Review: Death of the Territories: Expansion, Betrayal and the War that Changed Pro Wrestling Forever

Death of the Territories: Expansion, Betrayal and the War that Changed Pro Wrestling Forever by Tim Hornbaker
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The National Wrestling Alliance, a group of allied wrestling promoters and their territories had been around for decades. With the advent of cable TV, could the territory system survive? Not if one enterprising promoter from the Northeast has his way...

Yeah, the teaser is misleading since we all know Vince won the war. Anyway, I enjoyed National Wrestling Alliance: The Untold Story of the Monopoly that Strangled Professional Wrestling and decided to pick this up. I was not disappointed.

Death of the Territories starts with an overview of the established system, the National Wrestling Alliance, and details various bumps in the road, like Vince McMahon Sr. hijacking Buddy Rogers and leaving the NWA, only to rejoin years later, and promoters running opposition in one another's territory.

Once the cable boom hits, there are a lot of damn pigs eyeing up the whole trough. People paint Vince McMahon Jr. as the devil, and while he's definitely got some bad points, a lot of other promoters would have expanded nationally with the resources to do so.

I've gleaned a lot of this information from various books and documentaries over the years but this time I feel like I got the whole picture. There wasn't any bias. It didn't go out of its way to drag Vince McMahon through the mud and it didn't make him a saint, either, like a lot of WWE-made material does.

All the maneuvering behind the scenes was fascinating. I had no idea about the various attempts of other promoters to go national once cable was readily available. Ever hear of Global Wrestling (not to be confused with the Global Wrestling Federation)? Me either. The book runs through the 1980s and ends when Jim Crockett sells his promotion to Ted Turner, where it becomes WCW and eventually ignites another war. Hopefully Hornbaker will cover that next.

Pretty much every territory I've ever heard of got its due here: Don Owen of Portland, the Von Erichs, Joe Blanchard, Paul Boesch, Eddie Graham, Bill Watts, and a slew of others. Each made their mark but couldn't keep up with the changing times and the Scrooge McDuck-like bank account of one Vincent Kennedy McMahon.

The warts and all presentation made it a gripping read. I read it in two sittings, a rarity for me these days.

Upon finishing, I think partly some of the old promoters going the way of the dinosaur was karma biting them in the ass. The good old boy network helped run people who weren't NWA members or aligned with the NWA out of business during most of the NWA's existence. It's just this time, it was the NWA members that got got. I think the wrestling world would be better off without one horse running the race a few laps ahead of all the others, though.

Four out of five turnbuckles. Get cracking on that Monday Night Wars book, Tim!


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