Formation , who held the
Atlantic Athletic Commission World Heavyweight Championship, as its first world champion. Tony Santos Sr. formed Big Time Wrestling following the death of
Paul Bowser and subsequent departure of
Eddie Quinn from Boston in 1960. Santos had spent six years working under Bowser, initially promoting shows in
Medford and
Revere, Massachusetts in 1952, before running
Boston Arena and
Boston Garden under the "Big Time Wrestling" banner. Santos worked with a number of wrestling promoters during this period including a brief partnership with Quinn and Johnny Doyle. When Doyle left the U.S. with
Jim Barnett to start
World Championship Wrestling in Australia,
Jack Pfefer was brought in as a booker.
Frankie Scarpa was the promotion's main attraction, however, Santos built a small group of his own stars by the early-1960s including The Boston Bruiser, Bull Montana, Gypsy Joe Jesse James and Alma Mills. The promotion also started one of the first-ever
wrestling camps in the country where many of these BTW mainstays were trained. Using two or three crews of wrestlers, Big Time Wrestling put on shows six nights a week during the summer months. These included
midget and
women's wrestlers, and even a 300-pound "
wrestling bear" called Black Ozzie. For most of its existence, BTW did not have a studio wrestling show. It did, however, manage to get occasional television coverage into Boston via
WMUR-TV (Channel 9) from
Manchester, New Hampshire The NWA had acknowledged Carpentier as champion until Eddie Quinn left the organization later that year. Through the belt was returned to Thesz, the decision was challenged by several NWA members who continued billing Carpentier as a world champion for several years. This eventually resulted in the creation of the
Minneapolis and
Los Angeles versions of the world title. Santos' decision to continue supporting Carpentier gave Big Time Wrestling the opportunity to "own" their own world champion, however, this would put Santos at odds with other promoters in the Northeast United States. In April 1961,
Bearcat Wright defeated
Killer Kowalski for the BTW Heavyweight Championship in Boston, becoming one of the first African-Americans to win a major singles title during the Territory-era. In addition to the "traveling champion", the promotion also established several regional titles including the BTW United States Heavyweight Championship (1959–1974), Santos and Pfefer also mimicked other popular wrestlers then working for the WWWF, such as "Hobo Brazil" (
Bobo Brazil) and "Pierre Carpentier" (Edouard Carpentier), as well as the National Wrestling Alliance. This practice lasted only a few years, however, the promotion become associated with these "soundalike" wrestlers long after Pfefer had left Boston.
Rivalry with the WWWF Santos remained the sole promoter in Boston for another two years until the reappearance of Abe Ford in 1965. The following spring Santos decided to hold a tournament to crown a new champion. The winner was to be presented with the prestigious
Ed "Strangler" Lewis championship belt, then valued at $10,000. Frankie Scarpa ended up winning the tournament on April 27, 1967, The tide finally began to turn in the fall of 1967 when Sammartino began feuding with
Professor Toru Tanaka over the
WWWF World Heavyweight Championship. A high point in the Samartino-Tanaka feud occurred at the Boston Garden on September 30, 1967, when Tanaka pinned the champion while using his feet on the ropes for leverage. The death of its biggest star was a major blow to Big Time Wrestling. The company held only a few more events before it ultimately went on a long hiatus. It has been speculated that the departure of Bruno Sammartino in early-1971 was a factor in the WWWF rejoining the National Wrestling Alliance that same year. As Sammartino had been such a huge draw in Boston, Vince McMahon Sr. may have been concerned that Santos would make a bid to force the WWWF out of Boston.
Territorial reach Big Time Wrestling was based in Boston, holding bi-monthly shows at
Boston Arena and
Boston Garden, but also promoted shows throughout New England with its regular towns including
Holyoke,
North Attleboro,
Revere,
Springfield and
Worcester, Massachusetts,
Manchester, New Hampshire and
Portland, Maine. Working with local promoters Santos ran summer tours in
Eastern Canada, In October 1964, Santos and Pfefer co-promoted shows with Walter J. Moore in
Akron, Ohio. The longtime promoter of the Akron Armory had been forced to go on an eight-month hiatus due to a local promotional war. A year before its close, Big Time Wrestling even managed to promote a show in Miami, Florida. Santos, a protege of the longtime promoter, also had comparatively little television coverage. He instead relied on
word of mouth and other traditional methods of advertising (e.g. distributing
posters, taking out
newspaper ads, etc.). In 1965, Santos signed a deal with Magna Films to produce a number of episodes to broadcast on television. It is believed that Big Time's wrestling show aired in
Manchester, New Hampshire on
WMUR-TV (Channel 9)
Notable talent The promotion used a mix of local Boston wrestlers and "journeymen" from across the country.
Killer Kowalski,
Bearcat Wright and
Jackie Fargo all appeared in Boston as Big Time's "
traveling world champions" between 1960 and 1964. Santos also had ties to the Tennessee area and used wrestlers from the
Southeastern U.S. including, most notably,
Jackie Fargo and Buddy Fuller from
NWA Mid-America. Frankie Scarpa was the top local "
babyface" and a major star in the New England area throughout the 1960s. Scarpa's bloody feud with Bull Curry caused several riots at the Boston Arena. produced
Les Thatcher and
Rufus R. Jones among others. Other future
National Wrestling Alliance and
World Wide Wrestling Federation stars also got their start with Tony Santos such as
Pat Patterson,
Duke Savage,
Frank Shields and
Carlos Colon.
