The Pro Wrestling Wire

The Pro Wrestling Wire is a classic-wrestling interview podcast hosted by Rick Del Santo, part of ProWrestlingWire.net. Its subject is the era before the business consolidated — the territories, the buildings, the road, the people who worked all of it. The approach is conversational rather than journalistic. Del Santo usually starts with the same plain question, some version of whether the guest played sports as a kid and how that turned into wrestling, and the guest takes it from there. What follows is memory: names, towns, dates that get corrected mid-sentence, side stories that lead somewhere else entirely. Referee David Dwinell talked about refereeing roughly fifteen shows at Madison Square Garden, his first being a Brutus and One Man Gang match that ended in a double count-out when both men fell out of the ring. He described the sound of 16,000 people erupting the moment Howard Finkel said good evening, and reflected on how much more the crowd participated back then. His book Ringman covered a 32-year career. Tommy Lane, one half of the Rock 'n' Roll RPMs, traced the tag team's route through Mid-Atlantic, Tennessee, Texas and the Knoxville area under the Fullers, and got into Memphis in 1987 and 1988 when the territory was, as he put it, on fire. Roxy Astor came from the other direction. She was not a wrestling fan, had no acting classes, grew up in a small town in Washington, and only encountered the business after moving to Los Angeles — she credits beauty school with teaching her how to talk to people. Gene Jackson, an author and podcaster whom Del Santo calls a history nut, appeared to discuss wrestling books including one on Eddie Gilbert, and noted how strange it is for an interviewer to answer the questions instead. Roger Sartain traced his interest back to watching wrestling with his grandfather at about six years old. Del Santo credits the people who help him book these conversations, including Nick Massey of the Captain's Corner. The reason for talking to them comes up in conversation. Some veterans say they did nothing important enough to talk about, and the answer is that they were on somebody's television when they were a kid, and that is enough. The tone is warm and appreciative, occasionally amused. Episodes run long, digress freely and circle back, which suits an audience that came for the detail rather than the summary. When Dwinell died after a long illness, Del Santo set aside a scheduled interview and re-aired their 2021 conversation instead. That instinct — to hold on to what would otherwise disappear — runs through the whole archive.