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CLASSIC WRESTLING LIBRARY RESURRECTION ATTEMPT UNDERWAY

By Mike Johnson on 2014-07-09 10:07:13
Jerry Lawler is greatly involved in attempting to resurrect and assemble the remnants of the old Memphis wrestling video library, PWInsider.com has learned.

Lawler, who mentioned publicly several weeks ago that he hoped to make the library available via the WWE Network for fans, has been reaching out personally and via intermediaries to those who may have masters and/or good quality copies of old Memphis TV episodes in an attempt to acquire them.

We've also heard that a number of different DVD vendors have been approached about helping with the search.

The Memphis library is extremely fragmented for many reasons. One, many of the masters were discarded and taped over, as was the norm in the TV industry, during the heyday of the promotion when tapes were cycled to different stations. Two, there were different partners involved, all of whom could claim ownership over at least part of the library before the promotion was sold and went bankrupt in the 1990s.

It's likely impossible to put the entire library back together but whatever does end up assembled will be a great boon to WWE and to wrestling fans in general, if WWE does end up acquiring the material.

In recent months, WWE has been in discussions with the Colon family about acquiring the WWC video library from Puerto Rico as well.

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