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Bill Watts
A famed wrestler as much as he was a promoter, Bill Watts saw an illustrious career as a promoter and booker across three big companies. In his wrestling days back in the 1960s, he was a challenger of Bruno Sammartino during his eight-year title run while also going for the American Wrestling Association (AWA) belts. However, post his in-ring days; he became a promoter with his Mid-South Wrestling in the Louisiana region.
Back then, Watts was credited with pioneering the idea of weekly-episodes that allowed him to build up storylines backed with in-ring action. And then, he had some solid wrestlers such as Ted Dibiase, Jim Duggan, ‘Dr. Death’ Steve Williams and so on who were excellent draws. Watts was very careful about kayfabe and would never allow the heels and faces to be seen together.
In fact, it is said that he had different rooms for the heels and faces so that people wouldn’t see them together. He has criticized about breaking kayfabe and wrestling fans being aware of what’s going on behind the scenes, in his autobiography released in 2006.
While he had a very good run with Mid-South Wrestling that was eventually renamed as “Universal Wrestling Federation”, he had to sell it to Jim Crockett, owing to financial problems.
He would then go on to work in WCW as Executive President and later, the WWF as a head booker. However, his tenure there was short-lived but that did not stop him from being inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame Class 2009.
Jim Crockett, Jr.
As we speak of whom Bill Watts sold his UWF to, it is none other than Jim Crockett, Jr; taking over from his father, who had been the company’s head for almost thirty years, Jim Crockett introduced some radical changes. He brought in George Scott as Head Booker while recruiting excellent young talents such as Ric Flair.
Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, as it was known had been a tag-team oriented promotion for a long time but in the revamp, had started to concentrate more on singles wrestling. The various local wrestling shows, in regions around North Carolina were merged into one unit which started shooting on Wednesdays.
As they started growing popular, secondary shows were started, which were some kind of a first and within no time, Jim Crockett was elected the head of the NWA.
In the early 1980s, Vince’s WWF was repeatedly forcing their surge in popularity on the NWA which led to Crockett consolidating many of the NWA divisions and starting a new show, Starrcade. Very soon, in 1985, Crockett came in charge of WCW and then, his business started flourishing.
It was in the following three years that he had the best time of his career as the Jim Crockett Promotions went on to put on some big matches and win major awards. Ric Flair was the face of his company and went on to headline the flagship show nine times making a name for himself.
However, around 1988, the company started to decline financially leading Crockett to sell it to Ted Turner, and put an end to the NWA for good as an individual wrestling body.
