Man I don't know who had better handles--wrestlers or rappers. I think you gotta give it to the wrestlers. S.T. "Special Delivery" Jones. The Fabulous Freebirds. Jerry "The King" Lawler. Kamala The Ugandan Giant. Abdul The Butcher. Dr. Death Steve Williams. The Iron Sheik.
RIP Captain Lou Albano. The news sent me trolling through the archives. Came across this gem from the old days. Dudes around the way used to say the WWF was fake, and NWA was real. Heh.
The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood 
Copyright © 2010 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All rights reserved.
Don't forget great names like "Classy" Freddie Blassie or Hacksaw Jim Duggan.
I grew up on Mid-South Championship Wrestling, which featured The Junkyard Dog (who left town once and came back as the masked Stagger Lee), and the above mentioned Hacksaw Jim Duggan. Ted Dibiase was there before he became Millionaire Ted. So was Gorgeous Gino Hernandez, Jake the Snake Roberts, Ravishing Rick Rood, Magnum T.A., the Samoan Twins Afa and Sika with their manager General Skandar Akbar and so on. High drama for a ten year old. I was honestly upset when John Stossel did the "exposé" on the business on 20/20, though given the kind of douche he's become in the years since, I don't feel so bad to the slap upside the head he got from one of the wrestlers when he asked if it was fake.
Ted DiBiase was The Million Dollar Man. Billionare Ted was a lame gimmick WWF had in the mid 90s when the company was losing a ratings war with Turner-owned WCW.
They earn those handles. Just consider the early mortality rate of these guys.
On a side note: I can only imagine how embarrassing it would have been to have to wrestle Hulk Hogan in his peak. His matches were so ridiculous.
It would have been more embarrassing to be a ref. Those guys got no respect. My favorite part of that clip is the ref just walking back and forth ineffectually.
Ha! I really do love that they bother to have refs in wrestling. It makes me laugh. I've seen guys pull chains out from under the ring and use them to choke their opponents in a match. And I was like, "C'mon! How is that not a foul!"
TNC,
I can't believe you mentioned Kamala the Ugandan Giant without including your father's quote in The Beautiful Struggle: "Go see Kamala the Ugandan Giant. And you will understand, as I do, that that nigger is from Alabama." Funniest. Quote. EVER!!!!!!!
The funny part is that years later, when I researched it, my Pops wasn't that off. Dude was from Mississippi.
If you haven't seen the documentary Beyond the Mat, go find it right this second and watch it. Gives you a look at how it's not as fake as you think in a lot of ways.
But just as fake as you think in every other way. ;)
Saw it. It's fake, but that doesn't mean you don't get hurt.
True. After seeing that documentary, The Wrestler freaked me out. Aronofsky made all of that stuff seem very real (and I guess Rourke still hasn't denied that he was actually stapled during that fight).
Seconded. Watch it for Jake Roberts alone.
Yeah, fake has always been the wrong word to use--predetermined, staged, those are both better, But the injuries these people get and the damage they do to their bodies is real, and it's incredible as well.
i guess the difference between an entertainment wrestler, and a wrestler in shootfighting/mma/vale tudo is that, in the latter, the fighter knows how he may get hurt, and he can actively counteract it, and in wrestling, he hopes to higher powers that he doesn't end up on a stretcher, because the other guy missed to set the throw up properly...
RIP,
I know I am not alone in taping (I didn't have the courage to use glue) rubber bands to my face when me and my friends reenacted our own WWF or AWA or WCW matches.
Never forget rock and wrestling--a marriage made in heaven!
You had to sit and wonder on that a minute! Obviously wrestlers have better names. Superfly Jimmy Snuka. Gorilla Monsoon. Brutus the Barber Beefcake. Macho Man Randy Savage. Stone Cold Steve Austin. The Heart Foundation with Bret the Hitman Hart and Jim The Anvil Neidhart. Haystack Calhoun. The Four Horsemen. Ricky The Dragon Steamboat. Never, and I mean ever, get in a "who can give themselves a better nickname" with a pro wrestler.
The Ayatollah of Rock n Rolla. The Crippler. The Hitman. All great handles. I'm probably dating my WWE watching days and am possibly in the minority in thinking that old-school wrestling (Andre the Giant, Jake the Snake, Roddy Piper, Superfly Snuka etc.) wasn't really that fun to watch. Maybe I dislike VHS. I don't know. My dad was a huge fan and I remember when he used to put those tapes on when I was a kid. Then he gave up drinking and with it, WWF.
Me, I came to like it around the time of Benoit and Jericho and the Rock. It was better then, in the Attitude era. Not so much now when you have silly handles like Dolph Ziggler and C.M. Punk. Dolph is a silly enough name on Lundgren without having Ziggler. I tried getting back into watching RAW and Smackdown but I found I just couldn't care about the current crop of wrestlers. Or maybe I've just finally gotten too old to be a wrestling fan.
