First Card with My Sister Vicky

Recently, I went through St. Louis Wrestling Club cards from 1981 trying to find the first card I attended with my sister Vicky. My big sister taking me to the wrestling matches in St. Louis every three weeks led to my interest in professional wrestling history.

When my mom married my stepdad, Ernest C. Diaz, I got five bonus sisters. We were a blended family before people were using that term. Vicky was fifteen years older than me and always wanted a brother. When she found out her little brother watched Wrestling at the Chase, Vicky got super excited. Vick had season tickets to Sam Muchnick’s wrestling cards but never went because no one else would go with her.

The first card Vicky took me to was right after my parents got married in June 1981. Vicky and I went to the Friday, June 12, 1981, card at Kiel Auditorium. I remember it distinctly because one of my two favorite wrestlers, Ted DiBiase, wrestled World Champion Harley Race for the world title in a best two-out-of-three-falls match.

Vicky picked me up at my parents’ house and drove me Downtown, where we would park in the auditorium garage. Most of the time, Vicky was decked out in a pants suit with a brimmed hat, very fashionable for the rough and tumble group that went to the wrestling matches. However, no one ever messed with us.

I tell everyone that my sister Vicky was the toughest sibling in the family. I saw her back lecherous men down on more than one occasion with just a hard look. As a small 12-year-old, I was worthless in a fight at the time. After I turned 18, I could back people down with that same look.

That night we saw Harley Race successfully defend his title by winning two of the three falls in a main event that barely lasted thirty minutes, a rarity in St. Louis. Pat O’Conner won the co-main event, an 18 man battle royal, so the card may have been running long.

For the rest of the card, Dusty Rhodes and Dick the Bruiser defeated Ric Flair and Ken Patera, when the referee disqualified Ric Flair. Kerry Von Erich and Dick Murdoch brawled to a double-disqualification. Rocky Johnson and Bulldog Bob Brown, during Brown’s improbable face turn, defeated J.J. Dillon and Buzz Tyler. Jack Brisco defeated Bobby Heenan. Rufus R. Jones and Terry Gibbs defeated Bob Sweetan, who looked like the horrible human being that he turned out to be, and Gene Lewis. In the opener, Spike Huber, Dick the Bruiser’s son-in-law, defeated Steve Lawler in six minutes.

Finding the first card was easier than my task for the last post of the year. I’m going to find the last card we attended before Bob Geigel and Pat O’Conner sold the promotion to Jim Crockett Promotions. Sam Muchnick was still the St. Louis promoter in 1981, but Sam would retire on Friday, January 1, 1982. Vicky and I attended that card also. In only a year or two, the new promoters had ruined the promotion Sam Muchnick built over forty years.

My big sister passed away in February 2022. A few months earlier, we talked about kids, grandkids, and for Vicky, great grandchildren. As often happened, we also reminisced about going to the cards in the early and mid-1980s, still some of our fondest memories.

I dedicated the Divided Championship to Vicky. She was the catalyst. Until we meet again, big sister.

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Sources: St. Louis Post-Dispatch (St. Louis, MO) June 12, 1981, p. 25 and June 13, 1981, p. 6