The Boogie Woogie Man and Saturday Mornings

James Harold Fanning was a Tullahoma boy – and for one generation, he helped make Memphis wrestling feel like home

#Opinion • 11:15 a.m. May 3, 2026

Jimmy Valiant unlaced his boots for the final time last week, and I swear I could hear Lance Russell calling it.

Not the way he might have said it on television, exactly. More like the way he lives in my memory now – steady, Southern, slightly amused, trying to keep some order while the whole studio threatened to come apart around him.

Before the “Boogie Woogie Man,” before “Handsome Jimmy,” before the hair and beard and strut and holler, he was James Harold Fanning, born Aug. 6, 1942, just up the road in Tullahoma.

That makes the memory feel even closer.

One of wrestling’s great originals did not come from some faraway place. He came from here, from southern Middle Tennessee, and somehow made himself big enough for the whole country to remember.

Valiant was 83 when he wrestled his last match, closing a career that began in 1964 and somehow stretched across seven decades. He would become a WWE Hall of Famer, but around here, he did not belong to a plaque or a national highlight reel first.

He belonged to Saturday morning.

Through the grain of WMC-5

That is where I remember him best.

Not under the bright lights of some giant arena. Not with pyro, entrance graphics, or every camera angle polished clean. I remember him on WMC-5, with Lance “Banana Nose” Russell and Dave Brown sitting ringside, calling the kind of chaos that felt both ridiculous and dead serious when you were a kid.

At 11 a.m., the world stopped.

Not slowed down. Stopped.

Whatever else was happening in the house had to wait because wrestling was coming on, and wrestling had to be recorded. The VHS had to be ready. The tape had to be cued. Somebody had to make sure the red light was on because Dad would be home later from the John Deere dealership, and missing Memphis wrestling was not an option.

This was before everything could be paused, replayed, streamed, clipped, searched, and watched on a phone while standing in line somewhere. If you missed it, you missed it. So we treated that VCR like mission control.

My brother Kenny and I knew the routine. So did my best friend Graham.

Saturday morning had its own rhythm

The television came on. The tape went in. Lance and Dave took their places. The wrestlers strutted, shouted, cheated, bled, begged, and bragged. Somewhere in the middle of all that, Handsome Jimmy might come rolling through with hair, beard, swagger, and enough charisma to light up a cinderblock wall.

He was not polished in the modern sense, and that was his beauty.

Jimmy Valiant looked like somebody who had wandered out of a honky-tonk, picked up a microphone, and convinced the whole room he was exactly where he was supposed to be. He could be funny without becoming a joke. He could be over the top without losing the crowd.

He understood something the best territory wrestlers understood: People did not just want to watch a match; they wanted to feel like they knew you.

And we felt like we knew him.

Maybe that was part of it. Maybe somewhere, even as kids, we understood that Jimmy was not some manufactured TV character dropped into our living room from a coast we had never seen. He was one of ours – a Tullahoma boy who had remade himself into a wrestling folk hero, then came roaring through Memphis television like Saturday morning had been waiting on him.

We knew Jerry Lawler, Bill Dundee, Austin Idol, Tommy Rich, Jimmy Hart, the Fabulous Ones, the Moondogs, and every villain who ever needed to be knocked down a peg. We knew them because Lance Russell made us believe we were being let in on something happening just down the road.

Dave Brown sat beside him, calm enough to read the weather while the studio fell apart.

That was the genius of Memphis wrestling. It never felt far away.

It felt local. Sweaty. Half out of control. Like somebody’s uncle might get hit with a folding chair before the noon news, and Lance Russell would somehow have to explain it.

And for us, it was family time, even when Dad was not home yet.

The show came first. Then came the replay.

By the time Dad got home, the food was ready, and the tape was waiting. Bryan hot dogs. Kelly’s chili. King Edward tip cigarillos. Two six-packs of Schlitz for Dad’s lunch.

That sounds like another country now, and in some ways it was.

But I can still see it.

I can still smell the chili warming. I can still hear the clack of the VCR and the soft mechanical pull of the tape as it settled in. I can still see Dad coming in from work, ready to sit down and watch what the rest of us had already seen once but wanted to see again with him.

That was the part I did not fully appreciate then.

As a kid, I thought we were watching wrestling.

Now I know those were the parts that stayed.

The matches mattered, but not as much as the ritual. The ritual was the point.

A father coming home from work. Boys on the floor or the couch, already knowing what was coming but acting surprised anyway. A best friend close enough to be part of the family. A television station out of Memphis. A cast of loud, strange, wonderful characters. A Saturday morning that belonged to us.

That is what Jimmy Valiant’s retirement stirred up for me.

Not just the end of one wrestler’s career, though, 62 years in that business is hard to even comprehend. Not just the last bow of a Hall of Famer who kept dancing long after most men would have sat down for good.

Childhood memories, how they linger

What hit me was the sudden reminder of a time when heroes and villains arrived once a week through a TV screen, and the whole house adjusted itself around them.

We did not call it nostalgia then.

We just called it Saturday.

There is something sweet and sad about watching the last of those old names leave the ring. They take more than their boots with them. They take the territories, the studio crowds, the local promos, the bad microphones, the hot lights, the handwritten signs, and the feeling that anything could happen before lunch.

They take a little bit of our childhood, too.

But not all of it.

Because somewhere in my mind, Lance Russell is still trying to restore order. Dave Brown is still keeping his composure. Kenny and Graham are still watching with me. Dad is still due home from the dealership. The hot dogs are still ready. The chili is still warm. The Schlitz is still cold.

And James Harold Fanning from Tullahoma is still coming through that curtain as Handsome Jimmy Valiant, grinning like he owns the place.

Woo, mercy, Daddy.

For a while there, he did.