Cow Palace (Daly City) and Sacramento Memorial Auditiorium (Sacramento).
This wrestling blogger grew up with a promotion that spanned the San Francisco Bay Area, Northern California and parts of Nevada. There would also be a couple of shows in Hawaii. It was officially known as Big Time Wrestling San Francisco. Originally, this was an outlaw promotion. NWA San Francisco was the major promotion in the area between 1935-1962. I will share more of NWA San Francisco in a future post.
Wrestling fans were fortunate to see the likes of many wrestlers throughout North America and in Europe. The names of Ray Stevens, Pat Patterson, Pepper Gomez, Peter Maivia, Rocky Johnson, Nick Bockwinkel, Bruno Sammartino, Verne Gagne, Dory Funk, Dusty Rhodes, The Sheik and many others had a match or two in the area.
This blogger has seen numerous types of matches in the arena such as singles, tag team, Battle Royals and more. The Cow Palace held up to 15,000 for wrestling back then.
Per several databases such as Cagematch, the promotion, under mostly Roy Shire, had 1411 shows over the 21 year time frame. His biggest shows were mostly at the Cow Palace in Daly City and the Sacramento Memorial Auditorium near the state capital. Both pictures are on top of the post.
Here is the timeline of the promotion. Also, I'll share several links to the promotion below the timeline. When finding this in Cagematch, it goes under two promotions. Between 1961-1968, the wrestling shows were under the American Wrestling Alliance (not affiliated with the American Wrestling Association). In 1968, the promotion switched to the National Wrestling Alliance where it remained until the doors shut in 1981.
04 March 1961 - First Big Time Wrestling show at the Cow Palace. Bruno Sammartino, Verne Gagne and Ray Stevens appeared on the show.
30 March 1961 - Ray Stevens would defeat Bill Melby and become the first area United States Champion. Pat O'Connor (c) would defeat Ernie Dusek to remain the NWA Heavyweight Champion.
17 June 1961 - The Brunetti Brothers defeated Art Neilsen and Don Leo Jonathan to win the AWA (area version) World Tag Team Championship.
18 December 1965 - First ever Battle Royal took place in Sacramento with 18 wrestlers. It ended up a tie with Luis Martinez & Ray Stevens splitting the prize.
26 December 1965 - Women appear and wrestled at a BTW show for the first time at the Cow Palace as Bette Bouche and Betty Grable wrestled. The event drew a near capacity crowd.
24 January 1981 - Big Time Wrestling held their final show at the Cow Palace. Pat Patterson would win the 16 man Battle Royal. He would defeat Harley Race, the NWA World Champion by count out. Race would retain the title. An estimated 8500 (including me) was at the show.
23 May 1981 - Big Time Wrestling would have their final show at the Oakland Coliseum Arena. There were five matches on the show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iy4FNJCysso
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