Al Getz managed a complicated journey to Melby Award

Thomas Starr

Al Getz with his Charting the Territories books.
Al Getz with his Charting the Territories books.

In the 1990s, Al Getz was a manager in a promotion called Southern States Wrestling in Tennessee. He was known for his loud, high-energy promos. He was also heavier than the trim, svelte figure he is today. With that added weight and his hyperactive promo style, his peers decided to rib him.

“They sent me out to do an interview and told me that after a minute or two, I would be attacked from behind,” Getz recalled, launching into the tale for SlamWrestling.net. World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Smoky Mountain Wrestling referee Mark Curtis (Brian Hildebrand) was supposed to be the one confronting Getz.

“I went out and did my typical loud and boisterous promo, sure to get all the key points in because I knew I would eventually get attacked. Or so I thought. Minutes went by and I was still out there by myself. I was running out of things to say. I was quickly out of breath and started to sweat both figuratively and literally. But I had to keep talking. I had no idea why I had not been attacked yet, and I had to keep going, figuring I would get in trouble if I just finished talking and left the ringside area. Finally, after what felt like an eternity, Mark came running out to attack me. Afterwards, when I got to the back, everybody was laughing and smiling, and I realized it had all been planned by them!”

Al Getz as a manager.
Al Getz as a manager.

It’s all a far cry from what Getz is being honored for later this month — his research not his motor-mouth.

On July 19, 2024, Getz will receive the Jim Melby Award during a ceremony for the latest class of honorees at the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame. The ceremony is part of a three-day event spanning July 18-20, in Waterloo, Iowa, at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Dan Gable Museum. Since 2006, the Melby Award has been presented to someone who has shown “excellence in the preservation of professional wrestling history through the written word.”

Getz has been involved in pro wrestling in multiple capacities for the past 30 years. He is receiving this award for work that he has done via a series of books, podcasts, videos, and articles, documenting wrestling cards from a single territory over a three-year period and using metrics to analyze a wrestler’s value within that territory. He dubbed these endeavors: Charting the Territories.

Born Allan Barrie in 1971, Getz grew up in Long Island. His mother was a school librarian and, for most of his childhood, he was raised in a single-parent household. While visiting his grandparents in Florida, he was exposed to pro wrestling for the first time, on cable, which was something he didn’t have at home.

“I was flipping through the channels and came upon TBS, where Dusty Rhodes was doing an interview. I do not even know if I knew that I was watching pro wrestling, but I was absolutely hooked by watching Dusty do his thing,” said Getz, who prefers to go by his work name when it’s wrestling-related.

Back in Long Island, the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now World Wrestling Entertainment, WWE) was the promotion available on local TV, and he started watching and attending house shows. Eventually, his family got cable and he was finally able to watch several different pro wrestling promotions. He was even able to watch Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, but only the Spanish-language broadcast. Basically, Getz would watch any wrestling available to him.

In the 1990s, Getz was living in North Carolina, and was exposed to Jim Cornette‘s Smoky Mountain Wrestling shows. Then, in the summer of 1995, he attended a couple of local shows, and met the veteran Southern star, K.C. Thunder, who would take Getz under his wing and show him the ropes, setting him on the path to becoming a wrestling manager (and eventually being ribbed). In exchange, Getz drove Thunder to the shows and got an education.

“I had a knack for pissing people off,” Getz explained, with a sly smile.

Al Getz and Beau James
Al Getz and Beau James

As Al Barrie became Al Getz, he realized that his ability to make people angry worked wonders as a manager for the next two decades, although he would have several other roles and his schedule lightened after 2007.

In 1998, Getz worked for Bert Prentice‘s Music City Wrestling, as an office manager and a TV commentator for several months. He also toiled for Bill Behrens’ National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) Wildside and later for Roland Alexander‘s All-Pro Wrestling (APW) from late 1998 to early 1999. Back in the North Carolina area, Getz spent time with several promotions, including the Hardy Boys‘ OMEGA promotion.

Some notable names Getz has managed include Steve Corino and Joey Matthews. He worked for NWA Wildside off and on from 1995-2007 where he was not only a manager, but, at various times, he also worked as a commentator and commissioner. In 2007, Getz’s involvement in wrestling would become sporadic as he decided to go back to college.

Getz wound down his wrestling career in 2015. His departure saw him involved in two matches: a Loser Leaves Town Match for NWA Atlanta and a Lumberjack Match for WrestleMerica. It was during a match in November 2015 that he decided to hang it up.

“It was November 2015 where I was managing the heel,” he explained. After said match, a brawl broke out. In attempting to avoid it, he hurt his leg. “I broke it when I jumped from the ring apron to the floor.”

A revamped Al Getz working as an announcer.
A revamped Al Getz working as an announcer in 2015.

Graduating from Georgia State University in 2007 with a double major in Actuarial Science and Finance, Getz’s new degree would play a role in his next, and arguably most important, contribution to professional wrestling. His curiosity surrounded statements made by wrestlers about how often they worked. Many have claimed to have worked six to seven days a week. He was also curious about their placement on cards and finding a way to contextualize their importance in the territories they worked for.