"The Ayatollah of Rock n Rolla"
That's what Mario van Peebles's character called himself in Heartbreak Ridge (great flick, btw).
One of my favorites. The Swede. Improvise, adapt, overcome.
"The Ayatollah of Rock n Rolla"
It's also what the Lord Humongous, the Warrior of the Wasteland, calls himself.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_TL4XZdyo3g
Oh man. I remember being absolutely crushed, CRUSHED, to learn that the Ultimate Warrior had beaten Hulk Hogan for the WWF title at Wrestlemania VI. I wasn't able to see it since my mom wasn't too keen on letting me watch wrestling, especially at pay-per-view rates, and I rushed to school the next day, desperate for the results. I wouldn't believe the first kid I asked. So I asked another and another, never really believing what I heard. I couldn't accept it. I was in a dark mood for days. Clinging to my delusions, I waited until the Saturday morning wrestling program -- god, what was it called? -- and there it was: video evidence of my heartbreak. I was devastated. I was in third grade.
Not "fake"? OK, how about "not real"? It is a theatrical tableau more akin to a musical than sport. I have always had profound respect for anyone who engages in genuine "combat sport" (boxing, 'real' wrestling, martial arts etc), because they are incredibly difficult. The actors portraying combatants are athletes pretending to be engaged in something they are not.
While slamming their bodies into metal, concrete, other hard bodies, not to mention the "extreme" matches, where guys jump onto thumbtacks from the top of ladders and steel cages. Yes, they're playing parts, and the outcomes are already decided, but the physicality is very real. Remember Owen Hart.
If I'm not wrong, one of the announcers is Jesse Ventura (later Governor of Minnesota) and the other is Vince McMahon (who owns basically all of wrestling, and who was, I think, on the Forbes 500 wealthiest people list at one point). Not too bad for a couple of people from a fake sport.
Also, all you wrestling/pop-ska lovers out there should check out the song 'King of the Ring' at http://www.myspace.com/12centsformarvin
What was not to love about George "The Animal" Steele. Used to love how he'd munch on the turnbuckle.....
Funny, before learning any of this I was thinking last night about how great it would be for rappers to get into the pro-wrestling game. Metal guys are already doing it, and half of pro-wrestling's appeal is the smack talk -- I imagine with rappers in the game we would have a veritable Golden Age of amazing pre-match put-downs.
How many words rhyme with "jabroni"?
By the way, have you heard Macho Man Randy Savage's rap album? Hilariously bad and worth a listen, if not several.
seriously, nobody ever played Def Jam Vendetta on PS2?? you get to fight Scarface, DMX, Luda, and Meth/Redman in tag team action.
Cyndi Lauper must be sad.
Two things on Lou.
1
I saw him in 1979 (I was 11) at the South Mountain Arena in West Orange, NJ on a slate that did indeed include Gorilla Monsoon and Superfly(as referenced above by others).
2
I have a picture of my father and the Captain taken in Las Vegas in about 1991-92 I think they were at a party. A seperate story related to Vegas is how I came to ask my dad why he had MC Hammer's phone number in his book, that was around 1992-3.
RIP Lou
First off the NWA was real fuck what ya'll are talking about. I remember when the Road Warriors tried to take out Dusty Rhodes' eye with one of their spikes... In all seriousness FAKE is a poor choice of words, predetermined is a much better adj. describing what goes on in the squared circle. "Beyond the Mat" almost brought me to tears when they interviewed Jake the Snake. Damian had lost all his luster, and Jake was even more out of shape than usual. But the straw that broke the camels back is when he refused to do the interview until they got him crack to smoke. Oh and CoCo Beware had a little cameo, that broke my heart. I'm not sure how said it, but you should never meet your heroes, and that filmed showed me a little more than I would have wanted to see. I assume wrestling is still pretty big though I haven't seen a full episode since the days of the NWO Wolf pack vs. NWO Hollywood. Gang Bang'n and wrestling, what a combo.
Why did I get chills when the Hot Rod came down the aisle?
R.I.P. Rock N Wrestling Connection
Same here.
And for this mornings episode of surreality, those of us in Memphis can vote (today people!) for Jerry Lawler to be the next mayor.
No joke, check it out:
http://www.ourcampaigns.com/RaceDetail.html?RaceID=551814
He's running again? About 10 years ago I was in Tunica, MS on business trip for a couple of weeks and experienced the most bizarre/surreal moment of my life while watching RAW in my hotel room. The King was on RAW announcing as usual and then during the commercial break, an ad for Jerry Lawler for Mayor of Memphis played. At first I thought it was some sort of bizarre angle Vince was working, until I flipped around to some other channels, eventually saw the same ad, and came to the conclusion that it was in fact real.