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Tampa Sportatorium
The Tampa Sportatorium was a professional wrestling studio used by Championship Wrestling from Florida. The former television studio building may be demolished for a new building. Located at 106 N Albany Ave near downtown Tampa, Florida, the 7,500-square-foot stucco building was used for television tapings at 11am on Thursdays, which would air on the following Sundays. Tampa native Hulk Hogan attended shows at the Sportatorium as a teenager and recalled that the studio could not fit more than 50 people in it and that it was not air conditioned despite Florida's often warm, subtropical, and humid climate. To make the room seem bigger to the television audience, the walls were painted black. Dory Funk Jr. praised the content to come out of the building, stating: "The Sportatorium was small, but the television it produced was so good." The upstairs of the building was used as an office by company executives Eddie Eddie or Eddy may refer to: Science and technology *Eddy (fluid dyna ...
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Tampa Sportatorium 1
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County. With a population of 384,959 according to the 2020 census, Tampa is the third-most populated city in Florida after Jacksonville and Miami and is the 52nd most populated city in the United States. Tampa functioned as a military center during the 19th century with the establishment of Fort Brooke. The cigar industry was also brought to the city by Vincente Martinez Ybor, after whom Ybor City is named. Tampa was formally reincorporated as a city in 1887, following the Civil War. Today, Tampa's economy is driven by tourism, health care, finance, insurance, technology, construction, and the maritime industry. The bay's port is the largest in the state, responsible for over $15 billion in economic impact. The city is part of the Tampa-St. P ...
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Professional Wrestling
Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring or—as in televised wrestling shows—in backstage areas of the venue, in similar form to reality television. Professional wrestling as a form of theater evolved out of the widespread practice of match fixing among wrestlers in the early 20th century. Rather than sanction the wrestlers for their deceit as was done with boxers, the public instead came to see professional wrestling as a performance art rather than a sport. Professional wrestlers responded to the public's attitude by dispensing with verisimilitude in favor of entertainment, adding melodrama and outlandish stuntwork to their performances. Although the mock combat they performed ceased to resemble any authentic wrestling form, the wrestlers nevertheless continued to pr ...
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Championship Wrestling From Florida
Championship Wrestling from Florida (CWF) was the corporate and brand name of the Tampa, Florida wrestling office existing from 1961, when Eddie Graham first bought into the promotion, until 1987, when it closed down. It is also referred to as ''Florida Championship Wrestling''. When Mike Graham tried a return to promoting, the rights to the name had been acquired by an outside party, forcing him to use another name, ''Florida Championship Wrestling''. History Founding The original owner and promoter was "Cowboy" Clarence Preston Luttrall, a former journeyman heel wrestler who once fought a widely publicized boxing match, resulting from a wrestling angle, with a forty-something Jack Dempsey. It worked but Cowboy took a severe beating. Cowboy opened the office in 1949, and Eddie Graham bought into the promotion in 1961, then took over completely in 1971, because of health reasons with Cowboy. The office was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance during the entire CWF era, ...
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Tampa, Florida
Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the County seat, seat of Hillsborough County, Florida, Hillsborough County. With a population of 384,959 according to the 2020 census, Tampa is the third-most populated city in Florida after Jacksonville, Florida, Jacksonville and Miami and is the List of United States cities by population, 52nd most populated city in the United States. Tampa functioned as a military center during the 19th century with the establishment of Fort Brooke. The cigar industry was also brought to the city by Vicente Martinez Ybor, Vincente Martinez Ybor, after whom Ybor City is named. Tampa was formally reincorporated as a city in 1887, following the American Civil War, Civil War. Today, Tampa's economy is driven by tourism, health care, finance, insurance, tec ...
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Stucco
Stucco or render is a construction material made of aggregates, a binder, and water. Stucco is applied wet and hardens to a very dense solid. It is used as a decorative coating for walls and ceilings, exterior walls, and as a sculptural and artistic material in architecture. Stucco can be applied on construction materials such as metal, expanded metal lath, concrete, cinder block, or clay brick and adobe for decorative and structural purposes. In English, "stucco" sometimes refers to a coating for the outside of a building and "plaster" to a coating for interiors; as described below, however, the materials themselves often have little to no differences. Other European languages, notably Italian, do not have the same distinction; ''stucco'' means ''plaster'' in Italian and serves for both. Composition The basic composition of stucco is cement, water, and sand. The difference in nomenclature between stucco, plaster, and mortar is based more on use than composition. Until ...
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Hulk Hogan
Terry Eugene Bollea (; born August 11, 1953), better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American retired professional wrestler. He is widely regarded as the most recognized wrestling star worldwide and the most popular wrestler of the 1980s, as well as one of the greatest professional wrestlers of all time. Hogan began his professional wrestling career in 1977, but gained worldwide recognition after signing for World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) in 1983. There, his persona as a heroic all-American helped usher in the 1980s professional wrestling boom, where he headlined eight of the first nine editions of WWF's flagship annual event, WrestleMania. During his initial run, he won the WWF Championship five times, with his first reign being the second-longest in the championship's history. He is the first wrestler to win consecutive Royal Rumble matches, winning in 1990 and 1991. His match with Andre the Giant on WWF The Main Event on February 5, 1988, still hold ...
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Air Conditioned
Air conditioning, often abbreviated as A/C or AC, is the process of removing heat from an enclosed space to achieve a more comfortable interior environment (sometimes referred to as 'comfort cooling') and in some cases also strictly controlling the humidity of internal air. Air conditioning can be achieved using a mechanical 'air conditioner' or alternatively a variety of other methods, including passive cooling or ventilative cooling. Air conditioning is a member of a family of systems and techniques that provide heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC). Heat pumps are similar in many ways to air conditioners, but use a reversing valve to allow them to both heat and also cool an enclosed space. Air conditioners, which typically use vapor-compression refrigeration, range in size from small units used within vehicles or single rooms to massive units that can cool large buildings. Air source heat pumps, which can be used for heating as well as cooling, are becoming incre ...
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WWE Books
WWE Books is a subsidiary of World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., created in 2002 to publish autobiographies of and fiction based on WWE personalities, behind-the-scenes guides to WWE, illustrated books, calendars, young adult books, and other general nonfiction books. The majority of WWE Books are published by Pocket Books, part of the Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group. Simon & Schuster UK and Simon & Schuster Australia are the publishers of WWE books in the United Kingdom and Australia. Simon & Schuster publish multiple titles yearly, based on the personalities, programming, storylines, and other topics of interest to WWE and its fans. In 2014, WWE Books and DK Publishing entered a multi-year publishing partnership to distribute and market WWE book releases on a global scale. The agreement also included digital and various subsidiary rights. DK has published a variety of titles including commemorative books, sticker books, historical guides, autobiographies and encyclopedi ...
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Dory Funk Jr
Dorrance Earnest Funk (born February 3, 1941), known professionally as Dory Funk Jr., is an American retired professional wrestler and wrestling trainer. The son of Dory Funk (Dorrance Wilhelm Funk) and brother of Terry Funk, he was the promoter of the Amarillo, Texas-based Western States Sports promotion. Funk held the NWA Worlds Heavyweight Championship once. He is the second-longest reigning NWA World Heavyweight Champion of all time, holding it for over four years. Only Lou Thesz held it longer. He held the WWC Universal Heavyweight Championship once and the CWA World Heavyweight Championship once. He is a 2009 WWE Hall of Fame inductee. He is working for All Japan Pro Wrestling as the Pacific Wrestling Federation (PWF) chairman and runs the Funking Conservatory, a List of professional wrestling terms#S, professional wrestling school. Overall in major professional wrestling promotions, he is a one-time Professional wrestling championship#World championships, world champion co ...
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Eddie Graham
Edward F. Gossett (January 15, 1930 – January 21, 1985), better known as Eddie Graham, was an American professional wrestler. He was also the promoter and booker for Championship Wrestling from Florida and President of the NWA in the 1970s. Early life Edward Gossett was born on January 15, 1930, in Dayton, Tennessee, blind in one eye. He lived in a troubled household and sold newspapers and eggs to make a living while in Chattanooga at the age of 12. The newspaper provided YMCA gym memberships to newsboys, allowing him to receive physical training. Professional wrestling career Texas Gossett started wrestling in 1947 in Texas at the age of 17 after being trained by Clarence "Cowboy" Luttrall.John Molinaro, ''The Top 100 Pro Wrestlers of All Time'', (Winding Stair Press: 2002), page 200. He was occasionally billed as the brother of "Nature Boy" Buddy Rogers under the name of Rip Rogers. He lost a loser-leaves-town match to Pepper Gomez in May 1958 in Texas. Tag team w ...
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Mike Graham (wrestler)
Edward Michael Gossett (September 22, 1951 – October 19, 2012), better known as Mike Graham, was an American professional wrestler who was the son of Eddie Graham. Amateur wrestling Mike Graham was a Florida high school wrestling district champion his senior year in 1969 for Thomas Richard Robinson High School in Tampa, Florida. He became a three-time state AAU champion and a Junior Olympics champion at 198 pounds. Graham was a state champion in the 154-pound weight class and, as a sophomore, defeated senior Richard Blood (later to become Ricky Steamboat) in the finals of a district meet. He left the University of Tampa to turn professional against the wishes of his mother Lucy. Mike was also an accomplished powerlifter who set state records in the bench press. Professional wrestling career Michael Gossett started wrestling in 1972 in his father's Championship Wrestling from Florida, which was a National Wrestling Alliance territory. He was trained by his father, Boris ...
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Jim Barnett (wrestling)
James Edward Barnett (June 9, 1924 – September 18, 2004) was an American professional wrestling promoter, and one of the owners of the Indianapolis National Wrestling Alliance promotion, Australia's World Championship Wrestling and Georgia Championship Wrestling. He also served as a federal officeholder during the Presidency of Jimmy Carter. Professional wrestling career Barnett was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. He attended the University of Chicago in the 1940s. In 1949, he went to work for Fred Kohler's wrestling magazine "Wrestling as You Like It" in Chicago. He eventually became involved in the operations of Kohler's wrestling promotion. In 1955, Barnett became a part-owner (with Kohler) of the National Wrestling Alliance promotion in Indianapolis. He moved to Indianapolis. In 1958, he entered into a partnership with wrestling promoter Johnny Doyle and started to run wrestling shows on a national basis in cities including Detroit, Denver and Los Angeles, sometimes cooper ...
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