In 1996, Getz ran a website called Whoo Wrestling. It would last about four years and featured articles on current events in wrestling and stories about local promotions. Although it was never said, the independent promotions knew that they would receive coverage on the website if Getz was booked with their promotion. Running Whoo Wrestling was a forerunner to his blog/website Charting the Territories, which would arrive almost 15 years later.

Charting the Territories started as a blog in 2018. The podcast began in 2020 with cohost Jon Boucher. The blog would morph into a website in 2023, which now has Getz’s blog posts in its archives section.

“I wanted to fill in gaps in historical records and create something similar to the back of the baseball card stats,” Getz explained.

The same title adorns a series of self-published books. There are currently four books in the series with more coming. The first book, published in 2022, covered Leroy McGuirk’s Oklahoma/Louisiana territory from 1971-73. Getz collected records for 2,499 house shows and used unique statistics to measure the role of each wrestler in the territory.

In November 2018, Getz told Brian Last, famously Cornette’s cohost on his two podcasts, “With wrestling there really aren’t statistics. Obviously, there are wins and loss records but those don’t mean anything.” He used an example of promoters using a count-out loss to setup a rematch, calling it a plot device not a result.

“So, for a while I was thinking, ‘What can quantify a wrestler’s worth or position?’ And I got the idea of looking at their spot on the card,” said Getz.

One of these statistics was SPOT. SPOT stands for Statistical Position Over Time. He compares it to a batting average where you can look at it over a short period or a long period of time. Getz explained SPOT to Jonathan Snowden in an article posted in 2022 The Past is Never Dead – by Jonathan Snowden – Hybrid Shoot (substack.com).

“Over time I developed what I call the SPOT Rating, which stands for Statistical Position Over Time. It uses the order of the matches on a given wrestling card to put a numeric value on a wrestler’s position, or their ‘spot.’ The higher the number, the higher up the cards they were placed. And this was during an era where that mattered, where the wrestlers higher up on the card were the ones who ‘drew the crowd.’ If someone demonstrated the ability to draw fans when they are put in meaningful matches, the promotion will continue to put them in meaningful matches.”

Not every card is as simple as the last match being the most important match. In the World Wide Wrestling Federation (WWWF), the main event would frequently take place before intermission. So, the heavily advertised match would not be the last match on the card. Getz elaborated on his SPOT ratings: “The idea with the SPOT Rating is to rank the matches in ‘perceived order of importance.’ What was the promoter pushing as the most important match, second most important match, etc.”

He continued, “In some ways, it’s similar to the order that actors/actresses are listed in movie credits. If you wanted to know who the ‘biggest stars’ of the Fast & the Furious movies were, you could watch each movie and calculate screen times and who won every car race, car chase, and fight scene. Or you could just look at how they’re listed in the credits and come up with a numeric way of measuring that.”

His website Charting the Territories – Wrestling has several other features. This includes what he calls “A Year in the Life” which is an overview of a single year of a single territory in a “back of a baseball card” fashion. For instance, currently the East Tennessee territory is covered for 1971. Along with the aforementioned past blog posts, the site also includes links to his podcast. In addition, Getz has set up a companion YouTube page (873) Charting the Territories – YouTube with clips from the podcast as well.

Getz pitched the podcast idea to his co-host, Jon Boucher, in February of 2020. He simply direct messaged Boucher on Twitter, now X. Boucher says he was initially hesitant to do the podcast, because he was unsure of what he could contribute. He was familiar with Getz’s work and admired what he was doing, so the opportunity to learn how he conducted his research was part of why Boucher eventually decided to do the podcast.

Al Getz
Al Getz

The research that Getz does has led to this honor from the George Tragos/Lou Thesz Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame. Past recipients include Scott Teal, Dave Meltzer, and Bill Apter among the 16 past winners. It is named for the first winner Jim Melby, a prolific writer, who worked on magazines, programs, books, and anything else you can think of related to pro wrestling.

Boucher for one is “delighted” to see Getz be honored. “His work ethic is tireless, his analysis of his research is unique, and the way he presents this analysis — whether on the podcast, in his books, on his blog, or on social media — is always in a manner that is both engaging and easily understood,” said Boucher.

Charting the Territories is like an encyclopedia for pro wrestling. Getz scours local libraries and state archives, looking through decades worth of microfilm and newspapers to fill out his charts and compile statistics. His interests range from the period of the Dumont Network days to the rise of cable TV. His next book, released just in time for the Tragos/Thesz induction weekend, will look at the Heart of America territory, based out of Kansas City, from 1974-1976.

The importance of Getz’s work cannot be overstated. Getz has put in the hours to compile an impressive amount of data and made it available in multiple forms that will be useful to current and future historians of professional wrestling. His statistics also provide an idea of the importance individual wrestlers had on a specific territory, adding context to other research.

TOP PHOTO: Al Getz with his Charting the Territories books.

2024 TRAGOS/THESZ HOF HONOREES

RELATED LINKS

More Hall Of Fame News