Professional wrestling thread

Any thoughts on the new photo? That's Bobby Heenan next to the Clawmaster!

 

Awesome. Where did you find it?

Heenan was a well-known blader back in his days in Detroit/Indy. Didn't think the Baron did it much though.

 

Found it on a site that actually had the Baron on for an interview Wednesday night. It was on a person's message for the Baron as the radio show allowed fans to ask questions beforehand for him to answer. The photo was on it. It's a keeper!

 

Nice. I used to love The Baron during his days in AWA, when I was a kid watching it on Sunday mornings.

Although that goose step might be considered a little non-PC these days...

 

It might be January and Texas might have gotten a sleet enema this week, but that isn't keeping WWE from doing a little spring housecleaning.

According to Meltzer, the following wrestling packed up their knives and left: Sylvester Terkay, Rodney Mack, Jazz, Tony Mamaluke, Doug Basham, Danny Basham Al Snow (only fired from his talent contract with ECW, he is remaining with the company as a trainer at OVW), Gymini (Mike & Todd Shane), David Heath (Gangrel) and C.W. Anderson.

No really big losses there, though I'm a little surprised they let Terkay go because they were actually doing something with him in ECW. The rest were either lightly used (Bashams, Tony Mamaluke), used only on house shows (Anderson, Snow), in developmental (Shane twins) or not used at all. But the last two times WWE fired a handful of people, they usually cut a lot more in the following days.

Also, apparently Big Show is pretty much retired and won't be wrestling at WM 23. According to Bryan Alvarez, WWE has approached Hulk Hogan with two possible WM opponents -- Great Khali and ... Shane McMahon. Since they were high on the 20-year anniversary of the Hogan-Andre slam, and Big Show was supposed to bow out with this match, they'd be more likely to go with Khali. Oh God, Tiny Lister isn't available, is he?

 

Abdullah the Butcher is still around. I saw him wrestle at an indy show last weekend.

 

He's pushing 70, I think, still fat as the queen of all sea cows and still running his House of Ribs in Atlanta. I must eat there while he's still around. How IS he still around at that age and that weight?

 

Dude, was he a sight.

Comes waddling in with like a size-88 sportcoat and baseball cap, sits down and starts selling autographed Polaroids, 8x10s and -- get this -- forks. I watched him interact with some people who bought stuff and he seemed nice enough; when he took pictures with people he pretended he was gouging them in the forehead with a fork and so on.

The match? He is every bit 70 years, perhaps more. Wrestled in a t-shirt, which was probably a good thing. Never even got into the ring. But can he still bring the gore factor! Within two minutes, both he and the guy he was "wrestling" were drenched in blood. Abby actually broke a real beer bottle and started carving the guy up with it. They went about 10 minutes, leaving big pools of blood everywhere, before the mortified promoter ruled it a "no contest."

Cool to say I actually saw him, seeing as I used to be scared to death of him when I was a kid. But on the other hand it was pretty depressing.

Here's a link to some pics. Beware; some are pretty gory.

http://albums.photo.epson.com/j/AlbumIndex?u=4380170&a=32435154&f=

 

Jeez, Abdullah looks almost the same as he did when I started watching wrestling in the mid 80's.

I hope the promoter was just working a gimmick by being mortified; otherwise, he'd the dumbest fuck ever for being shocked that an Abdullah match would involve blood. The guy's probably bled 100 kegs worth of plasma in his lifetime, most all of it through his forehead. What was this dude expecting, Bob Backlund vs. Lance Storm?

 

I dunno. I'm usually pretty good at detecting what's a work and what isn't, but this guy seemed genuinely freaked out. What makes it even funnier is the fact he used to be a WWF jobber back in the day, so he definitely knew what Abdullah brought to the table coming in.

But for a show where a lot of little kids were in attendance, it probably wasn't the greatest thing to do. And, if you saw the pictures, there was blood EVERYWHERE. I was actually sitting in a front-row seat and as they started making their way toward me, I hightailed it out of there for fear of getting blood splattered on me. And lo and behold, about 10 seconds later, the guy Abdullah was assaulting wrestling dumped about half a pint right on my chair. Definitely not for the faint of heart.

I actually got a good look at his forehead when he was at his table doing the signing beforehand. Talk about a scarred-up mass of tissue. Geez! Those grooves in his head were unreal. I'm tempted to buy one of those shoot interviews with him I've seen advertised on the internet. The guy's been wrestling since like 1960 or something -- he's probably got some awesome stories.

 

All I can say is thank God he never had AIDS, or he could have ended professional wrestling all by himself.

 

If he got it, it would have had to have been from IV drug use. Because I can't see any woman being willing enough to give it up to Abdullah. Her nether regions would probably wind up looking like his forehead when he was done with her.