Episode Details

After three episodes digging through court records, conflicting stories, behind the scenes politics, and the financial mess surrounding the final days of the USWA, Beyond Wrestling w/Robb Helt brings the series home with somebody who was actually standing in the middle of it.

On Episode #12, Robb Helt is joined by guest co-hosts Gene Jackson and Steve Crawford for Part 4 of “USWA & The Lawsuit That Killed Wrestling’s Last Territory,” featuring special guest James Beard, longtime referee, booker, promoter, wrestling historian, and one of the final people involved in running the United States Wrestling Association before the doors closed in 1997.

For more than 20 years, Memphis Wrestling was part of the city’s identity.

Saturday morning meant Lance Russell. Then Dave Brown.

Jerry Lawler.

The Mid-South Coliseum.

A territory that somehow survived while the rest of the wrestling world changed around it.

By 1997, it was gone. Not because WCW beat it. Not because the WWF put it out of business.

Not even because Memphis fans suddenly stopped caring. It disappeared in the middle of a business deal that spiraled into competing ownership claims, cooked books, lawsuits, bankruptcy, accusations of fraud, and eventually a federal racketeering verdict.

And James Beard was there.

James takes the story back to the moment Bruce Prichard approached him about helping the USWA. At the time, James was still living in Texas and trying to figure out his next move in wrestling. The business was struggling almost everywhere, and USWA remained one of the few established promotions still operating with a relationship to the WWF.

Then James heard the name Larry Burton for the first time. Burton eventually called him and, almost immediately, tried to hire James to take over the booking. Instead of accepting over the phone, James went to Memphis and spent hours talking with Burton about wrestling, house shows, promotion, television, and what could realistically be done to improve business. The longer the conversation went, the stranger things felt. Burton claimed to be an experienced television and entertainment executive, but James quickly discovered a man who seemed to spend a lot of time yelling, giving orders, and acting busy without necessarily accomplishing much. And then James saw him try to produce wrestling television. That was when things really started falling apart.

From there, James Beard’s story manages to answer many of the important questions that Robb and Gene have had throughout this series, and by the end of this show it becomes crystal clear what was going on here with Larry Burton, Jerry Lawler, and the Selkers. 

James Beard saw the final days firsthand.

He saw the books.

He met the investors.

He dealt with Burton.

He worked with Dutch.

He introduced some people who desperately needed to meet.

He tried to keep television alive.

And when everything collapsed, he was one of the men left standing in the wreckage with money still owed to him (that’s still owed to this day).

For four episodes, Beyond Wrestling has examined the strange business deal, the money, the lawsuit, the courtroom findings, and the competing versions of how Memphis Wrestling finally died. This time, they bring it to a close someone who was there both in the company and in court. James Beard was the last matchmaker of the USWA.

And this is his story of how wrestling’s last territory finally came to an end.