The Two Man Power Trip of Wrestling Podcast recently interviewed Ron Full about his time in Continental Wrestling. You can hear the full podcast at this link, and submitted highlights, courtesy of Chad and John below:
The creation of the Continental Wrestling Territory:
"I had Southeastern and I saw what was happening (in the business) so I combined the two businesses and changed the name to Continental and I started doing a show in our main arena with 5-6,000 people and it made a big difference in the product that was out there. It made me harder to compete with for Vince and it probably helped me last a little bit longer than most and I might still have been in the wrestling business had I not gotten into hockey after wrestling. I owned a couple Minor League hockey teams and have done a little bit of everything."
Was it an uphill battle trying to rival the WWF:
"When Vince got national television than obviously he is going to be in the driver's seat. Everything was regionalized for many many years with the National Wrestling Alliance being a huge part of that and everybody ran their own operations but they tried not to put their television programs in somebody else's area because it was just not done and Vince changed all that obviously and got a National program. He started to buy talent by basically picking up the best wrestlers from certain areas and he'd take them back to wrestle against the guys that had developed them. I developed a lot of talent for him too that he did very well with and like a lot of other territories Hulk Hogan came from me, Honky Tonk Man came from me, Arn Anderson came from me and there is a lot of guys we developed who were young guys that weren't stars that went on to work for Vince and it made it very hard when Vince would bring those guys back and use them against you. We had some success against Vince early on and we figured out how to compete with him as best we could."
"We tried to compete but I had a feeling that it was kind of like I could see the writing on the wall and it was not going to work and we weren't going to be able to compete with him and we weren't going to beat him. I could have maybe done so as far as that and I had an opportunity in 1985 and I had a company that took Continental Wrestling and they sold it in the Middle East for me and they got really hot on my talent and my program and they had a connection with NBC in the same place where Vince went. They talked to me and said that they (NBC) are looking for a National TV show and your program is great, you've got super talent and we want to try and get you on. I turned them down because I was a member of the NWA and I couldn't see how if I became a National product how everyone else in the National Wrestling Alliance would've been scared to death of me and it would have made my life difficult. I chose at that point to turn down the opportunity to make a run at that and the rest is pretty much history. I am not really pleased with where the wrestling business is today and had it been handled and someone else had got their foot in that door and handled it differently I think it could be a whole different product than what it has become with Vince."
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