Episode Details

🎙️ Ringside in Rose City#11 – Thanksgiving in Salem: Turkeys, Tag Teams, and Total Chaos

One ring. One city. A thousand stories.
And this week… a thousand helpings of stuffing, blood, and coal miner’s gloves.

For Episode #11 of Ringside in Rose City, Frank Culbertson and Mike Rogers sit down on Thanksgiving Day—plates piled high, Lisa holding a carving knife, and the studio smelling like heaven—to spin the wheel. Every envelope is the same. Every topic gobbles.
Welcome to Thanksgiving Wrestling in Salem.

Portland never ran on Thanksgiving…
But Salem?
Salem turned Turkey Day into absolute mayhem.

Frank and Mike serve up a full holiday platter of stories,results, and legendary oddities from 1940 to 1990, including:

🦃 The Early Years

Dude Chick, cowboy champion and Gene Autry stunt-double, tearing it up in 1940.

Free turkeys for the ladies. Cornish game hens for the midget wrestlers.

How boxing, wrestling, and chaos collided in the Luther Lindsay vs. The Hangman 20-round glove fight.

🦃 The Loaded ’70s

The 1971 Three-Man Thanksgiving War: Savage, Morrow & Bo vs. The Kangaroos + Rocky Montero.

The 1973 $500 battle royal where Snuka “flopped” onto Ripper Collins for the win.

1975’s overloaded menu: Savage, Norman Charles, Snuka, Ramos, Eagles, Ports, Boyd, Vachon—and a coal miner’sglove match nobody saw coming.

Youngblood, Goldie Rogers, and Tony Russo (barefoot brawler and 10-second Tony Bourne conqueror).

🦃 The Chaotic ’80s

Six-man cage matches, Backstreet Survival Matches, and the TV Title defended on a show not on TV.

Jerry O pinning Matt Bourne (!)

Jimmy “Siva” Afi’s Portland days…and his career detour working for Tom Peterson’s furniture store.

The infamous 1987 Thanksgiving where Sandy Barr wrestled Rip Oliver at age 49 (even though it felt like 75).

🦃 The Wild Late-Territory Era

The 1988 armory ads featuring…Hulk Hogan punching Andre the Giant (but in Salem? Not so much).

Five “Super Main Events” (or was it six?) including:

Logger Match – Rip Oliver vs. The Grappler

I Quit Match – Beetlejuice vs. Jonathan Holliday

Coal Miner’s Glove – Steve Dahl vs. Scotty the Body

And the 1990 20-Man Survivor’s Bash—a 10-man team vs. an 8-man team because… territory wrestling.

And of course…
No Thanksgiving episode would be complete without K-Fabe Curveballs, where Mike swings and misses at Swanson TV dinner trivia, chipmunks, poem history, and a jazz track tied to Sandy Barr by way of Chris Bilbao. You couldn’t script this with a straight face if you tried.

Whether it’s turkeys, tag teams, cage matches, or Cornishgame hens…
Thanksgiving in Salem had it all.

Dig in, hit play, and loosen your belt. This episode is stuffed.