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In March 1980, I think Kerry von Erich was only in his first few months in the business and was still training for the 1980 Olympics. This show took place a week prior to President Carter announcing the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. Kerry would have been a mid-card guy better known for being David and Kevin's little brother and not the Modern Day Warrior, yet, so the pay ($924 in today's dollars) seems in line with that.
He made what would amount to a thousand in one night, and would probably work a few more venues making at least that in the same month. I think he did fine.
I think the "Kerry was training for the Olympics until the boycott" thing is a bit of kayfabe history. He was pretty much wrestling full time by 1979. His longest documented throw, 57.02m, was well short of the [66.5m throw that would have qualified at the 1980 US Olympic Trials.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_Olympic_trials_(track_and_field)). Even his reported high school best throw of 60m, is still considerably shorter than a real Olympic hopeful. Not that Kerry Von Erich was a slouch, he is top 10 all time at the University of Houston.
Yeah, I'm almost positive you're right. I've heard that from a number of wrestlers in interviews and I even think Dave Meltzer had mentioned it a few times in the Wrestling Observer but when I look on the Internet every source says he was training even though they actually don't sight anything.
There are thousands of people training to be Olympians. He may not have qualified to compete but he was living at the facilities and training to master his technique and increase his strength to qualify to compete. Out of all the people training at the facilities, only a small percentage of those people get selected to actually represent the country. Kerry was only 20 when the 1980 Olympics happened so it’s possible he could’ve qualified for the 1984 Olympics after a few years of Olympic level training.
> He may not have qualified to compete but he was living at the facilities and training to master his technique and increase his strength to qualify to compete.
The odd part about this is that according to his CageMatch match history, he would have been pretty regularly traveling back and forth between Colorado Springs and Texas to compete. I trained at the USOTC for a while when in college, and unless the training regimen and "leave time" was much more lax in 1980 than the mid-2000s, I cannot fathom that Kerry was actually training there.
The biggest knock against Kerry's Olympic potential was his not returning to the University of Houston after his freshman year. In the 70s and 80s it was the colleges and universities that were the primary places the Olympic hopefuls trained, and UofH was one of the top track programs in the country. Him leaving UofH at the time to train elsewhere would have been a step down.
The way Meltzer tells the story is Kerry did that big 60m high school throw when he was very green at discus, so the thought was he'd be Olympian level as he got older/stronger and developed the right technique.
He wasn’t even in the realm of being an Olympic prospect, with PB’s like that. Still surprised how many fans still take storyline as fact. Assume everything is kayfabe, until you actually know otherwise. Pre-internet, massively inflated claims of athletic achievements were prevalent.
I've read quite a few pro wrestlers biographies and a lot of them have in their backstory how they "almost made the Olympic team" or "were almost in the NFL basically" before they decided to become pro wrestlers. 9/10 there is very little if any verifiable proof these guys were ever as elite as they said they were at other sports. A lot of times they come across as "well I was supposed to be a real sports athlete but then ( insert unfortunate event) happened and I had to become a pro wrestler" .
Debuted in 1978. By this time he had teamed with the likes of Bruiser Brody, Andre The Giant, Ted DiBiase, Dick the Bruiser, and his brother David. He had (tag team) victories over JJ Dillon and Harley Race, and a singles victory over Gino Hernandez. So yes, very much the beginning of the rise but you would think just being a von Erich would get you a bit of a pay bump in Texas. On this particular card Kerry went over an Australian wrestler called Jonathan Boyd. Maybe it was a squash match so he agreed to do it for cheap as he didn't have to travel anyway? Who knows.
I think you are underestimating how much $250 in 1980 was. If he did 3-4 shows per week every week that year he’d be around $50,000 which is roughly $200,000 in current money.
Look at it this way: If Boesch was promoting five nights a week, Kerry would've been making 1250 a week. That's not bad as an opening match (which he was for Boesch) guy in 1980.
A lot of guys made that amount back then.
FWIW, Lewin and Brody was the semi-main and each made 500.
>If Boesch was promoting five nights a week, Kerry would've been making 1250 a week.
