Nick Gulas - Southern Wrestling Promoter

Nick Gulas, of Greek descent, was born into an entrepreneurial family. Family members owned Gulas Supper Club, a Birmingham landmark for decades. His brother Gus, even into the late 1980's, owned and operated fast food operations.

Nick was drawn to the entertainment business. He began working for Birmingham wrestling promoter Joe Gunther in the 1930's, running errands and doing chores that management or the wrestlers gave him.In a 1984 interview, Gulas told a reporter that he arrived in Nashville "about 1937" and found the Hippodrome. He soon began booking wrestling on Tuesday nights. In the 1940's, he booked big name dance bands in the Hippodrome like Benny Goodman, Xavier Cugat, Harry James and Sonny Dunham.

In the early 1950's, Nick Gulas took on veteran wrestler Roy Welch as a partner. Roy Welch was a member of the famous Welch wrestling family. Gulas/Welch Enterprises, Inc. was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance, a federation of wrestling promoters that exchanged talent and supported a unified Heavyweight Wrestling Champion. Each promotion could, however, promote their own champions in any other category. For instance, Nick and Roy could, and did, have their own World Tag Team Champions - in this case the "world" was Nick and Roy's promotion. Not very many fans pondered how their city could be so fortunate as to have the World Tag Team Champions wrestling week after week; those that did really didn't care.

Gulas' best drawing cities hosted wrestling every week, only taking a week off when a traveling event like the circus or an ice show had an arena booked. Even then, often the card would be moved to  an alternate venue. Rickwood Field in Birmingham served that purpose when Municipal (Boutwell) Auditorium was unavailable. It is actually pretty amazing that wrestling could sell 4000 - 6000 seats in Birmingham, fifty or more weeks out of the year. Wrestling didn't stop for holidays. Christmas and Thanksgiving cards were promoted as something special.

Some of Gulas' best cities were Nashville TN, Memphis TN, Chattanooga TN, Birmingham AL, and Louisville KY. Others that made him money over the years were Jonesboro AR, Lexington KY, Wheeling, WV, Huntsville, AL, Jackson TN, Tupelo, MS and Dayton OH. Over the years he ran spot shows at probably every town within a few hundred miles of Nashville. Small towns like Attala, Hartselle, Jasper, Sulligent, Decatur and Hamilton in Alabama, and Crossville, Cookville, Shelbyville, Tullahoma, Dixon, Waverly, Henderson and Lawrenceburg in Tennessee saw wrestling stars appear in their high school gyms and town halls. These were big events for small towns, and because the overhead was low, they were very profitable.

Gulas/Welch Enterprises covered an area hundreds of miles from one end to the other. The wrestlers did almost all of their traveling by automobile. Among the wrestlers, the most serious injuries did not occur in the ring, but on the road. History has forgotten most of the car accidents, but some were horrific. In 1976, Frank Hester, Pepe Lopez and their manager, Sam Bass, lost their lives traveling from Memphis to Nashville. In 1974, Len Rossi, one of Nick Gulas' major talents, was critically injured in an auto accident near Jackson Tennessee. The accident forced Rossi into retirement.
Jerry Jarrett in an interview with Tim Dills at Kayfabe Memories had this to say about the traveling:"During those days, I would make Memphis TV on Saturday morning, jump in the car without changing from my wrestling clothes and drive to either Huntsville or Chattanooga television, then make the Chattanooga house show and then drive to Birmingham television. It was crazy, but we were young and hungry.

By most accounts, Nick was not a popular man in the industry. He was loud and somewhat obnoxious, but maybe that was one of the secrets to his long success. Wrestlers have to be self promoters and self-serving to make a living, and promoters had to look out for their business. It was a clash of interests that always kept the promoters and wrestlers trying to get the better of one another.

The stories about Nick's poor payoffs have become legend. But no doubt they are true. Early in his career, Jack Brisco received $12.50 from Gulas. Even up into the late 1970's jobbers (enhancement talent who were paid to put bigger names over) were making around $25 a match. Most jobbers had to have day jobs to live. In Birmingham, Bob Holland was Nick's main referee. His pay was $15 to referee the entire card.

There were some wrestlers who Nick paid well and treated well. Len Rossi, Tojo Yamamoto and Jackie Fargo were unquestionably Nick's best draws from the early 60's to the early 70's. All three of them could have been stars anywhere in the country, but all three chose to work for Nick Gulas for the majority of their careers. Rossi's career was cut short by his auto accident, but even after the wreck Nick kept him employed in various capacities. Tojo and Fargo were friends with Jerry Jarrett, but chose to remain with Gulas when Jarrett began promoting competing cards.

