My “Wrestling Reality” podcast now has two episodes a week presented by TicketKingOnline.com
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This second episode features a chat with one of the most successful independent wrestling promoters Norm Connors. He ran Steel City Wrestling in the 1990’s in Pittsburgh and then launched the International Wrestling Cartel (IWC Wrestling) in 2001. Norm spoke about a range of topics. Here’s some excerpts:
Dusty Rhodes writing Norm stiffed him money in his book:
Dusty Rhodes wrote in his book that I stiffed him on money and that’s not an accurate statement. I don’t like to talk negative because Dusty by far is one of my favorite guys to ever work with. This would have been 2003 and 2004. He worked for me in December of 2003 in Johnstown, PA. The following Sunday he was scheduled to appear for me in Moon Township. While we were doing the Johnstown show, I had a message to all the gentlemen who was putting the show together in Moon and the gentlemen said it was too close to Christmas, it was our fault and we were going to lose a lot of money. Now when I would do a charity show I didn’t make anything. It was just to help. Now with bigger events like Night of Legends I always had cushion of $2500 for things that go wrong like last minute airfare I would take out of there. Anything left over I would take. But for the first time shows like this I didn’t care fi I made money. So Dusty was scheduled to be in main event of that show. Told Dusty I’m sorry but these people don’t have the money. Nobody is going to get paid. They just didn’t have time and opportunity to give it a good go. He said, “Daddy, The American Dream needs to know the replacement date. You let me know.” So I called him back and let him know the date was January 31st of the next year and he said, “Daddy, The Dream is booked in Charlotte and you know Charlotte is the pay window.” I said I understand, no problem at all. That’s where it ended. Mike O’Brien who was awesome promoter in North East Wrestling, he helped me book Jerry Lawler as replacement. We had Lawler, CM Punk, Raven…it drew great crowd was on front page of paper. Dusty then told Mike that he wanted half of his money. I said to Mike that this is charity event and it’s not like I have all this extra money. Doesn’t matter, he wants it. Mistake I made I regret to this day is after four or five times of this I said I would send it and I never did. That was on me. I will tell you when I make mistakes and that was on me. Should have never promised. As soon as I hung up phone I got angry because I wasn’t making money and I never sent it. But the way it’s worded in his book is completely different than the reality of what happened. But I was warned by both the ghostwriter of Dusty’s book and Mike O’Brien that this was going to be in the book.
Creating the now famous Super Indy tournament:
Ironically, it was born out of annoyance. I was so mad because when I would bring in Punk, Cabana, Jerry Lynn, Christopher Daniels, AJ, Chris Hero, the local wrestlers were annoyed because they felt they should be in the main event spots and not these guys. They would walk around mad in the locker room and go “ha, that guy is super indy.” I was so annoyed, I didn’t tell anyone but I just announced there would be a Super Indy tournament. I was trying to teach a life lesson to some of these guys and the winner of the first tournament was a local wrestler who ended up being Super Hentai. The idea behind it was don’t complain I know what I’m doing I was going to break these guys off from each other and pair them with our local guys to get them better and more credibility, which we did.
Norm goes on to talk about..
09:00 mark – ECW & WCW Gone causing IWC to be born and 9/11 terrorist attacks making it easier to pay for guys.
33:00 mark – Being told he’s being sued by WWF.
39:40 mark – Who he wanted to book but never got to.
1:02:50 – His appearance on “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”
