The Interactive Interview has interviewed over 120 guests and has survived for over 2 years. Other shows have come and gone, we're still standing after all.
In an interview no Florida Championship Wrestling fan should miss, we are humbled to welcome the late Gordon Solie's daughter and son-in-law Pam and Bob Allyn in an attempt to spread the word about their fantastic new book titled "Gordon Solie, Something Left Behind."
You have two options in how you wish to listen to this show. You can listen to an archived broadcast of our live Tuesday night show on KASC "The Blaze" 1260 AM or you can listen to our Internet broadcast. The Internet broadcast is uncut and is a few minutes longer. But, the choice is entirely up to you!
Listen to TII LIve Archive from 4/12/05
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BOB & PAM ALLYN
-- The show opens up with audio clips from Gordon Solie's emotional Hall of Fame induction from 1995. If you've never heard this, you should!
-- "He was my dad. He put his pants on like everybody else. I never really put him up there like he was someone really big," said Pam when asked about how she reacted to her dad's fame.
-- Pam remembers going to restaurants and having people come up to Gordon and how much Gordon loved that. "They became part of the table, in fact!"
-- There were plans to release a book before Gordon passed away. There was going to be 2 books, actually. One was to be Gordon's short stories and the other was one he was going to write about wrestling. But, Gordon's wife's health started failing and once she passed away, his started failing. So, one day Gordon looked at Pam, told her he was leaving her his writings and she "knew what to do with them."
-- Erik asks Pam if she learned more about her father in the process of putting this book together. "Absolutely! Things he probably didn't want me to know," said Pam. But, she says it was not all dirt she never knew before but a lot of good things as well. She had occasion to talk to people Gordon went to high school with and got to go further back in the family history than even Gordon himself did.
-- Pam describes the experience of writing the book with the same word Gordon described he and his daughter getting back together, "bittersweet."
-- When they went through Gordon's files, they would open a folder and there would be 20 newspaper clippings folded in there with no dates on them. Then family members would come up with pictures Gordon had given them and when they took all the documents that were given to them and all the documents Gordon left them, there were 2,200 documents!
-- As Gordon wasn't terribly organized, Bob was. The fact that Bob had become disabled gave him the time to shift through it all and use all documents that were reinvent and good for this project.
-- Many of the pictures from the book were so old, neither Bob nor Pam knew who they were of. They received help with things along those lines from Jim Brunzell, Sir Oliver Humperdink, Les Thatcher, and others. Bob mentions that was one of the best parts of the experience of writing the book, talking to the industry insiders who knew Gordon.
-- When Bob met Pam, she was living in Illinois with her mother and step-father. She told Bob that her father is a wrestling announcer in Florida. Bob's reaction was, "whoopie." He didn't know of Gordon at that time but when they went to Florida on their honeymoon, "the whoopie was on me," said Bob. He says people were all over Gordon in public asking for autographs from wrestling. But, he also was well known at the race track which was yet another facet of Gordon's life, one which many in wrestling didn't know about.
-- The reason Bob mentions the stock car racing is because he feels as good as Gordon was at wrestling announcing, he was even better at announcing races.
-- Pam feels one of the most surprising things in the book is Gordon's short stories. She mentions a friend said to her, "Your dad wrote this? He was just a wrestling announcer." But, Pam says her father knew how to tell a story perhaps like no other.
-- Nearly 2 years ago, James had occasion to sit down and speak with Mike Tenay for an interview that went nearly an hour and a half. James guesses a good 15 minute block of that interview was spent discussing Gordon Solie and the impact he had on Mike's life. (This interview is available for download in the archives of www.WrestlingEpicenter.com) James mentions how nice of a man Mike is and asks if they contacted him. They did and actually used one of his quotes on the back of the book. Bob mentions that he had occasion to speak with Mike as well and thought he was very nice and could tell he adored Gordon.
-- "Always a teacher," says Pam as she mentions how he took Mike under his wing in WCW and taught him. She says Gordon would do that for anybody.
-- "Those were some of the most personable people I have ever met," says Pam about the fans she met at the WrestleReunion recently. "Egos were checked at the door." She says it was a great experience getting to speak with people who remember her father and hearing them share serious about him with her, stories she had never heard before.
-- Bob says one of the reasons people should buy the book is for the pictures.He mentions how there are pictures of stars from the 50's to the 90's.
-- Pam knew he was writing short stories. She said when she was a little girl, he would tell her stories about knobs that just came out of nowhere. She said she remembers him wearing out typewriters, writing on tiles, wherever he was, he would write.
-- One of the short stories in the book is called "One Week from Rome" which was written in the 1970's. She is amazed by it because it was almost like he could see into the future because it feels like it could be right now.
-- "He was the best even though he sometimes didn't think he was," says Pam about her father.
-- Unsolicited remark by myself, Gordon was the best. There has never been and never will be an announcer that can captivate my attention during a match like Gordon Solie did. I caught some Georgia Championship Wrestling and World Championship Wrestling and then saw him through the wonder of the VCR with tapes from Florida. The man was the best.
Buy the book! http://www.floridabookstore.com/gs/ttr/
-- The Internet show then goes into an insane recap. On this recap, we discuss Ric Flair's incoherent speech from the Hall of Fame ceremony, Triple H's injury, the return of Hulk Hogan, and ponder exactly what Sid meant when he said breaking Goldberg's speech would make him "shake all over." Hey, we were in a good mood! There's nothing wrong with that!
***** We welcome you to join us this week on TII Live at 10 p.m. EST at www.WrestlingEpicenter.com as we will be previewing TNA Lockdown and will be joined by "The Royal Stud" Adan Windsor as well as discussing all the topics in pro wrestling including taking your calls at (480)965-1260 between the hours of 10 and 11 p.m. EST! Call in and you may walk away with a prize!
Also, join our official forums at www.WrestlingEpicenter.com and submit questions for Sean O'Haire who will join us next week!
