Dr. Death, RIP

I posted this on the wrestling thread, but this was the guy who got a cut that required 106 stitches back like in the early 80's. They sewed him up and he went back out for the night matches.

If that happened to Cena, it'd require six months off and a comeback montage set to Uprising or something.

 

I'm still trying to figure if the thread would have been better with an RIP Steve Williams.
Met the guy when I worked security at a wrestling event. Arrived backstage in a polo shirt and dockers - didn't understand why people referred to him as Dr. Death. Seemed like a nice guy.
But I figured this thread was for Skip Thomas or Donald Gibb from First and Ten fame.
RIP Doctor.

 

Back on topic, Schultz was known as Dr. D (for David), rather than Dr. Death. The WWF didn't fire him for the Stossel slap (many wrestlers actually admired him for it because Stossel was being an ass).

Rather, they fired him a month or so later because Schultz wanted to be in the first Wrestlemania main event with Piper against Hogan and Mr. T. When Vince told him no, he decided to try to attact Mr. T at a show legitimately, but security guards headed him off, and he got canned.

He is still alive. He disappeared for a number of years after he claimed that Hogan took steroids, but he's resurfaced in the last few years. He's now a bounty hunter (seriously).

 

did he really think he would team with Piper. weren't Piper, Orndorf and Orton always a team at that time? that would've been great if he did go after Mr. T though.

 

Shultz would team with Piper on occasion. MSG Classics showed a match with them as a team. He actually was a very talented wrestler, who, watching him on YouTube, seemed kind-of like a precursor to Steve Austin.

 

I saw a photo of him recently and he was in bad shape. Cancer is a hell of a disease. He was a pretty big star in Japan in the early 90’s, and he made a lot of money. By all accounts he had set himself up for life after wresting. He had a few businesses etc. Unfortunately, the battle with cancer was so costly and prolonged that he ended up having to sell up. In the end he couldn’t even afford the voice box thing that people with cancer get. A charity called Wrestler’s Rescue (or something similar) was collecting for him so that he could get the box. I don’t know if he ended up getting it.

He was a good amateur wrester as well back in the day.

http://www.wrestlinghalloffame.org/wrestlers.php?wrestler=2201

His amateur wrestling career was particularly impressive as he was playing football as well. The heavyweight division in the early 80’s was pretty stacked and for him to do so well against guys like Bruce Baumgartner, whose sole focus was westling, was pretty impressive.

For a long time before age, injuries and life in the fast lane caught up with him he was one of, if not the, toughest guy in the business as well. In fact, he was interested in getting into the UFC in, I think, the mid-nineties. His bosses in Japan nixed the idea though believing that there was too much risk and no real upside.

In 2004 he did end up having an MMA bout at a K-1 show. He was in his forties and I think already sick at that point. Alexey Ignashov, a kickboxer, knocked him out in twenty-two seconds.

 

He also took a beating in the ill conceived "brawl for it all" that was supposed to put him over as a bad ass shooter, not one of Vince's better ideas.

I loved Jim Ross announcing his matches in the very short lived UWF.

 

For a time in the early 80s, Williams would enter the ring wearing an Oklahoma helmet and jersey with shoulder pads. That's the kind of thing that captures your imagination when you're a 9-year-old who's obsessed with both football and wrestling.

 

The UWF was awesome.

 

Was that the one at the Sportatorium in Dallas?

 

No, that was World Class Championship Wrestling, owned by Fritz Von Erich, in the 80s, which eventually was bought out by Lawler's group in Memphis and retitled USWA. That didn't last long, and the Global Wrestling Federation came in around 1990 or 91 and was there for a couple of years.

 

UWF was the old Mid-South territory. I believe it encompassed Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana, and I think they did shows west of there (pretty sure they hit Oklahoma, though I doubt they ran much in Dallas). A lot of good wrestlers got their start there (Williams, DiBiase, Duggan, Sting, Ultimate Warrior, some others I'm sure I'm forgetting). Then Jim Crockett bought Bill Watts out and turned everybody into jobbers to WCW guys. Think of it as a dry run for the WCW/ECW invasion angle.