NWA Legend Ronnie Garvin Discusses Why Jim Crockett Promotions went out of business

Former NWA World Champion, Ronnie Garvin recently discussed with Steve and the Scum on WGD Weekly for a great hour plus long interview. Garvin spoke about quite a number of issues including  why Jim Crockett Promotions went out of business.

 

 

Ronnie Garvin’s decision to retire at 45, and his thoughts on performers who stay around too long becoming “has beens”:

“…It was time for me to do an exit. You got to know when to quit. You stay in the business until you are sixty years old, you look like an imbecile. First of all you know you are broke and you become a has-been.

 

That is what I hate to see. Guys are in the ring and they are sixty years old, I mean come on, I know it’s not real, but your body, you look like an old douche bag, your skin is sagging. The older you get, the more you look like a pear, you might want to go as a human pear. You might make some money, it might be a good angle, I don’t know. But, I was forty-five years old and I said goodbye, time to go…”

 

His thoughts on Vince McMahon and his effect on the business, putting Jim Crockett Promotions out of business:

“…Vince is very successful. I’d be crazy to critcisize that. The business has changed and it is not going to go back to the way it was and it’s going to change again from what it is today. Somewhere down the road it will change again.

 

That’s why a lot of promoters got left behind. Jim Crockett Promotions thought Vince McMahon was going to go bankrupt, he was going to kill wrestling, they thought he was going to destroy the business, and what did he do. He took it over, they all went out of business, so Vince had a vision and it worked…”

 

 

Why he decided to end his career during his WWF run:

“…I told Vince, I can’t sing, I can’t dance, and I can’t rock and roll… I’ve always liked Vince, he was a very honest guy, but I didn’t fit there, you have to be realistic. It was not my kind of wrestling…I go in the ring and I wrestle, I put on a fight and tried to make it as believable as I could…So, instead of going around dressed up like a clown or all in polka dots, I loved that one when Vince put polka dots on the ‘fat man.’

 

I thought that was great, Vince is a genius, putting polka dots on the ‘fat man.’ But no, I just didn’t fit in that environment…I could not do what he wanted, he never told me that, but I could just see it. To be successful there you have to be able to do different things than I was used to doing. When I started in the sixties, we sold wrestling…”

 

In addition to these topics, the “Hands of Stone” spoke to WGD Weekly about, what made him go into wrestling, how he was paired with his “brothers” Terry and “Gorgeous” Jimmy, working in various territories and having a hand in running the ICW, battling a young Randy Savage, his one match with Andre the Giant, his classic feud with Jake Roberts in Georgia Championship Wrestling, being given the nickname “Hands of Stone” by Gordon Solie, his great run in Jim Crockett Promotions and working there with Tully Blanchard, Arn Anderson, the Koloffs,

 

Dick Murdoch, and others, winning the U.S. Tag Titles with Barry Windham, the Miss Atlanta Lively gimmick, his thoughts on retiring somewhat early in life, working briefly in the AWA, his WWF feud with Greg Valentine, thoughts on working at a WrestleMania or Starrcade as opposed to house shows in the old territories, and so much more.