Posted on 11/16/125 by DMV Wrestling News
Bob Caudle has died at 95. The Mid-Atlantic Gateway, which
has been documenting Jim Crockett Promotions history for
years, was the first to report that he passed away
peacefully in his sleep overnight. Veteran wrestling writer
Mike Mooneyham, who has covered the business for more than
fifty years, added that Caudle’s son confirmed the news
Sunday morning. Mooneyham also said that Caudle was the
first wrestling voice he ever heard 61 years ago.
He was the first wrestling voice I ever heard too. For me it
was Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling on Saturday
afternoons on WFBC, Channel 4, in Greenville, South
Carolina. The show was taped in arenas by the time I was
watching, not in the old WRAL studios, but Caudle’s steady
presence came across the same way. His voice opened the
show, carried you through it, and closed the week out like a
routine you didn’t realize you depended on.
Caudle never made himself the point of attention. He said it
himself years later: “Nobody turned on the TV to watch me.
They turned on the TV to watch the wrestlers. The wrestlers
were the stars. It was really my job, in essence.” That
summed him up. He called the matches, asked the questions,
and let the wrestlers handle the rest. Whether the tapings
were in Raleigh, Charlotte, or the bigger Crockett buildings
that followed, he didn’t change what he did.
Fans across the Carolinas and Virginia grew up with that.
“Hello, wrestling fans” was how the week started. “So long
for now” was how it ended. Crockett Promotions expanded in
the seventies and eighties with bigger crowds and national
TV, but Caudle kept the same calm delivery no matter how
loud the product got. When people think back on that era,
they hear him right away.
Mooneyham revisited Caudle’s career in a multi-part series
in 2022, talking with him and with people who worked around
him. The stories lined up with what fans already knew.
Caudle treated everyone with respect, did the job the same
way every week, and never acted bigger than the show. Late
in life he looked back on it simply, saying, “I’ve had a
great life.”
His death is another reminder of how much of that territory
world is fading. Wrestling felt more local then, more tied
to the communities that watched it. Caudle was the voice
that connected all of it on screen. He helped shape how Mid-
Atlantic wrestling felt to generations of fans without ever
trying to stand in front of the product.
So long for now, Bob