The Squared Circle: Life, Death, and Professional Wrestling
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Venis, Val, 142
Ventura, Jesse “The Body,” 119, 137, 162, 203, 346, 347
Vicious, Sid, 233, 356
Volkoff, Nikolai, 50, 120, 148, 292
Von Erich, Chris, 69, 72, 79
Von Erich, David, 69, 72, 75–76, 78
Von Erich, Fritz, 66–68, 70, 76–77, 79, 93, 96–97, 110, 290, 313
Von Erich, Kerry, 69, 72, 74, 76–78, 84–86, 88
Von Erich, Kevin, 69, 72, 74, 76, 79, 84, 88
Von Erich, Lacey, 73
Von Erich, Lance, 77–78, 250
Von Erich, Mike, 69–70, 72, 76–77
Von Erich, Waldo, 66–68
Von Haig, Crusher, 203, 205
Wagner, George. See George, Gorgeous
Waldek, Ella, 56–57, 317
Walker, Doak, 65
Wallace, David Foster, 180
Waltman, Sean, 244
Ware, Koko B., 137, 299, 306, 308
Warlord, 207, 369
Watson, “Whipper” Billy, 52
Watts, “Cowboy” Bill, 46, 66, 73, 87, 137, 144, 260
WCW Monday Nitro, 141, 262–63, 269–70, 355
WCW World Heavyweight Championship, 137
weddings, 198–99
Wells, Danny, 174
Wepner, Chuck, 158
Whatever Happened to Gorgeous George? (Jares), 25
Whatley, Pez, 30
White, Tim, 313
White Wolf, Billy, 105
Wight, Paul “the Giant,” 313
Wild Samoans, 106, 174, 214, 321, 341
Williams, Steve “Dr. Death,” 88–89, 298
Wilson, Rick, 255
Windham, Barry, 30, 93, 119
Wolfe, Billy, 56–58, 317–18
Wolfe, Buddy, 111
Wolff, Dave, 119, 169
Woods, Tim “Mr. Wrestling,” 102
WrestleMania, 115–23; and Albano, 169; and Andre the Giant, 155, 160; and the Attitude Era, 275–76, 278; and competition between wrestling organizations, 270–71; and “Crush” Adams, 285; and drug abuse, 244; and famous venues, 81; and geopolitics in wrestling, 291; and Guerrero/Benoit victories, 349–50; and Jones (S. D.), 125, 128–29, 130; and Junkyard Dog, 143, 149; and “King” titles, 152; and Miss Elizabeth, 195; and race issues in wrestling, 137; and the Road Warriors, 202, 282; and Rude, 223; and Savage, 181–85; and Smith (Davey Boy), 230; and the Territorial Era, 46; and the Ultimate Warrior, 249, 252–53; and Yokozuna, 321–22, 324
The Wrestler (2008), 348
Wright, Bernie, 227
Wright, Charles, 140
Yamaguchi-san, 142
Yokozuna, 106, 291, 309, 313, 319–26, 328
Young, Mae, 317
Yukon Eric, 315
Zbyszko, Larry, 30, 102
Zbyszko, Stanislaus, 21
Zenk, Tom, 218
Zhukov, Boris, 292
*The promotion would later come to be known as Stampede Wrestling.
*Waldo, left to his own devices, would go on to a fairly significant career, the highlight of which was probably feuding with fan favorite Bruno Sammartino in the WWWF—the ur-WWE.
*The Sportatorium was one of the legendary venues in pro wrestling history, but it was little more than a barn with a fancy name, a ramshackle setup with wobbly risers, exposed rafters, and no A/C. In its latter days you’d exit the highway and drive past a mile of nothing but liquor stores and bail bondsmen before you turned into a dirt parking lot to see a show there.
*In an on-screen promo that purported to extol David’s talent but that alluded rather bold-facedly to backstage reality, Flair said, “I can tell you right now, he was close to being the world’s heavyweight champion.”
*WCCW was bizarrely popular there.
*Then known as the “Blackbird,” due to his partnership with Gordy and Roberts.
*Contrary to any sense of necessity, Roberts’s nickname originated from his love of Jack Daniel’s whiskey.
*The Memphis-based CWA territory, primarily because of Jerry “The King” Lawler’s obsession with the music biz (he had once been a DJ), had used rock music in video packages and the like.
*Gouldie was a Canadian who had reigned as a heel in Stu Hart’s Stampede Wrestling, and who found a second home in Knoxville, Tennessee, near Gordy’s hometown of Chattanooga. Bret Hart once called him the best wrestler ever to come out of Canada.
*Hayes tells a story about their first brush with fame while working there, when Nick Bockwinkel and Bobby Heenan came to Jackson and scouted them: “Terry and I were so excited, because we were hoping finally somebody, outside of where we were at the time, somebody big, somebody that had made it, could see us, and see that we were young, we were good, and maybe we could get out of ‘jail’ here.”
