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MISSY'S MANOR: A look at Continental Wrestling Federation in 1988

Posted: Dec 21st 2009 By: CMBurnham

One of the most amazing times that I ever witnessed was the time that I spent in the Continental Wrestling Federation in 1988. The territory was in poor shape. The previous booker presented a product that did not entice fans to want to see the shows live. Plus they were in the predicament in utilizing stale talent that had been seen in the territory on and off forever.

When Eddie Gilbert got the creative pencil, the wrestlers looked at him as their possible savior. Eddie was coming off of a successful booking run with UWF/Mid South Wrestling prior to Jim Crockett buying it out. He knew how to book episodic television shows that made sense and the shows closed by having the viewer wanting to see more. I always gauge a successful wrestling television show under the criteria if it entices people to want to buy a ticket or a PPV. I also gauge a television show if it leaves me pondering about story lines & match ups for the whole week.

The wrestlers were so happy that Eddie was going to give Continental the proverbial shot in the arm in creative. Eddie had quite a task in having to create a product that would increase fan interest in ticket sales. If the arena business increased, the pay offs for the talent would improve. The talent was so excited that they helped us move in to our new home at the time. To say Eddie was respected at that time period would be an understatement. Now a days, the only way the wrestlers are going to help a creative person to move would be out of a company. The talent that Continental was featuring at the time fell in to several criteria's. They were solid journey men, mainstays, & talent getting their first major breaks in a territory.

Here was some of the talent that Eddie was using during his run that ran the Alabama side of the territory.

Lord Humongous:
Sid Vicious getting his first break with the hockey mask & take off of the Mad Max character. The gimmick had been used previously by Jeff Van Camp in Mid South & the Southern territories. Sid was hidden in tag team matches with Detroit Demolition [Moondog Rex/Randy Culley] as a heel tag team and with Shane Douglas as a baby face team. Sid would use Downtown Bruno as his mouthpiece for a manager. The best comparison to the Lord Humongous character would be similar to the initial Kane character.

Shane Douglas:
Shane would be discovered by Eddie when he saw Shane working on a UWF show in Pottstown, PA in 1987. Eddie was also high on Mick Foley's talent at that time. This would be Shane’s second territory after the UWF.

Shane would be the hot baby face that knew how to sell & get sympathy. He even formed a tag team with Lord Humungous in which it allowed Sid to learn the mechanics of wrestling & be able to be used in short spurts. Trivia note, I came up with the Shane Douglas name for Mr. Troy Martin. To this day, I had not received any residuals or Dynamic Dudes merchandise by Mr. Troy Martin for his name.

Danny Davis & Ken Wayne:
Danny & Ken are two underrated wrestlers of the 1980's. Both of them would move on to running successful wrestling schools. I still have to say that OVW should be utilized in order to be grooming talent for the big two.

Both wrestlers were long time partners in the Nightmares. Eventually they did a big split up with the catalyst being over the Junior Heavy Weight title. The split up was planned with detail, since they were synonymous as a team. Ken Wayne would win the Jr. Title and act as if the title was more important then his team with Davis. They would get a shot at the tag team belts that were held by Tracy Smothers & Steve Armstrong. During the match, Armstrong would suffer an injury. The referee was going to award the tag team titles to Wayne & Davis. Wayne was so happy that he put on both tag team belts & the Jr. Title [you have to appreciate subtleties in building dissention & an eventual heel turn]. Davis being the sportsman would give the belts back to Armstrong & Smothers, despite Wayne being content in winning the belts in that manor.

The feud had blood & guts. Eventually the big blow off match would be a hair VS. hair match. There was four months building to the big blow off match. Talk about having long term direction in comparison to partners turning & having blow off matches within the span of only a few weeks. Ken got over big time as a sneaky heel with Paul Heyman as his manager.

Paul Heyman:
If Heyman had continued to be a full time manager, he could had been easily been one of the top 3 of all time. He was a heat magnet on camera & behind the scenes. That's the best kind of heel in my opinion. Heyman got mega heat by partnering him with Eddie Gilbert. It was a combination that should had been duplicated by WCW in my opinion. They got near riot heat on two television angles. The angle in which Eddie & Heyman beat up Willie B Hert's [Pez Whately] fourteen year old son almost had people jumping in to attack them. Very simple reason, it was believable & it captured actual emotion. When was the last time that any of us seen a 14 year old get beaten up on TV?

Old school fans will remember the famous John Gilliam angle which was a classic.

The other angle was when they attacked Austin Idol & cut off part of his hair. Austin was over big time & would get revenge with various objects. Austin would also segue in to a feud with Jerry Stubbs.

Paul Heyman would also be Eddie's assistant behind the scenes. Paul would learn about the creative side & the business end in running a company under Eddie.

Kokina Maximums & Sika:
They made a decent tag team. Kokina was working his first territory with his veteran father. They did pretty well with long time preliminary wrestler in Alan Martin being their manager.

Randy Culley:
Culley had been everywhere as Moondog Rex. He used the Detroit Demolition name to freshen up his character. Supposedly he created The Demolition character to be used in WWF. But everybody recognized him from his Moondog Rex stint. The end result was that Culley would quickly be replaced by Barry Darsow in Demolition. I have no idea if Culley actually created the gimmick. He did use the same ring attire & make up as part of his presentation as Detroit Demolition. He would form a tag team with D.I. Carter. They would have a lengthy feud with Lord Humongous & Shane Douglas. They even did a blinding angle with Humongous with the dreaded ink to the eyes.

