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The Gathering in Charlotte, NC kicked off yesterday with a watch part for 1987's Wrestlemania III as well as Q&A Sessions with former World Class Championship Wrestling official David Manning and Memphis Wrestling host Dave Brown.
During his Q&A Manning discussed WCCW pulling out of the National Wrestling Alliance, recalling:
"Truly, what led to us leaving the NWA was when they took the belt back from Kerry before they were supposed to. When we switched the belt, just so everyone knows, David Von Erich was going to be the World Champion. But David was a different worker than the other two, he could work heels great. And it's really hard for a babyface to be the World Champion, because think about it, you're coming into a territory, and it builds a babyface, that's who they're going to root for. Well, when Kerry would come to town, they didn't want to root for their guy, they wanted to root for Kerry! And that takes away all the drama of the World Title switching. But they were supposed to leave the belt on Kerry for six months.
And when David died, I was there when Fritz made the call to Jim Barnett, and he asked to speak to Jimmy, and he said, "We got to switch the belt, we have to." And Kevin and I, just so you know, we tried to get Fritz to pay-per-view that, cause we had people calling from Japan, I mean, all over the world, it was crazy, wanted to come to the memorial.
And so, whenever we switched the belt, we didn't even know that they were going to... and Flair didn't even know! Flair got the phone call to fly to Japan, they were switching the belt back, and Kerry had only had it about, I don't know, three or four weeks. And oh, you didn't want to be around Fritz when he was mad, even if he was mad at someone else! And he was mad, and that... I'll never forget that booking meeting, he said, "You know what? The hell with them! We show up at all their shows and help their gates, and they're going to do that to us without telling us? He said the hell with them all! We're..." and we came up with the name World Class Championship Wrestling.
And matter of fact, Ralph's attorney was there, who was Ralph Pulley, and I'll never forget, Fritz was saying we were going to call it World Class... let's see, there was already a WCW, and he said, "You're treading on thin ice going with WCW," so we went with World Class Championship Wrestling, so we had WCCW, and that's how we did the name."
The Gathering continues all weekend in Charlotte, NC. For more, visit www.TMartPromotions.com.
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