Nick has a reputation for paying poorly, yet big names chose to work for him. Major stars who worked for Nick over the years include Sputnik Monroe, Crazy Luke Graham, The Von Brauners, Danny Hodge, the Shiek, Dick the Bruiser, Eddie Graham, Lester Welch, Pepper Gomez and Sam Steamboat. Many stars didn't just cruise through the territory; they would often work extended programs and return numerous times to the promotion.

Quite a few good wrestlers (or performers) chose to work for Nick for an extended period of time - Don Carson, Ken Lucas, Corsica Joe, Tamayo Soto, Dennis Hall, Johnny Walker (later to become Mr Wrestling #II), and Saul Weingeroff are just a few.

So it seems poor payoffs didn't hurt Nick's ability to book good names.

Buddy Wayne, who worked for Gulas for many years had this to say: "Nick was a very good promoter. His payoffs were right. I wrestled for him many years and also promoted towns for him. Almost every wrestlers thinks their payoff should have been more. Nick had a bad habit of saying the houses were more than they were; and then when he made the payoffs, he paid what was there. One night in Chattanooga he said, "Damn boy, we did $10,000.00 tonight. I said "Nick, it was a little over $8000.00" Nick said that was close to $10000.00 and that is what he said it was in the dressing room. When he paid off; he paid on $8000.00 which was what it was. Most everyone thought they should have got more, but it was not $10,000.00. Nick made a mistake of trying to push George when George was not that kind of talent."

But then there are those who worked for Nick for years who claim Gulas was not only a miserly promoter - he would take what wasn't rightfully his if he thought that he could get away with it. Don Greene has told the story of the time that he and Al Greene were booked against Larry Chene and Mike Clancy. All four of them were promised the same payoff, yet when comparing notes after the match they found out they had all received received different pay. According to Greene, an informal investigation of the books reflected that they had received the same pay, but evidently took the difference for himself. Chene and Clancy got so mad they left the territory.

Nick Gulas, Eddie Marlin, & Tommy Gilbert

In the 1950's, Nick Gulas introduced his wrestling stars to the television audience, which had grown to include almost every home. Though Gulas continued to use print media, it was television that drove the fans into the arenas. He used a formula that was repeated over and over to great effect. As soon as one grudge was settled (meaning when the promoters had used every conceivable gimmick, and the program was on the verge of become stale), a new one was set up on TV. For example, Birmingham's Saturday night TV matches, set the stage for the following Monday night's grudge match at Municipal Auditorium. This tactic was employed in every city that Gulas promoted that had local TV programming. Each city had it's own wrestling universe and the events of another city didn't figure into the booking. Match results in another city were never acknowledged - even title changes.

Wrestling announcers became local celebrities. The three that had the longest runs for Gulas were Sterling Brewer in Birmingham, Harry Thornton in Chattanooga, and Lance Brown in Memphis.

The wrestling business began to pass by Nick Gulas in the mid to late 1970's. WTBS out of Atlanta began airing wrestling to a national audience and fans began to fall away from their local promotions, which seemed minor league when compared to the production that Ted Turner's money could buy.

Christine Jarrett had been a key employee of Gulas/Welch Enterprises since the 1960's. Her son, Jerry Jarrett, grew up in the wrestling business. He worked his way up from program and ticket seller to regional star for Gulas. Details differ, depending on who is telling the story, but over time Jarrett had taken responsibilty for much of the work that the ailing Roy Welch once handled (Welch died in 1977). Jarrett eventually became part owner of the business. Jarrett booked the west side of the territory. Gulas booked the east side. There was an accrimoneous split between Jarrett and Gulas, partly according to Jarrett and other's who were involved in the business at the time, because Jarrett refused to book Nick's son George at the top of the cards on the eastern side. Nick was old school, very good old school, and he wasn't able to keep up with the younger Jarrett, who was headstrong about changing to suit the times. Jarrett was also a very good businessman who has been financially successful beyond wrestling.

The split was at Nick's expense. Jarrett took most of Nick's top talent and won the battles when they competed for the same fans - Memphis, for one, which must have been a huge blow to Nick's ego since it had been his city for several decades. Gulas lost Memphis TV Channel 13 to Jarrett, along with Memphis' biggest star Jerry Lawler and popular announcers Lance Russell and Dave Brown. Nick Gulas' last card in Memphis on Monday, March 21, 1977, drew a reported 484. Jarrett's card the night before, Sunday, drew a reported 4,887.

By the summer of 1980, Nick was out of the business. He died on January 21, 1991.

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