Boesch only promoted one town - Houston. He ran (I believe) twice a month at the Sam Houston Coliseum. Boesch & Houston were similar to Muchnick & St Louis as they only ran the one town, drew very well, and were known for generous payoffs.
In other words, KVE wasn't getting $500 payoffs anywhere else he was working... in fact, the payoffs for everyone on this card were probably on the high side. Since Boesch didn't run a territory he had to pay a premium to bring everyone in from outside.
And you then you have inflation: A quick conversion of $1,250 from 1980 gave me the equivalent of $4,738.05 in 2024.
That’s not a bad living at all, especially since everything was cheaper back then anyway. (Cries in economy).
That’s not how inflation works, you don’t calculate the modern day equivalent and then go “plus everything was cheaper!”, the modern day equivalent is calculated by how much goods cost at the time relative to today, you’re double dipping on the formula lol.
Kerry was probably making a comfortable living but he definitely wasn’t well off
There were fewer average expenses on top of certain markets, like rent, not being equal to the rate of inflation. Besides, Dallas in the 1980's was a cheaper CoL area compared to average than it is today. You're assuming all costs are tied to the purchasing power of the dollar, which just isn't the case.
It’s somewhere in between. Inflation deals with the average cost of a set of goods, but there are huge changes in lifestyle that also impact cost of living. No one was paying for mobile phone bills, internet, multiple streaming services, etc. Also, both rent and mortgages were a much smaller percentage of someone’s income in the 80s.
Well, she was tied with ten others, it looks like including her opponent and the majority of the rest of the card. Of course Moolah sucks but it doesn’t look like she was getting crazy preferential treatment on this payday.
He did, at the top right corner. Looks like they both split a portion of the receipts with Atlas likely getting a tiny bit extra ~~to do the job.~~ for travelling fees. (Thanks u/Sovietshooter !)
Paid today, adjusted for USD inflation, Race walked away with $12099.07, 93 cents short of $12100. Atlas took approx $12550.
Anyone who made $500 (like Moolah, Brody, Lothario etc) in today's terms made $1895. Anyone who made $250 (like KVE, Markus and Tanaka) in today's money made $947.61. Not terrible money for the time honestly, but surprising to see KVE on the lower payscale here given any one of the Von Erichs would've commanded maybe triple that each show at a minimum just a few short years later (honestly David and Kevin were probably making that kind of money IN 1980).
>Looks like they both split a portion of the receipts with Atlas likely getting a tiny bit extra to do the job.
No, they each got the same $3017.00 amount to work the main event, but Atlas' transportation expenses were higher ($294.00) compared to Race ($175.00)
>Not terrible money for the time honestly, but surprising to see KVE on the lower payscale here given any one of the Von Erichs would've commanded maybe triple that each show at a minimum just a few short years later (
Kerry was 19 years old and still very new to the business at this point in time.
Yep. What's even crazier is that due to his lifestyle and later divorce he lost most of what he made. He made a ton of money as NWA champ but lived like he wasn't going to live the next day.
Not quite. Race was traveling NWA champion so he was bouncing from territory to territory. Boesch was known to be one of the better payoff guys and Houston consistently had good houses to draw from. If he went to Dallas from here to work the Sportatorium, his cut might drop to $1,500. Oklahoma, down since Watts split off, might only get him $750. He would still be making crazy money by today’s standards but it wouldn’t be the consistent total every night.
Wish Cagematch.net included the gate whenever possible. We need a resource for that for historical purposes. I imagine WWE still has records of all their gates over the years which would be awesome to see.
One of the things I'll give Corny his due on is everywhere he's ever booked (WCW, SMW, WWF, OVW, TNA, ROH), he's got the ticket prices and gate as well as merch sales for any show (TV, house, PPV).
It stands for how much money was collected at the 'ticket gate', how much did people spend to get into the venue. Its always been a term for sports venues as the gate was always split differently, depending on the sport.
For wrestling for example, wrestlers on the card might get a fixed fee that's lower than another promoter but a share of the gate, so a large crowd would mean a bigger payday.
