Charting The Territories

Every month, Jon Boucher and I create a podcast that discusses a wide range of topics related to what is covered on this blog. I thought it would be helpful to create a 'companion piece' that goes along with each episode. We often reference web sites, books, YouTube videos, etc., on the podcast, and this companion piece will provide links to many of those materials so that you can see what Jon & I are discussing.

One of the biggest pro wrestling stars of the 1980s, "Mr. Wonderful" Paul Orndorff, passed away in July 2021. Before his big run with the WWF, he, like many other wrestlers, competed for various territories over a several year period. He had three separate stints in the territory I have been heavily researching for the last few years, first coming in late 1977 when it was still owned by Leroy McGuirk and returning for two later stints after Bill Watts took over and named it Mid-South Wrestling. Using the statistics I have developed for Charting the Territories, I decided to take a snapshot look his three stints here. There are three charts below, each providing what is basically the equivalent of a "stat line" for Orndorff in each of his three separate stints in the territory. These concepts may be new to readers, so here's a brief explanation: The SPOT Rating is a statistic that measures a wrestler's average position (or spot) on the cards. The advertised m

 Welcome to Chapter 20 of The McGuirk/Watts Wrestling Almanac, an in-depth data-driven look at the wrestling territory run by Leroy McGuirk (and later, Bill Watts). The territory is most commonly known as Tri-State Wrestling and/or Mid-South Wrestling, though neither of those names were actually used until September 1979 when Watts split from McGuirk.

In the 3rd quarter of 1981, Orndorff faces challenges from three J’s (Jim, Jake, and JYD), DiBiase returns, Bob Roop and Bob Orton Jr. debut and both “break bad”, and more!

In many ways, I view Charting the Territories as an ongoing beta test of the statistics I have created. I look at it as hey, I invented these stats...now follow along with me as we see if they *work* . With the SPOT Rating, I've actually been quite surprised at how well it measures what it is supposed to measure (a wrestler's average position on the cards expressed as a number) across different territories and different time periods. I first debuted the FEUD Score in November of 2019. It's an attempt to measure how "big" a feud was based on how many times it occurred on house shows, and how clustered those matches are over time (if they're wrestling against one another once a week for five weeks, that's different than if they wrestled each other five times in one week). The idea being that if a particular feud between two wrestlers or teams is received well by the fans (i.e., it draws money), the booker/promoter will continue to run it around the horn, wit

Every month, Jon Boucher and I create a podcast that discusses a wide range of topics related to what is covered on this blog. I thought it would be helpful to create a 'companion piece' that goes along with each episode. We often reference web sites, books, YouTube videos, etc., on the podcast, and this companion piece will provide links to many of those materials so that you can see what Jon & I are discussing.

Welcome to Chapter 19 of The McGuirk/Watts Wrestling Almanac, an in-depth data-driven look at the wrestling territory run by Leroy McGuirk (and later, Bill Watts). The territory is most commonly known as Tri-State Wrestling and/or Mid-South Wrestling, though neither of those names were actually used until September 1979 when Watts split from McGuirk.