Flair was a great traveling champion. When he would only be seen in an area a limited number of times per year, he could pop a gate and make the local guy look like a real contender. Once things changed to the point that Flair was on TV every week and PPV every month, his act got stale. Some critics have pointed out that as he got older, Flair worked pretty much the same match every night, with minimal variations as required.
Chop > chop > reversal > punch > punch > Irish whip > backdrop > put back of hand on spine and grimace > beg off > low blow > chop block to back of knee > stamp on leg > knee drop on leg > leg bar…
On an unrelated note, I just heard that Ultimate Warrior has died. Can’t say I was a fan, but the guy was only 54 years old. 
The Ultimate Warrior Has Died for your remembrances.
The Shockmaster and the Gobbledy Gooker top the list. Since it’s absurd anyway, you might as well go for the two primo examples. The rest is mostly bad athletic acting.
I forget, was Shockmaster Tugboat or Earthquake. Either way, that was a disaster. Gotta love live TV. I know the Gobbledy Gooker was Hector Guerrero, who would take any gig Vince threw his was as long as he was given a check at the end of the night. At least his name wasn’t formally attached to the gimmick, unlike the Red Rooster.
Dusty could have made any of those work. That was the charm, charisma, and skill of the man.
Yes, yes, your threadshit is noted.
Settle down, I was joking around. Seriousness in a wrestling thread? Now I’ve seen it all.
Only a fan, or at least a lapsed fan, would know of Shockmaster and Gobbledy-gooker.
Let’s see.
- Bruno Samartino
- Hulk Hogan
- George “The Animal” Steele
- Brutus Beefcake
This post frightened me. If you pulled all this from memory, you really watched too much wrestling. Good god, those names! I didn’t even recognize many of them. I will also add that I am disappointed that you did not mention the “Throwin’ Samoans” in your tag team section,
I might not have seen all of them wrestle, but I recognized all the names and of their significance to the business.
Everybody needs a hobby. 
Indeed.
The depth and breadth of your wrestling knowledge is, um… Impressive?
I thought most people (and usually guys) had a fairly short window of time to become familiar with wrestlers.
For me, there were two windows, only because I have a brother about 10 years younger than me, and he was into wrestling during the WWF heyday. (i think it was WWF). He had a Rowdy Roddy Piper action figure, among others.
So I, through osmosis I guess, picked up the Brutus “the Barber” Beefcakes of the world. Total 'roid junkies, that looked like cartoon chatacters.
My first memory of wrestling was back in the Bruno Samartino days. I still remember the masked guys that were a tag team, but I can’t remember their names, i want to say one of them was Mr. Wrestling, number 2? Is that right? Larry Szybisko (sp?), George “the animal” Steele, etc. none of these guys had much of a physique. All had a gut, and if they were really out of shape, they wore that caveman leotard that Andre the Giant made famous, where it has one strap coming up over one arm, leaving the other arm exposed. But usually a big, fat gut. I guess Bruno was in shape in the day, but I caught him on the downward side of his career. George Steele, I remember, had the hairiest body I ever saw on something on this side of the cage bars.
When Hulk Hogan and those guys appeared, it turned into an entertainment extravaganza. I do recognize a few names, but not many. You cover different eras that must span 20-30 years or more, plus you remember what leagues they were in. Impressive. You would run the category on jeopardy!
If you’re a baseball fan you know the names of many great players who played before you were born, the same with wrestling. Once upon a time wrestlers weren’t all body builders, but they weren’t out of shape, they worked longer matches more often than wrestlers do today. Vince McMahon Jr. changed all that. He was a gym rat himself and he is alleged to have turn the corner when trying to get his friend Dick Ebersol to get wrestling onto NBC broadcasts. Ebersol’s response was something like “Wrestlers? Those are the guys who all have beer bellies right?”. From then on Vince placed appearance above ability. One notable exception was Nature Boy Buddy Landell who drew tons of heat as a grossly overweight wrestler playing a ‘Nature Boy’. Vince told the other wrestlers they had to work out more and get in better shape, except for Buddy.
Well, there were rather a lot of exceptions but being fat was part of their gimmicks (Yokozuna, King Kong Bundy, Earthquake, Typhoon, Rikiski, et al.)
Sure, giants were always an exception, it’s counter-productive to tell a giant to lose weight. OTOH, note the number of deaths in that group at a young age. Those weren’t guys suffering from acromegaly.
John “Earthquake” Tenta was a trained sumo. I never considered him just ‘fat/big’ after I watched him catch Ray “Big Boss Man” Traylor leaping off the top rope. Traylor was billed as 6’6" and 315 lbs., so figure really between 6’2" and 6’4" and around 275 - 290 lbs. That’s not Rey Mysterio weight he caught and held. Rikishi was another powerhouse behind the weight, and you could tell from Tugboat’s/Typhoon’s biceps that he was not someone you’d want to arm-wrestle.
That said, they’ve tried to get The Big Show to lose weight many times (and he has yo-yoed some), mostly for his own health and to lessen his own injury risk, especially back and knees.
I didn’t say they were just fat, only that they were fat. Vader has always been one of my favorite wrestlers, and he’s fat as fuck but also a phenomenal athlete.
It was Stink Fish Pot who said they were out of shape, referring to Wrestling II, Larry Larry Zbyszko, and George “The Animal” Steele. All three guys being in extraordinary physical condition. Johnny Walker (Mr. Wrestling II) was older when he developed the gut, Larry put on weight to emulate his WWWF mentor Bruno Sammartino and later slimmed down considerably, and George Steele could rip the bumper off a pickup truck as easily as he could rip your arm off. Very few wrestlers have ever made it very far without being in exceptional physical condition.