Timothy Polfuss, a 47-year-old self-described “professional wrestling historian,” can tell you everything there is to know about every “territory” in the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA) between 1948 and 1993, and can also tell you everything there is to know about desperately yearning for an emotional relationship with another human being.

Polfuss, whose subterranean bachelor apartment in Topeka is a floor-to-ceiling shrine to wrestling and sadness, can rhyme off the entire history of Leroy McGuirk’s Championship Wrestling in Tulsa, but is incapable of describing the act of lovemaking from first-hand experience.

“When McGuirk sold the Tulsa territory to Bill Watts in 1979, it laid the foundation for Mid-South Wrestling, as well as a alliance with promoter Paul Bosch’s Houston territory, and dear God I am so very,very lonely,” Polfuss recently said to his cat, Toots.

Added Polfuss: “Meanwhile, the Funks were running Western State Sports in Amarillo and forging a strong relationship with Giant Baba’s All Japan Pro Wrestling promotion. I wish I could forge a strong relationship with someone. Anyone.”

Polfuss has numerous areas of particular expertise, such as:

  • The importance of Chief Jay Strongbow in Eddie Graham’s Championship Wrestling from Florida promotion, and the utter lack of interest any woman he met on eHarmony has ever expressed in the subject
  • The little-known role of Gorilla Monsoon in establishing Puerto Rico’s World Wrestling Council, and the crushing solitude that accompanies researching the subject
  • The pivotal role of “Playboy” Buddy Rose in Don Owens’ Portland Promotion, and the gnawing existential dread of dying alone amid countless grainy VHS tapes and boxes of tattered back-issues of Pro Wrestling Illustrated

Polfuss intends to spend the coming weeks doing a “deep dive” into the sociological ramifications of the 1891 match between Farmer Burns and William Muldoon, and then perhaps doing a deep dive into depression.

 

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