Why Did Vince McMahon Pay $750K for a Georgia Wrestling Show Southern Fans LOVED? (Black Saturday)

Saturday, July 14, 1984, five minutes past six on Superstation WTBS. Southern wrestling fans turned on Georgia Championship Wrestling and found Gordon Solie gone, the little Techwood Drive studio gone, and Vince McMahon welcoming the World Wrestling Federation to the network. The switchboard in Atlanta lit up, and across the South people started picking up the phone. This is the true story of Black Saturday. Ted Turner never sold McMahon that time slot. So how did a New York promoter end up holding the South's most-watched Saturday wrestling show, and why did he walk away nine months later with a cheque for one million dollars? The answer starts inside the Georgia office itself: Jim Barnett, Ole Anderson, Jack and Gerald Brisco, a shareholder fight, and a secret sale that handed the territory's TV to New York. In this territory-era wrestling documentary: How a local Atlanta studio show on channel 17 became one of the biggest programs on cable TV Gordon Solie, Tommy Rich, Mr. Wrestling II and the Anderson brothers, the faces of Georgia wrestling The Georgia Championship Wrestling boardroom war that made the sale possible Black Saturday: the broadcast, the calls and letters, and the ratings that followed Championship Wrestling from Georgia, Bill Watts and Mid-South on the Superstation Why Jim Crockett Jr. paid Vince McMahon one million dollars for the Saturday slot, and what it cost him Where everyone ended up, from Ole Anderson to Ted Turner Were you watching WTBS in the summer of 1984? Tell us in the comments where you watched from and which territory you grew up with. And was Black Saturday just business, or was it a betrayal? If you grew up with the old territories, subscribe for more true stories of the promoters, the wrestlers and the Saturday shows that ended when Vince McMahon went national. What the fans lost that night wasn't really a time slot. It was the idea that the show belonged to them, that the men in that little room on Techwood Drive were theirs, and that nobody in New York could buy them. Nine months later, the six oh five slot was back in Southern hands. #BlackSaturday #TerritoryWrestling #GeorgiaChampionshipWrestling