From: danm@ether.UUCP (Dan McDonald)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.pro-wrestling
Subject: CWUSA Old News 2 of 2 (Portland Wrestling)
Keywords: Newspaper article from 9/15/92--2nd article
Date: 23 Dec 92 19:24:13 GMT
Organization: Handmade Designs, Salem, OR.

Here's the accompanying article from the Oregonian.  I hope that these
find a decent audience in these holiday times.  Merry Christmas and
happy reading.

dan
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Dan McDonald          danm@ether       ...uunet!sequent!ether!danm

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From The Oregonian 9/15/92 Sports Section page C5

Saturday-night wrestling still has a pulse, although it is faint

by Ken Wheeler of The Oregonian staff.

    The crowds have been slim, and the visibility low, but professional
wrestling still lives at the Portland Sports Arena.
    It's not the same, not the same at all, as it was years ago when
promoter Don Owen had a Saturday-night television show and a full house.
    But the commercial-channel TV show ended last December after 38 years,
and the 80-year-old Owen, after 68 years in the business, stopped promoting.
    Sandy Barr, who for years worked for Owen, first as a wrestler, then as
a referee, stepped in to try to keep the wrestling shows going.
    It has been a struggle.  "The crowd is climbing slowly," Barr said as he
surveyed a recent Saturday-night house of about 300 fans in the 2,000-seat
former bowling alley.  "When Don left, it was down to 160 hard-core fans.
Each week, it's been a little better."
    Barr, who also runs a couple of flea markets in the north end of the
city, admits that the wrestling programs don't break even at this point.
"Right now," he says, "the flea markets are supporting the wrestling."
    Television, in another form, is coming back.  Paragon and TCI, the
two cable companies which cover the bulk of the Portland market, now show
a tape of the Saturday-night matches on local-programming channel 30 at 8:30
p.m. the following Friday.  And UHF channel 32 at Salem also has a tape
delayed telecast of the matches at 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. the following Saturday.
    Starting Oct.2, Barr says, Prime Sports Northwest, a cable programmer
in Oregon, washington, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, will start airing a
tape-delayed telecast of the Saturday matches at 11 p.m. the following
Friday.  A spokesperson at PSN said that no contract had been signed,
but confirmed that negotiations are in progress.
    Meanwhile, the show does go on, and the trappings of the past, if
not the crowd, are there.
    For $5, fans can still get a Polaroid picture, snapped with their
favorite wrestler.
    Signs near the front concession stand--where souvenir T-shirts,
tank tops and pictures are for sale--warn that, "The use of profanity
will not be tolerated in this building."
    The crow's nest, that place where the TV interviews with wrestlers is
conducted, still is the scene of some made-for-TV mayhem.  And the crowd,
well aware of who's good and who's bad, still loves it.
    In the ring, a wrestler, either wronged or maybe just bad,
occassionally is led to grab a folding chair and chase his opponent from the
ring.
    The crowd may be smaller, and the television lights not quite so bright.
It may, in fact, be only barely alive.  But professional wrestling at the
Portland Sports Arena still is a Saturday-night staple for some.

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