On Saturday night, the night before Game Changer Wrestling (GCW) returns to Nashville for Long. Live. GCW, GCW presents it’s second WOMBAT special event. WOMBAT, or Warriors of Mat Battle and Trouble, is the old indie promotion from GCW regular The Invisible Man and features backyard wrestlers and longtime underground indie veterans in a fun-filled, yet chaotic event.
One of the matches slated for Saturday nights event, which airs live on FITE.tv, features a blast from the past and one of Southern wrestling’s greatest stars in “Wildfire” Tommy Rich. Tommy Rich is pairing alongside another longtime Southern wrestling veteran in “Action” Mike Jackson, to face the tandem of Mancer Warner and 1 Called Manders.
Tommy Rich began his pro wrestling career in 1974, working various NWA territories such as Championship Wrestling From Florida, Georgia Championship Wrestling, Mid South Wrestling, and Mid-Atlantic, as well as Continental Wrestling Association (CWA) in Memphis. In 1981, Rich reached the pinnacle of the sport, defeating Harley Race for the NWA World’s Heavyweight Championship.
He would also work with the American Wrestling Association (AWA) and All-Japan throughout the 1980s, before signing with WCW in 1989. By 1993, he reunited with the CWA brass in their new venture, United States Wrestling Association (USWA), where he became a 4x USWA Heavyweight Champion and 5x USWA Tag Team Champion with Doug Gilbert.
In 1991, he was a 2x WCW World Tag Team Champion and member of Terri Runnel‘s York Foundation stable, which also featured Terry Taylor and the Rock N’ Roll Express‘ Ricky Morton, and Michael Wallstreet (aka IRS in the WWF, or Mike Rotunda). By the end of the 1990s, he began working with ECW, and by 1999 was working with IWA Mid South. While he hasn’t officially retired from a 45-year career, his appearances are limited to less than 10 a year – and his GCW match on Saturday night will mark his first of 2019.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yov1BBbHboU
His partner for the evening, “Action” Mike Jackson, is another longtime veteran of the original NWA, with Mid South, Championship Wrestling From Florida, Georgia Championship Wrestling, as well as the AWA. A career journeyman who debuted in the early 1970s, he was a hand utilized around the nation. After briefly working for WCW in 1991, he took an extended hiatus from wrestling, before returning to the US indies in the early 2000s, where he’s worked the Southern indies like Peachstate Wrestling Alliance in Georgia and NWA Wrestle Birmingham in Alabama.
Stay tuned to the Last Word on Pro Wrestling for more on this and other stories from around the world of wrestling, as they develop. You can always count on LWOPW to be on top of the major news in the wrestling world, as well as to provide you with analysis, previews, videos, interviews, and editorials on the wrestling world. You can watch W.O.M.B.A.T. 2 from GCW live on FITE.tv.
