NWA Chicago, Chicago, IL
Here’s a request. Don’t get a lot of asks for 60s wrestling. Don’t care to get a lot more in all honesty but then again maybe I do, who knows how my tastes may have changed? You can watch this online.
Calhoun was a massive fucker, billed here at 601 pounds and looking every ounce of it. Rogers is introduced as NWA heavyweight champion, but he’s actually the United States heavyweight champion which was a Capitol Sports thing. He’d win the world title in June of ’61 and vacated this belt as its only holder ever. There were all kinds of “NWA US heavyweight titles” around this era but the one Rogers has was the Capitol one.
Russ Davis is on the commentary here; he was Chicago’s “Mr. Television.” This is Haystacks’ first match at the Amphitheatre. Buddy has Bob Davis as his manager, and Haystacks isn’t having it.
“Calhoun is married. Has a tremendous appetite,” Russ Davis tells us. “Takes a dozen eggs, a loaf of bread, and a half-pound of butter to feed him just for breakfast. He has no compunction at all about diet, neither does is wife. Even his overalls have to be tailor-made. He travels in trailer, he can’t get in a car. You didn’t see the forklift truck that they put him in the ring with. That happened earlier.”
Russ Davis doing a tremendous “hillbilly impression” as Calhoun gets mad. “I’m gon’ wear you down ta where you ain’t no bigger’n sharecropper size, you keep’at up. Rah’naow!”
Davis calls Buddy “a strutter.” Davis chuckles as Buddy tries to break out of a Calhoun side headlock, which fails. Haystacks cranking away. “Ya get lost in all that blubber there, ya’d almost need a scuba outfit.” We are essentially listening to Russ Davis relentlessly roast Haystacks Calhoun, the babyface.
The hockey score is announced over the house mic: Blackhawks 4, Detroit 3. This gets a rise from the crowd. Chicago would go on to win 6-3 to go up 3-2 in the Stanley Cup Final, and would close the series two days later, winning 5-1 in Detroit.
We’re still in that same side headlock, but then Rogers finally gets free with Calhoun in the corner. After the Calhoun side headlock, we go to the Rogers chinlock. He tries to choke here and there but Calhoun’s neck is uh too fat to choke good.
“This is a big ol’ boy. Whew. I wonder if he has a cholesterol problem? I would certainly think so.”
Eventually Calhoun gets a top wristlock and Rogers has to eye gouge his way free. After a biel and a bodyslam from Calhoun, he just ambles over and sits down on Rogers a couple times. Then he stands on him with one foot. Russ Davis can’t believe it.
After that they kinda just start over. “I’m just sittin’ here ringside, lookin’ at all this animated blubber,” Russ says, but he does admit that Calhoun is a “good” version of a “monstrosity.”
Haystacks mashes Buddy in the corner a few times, then hits a big splash, crowd just loving it, but Rogers gets his leg over the bottom rope. Russ completely misses what happened there and gets confused about whether this is 2 of 3 falls after all, but it’s not, and at any rate we go on.
Rogers tries to charge Haystacks but of course we get a BEARHUG, which Buddy quickly escapes and hits a couple of dropkicks, knocking Calhoun out to the floor with the rope breaking on the way down! Calhoun is counted out, of course.
This is fun. I mean, maybe not if you’re sensitive about good-natured weight-based insults. There’s a lot of that here. And maybe not if you don’t like wrestling with 600-pound fan favorites. But I do. I’m not saying it’s better or worse because each way has its pros and cons, but this is just not the wrestling you’ll ever see on a TV program again, and it’s not the wrestling we’ve seen on a TV program in a long, long time, most of us never, really. I mean even compared to slower-paced 80s stuff this is slow and basic. But it’s a wrestling style of another time and place, and it’s neat to be transported to that for a bit. I enjoyed watching it. Many probably would not find much to care about here.
Tape Machines Are Rolling 
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