Southern States Wrestling is an American independent professional wrestling promotion based in eastern Tennessee. Founded by wrestler Beau James in early 1991, SSW (along with NWA Bluegrass) succeeded Smoky Mountain Wrestling as the top promotion in eastern Tennessee following its close. It featured a number of former SMW mainstays including Stane Lee NOT Stan Lane, Steve Flynn, Tracy Smothers, Killer Kyle, Tom Prichard, Bunkhouse Buck, Buddy Landell, The Mongolian Stomper and The Batten Twins (Bart & Brad Batten). While in the promotion, Ricky Morton teamed with longtime Fantastics rival Bobby Fulton as the Fantastic Express as well as forming a second incarnation of the Rock 'n' Roll Express with Ricky Harrison capturing the promotion's tag team titles with both men.
Others to appear in the promotion have included former National Wrestling Alliance veterans Ivan Koloff, Jimmy Valiant, Junkyard Dog, Pez Whatley, Terry Taylor, Shane Douglas and female wrestlers Sherri Martel, Debbie Combs, Brandi Alexander, Lexie Fyfe and Malia Hosaka. Jillian Hall, EZ Money, Andy Douglas and Edge and Christian (Edge & Christian) spent their early careers there as well. The promotion also runs a wrestling school in Fall Branch, Tennessee.
Famous quotes containing the words southern, states and/or wrestling:
“... so far from thinking that a slaveholder is bound by the immoral and unconstitutional laws of the Southern States, we hold that he is solemnly bound as a man, as an American, to break them, and that immediately and openly ...”
—Angelina Grimké (1805–1879)
“Perhaps anxious politicians may prove that only seventeen white men and five negroes were concerned in the late enterprise; but their very anxiety to prove this might suggest to themselves that all is not told. Why do they still dodge the truth? They are so anxious because of a dim consciousness of the fact, which they do not distinctly face, that at least a million of the free inhabitants of the United States would have rejoiced if it had succeeded. They at most only criticise the tactics.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“There are people who think that wrestling is an ignoble sport. Wrestling is not sport, it is a spectacle, and it is no more ignoble to attend a wrestled performance of suffering than a performance of the sorrows of Arnolphe or Andromaque.”
—Roland Barthes (1915–1980)