finally!

Ken Hoffman unearths a goldmine for every '80s Houston Wrestling fan

Now you can relieve the glory days of Jake the Snake and other '80s Houston Wrestling stars.

I became a true Houstonian the first night I moved here from Phoenix. I pulled into a dump hotel on 610 near the Galleria, unhitched the 5-by-8 U-Haul packed with all my worldly possessions, and headed straight to the Sam Houston Coliseum for a night of Houston Wrestling.

The main event was the Sheepherders vs. the Fantastics in a tag-team cage match. It was love at first sight … of blood. I heard there was an expression in the south, if wrestlers wanted to see green (money), the promoter wanted to see red (blood). Who knows if that was true, probably isn’t, doesn’t matter.

Man, that was one wooly night. I grew up in the northeast, so the only wrestling I watched on TV was WWE (formerly WWF, formerly WWWF), and babyface stars like Bruno Sammartino, Pedro Morales, Bob Backlund, and heels like Macho Man Randy Savage, Larry Zbyszko, and the Wild Samoans. But I knew all about Houston Wrestling and Friday nights at the Coliseum from wrestling magazines. I couldn’t wait.

I am a wrestling fan. I loved it as a kid, still do, even though it’s changed, not sure for the better. Early on in Houston, I got to know Paul Boesch, the legendary wrestling promoter.

Ken wrestles with Houston Wrestling
Quick story about the time he blew up in a rage at me. I had a friend who worked for WWE up in Connecticut. He called one day and said, “We just signed Jake the Snake Roberts and he starts with us in two weeks. Well, Snake was the local champion in Houston, and that meant he had to drop the title before he left for WWE. It’s was the unwritten rule in wrestling, if the champion was leaving a promotion, he lost the title on his way out.

Not the smartest thing I’ve ever done, I wrote in my little column, “Jake the Snake will defend his title Friday night against Dirty Dick Slater, and you can bet the ranch that Roberts will lose … because he’s joining WWE in two weeks.”

Boesch was so incensed that I gave away the ending to his main event, he had Roberts win the match. I changed the course of history! Two days later, when the match aired on Channel 39 (now CWB39), there was Roberts celebrating his win and threatening me to keep my mouth shut. I was scared to death, sitting in my underwear, watching on TV.

Do a YouTube search for “Jake Roberts threatens me.” It’s there. You’ll understand why I was so frightened. Freddy Krueger in Nightmare on Elm Street had nothing on Snake Roberts.

I was hooked on Houston Wrestling, and Friday nights at the Coliseum became a ritual. But like many regional “territories,” Boesh and Houston Wrestling was bought/forced out by Vince McMahon and WWE. Unlike other promotions, Boesch and his family (later lawyers) refused to sell the Houston Wrestling video library to McMahon.

For years, readers would ask, “How can I get tapes from Houston Wrestling? At long last, now.

A Houston Wrestling goldmine
Jim Cornette is offering a four-hour DVD titled Houston Wrestling Spectacular on his website. It’s $15 for 12 matches, the most intense wrestling you’ll ever see.

“I have an audience that’s interested in old-school wrestling. Especially interesting is the Bull Curry vs. Johnny Valentine match from 1969, which is an amazing spectacle of two of the biggest names in Texas facing each other in a grudge match before the biggest Houston Wrestling crowd since the mid-1950s. Houston was one of the last great wrestling cities in the country under Paul Boesch, before everything went national and global and lost all the passion and emotion,” Cornette says.

Other matches on the DVD include: Jimmy Snuka vs. Ken Patera, Jack Brisco vs. the Spoiler, Dusty Rhodes vs. Ivan Koloff (casket match), Dusty Rhodes vs. Bruiser Brody, and Black Gordman vs. Chavo Guerrero. You might want to put a drop cloth in front of your TV, there's a few very bloody matches.

Now a few words about Jim Cornette. I never got to see him work as the manager for the Midnight Express in Houston Wrestling’s heyday. I have to watch videos on the Internet. He was a maniac, hateful, and hilarious. The Wrestling Observer newsletter name Cornette “Manager of the Year” from 1984 to 1990, and 1992 to 1996. “Corny” is a member of the Pro Wrestling Illustrated and Wrestling Observer Hall of Fame. In 1994, he won the WWE Slammy Award for “Best Dressed.” Two years later, he won the Slammy for “Worst Dressed.” That’s Cornette, all right, definitely the best and proudly the worst.

