Bob Caudle Has Passed Away at 95
Remembering the longtime voice of Mid-Atlantic Championship Wrestling.
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.
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