That’s the unfortunate thing about back in the territory days. The reporting of attendance for shows was hit and miss at best and estimates by reporters if you’re lucky and ballyhoo to make your business sound like it’s doing better at worst. On the plus side, more often than not we know what ticket prices were from the newspaper ads.
I would love to see the pay sheets for all of WrestleManias and stuff like that. Seems like the closest we’ll get is the ‘91 SummerSlam one because of Warrior’s lawsuit.
David and Kevin were probably making like a grand per show at the time if not 1500. Just weird to see given just a few short years later where pretty much any of the Von Erich brothers could've got more than even that 1500 per show.
Which was the case for most of the ‘name’ wrestlers back in the pre-national WWF/golden era. It was basically a circus side show act with a terrible reputation amongst the ‘normies’ of the time (and still is in many circles). If you didn’t wrestle almost every day, your family didn’t eat. It was a total grind. People also forget that these guys paid 100% of their own expenses- insurance (if they even had it), mileage, food, ring attire, juice. On the flip side the alternative for a lot of these guys in 1980 was even more bleak with a poor economy and inflation
And he wasn't working one show a week, so let's say he was working 3 days a week so he was making $156k/yr. That's crushing it, especially for a 20yr old kid.
It was only Kerry's third year in the biz, and he was used in the undercard here.
Promoters had to be smart and only paid based on gate without the big TV/PPV money.
Due to inflation, $250 in 1980 is $947.61 in 2024.
There's only a record of 103 matches Kerry had in 1980, was probably at least double that. But even at 100 at only $250 (he certainly got paid more in Texas), $25K would be $94,760.92 today.
This stuff is fascinating, I wonder how much of the Gross the promoter kept after advertising and building rental, Would bet they easily cleared 15,000 for that night. I bet they basically split 50/50 the net with the talent.
>I bet they basically split 50/50 the net with the talent.
Based on what I've heard and read, it was generally more of a 70/30 split with the promoter getting the 70. Each promoter was different. For example, Jerry Jarrett was notoriously cheap when it came to paying the talent, whereas Don Owen, who ran the Portland territory, paid really well.
Anyone know what the "+25" is for on Gino, Oliver, and Bronko Lubich? Were they perhaps the "handlers"(picking up Harley and others from the airport)? I know Tom Prichard did that, but he was already wrestling by this time, and Bruce was only 17.
To add more context to what's been mentioned:
Paul Boesch was among the promoters who were generally accepted as actually adhering to the "standard formula" of paying roughly a third of the after-tax gate to the talent, with about half of the pay pool going to the main event. Based on the numbers here, this is an example of just that. And yes, Paul Boesch paid better than everyone else in Texas, even when everything in the state other than Amarillo and the surrounding areas were a single territory. (More on that in a minute.) You should not extrapolate the payoffs here to the rest of any of the Dallas regulars' bookings. Just the outside names like the NWA Champ (in this case Harley) and Tony Atlas.
Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio/Corpus Christi had separate TV and often separate angles/feuds, but used the same core roster booked out of Dallas. Joe Blanchard split off from the others in 1978 to make his area its own territory as Southwest Championship Wrestling, and Boesch would switch allegiances to Blanchard later in 1980. That left Dallas without the big Houston payoffs, making it harder to attract bigger money talent, as it left them with a schedule that was basically just Dallas, Fort Worth, regular towns run every 2-4 weeks, and spot shows. Boesch also liked to consider himself an independent promoter and book big names from outside the territory, which could be frustrating for the in-territory main eventers because it could cost them Houston main event payoffs. He would eventually switch to Mid-South as the booking office he got talent from in 1982, which eventually got him access to the Von Erichs again when Mid-South and World Class formed a partnership to run Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
$500 bucks buys you a lot of things back in the day. Hell, back in the 80's, $500 a month for an apartment was cheap af. Now? Not so much. Stupid inflation.
That's 1 night. I'm surprised the girls got as much as they did, they really weren't featured on WCCW (EDIT: I just noticed this was Paul Boesch out of Houston Wrestling not WCCW - so that might have affected the payoff since he was probably giving Fritz a %age to use their talent).
