Ignacio “Pedro” Martinez is not a promoter that is well known today. Through most of his career, Martinez controlled upstate New York. Buffalo, Utica, Rochester, Elmira, Binghamton, and occasionally Albany. It wasn’t a large market, but it was a small stable territory that drew respectable numbers for decades. Names like Dusty Rhodes, Ox Baker, and Earnie Ladd worked that area at various points in their career. Pedro Martinez was born in Caliente, Mexico, on February 6, 1915, and he was raised in Phoenix. The date of his in-ring debut as a wrestler is unknown, probably sometime in the 1930s. In the 1940’s he settled in Buffalo, where he worked as a wrestler and later on as a wrestler/promoter alongside promoter Ed Don George.
Martinez’s kept Toots on to help manage the territory. According to Martinez in a 1954 interview, under this model, business went way up. MBA grossed $1,100,000 in 1952, up from $540,000 in 1951. November 18, 1952, MSG card drew 18,357 and a gate of $57,396. Publically things were going great for Martinez, but he wanted out for unknown reasons and wanted out fast. Martinez sold control of the company back to Toots. As a part of the agreement, $25,000 would be paid back to Martinez in $250 installments over 100 weeks.
As of January 1953, Toots was left in control of Manhattan Booking Agency with the idea that Martinez would keep making money through that agreement. The result was a disaster. A March 1953 MSG card with the main event of Antonino Rocca challenging Lou Thesz for the NWA World Title drew 9,300 fans. Attendance was down across the board, even in the smaller arenas. A talent sharing relationship with Chicago’s Fred Kohler, a key to New York’s success due to Chicago’s national television wrestling access, was temporarily severed. The Manhattan Booking Agency went into debt seemingly overnight. Things got so bad that 20 weeks into the 100-week deal, Toots notified Martinez that he wouldn’t be able to make any further $250 a week payments. Martinez was out $20,000.00, about $193,865.92 in today’s money. Martinez tried to get the NWA to step in on his behalf, but NWA Sam Mchnick refused due to the potential for bad publicity from a legal case. Martinez sued the Manhanttan Booking Agency, but the company declared bankruptcy. Martinez got into a locker room brawl that went public and made headlines. That is how the name of Pedro Martinez became a cautionary tale for business dealings in professional wrestling.
How exactly does a large market like New York City implode overnight at a time when it should have been booming? That is the big question, and your answer will probably depend on how you view Toots Mondt. One view of the situation is that Toots Mondts was just that bad at promoting professional wrestling. Toots like to play the ponies. He was a noted horse racing gambler. Maybe a gambling addiction ended up hurting the business? Another view is that Toots intentionally sank the ship to pocket the money. Even if it meant years of work to rebuild, the NWA wouldn’t let NYC wrestling totally fail. We’ll never know the full answer.
The renamed Manhattan Wrestling Enterprises received help from the NWA and Fred Kohler to regularly book better cards. Washington DC promoter Vince J. McMahon, who formed Capitol Wrestling Corporation(today’s WWE) in 1953, eventually formed a partnership with Toot’s MWE. There were ups and downs in the mid-1950s. Eventually, Toots’ MWE merged into Capitol Wrestling Corporation when McMahon joined the NWA in 1957. By that point, things were finally going as they should have all along. MSG was drawing over 15,000 wrestling fans up to 7 times in 1957, with Antonino Rocca as the main headliner.
Rocca featured on Superman issue 155, August 1962.
The next battle for New York came from within Capitol Wrestling Corporation. By the late 1950s, wrestling had changed again. The DuMont TV network that was the primary outlet for national TV wrestling went out of business in 1956. Wrestling television became a purely regional setup for the decades that followed. John Doyley, a CWC employee, left the company for an opportunity to book for legendary promoter Paul Bowser. He found great success there in 1958. He decided to take over New York City via the power of local television. He partnered with Kola Kwariani, which gave him Rocca and Rocca’s hot new tag team partner Miguel Perez. Perez was a Puerto Rican wrestler who broke into the business in Quebec, Canada, in 1954. Rocca and Perez’s tag team was one of the biggest drawing acts in wrestling and a huge reason why CWC’s business did so great in 1957. Doyle and Kola got a TV deal with WABD, current-day WNYW Fox 5 in New York City. They made a talent exchange deal with Pedro Martinez, who still controlled upstate New York. They also got Jack Pfefer, the booker who made the shoot happen way back at the start of this article, to be the primary matchmaker. Overall, this was like a version of the Monday Night War but in the 1950s. Toots & McMahon Vs Doley, Perez, and Pfefer in New York City with both groups on TV in the same market and talent jumping from one side to another.
Jack Pfefer is worth an entire book all his own. We often think of early to mid-20th-century professional wrestling as a period when shooters were shooters, and fans thought of wrestling as a pure sport that was “real.” Pfefer was the antithesis of this on every level. He had an entertainment-first approach to booking, and he didn’t always let a little thing like kayfabe get in the way of a good show. Pfefer booked gimmick wrestlers that were blatant knockoffs of more famous stars. He outright accused the top stars of the 1930s of fake wrestling matches in major Newspapers. Jack Pfefer made enemies of some of the most powerful promoters and wrestlers in the business. Yet he managed to survive for decades because while some fans hated his brand of wrestling, others loved it. He drew large crowds at various points in his career.
