The Southern Joe Fandom Story

Thank You Karl Wardlaw, you have inspired this story.

As the header says, I would like to publicly thank my fellow PWDownunder.com contributor, Karl Wardlaw, for his story about how he became a pro wrestling fan. Karl, you have inspired me to write mine.

There have been many an idle moment where I try and think where my wrestling fandom comes from. I remember as an 8 year old entering a talent quest in primary school (Elementary school for our American friends) where I refereed two of my friends having a wrestling match. We thought it was entertaining because what we saw on TV was entertaining.

I’m originally from Sydney, Australia. I have lived in Melbourne since 1990 where I chased the girl of my dreams and married her (35 years this September!)

When I was in primary school, I was learning all the sports Aussie kids played. My father couldn’t teach me about any other sport other than football (soccer). He did know wrestling because he did some amateur wrestling when he was in the Hungarian Army. I also found out about a decade or so ago that he did indeed do some independent UK pro wrestling shows in the late 50s before my parents emigrated to Australia because they weren’t fond of England. They escaped their native Hungary when communism rolled into Budapest and spread it’s evil tentacles. (Apparently his wrestling name was Sandbag, but it was hard to understand him at that time because, apart from the fact that my dear old Dad never really got a good grasp of the English language, he was starting to decline in those last years of his life)

But it was sitting in the lounge room with my Dad where it all began, probably a year before that Grade 3 talent quest entry.

This was during that first Golden Era of pro wrestling in Australia in the 60s & 70s where it rated very highly every Saturday & Sunday Afternoon starting at Noon. I have since learned that there must have been 2 different shows, one from Sydney & one from Melbourne, because I remember our commentator was former Rugby League star Mike Cleary, who later became a very successful politician in NSW. It was about 30 years ago that I found out about Ted Whitton, one of the absolute legends of Aussie Rules (who I never remember hearing of until I moved to Melbourne) hosting the Melbourne version of World Championship Wrestling (Yes, we had the name before The Americans had it!)

There were clean cut believable Aussies like Ron Miller & Larry O’Dea. We also had heroes that we Aussies took to our hearts like Mario Milano & Spiros Arion, who ended their promos with short messages for the growing Italian & Greek populations here in Oz. Mario stayed and became a dinky di Aussie, he even opened a pizza shop in Melbourne.
We saw mean, despicable heels like Big Bad John & Bulldog Brower, as well as stereotypical WW2 heels like the Kayfabe German soldier Waldo Von Erich & the Japanese warrior Mr Tojo.
Andre The Giant & Haystacks Calhoun came through at various times as larger than life attractions.

This was still smack bang in the midst of a time when most people treated pro wrestling as a legitimate sport. The Saturday morning papers used to show the results of the big Friday night cards in the sports section right alongside any tennis, cricket, football or other “legitimate” sports results.

My first show was at the Blacktown Civic Centre, which when I think back now would be what would be classified as a spot show because I don’t recall them ever appearing there ever again. I would have been 9 years old as we were already living in the permanent family home & it was before my brother was born. My Mum wanted to go only to see the midgets who wrestled that night. At the time, midgets were seen as a comedy attraction. I do remember a promo one of these guys cut where they said that they wanted to be respected as athletes, & to prove his point, he lifted Johnny Gray, a pretty decent sized guy who was 5 foot 10 & 230 pounds, onto his shoulders.

The most memorable match I ever saw was Harley Race when he was touring Australia as world champion. For whatever reason, I tuned in late to see his match with Ron Miller. It was a great match and I marked out hard when Miller won, because I didn’t know it was a non title match. I thought our Aussie Champ had just become world champ. I interviewed Justin Race, Harley’s son, about that match & he remembers being there. Have a look at the great stories Justin tells about his legendary father via this link on my YouTube show “If You See Kayfabe” (linked below)

The only other live wrestling I got to see was when there would be some exhibition matches at one of our local shopping centres (Shopping Malls for those of you in the USA).
The wrestling would be taken off TV around 1978. I always remembered that the reason was supposed to be due to poor ratings, but it was Ken “The Dazzler” Dunlop who said in my interview with him on my show stated it was because Nine Network owner, Kerry Packer, wanted the wrestling to move aside for his World Series Cricket.

I think I remember seeing a few more Shopping Centre matches after that, & then all that faded away as the wrestling in Australia became stale. I remember after one exhibition, I approached Kevin Martin, who was always a lovely fellow to say hi to, asking if their TV shows will return. He was hopeful, that’s all I can gather as I was a teenager back then.

