Damn. Was the slickster really that bad? I remember Bobby "The Brain" saying he had that lips like bicycle pedals. Heh. We all that was fucking hilarious. My older brother (Big Bill in those days) laughed about it for days. We were so young.
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I loved wrasslin coming up, but WTF was the white guy doing in that video?
You mean Akeem? Formerly the One Man Gang. There are other clips out there that explain the transformation, including an Arsenio appearance if I remember correctly, but TNC seems to block links to them so just check it out yourself.
Man, I still love the Slickster. Well, I met this lady and I told her quite a story...
I'll assume it's not "hijacking" this "wrestling" thread to insist that everyone go see "The Wrestler" - an incredible performance by Mickey Rourke and a very moving film.
Saw it twice in two days and it was as powerful the second time as the first (wife decided she did want to see it after hesitating so I went again with her.)
Only in the WWF would a fat white guy with Huntington's and a southern accent don a dashiki and call himself "Hakim".
Just to follow up on my previous post, if you look at the related links at the end of the video TNC posted, you'll see one called "One Man Gang Becomes Akeem." That pretty much explains it although it is pretty unwatchable.
Wasn't there a wrestler with an outrageous nickname like The Jive Soul Bro?
Okay, I am going to assume this is a "wrestling thread." Hopefully, I am not threadjacking...
First, I want to second brucds. "The Wrestler" is a great film, and I highly recommend seeing it. Rourke deserves recognition great performance (also, it must be pretty hard to get into "wrestling shape" when you are past 50), but I also want to say that Marisa Tomei and Evan Rachel Wood also give great performances too.
Second, what are people's thoughts on Virgil (Ted DiBiase's "butler" when he was the Million Dollar Man, and the Junkyard Dog?
Finally, when I was growing up, my favorite wrestler was a guy named "The Ultimate Warrior." I thought he was the coolest wrestler, and he was the big buffed guy when everyone else was all flabby. I loved his rants, his entrance music, how he would run out onto the ring, and how he'd just beat the crap out of the guy in, like, three minutes (in a scripted way). It turns out, everyone in the WWF hated him, he had some "roid rage," nobody liked his "technique" or his "interviews," and now he is some right-wing commentator who rants and raves about everything.
Oh well, you're only young once.
Coates you're the real deal baby! You bring things back and don't take your platform too seriously!
I remember begging my mom for red jogging pants so I could pretend to be JYD, and my Dad letting me stay up late to watch Friday Night Wrestling...
The acting was terrible but the experience and memories are priceless
k1
ryanculver.blogspot.com
Best Ultimate Warrior quote (screamed out at the beginning of one of his Monologues)
"NIIIGHTMARES ARE THE BEST PART OF MY DAAAYYYY!!!"
Akeem and Slick are wonderfully absurd. There's been a bunch of dumb racial shit in the old WWF that even today doesnt offend me at all. It tickles me, actually. Kamala, Papa Shango, Virgil, Razor Ramon (Stereotypical Latino....being played by a white guy!) I love it
That video is like a crazy pill.
@Cee, don't forget the Iron Sheik & any Asian wrestler
I remember once in the mid-late 90s, I switched to WWF Raw just to see what was going on in wrestling at that point. Some ill superfly-type entrance music started up, and my wife said "what, do they have a pimp wrestling or something?" A second later, The Godfather and his hoes walked out onto the stage, and we cracked up.
And remember the Rock in the old days, when he was a member of the Nation of Domination?
I was a big fan of "The Honkly Tonk Man" . . . an Elvis impersonator who beat the stew out of people with a lead-weighted gee-tar . . . too funny!
Was Bobby the Brain Heenan based on Donald Trump, or vice versa?
The (original) Ultimate Warrior has his own website. It's great fun to go read.
IIRC, the original ultimate warrior got shuffled off and they replaced him with another guy who they tried to claim was the same, except the second Ultimate Warrior was about 75 pounds lighter. HE was more, the Penultimate Warrior.
Being older than our host and most of you my wrestling fan days were as a kid in the 70s watching the old WCW on WTBS on Saturdays (also the dark ages where cable was ESPN, WTBS and Showtime, i think if Dale Murphey ever gets in the HOF it will be because of my generation who grew up watching Braves games as the only baseball on TV)
There was a great lets put on a show amateur quality to the whole thing that fell somewhere between the dingy gyms of The Wrestler and the spectacle that is WWE; it helped that steroids weren't big yet and guys looked more normal, albeit big, but not freaks like now. Some of those cats were flat out stars who did great interviews and would have shown no matter where, of course Rick Flair and Bret Hart were young enough to make the transition to the big pay days, but guys like Michael PS Hayes and the fabulous Freebirds or Dusty Rhodes missed out on the big bucks they could probably make today.
In addition to the Wrestler I'd recommend a documentary "Beyond the Mat" that focusses mostly on Jake the Snake Roberts whose sad story is similar to The Wrestler, even down to the estranged daughter, I wonder if the guy who wrote it based it in part on this. Also the A&E Biography on Andre The Giant is very good.
I had a Twinkie a couple months ago---after a hiatus of about 20 years, maybe more---and my entire face puckered. Wow, how'd eat that and ever look forward to eating another one? But then again the hiatus did last over 20 years.
Maybe if all you've retained are the bicycle pedals, he wasn't as good as you think you thought he might have been. Although I can't remember the last time I've laughed for days over something.