Jack Pfefer
Pedro Martinez ended up pulling out of the group fairly quickly in March 1959. He had his own territory to take care of and other booking interests around the Baltimore area at the time that was anti-Toots McMahon business. He remained in contact with Doyle and Pfefer as a supply of talent. Obviously, he remained an enemy of Capitol Wrestling for the rest of his career. Martinez would eventually go on to form NWF, of the Antonio Inoki New Japan title fame. As well as IWA, of the Mil Mascaras World title fame, in the 1970s. He remained a successful wrestling promoter in his area until retiring in 1978. After that, he formed a tape trading company, PM Film Co, based on tape libraries that he owned. Ignacio “Pedro” Martinez passed away on February 4, 1998.
The Doyle-Pfefer-Martinez and later just Doyle-Pfefer crew took control of MSG in 1959 and drew some very impressive crowds that year. 19,990 on March 9. 15,827 on May 23. 19,000 on July 25. A record 21,890 on November 13 for Antonino Rocca Vs. Mighty Zuma. Mighty Zuma was doing an impostor gimmick down to the “Argentina” nickname. The angle was Pfefer’s idea, and it worked wonders. Rocca and Zuma didn’t like each other behind the scenes, but they worked together for a time because the angle was red hot. 1960 continued where 1959 left off—21,950 for January 2 and 15,675 for January 25, both shows headlined by Rocca Vs. Zuma again. The Rocca Vs. Zuma angle ran its course, but the group kept drawing solid business through mid-1960. A rookie by the name of Bruno Sammartino started working MSG regularly on these Doyle-Pfefer shows.
On Toots & McMahon’s side, they were doing good business but mainly focusing on matters outside of New York City. At the time, the NWA was under investigation by the Antitrust Division of the Department Of Justice. This, combined with a weakened NWA Champion due to splits that formed the WWA World title with Édouard Carpentier, and the AWA World title with Verne Gagne made the NWA weak. Toots & McMahon were using their situation to their advantage to gain as much political power as possible within the NWA. This is a long and complicated story with lots of details, but just know that eventually, this would lead to Buddy Rogers winning the NWA title on June 30, 1961, and Rogers-Mcmahon-Toots leaving the NWA to form the World Wide Wrestling Federation in 1963.
The second half of 1960 went poorly for Doyle and Pfefer. They couldn’t find a suitable replacement for the Rocca Vs. Zuma feud. They pushed Bruno, but as a rookie, he had very little name value. They pushed journeymen like Ricki Starr, Chris and John Tolos, Jackie and Sonny Fargo, and Pampero Firpo. The audience dropped to between 10,000-13,000 between August and November MSG shows. Being outlaws running opposition to the NWA limited the talent that you could draw into your area. Doyle and Pfefer still had their upstate New York connection with Pedro Martinez to supply talent, but it just wasn’t the same. Madison Square Garden Corporation, the owners of the building, feared that Wrestling at MSG could die yet again. They pulled the plug on Doyle and Pfefer running in their building and gave the keys to Toots & McMahon, who were at the peak of the NWA powers. The McMahon family would never again lose control of Madison Square Garden and New York City wrestling again.
However, there was one final challenge to the establishment. With the competition out of the picture, Antonino Rocca went back to work for Toots & McMahon in mid-1961. He was treated as a midcard act. Buddy Rogers was now the man on top of MSG cards. Vince J McMahon also introduced a new Vittorio “Argentina” Apollo, a copy of Rocca to safeguard if Rocca ever decided to leave again. Antonino Rocca left WWWF in 1963. He secured a local TV deal and cut a talent exchange deal with Jim Crockett Sr. This can be considered the first shot fired in the McMahon Vs. Crockett war of later years. Rocca’s new company failed to make an impact. He had fewer resources than Doley and Pfefer did a few years earlier, and by this point, McMahon and Toots were at the peak of their powers with Rogers as NWA Champion. Rocca’s company died by the end of 1964 without making any kind of lasting impact. Rocca eventually reconciled with McMahon and served as TV commentator in WWWF in the mid-1970s alongside Vince K. McMahon. He passed away in 1977 and went into the WWE Hall Of Fame in 1995.
By the mid-1960s, Toots Mondts was in his early 70s. He started to reduce his role in WWWF, leaving Vince J. McMahon with complete control of the company’s operations. At the time of his retirement in 1969, Toots owned half of the company and had Vice President’s title. When Toots pulled out of the company, his half was split evenly. Phil Zacko, Vince’s right-hand man and local promoter in charge of Pennsylvania, took part. The other part went to Robert James Marella, aka Gorilla Monsoon. Gorilla took Toot’s Vice President title within WWWF. After his retirement, Toots and his wife moved to St. Louis. Joseph Toots Mondt passed away on June 11, 1976, at age 82. He was inducted into the WWE Hall Of Fame legacy wing in 2017.
I highly recommend reading the book “Capitol Revolution: The Rise of the McMahon Wrestling Empire” by pro wrestling historian Tim Hornbaker. The book serves as a biography of the McMahon family and the formative years of WWE. It tells this story in far greater detail and many other aspects of the McMahon wrestling empire. It’s a must-read for any wrestling fan and a great entry point for Pro Wrestling history.