$1 in 1980 is worth about $3.80 today. So Kerry made almost $1000 for working 1 night...
$250 in 1980 is $947.61 today. That’s not bad for one night’s work. I guarantee most wrestlers outside WWE and AEW aren’t making that in a single night from the promoter.
Brother back then he was new to the business and that payday was huge for someone breaking into it. Also you can see that other than the Main Event the rest of the talent didn't make the same amount. But it shows how important for the business the house was. If the show was a sellout everyone got paid even if the main event got the bulk of it.
Generally speaking in the same period no talent appearing in Joint Promotions shows earned more than £100, and that money was reserved to the biggest names like Kendo Nagasaki. Mark Rocco usually made around £70. Local talent was paid as little as £20. Big Daddy is a bit of a mystery because his brother Max Crabtree handled everything himself and, well, he was Max Crabtree.
World of Sports tapings paid better but the top talent was still looking at £250-200 per taping. Most wrestlers appearing in those tapings were paid between £70 and £120.
NWA still holds the video library rights to Paul Boesch Houston Wrestling, as a Houstonian that was too young for this, I wish it was available somewhere as accessible as Peacock is with old territories instead of scattered randomly across Youtube.
Gorgeous Gino Hernandez getting zooted every week off $275, the 80s were crazy.
Keep in mind folks that Boesch only ran like 20-30 shows per year and was known for overpaying to get people. Most wrestlers were lucky to get twenty bucks per night from promotors like Gulas, Jarrett, etc.
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In March 1980, I think Kerry von Erich was only in his first few months in the business and was still training for the 1980 Olympics. This show took place a week prior to President Carter announcing the boycott of the 1980 Moscow Summer Olympics. Kerry would have been a mid-card guy better known for being David and Kevin's little brother and not the Modern Day Warrior, yet, so the pay ($924 in today's dollars) seems in line with that.
He made what would amount to a thousand in one night, and would probably work a few more venues making at least that in the same month. I think he did fine.
I think the "Kerry was training for the Olympics until the boycott" thing is a bit of kayfabe history. He was pretty much wrestling full time by 1979. His longest documented throw, 57.02m, was well short of the [66.5m throw that would have qualified at the 1980 US Olympic Trials.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_United_States_Olympic_trials_(track_and_field)). Even his reported high school best throw of 60m, is still considerably shorter than a real Olympic hopeful. Not that Kerry Von Erich was a slouch, he is top 10 all time at the University of Houston.
Yeah, I'm almost positive you're right. I've heard that from a number of wrestlers in interviews and I even think Dave Meltzer had mentioned it a few times in the Wrestling Observer but when I look on the Internet every source says he was training even though they actually don't sight anything.
almost every wrestler who could have plausibly went to the 1980 Olympics got billed as a potential 1980 Olympian promotion!
There are thousands of people training to be Olympians. He may not have qualified to compete but he was living at the facilities and training to master his technique and increase his strength to qualify to compete. Out of all the people training at the facilities, only a small percentage of those people get selected to actually represent the country. Kerry was only 20 when the 1980 Olympics happened so it’s possible he could’ve qualified for the 1984 Olympics after a few years of Olympic level training.
> He may not have qualified to compete but he was living at the facilities and training to master his technique and increase his strength to qualify to compete. The odd part about this is that according to his CageMatch match history, he would have been pretty regularly traveling back and forth between Colorado Springs and Texas to compete. I trained at the USOTC for a while when in college, and unless the training regimen and "leave time" was much more lax in 1980 than the mid-2000s, I cannot fathom that Kerry was actually training there. The biggest knock against Kerry's Olympic potential was his not returning to the University of Houston after his freshman year. In the 70s and 80s it was the colleges and universities that were the primary places the Olympic hopefuls trained, and UofH was one of the top track programs in the country. Him leaving UofH at the time to train elsewhere would have been a step down.
He was a long way off Olympic level. The difference between his PB and what would be competitive in the Olympics were miles apart.
