10/16/2026
For years, Wednesday nights in Evansville, Indiana, meant professional wrestling at the Coliseum. And when the matches were over, there was one place you could count on finding some of the boys: Roca Bar Pizza.
Dusty Rhodes, Bill Dundee, and plenty of others made their way there after the shows. It was a popular local hangout, but it also became part of the wrestling scene in a town where the fans took their wrestling seriously.
Jim Cornette has spoken about just how much heat the wrestlers could generate in Evansville, recalling occasions when police escorts were needed to get them safely out of town. Those were different days, when what happened inside the ring could follow a wrestler long after the show ended.
This terrific photograph of Dusty Rhodes and Bill Dundee together at Roca Bar comes to us courtesy of Book Pro Wrestlers reader Nik Merrell, who shared a little of the restaurant’s history with us.
Nik also told me something I particularly enjoyed hearing. He and his brother regularly send each other photographs and stories they find on our page.
This particular photograph has quite a story behind it. Two of wrestling’s most influential minds, sitting together at a pizza restaurant in Evansville, back when the territory system was still very much alive.
My thanks to Nik for sharing this one with us. If you’ve got old wrestling photographs or firsthand stories of your own, we’d love to see them. Some of the best history we’ve shared on this page has come directly from our readers.
— Steve Stasiak, Book Pro Wrestlers