The Golden Age of Professional Wrestling

By Anita Rao,

Published May 19, 2015 at 11:15 AM EDT

Image of John Hitchcock with the Front Row Gang

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John Hitchcock with the Front Row gang holding one of his signs meant for Dusty Rhodes. Hitchcock was the first audience member in the Greensboro Coliseum to hold up humorous signs at wrestling matches. Some of the pro wrestlers loved it, others didn't.

John Hitchcock

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John Hitchcock (R) with Arn Anderson of the Four Horsemen, a notorious group of fans. John christened the name of the group after Arn said something like, "The only time this few people wreaked this much havoc was the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse!"

John Hitchcock

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This is one of the screen printed wrestling cards used to advertise matches in the 1960s and 1970s.

John Hitchcock

Greensboro native John Hitchcock attended nearly every professional wrestling show in the Greensboro Coliseum for 15 years. He was a part of a group of troublemakers who sat in the front of the coliseum cheering loudly for the bad guys and getting a rise out of the crowd and the wrestlers.

Hitchcock captured his reflections from what he calls the “golden age of professional wrestling” in a new book, Front Row Section D: Glory Days for Mid-Atlantic Wrestling. We'll talk with Hitchcock, owner of the comic book store Parts Unknown in Greensboro, about his lifelong passion for professional wrestling, spanning from staying up late to watch matches as a 10-year old, to being a part of the show himself in the late 1990s.