Straight Up John Watanabe

Today, November 2nd is National Bison Day (celebrated on the first Saturday in November), which "honors one of the most magnificent beasts to roam the land". On National Bison Day, I thought I'd honor one of the most magnificent and good-natured beasts to rule the wrestling ring, an old friend and colleague from my pro wrestling announcing days, Mark "Bison" Smith (who passed away on November 22, 2011 at the age of 41). Bison Smith may have looked like a big, intimidating buffalo, but away from the ring and TV cameras, he was really kind, sensitive and good-natured. I thought I'd share a good-natured story revolving around the above photo featuring me and Bison. Backstage, before one of our Urban Wrestling Alliance TV tapings at the historic Grand Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, I asked Bison if he could take a photo of me and someone else together (I don't even remember who it was) with my camera (before cameras on phones). Shortly after I h...

"Jesus wept" (John 11:35). That's the shortest verse in the Holy Bible. And this will probably be my shortest blog post. Above is a painting painted by a friend of my wife April's, a talented artist named Loretta Schroder of Big Bear City, California. In today's world where much of the "art work" we see is electronic, computerized and digitalized, it is SO refreshing to see an actual handmade painting on canvas, made with such great care by an actual human being's own hands. This beautiful painting features 2 verses from God's Word, Jeremiah 1:5 and Isaiah 49:1 (look 'em up, they're in there). Enjoy gazing at it, and may you see (visually and spiritually) the finger of God!

The photo above features me & my wife April with Bernie the baseball mascot, in one of the suites at San Manuel Stadium in San Bernardino, California, the home of the California League's Inland Empire 66ers baseball team. Over the years, around this time of year, April & I have enjoyed visiting several different minor league baseball parks (this last June, we witnessed the Evansville Otters winning over the Windy City Thunderbolts at Bosse Field in Evansville, Indiana), and this photo brings back good memories involving this San Bernardino-based baseball team and my pro wrestling announcing career. More than a decade ago, I was one of the morning radio co-hosts on KCAA AM 1050 (the NBC talk radio station in the Inland Empire), which also featured live broadcasts of Inland Empire 66ers baseball games. During one 66ers game, at San Manuel Stadium, then-Inland Empire 66ers baseball play-by-play announcer Sam Farber invited me into the stadium's radio broadcast booth to be ...

The photo above features me and another one of my old pro wrestling colleagues, the late "Shooter" Tony Jones, in the locker room at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in downtown Los Angeles, before I did play-by-play at ringside for one of our Urban Wrestling Alliance TV tapings. Tony passed away last month at the age of 53. Tony Jones and another old wrestling colleague of mine, Michael Modest (who was our UWA trainer) were prominently featured as the 2 wrestlers who had a WWF tryout match in the documentary movie "Beyond The Mat". For the Urban Wrestling Alliance TV shows, Tony wrestled as HTK...first, as a no-nonsense babyface/"good guy" known as Hard To Kill, and then later on as a heel/"bad guy" known as Honor, True & Knowledge. While there was no doubt that Tony was solid on the mat, there were some in the "creative department" (which included a staff of Hollywood TV writers) who had doubts about his "charisma" or on-cam...

With the news of Paul Heyman being inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame, as a part of the festivities leading up to WrestleMania 40 at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia, I thought I'd share this photo and some memories of the first time I met with Paul Heyman (back when he was the heel or "bad guy" wrestling manager Paul E. Dangerously) and his involvement with a certain small independent wrestling group that even some hardcore wrestling fans may not know that he was a part of. This photo was taken in a locker room at Marengo High School, in the tiny town of Marengo, Illinois, when Paul was brought in to manage The Terminators (Riggs & Wolf) at an event presented by a new promotion called Windy City Wrestling, promoted by Sam Decero (who formerly wrestled as Super Maxx, one half of the Maxx Brothers tag team with Mad Maxx, aka Eli The Eliminator). At the time, Windy City's events coordinator was the late Alan Eppenstein (I also knew Alan when he promoted some ...

My wife April took this recent photo of me with my long-time good friend and former Chicago-based pro wrestler/promoter/trainer Sonny Rogers. This picture features me & Sonny in front of the Oak Creek Diner in Oak Creek, Wisconsin (near where Sonny currently resides)...one of this diner's regulars is a peculiar old man whom Sonny calls "Terrytales" since this individual named Terry tells a lot of tall tales as a way to get everybody's attention. Since Sonny already mentioned on the old school wrestling website Kayfabe Memories that he, yours truly and former wrestler Jonnie Stewart all have birthdays on March 4th (even though I regard every day the same as any other, per Romans 14:5), I thought I'd share this memory of mine involving the 3 of us birthday boys in a wrestling ring. During my wrestling ring announcing days (before I began doing television & home video wrestling on-camera hosting & play-by-play), I was working at this Hammond (Indiana) Civ...