LordAntler
New Participating Member
http://members.f4wonline.com/wrestling-observer-newsletter/may-15-2017-wrestling-observer-newsletter-wwe-financials-breakdown
In Japan, Karl Gotch was known as the "God of Wrestling." If someone is to be considered the "God of Wrestling Historians," that honor would go to J Michael Kenyon. J Michael, or JMK as many of us know him, may have done more research and chronicled more wrestling facts than anyone alive. Fellow wrestling historians considered him the "go-to guy" when information about a specific wrestler or event was needed.
Kenyon passed away of congestive heart failure at the age of 73 on 5/3.
He was born Michael Eugene Glover in Seattle, Washington, on July 9, 1943. He discovered pro wrestling in December 1952 when his grandfather took him to see Lou Thesz defend the NWA title against Primo Carnera at the Armory in Seattle on Dec. 18, 1952. Not having a television in their home, that event sparked an interest in pro wrestling that would last his entire life.
"They had me from the minute I stepped in the door. I was captivated by the overall atmosphere, the smoke, the growl of the crowd, people dressed to the nines screaming their heads off ... and, of course, the colorful guys who were climbing up into the ring."
His dad wasn't really a fan, so JMK wasn't able to attend house shows again until he was in high school. That didn't stop him from pursuing his interest, though. He kept up with what was going on through newsstand magazines, scoured the newspapers for reports about the weekly matches, and joined fan clubs. One night at the Civic Auditorium, he summoned up enough courage to approach wrestler Shag Thomas and told him he would like to start a fan club in his honor. The following week, Shag brought around 100 glossy photos and gave them to JMK to send out with a mimeographed bulletin he produced.
When he was able to drive, J Michael ventured out to house shows in Tacoma, promoted at the time out of the Vancouver office.
"Tacoma was a different kind of promotion. They used bigger heavyweights. Don Owen continued to use smaller guys, like (Morris) Siegel did in Texas. Rod Fenton, who had the license up there, Don Owen and Harry Elliott combined to run huge shows in Seattle, drawing 12,000 to 14,000 people. Those were the first really big shows I had seen."
Kenyon never pursued a career as a wrestler, but he had a couple matches at charity boxing exhibitions in Seattle.
"Before one of the boxing matches, one of my friends and I would go into the dressing room, blade ourselves, cover it with something so it wouldn't bleed, and go out to the ring. In seconds, we had blood all over us. We'd blow up in about two minutes and could barely move, but everybody got a kick out of it. It made for a nice intermission."
He was still in high school when he got his first experience in the newspaper business, writing sports reports for the school newspaper, and was listed as a finalist for a "Seattle Times" scholarship in 1960. When he graduated high school, he went into the service and was assigned to Fort Ord in California. He later was transferred to Fort Hood in Texas where he made friends with the local wrestling promoter in Waco.
"He thought he was promoting, but Dick Raines was running the town." Raines took Kenyon into the dressing room and that's when he got smartened up to the inner-workings of the wrestling business. In the days that followed, he began sending articles on the Texas promotion to "Wrestling Revue" and "Wrestling World" magazines.
After receiving an honorable discharge from the army in Dec. 1964, Kenyon moved to Yakima, Washington, where he got a job as sportswriter. One year later, he was hired as a reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
In 1965, the sports editor of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer hired him as a sportswriter. Three years later, when he was just 25 years old, young Mike Glover replaced the Post-Intelligencer reporter who had been assigned to the newly formed Seattle Sonics basketball team, a position that propelled him into the big-time. He took to the limelight with alacrity, traveling from coast to coast, indulging in willing women and high-stakes card games, and was a nightly patron at bars. By his own admission, it wasn't unusual for him to "be gone 24 hours a day, working 12 hours at the paper and spending 12 hours at the bar."
In June 1968, before he married the second time, his fiancé accepted his proposal on the condition he change his name. The name "Michael Glover" didn't appeal to her. He agreed and changed his name to J Michael Kenyon. The name was conceived when he drove past a building in Lynnwood, Washington, with the name Kenyon Printing printed on the side. He liked the sound of "Michael Kenyon," but thought it was too short for a byline at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, so he asked the printer to add a "J" before "Michael" ... and to leave off the period. He had his name legally changed and they moved to Baltimore (another condition his bride made before accepting his proposal) where he took a job with the Baltimore Sun. He discovered that the columns for the newspaper, however, were narrower in size than those in Seattle, so he was billed simply as "Mike Kenyon" in the Sun sports pages.
Other than that, from that day on, he has been known personally and professionally as J Michael Kenyon.