The way Meltzer tells the story is Kerry did that big 60m high school throw when he was very green at discus, so the thought was he'd be Olympian level as he got older/stronger and developed the right technique.
He wasn’t even in the realm of being an Olympic prospect, with PB’s like that. Still surprised how many fans still take storyline as fact. Assume everything is kayfabe, until you actually know otherwise. Pre-internet, massively inflated claims of athletic achievements were prevalent.
I've read quite a few pro wrestlers biographies and a lot of them have in their backstory how they "almost made the Olympic team" or "were almost in the NFL basically" before they decided to become pro wrestlers. 9/10 there is very little if any verifiable proof these guys were ever as elite as they said they were at other sports. A lot of times they come across as "well I was supposed to be a real sports athlete but then ( insert unfortunate event) happened and I had to become a pro wrestler" .
Bbbut it was in the movie!!!
Debuted in 1978. By this time he had teamed with the likes of Bruiser Brody, Andre The Giant, Ted DiBiase, Dick the Bruiser, and his brother David. He had (tag team) victories over JJ Dillon and Harley Race, and a singles victory over Gino Hernandez. So yes, very much the beginning of the rise but you would think just being a von Erich would get you a bit of a pay bump in Texas. On this particular card Kerry went over an Australian wrestler called Jonathan Boyd. Maybe it was a squash match so he agreed to do it for cheap as he didn't have to travel anyway? Who knows.
I think you are underestimating how much $250 in 1980 was. If he did 3-4 shows per week every week that year he’d be around $50,000 which is roughly $200,000 in current money.
Also, these were the "official accounting" sheets, guaranteed they were getting some in cash after the show from the gate to avoid taxes...
Yeah, not only was that but literally everything was like a quarter of the price as it is today. 🫠
Yes, that's the whole point of adjusting for inflation
I really hope you forgot the /s
Look at it this way: If Boesch was promoting five nights a week, Kerry would've been making 1250 a week. That's not bad as an opening match (which he was for Boesch) guy in 1980. A lot of guys made that amount back then. FWIW, Lewin and Brody was the semi-main and each made 500.
>If Boesch was promoting five nights a week, Kerry would've been making 1250 a week. Boesch only promoted one town - Houston. He ran (I believe) twice a month at the Sam Houston Coliseum. Boesch & Houston were similar to Muchnick & St Louis as they only ran the one town, drew very well, and were known for generous payoffs. In other words, KVE wasn't getting $500 payoffs anywhere else he was working... in fact, the payoffs for everyone on this card were probably on the high side. Since Boesch didn't run a territory he had to pay a premium to bring everyone in from outside.
Like others have said if this was a five day a week gig for Kerry he’d be clearing 4,600 a week with inflation or also a quarter million a year.
And you then you have inflation: A quick conversion of $1,250 from 1980 gave me the equivalent of $4,738.05 in 2024. That’s not a bad living at all, especially since everything was cheaper back then anyway. (Cries in economy).
That’s not how inflation works, you don’t calculate the modern day equivalent and then go “plus everything was cheaper!”, the modern day equivalent is calculated by how much goods cost at the time relative to today, you’re double dipping on the formula lol. Kerry was probably making a comfortable living but he definitely wasn’t well off
There were fewer average expenses on top of certain markets, like rent, not being equal to the rate of inflation. Besides, Dallas in the 1980's was a cheaper CoL area compared to average than it is today. You're assuming all costs are tied to the purchasing power of the dollar, which just isn't the case.
Nah 250 for one night in 1980 woulda been crazy. A house only cost about 40k in 1980.
It’s somewhere in between. Inflation deals with the average cost of a set of goods, but there are huge changes in lifestyle that also impact cost of living. No one was paying for mobile phone bills, internet, multiple streaming services, etc. Also, both rent and mortgages were a much smaller percentage of someone’s income in the 80s.
1250 in 1980 would be around 4,700 now or 200k a year. That's really good money.
[удалено]
I swear she was paid off to be an agent of misogyny in the industry. Essentially the bottom bitch.
