[Seth82]

WWF Black Saturday occured thirty years ago today.

Imagine being a huge fan of the NWA at the time, and the only way to watch it is every Saturday at 6:05 p.m. on WTBS, and you turn on one week, only to see Vince McMahon on the channel instead, hosting the program, and showing HIS wrestlers, instead of the familiar faces, like the Ric Flairs, the Dusty Rhodes', the Jimmy Valiants, etc. Well, it did happen, and the day remains in infamy in wrestling history, and is known as "Black Saturday" on July 14th, 1984. After gaining control of Georgia Championship Wrestling, the WWF immediately shut down the wrestling operation. Their main interest was the 3 hours of national television time on Superstation WTBS (local Atlanta channel 17), as well as eliminating their competition in the state of Georgia which also gave them Ohio, Michigan, and West Virginia markets that Georgia had been running for years. Ole Anderson, who had been in control of Georgia Championship Wrestling, was forced out, but quickly aligned with south Georgia promoters Fred Ward and Ralph Freed (and weeks later maverick promoter Ann Gunkle) to attempt to continue promoting wrestling shows in Georgia and elsewhere. The first thing they needed, though, was TV. The week immediately following "Black Saturday", the Georgia promotional group hastily put together a television taping in the studios of WMAZ-13 in Macon GA. The new show debuted on July 21, 1984 (one week after "Black Saturday") and was called “World Championship Wrestling ’84” and aired on their stations in the traditional Fred Ward markets of Columbus, Albany, and Macon GA (and perhaps a few other markets as well) and also eventually got on WGNX-46 in Atlanta. The show was hosted by longtime announcer Gordon Solie, an icon in Georgia, and a focal point for fans who protested to WTBS that Georgia Wrestling had been replaced by the WWF. this was the signal to many fans that WWF wasn't intent on playing by the rules. WWF instead of giving them live action at first uses old taped matches. Eventually Ted Turner demands that they produce live content each week. The WWF show on TBS was a ratings disaster from the start. GCW's core audience began writing and calling TBS in droves, furious over the fact that GCW was no longer airing on the station and demanding to know why. Thousands of complaints were received, many of which focused on the loss of Gordon Solie. Turner himself was angered by the sinking ratings and made two decisions that would fix the ratings problem. First, Turner made an offer to Bill Watts, a promoter who ran Mid South Wrestling out of Oklahoma, to take a Sunday afternoon time slot on TBS. Turner then gave Ole Anderson's Championship Wrestling from Georgia, an NWA-affiliated promotion regarded as the successor to GCW with Gordon Solie as its announcer, a weekly time slot on Saturday mornings. McMahon was not happy with either of Turner's decisions, thinking his control of GCW would make the WWF the exclusive wrestling company on TBS. Both Mid South Wrestling and Championship Wrestling from Georgia outdid the WWF in ratings.