New wrestler profiles and territory histories. Free, about once a month.
The Great Western Wrestling Alliance (GWA) was a professional wrestling promotion that ran across the American West from 1957 to 1993. It divided the region into territories, each with its own hub city, and moved wrestlers and champions between them over four eras. This site is the GWA Worldbook, with profiles of its wrestlers and a record of its events.
Kiki Starr came out of the Sunset Strip go-go clubs and debuted on the Pacific Coast in 1968. She teamed with Peaceful Pete Donovan as Donovan & Starr, held the GWA Women's Championship from 1975 into 1976, and played the older woman to Barrett Mason on Wrestling Junction in 1977.
A Ute fire-crew man from southern Colorado who became the most popular wrestler in the Rocky Mountain territory, held the Great Western Championship from 1981 into 1982, and asked every Native wrestler in the West to stand together.
Billy Larson left a Bakersfield plastics plant for the ring in 1973. On the Pacific Coast he stood up to management on TV, beat "Big" Stan Rafferty in a factory outside Fresno, and met Jackie Burns in the Heatwave Showdown.
Emily Beaumont left Magnolia Hall for the wrestling ring before her brother James Montgomery did. She worked the Rio Grande Valley and the Gulf Coast for nineteen years with a lace parasol and a sleeper hold.
Wendell Briggs wrestled the Rocky Mountain and Rio Grande Valley circuits for nineteen years and set up the ring for the cards he opened. In 1976 Bo Bradley picked him for the Frontier Justice League.
Punk women's wrestler Trash Candy came out of Tacoma in combat boots, fishnets and a torn cheerleader's uniform, swinging a kendo stick. One of the first women in the GWA to fight hardcore, she knocked out Vivian Vanceworth's tooth and never stopped fighting Hannah Hope.
El Violín was the masked high-flyer of The Midnight Maracas, the mariachi luchador tag team he formed with El Guitarrón. He worked the GWA from 1968 to 1989.
Bodybuilder Vinnie Voltage bellowed promos into the hard camera and won the Columbia tag titles twice beside Felix Frenzy. Then Sterling Radcliffe handed him a check, and in a shocking turn he clamped his nerve hold on his own partner.
Scott Darkness came to the GWA in 1988 in face paint and taped fists, talking about heavy metal. Crowds laughed at him until he walked out behind The Phantom on Night Trials.
The GWA's border blaster is back on the air at xeoj-am.com, 24 hours a day, and XEOJ Radio for iPhone carries the same signal with the phone in your pocket.
Tom Dillon came into the Frontier Justice League at twenty-one, the year the group expelled Tommy Tucker, and stayed until it broke up in 1982. He worked the Frontier loop for sixteen years and never held a championship.
Two new pages on the site: a map of the real wrestling territories, and a guide to building a fictional promotion of your own.