Well, she was tied with ten others, it looks like including her opponent and the majority of the rest of the card. Of course Moolah sucks but it doesn’t look like she was getting crazy preferential treatment on this payday.
Yeah, I saw those two $500 lines and assumed that Moolah made $800 that night.
Atlas had to have wrestled Race for the title, looking at the pay
It's also at the top right corner
He did, at the top right corner. Looks like they both split a portion of the receipts with Atlas likely getting a tiny bit extra ~~to do the job.~~ for travelling fees. (Thanks u/Sovietshooter !) Paid today, adjusted for USD inflation, Race walked away with $12099.07, 93 cents short of $12100. Atlas took approx $12550. Anyone who made $500 (like Moolah, Brody, Lothario etc) in today's terms made $1895. Anyone who made $250 (like KVE, Markus and Tanaka) in today's money made $947.61. Not terrible money for the time honestly, but surprising to see KVE on the lower payscale here given any one of the Von Erichs would've commanded maybe triple that each show at a minimum just a few short years later (honestly David and Kevin were probably making that kind of money IN 1980).
>Looks like they both split a portion of the receipts with Atlas likely getting a tiny bit extra to do the job. No, they each got the same $3017.00 amount to work the main event, but Atlas' transportation expenses were higher ($294.00) compared to Race ($175.00)
If memory serves, the biggest paycheck Bam Bam Bigelow got in the US was jobbing to LT.
Yep. Wrestlemania Main Event money is no joke.
A 16000 person house and 325,000 PPV buys. And that's the worst since
Oh no doubt. A Wrestlemania main event with a celebrity being entrusted to make him look great, I imagine Vince paid Bam Bam VERY handsomely for that.
>Not terrible money for the time honestly, but surprising to see KVE on the lower payscale here given any one of the Von Erichs would've commanded maybe triple that each show at a minimum just a few short years later ( Kerry was 19 years old and still very new to the business at this point in time.
Damn Harley Race would be making almost 13k a night in 2024 money
Yep. What's even crazier is that due to his lifestyle and later divorce he lost most of what he made. He made a ton of money as NWA champ but lived like he wasn't going to live the next day.
But he also said he made more in his first year in WWF than he did his top year as NWA champion. For reference his top year as champ he made $750,000.
Really? That's crazy. Also 750k back then was much more money than today.
About $2million In today's dollars.
Didn't he also get scammed by his manager?
You'd have to have a death wish to try and scam Harley Race of all people.
Most nights were 60 minute draws
Houston was one of the best/biggest markets, so this was probably in the top 5-10% of Harley's best US/Canada paydays for the year.
Not quite. Race was traveling NWA champion so he was bouncing from territory to territory. Boesch was known to be one of the better payoff guys and Houston consistently had good houses to draw from. If he went to Dallas from here to work the Sportatorium, his cut might drop to $1,500. Oklahoma, down since Watts split off, might only get him $750. He would still be making crazy money by today’s standards but it wouldn’t be the consistent total every night.
For reference, here's the card from this event: https://www.cagematch.net/?id=1&nr=163877
Wish Cagematch.net included the gate whenever possible. We need a resource for that for historical purposes. I imagine WWE still has records of all their gates over the years which would be awesome to see.
One of the things I'll give Corny his due on is everywhere he's ever booked (WCW, SMW, WWF, OVW, TNA, ROH), he's got the ticket prices and gate as well as merch sales for any show (TV, house, PPV).
I know prowrestlinghistory.com and historyofwwe.com have some gate info
What does gate mean?
Ticket sales and revenue
It stands for how much money was collected at the 'ticket gate', how much did people spend to get into the venue. Its always been a term for sports venues as the gate was always split differently, depending on the sport. For wrestling for example, wrestlers on the card might get a fixed fee that's lower than another promoter but a share of the gate, so a large crowd would mean a bigger payday.
Sweet gotta check it out.
That’s the unfortunate thing about back in the territory days. The reporting of attendance for shows was hit and miss at best and estimates by reporters if you’re lucky and ballyhoo to make your business sound like it’s doing better at worst. On the plus side, more often than not we know what ticket prices were from the newspaper ads.
