Who’s responsible for the success of professional wrestling? Is it “Stone Cold” Steve Austin? Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? Or is it someone like Terry “Hulk Hogan” Bollea?

Friends, I submit to you the guy most responsible for keeping professional wrestling alive is none other than “Mr. Wrestling,” Tim Woods. What he did back in the 1970s not only kept a major promotion alive, it cemented in the minds of fans that “kayfabe,” or the notion that wrestling was a legitimate sport, was something in which they could place their trust.

Set the Wayback Machine to October 4, 1975. A company based out of Charlotte, Mid-Atlantic Wrestling, was making a major expansion in their territory. All of this was carried out at the behest of Jim Crockett Jr., who took over the company after the death of Jim Crockett Sr., his father. Senior’s company, Jim Crockett Promotions, was responsible for lighting the Carolinas (which oddly enough counted Virginia in the same “territory” as North and South Carolina) on fire. With national stars in the region and huge coliseums selling out, JCP and by extension, Mid-Atlantic, were doing huge business.

Success brings with it new challenges and the boys were often running on fumes as they tried to make schedules that consisted of three live events in the region and weekly television. Some of the top guys started chartering private planes so they could make it home by morning on the longer trips.

Anyway, the flight we’re talking about today was a Cessna 310 Twin engine piloted by a Vietnam vet named Mike Farkas. Onboard are some of the top stars wrestling’s got. You’ve got “Nature Boy” Ric Flair, David Crockett, Jim Junior’s brother; Bob Bruggers, a former NFL guy in his rookie year of wrestling, and Johnny Valentine, a major star for almost 25 years around the world.

And then there was “Mr. Wrestling,” Tim Woods. He was a collegiate wrestling standout and often competed in a white mask, tights, and boots. The all white ring attire was symbolic of Woods’ no-nonsense, sportsmanlike approach to wrestling.

Here’s the part I haven’t really drawn attention to yet. Woods was the only “good guy,” or babyface, on the plane. He and Johnny Valentine were in a bloody feud at the time of this flight and it was imperative Woods separate from the bad guys, or “heels,” upon landing.

As you can probably guess by now, their flight never landed. It was supposed to be an easy run from Charlotte to Wilmington, North Carolina, where an outdoor event at Legion Stadium awaited the plane full of grapplers. Unfortunately, the pilot didn’t calculate the right amount of fuel for the flight and the Cessna’s left engine died out. The Wilmington runway was in the plane’s line of sight when Farkas, the pilot, panicked.

First responders arrived to a nightmarish scene. Everyone was injured. Mike Farkas, the pilot of the craft, died a year after the crash. Johnny Valentine broke his back and never wrestled again. Bob Bruggers broke his back as well and never wrestled again. The least injured of the bunch was David Crockett who shortly returned to TV broadcasting and kept at it until Turner Broadcasting bought JCP and Mid-Atlantic in 1988.

Arguably the most well known passenger, Ric Flair, broke his back as well. Doctors told Flair he’d never wrestle again. But Flair wouldn’t listen. He trained, went through a grueling rehab, dropped 50 pounds, and came back to the ring in six months. His career would last another 35 years and the “Nature Boy” would be regarded as one of the best the business had ever seen.
I said this was about Tim Woods, didn’t I? I’m getting to what happened to him.

When news of the crash broke, the hospital was flooded with calls. Everyone wanted to know what had happened to the injured. One person never came up in the conversation, and that was Tim Woods. You see Woods had been of enough mind when attended to at the site of the crash that he gave the doctors his real name—George Woodin—and listed his occupation as “promoter” so no one would know he was actually “Mr. Wrestling.”

Woods lay in a hospital bed trying to figure out what his next move was going to be. He’d made sure “Mr. Wrestling” wasn’t identified in the crash as being on the same plane as the hated Johnny Valentine, but as time passed he knew he’d have to account for his alter ego’s absence. After all, with “Mr. Wrestling” not appearing on cards, speculation grew that Woods might have been on the plane with Flair, Bruggers, and Valentine.

So Woods did something either incredibly ballsy, stupid or a combination of the two. He checked himself out of the hospital against medical advice and went back to work to prove he’d never been on the plane.

It’s easy to dismiss what Woods did as a stupid stunt. But remember Mid-Atlantic was in the midst of an expansion at the time of the crash. If Woods didn’t return as “Mr. Wrestling” there was a chance he’d kill kayfabe, expose the business and permanently damaged wrestling as a whole.

So Woods, with broken ribs and various injuries, in tremendous pain and needing assistance walking to the back after matches, returned to the ring. Clad in his signature white ring attire, Woods made several events and worked brief matches to “prove” to the world there was no way he was on that plane.

How important was Tim Woods to wrestling? Well, 30 years later in his book “To Be The Man,” Ric Flair would pay his respects to Woods and his sacrifices to the wrestling business.

Jim Crockett Junior, when asked about Tim Woods’ contributions to wrestling, would have this to say:

“Professionally, there’s not a man alive who did more to protect the integrity of professional wrestling than Tim Woods. What he did was unprecedented and is generally unheralded. On a personal level, Woods’ dedication cemented the legacy of Mid-Atlantic Wrestling and helped my family achieve incredible success. I’ll never forget that.”

And that’s how Tim Woods paved the way for future wrestlers to make money—by literally putting his health on the line to keep the business of pro wrestling alive when just doing nothing would’ve caused serious harm to it.

That’s all for this week, folks! Happy Friday and remember: no matter how bad your week’s been at least you didn’t have to show up at work hurt and under a fake name!

We’ll see you next time, everybody!