Cornette is retired as a manager, and still does some commentary for TV wrestling, but his main focus is twice weekly podcasts. Every Monday, he unleashed Jim Cornette’s Drive-Thru and every Thursday it’s the Jim Cornette Experience. Both can be found on the usual podcast platforms.

I do not miss either podcast. Each one is about 90 minutes of wrestling nostalgia mixed with restaurant reviews, homeowner gripes, queasy grooming tips, and outrageously brilliant political commentary. I’m serious, this guy should be hosting Meet the Press, Martha Stewart’s Kitchen and a few hours on QVC hawking his Cornette’s Collectibles.

sports ken-hoffman

Winter weather warning

Arctic air will bring hard freeze to Houston this weekend

Photo by Uliana Sova on Unsplash

This weekend could bring ice to Dallas-Fort Worth and beyond.

With many Americans still recovering from multiple blasts of snow and unrelenting freezing temperatures in the nation’s northern tier, a new storm is set to emerge this weekend that could coat roads, trees and power lines with devastating ice across a wide expanse of the South, including Texas.

The storm arriving late this week and into the weekend is shaping up to be a “widespread potentially catastrophic event from Texas to the Carolinas,” said Ryan Maue, a former chief scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“I don’t know how people are going to deal with it,” he said.

Forecasters on Tuesday, January 20 warned that the ice could weigh down trees and power lines, triggering widespread outages.

“If you get a half of an inch of ice — or heaven forbid an inch of ice — that could be catastrophic,” said Keith Avery, CEO of the Newberry Electric Cooperative in South Carolina.

The National Weather Service warned of "great swaths of heavy snow, sleet, and treacherous freezing rain” starting Friday in much of the nation’s midsection and then shifting toward the East Coast through Sunday.

Temperatures will be slow to warm in many areas, meaning ice that forms on roads and sidewalks might stick around, forecasters say.

The exact timing of the approaching storm — and where it is headed — remained uncertain on Tuesday. Forecasters say it can be challenging to predict precisely which areas could see rain and which ones could be punished with ice.

Meteorologists at WFAA say it's too early for an exact forecast across Dallas-Fort Worth. But it's good to start being weather aware.

Here’s what to know:

Cold air clashing with rain to fuel a 'major winter storm’
An extremely cold arctic air mass is set to dive south from Canada, setting up a clash with the cold temperatures and rain that will be streaming eastward across the southern U.S.

“This is extreme, even for this being the peak of winter,” National Weather Service meteorologist Bryan Jackson said of the cold temperatures.

When the cold air meets the rain, the likely result will be “a major winter storm with very impactful weather, with all the moisture coming up from the Gulf and encountering all this particularly cold air that’s spilling in,” Jackson said.

Texas could be a harbinger for other parts of the South
Some of the storm’s earliest impacts could be in Texas on Friday, as the arctic air mass slides south through much of the state, National Weather Service forecaster Sam Shamburger said in a briefing on the storm.

“At the same time, we’re expecting rain to move into much of the state,” Shamburger said.

Low temperatures could fall into the 20s or even the teens in parts of Texas by Saturday, with the potential for a wintery mix of weather in the northern part of the state.

Forecasters cautioned that significant uncertainty remains, particularly over how much ice or snow could fall across north and central Texas.

“It’s going to be a very difficult forecast,” Shamburger said.

An atmospheric river could set up across the Southern U.S.
An atmospheric river of moisture could be in place by the weekend, pulling precipitation across Texas and other states along the Gulf Coast and continuing across Georgia and the Carolinas, forecasters said.

“Global models are painting a concerning picture of what this weekend could look like, with an increasingly strong signal for ice storm potential across North Georgia and portions of central Georgia,” according to the National Weather Service's Atlanta office.

Highway and air travel could be tangled by the storm
Travel is a major concern, as Southern states have less equipment to remove snow and ice from roads, and extremely cold temperatures expected after the storm could prevent ice from melting for several days.

The storm is also expected to impact many of the nation’s major hub airports, including those in Dallas-Fort Worth; Atlanta; Memphis, Tennessee; and Charlotte, North Carolina.

Polar air from Canada to keep northern states in a deep freeze
Unusually cold temperatures are already in place across much of the northern tier of the U.S., but the blast of arctic air expected later this week is “will be the coldest yet,” Jackson said.

“There’s a large sprawling vortex of low pressure centered over Hudson Bay,” Jackson said of the sea in northern Canada that’s connected to the Arctic Ocean. “And this is dominating the weather over all of North America.”

weather

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Winter weather warning

Arctic air will bring hard freeze to Houston this weekend