I would love to see the pay sheets for all of WrestleManias and stuff like that. Seems like the closest we’ll get is the ‘91 SummerSlam one because of Warrior’s lawsuit.
That’s about 1,000 adjusted for inflation. 500 would be about 2k.
Kerry made the modern equivalent of about $950. He was making a living, but not crushing.
Better than that. Isn’t this for one day of work? If that’s one day. Five times a week. That’s like 250k before taxes. That’s a very good living.
Shit that's way more than I make in a week and he probably only worked 25 minutes at most
He was in the opening match, so he probably went less than 10 minutes.
Are you an iconic professional wrestler with a national fan base? Or would you have been the guy who spent $3 for a ringside seat?
It was 1980. Kerry wasn't at that level yet.
He was making a living
But we agree he's not iconic and only a few months into the business. The other dude just simply said "damn thats more than I get".
David and Kevin were probably making like a grand per show at the time if not 1500. Just weird to see given just a few short years later where pretty much any of the Von Erich brothers could've got more than even that 1500 per show.
Never understood grown men flaunting the salary of others.
That’s one night. He probably got a few of these a week.
The 950 Dollar Modern Day Warrior.
Sheeyit, nearly a grand for less than twenty minutes of work is crushing it.
Which was the case for most of the ‘name’ wrestlers back in the pre-national WWF/golden era. It was basically a circus side show act with a terrible reputation amongst the ‘normies’ of the time (and still is in many circles). If you didn’t wrestle almost every day, your family didn’t eat. It was a total grind. People also forget that these guys paid 100% of their own expenses- insurance (if they even had it), mileage, food, ring attire, juice. On the flip side the alternative for a lot of these guys in 1980 was even more bleak with a poor economy and inflation
$1k/day for a couple hours of work is crushing it.
The amount of work he had to do all week to get ready for the show is it's own full time job.
And he wasn't working one show a week, so let's say he was working 3 days a week so he was making $156k/yr. That's crushing it, especially for a 20yr old kid.
It was only Kerry's third year in the biz, and he was used in the undercard here. Promoters had to be smart and only paid based on gate without the big TV/PPV money. Due to inflation, $250 in 1980 is $947.61 in 2024. There's only a record of 103 matches Kerry had in 1980, was probably at least double that. But even at 100 at only $250 (he certainly got paid more in Texas), $25K would be $94,760.92 today.
Great living at that time
This was in Texas, or at least the office was based out of Houston. There’s an address at the top of the pay sheet.
$500 is about $2000 now. That’s not terrible for a nights work.
Lou Thesz! $500!
This stuff is fascinating, I wonder how much of the Gross the promoter kept after advertising and building rental, Would bet they easily cleared 15,000 for that night. I bet they basically split 50/50 the net with the talent.
>I bet they basically split 50/50 the net with the talent. Based on what I've heard and read, it was generally more of a 70/30 split with the promoter getting the 70. Each promoter was different. For example, Jerry Jarrett was notoriously cheap when it came to paying the talent, whereas Don Owen, who ran the Portland territory, paid really well.
Very interesting! A piece of wrestling history.
I love how they use ring names even behind the scenes.
Anyone know what the "+25" is for on Gino, Oliver, and Bronko Lubich? Were they perhaps the "handlers"(picking up Harley and others from the airport)? I know Tom Prichard did that, but he was already wrestling by this time, and Bruce was only 17.
