Championship Wrestling started life as an attempt at another "super session"-type production, with more of a focus on R&B than blues, to have featured
Al Kooper and
Jeff "Skunk" Baxter as equal partners with dual credit. Midway through what took a third of a year to get down on tape,
Baxter withdrew from collaboration, and
Championship Wrestling turned into a
Kooper album featuring
Baxter. It wasn't what Columbia Records expected, and it was dumped on the market -- based on the paucity of reviews, it's doubtful that promo copies or even a press release went out to A- or B-list critics -- and forgotten. Despite the fact that it's sort of "off-brand" (or "off-game")
Kooper,
Championship Wrestling has more than a few good, even exciting and bracing moments.
Kooper later admitted in his autobiography that, weary of reading of the supposed inadequacy of his vocals, he chose to keep his singing role to a minimum here -- two songs and that's it, though both "I Wish You Would" and "The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter" are excellent, the former even making another link in a chain of classic blues reinterpretations by
Kooper going back to his
Blues Project days. But even better is the rest of the material, sung radiantly by
Valerie Carter and with
Mickey Thomas and
Ricky Washington not too far behind. The fact is,
Kooper knew 20 years before this how to make a good soul record, and with the talent he assembled here -- including the Tower of Power horns -- and
Bill Szymczyk producing, it would have been hard for the resulting album not to be worthwhile; considering that even the two instrumentals (arguably the weakest tracks here) are highly diverting, the whole album is a keeper, assuming one can find it. Sony made that a lot easier by reissuing it as a mini-LP-sleeve CD in Japan to coincide with
Kooper's concert tour of the country, and
Kooper thought enough of it despite some unpleasant memories to include one track on his first Columbia Records anthology.