Legendary pro-wrestling journalist Bill Apter spoke with Ken Resnick on the latest edition of VOC Nation’s Wrestling With History. Hear the latest highlights from the episode below.
Says wrestlers never use to pay attention to rankings:
“The wrestlers did…we would do our interview day in the AWA on Tuesdays. (When) guys were sitting around in the interview room during the breaks, invariably somebody would have the latest magazine with them and they’d start talking about the ratings. Sometimes they would say ‘ah this is (bogus) that guy’s not that good’, or other times the conversation would be, ‘geez that guy must be better than I thought; have you ever seen him work or have you ever worked with him? Look how high they’ve got him.’ There was no Internet, there was no cable, the rankings were the horizon line that talent judge how good or not good that other talent was.”
On an incident he had with the legendary Steiner brothers:
“Rick and Scott Steiner were terrific. Ken knows that Scott can be very intimidating. I would go into a building during the prime days of WCW and Crockett Promotions…(Rick Steiner) would hold me and tell Scott, ‘why don’t you pop him?’ I’m terrified there. I (asked), ‘what is this all about?’ (They said) ‘the (expletive) rankings! You had the Road Warriors above us?’ This (kind of thing) went regularly through every single territory.”
Discusses how top 10 lists used to be done:
“The top 10 wrestlers (were rated) by what we believed were the right organizations to go in order. And that, back in the days – especially when we were banned by the WWF – was NWA, AWA, WWF. That’s how we rated the champions back then. Sometimes we switched AWA and WWF… I always had to tell them (that) nobody paid us. People thought I was in Jim Crockett’s pocket because I was on his TV. Then Vern put me on his TV and people thought I was in Vern’s pocket. The ratings were done on the top 10 guys in that (territory)…I did them technically like the programs that were on TV.”
Full edition of Wrestling With History can be found below.