DCP120 – Don Muraco and Gordon Solie TBS Studios

"Magnificent" Don Muraco & Gordon Solie

TBS Studios — Georgia Championship Wrestling

The Bio

"Magnificent" Don Muraco — born Donald John Muraco on September 10, 1949, in Sunset Beach, Hawaii — is a WWE Hall of Fame inductee and one of the most respected and physically imposing heels of the golden age of professional wrestling. Muraco broke into the business in 1970 after being trained by Dean Ho and Peter Maivia, spending his first year learning the ropes across Vancouver, Portland, Championship Wrestling from Florida, and Los Angeles. His first major break came in Verne Gagne's American Wrestling Association, where he tag-teamed with Jimmy Snuka before moving on to Championship Wrestling from Florida in 1974. There he was frequently compared to NWA World Heavyweight Champion Jack Brisco, who he physically resembled — and in a career-making moment on May 28, 1974, the twenty-four-year-old Muraco reversed Brisco's signature Figure-Four Leglock in front of a stunned Florida crowd. He lost the match by disqualification, but the star was made.

Muraco went on to capture the NWA Americas Heavyweight Championship in Los Angeles, the NWA Florida Heavyweight Championship, the NWA Florida Tag Team Championship with Mike Graham, and championships across Hawaii, Georgia, San Francisco, and beyond. He first arrived in the WWF in 1981 and captured the WWF Intercontinental Championship by defeating Pedro Morales, holding the title for a combined 541 days across two reigns — one of the longest cumulative Intercontinental Championship tenures in company history. During his second reign, Muraco's cage-match feud with Jimmy "Superfly" Snuka culminated on October 17, 1983, at Madison Square Garden — a match remembered less for its outcome than for what happened after: Snuka scaling the fifteen-foot cage and delivering the Superfly Splash from the top, a moment of professional wrestling folklore that has been credited by everyone from Mick Foley to Tommy Dreamer as the moment that inspired their entire careers.

Muraco split 1982 between three territories at once — Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling (where he tag-teamed with Roddy Piper), Georgia Championship Wrestling (where he wrestled at times under a mask as Dr. X), and New Japan Pro Wrestling — before returning full-time to the WWF that fall. His bloody feuds with Bob Backlund, Tony Atlas, Rocky Johnson, and Snuka defined the WWF's Intercontinental Championship picture through the early expansion era. Muraco continued to wrestle internationally into the 1990s and 2000s, and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame by his old adversary Mick Foley in 2004. He was also inducted into the Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame in 2018.

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. Solie's paths crossed with Muraco throughout the 1970s and 1980s across the Florida and Georgia territories, and their broadcast desk interviews together — like the one captured in this print — represent some of the most memorable moments of the pre-satellite territory-era. Solie passed away on July 27, 2000, in Lakeland, Florida, at the age of 71.

This photograph — captured by Ditch-Cat Photo at the TBS Studios in Atlanta during a Georgia Championship Wrestling broadcast — preserves a moment when one of professional wrestling's most magnetic heels sat down with the Dean of Wrestling Broadcasting, the state-of-Georgia crest of the NWA Georgia Heavyweight Championship belt on the desk between them. Within months, Muraco would return to the WWF and capture the Intercontinental Championship for the second time, cementing himself as one of the defining champions of the era.

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.

About the NWA Georgia Heavyweight Championship

Established in 1964, the NWA Georgia Heavyweight Championship was the top regional singles title of Georgia Championship Wrestling — its centerpiece belt marked with the distinctive state-of-Georgia crest at the center of the main plate. Held throughout its history by Mr. Wrestling II, Tommy "Wildfire" Rich, Stan Hansen, Ole Anderson, Bruiser Brody, Buzz Sawyer, Tony Atlas, Dennis Condrey, Ken Patera, Dick Slater, Ted DiBiase, and a generation of stars who defined the golden age of the Georgia territory, the belt was the marquee prize on Saturday-afternoon WTBS broadcasts and headlined countless main events at the Atlanta Omni. In 1981, the championship was unified with the newly created NWA National Heavyweight Championship — Georgia Championship Wrestling's flagship national title — and the two belts traveled together through the final years of the territory era.