As I have stated, I was into the legitimacy of the sport. The only other “match “ I ever saw for a while on TV was that debacle between Muhammad Ali & Antonio Inoki. It was in the early 1980s when the first signs of wrestling’s legitimacy was challenged for me. I was watching a bout at Westfields Parramatta Shopping complex. There was an exhibition match & I proudly knew who was who (but I don’t remember who they were now). Someone near me said, “My cousin is involved with this, you know that the matches are fixed?” I don’t know why I didn’t probe this statement further. I don’t know how I found out, but I found out that what was said seemed to be true. I somehow then came to the conclusion, “OK, so the lead up matches are rigged, but the title matches MUST be real, RIGHT??“ (For those of you who have grown up in this era where the curtain has long been drawn back & we have all looked up the skirt of pro wrestling, please refrain from laughing. Pro wrestling did an excellent job of protecting it’s “legitimacy”. Just ask John Stossel).

The next thing, Rocky 3 was featured in cinemas and there was that large wrestling dude, Thunderlips. Then this same Dude was standing behind Cindy Lauper and her entourage at that year’s Grammy Awards. He was announced as her bodyguard. He was there, arms crossed, saying nothing, but VERY tall. This coincided with starting to see a bit more wrestling on Nine’s Wide World Of Sports program. This program ran for 6 hours every Saturday afternoon featuring sports programs from around the world, & every now & then they would show some WWF matches. Not long after this, Channel 10 showed the first Wrestlemania. It was a new concept. It was mainly wrestlers I had never seen before. The main event of course was Rowdy Roddy Piper and Paul Orndorff wrestling Mr T (who I knew from the TV show The A Team) & that big Dude I told you about. Yeah, Hulk Hogan.
All these new names fascinated me & found out that Channel 10 was going to be showing WWF Superstars Of Wrestling every Tuesday night. I taped every show so I could save the best stuff.

I don’t remember exactly when it was, or the exact place, but I saw a wrestling magazine in a Newsagency. I purchased it and found out 2 things. There were a few different magazine titles (a few of those what would be commonly known as the Apter mags, the London publishing mags whose public face was the legendary Bill Apter but there were also others).

There was a plethora of pro wrestling companies scattered across the USA, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Japan and elsewhere.
So I immersed myself in learning what was going on elsewhere other than the WWF. It was especially interesting seeing all the stories of people like Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes & The Road Warriors.

Towards the end of the 1980s I found a VHS tape in a discount bin. It was called “Lords Of The Ring”. It was a compilation tape of everything not WWF (the WWF was one out in doing their own thing). It was hosted by Mr Apter & Gordon Solie. After hearing so much about Solie’s announcing skills, it was interesting hearing his voice for real.
I don’t remember how it happened, but I became friends with a newsagency owner & his wife who were rusted-on wrestling fans. They gave me a few tapes of stuff not seen in Australia. I also took in a live show at Ingleburn RSL, my first in many years. I met legendary Aussie wrestlers Wayne Pickford & Ken Medlin that night in the bar after the show.

The only other wrestling I remember from that time period was a local sports show showing a couple of quick grabs of The Great Muta’s high flying exploits, which was pretty revolutionary at that time.
I moved to Melbourne in 1990 and got married. In 1991 we moved into our first home that was ours (or at least mostly the bank’s). We moved in the day our first son was born (he was 5 weeks early).

Between then and the mid 90s I didn’t see as much wrestling as I would have liked to. Channel 10 had long stopped showing “Superstars”, & the magazines became exorbitantly expensive.
I somehow picked up info here & there. The magazines were also disappearing as no-one brought any volume of wrestling magazines to Australia, hence the high price.
The only magazine I saw during this time was when I saw Hulk Hogan had turned heel & formed the NWO. Channel 10 then picked up the slack by showing a composite WWF show of matches from different RAW & Heat shows etc. This was about 1996 or maybe 97. By that time pay TV had arrived in Australia & they carried the RAW & then the Nitro shows. We didn’t get Pay TV in our household until 2000.

I started a job in 1995 in an electrical retail store that had a demo of Pay TV running in store. At that time, the PPVs were available for free the day after the show, so I hooked up a VCR to record those shows in store. When that store stopped selling Pay TV subscriptions, I did have a fellow worker who would record PPVs for me if I provided him with a tape.

This practice eventually stopped working as the PayTV provider stopped showing replays of PPVs for free.
Once I discovered the internet I also discovered chat forums. I was on a couple of forums for wrestling and others. I started to get a better feel for what wrestling was really like in the 21st century.

Fast forward to 2006. A new sports radio station called SEN had just started in Melbourne 2 years previously. It was in 2006 that I accidentally stumbled upon a wrestling show on that station hosted by Tony Shibeci & some guy called Cremator. I started listening & I won a trivia contest one night. The prize was 2 tickets to the next PWA show. I took my eldest along not expecting a great deal. After all, the Ingleburn RSL show a few years earlier was decent, but was a bit pedestrian.

