Along with the likes of Detroit and Houston, the city of Louisville has a long time, special Monster Jam heritage that is set to be renewed this coming weekend when an 8 truck all-star line-up, featuring a trio of World Championship winning drivers, invade historic Freedom Hall on the grounds of the spacious Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center.
It’s pretty easy to see why some cities have had such an impact on building Monster Jam tradition, but Louisville’s role is a little more unique. Take the aforementioned locales of Detroit and Houston. Both cities have huge population bases, among the country’s largest cities, and boasted spacious domes, so over the years Monster Jam would make multiple appearances each year in the Silverdome and the Astrodome, which has led to today’s mega events in Ford Field and Reliant Stadium. Louisville, on the other hand, is more of a top 50 type market, has a medium size population base, without a domed stadium for Monster Jam to call home. Still, over the years the city has hosted some of Monster Jam’s most memorable moments and events.
One reason for Louisville’s place in Monster Jam lore goes back to the sport’s competitive origins, when several promoters started putting together stand alone Monster Jam events after a few years of monster trucks being special added attractions to crush cars at truck and tractor pulls. In the late 80’s there were three major promotion companies that broke out of the pack to begin putting together the biggest events in major facilities, one of them being TNT, and TNT was based in Louisville. So right off the bat the city was the natural home base for TNT to create major events, and Freedom Hall became a showplace for that organization. Sitting in their headquarters city meant that those early Freedom Hall events would get the best of the best in terms of trucks and drivers every time out.
Along with TNT’s desire to make the Freedom Hall events special, the logistics and scheduling of the busy Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center also helped make Louisville a high profile stop. The home of the popular National Farm Machinery Show’s Championship Truck and Tractor Pull as well as the University of Louisville basketball Cardinals, and a slew of major winter conventions, Freedom Hall was never available for Monster Jam events in the first three months of the year, when most cities host the biggest events. So to get the date in their home town building the sanctioning body took the only availability that they could get, which was a fall date. And in the fall, with so many fewer events being held, Freedom Hall became a major, high profile stop. When the group that has now become Feld Motor Sports purchased TNT they continued to send in superstar line-ups to Freedom Hall and put on awesome events by holding on to that fall date.
At the same time as the Freedom Hall event was being built one of short track racing’s most respected and innovative promoter’s, Andy Vertrees, was busy building Louisville Motor Speedway into one of the true showplaces of auto racing. With the TNT headquarters in the same city it was Vertrees who approached TNT with a novel idea: bring the best trucks and drivers to the speedway and race them on the Louisville Motor Speedway Figure-8 course. From the first time that the monsters ran the Louisville Figure-8 track the grandstands were jammed full, and the early television producers loved the event because it was so unique and let the trucks run a long, challenging course with both left hand and right hand turns. To this day I still hear from long time fans that have taped those old Louisville Speedway Monster Jam broadcasts and pull them out to watch and relieve those incredible events to this day.
Again when TNT was sold the events at LMS continued and flourished under the new ownership. The promoters at the track and with the sanctioning body knew they had a special event that made great television, but it was tough on the equipment, so the commitment was always there to send to Louisville Speedway large fields of the sports best which built the LMS Figure-8 Monster Jams into must see events. From Mike Whitt flipping over the Stomper truck, something most fans had never seen before (a truck flipping onto its roof), to classic photo finish races between Gary Porter in Carolina Crusher and Dennis Anderson in Grave Digger, the Louisville Motor Speedway Figure-8 races remain special in Monster Jam history.
Louisville then fell off of the Monster Jam map at the start of the new millennium. First it was Freedom Hall that went away. Simply put, the facility was too busy. Despite Monster Jam’s success there the Expo Center landed several major new fall conventions and there was no longer availability in Freedom Hall for a fall Monster Jam. Then in 2001 Louisville Motor Speedway was bought by a group that closed the raceway and built profitable airport warehouses on t he property. Some small promoters tried some other events in the market, but they weren’t at the high level of earlier Louisville events, and frankly, brought weaker line-ups to the Derby City then the fans there had come to appreciate, and ultimately those events did not succeed at the ticket office and went away quickly.
So fans in Louisville are so excited that the scheduling in Freedom Hall has opened up and brought the October Halloween time Monster Jam event back on the schedule, and this Friday and Saturday night the Kentuckiana fans are in for a real treat. I think the Louisville Monster Jam tradition weighed heavily on the promoters when they scheduled an amazing 8 truck line-up for this weekend’s Monster Jam action, including both reigning World Champions, John Seasock in Batman and Adam Anderson in Taz, along with 2007 World Freestyle Champion Pablo Huffaker behind the wheel of Grave Digger to highlight a phenomenal field, set to write a whole new chapter of Louisville Monster Jam history. Fans that I’ve talked to (for those of you who don’t know, I live in the Louisville area) are so fired up for this event, and the current freestyle champ is one of the biggest reasons. Dennis Anderson remains to this days one of the Louisville area’s most popular motor sports figures, not just a Monster Jam star, I mean in all forms of motor sports, and to have his son, the youngest World Champion in the sport’s history, coming back to a city where his Dad left fans with so many exciting memories has the Louisville fan base jacked up big time.
On a personal note, I am looking forward to this event as much as any I’ve ever had the pleasure of announcing. I first grabbed a microphone at a Monster Jam event in Freedom Hall over 20 years ago where I began to learn Monster Jam announcing from the great Butch Krieger, and I was heavily involved in every figure-8 show at Louisville Motor Speedway. So for years I’ve been fortunate enough to announce Monster Jam all over the world live, and on Speed TV, but I haven’t been on the microphone in my home town since the final speedway Jam in 2001. Yes, it’s going to be a special weekend for me personally, but moreover, a special weekend for the sport. It’s rare that a city hosts the incredible events that Louisville did only to fall off the schedule. Now Monster Jam is back in Louisville, and with the awesome line-up coming to town this weekend, it will truly add to this city’s rich Monster Jam heritage. If you are anywhere close to Louisville this weekend don’t miss your chance to be a part of this special weekend in Freedom Hall, livin’ it live!
