From: cg@cbnewsf.cb.att.com (charles.gavinelli)
Subject: Weekend Of Champions Summary (Part One)
Organization: AT&T
Distribution: usa
Date: Thu, 3 Sep 1992 14:26:01 GMT


	I'm posting this review of Arezzi's convention in
a couple of parts...

			Part I
--------------------------------------------------------------------------
         "Weekend of Champions III"
           "Convention Chronicles"


	John Arezzi had the third annual Pro Wrestling Spotlight
Weekend of Champions convention 8/29-8/30 at the Ramada Hotel by
LaGuardia Airport. Pete (AT&T Co-Worker) and I volunteered our 
services to Arezzi. Pete and I tag-teamed (collaborated) on this summary:

	Originally, I was supposed to drive from Holmdel NJ
(in Monmouth County) to LaGuardia. My muffler busted wide open on
Thrursday. I asked my brother in Brooklyn NY to fix
the muffler so the route to the convention was now Holmdel to Brooklyn
to LaGuardia. This is important to note for a later story.

	We got to LaGuardia at 5PM and met a few folks in the
lobby. We met a guy named Mike who runs Arezzi's BBS. He told
us that he was bringing some wrestlers/personalities of his own (besides
those guys that Arezzi had). He said that he was bringing a woman
wrestler/mud wrestler/ring whore "...who has 44D's and will show
'em". I realized that he was not talking about cough syrup and
my shorts did an Undertaker sit-up.

	We also met Don Liable. The meeting capsule time was
5:23PM. Found out that he operates as a manager under a hood 
(known as "The Bug") for Killer Kowalski besides being Arezzi's news man.
Another gentleman we met at this time was Sheldon Goldberg, editor/producer
of the Mat Marketplace newsletter out of Massachusettes. Being a
Chatterbox and PWS newsletter reader, he recognized Pete by name as the
poem writer for these fine publications.

	Pete and I checked in. While on the check-in line, we met Julie
from Wrestling Independent Network. WIN is a new promotion out of Baltimore.
When we came back from dumping our stuff in our room, we found out that
Liger had also checked in on our floor. Apparently, most of the wrestling
crowd, if not all, was booked onto the same floor - maybe hotel management
was trying to keep us segregated from the rest of the humanoids in the place?

	We found out John Arezzi had a financial partner who's
name was also John. He talked about how The Slammer (NY Daily
News Wrestling columnist Herm Winnaker(sp?) ) did not mention the
convention in his column. He remembered Pete from a previous Arezzi
autograph show with Missy Hyatt in June on Staten Island.

	While we were still in the lobby shooting the breeze,
the Lightning Kid checked in. Some folks walked up to take his picture
as he was checking in. I don't want to say he looks young, but I almost
tripped over his umbilical cord when I walked by. He told us later
that he had turned 20 recently.

	We had dinner with a guy who came from California named Rick.
We went to a local diner called the Buccaneer. When Rick asked "where is
the Buccaneer", Pete told him about a kid he saw playing pirate in the
street, and when asked "Sonny, where are your buccaneers", the kid replies
"Under my buckin' hat"! This wasn't as bad as the van driver, however,
who thought we were talking about the price of corn.

	When we came back we then heard some scuttlebutt concerning
Pat Patterson. Apparently, he's officially back with the WWF.
Most of the experts there said that he never left to begin with.
We then met Georgiann Markropoulos. She writes the afore-mentioned
"Wrestling Chatterbox". Pete writes for her. She showed us some
pictures of Buddy Rogers and the special August issue devoted entirely
to Buddy. The man looked to be in incredible shape three weeks before his
death. People seemed to get somber when discussion turned to
the "Original Nature Boy".

	Georgiann told us that DiBiase was not on any of the WWF
booking sheets for September so he may be history withthe WWF.

	Georgiann also introduced us to her good friend Dave Steele
(no relation to George The Animal). As we sat in the lobby talking,
Dr. Mike Lano, a dentist and wrestling expert from California,
and his photographer/video man were also introduced to us.
They also recognized Pete for his poems/articles in the Chatterbox and PWS.
They mentioned that they had an audio tape copy of the February
Pro Wrestling Spotlight live remote show from Brooklyn with Cactus Jack.
On that show, Pete read "The Ballad of Cactus Jack", which we wrote together,
live on the air to Cactus, and they said that they loved it.  We were having
a hard time believing all this, until the video man started reciting some
of the lines from the poem back to us. I think our heads were starting to
swell at this point. We lost it big time.

	After a couple of hours of talking wrestling, we broke up
and retired to our room for some much-needed rest. Watching the Met
game helped put us to sleep faster than a Ted DiBiase sleeper hold.
We couldn't wait for Saturday morning.


						Charlie