Tom Pritchard & Dirty White Boy:
They had a great feud with each other. One of the greatest angles that I ever seen was when they had Dirty White Girl come out with a black eye. They alluded that she had a domestic violence incident with Tony Anthony. All through the show she kept asking Gordon Solie to get Tom Pritchard to speak to her. Eventually a reluctant Pritchard came out & told her that she needed to break away from DWB. This would lead to DWB ambushing Pritchard & hanging him with a noose. It was all a ruse. The angle = $$$$, unfortunately fake swerves are done weekly. Obviously a domestic violence angle is never going to air again this day & age. This feud would even incorporate valet VS. valet feud with Bambi or myself to counteract Dirty White Girl.

The promotion would use Jerry Lawler in the role as the touring world champion with his AWA title. This would allow Lawler to draw some big houses against Austin Idol, Eddie Gilbert, & others. People forget that titles draw $$$ if used correctly.

Eventually Continental would try to create their own “World Title” with “The Road To Birmingham”. The long drawn out tournament was dragged out in order to culminate all of the feuds & the chase for the title for a big house. Unfortunately I have no clue on how it turned out, since Eddie & myself would depart Continental for WCW.

No knock at the talent, but the promotion would be considered minor league when you glance at it and compare it to Jim Crockett Promotions, World Class, AWA, & obviously WWF at the time. Luckily Eddie would be proud to say that he "made chicken salad out of chicken shit" by properly utilizing the talent in story lines, match ups, & fresh ideas. The roster worked their asses off & took pride in their work.

The attendance would start increasing over time & the promotion was looking to venture in to new markets. If you watch the television tapings from April of 1988, the Montgomery, Alabama Field House looked empty. If you compare the television within several months, there was a noticeable increase in attendance. Keep in mind that the television tapings consisted of actual tickets being sold. This booking stint would even land Eddie the award for 'Best Booker' by several publications. Eddie was actually very proud of that accomplishment.

Here is a side of Eddie Gilbert that very few wrestlers were even aware of during this stint. Eddie was paid to handle the creative end, being talent, & pay roll. There were several occasions that Eddie would dip in to his own salary in order to give some of the talent some extra $$$ that was unbeknownst to them if the houses were down. I dare anybody to name how many people in the same situation would have done the same.

I find it impressive that Eddie was able to draw crowds that were PAID that ranged from the several hundreds to over a 1,000 for weekly to bi-weekly shows in a territory that was in the toilet when he got there. A good booker should be judged by his talent to create television that translates in to profitable arena business. A great booker should be judged on their ability to create long running story lines that have logical scenarios and long term direction. A good booker should also be able to maximize the strengths of all of their talent. I gauge a successful booker as a person that left a company in better shape then when they first came in.

Eventually David Woods would purchase the rights of the Eastern Tenn. part of the territory. The expansion of Continental would create a large amount of towns and plenty of work for the talent. Unfortunately some of the new towns were ran too early & resulted in empty houses.

Here is a listing of the towns that CWF had expanded to by the fall of 1988. The loop of towns was larger then AWA, World Class, & Memphis were running at the same time period. The CWF was able to run two crews in two different towns on most nights. This allowed CWF to be able to run 8 shows in 6 days by augmenting the Alabama crew with the Knoxville crew [consisting of Robert Fuller, Dutch Mantel, Doug Furnas, Bam Bam Bigelow, Doug Furnas, Johnny & Davey Rich, Jerry Stubbs, & others]. The TV would also get limited national clearance on the FNN network.


This is what the loop would resemble for the week of:

9/10/88-9/16/88

Sat.: Dothan, Al

Sun. Gadsden, Al

Mon. Birmingham, Al

Wed. Oneonta, Al & Bainsbridge, Ga

Thurs. Tallahassee, Fl [****my home town*****]

Fri. Columbus, Miss & Ft. Walton Beach, Fl



9/22/88-9/26/88

Thurs. Athens, TN

Fri. Knoxville, TN

Sat. Crossville, TN



This is what the house show line up generally looked like for that month:

Battle Royal for monopoly $$$$
Detroit Demolition, Pvt. Pyle, & DI Carter VS. Doug Furnas, Bob Armstrong, & Bam Bam Bigelow
Lord Humungous [Sid] & Shane Douglas VS. Sika & Kokina [Yokozuna]
Eddie Gilbert VS. Willie B Hert
Dirty White Boy VS. Tom Pritchard
Ken Wayne VS. Danny Davis
Nightmare Freddy VS. Dutch Mantel


Unfortunately Eddie’s stint as the top heel & running the creative end would end around October of 1988. This was due to many reasons. The owner wanted to expand in to markets too quickly with less then a month worth of television exposure in the new markets. Eddie would grow tiresome in being second guessed on his creative ideas that was creating episodic television shows & bringing up the houses. Plus there was a person that we believed was in the owner’s ear in his attempt to get Eddie’s spot in the event there was a personality conflict. Backstage politics, second guessing, an outside booking, & backstabbing would spell the end for Eddie Gilbert in Continental. The company would eventually go out of business within the next year by reverting back to stale booking and bad management.

Special thanks to Linden Walker for the DVD’s & Karl Stern on his help. If anybody got Southwest Championship Wrestling TV from San Antonio, please send it my way. I'm sorry if the article went too long. I had 12 inches of snow & I had no cable.

Tags: Missy Hyatt, Eddie Gilbert, UWF, MSW, Lord Humongous, Moondog Rex, Shane Douglas, Mick Foley, Ken Wayne, Tracy Smothers, WCW, Sika, Barry Darsow, Tony Anthony, Jerrry Lawler, WCCW, AWA, WWF, Robert Fuller, Dutch Mantel, Doug Furnas, Bam Bam Bigelow