opened the door to Crockett. You know, that TBS time slot,

time, it probably sounded like a great deal.

Vince will sell the time slot on Saturday night on TBS to Jim Crockett

Promotions, and Vince McMahon would get a million dollars.

And everybody becomes happy with that.

With Barnett putting all the pieces together, Vince McMahon temporarily

monopolizes cable TV wrestling in the United States, but is a failure at that,

so he uses that flop to make money to finance WrestleMania,

where he then started on the road to put every other promoter out of business.

The wrestling extravaganza of all -time WrestleMania.

All in that 80s period, that's where he got the big jump. WWE became the name

brand of pro wrestling, and he's got Cyndi Lauper, and he's building up

WrestleMania, Hulk Hogan's getting big, and he's just shooting way past

everybody else, and they don't have the outlet to compete with him.

Black Saturday forever altered the trajectory of the wrestling business,

something no one understood better than Ole Anderson.

It was almost like he had just cleared his desk off and scraped everything into

it.

Honestly, the state my father is in today, I don't know that he can hate

anybody, sadly enough.

But I think he held a grudge against Vince for a long time.

I'm just trying to see what all I got here.

Bill Watts, himself a pioneering promoter in Mid -South Wrestling, writes

letter to Oli in 1987 reflecting upon the significance of Black Saturday.

Dear Oli, I know actions and words once said or done cannot be recalled.

You were seeing the beginning of the metamorphosis of change of the very

of our business, all precipitated by McMahon, in my opinion. I certainly

his legacy will be the destruction of an industry as we know it or knew it.

After the Black Saturday incident, Barnett was Vince's right -hand man, but

Barnett was still more old -time wrestling and...

Vince wanted to be modern, and somewhere in 87, they had a difference of

opinion, and Vince let Barnett go.

Jim Barnett only worked for WWF for a fraction of his long career, but his

actions during the company's expansion helped solidify a new way of doing

business in wrestling, the Vince McMahon way.

Vince McMahon, for 40 years, he made his business based on taking TV

time slots or companies out from under people, doing takeovers, buying

stock, issuing stock, public offering of the WWE that made him a billionaire.

But his downfall eventually came through the same way.

You know, there's an old saying, what goes around comes around. And or around

and around. Pretty soon you won't be around.

Well, Vince had it came out in The Wall Street Journal that he had allegations

of paying certain women off, you know, nondisclosure agreements for

and, you know, even worse.

McMahon paid a former employee three million dollars to keep her quiet.

You take a picture of Vincent McMahon.

And that there is the reason why there is a human resources now in companies.

That is the reason why.

As far as revolutionizing our business, yes, he did.

Is there a dark side and a bad side? Yes, there damn sure is.

It was nothing but an embarrassment to the company that Vince stepped down.

forced him out of the company.

because his son -in -law and his daughter and all these people that he's

with and trusted were saying, Vince, you've got to go.

This is not going to do the stock price any good. It's not going to do our

business any good. You've got to step aside.

And the thing he learned from the Georgia takeover, he still owns 80 % of

company. So after six months, then he comes back in a whirlwind of

action. Let me just say that I've made mistakes, obviously, both personally and

professionally through my 50 -year career.

I've owned up to every single one of them and then moved on.

And then announces, I'm coming back because we're going to sell this son of

bitch. And the time is right.

Endeavor announcing WWE and UFC will combine to form a $21 billion global

sports and entertainment company.

And that's what worries all the wrestling fans.

Say what you want about Vince, at least it was the family business.

He's done it for 50 years.

Now, Endeavor, what mental romantic attachment do they have to the wrestling

business, to its history, to keeping it alive?

We're going to lose a lot of history, and we're going to lose the, you know,

last vestige of what old -time professional wrestling was for 100

I think Black Saturday was kind of a tipping point in the wrestling business.

That was the moment it started to evolve away from the wrestling business and

into show business.

Black Saturday in and of itself wasn't a groundbreaking moment. It was the

canary in the coal mine.

Vince McMahon put anywhere from hundreds to maybe thousands of wrestlers out of

work. Didn't Vince make a lot of those guys millionaires, though?

maybe 3 % of them.

The other 97 % didn't get to work anymore.

That's when all the change is going on, and you can't go back. I mean, and

that's life. Just times change, you know, and I'm just holding on to them

Do you think guys like Barnett, Jack, Jerry Briscoe, do people blame them for

the demise of the territories?

I don't think they blame the Briscoes, but they definitely blame Vince.

But it was the move. It was the move to make.

What killed the territories was cable television.

And that would have been with Vince McMahon or without Vince McMahon. If it

wasn't Vince McMahon going national, it would have been Vern Gagne or Jim

Crockett. And they wouldn't have done as well as Vince did.

Somebody was going to be successful. Wrestling wasn't going to go away.

But would they have been as successful as Vince McMahon was?

I'm going to say no.