The Road Warriors: Danger, Death, and the Rush of Wrestling by Joe Laurinaitis

territories his father had done business with for decades. Once known for being a primarily Northeastern territory with a home base of Madison Square Garden in New York City, the WWF had exclusively run shows and reigned supreme from Maryland to Massachusetts and in Pennsylvania as well. Vince discovered new ways, like home video distribution, to promote his product without even setting foot outside of his region.
    The WWF was also the only other company besides GCW that had a national TV deal . All American Wrestling was a WWF showcase program airing on USA Network on Sunday mornings. It had great ratings, but that wasn’t enough for Vince.
    After looking around, Vince found that the only other available time slot that could serve his purposes was none other than a two-hour block starting at 6:05 p.m. on Saturday nights on Superstation TBS. See something familiar there? It was the slot of our very own World Championship Wrestling . Crazy, right? Well, when Vince has his eyes on something, he’s a machine.
    Vince actually went down to Atlanta to see Ted Turner himself about the purchase of the airtime. Without even thinking about it, Turner told McMahon he wasn’t interested. It was well known that Turner enjoyed having wrestling on TBS and was proud of its high ratings. Undaunted, Vince started looking for a way around Turner into the time slot—and he found it.
    A group of shareholders, including Jim Barnett, Jack and Jerry Brisco, and Ole, owned Georgia Championship Wrestling. Knowing Barnett and Ole would have wanted nothing to do with him, Vince started negotiating with the Briscos to try to buy out their shares for a large sum and company jobs. As part of the deal, the Briscos would have to convince the majority of remaining shareholders to do the same.
    They did. Apparently, Jack and Jerry had seen the writing on the wall over the course of the past year or so and wanted out of GCW. With his growing power and money, Vince had begun luring some of the top guys away from the other territories with unrivaled promises of fame and fortune. Andre the Giant, Hulk Hogan, Big John Studd, “Mr. Wonderful” Paul Orndorff, Greg “The Hammer” Valentine, and Rowdy Roddy Piper, among other big names, decided to make the WWE their exclusive home. The Briscos probably thought it was only a matter of time before they were put out of business if they didn’t join them.
    When the deal came through on April 9, 1984, it effectively meant the end of the forty-year-old Georgia Championship Wrestling promotion as everyone had known it. No one could believe it. Not only was the company sold to the rival WWF, but it was because of the Briscos.
    The Briscos were total fan favorites who had wrestled their entire careers in the Southern NWA territories, especially Florida and Georgia. Jack had even been the NWA World Heavyweight champion twice. Instead of cheers from the fans, the Briscos were now receiving threatening phone calls and letters both at home and at their body shop in Tampa. Hawk and I were even asked to hurt them on their way out.
    The Briscos had to finish out some remaining dates before they left, and as it turned out, their last scheduled match was against us in Cleveland. Some of the guys in the back offered us $5,000 to exact their revenge and to do some real damage to Jack and Jerry. They actually wanted us to break their legs.
    We refused. We didn’t need to get paid to legitimately hurt someone; we already got paid to kayfabe it. But there was more to it than that: the Briscos were my friends. I’ll never forget how Jack had let me get some offense in when I was a jobber in ’82. He was always good to me, and that’s all that mattered.
    Out of respect, before our match I even told Jerry what had happened. “Be careful, bro. A lot of guys around here are saying some crazy shit, but don’t worry about us. We don’t have any problems with you.”
    Then we wrestled them in what proved to be Jack and Jerry’s very