*He encouraged his employees to get into bar fights to impress upon the public their legitimacy, and would, for appearance’s sake, fire anybody who lost such a fight.
*The rumor is that McMahon was only interested in Hayes, and once that became clear, Hayes walked with his brethren.
*With its proximity to the United States, Puerto Rico has long imported American talent to amplify its bigger shows.
*Who’s presently appearing in WWE as Zeb Colter.
*McDaniel’s name was misspelled as “McDaniels” in the on-screen Chyron, a perhaps deliberate pluralization that called back to the fact that his name was often misspelled during his career.
*The jersey name rules in the AFL were much looser than in the NFL.
*It was Jim Barnett, who was a part-owner of Georgia Championship Wrestling and a broker of the sale of the WWF’s Saturday night TBS timeslot to the Crocketts, though history here is as hazy as ever; there’s also records of him wrestling for Dory Funk in Amarillo a year before.
*As far as I can tell, the two chiefs never crossed paths in New York, but McDaniel and Joe Scarpa were occasional partners years earlier in Florida.
*Shropshire later eulogized him when he died in 2002.
*This is true, actually.
*This could well be true too.
*Industry parlance for guys whose entire job is to lose, night after night.
*The “Hulk” moniker came from his days in the Memphis territory, when he appeared on a talk show with Lou Ferrigno and, as the host pointed out, dwarfed him; Vince Sr. gave him the Irish surname as part of his determination that every wrestler should have a discernible ethnic background.
*“You can practically hear Vince drooling on commentary,” says Adam Nedeff in his invaluable review of this card on 411mania.com.
*The specifics of this technique, with head shaking and finger wagging, would come soon thereafter.
*Jerry Jarrett and Jerry Lawler’s CWA promotion.
*Ring announcer Howard Finkel takes credit for the coinage.
*For the uninitiated, this was a system by which events were simulcast from the event site not to people’s homes but to big screens in arenas and other large venues, so that large crowds could gather (and pay money) to watch the show in multiple cities at once. Coming from an era in which major wrestling shows weren’t even broadcast on television, this was a really, really big deal.
*This figure is widely considered suspect, as are most attendance records.
*A battle royal is a classic wrestling match style in which a number of men, usually twenty or more, are crammed into the ring, brawling in close quarters, until all but one has been tossed over the top rope.
*Rodz’s most famous students went on to be ECW standouts—Taz, Tommy Dreamer, and Bubba Ray and Devon Dudley—who, in the preceding era, also probably would have faced careers of S.D. Jones–level hierarchical immobility.
*Gene Anderson’s na
me was genuine, but much like Jones’s “cousins,” his siblings were false. Lars (Larry Heinemi), Ole (Alan Rogowski), and latter-day cousin Arn (Marty Lunde) were all Andersons in stage name only.
*Well, except Koko B. Ware.
*The documentary Memphis Heat discusses at some length the segregated seating in the old Tennessee territory, and the locker room animus between the wrestlers who didn’t care for black audiences and those—notably Sputnik Monroe, who was a borderline civil rights pioneer—who were more open-minded.
*Father of the Rock.
*For a master class in this act, see Colonel DeBeers, wrestling apartheid advocate of AWA fame.
*If this storyline sounds familiar to non-Mid-South fans, it should: Neighboring territories during this era often passed storylines from one to another in the way that old football teams stole plays or hoboes borrowed stories. Running the same program, Tommy Rich masqueraded as “Mr. R” and Dusty Rhodes as “the Midnight Rider” in different regions, to similar acclaim, and decades later, Hulk Hogan took on the mantle of “Mr. America” after he was “fired” by nemesis Vince McMahon.
*Lloyd Price had the first big hit in 1958 followed in the next decade by Wilson Pickett, James Brown, and Tommy Roe. Other renditions were subsequently performed by Woody Guthrie, Elvis Presley, Fats Domino, Bob Dylan, Neil Diamond, Nick Cave, and Beck.
*This is particularly potent when one considers Marcus’s theory that Stagger Lee was actually white and his victim black, and that African American legend usurped and reversed the story.
*“Thump,” the unspectacular name of his powerslam finisher, was imprinted on the back of his tights.
*The legendary former NWA champion—from whom Ric Flair had won the belt—was at this point in his mid-forties and approaching his in-ring dotage.
*I am nonetheless indebted to Michael Krugman’s André the Giant: A Legendary Life for its “official” timeline of Andre’s early life.
*There are stories that his grandfather in Bulgaria had the same affliction and grew to a height of 7-foot-8.
*Harley Race, Stan Hansen, and the Masked Superstar had all supposedly done it before.
*Or tried to. After an obviously missed slap, commentator Gorilla Monsoon yelled, “Andre just paintbrushed him!”
*The concept of a manager in wrestling is a sort of catchall description of a paternal adviser, equal parts corner man, mouthpiece (especially for the charismatically challenged wrestler), and, most important, instigator. Note that the manager is almost always a noncombatant male; the female counterpart is a valet, though valets are usually ineffectual eye candy, and a formidable male in a similar role is usually called an enforcer or bodyguard.