I can't believe nobody has brought up Rowdy Roddy Piper and Piper's Pit. He and his goons (Cowboy Bob Orton, Big John Stud, Mr. Wonderful Paul Orndorff) used to verbally abuse whoever was on the show for the first five minutes, then blind-side them and beat the shit out of them for the final five minutes, while destroying the entire set. Wrestling at its best!
Nah, wrestling at it's best was the Four Muthafuckin Horsemen. Ric Flair, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Ole Anderson (though I did love when Barry Windham was a part of them).
Piper's Pit was incredible; it was like watching Bill-O with violence. The conversion of the Pit into Adrian Adonis' Flower Shop was Vince McMahon's worst move.
Watching wrestling from the 1980s is similar to watching a Sarah Palin rally, everyone boos the gay guy and a the tag team of an Iranian and Russian with a Japanese manager (when we said "Buy American" and watched Gung-Ho).
The American Dream Tag Team of Barry Wyndham and Mike Rotundo stunk though. I was always a bigger fan of the Road Warriors, the British Bulldogs or the Killer B's who never made it big (B Brian Blair and Jumping Jim Brunzell!)
Man, up until I was in 8th grade, you couldn't tell me rasslin' was fake....them was fightin' words for real. Watching 'The Wrestler' brought all that back.
I remember watching this VH1 special called Ego Trips Guide to Racism, or something to that effect, where they (quite funnily) talked about all these things about race and tv (such as the phenomenon of white families adopting black kids/people...ala Diff'rent Strokes, Webster, Gimme A Break)....anyway, they did a segment on wrestling and it was hilarious to hear the RZA say he didn't even know what a Samoan was until he saw them on the WWF.....
Yeah, he was that bad, but honestly, they were *all* that bad.
I do enjoy the classic AWA on ESPN Classic....although I'd prefer to see vintage WCW live from Turner studios in Atlanta (remember that space age 80's theme music) instead.
I referenced 'Illest Minority Moments Presented by Ego Trip' earlier...a must see for the wrestling segment if nothing else.
I guess its part of growing up. I think we all change our opinions as we get older. I used to love loony tunes in addition to WWF as a little kid. Now some of those cartoons make me cringe. Some of those stereotypes we imbibe as kids stay with us into adulthood if we let them.
Looking back now it seems that every single character in the show was portrayed in a stereotypical manner. I'm not sure melodrama is possible without stereotypes, and I certainly think that wrestling is melodrama.
By this period in wrestling, I had stopped watching and wouldn't return until the creation of the NWO. I was a huge fan in the early 80's though, and was shocked in college when my roommate said that he had always had a bit of an issue with JYD - the one Black superstar - walking around in chains. I had always thought of it as a "tough" thing, so this was sort of a Cook's Chicken moment for me, a la Ghost World. Watching WWE recently, I saw some gangsta rapper tag team and was like "damn, Vince, are you still doing that tired race-baiting good/evil shit?"
Of course, the curtain was really pulled back in 1987 when the Iron Sheik and Hacksaw Jim Duggan were arrested in NJ for driving while drinking and doing drugs together.
Ah, to look back with simultaneous nostalgia and deep embarrassment at the pleasures of our youth.
Is it race baiting to point out McMahon Sr and Jr are uneducated white southerners?
I remember fondly One Man Gang's "revelation" that he was black and changing his name to "Hakeem the African Dream"
Yes, only in wrestling.
I also remember an interview with Andy Kaufman where he talked about how a wrestling heel has the only job in entertainment of making everyone hate his effing guts. Ravishing Rick Rude=exemplar
DougEMI,
'Jive Soul Bro' was actually The Slickster's song that was released on the first WWF(E) album. The album also included Hulk Hogan's 'Real American' and countless other songs too awesome to mention here.
Talk about embarrassing, I know these facts that's embarrassing. Of course, I took my wife to see Ric Flair wrestle Sting for our first wedding anniversary so there you go.
I spent about four months in southern Africa last year (Zimbabwe, Malawi and Tanzania) and was stunned to discover that people there love wrestling.
My roommate, a college educated 25 year old black Zimbabwean had a picture of John Cena on his wall at his parents house. The market for second hand Cena, Undertaker and Batista t-shirts was huge.
I was surprised and fascinated. Suffice it to say, I loved Africa.
Oh and Jive Soul Bro was on Pildriver, the second WWF album.
The WWF did an interesting twist on its racial past after 9-11. They had an arab-american wrestler (actually an Italian guy) and he did a swerve. In the old days, he would have talked about how much he hated America and everyone would boo him. But this guy, Muhammed Hassan, complained that the audience was all racist and wanted to deny muslims their civil rights and they booed him. It was really messed up. He actually directed wrestling fans to Cornell paper on Anti-Arab prejudice it was surreal.
I've watched WWF off & on since college, and am amazed at the racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia packed into each & every episode. I'm not sure what it says about us as a species, but I'm married to a lifelong wrestling fan who says it's a soap for guys.
His favorite storyline: When Sgt.Slaughter decided to support Iran & turn his back on America? It was during the hostage situation in the 80's, I think. He'd walk out to the ring, do his little anti-American speech, and the crowd would just go ballistic, as planned. But when he began to get real death threats from the true believers, they had to stop the whole storyline & show these little announcements where he'd beg for forgiveness because he 'wanted his country back.'
That was the first Gulf War. He had joined forces with a General Adnan from Irag.