Due to irreconcilable differences, six weeks after the wedding, JMK left a note on the couch that said, "I'm leaving," and took a bus to Detroit, where he wandered the streets dead broke while working for two fledgling local magazines. He eventually called the managing editor of the Post-Intelligencer and secured a job with the newspaper as the television critic. The job didn't last too long. He left the Post-Intelligencer in 1969 when he was ordered to write about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landing on the moon. He refused and eventually typed a resignation letter which he took to KVI Radio and read it over the air.
JMK then went to work for George Chemeres, a boxing promoter at the Downtown Boxing Gym on First Avenue. He ran the gym and helped with Chemeres' boxing cards. In January 1970, Dean Chance, former Major League Baseball pitcher and winner of the Cy Young Award, tried his hand at presenting boxing and asked J Michael to promote them. They held several cards, with most not drawing well, and JMK left less than two months later when he couldn't handle Chance's interference with the shows.
He also worked in various capacities for a variety of publications — managing editor of "Hollywood Citizen-News," columnist for "Hollywood Reporter," and was a feature writer for the McClatchy News Service, all of which went out of business or didn't pay well. He returned to Seattle and, drag-racing being another of his passions, took another low-paying job as publicist for the Seattle International Raceway. A short time later, broke and discouraged, he swallowed his pride and called someone he knew at the Post-Intelligencer. To his amazement, he was offered a position.
JMK was quite a controversial character. A newspaper report said, "Seattle never has been the same since this man blew through the city, sending people running for cover and dodging debris, providing his hometown with an unforgettable character who repeatedly tested the limits of his personal and professional life while writing and talking about sports in an entertaining and pioneering fashion."
He may have been controversial, but he also was highly respected by those in the news industry. In his column, "Larry King's People," Larry King wrote, "J Michael Kenyon in Seattle and Pete Franklin in Cleveland are the two best radio sports talk-show hosts in the USA." "The Weekly," a Seattle publication, said he was "the best sportswriter in Seattle," and referred to him as "the hardest working, most imaginative, most thorough, most knowledgeable," and added "with a special citation of 'most bizarre.'"
One of those bizarre incidents included driving a borrowed Chevrolet into San Diego's Mission Bay ... and leaving it there. His direct style of reporting led to ABC Television and Carol Channing, on separate occasions, demanding he be fired by the Post-Intelligencer. He was threatened by former Yankee catcher Elston Howard, and having a can of beer hurled at him by Boston Red Sox pitcher Dick Williams.
While hosting a talk show on Seattle's KVI radio, he had more than one interview end abruptly when he asked a question deemed too controversial for the subject he was interviewing.
By JMK's own admission, he went a little crazy in the '70s. "I went off the rails for 15 years ... drugs, booze, and four wives during that time."
In 1973, JMK began working as publicity director, ring announcer and even did some refereeing for Dean Silverstone's "Superstar Championship Wrestling" promotion. "
“At the time, I was a special projects editor for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer,” he recalled. “I was around for four or five months, but Dean stayed at it for three years or so."
In 1977, when the Seattle Mariners came into existence, he was asked to cover the Mariners. JMK immediately spent every waking hour reading about baseball and learning everything he could about the operation and history of the sport. General manager Dick Vertlieve praised J Michael's work when he told a reporter, "He has a feel for what makes sports colorful, for the wonderful characters who play and hang around the game. He knows them and knows everything else, too."
JMK is credited for nicknaming Mario Mendoza, the shortstop, "El Espirador" (the vacuum cleaner), and saddled Mariners' broadcasters with the handles "Dapper" Dave Niehaus and "Captain" Kenny Wilson. He also knew more about what was going on inside the Mariners offices than the team owners and executives.
A true reporter, though, he didn't allow his relationship with the team to skew his reporting. He wrote many stories that team executives didn't appreciate, like financial troubles the Mariners were facing, or how the outfield fences weren't regulation height (he actually took a tape measure in the Kingdome and measured them), regardless of how that might affect his acceptance into the Mariners' locker room.
When he was in the Mariners' clubhouse, he asked outrageous questions that had the players thinking he was a bit off his nut. Those questions, however, elicited fascinating answers that no other reporter could have obtained.
In 1980, he began moonlighting on KAYO radio as an occasional guest and host of the station's sports talk show. That spring, he moved to KVI as host of the "Ask Dan O'Brien Show," in which the public called in to ask questions of the Mariners' president. It was during his time at KVI when he experienced what he called the "highlight of my life in sports."
While hosting the Sunday night "7/11 Legends of Sport" in 1982, he spent an hour reminiscing with "The Galloping Ghost," Harold (Red) Grange, the legendary All-American halfback for the University of Illinois and Chicago Bears.
From there, he worked a variety of jobs — columnist with the "News-Tribune" in Tacoma from 1986 through 1989, co-hosted a Saturday night college football highlights show on KCPQ-TV with Keith Shipman in 1987, returned to KLAY in 1990 with a seven to nine a.m. morning show, complete with (as one newspaper reported) "a make-believe marching band, oodles of controversial and often silly guests, plus his usual, nonsensical view of the sporting scene."
