DCP117 Ric Flair, The Masked Superstar and Gordon Solie – TBS Studios

Ric Flair, Gordon Solie & The Masked Superstar

NWA Territory Era — Original Ditch-Cat Photo Print

The Bio

"Nature Boy" Ric Flair — born Richard Morgan Fliehr on February 25, 1949, in Memphis, Tennessee — is widely regarded as the greatest professional wrestler of all time. A record sixteen-time world champion across the NWA, WCW, and WWF, Flair transformed himself in the mid-1970s from a power brawler into the platinum-blond, robe-wearing, jet-flying, limousine-riding "Nature Boy" who would come to define professional wrestling for the next four decades. In 1981, he captured his first NWA World Heavyweight Championship — the first of a record-setting reigns — and became the industry's most recognizable full-time traveling champion. In 1986 he co-founded The Four Horsemen alongside Arn Anderson, Ole Anderson, and Tully Blanchard, the most influential stable in professional wrestling history. Flair is a two-time WWE Hall of Fame inductee — as an individual in 2008 and as a member of The Four Horsemen in 2012 — and has been honored by every major wrestling institution.

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. His signature phrases — "a pier-six brawl," "the crimson mask," "suplay" — became part of the wrestling vernacular. He passed away on July 27, 2000, in Lakeland, Florida, at the age of 71.

The Masked Superstar — William Reid "Bill" Eadie, born December 27, 1947, in Brownsville, Pennsylvania — is a Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame inductee and one of the most respected masked wrestlers in the history of the business. Before wrestling, Eadie was a high school teacher and athletic trainer at Cambridge and East Liverpool schools in Ohio, bringing real-world discipline and legitimate athletic credentials to every character he ever portrayed. Trained by Geeto Mongol (Tony Newberry) in Pittsburgh, he made his professional debut on December 15, 1972, and after early runs as one of "The Para-Medics" and as Bolo Mongol alongside his trainer, he found his defining character in Georgia Championship Wrestling in 1978, where he first donned the mask as The Masked Superstar.

Eadie's résumé under the hood is one of the deepest in wrestling history. He captured the NWA Georgia Heavyweight Championship four times — unifying it with the NWA National Heavyweight Championship, which he held three times — and added the NWA Television Championship and the NWA American Heavyweight Championship during his Georgia run. He returned to Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling in February 1980 under the management of Boris Malenko, where he was billed as an Olympic champion and challenged all comers with a $10,000 reward to anyone who could break his signature Cobra Clutch. He captured the NWA World Tag Team Championship (Mid-Atlantic version) twice in 1980–1981 with Paul Jones, and later held the NWA National Tag Team Championship with Super Destroyer and with King Kong Bundy. His mask-vs-mask feud with Mr. Wrestling II and his hour-long and 90-minute cage matches against Blackjack Mulligan are still regarded as some of the most physically demanding matches ever staged — feats no wrestlers since have matched. Eadie was also one of the very few men billed as having body-slammed Andre the Giant.

Eadie went on to become "Ax" of Demolition in the WWF alongside Randy Colley and later Barry Darsow (as "Smash"), one of the most decorated tag teams in company history — three-time WWF Tag Team Champions, holding the belts for what was at the time the longest reign of any tag team in company history. He played "Jake Bullet" opposite Hulk Hogan in the 1989 film No Holds Barred, appeared in national Pizza Hut commercials, and worked his final official match on August 5, 2017. He was inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2014 as The Masked Superstar, and into the New England Pro Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2020 with Demolition partner Smash.

This photograph — captured by Ditch-Cat Photo inside the legendary TBS Studios in Atlanta during a taping of Georgia Championship Wrestling — preserves something that could only exist in that specific window of professional wrestling history: four men, four separate paths to the top of the profession, standing together in the same ring, on the same broadcast. Flair as the Nature Boy. Solie as the Dean. The Masked Superstar in his prime as one of the most feared masked heels in the business. And Tim Woods — appearing here as himself, before adopting the hood — the credentialed collegiate champion, the babyface who broke the mask-heel convention, and the man who protected kayfabe when the whole business hung in the balance. Inside the studio that would make wrestling a national cable phenomenon.

About Georgia Championship Wrestling on WTBS

Georgia Championship Wrestling debuted in 1972 on Ted Turner's then-modest Atlanta independent station WTCG-Channel 17, under the booking of promoter Jim Barnett. On December 17, 1976, WTCG became one of the first stations in the United States to be uplinked to a satellite, transforming Turner's local Atlanta station into a "Superstation" beamed into homes nationwide. From that moment, Georgia Championship Wrestling on WTBS — broadcasting from Studio One on Techwood Drive and anchored by the unmatched voice of Gordon Solie — became the first wrestling program to reach a national cable audience, decades before any of its rivals could claim the same milestone. The show launched the careers of Tommy "Wildfire" Rich, Buzz Sawyer, Magnum T.A., and a generation of stars, and made Solie's call synonymous with wrestling television itself. On July 14, 1984 — the day remembered in wrestling history as "Black Saturday" — Vince McMahon Jr. acquired the program's Saturday 6:05 PM time slot and replaced it with WWF programming, an act that helped accelerate the collapse of the territory system. The broadcast was rebranded as World Championship Wrestling in 1985 and ran until WCW itself was sold to the WWF in 2001.