*Who was actually a Canadian named Jim Parras.
*The Grand Wizard and “Classy” Freddie Blassie were the other two greats of that period, and they, along with Albano, are referred to as the “Holy Trinity” of heel managers.
*Such an assault on Lauper by the predominant heel manager of the era was actually a masterstroke in lending her pro wrestling credentials. Wrestling fans are notoriously touchy about outsiders invading their turf, but Albano’s factually absurd anti-Lauper rant cemented her as a comprehensible presence on the wrestling stage.
*Interestingly, Richter herself proved disposable; she never became as significant a wrestler as she was here a symbol—a vessel for Lauper-style feminine strength and coolness. Her WWF run was interrupted due to a contractual dispute, and her later employers were unable to muster the hype that attended her WWF run. Yet in retrospect, the fact that the legendary Moolah was jobbed out to such a one-hit wonder hardly seems significant; legacy has become disposable too.
*The actor Brad Garrett, of Everybody Loves Raymond fame, portrayed cartoon Hogan.
*Dutch Mantel said that he trained his “real” voice to be the Macho Man voice—there was no put-on there either.
*For the uninitiated, imagine Honky Tonk Man as a wrestling Elvis crossed with, um, a wrestling Elvis.
*Hogan and Andre the Giant had fought to a double disqualification in the tournament quarterfinals, eliminating them both from contention.
*Conspiracy theory has played a fairly significant role in Savage’s post-wrestling life, interestingly. There’s a widespread Internet rumor that Savage deflowered a teenage Stephanie McMahon in the early ’90s, and that accounts for his estrangement from the WWE since his departure. It’s a compelling story, but it’s been met with astonishment from less Internet-savvy figures like Hogan and tired shrugs from more plugged-in figures like Jim Ross; it seems just as likely that Savage’s reclusiveness kept him remote enough from McMahon and the WWE to preclude a full-fledged reconciliation. And the WWE did work with Savage on a DVD collection and a video game shortly before his death.
*It has never been clear why Savage was deemed ready for retirement—or, for that matter, why he took to wearing shirts in the ring even though he appeared to be in good shape.
*At this time, head writer Vince Russo was unintentionally taking the notion of nonlinear storytelling and free association to new heights of inanity.
*No relation to the ’50s icon, thankfully.
*She would eventually reach slightly greater fame as the WWE’s Molly Holly.
*Both McMahon and Heenan did wrestle, of course, but their contributions minus those instances are still profound.
*According to Freebird Michael Hayes, AWA owner Verne Gagne was skeptical that the Warriors would play as good guys despite the cheers they were getting—one can’t help but see an echo of Gagne’s earlier reluctance to push Hulk Hogan—and the Freebirds ended up leaving soon hereafter.
*Lawler is an avid reader of comic books and so unsurprisingly was a huge fan of the Warriors.
*Odd fact: The Road Warriors were actually the first investors in Zubaz, those neon animal-printed workout pants from the ’80s. They insisted on appearing in them in TV sketches and in wrestling magazine photo shoots. Once Jim McMahon and his Chicago Bears teammates started wearing them, Zubaz became a certifiable national phenomenon.
*They would soon be feuding with Demolition in the WWF, naturally.
*The other offshoot of this archetype is the “Adorable” Adrian Adonis–style gay baddie. If Buddy Rogers was the guy that male fans could call a fag under their breath, Adonis and his ilk just played the fag. If you will.
*Years later, the WWF would introduce a character named Val Venis who basically aped Rude’s whole act, only without the subtlety: He was actually supposed to be a porn star.
*To be fair, airbrush technology was just reaching its golden age.
*Rumors abound that Hogan refused to work with Rude, though it should be said that in certain quarters such Hogan rumors abound like stories of UFO sightings.
*If he lacked the oiled homophilia of his earlier incarnation, his slim-cut, double-breasted suits and perpetual nine o’clock shadow subtly affected a certain International Male vibe.
*If one were to be snarky, one might point out that WCW had no real plans for most of the roster.
*The cause was heart failure possibly brought on by an overdose of mixed medications.
*Contrary to popular usage, “Boy” is a family name treated as a middle name, and should rightly be treated as the first part of a hyphenate—for instance, the Dynamite Kid refers to him as “Boy Smith” in interviews—but since everybody in the United States assumed that “Davey Boy” was a nickname version of “David,” I’m going to hew to that line for readability’s sake.
*This fact will come as no surprise to many wrestling fans, who well know Jake to be the industry’s most famous substance abuser.
*Bret and Billington had themselves been tag team partners in Stampede.
*Matilda would later be replaced by ano
ther bulldog named Winston.
*Though the WWF bought Stampede in 1984, McMahon was only interested in its assets and sold the company back (minus the wrestlers) in 1985.