Robbie Ellis, then a member of the
Amherst College wrestling team, also attended the Santos wrestling school. He drove down to Boston on Sunday mornings and underwent half a dozen training sessions under Bill Graham in exchange for $200. A number of wrestlers passed through Big Time Wrestling early in their careers, including
Chris Colt Rhodes drove to Boston after seeing a newspaper advertisement for the Santos promotion, and despite not having any wrestling experience, bluffed his way into working for the company by using his real life friendships with
Bobby Duncum and the Funk brothers. Billed as Dusty Runnels, one of his first matches was for the BTW World Heavyweight title against champion Frank Scarpa in the
Boston Arena. Having little money, Rhodes slept in his car and spent
Thanksgiving with Rufus R. Jones in a Boston
soup kitchen. Big Time Wrestling also had a semi-regular women's division which included at various times Alma Mills, Bambi Ball, Rita Cortez, Lucille Dupree, Margaret Garcia, Mary Jane Mull and Sylvia Torres. Santos also discovered Ann and Ruth Lake, the first sister tag team in pro wrestling.
June Byers Though it was not until the retirement of BTW's longtime champion Alma Mills that Moolah, then
NWA World Women's Champion, was recognized as the undisputed world's women champion in the New England area. The promotion also featured midget wrestlers
Fuzzy Cupid, Irish Jack, Sonny Boy Cassidy and Tom Thumb. A big hit with summer tourists, the two frequently appeared together during the promotion's early years. Then Senator
John F. Kennedy and his wife
Jackie reportedly attended several BTW events in
West Yarmouth during this period.),
Haystacks Muldoon (Bill Toomey and
The Fabulous Zangaroos (Bull Montana and Gene Dundee). At one point, Pat Patterson, Ronnie and Terry Garvin, Ronnie Dupree, Don Kindred and Les Thatcher all shared a rooming house on Westland Avenue for $10 a week. Luke Graham and Frank Hill lived at the
YMCA on
Huntington Avenue. It was not unusual for even Big Time's top stars to have a second job in order to supplement their income. The Boston Bruiser worked as a
taxi driver Even Pfefer himself inadvertently became involved in a humorous altercation with a Santos wrestler. One night, upon discovering Pfefer taking a nap in the locker room, rookie Joe "Red" Sasso mistook him for a homeless man and threw the elderly, shabbily-dressed booker out of the building. After The Fabulous Moolah lost the women's title to Rita Cortez in October 1963, Moolah ended her relationship with Santos' booker, Jack Pfefer. She allegedly caught her manager and common-law husband, Buddy Lee in bed with Cortez which led to their breakup. The promotion faced at least one lawsuit from a fan who had been injured at one of its events. On September 26, 1962, 40-year-old Manuel Silvia of
Fall River suffered a knee injury after a 280-pound wrestler was thrown out of the ring by his opponent and fell into the front row. Silvia sued both Santos and Raymond J. Woodhouse, owner of the Woodhouse Arenatorium in
Dartmouth for $75,000. The defense argued that Silvia assumed a risk by sitting in the front row. As the wrestlers were considered
independent contractors, and Santos did not "direct" the participants to perform certain moves, the promoter himself should not be held liable. A Fall River jury in
Bristol County Superior Court ruled in Silvia's favor and awarded him $7,300.
Demise Starting in 1970, Boston had become the final part of the WWWF's "Northeast Triangle", a wrestling territory which included
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
New York City, New York and
Washington, D.C. By this time, however, Abe Ford had fallen out of favor with Vince McMahon Sr. as the WWWF's local promoter in Boston and had since been replaced by Bobby Harmon and his manager
Ernie Roth. Abe Ford filed a lawsuit against McMahon claiming that the WWWF was operating as a monopoly. It has been alleged by wrestling historian Tom Burke that McMahon was secretly working with the Santos family to put Ford out of business. In 1974, Tony Santos Sr. decided to retire from pro wrestling to work in the
country music industry with wrestler-turned-music producer Buddy Lee at
his famed talent agency. The elder Santos turned BTW over to his sons, Gene and Tony Santos Jr., and
Dr. Jerry Graham, who had just left the WWWF, was sent to Big Time Wrestling to become their top heel. The newly revived promotion was short-lived and the Santos brothers closed down Big Time Wrestling in 1975. Gene Santos left the business and returned to Florida. Tony Santos Jr. was hired as the WWWF's main road agent for the state of Maine and parts of Massachusetts, and later worked with Killer Kowalski's
International Wrestling Federation and
Angelo Savoldi's
International Championship Wrestling during the 1980s. Sheldon Goldberg, founder of
New England Championship Wrestling, has said that the feud between Ford and Santos was among the most important periods of Boston wrestling history. According to
Jim Cornette, Big Time Wrestling was one of the first-ever
"outlaw" wrestling promotions in the United States. Charlotte and Richard Santos, the children of Tony Santos Sr., accepted the award on the family's behalf. ==Revival==