In 1992, JMK and his wife Joan went to England, returning to the U.S. in 1994 to host a sports radio talk show in Portland.
From 1995 to 1998, JMK was the spokesman and vice-president of public relations for the Unlimited Hydroplane Racing Association and promoted annual hydroplane races on the river near Evansville, Indiana. That ended with a move to the New York City area where he worked for a sports website. He returned to the Pacific Northwest in 2000 and, for health reasons, moved to the Oregon coast in 2004.
J Michael was both a mentor and an inspiration to me since I first began researching and writing about professional wrestling in 1996. He also has been one of the biggest advocates of my work. That didn't stop him from reaming me out whenever he found an error in my writing, be it historical or grammatical.
He sent e-mails chastising and/or insulting me strongly for spelling or grammar infractions, and minced no words in the process. Where most people would have been offended to have been addressed in such a manner, I loved everything he wrote ... because I always learned something. As the president of the unofficial 'Wrestling Spelling Police,' an imaginary organization born in his fertile mind, J Michael sent out regular updates to historians about the correct spelling of wrestlers' names.
On one occasion, I reported that a 'Mike Czarian' wrestled in Nashville, which should have been 'Mike Nazarian.' It was spelled 'Czarian' several times in newspaper reports and I never made the connection. J Michael's e-mail began with, 'I was able to at least temporarily block a cease-and-desist order by the Wrestling Spelling Police to have you arrested on sight.' That was a mild rebuke compared to others he sent.
It was attention to details that makes J Michael Kenyon the most important wrestling historian ever. There were times when I would e-mail and ask if he could send me a brief overview of a particular wrestler's career. Within an hour, a return e-mail would arrive with ten to 20 (sometimes more) pages of results, articles, and background material. How he was able to structure his records so he could find that much material so quickly is amazing.
Even more amazing, J Michael's brain was a virtual computer filled with information he could access at the drop of a hat. I'm one of those whose talent lies in knowing where to look to find the material I need, but I forget a lot of things as soon as I hear them. JMK had instant recall of all kinds of information. And wrestling wasn't the only thing he knew. He could rattle off statistics, details, and trivia about basketball, baseball, boxing, auto racing, horse racing, old-time radio, politics, and who knows what else. He could even tell you the history of various newspapers.
A great deal of J Michael's research and writings can be found on the Internet, specifically "The WAWLI Papers" (Wrestling As We Liked It), which can be found on the wrestlingclassics.com website, and he sent out regular e-mails to fellow historians with lengthy documents under various titles, like "Allsies" and "Manmania," each filled with typed articles followed by his comments and viewpoints.
If combined into book format, his work would easily fill 20 or more books. He also was a valuable asset to other authors, giving Steve Yohe an unfinished version of a biography on Ed (Strangler) Lewis, which Steve used as the base for the early part of his book "Ed (Strangler) Lewis: Facts Within a Myth." He also helped Fred Hornby with his "Gorgeous George Record Book."
For the past fifteen years, I pushed, cajoled and prodded JMK to actually write a book on some subject — any subject — pertaining to wrestling. Sadly, the only book published with his name as author was the recently released "Wrestling in the Garden — The Battle for New York: Works, Shoots & Double-Crosses," of which JMK and I were co-authors.
After it was released, he admitted to me that he wished he had taken me up on my suggestion, and having the completed book in his hands had inspired him to begin working diligently on a book about the wrestling territories, centering around the Tom Packs booking operations of the '30s and '40s, which he planned to begin in May 2017.
In 2016 and 2017, he edited the autobiography of the first Sonics coach, Al Bianchi, and had just finished the edit of "My Oh My: The Dave Niehaus Story."
In 2010, JMK was the recipient of the James C. Melby Award at the annual George Tragos/Lou Thesz Professional Wrestling Hall of Fame inductions at the National Wrestling Hall of Fame/Dan Gable Museum in Waterloo, Iowa. He also was selected to be the first recipient of the Cauliflower Alley Club version of the James C. Melby Award, an award he deferred due to a difference of opinion he had with the CAC board of directors, of which he had been a member for many years.
He lived the last decades of his life with his wife, Joan (who he refers to as Madame Zogg), in Port Orford, Oregon. For almost a decade, he told close friends that he was suffering from dementia. Until the day of his death, though, he never was at a loss when asked a question about a wrestler or an event.
"There will never be another like him" is a cliché overused in obituaries, but in regards to J Michael Kenyon, it's the perfect description to characterize his life. Words can't begin to describe just how much he contributed to the wrestling community and the annals of wrestling history.