Nick Gulas
Nick Gulas (born December 3, 1923 in Birmingham - died January 21, 1991 in Nashville) operated what was once the largest wrestling promotion in the South. Of Greek descent, was born into an entrepreneurial family. Family members owned Gulas Supper Club, a well-known Birmingham restaurant. A brother owned hot dog stands in Birmingham well into the 1980s.
Gulas began working for Birmingham wrestling promoter Joe Gunther in the 1930s, running errands and doing chores for management and the wrestlers.
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 1940s, he booked big name dance bands in the Hippodrome like Benny Goodman, Xavier Cugat, Harry James and Sonny Dunham.
The exact year is unknown but sometime in the mid-1940s, Nick Gulas began co-promoting wrestling cards with veteran wrestler Roy Welch, a member of the famous Welch wrestling family. A newspaper article from 1953 stated that Roy Welch had added Birmingham to his company when he bought a one-half interest in the promotion from Joe Gunther in January of that year. Gulas was not mentioned in the article but this was the point where Nick Gulas was eventually able to return to his hometown as a wrestling promoter.
On most Monday nights Gulas made the trip from the home office in Nashville to Birmingham to personally oversee the cards at Boutwell Auditorium, sometimes even walking to ringside from the back office to involve himself in outcome of the main event. It was also Nick who was on the other end of the phone at Live Studio Wrestling on Channel 13 and later Channel 42 when the upcoming Monday night card needed to be changed as a result of some event that Saturday night.
In the early days of the partnership Roy Welch was the primary decision maker and Gulas was more often the public face. Welch was the son of a wrestler and had three brothers in the business, all of them main-event caliber. Roy had been wrestling since the 1930s and had even owned and toured with one of the first wrestling bears.
In the early years of their partnership, Welch worked as a wrestler on the cards and it was not mentioned in promotional material that he actually owned part of the company. Nick was promoted as the “matchmaker” but behind the scenes Roy was the senior partner. This arrangement also allowed Welch to be the “good guy” with the talent since the more vocally feisty Gulas was usually more than willing to defend the partnership’s position “face to face.”
The duo eventually formed Gulas/Welch Enterprises, Inc. The promotion was a member of the National Wrestling Alliance, a federation of wrestling promoters that exchanged talent and supported a unified Heavyweight Wrestling Champion.
Wrestlers like the Fargos, Tex Riley, Len Rossi, Bearcat Brown and Tojo Yamamoto became local celebrities. Sterling Brewer, the announcer at Boutwell and Live Studio Wrestling, was also locally famous.
The wrestling business began to pass by Nick Gulas in the mid to late 1970s. WTBS out of Atlanta began airing wrestling to a national audience and fans began to fall away from their local promotions.
By the summer of 1980, Gulas was out of the business. He died on January 21, 1991.
External links
- Multi-use Hippodrome Was No Rinky-dink Arena website
- Kayfabe Memories website
- Studio Wrestling website