DCP115 Harley Race and Gordon Solie TBS Studios

Harley Race & Gordon Solie

TBS Studios — Georgia Championship Wrestling

The Bio

Harley Race is one of the most revered and influential professional wrestlers of the 20th century — an eight-time NWA World Heavyweight Champion widely regarded as the measuring stick for what it meant to be a true world champion. Born Harley Leland Race on April 11, 1943, in Quitman, Missouri, he dropped out of high school as a teenager to pursue wrestling, training under former world champions Stanislaus and Wladek Zbyszko on their Missouri farm. On May 24, 1973, Race defeated Dory Funk Jr. in Kansas City to capture his first NWA World Heavyweight Championship — and on July 20 of that same year, NWA President Sam Muchnick presented him with the iconic "Ten Pounds of Gold" belt, the domed globe championship visible in this very photograph.

Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s, Race was the NWA's most dominant traveling champion, defending the title across the United States, Japan, Australia, Mexico, and beyond — the country plates on the belt itself a literal map of where the title traveled in his hands. He famously body-slammed Andre the Giant on October 13, 1978, and his title-versus-title matches against WWF and AWA champions were historic firsts. His final NWA World Title loss came on November 24, 1983, at Starrcade, where Ric Flair pinned him for the championship in what is universally regarded as the torch-passing moment between two generations of NWA champion. Race was later inducted into the WWE, NWA, WCW, Professional Wrestling, and Wrestling Observer Newsletter Halls of Fame — one of only six men to achieve that distinction. He passed away on August 1, 2019, in Lake Saint Louis, Missouri, at the age of 76.

Gordon Solie — born Francis Jonard Labiak on January 29, 1929, in Minneapolis, Minnesota — was the most influential and respected play-by-play announcer in the history of professional wrestling. Known throughout the industry as "The Dean" and often called the Walter Cronkite of professional wrestling, Solie brought a journalistic gravitas and unparalleled command of language to the broadcast booth that elevated wrestling from spectacle to sport. He was the voice of Championship Wrestling from Florida under promoter Eddie Graham for more than twenty years, and from 1974 served as the voice of Georgia Championship Wrestling on WTBS — the program that, in 1979, became the first professional wrestling show to be broadcast nationally on cable television, transforming the regional territory model and laying the groundwork for what would become World Championship Wrestling.

Solie's signature phrases — "a pier-six brawl," "the crimson mask," "suplay" (his deliberate pronunciation of suplex) — became part of the wrestling vernacular. He never overstated, never broke kayfabe, and never let his voice carry above the moment. Wrestlers and promoters across every territory respected him as the rare broadcaster whose presence at ringside legitimized the product. He passed away on July 27, 2000, in Lakeland, Florida, at the age of 71. Solie was inducted into the WCW Hall of Fame in 1995, the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2003, the NWA Hall of Fame in 2009, and the WWE Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class of the Slammy Award for Best Announcer's legacy honorees.

This photograph — captured by Ditch-Cat Photo at the TBS Studios in Atlanta during a Georgia Championship Wrestling broadcast — preserves a moment when wrestling was about to change forever: the reigning NWA World Heavyweight Champion seated across from the most respected voice in the business, with the "Ten Pounds of Gold" on the table between them, inside the studio that would soon make wrestling a national cable phenomenon.

About "The Ten Pounds of Gold"

The NWA World Heavyweight Championship "Ten Pounds of Gold" belt was created in 1973 and presented to Harley Race by NWA President Sam Muchnick following his first championship win. Crafted in the United States with a signature domed globe centerpiece and removable side plates marking the countries where the title had been defended — Australia, Japan, Mexico, the United States, and more — the belt became the most prestigious championship in professional wrestling. It was carried across the territories by Race, Dory Funk Jr., Terry Funk, Jack Brisco, Dusty Rhodes, Ric Flair, Ricky Steamboat, and a generation of legends whose names defined the NWA. The original "Ten Pounds of Gold" was retired in 1986 and remains one of the most coveted and historically significant championship belts in the history of the sport

The TBS Studios — Studio One

Atlanta, Georgia · 1050 Techwood Drive · Home of Georgia Championship Wrestling

Tucked into the basement of Ted Turner's Techwood Drive headquarters, Studio One was — and remains — one of the most historically important buildings in the history of professional wrestling. From 1972 onward, Studio One hosted the weekly tapings of Georgia Championship Wrestling, the program that would, on December 17, 1976, become one of the first wrestling broadcasts in the country uplinked to a satellite when Turner's WTCG-Channel 17 became the WTBS "Superstation." From that moment, the small studio with the painted scenic backdrop and a few hundred folding chairs was beaming professional wrestling into living rooms from coast to coast — a national cable audience years ahead of any rival promotion.

It was here that Gordon Solie conducted the interviews that defined the broadcast vernacular of wrestling television. Here that Tommy "Wildfire" Rich, Ole Anderson, Buzz Sawyer, Magnum T.A., Dusty Rhodes, and a generation of stars were made. And here, on July 14, 1984 — the day still remembered as "Black Saturday" — Vince McMahon Jr. acquired the time slot and replaced Georgia Championship Wrestling with WWF programming, in a moment many wrestling historians mark as the beginning of the end of the territory system.