Re: Episode #22 Quinton Quarisma "Power Slamming
One of our best runs was in west Nashville at Skate Town. We were there for several months. Crowds were good for most of the time then started dwindling. Another thing I wanted to mention about the Dickerson Road run was what turned out to be my biggest mistake in the business. The night Quinton mentioned when Dutch Mantel was there. Dutch was an unannounced fill in for a tag match. I had known Dutch for a while since we both worked for Nick Gulas at the same time. Pete Cannon was attempting to book at the time. I say attempting because he really didn't have much of an idea about what he was doing. As I was paying Dutch he suggested I replace Pete with him, citing his booking experience and contacts in the wrestling business. Stupidly I still believed in loyalty and turned him down. Later on I found keeping Pete on as booker was a mistake. That came to a head at Bass School. We were having decent crowds pulling in what I thought was decent money. But, we weren't taking any home. Pete would say bring me the money and I'll pay the boys. Finally. Wahoo (Sandy) who kept the books asked how much are you paying the workers? Feeling like an idiot I said I don't know. She said it's your company and you don't know why we aren't making any money? She said tell Pete to give you a list of the pay offs. The next Friday night I asked Pete for a list of pay offs and he refused basically saying I'm the booker it's none of your business. I fired him and asked Tommy Heggie to take over booking. Good move. I was trained to believe a program should go 3-4 weeks. Pete had booked a 12 week program with him on top. After a few weeks people started leaving when it was main event time. Sandy would tell them there was one more match and they would tell her we saw it last week. We'll see you next week. Found out there were guys who NEVER got paid and some guys told me they talked to Pete about coming in and were told you can come in but Rice will only pay ten dollars a man. Over the years we had some pretty well-known workers come in. Junk Yard Dog, Rock 'n Roll Express, Well Dunn, Ivan Koloff. I'm pretty sure Krull the Deathstalkers first match was with Power Slam in Spring Hill. Time to stop blowing my own horn and again thank Quinton for mentioning us on the pod cast. Col. Terry
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T. Rice