This PWA show started with a bang, & I was hooked. For the rest of 2006, once a month on a Friday night, I would be at the PWA show. I even defended the show from some wrestling fan who tried to say that Aussie wrestling was crap. I rang up & said that that dude obviously hadn’t been to a live show. I met Cremator as well as “The Commissioner” & met up after each show.

After PWA shut down it’s Victorian operations at the end of that year, I would also stop attending live shows as my Friday nights would be consumed with my youngest son’s basketball exploits, which would take us all over Melbourne & beyond.
I was keeping up with all the pro wrestling where I could, and around 2017 I discovered the world of wrestling podcasts. The first one was Grilling JR, then 83 Weeks with Eric Bischoff. Jim Cornette’s 2 pods, The Drive Thru & The Experience have become my favourites.

Then came the moment that would change how I viewed wrestling forever. I had harboured thoughts of doing a YouTube show or some such but wasn’t sure about how to go about it. I did media training in the mid to late 80s when I had dreams of becoming a radio announcer. Step up to the plate Jay Jones. He posted a request on a Facebook wrestling page asking if someone wanted to do a video or a bunch for his channel. I have just researched my first contact. It was August 31, 2023. Turns out he is from the UK & has a YT channel called The Best Of British Wrestling. He lined up an interview with Queensland up and comer CJ Hench from Wide Bay Pro Wrestling. I also had my first of 3 interviews thus far with Aussie legend Ken “The Dazzler” Dunlop (also a fellow PWdownunder.com contributor). These went well as far as the interview was concerned. I did a couple of opinion pieces as well.

Jay & I mutually parted ways as he wanted to start up his own company in his native UK. I had the itch, a webcam, & an existing YouTube Channel where I had previously uploaded a few clips of old TV, sports & wrestling shows from my old VHS collection.

On that channel @SouthernJoe on Youtube, I started “The Southern Joe Wrestling Show” on December 15, 2023 with an intro video I recorded from my work van.
I procured interviews with Kris Pisarek, who was starting a new company in the Lismore NSW area called NCW. I also did another interview with Ken Dunlop because I wasn’t happy with the video quality of the previous video.

I managed to score media passes to Starcast Downunder in Ballarat, Victoria in April 2024. It was there that I came to the brutal realisation that I needed a catchier name for the show. This was when one of the supervisors of the Starcast event asked what show I was representing, he bluntly asked “WHO??”

It was soon after that that I remembered a way of swearing without swearing by saying, ”If You See Kay…. tell her I said hi” I turned that into “If You See Kayfabe” where the irony is that I refrain from swearing on the show. I can let out a pretty good litany in real life, but prefer to keep the show as family friendly as possible.

This has elevated my fan experience to levels I could not expect. Even though my show has a modest at best following at present, I have been able to interview not only an Australian legend (who we do keep in contact on occasion), but I have also interviewed the son of one of the greatest wrestlers of all time (Harley Race’s son Justin) as well as the legendary Bruiser Brody’s widow, Barbara Goodish. These are opportunities for me to experience first hand their amazing stories, something that can’t be had from a 10 minute meet and greet. I am hoping to experience even more interviews, & now have an appetite to see my YouTube show grow.

I know that maybe this last bit seems self indulgent, & I don’t wish it to be. But this part of my journey is almost like a dream come true. I have started going to a local show again. This time it’s Alpha Pro Wrestling in Thomastown, Melbourne. It’s about 25 minutes from home, & I am getting to know some of the wrestlers.

If I want to talk kayfabe, I have learned to do it in hushed tones so as not to reveal whats not supposed to be revealed. Even I don’t want to peek too much behind their curtain because that is their domain. After all, I still believe in some form of kayfabe.

Overall, I am happy for those that make a good living in wrestling or are at least living their dream. I hate the tribalism that goes on because there is hardly anyone that can be classed as a WWE only wrestler or an AEW only wrestler. Each person has their unique situation as to why one company would suit them over another. One could even throw in smaller companies like TNA, MLW & even GCW where there is good to great money to be made without having to go through a non stop schedule. It’s also great to be a fan because with Youtube you can watch old and new wrestling and catch up with whatever you want on demand.

If you have made it this far, thank you for allowing me to share my journey. I wanted to keep it as concise as possible, but how does one keep 50 plus years of fandom any more concise? Especially with so many incarnations of what wrestling looks like.
Please share this article with your wrestling mates, and please support PWDownunder.com.

If You See Kayfabe YT Channel: