What was sold is not the complete collection of the Watts promotion, which ran from 1979 to 1987.
The Watts family collection consists of almost every episode of Mid South Wrestling taped at the Irish McNeill Boy’s Club in Shreveport from December 1981 to December 1985, which was the company’s flagship show. It also had the run of Power Pro Wrestling shows from 1984 to the end of 1985. Power Pro was the “B” show, with the early shows consisting of what today would be considered hand-helds of arena shows shot by Joel Watts. Later, it became a regular taping at Gilley’s Night Club in Fort Worth at the end of the run.
There is also house show raw footage from late 1983 through the summer of 1985. There are some UWF shows from 1986 and 1987, but not the complete collection, including a few after Crockett bought the company, which is weird. Many of those shows are just raw footage of the matches before editing, as they have no graphics or interviews, or vignettes that would have been on the TV show. They also have the 1970s movie “Wrestling Queen,” which was about the late Vivian Vachon, which has a lot of footage from the McGuirk territory from that era.
It should be noted that none of the local promos for the arena shows were saved. If there was talk of a JYD tape, and I’ve heard rumblings they are interested in doing that, that would hurt a lot because his best stuff were his weekly promos for the shows in the New Orleans market and the rest of the territory.
Micah Watts had told people there was a lot more stuff in the collection but it was one inch and two inch reels and they felt the cost of transferring it couldn’t be made up with in sales. That would be whatever survived of the McGuirk territory, some UWF stuff and Mid South before December 1981.
The collection did not include much of the last year which was the UWF year, which I’m presuming was sold to Jim Crockett Jr. when he purchased the company in early 1987. It also didn’t include any of the 1980 Freebirds vs. JYD feud which was the hottest angle ever in New Orleans. It didn’t include the period where JYD was built. It does include maybe the last couple of years of JYD, and a lot of people like Ted DiBiase, Steve Williams, Jim Duggan, Kamala, The Midnight Express, Rock & Roll Express, Fantastics, Dick Murdoch, Jake Roberts, The Freebirds, as well as some house show main events with The Von Erichs, Ric Flair, Dusty Rhodes and others who came in for big shows.
According to Dave Bixenspan and what we’ve been able to find out, the most modern major territorial stuff that exists that they don’t own would be the Memphis collection and who knows who owns that with it being sold in parts to so many different people, and the St. Louis collection (which consists of only the last few years of Wrestling at the Chase TV) which is owned by The Fight Network in Canada.
There is also the Ron Martinez film collection, which is where the Wrestling Gold tapes we did came from. Ron died years ago. Todd Okerlund (Gene’s son) bought at least some of that collection for his Classic Wrestling company that used to produce low-priced classic PPVs (which at one time did very well when they were airing AWA stuff with the big names from the 70s and 80s).
The Savoldi family also has a big collection that includes USWA footage from Dallas. Dick the Bruiser’s wife has said they still have some of his old WWA stuff from Indiana, but has never put it for sale and at this point there would be almost no value in it except to sell to WWE.
The family of the late Fred Ward, who did his own TV show in Columbus, GA, using the same talent that appeared on TBS, is believed to have a ton of footage that nobody has seen unless they grew up in that city. For whatever reason, they have never marketed it or sold it. At one point Cornette tried to buy the footage from the family and they had no interest in selling it. The fact WWE doesn’t own it either says it’s not of good enough quality, as the latest would be 27 years ago and you’d think most would be older, or there isn’t much of it. Again, the stuff is of very little value except to sell to McMahon. If you think about it, a lot of the people who owned the tape collections, Mike Graham for Florida and the Gagne family, on a personal level, the last person they would want to sell it to would be WWE based on the history, but it was the right business move. Whatever money there was to be made from those tapes in marketing them was declining and in time would be almost gone. At that point, their only value is to McMahon for DVDs and the eventual network.
Bob Barnett and Dave Bixenspan own whatever was left of the Bill Watts collection that his wife didn’t get in the divorce. Watts sold it to Brian Last, boxes of one inch, two inch, quad, VHS tapes, some Beta tapes and a few 16 mm film reels, most of which were from the last year of the UWF. Last ended up making deals with Barnett and Bixenspan who had most of the stuff converted to DVD. There was some mid-80s stuff as well and some 1986 Crockett Cup footage.
The other major collection that is believed to still exist would be Houston wrestling. Boesch saved a lot of footage, some of which aired at a time for a nostalgia TV show and some was released in VHS form. The production values would be so-so by today’s standards, but no different from most anything else from that era. Houston was one of the major wrestling markets in the country during the entire period Boesch’s stuff would have aired. The bulk of the footage would likely be from the 80s. It’s mostly Mid South Wrestling augmented with guys Boesch would book from the outside before the business changed. But I’ve seen nothing done with that collection in many years. There has also been a question of ownership of the tapes between Valerie Boesch, Paul’s widow, Peter Birkholz, Paul’s nephew, and Nick Bockwinkel, who owned points in the Houston office when it closed.
There are a number of minor collections in existence, as Grey Pierson, who promoted Global Wrestling out of the Dallas Sportatorium in the early 90s has uploaded clips of late to YouTube from what appeared to be his broadcast masters.