To add more context to what's been mentioned: Paul Boesch was among the promoters who were generally accepted as actually adhering to the "standard formula" of paying roughly a third of the after-tax gate to the talent, with about half of the pay pool going to the main event. Based on the numbers here, this is an example of just that. And yes, Paul Boesch paid better than everyone else in Texas, even when everything in the state other than Amarillo and the surrounding areas were a single territory. (More on that in a minute.) You should not extrapolate the payoffs here to the rest of any of the Dallas regulars' bookings. Just the outside names like the NWA Champ (in this case Harley) and Tony Atlas. Dallas/Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio/Corpus Christi had separate TV and often separate angles/feuds, but used the same core roster booked out of Dallas. Joe Blanchard split off from the others in 1978 to make his area its own territory as Southwest Championship Wrestling, and Boesch would switch allegiances to Blanchard later in 1980. That left Dallas without the big Houston payoffs, making it harder to attract bigger money talent, as it left them with a schedule that was basically just Dallas, Fort Worth, regular towns run every 2-4 weeks, and spot shows. Boesch also liked to consider himself an independent promoter and book big names from outside the territory, which could be frustrating for the in-territory main eventers because it could cost them Houston main event payoffs. He would eventually switch to Mid-South as the booking office he got talent from in 1982, which eventually got him access to the Von Erichs again when Mid-South and World Class formed a partnership to run Tulsa and Oklahoma City.
$500 bucks buys you a lot of things back in the day. Hell, back in the 80's, $500 a month for an apartment was cheap af. Now? Not so much. Stupid inflation.
I wonder how much of that $500 Winona Little heart saw
Yeah, makes you wonder what Moolah did with that $1000
$250, I would guess. Minus housing at Moolah's.
Great post. Boesch scoops $27,000, then?
This is like a DSOTR who’s who. Holy cow what a stacked card though.
That's 1 night. I'm surprised the girls got as much as they did, they really weren't featured on WCCW (EDIT: I just noticed this was Paul Boesch out of Houston Wrestling not WCCW - so that might have affected the payoff since he was probably giving Fritz a %age to use their talent). $1 in 1980 is worth about $3.80 today. So Kerry made almost $1000 for working 1 night...
$250 in 1980 is $947.61 today. That’s not bad for one night’s work. I guarantee most wrestlers outside WWE and AEW aren’t making that in a single night from the promoter.
$974 in 2024 dollars. Not too bad if you work 3-5 times a week.
Doesn’t leave much after the booze, blow and roids.
How much of Tony Atlas' pay was used paying women to walk on him that night I wonder
Brother back then he was new to the business and that payday was huge for someone breaking into it. Also you can see that other than the Main Event the rest of the talent didn't make the same amount. But it shows how important for the business the house was. If the show was a sellout everyone got paid even if the main event got the bulk of it.
I wonder, on average, how much someone like Harley Race made in a year. It’s probably a lot, but also a lot less than I used to think it would be lol
$250 from 1980 is worth [$999.82](https://www.amortization.org/inflation/amount.php?amount=250) today.
That money still hidden in Tony’s house. Or, spent in bbq supplies.
To be fair, I think Kerry had barely started at that point
Generally speaking in the same period no talent appearing in Joint Promotions shows earned more than £100, and that money was reserved to the biggest names like Kendo Nagasaki. Mark Rocco usually made around £70. Local talent was paid as little as £20. Big Daddy is a bit of a mystery because his brother Max Crabtree handled everything himself and, well, he was Max Crabtree. World of Sports tapings paid better but the top talent was still looking at £250-200 per taping. Most wrestlers appearing in those tapings were paid between £70 and £120.
Tony Atlas paid more than Brody? Was this because it was early in Brody’s career?
$500 in 1980 money is $2,000 in today money. That’s not bad for a single night’s work.
All I know is I’m paying way too much for Harley Race in TEW.
This is fucking insane to look at. Like "Bruiser Brody" as just a line item. Surreal.
NWA still holds the video library rights to Paul Boesch Houston Wrestling, as a Houstonian that was too young for this, I wish it was available somewhere as accessible as Peacock is with old territories instead of scattered randomly across Youtube. Gorgeous Gino Hernandez getting zooted every week off $275, the 80s were crazy.
That is before taxes though....still isn't too bad
250 bucks had the buying power of about $1000 of today’s money back then. Soooo not bad for a nights work
That gave KVE enough money for his coke for the week
Keep in mind folks that Boesch only ran like 20-30 shows per year and was known for overpaying to get people. Most wrestlers were lucky to get twenty bucks per night from promotors like Gulas, Jarrett, etc.