In the world of wrestling villains, you can measure greatness in bruises and grudges. Some guys needed a mouthpiece. Some needed muscle. Don Carson needed only two things: his gravel-pit voice that sounded like he gargled with broken glass, and a loaded glove nicknamed Peanut Butter. If you were in the wrong place, at the wrong time, Peanut Butter introduced itself — usually across your jaw — and suddenly the night was over.
Carson, who wrestled across America from the 1960s into the early 1980s, never became a household name like a Blassie or a Fargo. But inside the territories, he was infamous — a raspy-voiced, dirty-fighting Southern heel who could rile up crowds from Birmingham to Los Angeles and make sure the local police earned their pay.
A Heel with No Babyface Period
Wrestling history likes its villains to have an origin story, some moment when they “turned” on a friend or manager. Don Carson skipped that formality. From the time he surfaced in Georgia in the early 1960s, there wasn’t a friendly bone in his body. Billed at one point as “Ted Blassie,” a knockoff of Freddie Blassie, Carson leaned into the act: loud suits, louder boasts, and the loaded glove always threatening to tilt the match in his favor.
That glove — Peanut Butter — was no gimmick. Fans swore it was weighted with lead shot. Promoters winked and let the legend spread. Opponents swore it felt like getting hit with a crowbar. In an era when kayfabe could still make a grandmother rush the ring swinging her purse, Carson’s glove was practically a weapon of mass hysteria.
Feuds, Friends, and Frenemies
Carson’s resume reads like a who’s who of territory wrestling: Gulf Coast, Mid-America, Hollywood, Florida, Memphis. Everywhere he went, he feuded with the local heroes — Bobby Fields, Ken Lucas, Jackie Fargo, the Fullers — and usually found some equally unsavory partner to team up with.
With The Red Shadow, Carson perfected the Southern tag-team formula: cheap shots, ref distractions, double-teams that drew heat like a bonfire. Against Corsica Joe and Herb Welch, they created matches that were half-sport, half-riot. Against Buddy Fuller and Sam Steamboat, they proved villains were always one step dirtier than the babyfaces were noble.
Later, when he paired with Freddie Blassie, Carson hit the peak of his notoriety. The two held Los Angeles gold and terrorized the territory until Blassie flipped to the good side. That feud escalated into gladiator death matches — wrestling’s carnival blend of blood, bravado, and spectacle. Carson usually ended those matches flat on his back, but not before making sure half the fans in the arena were ready to commit felonies on his behalf.
Hollywood Heat
Los Angeles in the late ’60s and early ’70s was a hotbed for larger-than-life angles, and Carson fit right in. He feuded with Mil Mascaras, losing cage matches but proving that his gritty heel act could stand opposite lucha royalty. He battled El Medico, Ricky Hunter, and even tangled with the mountainous Man Mountain Mike in handicap spectacles.
But the story everyone remembers is when Blassie was blinded by John Tolos in 1971. With Blassie temporarily sidelined, Carson stepped into the breach, fighting on behalf of his old enemy. It was wrestling irony at its finest — the villain turned reluctant stand-in for the fallen hero. Carson won a gladiator death match to claim the Americas Heavyweight Championship, but, as always, the belt slipped away quickly. Carson wasn’t built to be a champion; he was built to be the guy who made champions look like they’d survived a mugging.
Florida and Tennessee: The Peanut Butter Circuit
When Carson turned up in Championship Wrestling from Florida, he was the same raspy-voiced heel, brawling with Jimmy Golden in Black Glove Challenges and lighting up the towns with “lights out” matches. He never held the Florida crown, but he didn’t need it. The sight of him tightening that glove before a punch was enough to make fans believe murder was on the table.
Back in Tennessee, Carson kept the tradition alive. He feuded endlessly with Robert Fuller, trading titles and stipulations like poker chips. Brass knuckles matches, loser-leaves-town bouts, coal miner’s pole matches — if it could be dreamed up, Carson wrestled it, bled in it, and usually found a way to sneak out with the win, only to lose it all the next week in a rematch.
At one point, he donned a mask as “Mr. Knoxville.” Later, he became “The Tennessee Jawjacker.” Carson understood that gimmicks were just aliases in the territory system. What stayed the same was the rasp in his promos and the menace in his glove.
The Eternal Villain
Carson’s career spanned three decades, and in that time he played every role a heel could play: tag partner, betrayer, manager, masked man, enforcer. He wasn’t a sculpted bodybuilder or a mat wizard. He was an outlaw character, a man who looked like he’d just stepped out of a smoke-filled honky-tonk and into the ring, ready to settle debts.
That raspy voice gave his interviews a menace few could match. He didn’t scream like Jim Cornette or boast like Ric Flair; he rasped and growled, like a man who’d smoked three packs before breakfast and had nothing left to lose. When Carson said he’d knock your hero out with Peanut Butter, you believed him.
Life Beyond the Ring
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Carson had a foot in the “real world.” He worked as a deputy sheriff, which made the irony even richer: by day, a lawman; by night, a loaded-glove villain terrorizing arenas. Fans who saw him in uniform during the week must have shaken their heads, wondering how a man who broke rules so gleefully in the ring could enforce them outside of it.
Carson wrestled into the late ’70s and even made sporadic returns in the ’80s and ’90s, including a final match against longtime foe Ken Lucas in 1998. By then, Peanut Butter was more nostalgia than menace, but the raspy voice and outlaw presence never left him.
He died in 2013, remembered by old-timers as one of the territory era’s true journeyman heels — never the headliner, always the guy who made the headliner shine.
Legacy of the Loaded Glove
Don Carson will never be mentioned in the same breath as Ric Flair, Harley Race, or Dusty Rhodes. He wasn’t the NWA World Champion, and he didn’t headline Madison Square Garden. But in wrestling’s patchwork quilt of regional promotions, Carson was essential. He was the guy who filled houses, who gave babyfaces credibility, who made fans believe that evil might win unless their hero showed up with fire in his fists.
Every territory needed a Don Carson — the raspy outlaw with a dangerous glove, the man fans loved to hate. He proved that sometimes, you don’t need to be the top guy to make history. Sometimes, all you need is a voice like broken gravel, a fistful of Peanut Butter, and the willingness to never, ever play the good guy.